Chapter 21
Talking with Jess steadied me.
It didn’t actually change anything, and yet I felt better somehow.
I didn’t know all the details of what Jess had been through since discovering she was a Durupinen, but she had managed to stumble her way through it all, and that made me feel that I might just be able to do the same.
I hoped I wouldn’t really have to wait until I was twenty-one to hear the details.
The afternoon crawled by. I attempted a nap, but failed miserably. I tried to read, but after skimming the same paragraph a dozen times without absorbing a single word, I gave up. Okay. Anxious pacing and nail biting it was—at least those were two things I excelled at.
Finally, it was time to leave so that I could meet Xiomara at the Conclave archive.
I was relieved to be going somewhere, to be distracted and busy, even if it was only an excuse to fill the time until I could sneak off to the Manor.
I shook my mother off at the door as she tried to offer, once again, to accompany me.
“Mom, seriously. Just let me go. I’ll be with Xiomara. I’ll be totally fine,” I assured her. Logically, I could see that she knew that. Emotionally, it took three more hugs and a pinkie promise to text her before she finally let me leave.
As I pulled the door closed behind me, I glimpsed Persi’s workshop on the far side of the garden.
I knew my mother hadn’t worked up the courage to speak to her yet.
Persi hadn’t come inside for dinner, and I could see the plate Rhi had left for her still sitting on the flagstones outside the door.
It must be almost cold by now. What harm could it do just to knock on the door and hand Persi the plate?
She could eat it or not, but at least I would know I tried.
I hurried across the garden, realizing just how much the temperature had dropped.
Clouds hung low in the sky, promising snow.
My mother would have her work cut out for her, keeping all her precious plants from freezing, but at least it was work she loved.
Light danced through the curtains of Persi’s workshop, sending wavering bars of golden light across the frost-coated grass that crunched under my feet.
I reached down, scooped up the foil-covered plate on the doorstep, and knocked.
“Persi?”
I thought I heard something—a sort of scuffling sound, but there was no answer.
“Persi, are you in there?” I asked. “I have dinner for you. Can you just take it, and I’ll leave you alone?”
Again, no reply. Not surprising, but definitely disappointing.
No, not disappointing. That wasn’t the feeling that was now welling up inside me.
It was unexpected, which was why it took me about thirty seconds to realize that what I was feeling was anger—hot, bubbling anger that boiled up inside me and refused to dissipate.
How dare Persi lock herself away when I couldn’t?
Did she really think that I didn’t want to do the very same thing, just hide out and avoid all the responsibility that had been heaped on my shoulders?
If I had to face the world at large—or at least the prying eyes and gossiping mouths of Sedgwick Cove—then so did she.
“I’m coming in. I’ll put the plate down and leave,” I said, and, without waiting for an answer, I grabbed the doorknob, gave it a hearty twist, and pushed the door open.
There was a yelp and a clatter, and I hurried to forestall Persi’s angry protests.
“Persi, I’m sorry, I just need—” But then I froze at the sight in front of me.
Persi had cleared the table of its usual assortment of jars, candles, herbs, and tools.
In its place, she had set up the Vesper spirit board—I recognized it at once, having used it once to speak to Jess when she was in her Walker form.
Persi had ringed the board with candles in a variety of colors, and within that Circle of flame, she had placed a small framed picture.
Picture was the wrong word, I realized. It was a painting, a tiny oil painting, no more than four inches square.
It depicted the lighthouse and the beach in the thrall of a summer storm.
Lightning forked in the tiny, inky sky, and painted waves smashed against the rocks, while the lighthouse shone out brightly in a halo of yellow light.
I recognized it at once, because it was the same painting Persi had stolen off the wall at the Manor the previous week.
I took all of this in in less than five seconds, and that was all I would get, because Persi, her face contorted with anger, leaped up from the table, toppling her chair and sending it clattering to the floor.
I staggered backward, dropping the plate in my alarm.
Kicking it aside, Persi thrust herself between me and the table, throwing her hands wide in an effort to obscure her activities.
“What the hell are you doing? Don’t you know how to knock?” she shouted.
“I did knock,” I said, raising my hands up in front of me, because Persi showed every indication that she might fly right at me, and I had to be ready to defend myself. “I knocked twice. I also called your name, but you didn’t answer.”
Persi’s mouth twisted. “Get out. Now.”
That would have been the wise choice… the safe choice. Just drop my gaze to the floor, back out the still open door, and never speak of this again. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
“Persi, what are you doing?” I asked.
“I said, get out!”
I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “No.”
“No? No?!”
“Not until you tell me what you’re doing,” I said. There was a slight tremor in my voice, but I squared my shoulders and looked her right in the eye.
“What I’m doing,” she said acidly, “is none of your business.”
“I think it is, though,” I said. “And I’m not leaving until you tell me.”
“Well, I’m not telling you, so I guess you can just stand there forever.”
She glared at me. I glared right back.
“Persi, if you’re trying to contact Bernadette—”
“Did you hear what I said? This is none of your business, Wren! Stay out of it!”
“This is what you’ve been doing this whole time?” I asked. “So this is why the paintings keep disappearing from the Manor. You’re the one who’s taking them.”
A muscle was jumping in Persi’s jaw. “So what?”
“Ostara is going to rake you over the coals if she—”
“If she what? Are you going to rat me out, Wren? Are you going to run to the Conclave and tattle like a school yard coward?” she sneered.
“Of course not,” I said, keeping my voice calm and quiet to counteract her mounting hysteria. “You know that. But if you get caught—”
“I won’t get caught,” Persi said, tossing her hair. “Besides, I don’t need to steal any more paintings. It’s going to work this time. Now go back in the house, Wren. I don’t want you in here.”
I hesitated in the doorway. I couldn’t leave. I didn’t want to leave her here, reaching out for someone who wasn’t there anymore.
“I… I’m not leaving.”
Persi’s eyes flashed. “Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“I could make you leave, you know.”
“Yeah, you probably could.”
“I could hex you.”
“Go ahead.”
I held my breath, but stood my ground. Persi glared at me.
I stared calmly back, hoping against hope that I was calling her bluff, and that I was not about to get hexed by my own aunt.
Her fingers certainly twitched in the direction of the row of spells bottled up on the table, all of which I knew I’d be utterly incapable of countering if she chose to cast one on me.
But in the end, she let out a sound like an angry cat, and turned back to her spirit board.
She placed her fingers on the planchette, and it was clear they were shaking because the candles' flames wobbled with the motion.
I watched as she tried to ignore my presence hovering behind her, and sighed.
“Look, I just have one thing to say, and then I’ll leave you alone, okay?”
She continued to ignore me. I took her silence for begrudging assent.
I cleared my throat, considering how to begin. “Do you remember when I was really frustrated about divination, and you explained to me that the answers were coming from spirit guides who understood things better than I did?”
This question was met with a full five seconds of ringing silence. And then…
“That sounds more helpful than I typically am, but sure.” The words were stilted and snappish, and yet I could hear the undercurrent of curiosity. I took courage from it and went on.
“You told me that the answers they sent would be the answers I needed.”
Again, there was a long pause. Then Persi took her fingers away from the planchette and rested them on the table.
“But I’m not getting answers.”
“Exactly.”
Persi sighed, running a hand wearily through her hair and over her face. “Wren, if you’re not going to make sense, I am actually going to hex you.”
I ventured another step inside the workshop. “I know, sorry, it’s just… maybe the lack of response is intentional. Like, a message in itself?”
Persi turned an absolutely venomous glare at me that almost sent me right back to the doorway again. “So she can send messages to Leila Nightjar, but she can’t send answers to me?”
I didn’t dare comment on that, because to do so would be to admit that I’d overheard that conversation, and I thought that might just send Persi right over the edge. So I ignored it and said again, “Maybe the silence is the answer to whatever you’re asking.”
“Silence isn’t an answer. It’s the absence of one,” she hissed.
“I… I don’t think that’s always true. No, hear me out, please,” I added quickly, as Persi showed every indication of interrupting. “I just mean… well, you’re not reaching out to spirit guides. You’re reaching out directly to… to Bernadette, aren’t you?”
She didn’t reply, but she also didn’t contradict me.
“See? Sometimes silence is an answer,” I said softly.