Chapter 10
For the next hour, I sat on the couch with a cup of tea in my hands, answering question after question from Maeve and one of her fellow officers.
Luckily, I didn’t have to make up some kind of story about what I’d been doing in the woods, because like everyone else in Sedgwick Cove, Maeve was a member of a local coven, and therefore didn’t even bat an eye as I described the ritual at the Shadow Tree, and the flame that led me to Jess’ body.
She simply nodded along calmly, and scribbled on her notepad.
While this questioning went on, the members of the Conclave arrived one by one.
They never knocked or rang the doorbell, and yet my mother and aunts somehow knew when to rise wordlessly and open the door for them.
I glanced at Xiomara as she walked through the living room, her eyes burning with a question she couldn’t ask out loud.
I excused myself from the officers with a mumbled, “Be right back,” and went over to join her where she stood in the doorway.
Xiomara gave Rhi a pointed look, and after a moment’s hesitation, Rhi shrugged and returned to the kitchen.
“Are you all right, mija?” Xiomara asked.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I said, and watched her purse her lips at the lie.
“How much have you told them? About Asteria?”
“They know she contacted me in the spring. They know we’ve been trying to reach out since, but without success. I didn’t get into the specifics of last night, only that Asteria is confused. But,” I bit my lip, hesitating.
“Escupelo! Just come out with it, child!”
“I haven’t told you everything.”
Xiomara raised a single eyebrow, waiting.
“Just… don’t be mad. It wasn’t my decision. Well, it wasn’t all my decision.”
“What haven’t you told me?”
“You’ll see. The whole Conclave will know in a minute. Anyway, I’m sorry.”
At that moment, Rhi brushed past us again and opened the door to Ostara, who swept in like a queen about to preside over her court.
Despite the fact that it was nearly midnight, she was impeccably put together, makeup airbrushed and hair swept into an elegant chignon.
In that moment, I realized that the reason she always ruffled everyone else was because she never looked ruffled at all, no matter how dire the circumstances.
Then I wondered if it was a spell, which caused a hysterical bubble of laughter to force its way up my throat.
I slapped my hand over my mouth to stifle it.
Ostara’s arrival was like a silent command. Without her saying a word, we all stood up and followed her into the kitchen. I could feel the collective tension that bloomed at her appearance. The air was buzzing with it. Between that and the constant undercurrent of magic, I felt almost dizzy.
Ostara sat down at the table like a queen taking her throne and sighed, as though steeling herself.
The rest of the Conclave sat as well, the witchy knights of the round table, except for Lydian, who shuffled up to it with the aid of her walker, and leaned heavily on it as she grunted and grumbled onto the little seat.
Once she had settled, Ostara looked expectantly at Rhi who, as the oldest Vesper sister, was the matriarch of the coven by default.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” she said.
Rhi stepped forward. “Very well, Ostara, but I must warn you that the beginning is a lot farther back than you’d expect,” she said, and placed the grimoire on the table.
The whole Conclave leaned forward to examine it.
Xiomara realized what it was first, and began to mumble under her breath in rapid Spanish.
Lydian chuckled incredulously, while Davina and Zadia both grew wide-eyed and still.
Ostara stared at it uncomprehendingly at first. Then, we all watched as the realization swept over her, and the fear ignited in her eyes.
She pushed back from the table, her chair squealing across the kitchen floorboards.
Persi made a scoffing sound under her breath, indicating that Ostara was reacting exactly the way she expected.
“That… that can’t possibly be… how… what is the meaning of this?” she gasped.
“That’s what we’re going to explain, if you can just get a grip on yourself,” Persi said dryly. Lydian cackled wheezily in appreciation.
Ostara’s features stiffened. “I’m listening,” she said through pale, unmoving lips.
Rhi turned to me. “Wren? You’re the only one who knows the whole story.”
I swallowed hard, cleared my throat, and started to speak.
I told them everything, everything I could think of, starting from my first warnings from Asteria that Jess Ballard was coming, to the moment I found her lying lifeless at the edge of the woods.
I felt almost numb by the end, having gone through it with my family and then with the officers, and so it was easier now, just to let the details flow.
When I had finished, my voice had grown hoarse and I felt a wave of exhaustion wash over me.
My eyelids suddenly felt heavy, and I wanted to ask if I could go to bed, but no one was paying me the slightest attention now that I had stopped talking.
Every pair of eyes was trained on the grimoire instead.
“I never thought… I thought it must have been destroyed long before now,” Davina whispered.
“Not me,” Lydian croaked in her ancient froglike voice. “I knew it was out there, bidin’ its time, waiting for the right moment to reveal itself.”
“It didn’t reveal itself,” Ostara snapped. “It was found.”
“Says you,” Lydian shot back. “I don’t think there’s a witch alive who could tame that book.”
“And that is my fear exactly,” Ostara said. “That grimoire almost ended Sedgwick Cove centuries ago.”
“Be careful there, Ostara,” Xiomara barked. “The book alone could do nothing. It took a witch to wield it.”
“You think I don’t know that better than anyone?” Ostara asked.
“And yet you do not speak of it. Your fear is not just of the book, but of the weakness that turned it into a weapon. Do not lose sight of that.”
“I never lose sight of that. In fact, I rather think I am the only one who hasn’t,” Ostara said, each word forcing its way through her fiercely clenched teeth. “It works upon you all already, can’t you see that? Drawing you in. Don’t you feel it?”
All eyes fell on the book again, and several pairs were warier than before.
“What I cannot comprehend,” Ostara went on, “is why we were not immediately summoned upon the arrival of the book. It is unfathomable that the three of you neglected to do so. Utterly unfathomable.”
“Bullshit,” Persi cried, rising from her seat, and glaring at Ostara with a look that surely would have cowed nearly any other witch in the Cove.
“Persi,” Rhi said warningly, but Persi ignored her.
“We’ve asked for centuries—literal centuries—for the Conclave’s help in tracking down this book,” Persi went on. “Every matriarch in our family has begged and pleaded. And generation after generation the Conclave refuses, because in every generation there’s a Claire standing in the way.”
“Your mother never sought the Vesper grimoire,” Ostara said.
“Asteria knew a lost cause when she saw one,” Persi shot back. “She knew there was no point in arguing with you. This obsession with hiding the book has gone from caution to mania, Ostara. The power in that book is ours, and it’s time for you to stop standing between us.”
“So you admit you seek to expand your power!” Ostara cried, pointing a dramatic, perfectly polished finger at Persi, who snorted loudly.
“We seek only what is rightfully ours. Magic we have already honed, spells we have already perfected. We seek our history, our connection to our past. And you need to do some serious reflection on why you’ve always made it your business to stand in our way.”
“I… that is not…” Ostara stammered, her normally porcelain cheeks flaming.
I had never seen her so discomposed, and neither had most of the others, judging by the startled looks on their faces.
Lydian, in contrast, was grinning broadly, as though she found the whole confrontation highly entertaining.
Persi leaned toward Ostara. “Is it really this book and our family you fear? Or is it rather your own weakness when faced with such a temptation?” she whispered.
Smack.
Ostara’s slap resounded like a thunderclap against Persi’s cheek, and Persi staggered. A collective gasp ran around the room, followed swiftly by Davina’s bark of “Steady on, old girl!” and Xiomara’s booming, “Ostara Claire, you forget yourself!”
All the angry color drained from Ostara’s cheeks as she looked down in horror at her hand, as though it had betrayed her somehow, as though the blow hadn’t been her at all.
Both my mom and Rhi had leapt to their feet, and my mom actually started toward Ostara, but to my surprise it was Persi who held her back.
“Don’t give her the satisfaction, Kerridwen,” she said, still looking at Ostara with a furious spark in her eye, and a smirk of satisfaction on her lips.
“Well, well. I seem to have touched a nerve.” She tossed her head, flinging her masses of black hair back from her face, to reveal an angry pink handprint blooming across her cheekbone.
“Is this the leadership we can expect in Sedgwick Cove from this point on?”
“I didn’t… I never meant to…” Ostara’s words tumbled over each other as she struggled to distance herself from her own actions.
“Oh, I see. An accidental slap to the face, was it? Oopsie-daisy,” Persi said scathingly. “And in front of two police officers, too. You’re lucky I don’t like paperwork, or I’d be pressing charges.”
In the corner of the room, Maeve and her fellow officer shifted uncomfortably. It couldn’t have been more obvious from their faces that there were several kinds of torture they’d cheerfully undergo, rather than have to arrest the head of the Conclave.