Chapter 10

10

“ P lease tell me this is a joke,” Eva said. “Like, some YouTube influencer is about to pop out from behind one of these boxes and tell us we’re being pranked, right?”

“Unfortunately, no,” I said. “She’s doing it tonight, whether we go with her or not.”

“But not to tell us what she’s planning? Just texting us to hang out? Is she out of her mind?” Zale asked weakly.

“She knows we’d never show up if we knew what she was doing,” Eva said.

“Does that mean you’re not coming?” I asked.

Eva raised her eyebrows at me. “Does that mean you are?”

“Well,” I began, fumbling around for the words. “Nova… it’s not like we’re friends, but she put herself on the line for me last week on the beach. I mean, you all did. And so, when she showed up in my room and begged for my help…”

“You agreed because you felt guilty,” Zale finished.

“Well, partly, yes. I’m also probably just an idiot, because let’s be honest, I don’t actually know what I’m getting myself into. I don’t even know what the Keep is.”

Zale and Eva looked at each other. “It’s down in a cavern near the beach,” Eva said. “It’s sort of our version of jail around here.”

“We also have, like, normal jail,” Zale added. “We’ve got a tiny police station with a couple of holding cells for when the tourists get feisty. But when a witch needs to be contained, we bring her to the Keep.”

“That sounds… ominous,” I said. “And a bit dramatic.”

“It’s almost never used,” Zale said as Eva nodded. “There’ve only been two witches held in there since we’ve been alive. And the other one hadn’t done anything terrible, like Bernadette. She’d just been experimenting with love potions and went off the deep end. It was only temporary, but they had to leave her in there until the effects wore off, because they thought she’d do something crazy.”

“You’d have to be an absolute fool to mess with love magic, even if you do know what you’re doing,” Eva said, shaking her head.

“But the point is, sometimes when magic gets out of control, we need a place to contain it,” Zale said. “And Bernadette was definitely out of control. A danger to herself, and others.”

“But what kind of place is it?” I asked. I kept picturing a Rapunzel-type situation, a tall windowless stone structure that can only be entered if the trapped princess lets down her hair.

“I know, it sounds all Alcatraz, but it’s not that impressive. It’s basically just a structure built into the underside of the seawall. A lot of the kids like to brag that they’ve been out to it, and even broken into it, but they’re all full of shit. The truth is, hardly anyone knows what it’s like inside, because only the members of the Conclave are allowed to go in and out.”

“So, how does Nova expect to pull this off?” I asked, incredulous now. “She made it sound like this was a place we could just walk into!”

“I have no idea, but if she thinks we’re just going to go in there without a plan, she’s lost her damn mind,” Eva said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Have either of your grandmothers mentioned anything about all this?” I asked, looking between them. “About Ostara refusing to perform the Cleansing?”

Zale frowned. “Hm. She has been grumbling about Ostara more than usual, but she’s kept quiet about the details.”

“Xiomara and Ostara have never really gotten along, but yeah, things seem especially tense right now. I assumed it had to do with the Darkness; but as usual, the Conclave keeps all its cards very close to the chest,” Eva said.

“Can’t the other members overrule her or something?” I asked. “I mean, it doesn’t seem fair that one member can prevent all the others from making the right decision.”

“Ostara’s been the High Witch of the Conclave for more than a decade,” Zale said. “If they want to overrule her, they would have to call for a meeting of the covens to have her voted out of her position. They’ll do it if they absolutely have to, but I’m sure they’re trying to avoid it at all costs. The Claires are a powerful coven with a lot of allies, and the fallout from an ousting—whether it was successful or not—would be really nasty.”

“So while everyone plays politics, Bernadette could still be connected to this spirit that wants to destroy us all and feed us to the Darkness? Excellent. What could go wrong?” I said, and there was a definite note of hysteria in my voice now.

“I think your family is one of the only ones who could challenge her seriously,” Eva said. “After all, Asteria was High Witch before Ostara. But I don’t get the impression that either your aunts or your mom want that kind of responsibility.”

“Definitely not,” I said, biting anxiously at a fingernail. “I had to drag my mom back here. There’s no way she wants to run the place. Rhi just wants to be in her kitchen, and Persi… well, I don’t think she…”

My voice trailed away as I remembered the conversation I had overheard that morning between Rhi and Persi. Persi had gone to the Keep to visit Bernadette. That meant she knew how to get inside. Was it possible that she could help us? It was a fleeting thought at best, and my brain dismissed it almost immediately. Persi’s attitude toward me was mostly resentment—I couldn’t imagine gathering the courage to ask for her help any more than I could imagine her offering it.

“Wren?”

“Huh?”

Zale and Eva were both looking at me expectantly.

“You were saying something about Persi?” Zale prompted.

“Oh. Yeah, sorry. My mind is spinning with all of this. I was just going to say that I can’t imagine her being responsible enough to be in a position like that. I haven’t known her that long, but she doesn’t seem very interested in things like rules.”

“I think Sedgwick Cove at large would agree with that assessment,” Eva said, nodding. “No offense, but she’s always been a bit of a loose cannon.”

“None taken,” I said. “Like I said, I barely know her.”

“Well, look, it sounds like Nova is going to attempt this regardless, so why not at least meet up with her like she asked, and try to talk her out of it,” Zale suggested. “Maybe if we all gang up on her, she’ll realize what a truly insane idea this is.”

“I’m down,” Eva said, nodding. “We’ve got to try to stop her.”

I bit my lip. I really didn’t want to go back on my word to Nova. But Eva and Zale knew a lot more about this stuff than I did. If they were so against it, it probably was as terrible an idea as it sounded. I wasn’t sure if Nova would forgive me for backing out on her, but it was a risk I would have to take.

“Okay,” I said finally. “I’m not really sure what other choice we have. Let’s finish finding what we need here, so Luca can lock up.”

Zale retrieved a second pair of stilts where he’d found the first, and then carefully lifted the oversized tragedy mask off the wall, while Eva and I gathered big piles of spring and winter greenery into some empty bins. Then we dug through the costumes for another long robe, and found one made of gauzy gold material. There would still be more accessories to gather, but we had a good start. We dragged the items we were borrowing to the front door, and found Luca outside waiting for us.

I started at the sight of him, wondering how long he’d been there, and if he’d been able to overhear any of our conversation. Eva threw me a sideways look that told me she was thinking the very same thing.

“All set?” Luca asked, looking between us with an easy smile on his face.

“We’ve got enough to get started,” Zale said. “Do you think we might be able to come back again?”

“Sure, sure,” Luca said. “Just let me know. I’m here most days.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a summer vacation,” Eva commented.

Luca shrugged. “It could be worse. I get to the beach a lot. It beats summer in the middle of the city any day.”

He handed Zale a clipboard, and Zale wrote down everything we were borrowing. We asked if we could alter and paint things, and Luca assured us that it was part of the deal.

He walked us back to the parking lot, hefting one of the big plastic bins onto his shoulder to help us bring it all back in one trip. I stopped for a moment, remembering that all I had was my bike, but saw with relief that Zale was pulling a set of car keys from his jeans pocket. Luca helped us load the bins into the trunk and the back of the car, and waved us off.

“Thanks for your help,” I told him as Zale and Eva got in the car. I noticed Eva watching me from out of the corner of my eye, and felt my cheeks turning pink.

“Any time. Maybe I’ll see you down on the beach. You know, we outsiders need to stick together.” He winked, which I would have sworn was the cheesiest thing someone could do, but for some reason he pulled it off.

“Uh, yeah, sure. See you around,” I mumbled, practically forgetting how to form words. I jumped on my bike and pedaled away before I could find another way to make a complete fool of myself. Before I’d even made it out of the parking lot, my phone buzzed in my pocket.

Looks like someone’s got a crush.

It was from Eva. The problem was, I couldn’t tell if she was talking about me, or Luca.

When I arrived back at Lightkeep Cottage, my mom was there. She looked exhausted, but she raised her hands into the air in victory when she saw me.

“The apartment is officially empty, and everything has gone to storage,” she said with a genuine smile.

I plopped down next to her on the sofa, and hugged her. “That’s great, Mom. But you know, you don’t have to act happy about it for my sake.”

She frowned at me. “Act happy? If I wasn’t so tired I’d be throwing a party right now.”

“I know you’re glad to have all the packing done, that’s not what I mean,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean the whole moving thing. I know you didn’t want to come here. I know you love your job in Portland. I just want you to know it’s okay to be honest about it.”

My mom reached over and rumpled my hair, like she did when I was a kid. “Thanks for that, Wren. I know you think I needed to hear it. But honestly, I’m relieved.”

“Relieved?”

She took her time before answering. “I ran from Sedgwick Cove, not because I didn’t love it here, not because I didn’t think of it as home; but because I was scared that you were in danger. I should have realized we would always be tied to this place, but I didn’t want to admit that at the time. It’s exhausting, denying who you are at your core. For all the worries I still have, I’m glad we’re back. It’s… I think it will be… good to be home.”

I felt a warmth flooding through me. Home. Hearing that word from my mom’s lips, knowing that she meant it, that we both felt the same ties to this place—it felt like one more unbreakable thread binding us all together. The Vespers.

“Where were you off to? Rhi told me about the bike,” my mom asked.

“Pageant stuff. The costumes are just so pathetic, Mom, I don’t know how anyone can take the pageant seriously. So I asked Luca Meyers if we could borrow some stuff from the playhouse. They’ve got buildings and buildings full of costumes and props they don’t even use.”

“Did you have any luck?”

“Oh, yeah, we did. I came up with an idea to create larger than life versions of the Oak King and the Holly King—sort of like puppets on stilts. I think it will be really cool, if we can pull it off.”

“Well, that sounds great, honey,” my mom said, stifling a yawn. “It’s about time someone jazzed up that pageant, and I can’t think of a better person for the job than you.”

“Personally, I wish Charlie was here,” I said, referring to one of my best friends from home, who was a brilliant costume designer. “But I’ll do the best I can.”

“I’m sure it will be wonderful. I can’t wait for Sedgwick Cove to see what you can do, Wren.” She kissed the top of my head.

I smiled half-heartedly. The problem was that Sedgwick Cove had seen what I could do—or heard rumors about it, at least—and now they were all wary of me.

The hours until midnight dragged by. I tried to fill the time by reading the books Rhi had given me, but I couldn’t focus. I found myself reading the same paragraph over and over again, without absorbing a single word. Every time I looked up at the clock, I was sure it would be time to go; and instead, I would see there was still an interminable wait left. I threw the book aside in frustration, and picked up the pageant script instead, but I might as well have just stared at the tiny spider weaving a web in the corner of my ceiling for all the progress I made. It wasn’t that I wanted to go—I simply wanted to get it over with. Rhi, being such an early riser, was also in bed well before ten o’clock, and my mother was so exhausted, she’d been snoring in the room beside me since eight-thirty. So at least I didn’t have to worry about climbing out of my window to make my escape. Nova might be competent at scaling trellises, but I’d never had the chance to hone that particular skill, and I didn’t much feel like breaking my neck in the attempt.

I put a few things in my backpack—a flashlight, my phone, and all the notes I’d made for the pageant. If we were caught, the pageant was a passable excuse why we might all be meeting up together. I saw the mirror tucked down at the bottom, and shuddered involuntarily. If there was any way I could convince Nova to take that thing back to the Manor with her, I would try it. I changed into all black clothes—I had plenty of them from working backstage— and slipped as quietly as I could down Lightkeep’s creaky old staircase, and out the front door. I’d stashed my bike around the side of the fence rather than locking it back up in the shed, so that I’d have easy access to it. I wheeled it carefully through the gate, hopped on, and took off down the road toward town. I tucked the flashlight under my arm to light my way until I reached the part of the road that had streetlights, and made a mental note to invest in one of those little lights I could strap to my handlebars. I had a funny feeling this was not going to be my last clandestine bike ride in the middle of the night.

I felt a stab of guilt as I glided into the deserted downtown. Every decision my mother had made, ill-conceived or not, had been to protect me; and here I was, sneaking out in the middle of the night. Of course, I reasoned, I wasn’t doing it to get into trouble. I was doing it to get someone else out of trouble. And the only reason Nova was even attempting this ridiculous scheme was because the Conclave wasn’t doing its job. If the adults were handling things the way they were supposed to, instead of playing politics, we wouldn’t be in this situation.

Nova asked us to meet her outside of Shadowkeep which, tucked as it was down a narrow street with two other shops but no houses, meant there was little chance that we’d be seen by anyone. As I rounded the corner, I saw that Eva and Zale were already standing there, huddled together against the surprisingly cold wind rolling up from the harbor. I pulled my bike up, leaned it against a picket fence, and pulled my hands into my hoodie sleeves as I joined them.

“Any sign of Nova?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Eva said, pulling out her phone.

“What are we going to do if we can’t talk her out of it?” Zale asked. “Like, what if she just decides to go through with it anyway?”

“Look, I’m not here to be a snitch,” Eva said. “I might not want to participate, but Nova can do what she wants. If she wants to get herself caught interfering in Conclave business, that’s on her. I’m not risking Xiomara’s wrath because the Claires can’t get their collective shit together, but I’m not going to rat her out either.”

We stood there together in the cold, waiting. Zale’s teeth were chattering. Eva was bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, trying to keep the blood flowing. The temperature had dropped considerably that night, due to a storm that was rolling past the coastline out to sea. The minutes ticked by, and the anxious knot in my stomach twisted tighter. Where was she? What was taking her so long to get here? I could tell the others were thinking the same. Eva was glancing at her phone every ten seconds, waiting for a text, and Zale was pacing the block, peering down in the direction of the Manor.

“Something’s wrong,” I finally whispered, when a glance at my phone told me it was one o’clock in the morning, a full half-hour after Nova had asked us to meet. “What should we do?”

Zale was still looking up the street in the direction Nova should be coming. “Should we go to her house?” he asked.

“And do what, throw rocks at her window? I’m just going to text her,” Eva said, and began typing. At that moment, all our phones buzzed: a group text message.

There’s been a complication. Talk to you tomorrow.

Eva expelled a sigh of relief. “I guess that’s it, then. She’s not coming.”

“What do you think happened?” Zale asked.

“Probably got caught trying to sneak out. The last time Nova snuck out after curfew, Ostara grounded her for a month,” Eva said. “Hopefully she only found out that she was sneaking out, and not why she was sneaking out, or we won’t see her again for the rest of her natural life.”

“Speaking of getting caught, let’s all try not to,” Zale said. “Can you both come by tomorrow to help with pageant stuff?”

“Let’s do it at my house,” Eva suggested. “Xiomara will have leftovers from a catering gig, and we can use my mom’s art supplies. She’s got a sort of workspace up in the attic where we can lay everything out.”

“What time?” I asked.

“I’ll have to be at the cafe for the lunch rush. So… how about three?”

We all agreed. Zale and Eva headed off in opposite directions toward their houses. I stood at the fence getting ready to mount my bike, when a sudden flare of light caught my eye. I looked up, and saw that the light on the top floor of Shadowkeep had just turned on.

“What the hell?” I murmured. I hastily rolled my bike a few feet so that I could conceal both it and me behind a massive hydrangea bush, and continued to watch the upper windows. There was a figure moving around up there, silhouetted against the cream-colored shades that had been pulled down over the windows. My heart began to pound. Had someone broken into the store? Were we being robbed? And what did someone even do if they found out the secret part of their store was being robbed? It’s not like I could just call the police, could I? I could see it now: me standing in the side garden with two bemused officers, trying to explain about the invisible staircase, and then getting carted off to an in-patient mental facility. Unless the police here understood enough about the secrets of this town that they’d actually believe me? I didn’t know for sure. No, I’d have to handle this by myself.

I toyed with the idea of sneaking up the stairs to catch whoever it was red-handed, but dismissed it almost at once. Whoever was up there was clearly a witch, because they knew about the second floor; and if they were willing to use magic to break into Shadowkeep, I was sure they wouldn’t hesitate to use it against me if I confronted them. And so, I did what every teenager does when they want to document something: I whipped out my phone and started recording. I decided to wait and catch footage of whoever this person was sneaking back out of Shadowkeep, and then I could bring the evidence to Rhi and let her decide what to do with it. Of course, that would mean I’d have to explain why I was outside of Shadowkeep at one o’clock in the morning when I was supposed to be at home in bed, but I would cross that bridge when I got to it. Shadowkeep meant everything to Rhi and Persi, and I couldn’t just pretend I hadn’t witnessed this.

I shrouded myself further back into the bushes, and trained my camera on the upstairs window. The figure moved swiftly, but I was fairly confident it was a woman from the silhouette. As I recorded, the wind from the harbor numbing my fingers, the light in the upper level suddenly went out. I heard a creaking sound, followed by the shutting of a door, and then the footsteps down the hidden staircase. I waited for the person to come around the corner of the house and into my view, so that I could catch them on camera. My hands shook, and my lungs burned with the breath I was afraid to release. At last, I heard the creak of the gate, and the figure emerged from the shadowy garden into the golden pool of a street light.

It was Persi.

My first feeling was one of utmost relief. We were not getting robbed, and no thief was going to find me in these bushes. But that initial relief was followed by an intense wave of curiosity. Persi was wearing all black clothing—not totally off-brand for her, but these weren’t her usual style. She wore a pair of black leggings, a black sweatshirt with a hood, which she was now pulling up over her hair, and a pair of black sneakers. She carried a black backpack slung over one shoulder, which she was hastily zipping up as I watched her. She raised her head, looked warily down one end of the street, and then the other, before hurrying off down toward the harbor.

Go home, Wren. Just go home. It’s none of your business.

I hesitated only a moment and then, abandoning my bike in the bushes, I followed after her.