Chapter 27
Ididn’t remember getting home.
I knew I did, because I was sitting on my couch, wrapped in a blanket. Someone had put a cup of tea in my hands. It was too hot, but I kept it tightly clenched between my hands, because it was something real I could hold onto.
Everything else was slipping away. Everything else was falling apart. Broken.
I could hear the constant hum of hushed and urgent voices from the kitchen. They were all there. The Conclave. My mother. My aunts. Others I hadn’t even noticed. The back door, opening and closing, over and over again.
More voices. Sniffling. A muffled wail.
That room was full of shock. Of grief. Just like me, like my cup of too hot tea, filled to the brim.
Outside on the porch were my gloves and my coat and my scarf, soaked in blood. I could still smell the old-penny scent of it. I was afraid it was under my fingernails, but I wouldn’t look. Maybe I’d always smell it, like a memory I couldn’t bury.
None of my friends were there. They’d been gathered home, like me.
Maybe they were holding cups of tea, too.
Trying to forget. Trying not to fall apart.
My mother told me that Nova was back at the Manor, but I didn’t want to think about that.
I didn’t want to imagine her being handed a cup of tea by someone who wasn’t her mother.
No one had asked me what had happened in the clearing.
Or maybe they had, and I’d blocked it out.
I remember people whispering a lot, and I definitely heard the word “shock” a few times.
After that, they’d stopped asking questions, but I knew the respite was only temporary.
The questions were coming. I couldn’t hide from them forever.
Persi emerged from the kitchen, her face drawn and pinched with exhaustion. She sat down on the couch beside me with a sigh that seemed to go on forever.
“I can’t be in there anymore,” she said. “I can’t stand it.”
I nodded. I hadn’t been allowed in the kitchen, but I hadn’t wanted to be there anyway. Seeing Persi there beside me stirred something in my memory. Even as I tried not to think about the clearing, her presence drew the question out of me.
“You were there.”
Persi turned to look at me. “Huh?”
“In the clearing. You were there.”
“Yeah, I was,” Persi said slowly. I could feel her eyes on me, but I didn’t want to meet them.
“How did you know?”
“Huh?”
“How did you know where I was? Where to find me?”
Persi was silent for long enough that I chanced a glance at her face. I was surprised to see a tiny smile playing around her lips.
“Leila,” she finally answered.
This answer was so unexpected that it actually punctured the bubble of numb surreality in which I’d cocooned myself.
My mouth fell open. “Leila? I don’t understand.
I never told her about O—about where we were going.
” I had to be careful. I’d almost said a name I’d been carefully avoiding, lest I lose the very tenuous grasp I had on my self-control.
“You didn’t have to,” Persi said. “Someone else did.”
“Who? Eva? Zale? No one else knew.”
“Bernadette knew.”
“I don’t… oh!”
In all the chaos of the last couple of days, I’d completely forgotten about Leila and her desperate attempt to deliver a message to Persi. She’d admitted the message was from Bernadette, but Persi didn’t want to hear it.
“How?” was all I managed to formulate as a question.
“You were right. About Bernadette trying to keep her silence. She didn’t want to communicate with me, because she knew I was just hanging on to her.
But she also knew she had to get that message to me, so she sent it through Leila.
I was too stubborn to listen to it. But she didn’t give up.
Eventually, the message was so insistent that Leila just drove over here, and busted my door down. ”
“Really?”
“Well, not quite. The workshop is still intact. But she banged and banged on it. She wouldn’t go away. She wouldn’t let me shut her out. And when I finally answered the door to scream in her face, she told me that you were in danger, and that Bernadette knew where you were.”
“That was the message?” I asked.
“Coordinates,” Persi said. “Like, on a map. Leila didn’t know the significance of the numbers, but luckily, I figured it out.” Her expression hardened, like she was angry with herself. “And we were almost too late.”
The memory was pressing against me. I pushed it away, and instead I said “I’ll have to remember to thank her. Leila, I mean.”
“She’s here,” Persi said. “She came with me to find you. She’s in the kitchen with the others.”
From the next room, I heard Rhi’s tentative voice. “Persi? Is she—?”
“Give us a minute, okay?” Persi called back.
Then she looked at me, her face apologetic.
“I have a confession. I lied a minute ago. Well, not really. I didn’t want to be in the kitchen anymore; that part was true.
But the truth is that they’re ready for you in there, and so I volunteered to get you. ”
The cup trembled in my hand. “They might be ready for me, but I don’t think I’m ready for them,” I admitted.
Persi shrugged. “I can tell them to piss off, if you want. In fact, I think I’d rather enjoy it.”
I sighed. “No. I mean, thanks, but… I can’t put it off forever, can I?”
Persi leaned in, taking the cup from my hand and putting it down on the coffee table.
Then she took my hand in hers, gently. “I know a little something about putting things off. Feelings, in particular. But my very wise niece recently reminded me that’s not healthy, and that we can’t hide from things just because we don’t want to face them. ”
“That sounds like terrible advice,” I muttered. “Who is this girl? Let’s ignore her.”
Persi smiled sadly and squeezed my hand. “Let’s not.”
I expelled a shaky breath. “Will you stay with me?”
Persi looked surprised, but nodded. “Of course.”
“Okay.” I untangled my legs from the blanket and followed Persi into the kitchen, our hands still clasped.
The crowd of faces that waited for me felt like a firing squad, despite their sympathetic expressions.
The entire Conclave was there, along with my mother and aunts.
There were also two haughty-looking women with white blonde hair and red-rimmed eyes, who could only be Nova’s aunts.
And sitting in the corner, looking like she wasn’t really sure if she should be there, was Leila Nightjar.
She raised a hand in greeting to me, her face a little sheepish.
“You okay?” she mouthed.
I gave an approximation of a shrug as I sank into the chair that my mother pulled out for me.
I dropped into it, still holding Persi’s hand, and she slid into the chair on the other side.
My mother looked surprised at our hands clasped together, but said nothing.
As soon as I was seated, she wrapped a protective arm around my shoulders, and glared around at the others.
“We’re going to keep this quick. She’s been through enough tonight,” my mom said, with such a fierce and ringing authority in her voice that I was sure no one would object, and I was right.
“Of course,” Xiomara said.
My mother gave everyone one last warning look, then turned to me. Her eyes, as soon as she looked at me, began to shine with unshed tears. Goddess, did I look that awful?
“We just need to know what happened in the woods, Wren,” my mom said. “Not how you got there—Eva and Zale already explained about what you found in Ostara’s study.” I flinched at the name, and my mom bit her lip. “Sorry. Can you… can you do that, sweetie?”
I swallowed hard against the impulse to scream “NO!” at the top of my lungs. Something slid across the table with a scraping sound, and I saw a little plate in front of me. A teary-eyed Rhi was attempting an encouraging smile. “Just try a little nibble, Wren. For courage,” she said.
I had never felt less like eating in my entire life, but I knew that Rhi was trying to help me, so I picked up the cookie on the plate and worried down a small bite.
The moment I swallowed, a warmth spread through me, a feeling of fortitude and determination.
It was just enough for me to open my mouth and start explaining.
“I have to go further back than that,” I said. “It won’t make sense unless I do.”
Thank goddess no one interrupted me, because I think if I’d lost my momentum, I never could have started again. I began with my first vision, explaining about Granny Nightjar, the piece of sea glass, and all the subsequent visions.
“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything,” I murmured when I’d managed to get that far, “but I had to follow my instincts. I had to do this myself.”
Beside me, my mother was white-lipped and fragile-looking. But she squeezed my hand and whispered, “Of course you did. Go on.”
I was grateful I didn’t have to talk about the study at the Manor, and what we found there.
But then all that was left was the clearing, and I could feel my throat wanting to close over the words that would explain what had happened there.
Desperately, I picked up the rest of Rhi’s cookie and crammed it into my mouth, chewed it, and forced it down.
I explained how we found Ostara—I nearly choked on the name—locked in battle with Abaddon. I did my best to remember every word that was spoken between the two of them. But when it came to what happened to Ostara, even Rhi’s spell couldn’t help me.
“It’s all right, mija,” Xiomara said gruffly. “We know what happened then.”
“She spoke to me,” I whispered. “She… I think she was only trying to… to understand. Like I was. I think she was scared. Scared that the Durupinen would take over Sedgwick Cove if we couldn’t understand the Darkness. She was… trying to protect us.”
I needed to say this. More than anything else, I needed them to understand that Ostara had acted out of loyalty. Out of protection. It didn’t excuse what she did, but I couldn’t bear the thought that everyone would think of her the way they thought of Sarah Claire.