Chapter 22

22

V eronica and Nova screamed. The room exploded in a choking haze of dust and sand and rock. I lifted my head, and looked toward the source of the sound, just as a cold, salty wind whipped at my cheeks.

Three figures stood silhouetted in the gaping opening that had been blasted through the side of the cavern. The Vesper Sisters, bathed in moonlight, looking at once beautiful and terrible, their hair tossed around their faces like boats on the sea that crashed behind them: Rhi, on the right, her hands clenched at her sides, her tiny figure, yet somehow intimidating in her power. Persi, looking like an avenging siren that had just stepped from the waves, magic sparking in her fingertips like sparklers. And my mother, Kerridwen Vesper, her long hair loose, her face transformed with rage and fear, her hands extended out in front of her, fingers wide. And all around her, vines and branches were writhing and twisting and blooming like a pit of snakes, forcing their way through the stones across the floor.

“Wren!” Her voice called out sharply, cracking.

“I’m here!” I tried to answer, coughing and choking on the debris still settling all around me. “Nova! Where’s Nova?” My heart was in my throat. I hadn’t heard a gunshot, but the explosion had been so loud…

I heard an answering groan, and turned to see Nova crawling out from behind a huge, jagged piece of the wall. She was coated in dust, but I could see the blood on her forehead.

“Nova! Are you… did she…?” I choked, trying to crawl toward her just as my mother reached me, and pulled me around to face her, shaking my shoulders.

“Wren, speak to me! Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I… no. I mean, yes, I’m okay. No, I’m not hurt. I’m worried about…”

But Rhi had already crossed the cavern to help Nova to her feet, examining her wounds and fishing in her pocket for a handkerchief to help stop the bleeding.

“Wren, are you okay?” Nova was calling, shakily, as she blinked blood out of her eyes.

“She’s fine, honey, it’s you we’re worried about,” Rhi said. “Now, stay still so I can get some of my calendula salve on it.” Nova yelped. “Did I mention it stings a bit?” Rhi added apologetically.

“There’s another entrance back here,” Persi called from somewhere behind the rubble. “Damn it all, I think she’s gone!”

“Are you sure?” my mother called sharply. “All that rubble. Are you sure she’s not…” But she couldn’t bring herself to complete the question.

Persi understood, however. “I’ve cast a detection spell, but it’s still very—ugh, Kerridwen! Calm down!” Persi had to yank her ankle out of the curling tendrils of a nearby plant that was attempting to climb her.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m out of practice, I… damn it, hang on.” My mother shook her head as though to clear it and closed her eyes, taking several long, slow, measured breaths. As she did so, the rioting vines and branches slowed their spreading until, after maybe ten seconds, they had stilled entirely.

Ensured that she wouldn’t be strangled by a wayward vine, Persi was able to concentrate on her own spell. She held a hand out over the rubble, and began to walk slowly from one end of the pile to the other, murmuring an incantation under her breath. We all watched, no one daring to move or make a sound. My lungs felt like they’d been restricted to pinholes; I couldn’t seem to get any air into them at all. Was Veronica under there? Was she… had she actually…?

“No,” Persi said with a level of certainty that no one would even consider questioning. “I don’t know where she is, but it’s not under this debris; more’s the pity.”

I didn’t know whether I should feel relieved she wasn’t dead, or alarmed that she had escaped. I gulped, swallowing back some monstrosity born of emotional turmoil, a hysterical peal of laughter, or perhaps an onslaught of sobbing. I never found out which. I fought it off, choosing instead to try to stay in the moment.

“Pers, you have to get Ostara on the phone. Or Davina, or Xiomara, whoever you can get,” my mother ordered. “They need to know who?—”

“I know, I know, I’m on it,” Persi said, striding across the room to the gaping opening, her phone already at her ear.

“Rhi, can you go check on?—?”

“Yes, yes. I don’t see any reason to think Miss Claire here won’t be perfectly fine after a hot cup of tea and a soak in the bath,” Rhi said, tucking her tins and beakers into her apron pocket, and guiding Nova gently toward the dais. “Here you go, dear heart. Sit back against this and keep holding that gauze there, all right?”

“No!” I cried out, and Nova stumbled back in alarm, falling into Rhi, who only just managed to keep her feet.

“Wren, what in the world…?” Rhi gasped.

“I don’t… don’t think we should touch it,” I said, trying to sound calm, but unable to quell the note of hysteria in my voice.

“Why? What is it?” Rhi asked.

“It’s the reason she lured me here,” I answered.

Rhi’s eyes widened, and she took an awed step back from the dais, staring at it as though it had materialized right out of the ground in front of her.

“Rhi, please!” my mother said, and Rhi seemed to snap out of her fixation.

“Right, yes. Sorry. I’ll make sure she’s…I’ll be right back.” Rhi helped Nova take a seat on a different lump of rock, one a good ten feet from the dais, and then scurried from the room. I thought I heard her call something out in the night, but the wind made it hard to hear. When I could no longer see her, I turned to my mother instead, the unanswered questions pouring out of me now.

“How did you know where to find me?” I asked.

My mom held up her cell phone. “I just tracked your location. See? Not just handy for lost pets.”

“But—”

“The tracker led us to the playhouse, but we couldn’t find a way inside. While Rhi started trying to pick the lock and Persi was trying to find a good sized rock to hurl through the nearest window, I circled the building, looking for another entrance. When I came around the far side of the building, closest to the rocks, the signal on the tracker got stronger, and so I followed it until I saw what looked like an HVAC vent. I’d barely bent to examine it, when voices started drifting up out of it. I heard her threatening you, Wren, and I just… I couldn’t wait for locks or broken windows. I focused my magic on the bushes and plants on all sides of me, and gave them one command. Take me to that voice. And they did.” She looked at the vibrant instant garden that had literally exploded into life to help her and smiled a fond, wistful smile. She stroked the petal of a nearby Rose of Sharon blossom, and then looked past it to the crumbling dais, her expression turning grave once again. “You said that’s why she brought you here,” she said, pointing at it. “What did you mean? What is this place?”

“How much did you hear?” I asked.

“I knew she had a gun, and that Nova was down there with you, and that she was threatening you, and…” my mother shuddered at the pain of the memory, and hugged me again.

“Well,” I said, “according to Veronica, we’re looking at the source of the deep magic.”

I wouldn’t have thought my mother could go any paler, but somehow she managed it. Her eyes widened, her lips pressed into a tense, stressful line. It took what felt like a very long time for her to answer.

“The source?” she verified.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s… probably not good,” she concluded.

No, it was decidedly not good. But there was no unknowing it now.

“I guess we’d better tell Persi to pass along the message and get the whole Conclave down here.” My mom shook her head. “Veronica Meyers, of all people. I just don’t understand.”

“She’s only a Meyers in name,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s the mask she wears to hide the fact that she is actually a Kildare.”

My mother’s mouth dropped open. “But the… how do you know about?—”

“Persi mentioned them to me,” I said vaguely. There was no need to explain the exact circumstances under which I’d learned of the existence of the Kildare coven. There would be time for that later.

“It sounds like a lot unfolded before we found you,” my mom said.

“There’s so much to tell you. But…” I threw an uneasy look at the dais, felt the tugging of its strange lure, heard what could have been whispers. But what I no longer felt was Asteria’s presence. The cavern suddenly felt sinister again, even with Veronica gone. “Can we get out of here?”

My mother shuddered and nodded. “Yes. I think that’s an excellent idea. And we’ll need to stop at Xiomara’s house on the way.”

Xiomara’s name flicked some switch in my brain, and I felt a sickening wave of fear all over again. “Wait, Mom! Bea! Someone needs to check on Bea! Veronica put some kind of sleeping spell on her and?—”

“Bea’s fine. She’s more than fine. In fact, she’s the reason we’re here,” my mother said, managing a semblance of a smile.

“What do you?—”

But there was no time to finish my question. At that moment, Rhi walked through the opening to the cavern and holding her hand, looking at once cautious and pleased with herself, was Bea. She smiled at me, and I smiled back.

“How?” Nova asked hoarsely.

“I think I’d better let Bea tell you that. She’s had quite the night herself.”

Back at Xiomara’s house, everyone had crowded into the too-small living room—the Conclave, my mom and her sisters, Nova, Eva, and Zale. There had been no trace of Veronica anywhere around the theater. The Conclave had instructed Sedgwick Cove’s tiny police force to set up a perimeter and search for her, both near the playhouse and up at the Meyers’ palatial beach house. It was a formality; no one really expected to find her. Veronica had shown her hand, and now she had no choice but to hide herself for the time being, unless she was a fool and, as Lydian wisely observed, “the Kildare coven didn’t produce fools.”

It was a long night. Eva, Zale, Nova, Bea, and I sat in Eva’s room, all of us bleary-eyed and exhausted, as the Conclave met —calling us in one at a time to tell our parts of the story, so that they could piece it all together from multiple angles. It was a little like waiting with your friends outside the principal’s office after you’d all gotten in trouble. Not that I’d ever been sent to the principal’s office—I’d been a bit of a goody-two-shoes before I started waging magical war with ancient evil entities. While Nova was downstairs being questioned by her own mother, we all sat around and listened to what had happened to the others.

“I knew something was wrong the moment we started reciting,” Eva said. “Something was almost imperceptibly different, like seeing the world in a mirror or something. Everything was right, and yet it was wrong. It was disorienting and weird, but once we started, it was already too late. We couldn’t stop.”

“I think I felt something, too,” Zale said, shaking his head ruefully. “But I couldn’t swear to it. I was such a nervous wreck about the pageant, wanting everything to be perfect, that I chalked it up to nerves at the time.”

“And then?” I prompted. I’d been incredibly eager to hear what it was like to be under the spell on the stage.

“And then… nothing,” Zale said, with a shrug. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Seriously?”

“Me, too,” Eva confirmed, nodding. “I think I heard the music start, the part right at the beginning with the pan flute? And then the next thing I remember is having to cover my ears because of the feedback from the speakers, and there was Bea right next to me.”

“It was like I blinked, and the entire pageant was over,” Zale wailed. “All that work, and I don’t have a single memory of it. And all anyone could say was how amazing it was!”

“Everyone else was under a spell, too,” Eva said, shrugging. “Maybe it was terrible, and they were all hexed into enjoying it.”

Zale gasped and then geared up to retort, but I cut him off. “Not everyone was under the spell,” I explained. “It was designed to affect all the witches present, except for me. Everyone else was riveted, Zale, trust me. And so was I before it all went to hell. I promise.”

Zale gave a whoop of glee. Eva rolled her eyes.

“Sure, the whole thing was a ploy to hijack the festival and hand Sedgwick Cove over to the Darkness, but the important thing is that they clapped, ” she grumbled in disgust.

“But they did!” Zale said. “I heard that part.”

“So what happened next? After you all woke up, or whatever?” I prompted.

“All of the witches were really confused when they snapped out of it,” Eva said. “We didn’t have any trouble convincing them they’d been under some kind of spell, too. They believed it right away.”

“Why do you think that was?” I mused to myself out loud, not really expecting that anyone would know the answer, but Eva laughed. I looked at her in time to see her reach out a finger and playfully flick at one of Bea’s braids. “We all knew Bea would never come down to that festival alone, unless it was a real emergency. The second I saw her face, I knew there was some serious shit about to go down.”

I turned to face Bea, who was doodling quietly on the corner of one of her sketches, her lips fighting a smile that would have given away how pleased she was with herself. “Okay,” I said, nudging her knee with my foot. “Now I want to hear it from the hero of the hour.”

Bea’s complexion darkened as she blushed. “I’m not a hero,” she muttered.

Eva rolled her eyes. “Bea, just tell us what happened, okay?”

Bea bit her lip, then set her pencil down, and watched her own fingers while she spoke. “I knew something wasn’t right about that lady. I knew it the first time I met her, over at the pageant rehearsal. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but I knew I didn’t like her.”

“Neither did I much, but I figured it was just the rich yuppie thing,” Eva muttered.

“But I didn’t think about it again, until she came to the restaurant at the end of the lunch rush today,” Bea went on, her little brow furrowed as she sifted through the memory for the relevant details. “She came in with that tall boy, her son…”

“Luca,” I said automatically, and then felt my own cheeks flush. I hoped no one noticed. I felt a pang of pity for him. What must it be like up at his house, the local police officers searching for his step-mom, having no clue what was going on…

“Right, Luca. He seemed nice,” Bea qualified. “He waved at me and smiled, but that was it. But then she ,” she shaped the word like it was a curse, “came over to me and wanted to see what I was drawing. I got really scared, because, well… I’d started drawing her while she was standing at the counter, talking to abuela . I… I didn’t want her to see, so I turned the page.”

“Yes, I remember that,” I said, nodding. “I remember her talking to you.”

“She was so close to me. She was trying to lean over to see my sketches, and she felt so… so wrong. Too close. Too cold.”

I frowned, not really understanding, but also not wanting to disrupt her story.

“Then after she left, I started not to feel well. Mama kept asking me what was wrong, and I didn’t really know how to explain it. I just knew that I was so tired, I could barely keep my eyes open. Mama kept checking my forehead to see if I had a fever, but I guess I felt normal. She got worried about me, though, so she left early and took me home. She asked if I wanted her to wake me up to go with them to the festival, but I said no. All I wanted to do was sleep. I don’t really like the festival anyway. So loud. So crowded.”

I didn’t wonder about Bea’s mom letting her sleep at home by herself. You could see the pageant from Bea’s bedroom window. It was right in the heart of downtown. It would have been easy for her mom to walk a couple of houses down, watch the pageant, and come back before Bea had so much as started snoring.

“I was laying in bed, and my eyelids were getting heavier and heavier. I rolled over onto my side, and that’s when I felt it. There was something in my pocket. I couldn’t remember putting anything in there, so I reached in and pulled it out. It was a charm bag. I got scared. I ran to the window, opened it, and threw the bag out into the yard. I guess it’s probably still down there.”

“And how did you feel when you’d gotten rid of it?” I asked.

“As soon as it was away from me, I felt normal again. Well, not right away, but it faded after a few minutes. I stood at the window, taking some deep breaths, and that’s when I started paying attention to the festival outside my window,” Bea said. She shuddered. “I felt scared all over again. If that lady put a spell on me, who else did she put a spell on? I wanted my mom. I wanted Xiomara. I wanted to make sure they were okay. So, I went down to the festival to find them.”

“And when you got there…” I said.

Bea swallowed hard, her throat bobbing convulsively. “Something was wrong. Everyone was under some kind of spell. Mama and abuela couldn’t even hear me. They couldn’t stop watching the pageant. Then I ran to the stage and tried to get Eva’s attention, but she couldn’t see or hear me either. Everyone, everyone was under a spell.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she brushed them away with the back of her hand.

“That must have been so scary,” I whispered, as Eva threw her arm around her little sister, and pulled her in so that she was tucked in the crook of Eva’s arm. Bea accepted the contact, snuggling into it and availing herself of the comfort her sister provided.

“It felt like I stood there for a long time. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to sit down on the ground and cry, but I knew that wouldn’t fix anything. Then I…” Bea hesitated.

“Then you what?” Eva prompted.

Bea hesitated, throwing a quick, surreptitious glance my way before answering. “I decided to interrupt the pageant,” she said.

The words were decisive, and yet I was positive that it was not all that she had meant to say when she first opened her mouth. And what was more, I felt as though she meant for me to know it. That scrap of a look that had passed between us felt heavy with meaning. But when I started to ask what it meant, she widened her eyes and shook her head the merest fraction of an inch in either direction. I swallowed my question.

Bea’s shoulders relaxed a little, and she went on, “I was freaking out, but after a few minutes, I realized no one was coming to help me, but I guess it needed to sink in. I stopped crying. I kinda got… calmer. I paid more attention. I looked all around the stage. I listened to the performers. After a few more minutes, I heard it.”

“What did you hear?” It was Zale who asked now, looking absolutely riveted. Here, at last, was someone else who had seen at least part of the pageant he couldn’t remember performing.

“No matter what the big tall kings were saying, the fairies and the nymphs kept repeating the same words over and over again.”

“Yes, I remember noticing that as well,” I said, feeling the gentle tug back into the memory of the pageant.

“It was almost like a song,” Bea said, “Sometimes it sounded like one. But after a minute, I felt myself start to get, well, kinda sleepy again, and I covered my ears. I thought the words might be the spell… like an incantation.”

“That’s exactly what it was,” I said, forcing myself to say the words. “Veronica as good as told us that.” I didn’t look at Zale or Eva. I couldn’t bear to see the accusations in their eyes, knowing that I was the one who passed along the book in the first place. So, instead, I kept my attention on Bea and said, “What happened next? You interrupted the pageant somehow, didn’t you?”

Bea nodded, and raised her chin just a little. “I used the speakers. There were these microphones on the front of the stage, and they were attached to two really big speakers. I watched them this morning when they were setting up for the pageant.” She pointed at Zale. “During the sound check, one of the speakers started squealing, and Zale said they needed to move the microphone because it was too close to the speaker and was causing feedback. I thought maybe if people couldn’t hear the incantation, it might not work anymore. So, I just grabbed the microphones and caused some feedback.” She shrugged as though anyone would have thought of doing the same.

“How long did it take?” Zale asked. “Until we snapped out of it, I mean?”

“Oh, not long at all. The crowd started shouting and complaining. The actors stopped dancing around one by one. Nearly everyone was blocking their ears, so the words lost all their power. At least, that’s what it seemed like.”

“Okay, Bea, I know you didn’t like us calling you a hero,” Zale said, shaking his head in disbelief, “but how would you feel if we called you a genius instead?”

Bea squinted for a moment, thoughtful. Then her face settled into a placid expression. “I’ll allow it,” she said, and Zale burst out laughing.

“Eva! Zale! Can you come down here, please?” Xiomara’s voice called from the bottom of the stairs. Eva and Zale traded one anxious look, and then both slid off the bed and walked out the door.

I counted three quiet breaths, waiting for the sound of feet on the stairs to fade, before I turned back to Bea.

“You left something out, didn’t you? Something you didn’t want to say in front of Zale and Eva?” I asked her.

She nodded, looking tense.

“Did you tell the Conclave? Or your mom?”

This time, she shook her head. “I didn’t think they’d believe me.”

I swallowed hard, trying to keep my voice calm and even. “Would you like to tell me?” I asked.

Bea played with her fingers, clasping and unclasping them in her lap. “I think… I think I’m supposed to tell you.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Supposed to?”

Bea nodded again. “I think she… she wants me to.”

“Who wants you to?” I asked, my voice cracking with the strain of trying to remain calm. I was wound so tightly, I thought I might snap.

In answer, Bea picked up her sketchbook and flipped back through the pages to the very last sketch. Then she held it up for me to see, and as determined as I was to remain placid, I couldn’t help but gasp in surprise.

It was Asteria. Asteria, in her flowing skirts and her boundless curls. Asteria, whose wise and often mischievous face was folded into planes of worry… perhaps even fear.

“You’ve seen her too?” I whispered.

Bea’s eyes widened. “You?”

I nodded.

“I… I didn’t know you could. I didn’t even really know that I could.” Bea whispered.

“At first, I thought I was dreaming,” I admitted. “Seriously. Because as far as I knew, Asteria wasn’t… still here. There was also the fact that I didn’t believe in ghosts at all. Then again, my life has become one long string of things I probably wouldn’t have believed a month ago, so I’m getting used to that feeling.”

Bea put her little hand on top of mine, and squeezed sympathetically. The gesture brought a lump into my throat that I had to swallow against.

“But this isn’t about me, sorry,” I apologized. “What does Asteria have to do with this?”

“At first, I just… felt her,” Bea said. “I would be doodling, and I’d look down, and there she was. I’d draw her without really meaning to. And then, today, at the cafe… I told you that I started sketching Veronica. Well, this is what happened when I started doing that. It’s why I didn’t want her to see it.” She flipped a few pages forward in her sketchbook, and held it up again for me to see. This time, the image was of Veronica Meyers, somewhat rough, as though it had been done quickly, with no time to go back and refine it. But it was clearly her—her swanlike neck, her aquiline nose, her slender figure, but she was not alone. Asteria stood beside her, almost hovering over her, and her expression was anxious.

“You saw Asteria with Veronica?” I gasped.

“Well, no. I didn’t see her. But I felt something, and when I tried to draw what I felt…” And she gestured somewhat helplessly to the drawing, like it had sprung to life on the page in spite of her efforts, rather than because of them.

I wasn’t totally sure if I understood, but I nodded as though I did. So Asteria wasn’t here only to communicate with me. She’d been following Veronica Meyers around. Why? Had she known what Veronica was up to? Was she trying to stop her? Was she trying to warn me? My head was spinning.

“There’s more,” Bea whispered, and I pulled my attention from the sketchpad to look at her again. “When I went down to the festival… well, it wasn’t exactly my idea to disrupt the festival.”

“Whose idea was it?” I asked.

Bea pointed to Asteria’s image. “It was her. She was there, at the festival. I was so scared, and I was crying, and then I heard her call my name. I looked up, and she… she smiled at me. She told me not to be afraid, and that I could break the spell if I stopped the words of the pageant. And then she… she was just gone. Vanished.”

Again, I was rendered speechless. Asteria was still protecting me—protecting all of us. But why? Why hadn’t she moved on after her clifftop send-off? Had the events of the last week pulled her back from beyond the grave? Or had she been here all along, undetectable, silent, and invisible among us? My head was beginning to ache with the pressure of unanswered questions.

Still, at least, the biggest question seemed to be answered at last. I’d proven I could connect with the other elements: earth, fire, air, and water. And now, with the sightings of Asteria, it seemed I could connect with spirit as well. Or at least… one spirit in particular. Still, it seemed like it might be enough. It seemed I might really be the pentamaleficus the Darkness was looking for. Five elements. Five points of power.

After weeks of wishing for some sign of power, I suddenly found myself wishing I had none at all. Once upon a time, I’d have thought magic the solution to all my problems, and now I knew that it was, in fact, the cause. What a bitter pill to swallow.

“Wren?”

It took a lot of effort to drag myself up out of those thoughts, but I managed it. “Yeah, Bea?” I asked.

“Are you okay?” she asked, looking at me with a skittish sort of wariness, as though she thought I might explode unexpectedly.

“Sorry, Bea. My head’s kind of spinning with all of this. I’m okay. I guess I’m just… I’m wondering about my grandmother. I’m wondering why I can see her, why she’s here. And I don’t know how to answer that question.”

“Oh, I do,” Bea replied mildly.

I blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”

Bea looked puzzled. “You said you wanted to know why your grandmother was here, right?”

“Yeah, but?—”

“Well then, that’s easy. You go to see Xiomara. She can tell you.”

Her words felt like a slap to the face. All I could do for a few seconds was sit there and blink at her, my brain slowly turning sounds into words, and words into thoughts. Finally, I managed, “Has… has Xiomara seen Asteria, too? Did she tell you that?”

“No,” Bea said, shaking her head. “But she has a steadier connection than any other witch in Sedgwick Cove. If you want to communicate with a spirit around here, you call Xiomara.”

“I… wow, I knew she was sensitive to spirit, but I didn’t know it was… do you think she could help me?”

“I know she could. She could have helped me, too,” Bea said, her voice and chin dropping suddenly. “But I didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell anyone until right now.”

“What do you… oh!” It suddenly occurred to me that, once Bea had started sensing spirits, she’d had the perfect person to confide in right there in her house, a person she was close to, who had enough experience to answer all her questions. Then…

“Why didn’t you tell Xiomara?” I asked. “Didn’t you think she would understand?”

Bea swallowed. “I was too scared,” she whispered.

“Of Xiomara?” the words came out more skeptical than I’d meant them, and Bea flinched a little. Luckily, she still answered my question.

“Shh!” Bea hushed me, and I pressed a hand over my mouth automatically. “And no, I’m not scared of abuela . But I am scared of…” She sighed, a sigh much too big and heavy for such a little girl. “I know Eva told you about the trouble I was having finding my affinity.”

I flushed, ready to apologize, but she plowed on, “It’s okay. Really, Wren, I don’t mind that she told you that. But you should know that it’s not true. Well, Eva doesn’t know it’s not true,” she added, chewing on her lip, “and neither does anyone else in my family. The truth is that I’ve been lying to them about my magic.”

“Lying? Why?” I asked, dropping my voice even lower.

“It’s true that my affinity revealed itself a little later than most people,” Bea said. “That part wasn’t a lie. But then all of this started happening with my sketches.” She waved a hand at the sketchbook, looking at it like it was a beloved pet that had lashed out and bitten her. “I’d draw a picture of our house, and without meaning to draw it, there’d be a man sitting on our front steps. I’d try to draw the beach, and it turned into the image of a woman standing up on the cliffs. I wasn’t seeing them… only drawing them. But I could feel them, too, sometimes.”

“How did you feel them?” I asked.

“Their feelings. They sort of just… came over me. Like I’d be doing my homework, and suddenly I’d feel really sad, like I was going to cry. But it didn’t make sense, because nothing was happening to make me want to cry, even if it was math.” She made a face. “It was so weird. So when it happened, I would pull out my sketchbook and then… well, I would usually be able to draw who was making me feel that way.” And again, she flipped through the pages, stopping to point at certain sketches to show me that they were of spirits, rather than living people.

“How long has this been going on?” I asked.

“It started right after my ninth birthday. That was in April.”

“And you were scared.”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t tell your family? Even though you knew they would understand?”

“I didn’t want them to understand,” Bea whispered. “I didn’t want it to be true.”

I shook my head. “Bea, I’m sorry, but I still don’t underst?—”

“ Abuela is very strong. But the spirits weigh on her. I can see it sometimes, the way they wear her down. And then Bernadette… she’s the other most powerful spirit witch in our town, and she…” Bea shuddered. “Her gift drove her mad. They had to lock her up.”

“Bernadette sees prophecies of the future, though, doesn’t she?” I asked. “That’s very different than what your gift seems to be.”

“But it’s her connection to spirit that allows her to see the future. I was afraid, Wren. I’m still afraid. I don’t want to be a spirit witch. I don’t want to feel all those feelings that don’t belong to me. I just want to… to shut it off. Like a light switch. Just… click.” She pressed an invisible button in the air, her little finger trembling.

“Keeping it a secret won’t make it go away,” I told her, keeping my voice soft. I didn’t want her to think I was chiding her.

She sighed again. “I know. But I also know that when I tell abuela , she’ll say it’s time to start my training. She’ll say I have to start practicing. Instead of waiting for spirits to find me, I’ll have to go out looking for them to build my skills. But… they aren’t all nice. Some of them are…” Bea shuddered.

I didn’t need her to elaborate. It only made sense that spirits were as varied in their nature as living people were. There were a lot of kind and wonderful humans in the world, but not all people were good.

“What do you say we both go down there, and you talk to Xiomara about it?” I suggested. “Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe it will even be okay.”

Bea hesitated. “Will you hold my hand while I tell her?” she asked.

I smiled at her. “Only if you promise to hold mine when it’s my turn.”

She considered this. “Okay.”

I took her hand to shake it, but she didn’t let go. Instead, she flipped it around, so I was holding hers in mine. She picked up her sketchbook with her free hand, and tucked it under her arm. Then she stood up with a grimace.

“Okay. Let’s go.”