Chapter 9

9

A fter Nova climbed back out my window, I tried to distract myself with the books Rhi had left on the bed for me, but the sentences all slid together, meaningless in my churning brain. I gave up and tried to look over Zale’s script for the pageant, but there, too, I couldn’t concentrate. I tossed the pages aside and stared up at my ceiling, letting my myriad new worries chase each other around and around inside my skull, until I was sure that my mom and Rhi had both gone to bed. I didn’t think Persi was home, but it was her custom to be out until all hours of the night, and if I waited to hear her bedroom door shut, I might well be waiting until morning. I would just have to risk the possibility that she would find me in the library in the middle of the night. I’d come up with an excuse, but I hardly thought I’d need to use it. I couldn’t really imagine Persi showing much interest in anything I did.

I crept down the stairs as quietly as I could, and made my way to the library. It wasn’t a particularly large or grand room, but every inch of the walls from floor to ceiling was covered in bookshelves. The sheer number of texts was daunting, and I had no idea where to start. A quick glance was enough to confirm that Asteria had not organized her books alphabetically, and I didn’t know enough about magic to know whether they were grouped by subject. I knew I wouldn’t be lucky enough to find something called “Cleansings for Beginners,” so I just picked the corner by the door and started scanning titles, pulling anything that looked like it might contain the information I needed. Then I curled up with the first armload of books and started searching.

By three o’clock in the morning, I had only made it through one wall of books, and was nodding off over the tome in my lap. I decided to give up for the night and try to salvage a few hours of sleep. I took three books with me, the only ones in which I’d found any information about Cleansings at all. I wasn’t convinced they would be helpful—the information felt very basic, and the only Cleansing spells I had found in them talked about banishing “negativity” and “bad intentions,” not “300-year-old ghosts bent on your destruction,” but it was a start. I fell into bed fully clothed, and woke with a start to the sounds of shouting. I slid out of bed, crept over to my door, opened it a crack and listened hard.

“—stop shouting, please? Wren is still asleep!” It was Rhi’s voice.

“Oh that’s right, it’s her house, her rules, I forgot,” Persi snapped back.

“You’re only saying that because you’re trying to change the subject! This has nothing to do with Wren, leave her out of it! This is about you, Persi.”

I opened the door another inch, just in time to hear Persi sigh like an overwrought teenager. “Fine. You’re obviously determined to give me a lecture, so let’s have it.”

“I’m not interested in lecturing you at all,” Rhi said. “Believe me, when Asteria died, I did not relish the idea of becoming the person who has to rein you in. But someone has to say something, Persi, or you’re going to land yourself in serious trouble.”

“It was just a quick visit. I was barely there an hour,” came Persi’s sulky voice.

“You shouldn’t have been there at all!” Rhi cried. “The Keep is not a social meet-up, Persi, it’s a stronghold against powerful magic, and you had no business going there.”

“Oh, so now Bernadette is none of my business? You can’t honestly be saying that to me with a straight face.”

“That’s not what I… I know Bernadette means a lot to you?—”

“ Meant a lot to me. Past tense,” Persi snapped.

“Oh, come off it, Pers. If she didn’t mean anything to you, you wouldn’t have bothered to go in the first place. I know you two have history, but that doesn’t give you the right to?—”

“Rhi, I have every right! She betrayed me! She seduced me and then kidnapped my sister! Ostara might be content to let her rot in there, but I want answers! I need to… to know why …” Persi’s voice broke on the last word.

Rhi fell silent. I was holding my breath. Finally, I heard a long, drawn out sigh.

“I know. I’m sorry. I just… I don’t want to see you get hurt again. That’s all.”

“If you don’t want to see me hurt then leave me the hell alone, and let me do what I need to do to heal,” Persi said. Her voice was low, but fierce. Footsteps began to click toward the staircase, and so I pulled my door shut and crept back into bed before she could realize she was being spied on.

So, Persi had visited Bernadette. I wasn’t exactly surprised. Persi had never been one for following rules, from what I could gather; and her relationship with Bernadette had been longstanding and messy. And as curious as I would have been to know what passed between them, I was much more curious about how she’d gotten into the Keep. Nova had been extremely vague about it all, probably on purpose, because it certainly didn’t sound like the kind of place you could simply stroll into whenever you took a fancy. Knowing Persi had gotten in didn’t make me feel any better at the prospect of our impending field trip—after all, there was hardly a rule or a barrier that Persi wouldn’t shove aside to get what she wanted. I rolled over and looked at my clock—it was 6:30 in the morning. I closed my eyes, sure sleep would evade me now that I had so much more to worry about, but what felt like a moment later, Freya walked across my face and jolted me awake. The clock read 11AM.

“Shit,” I muttered. I’d slept the entire morning away. I hadn’t so much as glanced at the script for Zale or the reading Rhi had wanted me to do. On top of that, I now only had an hour before I had to be over at the playhouse to meet Luca, and it would take me a solid half hour to walk there. Maybe Rhi would let me borrow her bike again. I took the fastest shower of my life, dressed, and threw my wet hair up in a bun on top of my head. I paused in front of the mirror as I put my glasses on, and felt a little flop of disappointment in my stomach. If I was the kind of girl who knew how to do makeup, I’d likely have spent an hour and a hundred dollars worth of products on my face to impress Luca, but there was no point in worrying about it. Contouring and blending was as inscrutable to me as kitchen witchery, and I certainly wasn’t going to solve that problem in the next fifteen minutes. Poe had once sat me down at her vanity table, and made me up for the homecoming dance. I’d been basically unrecognizable when she was done, and though I thought the girl staring back at me out of the mirror looked pretty, she also looked like a stranger. I didn’t feel like myself—in fact, I felt like some kind of imposter.

“When you meet Wren Vesper, what you see is what you get,” I told my reflection. “Take it or leave it.”

I walked downstairs to find my mom on the phone with our realtor. She waved at me and blew me a kiss as I passed through to the kitchen to see my sad scones were still in a glass covered dish on the counter, alongside a fresh batch of peach cobbler muffins.

“Rhi, I promise if you put those scones in the trash where they belong, you will not hurt my feelings,” I said.

“I’m not going to do that!” Rhi said, looking scandalized. “They’re your first attempts at kitchen witchery!”

I laughed as I bypassed the scones, and reached for a muffin off the cooling rack. “What are you going to do, bronze them? It’s not like they’re edible.”

“They are so!” Rhi said, and she grabbed a scone from under the glass cloche, and took a bite. It was a testament to her good nature that she barely flinched as she chewed.

“It’s your funeral,” I said. “I’ll see you later. Oh, hey, could I borrow your bike?”

Rhi swallowed—it looked painful— but her face immediately brightened. “I’ve got an even better idea. Follow me out to the shed.”

My curiosity piqued, I followed her out the door and through the garden to the dilapidated shed. It was a slightly lopsided structure, with moss growing on the roof and roses creeping up the windows. Rhi tugged on the slightly crooked door, and it slowly scraped its way open. Then she stepped back and said, “Ta-da!”

A bicycle stood before me, a pale blue old-fashioned one with a white basket slung between the wide handlebars, and a little leather satchel strapped on behind the ivory seat.

“It’s adorable!” I said.

“It’s yours!” Rhi sang.

I turned to her, my mouth falling open. “Are you serious? Rhi, you didn’t have to do this!”

But Rhi waved me off. “Oh, stop, it wasn’t expensive. And besides, you needed a proper welcome home present. You also need a little freedom, and since you can’t drive yet?—”

The rest of her sentence was cut off with an “oof” of surprise as I slammed into her with a hug. She laughed and then put her arms around me, giving me a squeeze in return.

“Thank you!” I said, as I pulled away from her.

“You’re welcome,” she said, her voice a little husky. She wiped at her eyes, laughing. “Sorry. I don’t mean to get all sappy on you. I just… I spent a lot of years not knowing if I’d get to see you again, let alone hug you.”

“And now you have to live with me and survive my cooking,” I said, grinning. “Careful what you wish for.”

I pulled into the parking lot of the playhouse only a few minutes after noon. Rhi had tucked a bike chain and lock inside the satchel, and so I secured the bike to the bike rack near the entrance. Luca had said he would be doing landscaping, but I didn’t see anyone out near the parking lot. I did hear a faint buzzing sound, though, so I followed it around the side of the building, and spotted him trimming the edges of the flowerbeds with a weedwhacker. He had oversized headphones on, and though I called his name several times, he obviously couldn’t hear me. I crossed the lawn until I was just a few feet behind him, waiting for him to turn, but he was singing along to whatever music he was listening to, completely oblivious to my presence. Finally, when I’d reached my peak threshold for feeling like an idiot, I reached out and tapped him on the shoulder.

“What the hell!” he cried out, dropping the weedwhacker and stumbling backwards. He tripped over the rock border of the flowerbed, and fell onto his back.

“I’m sorry!” I cried. “I’ve been trying to get your attention for like five minutes.”

“No worries,” he said, and to my relief he was grinning. “I was in my own world. I usually am.” He glanced down at his watch. “Wow, it’s noon already? I completely lost track of time. See what I mean? I would have worked right through my lunch break.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t want to interrupt your lunch break. I can come back when?—”

But Luca was already shaking his head. “No, it’s fine.”

He just stood there, smiling pleasantly at me, until I finally said, “So… uh, did you have any luck? With your uncle, I mean?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. He said it was fine if you wanted to borrow some of the stuff in long-term storage. It’s been in there for years, so he has no idea what’s in there, but I can take you over and you can just have a poke around.”

“That would be great, thanks so much,” I said, feeling relief wash over me that I hadn’t gotten Zale’s hopes up for nothing. “Is it okay if I text Zale and have him meet us? He probably has a better idea of what would work than I would.”

“Knock yourself out. Tell him to meet us at storage building 4.”

I shot off a quick text and then set off across the grounds, jogging along beside Luca, who had incredibly long strides. I tried to think of something—anything—to say to make small talk, but my mind felt like it had been wiped clean. Luckily, Luca didn’t seem to mind in the least. He was whistling contentedly as he walked, hands tucked into his pockets, completely at his ease. It made me feel even more pathetic. Here I was, stammering like a fool in his presence, and he could not have been less affected by mine. I thought of Persi, of her magnetism, the way she drew every eye everywhere she went and wished, for one wild moment, that I was more like her.

“So you’re a Vesper, huh?”

Luca’s voice burst in through my thoughts, catching me off guard.

“Uh, yeah.”

“So, how is it that you seem to know even less about this festival than I do?” he asked, shortening his stride so that I could walk alongside him.

“Oh. Well, I haven’t lived here in a long time. My mother moved us both to Portland when I was a toddler.”

Luca’s eyes disappeared into his mess of dark hair. “Really? Haven’t the Vespers lived in this town since… forever?”

“How do you know that? I thought you were an outsider,” I said, and then slapped my hand over my mouth in horror.

But Luca just laughed. “An outsider who’s visited all the tourist attractions about a dozen times. I know the local history.”

“Sorry,” I said, dropping my gaze to my feet, “about the outsider thing. It’s just what some of the other kids said last night. I mean… I’m basically an outsider, too. Sort of.”

“It’s fine. I’m used to it. It’s kind of crazy that you can spend every summer of your life in the place and still be considered an outsider, but that’s Sedgwick Cove for you. I used to think it was just a money thing, but I don’t know. It seems to run deeper than that here.”

“A money thing?”

“Yeah, you know, people looking for seasonal second homes, that kind of thing.”

“Where do you live during the school year?” I asked.

“Manhattan. My great-grandmother was from Sedgwick Cove originally. That’s how my great-grandfather ended up buying this place to begin with.”

I had to press my lips together to prevent myself from asking the question I really wanted to ask, which was, of course, whether his mother’s side of the family were, in fact, witches. But that wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you can just come out and ask someone you’ve only known for a day. Still, the curiosity burned in me like a coal as we walked around the back side of the theater, and down to a row of low rectangular buildings that looked almost like an army base. Each building was made of concrete, painted gray, with a sloped metal roof and small, high windows. A huge numeral was painted on the side of each building in tan paint to denote which building it was. We walked along the lefthand row to a building marked with a massive number four. A metal sign beside the door read, “Storage 4: Long Storage.”

Luca pulled out a ring of keys that would make a custodian insecure, and flipped through them until he found the key to the padlock. He unlocked it and pushed the door wide, gesturing me through. “After you, Miss Vesper.”

“Should we wait for Zale?” I asked.

“I’ll leave the door propped for him. He’ll find us,” Luca said.

I nodded and stepped through. Luca followed, and mashed his palm against a bank of light switches.

Row after row of fluorescent lights buzzed and popped to life, revealing aisles of costume racks lined up all along the center of the room, so that the place looked like a fabric maze. The four walls were built out floor to ceiling with heavy-duty shelving that housed an impossible number of bins, boxes, and bags —each one neatly labeled with electrical tape.

“Holy shit,” I muttered. “How many buildings do you have?”

“Storage ones like this? Six,” Luca said. “Some for costumes, some for sets, some for props. My grandfather kept adding them as the theater grew.”

We walked forward, our footsteps oddly muffled by the sheer amount of stuff crammed into the space.

“Any idea what you’re looking for?” Luca asked. “I might be able to point you in the right direction. I used to play in here as a kid.”

“That must have been fun,” I said, thinking of the free rein of a child’s imagination loose in this place. “No, I’m not really sure what I’m looking for, actually. Just… inspiration, I guess.”

“Okay, well… feel free to just wander. I’ll be back in a few minutes—just going to grab my lunch,” Luca said, hooking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the playhouse.

“Of course. I’ll be fine. Thanks for letting me in,” I said.

He nodded and loped back out into the blazing sunshine. I felt a stab of pity, watching him go. It must be miserable, doing landscaping work in this kind of humidity. This building, on the other hand, felt almost like a walk-in freezer. Goosebumps were erupting on my arms as I started traversing the rows of costume racks. I supposed they had to keep the air conditioning blasting this time of year to keep the humidity from ruining all the fabrics. I’d never been in a theatre that wasn’t either uncomfortably warm or teeth-chatteringly cold—sometimes both at once, depending on whether you were under the stage lights or operating them.

I worried that I might have to dig costume by costume, but I quickly saw, to my relief, that the racks were organized by time period. I bypassed the entire 21st and 20th centuries, feeling the pull toward something older. Surely a pageant about a battle as old as time should have a more historical feel? I drifted past Victorian and Regency era garments, past petticoats and pantaloons, past French revolutionary uniforms and peasant garb, past Musketeer hats and Elizabethan frocks. We were definitely getting closer, I thought. I rounded a corner and found medieval robes and gowns, and several racks of white Greek togas. I dug into them eagerly, but still nothing seemed quite right.

“Wren? Are you in here?” Zale’s voice sounded from the direction of the door.

“Yeah, I’m over here!” I called.

We played a bit of Marco Polo until Zale finally found the right aisle.

“I brought reinforcements,” Zale said, and Eva appeared behind him.

“Hey, Eva. The more the merrier, because this place is huge,” I said. “I never imagined there’d be so much to look through.”

“Found anything good yet?”

“Not sure. I’m still hoping inspiration will strike.”

“These are definitely a lot better than what we have,” Eva volunteered, pulling out a red and gold velvet dress that looked like it belonged in a production of Romeo and Juliet, and holding it up to herself.

“Yeah, but I just keep thinking there must be something bigger and more epic we could do. I mean, we can find the fanciest costumes in here, but when it comes down to it, it’s still going to be Sergei and Ethan wearing them, swinging fake swords at each other like a pair of overgrown toddlers,” I said.

Eva’s face fell. “Good point. Maybe the costumes aren’t the biggest problem.”

“Let’s go check out some of the stuff along the walls,” I said. “Maybe we need to think beyond costumes.”

We split up and started opening bins and bags and boxes. I soon found that, though they were all labeled, extra things had been shoved into the boxes that didn’t necessarily belong there. I was just digging through a box labeled “medieval weaponry” that actually held a fair number of silver tea service pieces, when I heard a shriek and a thump.

“Everyone okay?” I called.

“Zale, you idiot! You scared the crap out of me!” came Eva’s grumbling voice.

“Sorry, I just wanted to show you these!”

I walked up the aisle and around the corner to see Zale towering over Eva on a pair of tall black stilts. Eva was angrily picking up handfuls of fake greenery that was spilling out of an overturned bin. Over their heads was a wall of masks and headpieces of all shapes and sizes. Two giant gold comedy and tragedy masks dominated the top row.

It was as though my brain took in each disparate element and synthesized them. My pulse began to race. I gasped out loud.

“Oh my God!”

“It’s okay, we’ll clean it up,” Zale said, still wobbling around on the stilts.

“No, it’s not that. It’s just… puppets!”

Eva and Zale looked at each other. “Huh?” they both said.

“Look, why does the pageant feel so lame? Because it’s supposed to be representing an epic battle waged by mythical monarchs of the seasons, and all we’ve got is Sergei and Ethan slumping around in some beat up robes. But what if we create versions of the Oak King and the Holly King that are larger than life?”

Zale still looked dubious. “I don’t?—”

“Look!” I cried. I dragged a step ladder over from the corner and clambered up it until I could reach the gold comedy mask. With a grunt of effort, I managed to get it off the wall. It was big and awkward, but not heavy, as it was made of papier maché. I climbed down and handed the mask to Eva.

“Hold this,” I told her, and then ran down the nearest aisle of costumes until I found the Victorian era ones. I pulled a long black cloak that looked like it may have been worn by the Ghost of Christmas Future, and ran back with it.

“Zale, totter your way over here for a second,” I said, throwing the cloak over my shoulder, and climbing back up the ladder.

Zale still looked mystified, but he did what I asked. I draped the massive cloak over his shoulders, and then held my hand out for the mask. Eva handed it to me, and I placed it carefully on Zale’s head. Then I pulled the hood up over his head.

“Hand me some of that greenery!” I said.

Eva’s face broke into a grin as she caught on to what was happening. She started handing me long flowering vines and trailing garlands of ivy. I wound them around Zale’s arms and draped them from his shoulders.

“How about this!” Eva shouted, running for a display of headpieces. She lifted one down that looked like deer antlers dipped in gold, and I placed it, with a final flourish, on Zale’s head.

“Holy shit!” I said.

“Lemme see!” Zale demanded.

Between us, Eva and I held up the cloak and the trailing vines so Zale could rotate himself and look into the full-length mirror on the opposite wall. He looked like some kind of strange apparition.

“It needs some work, but you can see it, right?” I asked eagerly. “We paint the mask, use seasonally appropriate greenery, find a big gnarled staff? Maybe give him some big branchy arms that people can operate with sticks?”

For a moment, Zale didn’t move or speak. I felt my heart sink. Did he hate it?

“I mean, it’s just an idea, we can just use the stuff we?—”

“THIS IS GOING TO BE THE BEST PAGEANT EVER!” Zale shrieked. Eva yelped and jumped away from him, which made him lose his balance. He toppled to the floor, still laughing with excitement in a heap of fabric and fake leaves.

Eva looked at me and grinned. “I think he likes it,” she said.

As Eva and I helped the still giddy Zale extract himself from the makeshift costume, Eva’s phone went off. She pulled it out of her pocket to check the notifications.

“Oh, it’s Nova, reminding me about tonight,” she said.

“Nova?” My head snapped up. I’d been so caught up in thoughts of the pageant that I’d completely forgotten about Nova.

“Yeah. She asked if Zale and I could help her with something.”

“Is that what she said?” I asked.

“Yup,” Eva said. “She was kind of sketchy on the details, to be honest, but we told her we’d come. I mean, she’s basically been in hiding for a week.”

“Dammit, Nova.” I groaned, and Zale and Eva both looked at me.

“There’s a reason she’s being sketchy about the details,” I said.

“Wait, are you going, too? Do you know what she wants help with?”

I hesitated only a moment. I didn’t want to betray Nova’s confidence, but at the same time, I couldn’t let Zale and Eva go into Nova’s plan blind. I’d only agreed to it out of guilt, and probably because I didn’t know enough about magic yet to realize how dangerous it was going to be. But Zale and Eva were lifelong witches. They deserved to know what they were getting themselves into.

I sighed. “You’d both better sit down,” I said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”