Spellcaster (Spellcaster #1) Read Online Free Page A

alone was loyal. She alone accepted him no matter what.
    They sat side by side, their backs against the elm tree, as the bell rang. When it stopped, Elizabeth said, “Have you been having the dreams again?”
    “Yes. Except they aren’t only dreams, Elizabeth. They’re real.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “I do.” The next would sound unbelievable, but the proof was here, now, walking the halls of Rodman High in the form of a girl so beautiful she stopped his heart. “I’ve seen her. The girl from the dream I told you about.”
    “That could have been anybody in the wreck. It was dark and rainy—you had to be in shock—”
    “You keep saying that, and I kept trying to believe you, but she’s here at Rodman High. Today. Her name is Nadia.”
    “Nadia. Do you know her last name?”
    “No.” He only barely stopped himself from saying not yet .
    Elizabeth took a sip from her bottle of water, obviously taking a moment to consider this. “You’re sure she’s the same one?”
    “Positive. It’s her. How else would I have known to be there before the accident?”
    “Coincidence.”
    “I could’ve believed that before today. Not anymore.” Mateo kicked at the ground with the heel of his sneaker. “I’m seeing the future. Just like Mom. Just like all the other Cabots.”
    “They only thought they saw the future—”
    “That’s what everybody always believed. I always believed that, too. But now I know it’s for real.”
    Which meant the rest of the “Cabot curse” was real as well.
    It stretched back through generations of his mother’s family—for hundreds of years, since Rhode Island was a colony and the first Cabots settled here. Maybe it went back to England, too; nobody knew for sure. All anybody knew was that, once a generation, a member of the Cabot family began claiming to know the future. That was how it always began. It always ended like—like it had for Mom.
    At first she had been merely distracted. Staying up late at night, mumbling over breakfast with dark circles under her eyes. Yet over the next few months, Mateo’s mother had … disintegrated. There was no other word for it. Her temper had become quicker; she said things that didn’t make any sense. Mom stopped bothering with dressing nicely or brushing her hair, and when she came to pick him up from school, he was ashamed of her. He hated himself for that feeling now. She was his mother, and he shouldn’t have cared what anyone else thought.
    Before long, Mom didn’t remember to pick him up from school in the first place. Dad would try to talk to her, tell her to get help, but she’d sob brokenly, telling him there was no help for her and they both knew it. They’d known it from the start.
    She’d taken a rowboat out on the ocean. There was no telling for sure whether it was an accident; Mateo thought she’d planned it that way, so maybe he wouldn’t know what she’d really done. He knew anyway.
    Elizabeth turned toward him, more intent now than she had been before. “Focus. It’s important. If you saw this girl—what did you see? Have you seen anyone else you know? Have you seen me?”
    “Not you. Not since that dream I had a few weeks ago.” It had been a weird one, something about them running through a haunted house; he wasn’t even sure that was one of the visions, since it could have been only a regular dream like any other. Mateo leaned his head back against the tree. Weak sunlight filtered through the elm’s spindly branches. “I see a lot of things I don’t understand. Rainstorms that seem to have been going on for weeks. Hospital rooms—lots of those. Jeremy Prasad trying to have a serious conversation with me, which absolutely can’t be the future, right? Because that would never happen. That girl with the gray hair, what’s her name, except maybe she was also glowing? That one was probably just a weird dream like any other weird dream. But Nadia—I’ve definitely seen her, and more than once.