Epilogue
Asteria came to me that night. I heard her voice, not from without, but within, calling to me from the inside of my own—head? Heart, perhaps? Regardless of exactly where it came from, I woke at once full of the knowledge of exactly where I would find her.
I hurried down the stairs and out the door into the garden, in nothing but a t-shirt and flannel pants. I should have been shivering with cold, but it couldn’t seem to touch me. My grandmother felt like a flame inside me, protecting me and keeping me warm.
My bare feet padded purposely through the frosty grass, following a path my heart had already chosen. I reached my mother’s walled garden, which was never locked anymore, and pushed the creaking old door inward.
Frost and cold could not touch this place.
The trees were rich with foliage, and the flowers bloomed lush and colorful, like hothouse plants.
Asteria sat at the center of the garden on a bench, waiting patiently for me.
I felt the smile bloom on my face, like one of the flowers nodding in the gentle nighttime breeze.
“Asteria.”
“Hello, my brave girl. Come sit beside me.”
I sat. She was real, and yet she was not. I could see her, but only if I didn’t look too hard. I could feel her, but only in the way one might feel the wind or the brush of a butterfly wing. She was a suggestion of herself.
“You look better,” I told her. “And you sound better, too. Like yourself.”
“Sarah’s desperate magic twisted our means of communication. We were all lost and confused—separated from ourselves and our living coven members. I could not reach you, and when I tried, I could not make sense of what was happening.”
“But it’s better now?”
“All is as it should be. You have done so well,” she said to me. “The Source is safe and stable again, and the spirits beyond it are connected with their loved ones again.”
I wanted to smile. I could feel it trembling at the corners of my lips. But then I felt my face crumple, along with my happiness.
“Why do you despair, my love?”
“Because it won’t last, will it?” I asked. “It can’t. The Darkness won’t stop its pursuit. It will never rest.”
“That is true,” she said. “I wish it were not so. But like the Vesper witches that came before you, you will stay the watch.”
I felt a lump in my throat. I didn’t want to stay the watch. I didn’t want to always be waiting for the next attack. I felt trapped, my momentary relief curdling into despair.
“Couldn’t we… couldn’t we just leave this place?” I asked, a note of desperation coloring my words. “We can still be a coven somewhere else, can’t we? Why do we have to stay? Why is this our fight?”
Her smile was slow and sad. “Do you not feel this is your home?”
“Of course, I do, but…” I shrugged. “I’ve known other homes. We could begin again somewhere new, couldn’t we?”
“Oh yes, I suppose we could,” she said. “But let me ask you this: could you really turn your back on this place, knowing that the Darkness might find a way to consume it? Could you find contentment, always looking over your shoulder, waiting for him to reappear?”
I wanted to say yes. The word was right there, stuck in my throat, threatening to choke me. But my lips wouldn’t give up the lie, because that’s what it was. I hated it, but it was true.
Asteria understood my silence. I could sense every one of my bitter, hurt, and angry feelings passing through the space between us.
“There’s one thing I still don’t understand,” I said.
“Just one?” Asteria asked with a hoarse chuckle.
“Well, one that’s pressing on me,” I clarified. “How did you know about the grimoire? It’s been lost for such a long time. Generations of our coven have sought it to the ends of the earth, and never tracked it down.”
“Ah,” Asteria said. “In life, I could never have unraveled such a secret. But in death, we share in the collective knowledge of our coven. The moment I passed into the spirit realm, I knew all that had been kept from us, for our own protection. And when Sarah Claire began her attack on the Source, I knew from whence help must come, and I sought it at once.”
“You contacted Jess.”
“That’s right.”
“But how did the Durupinen come to possess the grimoire in the first place?” I asked.
“Would you like me to show you?” Asteria asked.
“Can you?” I asked.
“Oh, yes.” Asteria said. “With your spirit gifts, I can share the memories with you. You already know how it works—Sarah showed you many of her own memories, I believe.”
I shuddered. I wished I could unsee those memories. They felt like intrusions inside my brain. But somehow, I didn’t think that anything Asteria showed me would feel the same way.
“It will be rather… disorienting at first. But you have earned these answers, my little bird, if you want them.”
I hesitated only a moment.
“I want them,” I whispered. “I want to understand.”
“Close your eyes,” Asteria said. “And brace your mind.”
I dutifully scrunched my eyes closed, but before I could figure out how to follow her second instruction, an icy blast of memory hit me like a violent ocean wave, dragging me under, tossing me through my own mind like a ragdoll.
For several long moments, it was nothing but a howl of sound and flashing images and deep, biting cold.
But then I managed to steady myself and the images slowed, the sounds resolved, and I found myself once again dropped right into a memory that was not my own.
There was no pain this time—though whether that was because I had chosen to experience the memory, or because the memory came from my own bloodline, I couldn’t say.
Also, this time, I seemed to be an observer, rather than reliving someone else’s experience from their point of view.
This realization calmed me, and I began to take in the details around me without the haze of fear or confusion.
I found myself sitting in Lightkeep Cottage as it had been when the very first Vespers lived there—I recognized it from Sarah’s memories, though the scene was much crisper and clearer than when I had seen it through the lens of her memories.
Beside me was Mary Vesper. She knelt on the braided rug in front of the hearth, her hair a tangled mass around her chalk white face.
She had smudges of dirt and blood on her cheeks, and her eyes were dark and wild with fear.
She was staring down at the grimoire, which sat in her shaking hands.
I understood. It was the night of Sarah Claire’s betrayal—the night of the Covenant.
The Darkness had been thwarted and cast out, and yet the terror remained, sharp as a knife.
In Mary’s hands, she held the grimoire. She looked at it like it was a beloved pet that had attacked her.
Then she looked behind her and saw her two sisters asleep on a bed in the corner.
They were curled up together like cats, their curls tangled like their fingers as they held hands in their slumber.
Both looked the worse for wear from the night’s events—scratched and bruised and dirty, their skirts torn and their hands streaked with blood.
I watched a decision crystallize in Mary’s mind—she would protect them.
She would protect all of them, every witch that called Sedgwick Cove her home now, and for generations to come.
Dear as it was, she could not justify the grimoire’s continued presence under their roof.
It was too dangerous—too tempting. It had yielded the magic that had almost destroyed everything.
It could not stay, and she could not destroy it.
It was too closely tied to her coven, imbued with their very essence.
To destroy it would be to destroy their own gifts, and she could not do that.
She did not speak aloud, but I could understand her thoughts, nonetheless.
She must hide the book. But where?
There had been markings on the Source—she had seen them.
She closed her eyes, and began to draw in the ashes of the hearth the symbols she could still conjure in her mind’s eye.
When she finished, she looked down at what she had created, and shuddered.
She knew at once they were correct. The sight of them sent strange energy skittering through her veins, just as they had done when she laid eyes on them in the cave.
She placed her hand over the symbols, her palm facing down, and focused her inner eye.
Show me the place, she begged the goddess. Show me the place that holds the answers I seek.
And bursting clearly into my mind, just as it burst clearly into Mary’s, was the sight of a castle set in the countryside, a mighty yet beautiful fortress of stone, crowned with four towers.
And carved over the great arched doors to the castle was the triskelion, a symbol Mary knew well, and which she had seen carved atop the archway in the cavern.
Mary hurried to her feet. She must tell no one, not even her own sisters.
She would hide the book, and she would take the secret to her grave.
Then I had to brace myself against a violent barrage of images, each bursting on my mind like a wave, and dragging me under to the next: using a love potion and a glamour to secure her passage aboard a ship; standing, drenched upon the deck of that same ship, arms raised to the sky, casting powerful magic to see them safely through a storm; riding upon horseback, sleeping in barns, gathering herbs and plants to dress a wound on her leg; and at last, standing upon the threshold of the castle itself, weak with exhaustion, and gratitude that the mercy and wisdom of the goddess had carried her so far.
Next, I saw Mary standing across from a woman with red hair that cascaded down her back almost to the ground.
This woman wore a richly embroidered purple gown and, at her throat hung a silver pendant with the very same triskelion symbol, winking with gemstones in the firelight.
She was looking down at Mary with an expression of deep consideration.