Chapter 23

23

W hen we finally arrived at Lightkeep Cottage that night, I was sure I’d be up for hours, hyped up on anxiety and unanswered questions. So imagine my surprise when I flopped down on the couch next to my mom, and immediately fell into such a deep sleep that I didn’t so much as move for almost ten hours. It was as though my body knew I had to unplug, before I short-circuited. Like a glitching gadget, I needed to be turned off and then turned back on again, if I had any hope of functioning properly.

The sleep may have been deep, but it was full of nightmares, a vivid but confusing collage of images that made little sense: Asteria’s spirit wandering across a stage full of entranced performers. Flowering vines bursting through my walls and winding up my legs like snakes. Bea drawing a sketch of Veronica Meyers, which immediately leaped off the page and pulled a gun from her pocket to point at my face. The Gray Man, with Sarah Claire standing on one side and Veronica Meyers on the other, all three of them gesturing at me to join them, to wear the crown they offered…

I jolted awake.

My mom was no longer lying against me. At some point, she had extracted herself, placing a pillow under my head, and a blanket over my curled limbs. Before I could panic about where she had gone, I heard her voice from the kitchen. She, Rhi, and Persi were talking quietly together at the kitchen table. I could smell a pot of Rhi’s herbal tea. I supposed I didn’t blame them for not waking me. They certainly had an awful lot to discuss. I wondered if they were still feeling as calm as they’d seemed last night while Bea, I, and the others had given them all the details we could about what had happened to us that night. It was true that my mother held my hand tightly the whole time I was speaking, true that my fingers were numb and tingling from the pressure she placed on them at times, but overall, she’d taken it all in her stride. I had to admit, I’d been worried that she would pack us up and leave town again, maybe even leave the country, but I should have given her more credit. I knew she’d learned from that mistake. She was scared, sure, but she was also stoic. She’d made her choice, and she was sticking to it. As I listened now, the tones of their voices were serious, but calm. It helped me feel calmer, too, for the moment. Calm enough for their voices to lull me back to sleep.

Another dream found its way into my slumber, but it was not one of the chaotic ones I’d endured in my first stretch of sleep.

I was standing in my mother’s garden. I could hear Asteria calling to me. I looked and looked for her. Her voice was playful at first, then worried, like she’d expected me to find her by now. I began to call her name as well, unease growing in me. At last, I saw a scrap of flowing purple fabric fluttering from the shadow of a nearby willow tree. The fronds waved in the breeze, obscuring the figure who stood there. I paused, uncertain.

“Asteria?”

There was no reply. I almost turned to run. Then…

“Wren?”

It was Asteria’s voice, but though the figure stood only a few feet from me, the voice sounded very far away.

“What is it?” I asked her. “What do you want to tell me?”

Another pause… and then…

“I don’t know. I don’t remember,” came the faintest reply.

“Please, Asteria! It might be important!”

“I… don’t remember.”

I stepped through the fronds in a surge of frustration, but instead found myself falling down, down, down into pitch-black darkness, and then…

It felt like I hit the couch as I jerked myself awake again. I managed not to cry out, smothering my yelp of surprise with the pillow under my face. I sat up. The kitchen was dark, the table silent. A cup of tea had gone stone cold on the table in front of me, beside a plate of untouched cookies. The dream felt like it had lasted only a brief moment, but I’d clearly been asleep for hours once again. I glanced at the clock. It was after midnight.

Screw it. I didn’t care how late it was.

I’d woken from that dream not only with a physical jolt but a mental one as well, as though waking up had jostled loose a decision I hadn’t even realized I’d made. I could no longer wait passively for Asteria to find me. I had to reach out to her. I had to forge a connection strong enough that she could finally tell me whatever it was she was trying to say. And there was only one person I knew who could help me.

As I flew along the road to town, my legs pedaling furiously beneath me, I prayed that my mother wouldn’t wake up, and that if she did wake up, she wouldn’t absolutely murder me for sneaking out like this. Part of me knew it was stupid, of course—after all, there was still no sign of Veronica. Before I’d agreed to lay down, I’d made my mother promise to wake me up if Veronica had been found. I definitely shouldn’t be out alone at night with that woman on the loose. At the same time, though, something very powerful was propelling me forward. I couldn’t confidently say what it was, but I thought… well, I thought it might just be my magic.

For weeks, Rhi had been trying—and failing— to convince me to trust myself. It’s the key to everything, Wren. You sabotage yourself with doubt and skepticism. If part of your brain intends for you to fail, then that intention will interfere with your abilities. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. And she was right. Every time I’d felt an instinct, I’d questioned it rather than trusted it, and so I’d burned, undercooked, overcooked, or in some other way ruined every magic recipe I’d tried. All that self-doubt that started in the kitchen had left me paralyzed with indecision in the cavern, unable to save my friend. I no longer had the luxury to take my time. I had to take my magic by the horns, to embrace what I was now realizing I feared. I didn’t want my magic. I’d been running from it all along, like my mother before me. Even when I thought I was trying my hardest to find it, I’d been hiding from it.

I was scared. But I wouldn’t be scared anymore. I was going to listen to my magic when it spoke to me. I wasn’t going to second guess, or defer, or delay. My magic was telling me this was what I needed to do, and damn it, I was going to do it. I felt my fear fall away like the moon-bathed road stretching away in a ribbon behind me. I felt so much lighter, that I was surprised the bike didn’t become airborne.

I skidded to a stop in front of Xiomara’s garden gate, sending sand and pebbles flying. I didn’t bother with the chain, just resting the bike against the fence before charging up the stairs and, before I could lose my newly acquired nerve, lifted my fist to knock sharply on the front door.

Instead, I stumbled forward as the door fell open, and almost fell face-first into Xiomara’s living room. I steadied myself, and looked up to see Xiomara herself holding the door open, not a trace of surprise on her face that I was standing on her front steps at nearly one o’clock in the morning.

“I thought I might see you tonight,” Xiomara said, stepping back from the door and gesturing me inside.

I didn’t move. “You did? How?”

Xiomara didn’t answer, just cocked her head toward the living room. I swallowed hard, and walked past her. She closed the door behind us, and then gestured for me to follow her. Memories of the previous night tried to overwhelm me as we walked through the very room where I’d relived every detail for the Conclave. I shoved those memories aside. They would only slow me down and cause me to lose focus.

We walked through the living room to the kitchen, and then to a small back room that looked like it had been converted from a three-season porch. Windows looked out over the back garden on three sides. The windowsills were lined with a staggering assortment of candles, bottles, statues, and stones, and yet nothing about it was cluttered; on the contrary, each item looked as though it had been carefully, mindfully chosen, positioned just so as to compliment all the other objects around it. I stared in fascination, feeling a sort of calm wash over me.

The room had a round table in the center, with a red tablecloth draped over it, and two wooden chairs pulled up to it, directly across from one another. Above the table, an ornate gold lamp with multi-colored glass shades hung from the ceiling, bathing the room in a warm, patchwork light. Xiomara gestured to the closest chair, and I sank into it without thinking. It felt natural. Xiomara moved to the chair opposite me, and settled herself into it with a creaking groan. Then she placed her hands on the table and looked me in the eye, waiting.

“How did you know I would be coming?” I asked.

“Because I’ve sensed what I imagine you’ve been sensing,” Xiomara replied. Her features were relaxed except for her eyes, which had a sharpness to them, almost like a bird.

“What I’ve been…”

“You have an energy attached to you, mija . But you know that.”

I nodded, swallowing hard.

Xiomara nodded solemnly in return. She didn’t ask me who I was talking about.

“She came to you.”

I nodded again.

“In a dream.”

It hadn’t really sounded like a question, so it felt strange to contradict her. “The first time, I thought it might have been. I thought I imagined it. But then I saw her again during the day, and I knew it couldn’t be a dream.”

Xiomara’s eyebrows shot up. “You saw her?”

“Yes.”

“How did she appear to you? Can you describe it?” The urgency in her voice made me edgy, but I answered truthfully.

“She looked… solid. Alive. If I hadn’t already known she was dead, I would have thought she was really standing there, waiting for me. Well, except for her voice.”

“You heard her as well?”

“Yeah, but it didn’t sound like her voice was coming from her. It didn’t sound far away. It sounded like it was coming from… from inside my own head, but also from outside it? Sorry, it’s kind of hard to explain.”

But Xiomara didn’t seem to have any trouble understanding what I was trying to say. In fact, she almost seemed to expect the words, like there was only one correct answer and I was repeating it back to her in class. She nodded along as each word dropped neatly into place. Her expression was grimly satisfied.

“Is that normal?” I asked. “To see or hear a ghost like that?”

Xiomara snorted. “ Mija, we don’t traffic in normal here. Now, you said ‘the first time.’ Does that mean you’ve seen her more than once?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Once in the garden at Lightkeep Cottage. And then again, standing in the garden at Shadowkeep. And then, finally, tonight. This time, it was a dream, but the dream took place in my mother’s garden.”

Xiomara grunted in satisfaction. “Asteria was a green witch. It follows that she would manifest in places, not only that she is tied to, but that she can draw power from.”

“But I don’t understand why she’s manifesting at all!” I said. “I thought… I thought after her funeral, she would have… I don’t know, moved on? Crossed over? Is any of that even true, or have I just watched too many movies?”

Xiomara smiled gently. “Yes. There is a spirit realm. And yes, when a spirit is ready, they cross into it, and there they remain.”

“So, you’re saying Asteria hasn’t crossed yet?”

“That’s what’s troubling me,” Xiomara said slowly. “I knew your grandmother well. I knew her energy. And I knew when it left this world. I felt it.”

“But then…how can she be here now?”

“How, indeed? That’s what we must discover, mija . Shall we try together?”

Xiomara reached a hand across the table, an invitation. I hesitated.

“Is there any chance I’ve just been imagining it?” I asked, almost hoping it was true. “Is it possible I’m just… just fixated on her and…”

Xiomara didn’t have to answer out loud. I could read the answer in the depths of her eyes, where it burned, pitying but bright. However, she spoke anyway, her hand still extended toward me. “Do not be afraid, Wren. Asteria has reached out to you. If she has something to say to you, do you not want to know what it is?”

I couldn’t answer right away. Was it possible I both wanted and didn’t want to know? I didn’t know much about ghosts, not really, mostly because I’d never believed in them before, but even I’d heard the well-known stories and urban legends about tortured spirits, unable to move on until they’d found resolution for their unfinished business. Was any of that true? Because if it was, I didn’t think I wanted to know. I didn’t want to imagine Asteria desperate and trapped. Surely, that couldn’t be the case. And yet, if it wasn’t something vitally important, why wasn’t she resting peacefully, or was that just a story, too?

Xiomara watched me patiently as all of these thoughts chased each other through my brain. I realized she must do this all the time —guide people through experiences like this. Bea’s drawing of her flashed across my mind, and I was able to appreciate on an entirely different level just how accurate it was. Though she did not speak, waiting for my permission to begin, I could see the curiosity burning in her eyes, the fire that seeks truth and knowledge.

“You want to know as badly as I do, don’t you?” I whispered.

“Her presence here troubles me. If she has something to say, I think we owe it to her to discover just what it is.”

That was apparently exactly what I needed to hear. I placed my hand in Xiomara’s and told her, “Okay. What do I do?”

Xiomara smiled encouragingly. “Simply close your eyes, child, and try to feel your connection to her. You can connect to spirit, just as you can connect to the other elements. Trust yourself.”

“I’ve never?—”

“ Try .”

I did as she told me, letting my eyelids fall shut, and trying to clear a hundred other thoughts that were bounding loudly around in my head, so that I could create a mental space for Asteria, and only Asteria. At first, it felt impossible. How could I focus on something so tenuous, on something that I knew was real, and yet in no way understood? How did you grab a hold of something so ephemeral?

“You’re doubting yourself, Wren. It’s blocking you,” Xiomara said, after a silent minute.

“I know, but I don’t know how to get rid of the doubts,” I said, my teeth gritted in frustration as I battled with my own brain.

“You don’t need to dispel them. Just push them to the side. Imagine a box in the back corner of your mind, and place everything in it, like a child putting away toys, until the room is clear.”

The metaphor was concrete, and suddenly, I felt like I had something to hold onto, something that felt more real than anything we’d said up until that moment. I visualized the box, and one by one, every other thought that tried to crop up, I shoved it inside. I did it over and over again, and when I began to worry that my brain would simply produce a never-ending supply of distractions, I took that worry and shoved it away as well. It took what felt like a long time, but Xiomara showed no signs of impatience; and soon, I found, for perhaps the first time in my life, that my brain felt… empty. An empty stage, with a single spotlight, waiting for someone or something to make its entrance.

Perhaps it was the energy coming off of me or the fact that I seemed to have gone unusually still, but Xiomara recognized the very moment that I’d achieved what she’d requested of me. Her hand tightened around mine, and she said, “That’s it, mija . Now, into that space that you’ve just cleared, I want you to picture your grandmother. Just place her there and picture her just as she appeared to you out in the garden, both at Shadowkeep and at Lightkeep. If there’s a detail you can’t remember, fill it in until she’s like a picture you’ve drawn for yourself.”

I began to do as she asked, and then started in surprise as Asteria popped into my head, fully formed. Every detail was exactly as I remembered it, and I felt myself taking mental stock of it, trying to commit it all to memory. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders in shining, gray-streaked waves. Her greenish eyes twinkled out from her lined face—I wouldn’t have called it wrinkled. Each line was simply a memory of smiles and frowns and deep concentration, a permanent incarnation of the joys and sorrows and accomplishments of her earthly life. She wore the dress she had worn the very last time I’d seen her alive, a bell-sleeved confection of jewel-tone patchwork, with crocheted lace dripping from the collar, cuffs, and the handkerchief hem. I felt Xiomara’s hand twitch in mine.

“She’s here,” we both whispered at the very same time.

“Asteria, my friend, why do you linger?” Xiomara was asking, her voice soft but insistent. “What message do you have for us?”

Wren. I need Wren. Wren Vesper.

It wasn’t like hearing a human voice. I didn’t seem to hear it with my ears, but with my brain.

“Wren is here, Asteria. She can hear you,” Xiomara insisted.

Wren. I have to speak to Wren. I have to warn her .

My pulse sped up. I opened my eyes to sneak a look at Xiomara. She was frowning intently, her head cocked to one side, like she was trying to identify a distant sound. As I watched her, she muttered, “She’s confused. I’m not sure why. She’s got a direct connection to you, and yet she doesn’t seem to know it’s you.”

“What am I doing wrong?” I whispered. The other thoughts rattled away against the confines of my mental box, but I kept them at bay. I was doing what Xiomara had asked, and yet something still wasn’t right.

“You aren’t doing anything wrong,” Xiomara insisted. “It’s Asteria. She’s… something is off.”

“What do we do?”

“You speak to her this time. Perhaps my guidance is interfering. I’ll try to observe without inserting myself,” Xiomara said. “Try again, mija , try again.”

I shoved my fear and doubt aside, and focused all my energy on the Asteria standing in my mental space. I moved myself closer to her, mentally walking toward her so that I could have touched her if I tried. “Asteria, it’s me. It’s Wren.”

I need to talk to Wren. My little bird.

“It’s me, Asteria. I’m Wren Vesper. Your granddaughter.”

Something flashed across Asteria’s face, a blip of recognition, followed by confusion again. But she was looking at me now. It was startling, like an actor breaking the fourth wall unexpectedly, and speaking directly to an audience member. Xiomara reacted to it as well; I heard her stifled gasp, and felt her hand tighten again around my cold, numb fingers.

Wren?

“Yes! It’s me!”

She still seemed unsure, but at least she felt the direct connection. She shook her head, her eyebrows knitting together like she had a sudden terrible headache. I felt a wave of something unpleasant—not quite nausea, but something akin to it.

She has to know. I have to tell her.

“Tell me! I’m Wren, and I’m listening!”

The girl. The girl will bring the book.

“What girl? What book?”

She understands the source. You must trust her. Everything depends on it.

“Asteria, who are you talking about? What girl?”

The source. She’s connected to the source. She will bring the book. Trust her, little bird.

The spotlight was fading on my little mental stage. Asteria’s voice was fading, slipping out of my hearing. I tried to reach for her, but my hands closed around the absence of her instead. When I opened my eyes, I found that my hands were reaching out into the empty air in front of me, that Xiomara had let go of my hand, and that the connection was broken.

I looked at Xiomara, and she looked back at me, her expression inscrutable.

“Did you break the connection?” I asked her, lowering my hands.

“No. Asteria did,” she said. Her brow was still furrowed. “It was not a clean break; she couldn’t hold on any longer.”

“Couldn’t hold on to what?”

“To you.”

Tears were pricking the corners of my eyes, but I blinked them back. “Could you hear what she was saying?”

“Yes.”

“And?” I asked. There was an impatient snap in my voice, but Xiomara didn’t seem to mind. She shook her head slowly, grinding her teeth together in her frustration. “I have no idea. I was hoping her message would make sense to you.”

My heart sank like a stone in my chest. “You don’t know what girl she’s talking about?”

“I do not. Nor do I know what book she’s talking about. Is this not something you and Asteria have discussed before?”

I threw my hands up in frustration. “Xiomara, I haven’t so much as spoken to Asteria since I was ten years old. She’s said more to me since she died than she did in the last six years of her life, and I have no idea what the hell it means!” The tears won out now, and I let my head flop down onto my arms on Xiomara’s table. Xiomara didn’t coddle me or try to placate me while I cried. She got up, made me a cup of tea, put it down in front of me, and waited quietly until I’d cried myself out. Finally, I raised my head, took a sip of the tea, and tested my voice. It was hoarse, but it sounded steady again.

“Sorry about that. I’m okay now.”

“You have nothing to apologize for, Wren. Sitting with your feelings is strength, not weakness. You have been heaped with the troubles of your ancestors. That is a heavy burden.”

“You know a little something about that, don’t you?” I asked, thinking again of Bea’s drawing of her grandmother.

Xiomara smirked knowingly. “Perhaps. But there are degrees of troubles, are there not?”

I took a sip of tea to fend off another wave of tears. Yes, there were.

“I admit I am troubled,” Xiomara went on. She tapped her stubby fingertips on the tabletop as she spoke. “Not about the girl and the book. No, I believe they will reveal themselves in time. My worry is about the source.”

The hot tea scalded my throat all the way down as I swallowed it too quickly. “Asteria said the girl was connected to the source. That she understands it.”

“Yes. In many ways, I wish I could say the same of myself,” Xiomara said. She pressed her palms flat against the table, spreading her fingers wide like she was bracing herself against her own words. “We went there, you know. Last night, after you had gone back home to Lightkeep Cottage. The Conclave went down to the playhouse, and we saw it for ourselves.”

I hadn’t known this. I wondered if my mother or my aunts knew. Maybe that was what they’d been whispering about in the kitchen while I’d slept.

“I believe,” Xiomara said, “that the source is tied somehow to the element of spirit. I say this because I am the only one of my fellow Conclave members who felt deeply drawn to it, and I am the only spirit witch among us. I felt presences there. Whispers.”

“I felt it, too,” I murmured, my breath scattering the swirling tendrils of steam rising off my mug. “And Veronica… she sensed something. She must be a spirit witch, too.”

“Does that not worry you?” Xiomara asked.

I laughed, though nothing felt particularly funny. “Everything about the source worries me. I’m worried that we know where it is. I’m worried that people like Veronica will continue to seek it. I’m worried someone will learn how to tap into it. I’m worried the Darkness will gain access. But probably most of all, I’m worried that we don’t understand it. We’re trying to protect something we don’t understand.”

“But that has always been the case, from the earliest days of witchcraft on this shore. The source has always been a mystery to us,” Xiomara said. “We have never known exactly why this place has such an effect on our magic, and most of us have accepted that we may not be meant to know. We only know that it must be protected, never sought, never exploited.”

“But now someone is coming who does understand it. Someone who is connected to it, somehow,” I said.

“So Asteria has warned us.”

“And Asteria also said we should trust this girl, whoever she is.”

“She did.”

“So then… maybe we won’t have to do all of this in the dark, you know? Maybe this girl, whoever she is, will be able to help us—to help me—so that I know what I’m facing.”

Xiomara looked at me long and hard. It was an appraising look, one that brought a flush of self-conscious pink to my cheeks, but I didn’t let myself look away.

“If it is true, Wren. If you are the pentamaleficus the Darkness seeks, it means that, in some way, you are the key to that door. And if there is someone who can tell us what’s behind that door… well, then let us hope she’s already on her way.”