Chapter 8

8

“ G AH!” I shrieked, the sweatshirt still pulled halfway over my head. My glasses, catching as I tugged, skidded across the floor, and landed at the feet of the unexpected figure.

“Calm down, Vesper, it’s only me!” hissed a voice. “Stop shouting before someone comes running!”

Though it was hushed and tense, I knew that voice. I extracted myself from the sweatshirt, tossed it aside, and switched on the light.

“Nova? What the hell are you doing here? You scared me half to death!”

Nova Claire bent her silky blonde head, scooped up my glasses, and held them out to me. I took them and thrust them back on my face, my heart still beating so hard I could hear it in my own ears. Nova was one of the last people I’d ever expect to find just sitting in my room unannounced, not least because I wasn’t entirely sure she even liked me.

“How did you get in here?” I asked. I couldn’t see my mom or Rhi letting someone into my room without even telling me, although I wouldn’t have put it past Persi.

But Nova cocked a thumb over her shoulder at the open window, around which the curtains were billowing in the salty evening air. “Through the side garden, up the rose trellis, across the porch roof, and in through your window. You really should lock that, you know.”

“Clearly,” I said, sinking on to my bed as my breathing finally began to slow down. “You could have just come down to the meeting at the playhouse if you wanted to see me. It would have been slightly harder to scare the shit out of me, but I’m sure you could have managed it, if you wanted to.”

“Look, I’m sorry about lying in wait like a stalker, okay? It wasn’t actually my first choice. I was planning to go down to the playhouse, but something came up.”

As my eyes adjusted and I was able to see Nova— really see her—my heart leaped into overdrive again. “What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” she snapped. “Why should anything be wrong?”

I would have laughed if I wasn’t so startled at her appearance. Nova was usually the epitome of cool and unconcerned, a walking poster child for designer ennui. But tonight, in the yellow light from my bedside lamp she looked… well, freaked out. Her eyes were wide and ringed with the purple, bruise-like shadows of sleeplessness. Her hair, usually silky and perfectly straight, was pulled into a messy bun on top of her head, and the strands that had escaped the hair tie hung limply around her face. Her eye makeup was smudged, like she’d applied it yesterday, and hadn’t bothered to wash her face. She was also wearing sweatpants in public—I mean it was probably a $500 matching sweatsuit from a well-known designer, but still.

But most startling of all was the spun glass fragility she was trying to hide behind a truculent scowl. She was vulnerable, and she was pissed about it. I thought about what Eva had told me at the cafe the previous day, about how rumors were flying about me and the Claires. I would have expected Nova to face them defiantly, middle fingers flying, but the Nova in front of me looked totally beaten down. She was also sneaking into my bedroom at night, so this was hardly going to be a casual, friendly chat.

“Nova. Seriously. What’s wrong?” I repeated.

Nova bit her lip, and jumped up from the chair, starting to pace. “Dammit,” she muttered. “I shouldn’t have come here. This was a stupid idea.”

“Why don’t you tell me the idea, and I’ll decide whether it’s stupid or not,” I suggested, sitting down on the edge of my bed. I was burning with curiosity, but I did my best to appear very calm and collected, as a counterpoint to her almost manic energy. It seemed to help. She looked at me as she was pacing, and gradually her steps slowed. She let out a sigh, and leaned against my windowsill, sagging.

“I need your help,” she said, the words eking their reluctant way out between her clenched teeth.

I managed not to let my mouth fall open in shock, but it was close. Nova Claire, admitting she needed help? And from a Vesper? If I’d been a less sensitive person, I would have whipped out my phone and recorded the moment for posterity. Instead, I swallowed back my shock and said, “With what?”

Nova pursed her lips, clearly wishing she didn’t have to elaborate. Then she blurted out, “It’s my mother.”

“Okay…”

“You know what she’s like. Well, no I guess you don’t, but her reputation precedes her in this town, which makes me think you probably have a pretty good idea of what she’s like. The Claire name is all that matters to her—protecting it, lifting it up, keeping it polished and shiny and pristine. It’s like… a generational trauma response. We fucked up so badly in the lead-up to the Covenant that the Claire matriarch of every generation since has made it her life’s work to make up for it. You’d think, over time, they’d get less fanatical about it, but it’s only gotten worse.”

I experienced a flash of memory of the first time I’d set foot in the Claire family home. There’d been a locked bookcase in their library, where every book on dark or malevolent magic was kept. Nova had told me her mother kept them locked up, because Ostara didn’t trust anyone around them. At first, I’d thought Nova was just being melodramatic, but I’d learned better since.

“We’ve spent a few centuries being pillars of the community, but the way my mother acts, you’d think we were running around hexing everything that moves every time she turned her back,” Nova went on. “I don’t think there’s a single coven in Sedgwick Cove which holds us to the kind of standards we hold ourselves to. Like, they’re over it. I’m not really sure why we can’t be. But it’s almost like she was waiting for something like this to happen.”

“Something like…?”

“Bernadette.”

“Oh. Right.” Everything Nova was saying confirmed what Eva had told me that afternoon at the cafe. The Claires were trying to do damage control on their coven’s image.

Nova sighed, and for a moment she looked beyond exhausted. “The problem is that my mother’s been so obsessed with maintaining our reputation, she doesn’t care if we’re rotting on the inside. It’s all about appearances, and if things are shitty between our own walls, who cares —as long as no one ever finds out. Not to say we’re all a bunch of evil witches cursing and plotting in secret, obviously, but we’re like any other family. We’re not perfect. We screw up. It’s inevitable. We’re human beings.”

Her voice broke, and I had to swallow against a sudden burst of sympathy. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like, having a mother like Ostara Claire. It seemed that Nova had built up her tough-as-nails exterior as a form of self-preservation; and not just from the outside world, but from her own flesh and blood. My mom and I had our differences, and we definitely had our own shit to work through, but I knew she loved me. I was realizing for the first time that maybe Nova couldn’t say the same.

“So… what exactly is going on with your mom?” I pressed, after a few moments of silence.

“Huh? Oh shit, I got carried away. Sorry to trauma dump on you. I’m between therapists,” Nova said, shaking her head. “So, the Conclave has been meeting almost nightly since everything went down at the lighthouse. They want to perform a Cleansing, which… wait, do you even know what that is?”

I nodded. No reason to tell her I’d only been in possession of that information for a few hours.

“Right. So, they want to perform a Cleansing on Bernadette to make sure that Sarah isn’t still somehow able to exert any influence over her. And they absolutely should. The problem is that my mother is fighting them on it.”

I decided then and there not to let her know that I’d overheard Davina in the shop. Nova didn’t need to know that her mother’s truculence was publicly known —she was stressed out enough as it was.

“She’s being ridiculous!” Nova went on, swiping ineffectually at the loose tendrils of hair that had fallen down around her face. “She knows there’s a possibility that Bernadette is still under Sarah’s influence somehow, but she doesn’t want to admit it! She wants to sweep it all under the rug. Sarah is the literal reason our family has this dark history, and rather than dealing with her once and for all, my mother wants to pretend she doesn’t exist!”

That was the moment I was able to put my finger on exactly how Nova Claire looked. Looking at her with her slightly wild eyes and her manic expression, it was obvious: she looked haunted. I suppose she always had been—her family, at least—but now it was catching up with her.

“For the record, I completely agree with you,” I said, still in a determinedly calm voice. “A Cleansing definitely sounds like the right call, just to be safe. But that doesn’t explain why you’re in my bedroom.”

“Oh, right. Well,” Nova bit her lip, like she was trying to decide whether she would even tell me the reason for her very unexpected presence in my house. Then she walked over to the chair she had been sitting in when I entered, and picked up a bag I hadn’t noticed until she drew my eye to it. It was a backpack, smallish and made of black leather. She unzipped the main compartment and pulled out a pillowcase. Then she opened the pillowcase and pulled out an object. She held it up for me to see, and I recognized it at once.

“What the hell?! Nova… what the actual… are you insane?!” I gasped, backing away from her and the object she now held in her hands.

“I know!” she cried. “I know! I told you I didn’t know if this was a good idea or not!”

“Okay, well, let me confirm for you that it is NOT. It is NOT a good idea!”

We both stood in breathless silence, staring at the thing in her hands. It was a mirror: a very old, very spotted and discolored mirror, that no one in the world would have looked twice at, unless they knew exactly what it was; and then, they likely would have run screaming in the other direction.

The mirror was a relic from the Claire family, the only surviving object that belonged to Sarah Claire herself. Once it had hung in the local historical society, but Bernadette had stolen it to use in her misguided attempts to communicate with Sarah. Bernadette used the mirror as a conductor, using Sarah’s direct connection to the mirror to clarify their communication.

“Nova,” I said, trying to remain calm, even as my body went into full fight-or-flight mode at the sight of the mirror, “Where did you get it?”

“I went to the lighthouse tonight, broke in, and took it off the wall,” Nova said, the words tumbling out over each other in her rush to say them, as though getting them over with would somehow make them better.

“The lighthouse that’s still sealed off because of the sheer amount of dark magic that was cast over it? That lighthouse?” I asked in a hiss.

“I used a masking spell,” Nova said defensively.

“I’m not convinced that would make me feel better even if I knew what the hell you were talking about!” I snapped.

“It means I shouldn’t have been seen coming in or out.”

“Shouldn’t?”

“Wasn’t. Nobody saw me. Trust me, if they had, Ostara would already have shipped me off to boarding school in a foreign country, right after she disowned me for disobedience.”

I narrowed my eyes at her, and she stared defiantly back, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Is it even worth asking you why you would do something so unbelievably dangerous?” I asked, after I had taken several deep breaths.

“Because if my mother isn’t going to perform this Cleansing, then I sure as hell will,” Nova said.

For a moment, all I could do was stare at her, my mouth opening and closing as my brain struggled to catch up. When I finally did find my voice, it had an audible tremor.

“Is that mirror still connected to Sarah Claire?”

I watched Nova’s throat bob before she answered. “I don’t know.”

“Is it still connected to Bernadette?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, is there literally anything you do know that can stop me from flipping out right now?”

Nova bit her lip and began to pace again. “I know that my mother is making a mistake, Wren. I know she’s going to put us all in more danger trying to bury this, than I am by trying to bring it to the surface.”

For all the gaps in my magical knowledge—and it was mostly gaps, let’s be serious—something deep in my gut was telling me to listen to Nova. Maybe this was a flash of my witch’s intuition, but as I looked at her, at the earnestness and the fear in her eyes, I knew she was right.

“I’m guessing you didn’t come all the way over here just to confess this to me, did you?” I asked, and was surprised to hear that the panic had gone from my voice. I sounded calm, even if I didn’t quite feel it.

Nova’s lips quirked into a shadow of a smile. “No.”

I sighed. “Just say it.”

The smile broadened. “I want your help.” She paused, and the smile slipped away. “Actually, that’s not accurate. I need your help.”

“Is it any use telling you that I’ll be more of a hindrance than a help at this point?” I asked. “I mean, I failed magical baking 101 this week.”

Nova shrugged. “I saw what you did on the beach. Regardless of how we pull off this Cleansing, I’m confident there’s no baking involved.”

At that moment, Freya slipped through the open window behind Nova as noiselessly as a shadow. She wound around Nova’s ankles once before hopping up on my bed, and butting her head against my hand, demanded pets.

“Some guard cat you are,” I told her, scratching behind her ears as she lazily closed her eyes. “You’re officially fired from sentry duty.”

Freya threw me a brief, baleful look before curling up on my pillow and turning her gaze on Nova, her tail flicking pensively over her back.

“So? Are you going to help me or not?” Nova asked, and behind the mask of impatience, I could hear a real plea in her voice. She wouldn’t be here if she had another choice, I thought. If she thought she could do this on her own, she’d already have done it.

I sighed. “Fine.”

Nova sagged with relief. “Good. Now here. Take this,” she said, and held the mirror out to me.

“What?! Why?! I don’t want that thing!” I gasped, scooting further from her across my bed.

“For goddess’ sake, Vesper, it’s not going to bite you,” Nova said, rolling her eyes.

“Why do I need to take it, then?” I asked.

“Because my mother is already suspicious that something is going on with me. If she catches me sneaking back into the house, she’s going to look through my bag; and if she finds this mirror, I’ll be under house arrest indefinitely. Hell, she might throw me in an adjoining cell to Bernadette. It has to stay with you.”

I clenched my teeth together. “Fine,” I ground out, and held my hand out for the mirror.

Nova smiled and handed it to me. “Good. Bring that with you when we do it.” And then she pulled out her phone, and started typing.

“Bring it where? And what are you doing, now?” I asked, exasperated.

“Texting Eva and Zale. Now that you’re on board, they’ll have to say yes, and we’re going to need all the help we can get. I haven’t exactly performed one of these before.”

“Like, at all?”

“Not when there was an actual entity involved, no,” Nova said, not even looking up from her texts.

“Oh, excellent. My confidence in this whole plan is soaring,” I said, a note of hysteria in my voice that I didn’t even bother to suppress. I shoved the mirror into my backpack and zipped it up. Just the sight of it made me anxious. “Is there anything I can do to help us not royally screw up this whole venture?”

Nova considered for a moment. “Well, I’ve broken into our collection of banned books, and read everything I can find on spirits and bindings and all of that. I have to assume Bernadette did the same to pull off her scheme in the first place. So now, I just have to pull together everything I can get my hands on about Cleansings, and we’ll have to wing it from there.”

I swallowed back the almost maniacal peal of laughter that was trying to bubble its way up my throat. “Right. Winging it. Always a good plan when we’re dealing with evil forces beyond our comprehension.”

“Vesper, you’re not cracking up on me, are you?” Nova asked, eyeing me critically as she glanced up from her phone screen.

“Have you looked in a mirror recently? Maybe cut me some slack on the whole ‘cracking up’ thing, given the several felonies you committed just to get me to agree to this travesty of a plan,” I snapped.

Nova raised her hands like I’d just trained a weapon on her. “Okay, okay. You’ve got a point. Do you think you could find anything here in Lightkeep about Cleansings? I always heard that Asteria’s collection of magical texts was extensive.”

I took a deep breath. “Yeah, I can look. If I find anything, I’ll let you know. When are you thinking you want to do this?”

“Tomorrow night. It’ll be a full moon, which can only help the cause. Does that give you enough time?”

“Sure, why not,” I grumbled. Asteria only had about a thousand texts in the library, and there was no way I could search them without arousing suspicions from my aunts or my mom. It looked like I wasn’t going to be sleeping tonight. “Another question: where do you want to do this? Does the location matter? Because I can maybe get away with creeping through the library collection, but we’re not going to be able to stage a Cleansing here.”

Nova looked nervous again, and I braced myself for the worst. “Well, that’s the other part. The Cleansing will work best if every entity involved is in the same space.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning Bernadette should be present, too.”

I stared at Nova, waiting for her to crack a smile and tell me ‘Just kidding! You should see the look on your face, Vesper.’ I waited. And waited. Her expression didn’t change.

“So what does that mean? Where do we have to go?”

Even Nova couldn’t disguise the grimness that came over her expression then.

“It means we’ll have to go to the Keep.”