Chapter 25 #2
We split up, each of us pulling out our phones.
Zale photographed all of the books that had been pulled from the shelves, while Nova got pictures of the conjuring Circle from every angle.
Eva and I split the room, and took pictures of all the handwritten pages of notes, timelines, and drawings.
I hesitated near the trash can, wondering if we should dig through the crumpled pages, but decided against it.
If Ostara threw it away, it was unlikely to be important, and anyway, it would take too long.
After a few frantic minutes of phone camera clicking, we all came back together.
Nova and Zale carefully replaced the rug over the conjuring Circle, and then Nova took a cursory walk around the room to make sure it looked as undisturbed as possible.
Finally, she gave us a rather grim thumbs up.
“Great. Now let’s get out of here,” I said, and we all followed Nova out the door.
I didn’t get home that night. I texted my mom that I was going to sleep over at Eva’s instead. Xiomara had already filled her in about the archive, and though she had evidently tried to make it sound like a misunderstanding, my mom wasn’t buying it.
“Ostara’s not allowed to change those enchantments without informing the others. She did this on purpose, just to keep you from those books, I’m sure of it,” she raged.
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it tonight,” I said, feeling like the parent. “It’s just a delay tactic anyway. Tomorrow she’ll be back in town, and she’ll have to relent.”
“Ooh, I’m going to give her a piece of my mind!” My mom went on. “When I get my hands on her, I’ll—”
“You’ll do nothing, because that will only make her less cooperative, and as mad as we are, we do in fact need her on our side, remember?”
I listened to her indignant huff. “Fine. But when this is all over—”
“You’ll tear her a new one,” I finished. “And I’ll be happy to let you.”
No one liked the idea of Nova sleeping at the Manor with that Circle up in the attic, so she came with us over to Eva’s, and all four of us slept in Eva’s room.
Well, “slept” was a strong word. It was mostly a combination of dozing, tossing, turning, and the occasional nightmare.
As I lay there in the dark, chasing slumber that wouldn’t come, my mind spun like a cyclone over what we’d discovered.
Somehow, I couldn’t help but take Ostara’s actions personally.
She knew that I was trying to find out everything I could about the Darkness.
Why wouldn’t she just help me? Work together?
Having such a powerful witch and the head of the Conclave on my side could have given me an enormous advantage.
But instead, she was hiding books and resources that could have helped me, and resorting to magic that undermined every principle she claimed to hold.
No, I told myself. No, this wasn’t about me.
Not really. This was about the Durupinen, and the fact that Ostara saw them, however unreasonably, as a threat to the town.
Her efforts to protect us might have been ill-judged, maybe even bordering on lunacy, but I had to believe they were good-intentioned.
At some point, I must have managed to fall into a decent sleep, because when Eva woke me up, it took me several seconds to remember where I was, or how I had gotten there. As I sat up, I remembered the body aches and the bruises from the night before, and groaned.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I mean, no. But yeah. Do you have any Tylenol?”
Eva snorted. “Like Xiomara would let that stuff in the house. Come on, my mom can patch you up.” She looked at me more closely. “No offense, but you look like hell.”
“I slept like hell,” I replied, but even as I said it, I knew it was more than lack of sleep. I had that feverish feeling again, like after the vision of Isabel. “Damn it. I think I’m… off balance again.”
“Huh?”
“My interior scales or whatever,” I said. “I don’t remember what my mom called it exactly.”
Eva’s expression cleared at once. “Oh! Yeah, I’ve been there. It sucks. We’ve got the cure for that, come on.”
I stood up and looked around. “Where are the others?”
“Zale had to help his grandmother today, and Nova was already gone when I woke up. I don’t think she wanted to face anyone this morning.”
I nodded. That made sense, though I hated the idea of yet another generation of Claires feeling ashamed about the choices of other coven members.
Nova wasn’t responsible for what her mother chose to do, but that generational trauma wasn’t going to be undone in a night.
Probably best to let her have a little space today, to process what we’d found.
We’d have to deal with it soon enough, because Ostara would be back in Sedgwick Cove at some point today, and we’d have to decide what the hell we were going to do.
I followed Eva down the stairs, where we found Bea eating a bowl of cereal and watching cartoons. Her face lit up when she saw me, and I found myself smiling the first genuine smile I’d felt on my face in a long time.
“Wren! I didn’t know you were here!” Bea said, shooting an accusatory look at Eva.
“It was a last-minute decision,” I told her, plopping down beside her, and accepting a very enthusiastic hug.
“How are you? I haven’t seen you in forever!” Bea pouted. Then she looked at me more critically and said, “Are you sick?”
“Unbalanced,” I said. “Working too hard on my magic, apparently. That’s why I’ve been MIA, actually. Sorry.”
Bea’s expression cleared. “Mama’s got just the thing for that. She’s in the kitchen, making breakfast.”
I flicked one of Bea’s beaded braids so that it clicked melodically against the others, and she giggled.
Then I hopped up and followed Eva into the kitchen.
Her mother, Mari, was there at the stove, transferring a mountain of freshly cooked eggs onto a plate.
Eva must have warned her she had a guest, because she showed no surprise at my entrance.
She did, however, wrinkle her brow in concern when she looked at me.
“Hmm. Xiomara was right. All out of balance, child!” She said. “You’re working too hard, it’s too much pressure.”
“I’m okay,” I said, but she ignored me, hurrying over to the cabinet over the sink, and muttering to herself as she prepared a tea for me.
I recognized some of the same scents from the elixir my mom had given me, and assumed the Marin family recipe used some of the same ingredients.
Finally, she slid the cup across the table to me, pointed at it, and commanded, “Drink until it’s gone. Then we’ll feed you.”
I knew better than to argue, so I scalded my mouth with the tea until the cup was empty.
I began to feel steadier after the first few sips, and by the time Eva’s mom put a heaping plate of food in front of me, I was feeling significantly better.
I cleared my plate, much to Mari’s satisfaction, and was asking for seconds when Xiomara entered the kitchen from her studio in the back of the house.
She looked at me hard, the kind of gaze that goes right to the marrow of your bones, and leaves you feeling exposed.
“Relapse?” She asked tersely.
“Mm-hmm,” her daughter confirmed.
“You gave her the tea, mija?”
“Naturally.”
Xiomara lowered herself into a chair with a groan, and pulled a plate toward herself. “Well, if Ostara Claire doesn’t pick up her phone, she may very well find her position as the head of the Conclave in jeopardy.”
That got everyone’s attention.
“What do you mean?” Eva asked, a little too innocently.
Xiomara snorted. “As if this child hasn’t told you every detail of our trip to the archive yesterday.”
Eva and I exchanged a swift glance but said nothing, afraid Xiomara would shoo us out of the room. Xiomara took several bites of food, evidently trying to test our patience, before continuing.
“I informed the rest of the Conclave what happened at the archive, and they have agreed, unanimously, that Ostara should be censured,” Xiomara finally said. “I suspect she knows it, too. That’s why she’s been unreachable all this time.”
Mari shook her head. “She must have realized this would happen. She’s been on thin ice as it is, after Bernadette. Why would she let this happen?”
Xiomara grunted. “Ostara has been slipping further and further from her path for a long time. Punishing her own bloodline for crimes long settled and over with. Whatever her reasoning this time, I do not think the Conclave will excuse it. She puts us all in danger now.”
I realized there were now three pairs of eyes on me, eyes that knew my situation, and that Ostara was quite literally standing in my way.
I could feel my cheeks reddening, and dropped my gaze to my plate rather than face their expressions.
I shoveled my second helping of breakfast down as quickly as I could without being rude, thanked them all for their hospitality, and headed for the door.
“Don’t forget to go through your pictures,” Eva murmured to me as she said goodbye.
That was right. The photos we’d taken of Ostara’s study. We hadn’t yet examined them. Everyone had been too tired and, frankly, too traumatized to deal with it. I made a mental note to do so when I arrived home and could find some privacy.
Speaking of traumatized…
Nova? Are you okay?
I sent the text without really expecting her to respond, but the ellipses appeared almost immediately.
Coping. She’s not home yet. I haven’t heard from her.
Are your aunts okay?
Sitting right here in the kitchen, saying they both had the best sleep of their lives. Should probably drug them more often.
I laughed out loud. Then I felt dizzy. Yup, still off balance. Apparently, getting dragged repeatedly into the memories of your nemesis isn’t good for you. Who knew.
By the time I reached Lightkeep’s gate, I was panting and fighting exhaustion.
I wasn’t too exhausted to see that there was smoke coming from Persi’s workshop chimney.
My heart sank a little. Had she stayed in there all night?
Had our conversation had any effect at all?
I’d have to wait until after a good nap to find out.
I didn’t have the wherewithal to face her again right now.
After assuring my mother that I was fine, and using the official “unbalanced” diagnosis as the perfect excuse for her to leave me to my own devices in my room, I dragged myself upstairs and into a pair of pajamas.
Then, with the covers pulled up to my chin, and Freya nuzzled into the crook of my legs, I began to go through the photos on my phone.
It was tedious work, and I could barely keep my eyes open, but I forced myself to keep looking.
There didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to Ostara’s notes.
There were lists of covens—I recognized many names, including Vesper, Kildare, MacDowell, Marin, and Nightjar, but there was nothing further, no notes to illuminate why these lists had been made.
I found some moon charts, several calendars ranging over centuries, and multiple maps that seemed to be of Sedgwick Cove before it became the bustling seaside town it is today.
There were also calculations full of crossings out and complicated formulas, and lists of decimals that she had underlined many times.
I honestly couldn’t make heads or tails of it, and the longer I looked, the worse my headache became, until I was literally seeing double.
Admitting defeat, I rolled over onto my side, closed my eyes, and was asleep within seconds.
I woke to a persistent buzzing noise, like there was a bee trapped under my pillow.
I rolled over with a groan. I must have been very deeply asleep, because my body was numb and my brain felt like cotton stuffed between my ears.
It took an embarrassingly long time for me to realize that the buzzing was my phone, and an even longer time for my fumbling fingers to locate said phone.
By the time I extracted it from my nest of pillows and blankets, and squinted down at the screen, I had twenty-seven missed calls.
Twenty-seven missed calls?!
“Shit!” I gasped, as I fumbled with the phone to unlock it, but not before I saw it was nearly one o’clock in the morning. What the hell was in that tea Mari made for me? I’d been asleep for more than fifteen hours!
I hit callback on the last call, which was from Zale. He picked up after barely half a ring.
“Wren! For Hecate’s sake, where the hell have you been?!”
“I’m sorry, I was sleeping, and I didn’t—”
“Well, wake the hell up, grab your coat and get out here!”
“Out where? Where are you?”
“We’re out on the shore road, about a hundred yards up from Lightkeep,” he said.
“Why?”
“Why do you think?”
I could only think of one answer to that question.
“It’s Ostara, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and we might already be too late, so please, get out here!”