Chapter 24 #2
“Well, let’s go,” Nova said, turning and heading for the door. “I need to show you what I found.”
We all just stared at her.
“What?” She demanded.
“We don’t… I mean, can’t you just like… tell us about it?” Zale asked, in a small voice.
“No! You need to see it! I need Wren’s opinion, and you invited yourself, so you’re in it now, MacDowell.”
“But what about… is anyone else home?” Zale asked, clearly stalling.
“Only my two aunts, but I drugged them,” Nova said, waving her hand.
“You WHAT?!” I gasped.
Nova shrugged, utterly remorseless. “It’s no big deal. They both drink a special tea that helps them sleep. I just… strengthened the brew slightly.”
Zale groaned, dropping his head into his hands. “Breaking and entering and drugging people. We’re just racking up the felonies here, Nova.”
“They’re only felonies if we get caught, and we’re not going to,” she insisted.
Zale opened his mouth, probably to tell her that’s not how felonies work, when he was forestalled by Eva jumping to her feet. “Look, what’s done is done. Nova risked a lot, so let’s not waste the opportunity. Let’s go.”
I bit my lip, hesitating. Somehow, I knew I was the deciding vote.
If I was honest, I agreed with Zale. I had no desire to be caught sneaking around in Ostara’s private study.
But there was no question I owed Nova. She rescued me from that tide pool, and she’d agreed to keep my secret about scrying.
How could I say no when she asked this of me?
Besides, Ostara wasn’t home, and wouldn’t be until the morning. What was I actually afraid of?
I stood up. “Okay, let’s do it,” I sighed.
Nova smiled tightly at me and nodded her head once, the closest I would get to a thank you. I nodded back, somewhat grimly.
Muttering under his breath about what a terrible idea this was, Zale stood as well, and followed as Nova led us out of the room and along the hallway to a second, narrower set of stairs. She stopped at the base, where we all promptly bumped into her.
“Wait there,” she said, waving her hand behind her. “This is where the first enchantment is.”
I looked at the doorway that led to the staircase. It would be easy to miss, if you didn’t know what to look for. But even in the dark, there was the slightest shimmer in the air, like the air above pavement on a blistering summer day.
“Oh!” I gasped. I wasn’t used to being able to spot magic on my own, and felt an unfamiliar little surge of pride. Eva and Zale, however, just looked wary, each of them so silent they must have been holding their breath.
Nova reached into her pocket, and pulled out a black velvet drawstring pouch. She loosened the drawstring, fumbled around inside, and extracted an ornate necklace, a long gold chain from which hung an enormous green gemstone wrapped in wire and beads.
“My mother’s,” she mouthed, and I heard Zale sigh. Stealing. Make that three felonies.
Nova ran the pendant around the doorframe, tapping it three times on the right, the left, the top, and the bottom as she whispered an incantation. As we watched, the shimmer in the air vanished, along with a barely audible hum that I was only aware of now because of its absence.
“Same enchantment she used to use on the cookie jar when I was little. She never figured out that I learned how to break it,” Nova whispered, smirking as she pocketed the necklace again. She waved us on impatiently, and we followed her single file up the stairs.
When we reached the door, I fully expected another protective enchantment, but there was only a plain old lock standing between us and whatever lay inside.
We stood on the stairs, bouncing and shaking with nerves and anticipation while Nova worked patiently at the lock.
Just when I thought Zale was actually going to explode with the pressure, there was a satisfyingly loud click, and the door swung forward into blackness.
No one moved for a full ten seconds. Nova was poker-stiff, her nostrils flaring, and I thought I understood what was racing through her mind in that moment. She was about to do something she couldn’t take back.
Then she stepped boldly forward, and did it.
She mashed her hand against the light switch, causing us all to temporarily squint at the sudden brightness.
Once my eyes adjusted, I took in the space.
I could see that, when it was in order, this room was the perfect reflection of the woman herself: elegant, put-together, perfectly coordinated, and with an air of authority.
The furniture was glossy and expertly matched.
The colors of the wallpaper, the carpet, and the drapes were deep and rich and elegantly patterned.
The desk, ornately carved and stained a deep mahogany brown, loomed from the corner like a monarch before which visitors ought to kneel in supplication.
But over it all was a sort of chaos of disorder that seemed wholly out of place.
Papers scattered over surfaces, teetering piles of books, file folders stacked between notebooks covered in frantic script.
More crumpled paper littered the floor around an overflowing gold trash can.
One section of the bookshelves was also in disarray, the books leaning against each other and sticking out at odd angles, like crooked teeth in an overcrowded mouth.
The place looked like it had been taken hostage, ransacked.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“I’m guessing it doesn’t usually look like this?” Eva asked quietly.
“Not even close. In any glimpse I’ve ever gotten of it, there has never even been a book out of place.
But look,” Nova said, and she hurried across the room and started picking up books at random.
“These are all the books missing from downstairs, from the library, and from the locked cabinet. She’s using them for something… researching.”
“Okay,” Eva said slowly, taking a few tentative steps into the room. “It definitely looks like she’s… busy with something. But is that really a reason to get all worried?”
“These are the forbidden books, Eva,” Nova repeated, holding one up and waving it in the air. “It’s the first rule of our coven not to mess with them. Not even to open them.”
“Sure, but… well, do you really think that rule applies to your mom, too?” Eva asked.
Nova frowned. “Of course. Why wouldn’t it?”
“Well, it’s just…” Eva took a moment to gather her words, scooping up a piece of crumpled paper from the floor, and holding it in her hands.
“That’s kind of what parents do, right? Rules for thee but not for me.
Not to mention she’s the head of the Conclave.
She probably doesn’t apply the rules as strictly to herself as she does to everyone else. ”
But Nova was shaking her head. “No, you don’t get it, Eva.
It’s the exact opposite of that. If anything, my mom holds herself to a higher standard than the rest of us.
She thinks she needs to set an example, that we’ll all go astray without her influence and guidance,” she says, rolling her eyes on every third word.
“But look at all of this! Look at it and tell me this is the work of someone who is setting a good example!”
Hesitantly, we all moved forward and began examining the disorder of the room more closely.
No one wanted to disturb anything, in case Ostara noticed something was out of place—though how anyone could make sense of the mess was beyond me.
Zale walked along the bookshelf, examining the volumes that were so clearly the ones that had been removed and hastily replaced. He let out a low whistle.
“Nova’s right, this is some shady shit. Necromancy. Blood rituals. Damn, every one of these could get you kicked out of the Cove.”
“These ones, too,” Eva said, looking at the books over on the desk. “Transfiguration, spirit transmutation, all kinds of stuff no one should ever meddle in.”
“Not these ones, though,” I said, examining another stack of books.
“These are just histories of the Cove,” I said.
“And… oh.” I caught sight of another box full of books under the desk, partially hidden by the thronelike chair in which Ostara apparently sat.
I shifted the chair slightly, just enough to get a better look at the books.
“What are those ones?” Eva asked eagerly, hurrying over to join me behind the desk.
“I don’t know,” I said, digging carefully through them. “They all have this weird gold symbol stamped on them. Is it a rune? I don’t recognize it.”
“It’s not a rune!” Eva said, her voice rising. “It’s the symbol of the Conclave! See?” She hovered her finger over the symbol and traced the components in the air. “That’s an ‘S’ on its side. This is a ‘C’ interlocking with it. And then the second ‘C’ upside down here. Sedgwick Cove Conclave.”
Now that she pointed them out, I could make sense of the letters. In fact, I thought I remembered seeing the symbol on a small journal-type book that Lydian sometimes carried in the basket on the front of her motorized scooter.
“They can’t be,” Zale said. “Those books aren’t allowed out of the Conclave archive.”
“Oh come on,” I said. “Ostara’s the head of the Conclave. I’m sure she’s allowed to—”
“No, he’s right,” Nova said, her eyes wide. “No one’s allowed to remove them. In fact, they aren’t even able to be viewed by one member of the Conclave unless a second is present.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Security,” Zale replied. “I remember Davina complaining about it once. She had to look up some kind of obscure procedural rule or something, and she said she could barely concentrate because Lydian was breathing down her neck, and kept unwrapping hard candies.”
“So why does Ostara—oh.” The realization hit me like a blow, and I knew I was right.
“What?” Eva snapped impatiently.
“I just got permission to use the Conclave archive,” I told them. “They voted on it, and Ostara agreed that I needed to read anything I could get my hands on about the Darkness. Xiomara and my mother were shocked. They thought she’d put up a fight, but she barely batted an eye, apparently.”
All three of them looked at each other. “Yeah, that doesn’t sound like her at all,” Nova said. “She’d never want you in there, if she could help it.”
“And she didn’t,” I said. “That’s where I came from, right before… well, before the tide pool. Xiomara met me at the archive, but we couldn’t get it. Xiomara thought your mom might have changed the locks.”
“And now we know why,” Zale said, gesturing to the box of books. “The books you needed are probably right here.”
“So either she took these books out first, so you couldn’t read them—” Eva began.
“Or she already had them, and knew they were safely out of the way,” I finished. I turned to Nova, the question on my face.
“Are those books about the Darkness?” Zale asked eagerly. “Can you tell?”
I looked back down at the box. “I don’t know. The outsides don’t give much away.”
“Well, just open one!” He cried, and then slapped a hand over his mouth as Nova looked daggers at him.
I hesitated. “I… do you think we should? I don’t want to—”
“Oh for goddess’ sake, just open one!” Nova hissed. “We’re in here, aren’t we? We might as well find out everything we can.”
My heart pounding, I reached into the box, and picked up the first book I could get my hands on.
I laid it on top of the other books, and gingerly opened the cover, like it might explode or vanish at my touch.
But it just sat there, musty and ordinary, and I bent over it to squint at the cramped lettering.
Slowly, I began to make sense of the words on the page.
“It… looks like a… court record or something? For a trial?”
“Whose trial?” Eva asked, pressing her shoulder against mine so she could get a better look.
“Sarah Claire!” I gasped. “But… I don’t understand. This is dated after her death. She died after she tried to open the Geatgrima. Why would you try someone who’s already dead?”
“It’s a tradition,” Nova said in a dull whisper. I looked up at her, and her expression was bordering on desolate. “Magical crimes are considered to be beyond the limitations of such mundane things as life and death.”
“They exact punishments of legacy,” Eva said, and she, too, sounded extremely grim. “They don’t just punish the criminal, but the whole coven.”
That pulled me up short. “Do you mean they punished the whole Claire coven for what Sarah did?” I asked.
“No Claire was allowed to serve in the Conclave for forty-nine years,” Nova said, in a tone that suggested the fact had been beaten into her head like multiplication tables.
“Forty-nine years? That’s a pretty random number, isn’t it?” I asked, momentarily distracted. “Why not an even fifty? Not that I’m suggesting your coven should have been punished at all,” I added quickly.
“Seven times seven. The most magically powerful number, multiplied by itself. The number was intentional, trust me,” Nova said. She suddenly sounded so tired.
“Okay, well, the point is, these books do have to do with the Darkness,” I said hastily, trying to move things along from such a sensitive subject. “So I think we can assume Ostara removed them to keep me from them. The question is, why?”
“I thought we established that already,” Zale said. “She doesn’t want anyone else to get sucked into the same trap Sarah Claire walked into. This is about protecting us all from the lure of malevolent magic, right?”
“I don’t think it is.”
Eva, Zale, and I all turned to look at Nova. She stood completely still, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Her voice was filled with an intensity I couldn’t quite interpret. Anger? Disbelief? I couldn’t seem to process what I was hearing.
“Why not, Nova?” Eva finally asked.
“Because of this,” Nova said, stepping away from the desk and deliberately off the circular rug in the middle of the room.
As she bent to grasp the edge of it, I got a good look at the rug for the first time.
The border showed the phases of the moon, woven in soft white and silver threads.
My eyes stayed on it as Nova tugged it with a grunt, sliding it across the floorboards.
But as beautiful as the design was, it couldn’t hold my attention when Nova revealed what had been hidden beneath the rug itself.
We all stared. Zale looked flummoxed, Eva confused but wary. But me? I knew exactly what I was looking at, and it stole the breath right out of my lungs.
I was looking down at a conjuring Circle. The very same one that, once upon a time, a desperate young man had used to summon a demon into a moonlit forest clearing.
“Ostara, what have you done?” I whispered.