Chapter 1 #2
“Oh forget it, I know a losing battle when I see one,” Rhi said. “Luckily, I’m always prepared.” And she pulled a basket of pre-wrapped cookies tied into little bags with twine and a sprig of rosemary.
“When did you make those?” Persi asked, sounding offended that anyone would have the audacity to hide baked goods from her.
“While the rest of you were sleeping. It’s the only safe time if I want them to make it to the shop,” Rhi explained.
“I can take them when I head out to open up,” Persi said, her eyes wide and innocent.
“Not a chance,” Rhi said flatly.
I left my aunts and my mother to battle it out over the rest of the cookies, and strapped the basket carefully to the back of my bicycle.
I’d been saving up for over a year for a car, but there seemed no point in owning a car in a place like Sedgwick Cove.
Maybe I’d feel differently in the winter, when the long and unrelenting cold set in, and the snow and ice turned the streets to slick, treacherous ribbons of white; but for now, I was more than content to sail down the coastal paths with the briny breeze whipping through my hair.
It was hard to imagine Sedgwick Cove in winter—to me it felt like it must always be warm and bright here.
Thanks to foliage chasers, New England in general was still teeming with tourists this time of year, but no place on the Northeast coast was busier in the lead up to Halloween than Sedgwick Cove, with the possible exception of Salem, Massachusetts.
The towns had very similar witchy reputations, though Salem’s stemmed from the violence inflicted against supposed witches, while Sedgwick Cove’s was much more rooted in the community of confirmed witches that lived there.
Both towns leaned heavily into their reputations—I’d even heard that the Salem High School mascot was a witch on a broomstick—but in the case of Sedgwick Cove, the embrace was more out of safety than for tourist dollars. I hadn’t understood this at first.
“But if we just advertise that this is a town full of witches, then how is that protecting people?” I had asked one afternoon, a few weeks into our move.
“It’s like hiding in plain sight,” my mother said, laughing as she picked through her rose bushes—not only hers because we lived at Lightkeep now, but hers because, as a green witch, they always had been. The petals brightened at her touch.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “How can you hide while fully admitting what you are?”
“Ah, but we don’t fully admit it. You remember how we set up Shadowkeep?”
Of course I knew. I was getting as familiar with the family shop downtown as I was with the rest of the Cove.
The downstairs level was crammed full of touristy junk: sparkly witch hats and broomsticks, mood jewelry, candles, and housewares decorated with black cats and silly sayings like, “I’m a real WITCH before I’ve had my coffee.
” It was all campy, and even the items that claimed to be magic were not really magic at all.
But upstairs, through a hidden door, the local witch population could find everything they needed to conduct their spellwork, charms, and sorcery: from rare herbs, to incense, to crystals and spotlessly cleaned animal bones.
My mother shrugged. “Shadowkeep itself is a good metaphor for the whole town. By presenting a silly, harmless version of witchcraft to the world, we can distract them from the real witchcraft flourishing beneath the surface—and the other, more nefarious things as well,” she added, her amused smirk melting away.
Because we knew better than anyone about just how nefarious those “more nefarious things” were.
And so, Sedgwick Cove became a wildly popular tourist destination in the weeks leading up to Halloween.
All Hallows Eve, or Samhain, as witches called it, was just one of many important days in the wheel of the year; but for the outside world, it was the one day of the year where witches had a share in the cultural spotlight.
Therefore, it was totally unsurprising to find the town full to bursting with tourists, even on a weekday morning.
There were people already lined up outside of the tarot shop, even though the sign on the door said it didn’t open for another fifteen minutes.
The Historical Center door had been flung wide, and Penelope was putting out a sandwich board advertising the walking tours that left from that corner of Main Street every hour, a queue already forming beside it.
I waved at her, but her answering wave and smile seemed somewhat strained.
At first, I thought it must be the stress of peak tourist season, and then I remembered that half the town was scared of me—it was one definite downside of discovering your power is coveted by the ancient evil that inhabited your town.
I tried to shake it off, the fear behind the smile.
“It’s only temporary, Wren,” my mom kept assuring me. “They’ll come to their senses.”
But it had been months. If people were going to come to their senses, wouldn’t they have done it by now? The thought popped like a soap bubble, though, when I spotted the next face that smiled at me. There was no fear there.
“Hi Bea!”
“Hi Wren!”
Beatriz Marin was standing outside of Xiomara’s Cafe taking orders from the line out the door.
Her grandmother was the cafe’s namesake, also one of my Aunt Rhi’s best friends, as well as one of the coven matriarchs that made up the Conclave.
She was also the most powerful spirit witch in the whole of Sedgwick Cove.
Since the summer, when I’d discovered I was a pentamaleficus, she had been helping me to develop my spirit abilities.
“Are you coming over tonight?” Bea shouted to me.
“Of course. You think your abuela would let me skip a session?”
Bea just grinned. “No way. See you, then!”
“Is Eva around?”
“No, she’s got that test today! You just missed her!”
Shit, I’d almost forgotten. Eva had been obsessing for weeks over this test, which was meant to assess her abilities as a water witch.
If she passed, she would be allowed to begin more advanced studies as a waterworker—a skill she’d been working toward for half her life already.
I checked my watch. If I pedaled fast, I might be able to catch her before she went in.
One of the many ways Sedgwick Cove was unlike other towns was that we didn’t have a typical school system.
As a town populated entirely by witches, the skillsets we had to learn were not exactly to be found in your average curriculum.
Most of the kids were homeschooled, which made perfect sense because each coven had their own unique magical traditions and abilities.
But we all had to attend a smattering of classes at Cove Academy as well, to keep the State Board of Education out of our hair.
I wasn’t sure the State Board of Education would have approved of these classes, as everything from American History to Mathematics was taught through a lens of the witchcraft tradition; but, as Xiomara said, “What the government doesn’t know won’t hurt them… unless we decide it should.”
Cove Academy was a collection of antique Victorian houses that looked down over Main Street like colorful sentinels from a grassy slope.
Each was painted in its own bright palette of colors and adorned with ornate gingerbread trim that made them look like overgrown dollhouses.
I pedaled hard up the hill, panting in the humidity, and came to a stop at last in front of the mint green house with a frilly front porch, and a doorknocker shaped like a phoenix in flight in the center of its cheerful, lavender door.
I was relieved to see Eva sitting on the porch steps, head bent over her stack of flashcards.
I shoved my bike against the bike rack—no one bothered to lock their bikes up in Sedgwick Cove—and hurried over to Eva. She was muttering under her breath with her eyes closed, and I had to say her name three times before she looked up, startled.
“Huh? Oh, hey, Wren,” she said, in a slightly manic tone.
“You okay?” I asked her, smiling sympathetically.
“Oh yeah,” Eva replied, puffing herself up with manufactured bravado. “Never better. Totally gonna crush this. Supremely confident.”
“So, freaking out, then?”
“Big time.”
I laughed and sat down next to her. “Hey, you’ve got this. I’ve never seen anyone study harder for anything in my life.”
Eva sighed. “I can’t be the first water witch in my family not to become a waterworker. I just can’t. I’ll never live it down.”
“Are there a lot of water witches in your family?” I asked.
“One in every generation, typically.”
“Okay, yeah, I guess that’s a lot of pressure. But if you don’t pass the test, can’t you just take it again next year?” I asked.
This was apparently the wrong thing to say. Eva turned on me, glaring.
“Not that you’re going to fail, obviously,” I said quickly. “Supremely confident, remember?”
Eva’s glare melted and her shoulders sagged.
She dropped her head forward into her hands, so that her braids swung down over her face like a curtain being closed.
“It’s not that simple. The test isn’t even really about all this.
” She held up the flashcards. “I mean, I have to know it, obviously, but I’ve known it for a long time.
It’s about my magic. It has to be powerful enough to work the spells. ”
I put an arm around Eva’s shoulders. “Hey, six months ago I didn’t know I was a witch, and now half the town is afraid of me. If I can do that, then you can most definitely do this.”
Eva laughed—it was shaky and uncertain, but at least it was genuine.
She took a deep breath, and blew it out slowly before getting to her feet.
She threw her shoulders back and whipped her braids behind her.
“You’re right. I’ve got to get out of my own head.
I’m psyching myself out. Wish me luck. Not that I need it, of course. ”
“Good luck,” I said and, pulling a polished piece of jade from my pocket, I handed it to her. “From all the Vespers. We all imbued it with intention.”
Eva smiled, rubbing her thumb over the smooth surface of the jade before pocketing it.
She started bouncing back and forth from foot to foot, and shaking out her hands.
As she did so, the water splashed up and out of a nearby birdbath.
She looked over at it and grinned. Then she bounded up the steps and into the house.
It was good to see Eva smile, but I still had a little knot of anxiety for her in my stomach as I walked up the steps of the next building over, this one painted in Easter egg shades of pinks and purples.
Inside the doorway was a curtain of bells, feathers, and gemstones hung on braided silk ribbons that I had to part with my hands and walk through to reach the secretary.
It tinkled and swished behind me as I walked into the Sedgwick Cove version of a front office.
“Well, hello, Wren,” Miss Bishop trilled from behind her desk. She was a squat little woman, with silvery hair braided into ropes that hung about her ears and nested on her head, like a shiny serpent.
“Hi, Miss Bishop,” Wren greeted her with a smile. “I have a paper to drop off for Ms. Boswell. Could you put it in her mailbox for me, please?”
“Of course, pet,” Miss Bishop said, reaching out a hand that jangled merrily with bracelets and bangles. “Just sign the log there, if you please.”
I jotted my name down along with the time, gave a last wave to Miss Bishop, and jingled my way right back through the curtain and out the door.
Ms. Boswell was one of the history teachers—a tall, willowy woman who gestured violently with her hands while she taught.
Her lectures were half performance art, half factual information.
I was excited for her to read my paper, which I had researched using family records in the Sedgwick Cove Historical Center.
I couldn’t remember ever being excited about homework before; but then, why would it be surprising that magic made everything—even homework—more interesting?
As I headed back to my bike, I noticed a woman with long black hair streaked with purple.
She was standing on the steps of one of the school buildings, looking thoroughly aggravated as she examined a map.
Was she lost? Her expression was so fierce, I decided to just slip away before she could ask me for directions.
I would have enough of tourist demands over at Shadowkeep, where I was headed next.
Little did I realize there was no point in avoiding the woman. Before the day was over, our lives would collide.