Sixteen

We thanked Sirena and hurried into Mermaid’s Pearls, the jewelry store next to the pub. It was narrow and long. No one was at the front counter, but we noticed a girl sitting on a tall stool at a workbench in back. She had wavy red hair and wore a shimmery blue-green sundress, the color of a mermaid’s tail.

“Excuse me, are you Minerva?” I called.

“I sure am! Hello, mermaids!” she said, beaming and beckoning us toward her workstation.

“I’m Oli, she’s Iris. Do you own the store?” I asked, thinking she looked too young for that. She was not much older than Iris and me.

“My great-aunt is the owner,” she said. “But I’ve been an apprentice here forever. Can I help you?”

“Do you make the jewelry?” Iris asked.

“Yes,” she said. “A lot of it.”

I looked in the glass case and couldn’t help but be dazzled by the rings and charms in there. Each one was a miniature canvas for enamel paintings set in fields of diamonds: a white owl, a pearlescent cat with wings, a silvery mermaid, and one that really caught my eye—a tiny white witch flying through fog, just the suggestion of mist on the face of a gold charm barely larger than a dime. The sight of it made me shiver.

“You like that one?” Minerva asked, leaning over next to me.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, frowning because even though I said beautiful , that’s not what I felt. My mind was swirling. The witch made me think of something evil that I couldn’t quite define.

“Thank you,” Minerva said. “She’s my favorite. When you live by the waterfront here, you see lots of sea witches.”

I glanced up, thinking she had to be kidding, but when I looked into her eyes, in spite of a friendly glint, she seemed dead serious.

“We’re actually looking for sibyls, not witches,” I said.

“The Sibylline oracles?” Minerva asked. “From the sign out back? A lot of people come in here with questions about it.”

“That’s what Sirena said,” Iris noted.

“Ah, I wondered how you knew my name.” Minerva nodded. “Is this for a school project? Or are you just into art, history, the waterfront?”

“We need to find out about the sibyls. Especially about the other paintings of them,” I said, avoiding the question directly. “Sirena said the sibyls were distant relatives of yours.”

“They sure are,” Minerva said. “Three badass sisters who also happened to be oracles. It fires my imagination to think of being related to them. They’re actually the inspiration for the sea witch design. I immortalize them in precious metals and enamel. I make talismans. And they inspire me to throw the tarot, and to work on my powers?.?.?.”

I heard Minerva’s words, but instead of looking at her, I was staring into her showcase. I felt mesmerized, as if I was under a spell—a lost memory making my legs feel liquid, like I might sink to the floor. Eloise was here, I felt her with me. What was she trying to tell me? Family trauma , I heard my sister say, and I silently thanked her.

“Sirena mentioned a tragedy,” I said, looking back at Minerva. “She said you carry its weight.”

Minerva didn’t speak for a long moment. She regarded me with cool eyes, as if deciding whether to tell me or not. “Weight. That’s an interesting word. I suppose it’s apt. A burden. See, the sisters passed down a gene. It affects some of the women in my family.” She took a deep breath. “Some of my relatives call it ‘a curse.’?”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be. I choose to give it a positive power. The gene adds to how special the Sibylline sisters were. I think of it as a spell, a kind of scientific magic. In fact, I think it’s the key to their clairvoyance. Possibly to mine. Definitely to my great-aunt’s.”

Do science and magic go together? I wondered.

“It sounds evil,” Iris said. “And there is evil in the world. I know it.”

“I don’t think of it that way,” Minerva said. “I choose to concentrate on the beauty, their talents, the way the sisters shone their light into the world. I don’t like to think of that darkness.”

I glanced at my phone to see what time it was. Forty minutes had passed, and Matt would be coming back soon.

“Minerva,” Iris said. Her voice was shaking, and I could see the emotion on her face. “I’ve seen other paintings of the sibyls. Panels. In an attic.”

Minerva’s eyes widened. “How do you know about those?”

Iris gasped. “So you’ve seen them, too? This is so important, Minerva—it’s actually life-and-death.”

“Life-and-death?” Minerva asked, frowning.

“Murder,” Iris said. “It already happened once. To Oli’s sister.”

I heard the words, but once again, I was drawn to the image of that white witch. And suddenly, all the fog lifted, the swirls of worry and urgency, the quest to find Hayley. I thought of the gold dust sprinkled amid the dry leaves and dirt that had covered Iris’s face. I reached into my pocket, and my hand closed around the charm I had found at my sister’s and Iris’s burial spot.

The tiny enameled gold disc with—not a white witch, but a ghost girl—so delicately painted on it.

And I knew, at that moment, that the charm I’d found in the Braided Woods had been made right here, by the girl standing in front of me. By Minerva.