Chapter 11

11

M y brain seemed to be completely disconnected from my body. I was shouting inside my own head to simply go home and mind my own business, but my body just kept plunging forward heedlessly. There was something inside me that was more instinct than logic, and I couldn’t help but obey it in this moment. About halfway down the narrow side street, I stopped fighting it. I was listening to something deeper… something more innate in me, something I wouldn’t have trusted before that night on the beach, but which I now recognized as intuition. Was this part of what Rhi had been telling me? That I needed to trust myself more?

I doubted she’d approve of the scenario, but I was going to take her advice regardless.

The narrow cobbled street we were on sloped down and met up with Harbor Street, which ran the length of the waterfront. Beyond the sea wall, boats bobbed in the dark water like corks under a star-sprinkled sky. The remnants of the old boardwalk jutted up from the waves, like skeletal fingers pointing out the constellations. I crept silently along, keeping a wide distance between myself and Persi as she walked purposefully down the street. For someone who looked like they were up to something shady or possibly illegal, she certainly didn’t carry herself that way. We’d traveled maybe half a mile down Harbor Street when Persi took a sharp turn, and disappeared through a gap in the sea wall. I quickened my steps, afraid I would lose her. When I reached the spot where she had vanished, I realized that it was the top of a staircase that led down to the rocky lip of ground that only appeared during low tide. I began to descend the stairs, which creaked with age; luckily, that creaking was swallowed up by the sound of the ocean, and the wind that whipped loudly against the sea wall.

The moment my feet hit the ground, I felt a sharp yank on the back of my sweatshirt. I yelped in surprise, but a hand clamped down over my mouth, smothering the sound. I was dragged backward into the deeper shadows underneath the staircase, and began thrashing in panic until I heard a voice whisper harshly.

“Stop flailing, Wren! It’s me.”

I recognized Persi’s voice, and forced my panicking body to go still. As soon as I did, Persi removed her hand from my mouth, and turned me by my shoulders so that we were looking at each other face to face.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked. “Why are you following me?”

“I thought we were being robbed!” I said, feeling defensive.

“So you followed a potential criminal down a darkened street to a secluded beach?” Persi asked, incredulously. “Good God, child, has my sister taught you even a modicum of self-preservation? If it was anyone but me, you could be dead right now!”

“Okay, fine, not my most brilliant moment, but what are you doing, looking like you’re burgling your own store?” I asked.

“What are you doing outside the store at 1 o’clock in the morning?” Persi snapped back.

“I asked you first!”

“I’m an adult!”

“Well, you’re not acting like one!”

She glared at me for a moment, and I glared right back. A second later, the corner of her mouth twitched into the merest suggestion of a smile, and I knew I had scored a point somehow. She dropped her hands from my shoulders, and sighed.

“You are infuriatingly like your mother sometimes, you know that?” Persi said.

I had no idea whether I should be offended or not, but it sounded like she was trying to insult me, so I crossed my arms over my chest and waited.

“I’m visiting Bernadette, okay?” Persi blurted out after a few seconds of expectant silence.

“I… you are?” I asked, my hands dropping to my side.

“Yes, and if you snitch on me, I’ll hex you into oblivion. Now it’s your turn. What the hell are you doing out here?”

“Nova wanted to perform a Cleansing on Bernadette, and she wanted my help. I came here to talk her out of it, but she didn’t show. I think maybe she got caught sneaking out, but I don’t know for sure,” I said. The words were out of my mouth before I’d even really decided to tell her the truth. But she’d been honest with me, and so I felt like I owed it to her.

“Nova Claire?” Persi asked, her mouth falling open in shock.

“There can’t possibly be another Nova living in this town,” I said, before second-guessing myself. In a town like Sedgwick Cove, all bets were off.

But Persi shook her head. “No, it’s just… I never thought I’d live to see the day when a Claire broke ranks.”

“You are literally sneaking out to visit a Claire in prison, Persi,” I said.

“Bernadette’s different. You have to be in the ranks to break ranks, and she never bought what Ostara was selling. She was always determined to forge her own path, and they all resented her for it. They would have kicked her out of the coven if they weren’t so worried about appearances.” Persi’s words were fierce, and I could tell that, in spite of everything, she was still fiercely protective of Bernadette.

“Quite the path she forged,” I said.

“I don’t… that’s not what I meant. They were terrified of her gifts, and they didn’t let her explore them the way she wanted to,” Persi said.

“Yeah, and when left to her own devices, she brought back a servant of the Darkness and kidnapped your sister,” I said quietly.

“She wasn’t herself! She was… she’s still…” Persi stammered.

“What are you really doing?” I asked. “I know you visited her already; I heard you and Rhi arguing about it.”

“So, you’re eavesdropping now?” Persi spat.

“No, you were shouting in the living room,” I shot back. “It’s not my fault you were too worked up to keep your voices down.”

“I don’t have time for this,” Persi said. “I’ve got a small window here, and you’re wasting it. So let me ask you this: If Nova had insisted on going through with the Cleansing, would you have ratted her out, or helped her?”

I hesitated. I thought about Nova, how she had been so distraught in my room, so sure that her mother was making a terrible mistake. I thought about the weight of the books in my backpack, the books I had snuck from the library in a rudimentary attempt to help. Would I really have left her to figure it out on her own, if I couldn’t talk her out of it?

“I probably would have helped her,” I admitted. “But she’s not here, so I don’t see the point of?—”

“Fine, then. You can help me,” Persi said, before turning on her heel and marching off down the beach. She was at least ten paces away before my brain caught up, and I started running after her.

“Help you with what?”

“You said you were down for a Cleansing, so you can help me.”

“I didn’t say I was… what are you talking about?”

Persi stopped and rounded on me so suddenly that I stumbled backward, and landed on my butt in the sand. “So, you’ll help Nova Claire, but you won’t help me?”

“Are you… you can’t possibly… what?!” I gasped, as I scrambled to my feet.

“Your little friend isn’t the only one who’s been paying attention. The Conclave is in shambles. They’re so caught up with infighting over Ostara’s behavior that they’re not doing their job. There’s no longer a Vesper in the Conclave, or this would have been handled. So I’m stepping in.”

“There’s no way you and Nova were both independently planning a Cleansing on the same night,” I said.

In reply, Persi swung her backpack around to her chest and unzipped it, revealing a book, candles, rope, and a number of other items I couldn’t even identify. “I didn’t want to use anything from the cottage, in case Rhi or your mother noticed it was missing, or caught me heading out the door. So, I took all this stuff from Shadowkeep instead. So what do you say? Are you in?”

I stood there for a moment, frozen with indecision.

“Why?” I finally asked.

“It was a yes or no question, Wren. I don’t have time for this.”

“I understood why Nova wanted to perform the Cleansing. I still don’t understand why you do.”

Persi’s intense eyes bore into me, but I held my ground. It was a question I deserved an answer to, and she knew it. I held my breath, waiting.

“Bernadette is important to me. I know she’s not well. I need to know how much of this was because she chose it, and how much had to do with the manipulation and control of Sarah Claire.”

And I realized. All the words might have been about Bernadette, but this wasn’t about Bernadette. Not really.

“You need to do this for you,” I said.

Persi looked startled, but the look faded to one of resignation. “I do.”

She looked at me and I looked back at her, this woman I shared such a deep connection with, through blood, through power. She was a stranger to me, and yet she didn’t have to be.

“Okay. Let’s do it.”

Persi looked absolutely stunned, and I realized in that moment that she had not expected me to agree.

“Seriously?”

“Yes. And if we get caught, I’ll tell them I was trying to stop you, and that you forced me to help,” I said.

Persi’s face split unexpectedly into a grin. “Noted. Now let’s go. There’s not a lot of time.”

With that, she took off down the beach with surprising speed, and I struggled to keep up with her on the uneven terrain. She’d clearly walked this path before, picking her way expertly between the larger rocks, and avoiding the slippery places. I did my best to follow her exact route so that I wouldn’t sprain an ankle, but it was no easy feat in the dark. We kept to the shadows where the beach met the sea wall, avoiding the pools of brightness where the streetlights from Harbor Street stretched down toward the water. At first, I thought Persi was being paranoid, saying we didn’t have much time; but as I glanced out at the fishing boats anchored in the harbor, I realized she might be right. Surely, fishermen set out incredibly early in the morning. We would want to be far from the beach before we had to start worrying about fishing crews spotting our flashlights bobbing around on the shore.

Nova hadn’t explained where the Keep was exactly, just that it was down near the water; and so, I had no idea what to expect as we moved further and further down the beach. We made our way under the remains of the old boardwalk, and then under the structure of the new boardwalk to where the sea wall ended, and the cliffs began to jut up, separating the beach below from the waving dunes of sea grass, above. At last, Persi came to a stop where three large, jagged stones rose up in front of the cliff face. I came to a stop beside her, panting.

“Where is it?” I asked, when I had caught my breath somewhat.

“This is it,” Persi replied, gesturing toward what appeared to be a solid wall of stone.

“I’m missing something.”

Persi was already rummaging through her backpack. “It’s got a spell of concealment on it, called a glamour. You probably haven’t learned what?—”

“Actually, I have,” I said quickly, relieved not to be totally ignorant. “Rhi explained to me about glamours when she brought me by Shadowkeep the other day.”

Persi nodded. “Well, this one can’t be broken with just simple foreknowledge of the location. It requires another step.”

“Isn’t there, like… a guard or something?” I asked. “How can they expect a prisoner to stay secure with no guard?”

“They’ve used magic to secure it. Bernadette can’t leave. I can’t get into her cell or try to engineer her escape in any way, and I would be foolish to try,” Persi said. “But a Cleansing should work. At least, I think it will.”

“Why would a Cleansing work when other forms of magic won’t?” I asked. My pulse was beginning to race, imagining that we were about to set off some kind of magical alarm system.

“Well, in the first place, we are Vespers,” Persi said, and I could hear the ringing note of pride in her voice. “Our magic helped to fortify this place, and magic recognizes its origins.”

“You mean the spells will… know us? Trust us?” I asked.

“Something like that, yes,” Persi said. She was lighting a candle now with a tiny lighter that looked like a tube of lipstick. “And secondly, a Cleansing is something that ought to have been performed already, and has been performed on other prisoners in the Keep in the past. The fortifications allow for that type of magic, because it was anticipated that such a spell might be required.” She turned and looked at me with a serious expression. “Bernadette is not the first witch to be locked up here due to the influence of dark forces.”

“You mean, if Ostara would agree to a Cleansing, it could be performed right here, with Bernadette still in the Keep?” I asked.

“Correct,” Persi said. “We’re only doing what ought already to have been done. And if Ostara doesn’t like it, she can take it up with me in front of the whole gathering of Sedgwick Cove covens, and she can explain to all of us why she hadn’t already done it herself. I promise you, I am far more prepared for that scenario than she is.”

“But you’re not a Conclave member. I thought only Conclave members could get in.”

“And all Conclave members have one of these,” Persi said, holding up a silver amulet on a chain, which swung wildly from her fingers. “Asteria still had hers. I simply borrowed it. Now stop with all the questions. I need to concentrate.”

Persi took a tall taper candle from her bag, and wrapped the chain of the amulet around it three times as she lit it. Then she reached into her pocket, and flung what appeared to be a handful of salt into the air. She muttered an incantation under her breath, and blew out the candle flickering between her fingers. I looked at the cliff face in front of me, waiting for something to happen. Then I blinked.

When my eyes opened again, the door to the Keep had appeared. Well, it was less of a door, and more of a jagged fissure in the rock that hadn’t been there a moment before; but I recognized it for what it was: an invitation to enter. Persi moved forward with purpose, and I followed, trying to take comfort from her confidence.

I was expecting something like a cave, with rough, damp walls and a sandy, rocky floor; but as we passed through the opening, I gasped audibly. Inside the confines of the cliff itself was an almost modern chamber. The walls, though made of stone, were smooth and cleanly carved. The floor transformed from beach to concrete. Narrow metal pipes ran along the ceiling over our heads, and industrial lighting hung down from them, illuminating the room with a surprisingly warm glow.

“It’s not all magic,” Persi said, flicking a light switch, and illuminating still further along what I now recognized as a corridor. “The electricity is run down from above on Harbor Street.”

We walked along the corridor to a door, which Persi unlocked. I raised an eyebrow at her, and she shrugged. “Asteria still had a key, too,” she said.

“Not for long,” I murmured, and Persi snorted.

The door swung open on loud, rusty hinges, and we were met with a gust of warm air from the room beyond. Just from the name “the Keep,” I’d dreamed up manacles chained to the walls; but the place in which we stood looked much more like a modern jail might look. There were three cells along the far wall, separated from each other by cinder block dividers, and separated from us by a wall of bars. The outer room contained little except for a few stackable molded plastic chairs for visitors, a bench along one wall, a small trash can, and a row of hooks on the wall, presumably for people to hang coats. Inside the cells themselves, there were metal bed frames made neatly with tan blankets and pillows, toilets, and a sort of shelf that pulled down from the wall, and could be used as a desk when one sat on the bed. The cells were empty except for the one in the middle, where Bernadette sat, blinking at us in surprise.

Bernadette looked thin and haggard. I reminded myself that she had been thin before she’d been relegated to the Hold, but it didn’t soften the shock of seeing her. Her eyes, always large, appeared to be bugging out of her skull, with deeply purple shadows sunken beneath them. Her hair was matted and tangled, hanging on either side of her hollow-cheeked face in great clumps. I swallowed hard against a lump in my throat, and then against the anger that followed it. This woman had held my mother hostage—had been content for my mother to die so that some ghostly ancestor could take her place. How dare she elicit my pity?

“Are you okay to be here?” Persi asked, and I turned my head sharply to see that she was watching me intently. “I’m sorry,” she went on, and her expression was the softest I’d ever seen it. “It was pretty thoughtless of me to invite you here to do this. I should have realized it would be hard for you to see her.”

“I’m fine,” I said, not because I actually was, but because I was grateful to her for recognizing the position she had put me in; and also because I wanted it to be true. I wanted to be fine. I wanted the woman in front of me to hold absolutely no more power over my life. Even if it wasn’t true yet, I was determined to make it true, out of sheer stubbornness.

“Are you sure? Because you don’t have to?—”

“I said I’m fine ,” I replied through gritted teeth.

Persi nodded once, and I was relieved to see that she accepted my answer. In a strange, unexpected way, I felt part of the wall between us crumble in that moment. I couldn’t really process it right then, while staring into the face of the other woman in the room, the one who had tried to kill me, so I pushed it to the back of my brain.

As we had this hushed conversation, Bernadette was watching us with a curiously hungry expression. Persi stepped forward, and Bernadette cooed at the sight of her, wrapping her arms around her midsection.

“I knew you couldn’t stay away,” Bernadette said in a sing-song voice that made the hairs on my forearms leap to attention. “But who have you brought along with you?”

I stepped forward to stand beside Persi, and watched the exact moment when Bernadette’s confusion turned to recognition. Her already enormous eyes grew even wider, and she slid down to crouch on the very end of the bed with an almost animal motion.

“Wren Vesper. You’re here,” she whispered. Her voice was raw and scratchy, like she’d been deprived of water, though I could see a glass of it sitting on the fold-down table beside the bed.

“It’s not a social call,” I said, the words coming out staccato as I practically choked on the anger surging up my throat. The sound of her voice, casually speaking my name, burned away the pity I’d felt at the first sight of her. How dare she talk to me? How dare she speak any words to me that weren’t an apology?

“But I’ve been asking and asking to speak with you and they… they wouldn’t allow it. How did you change their minds?” Bernadette asked.

Persi was frowning. “No one changed their mind. This isn’t a sanctioned visit. We came on our own.”

She tsk-ed loudly, and Persi flinched at the sound. “Breaking rules, as usual.”

“Do you remember what we talked about yesterday, Bernadette?” Persi asked. Her posture was as languid and unbothered as usual; but her knuckles, I noticed, were white—she wasn’t nearly as relaxed as she let on. I wondered if Bernadette could sense it, too. After all, she knew Persi much better than I did.

“Oh yes, I remember. Why did I do this, why did I do that? Why, why, why?” sang Bernadette. “Such an exhausting conversation. It seems to be the only question you know how to ask.”

“It’s the most important question, in my opinion, and yet you can’t seem to answer it,” Persi said, “and so I keep asking it.”

“Oh, but I did answer it,” Bernadette said, running her fingers back and forth across the bars. “You just didn’t like the answer.”

“I didn’t like the answer because I don’t think it’s yours,” Persi said, her voice still admirably calm. “I think it’s Sarah Claire’s.”

Was it my imagination, or did something shift in Bernadette’s eyes? There was a momentary flash, like a change of color, and then it was over, like a trick of the light. I had just decided that I’d imagined it when Persi muttered out of the corner of her mouth. “Did you see that? In her eyes?”

“Yes,” I murmured back. “What is it?”

“It’s why we need to do the Cleansing. There’s more than Bernadette inside that cell.”