AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I felt my expression twist sourly. “You know that doesn’t really answer my question, right?”
“It’s as close to an answer as we can give you,” Rhi replied firmly. “Asteria’s warning was cryptic. It only said that our circle had attracted darkness, and that we had to protect the garden.”
“Did you see or feel anything, Wren?” my mother asked, her fingers twisted together into an anxious knot.
I swallowed. Later, in my bedroom, I couldn’t retrace the logic that led me to keep the details of what happened to me in the garden to myself. It seemed silly to think they wouldn’t believe me—in fact, they probably would have understood more about my experience than I did. And yet, some small resentful part of me wanted to keep a secret, too. I still wasn’t getting all the answers I wanted—why should they? So when given the chance to explain, all I said was, “It… got really cold.”
The sisters looked at each other again, a bit mystified, perhaps, but no one was looking particularly alarmed by what I’d said, which I was glad about; because I couldn’t bear to make my mother look more distraught than she already looked. I’d never have even the slightest chance of learning more about our family, and witchcraft in general, if she thought I’d been traumatized the very first time she dared dabble in spellcasting again.
“You were really talking to Asteria?” I asked, even though I’d promised no more questions until the morning.
“Yes,” Rhi said.
“And did you find out what you wanted to know?” I asked, knowing I was pressing my luck.
“We… have a better idea,” Rhi hedged. Whether consciously or unconsciously, she shifted the hand that held the paper, so that the words she had written now faced away from me. “We can discuss it in the morning, over breakfast, all right?”
I couldn’t imagine sleeping after everything that had just happened, but I also recognized a lost cause when I saw it. I would get no more answers tonight. Better to preserve what goodwill I could and try for answers in the morning.
“Okay,” I said.
Rhi, Mom, and I began trudging slowly back toward the house. As I turned to shut the French doors behind me, though, I saw Persi was still standing in the garden, peering into shadows. Then she suddenly bent down and scooped Diana up from under a bench and whispered in her ear.
My last nonsensical thought as I closed the door, was wondering what Diana had whispered in reply.
11
Miraculously, I slept.
The strange encounter in the garden had taken more out of me than I’d realized, and just when I was sure that I’d be staring at my ceiling all night, burning with unanswered questions, I drifted irresistibly into sleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. I had just enough time to wonder if my mom or aunts could possibly have slipped me a witchy sleep potion or something before I surrendered to it. If I dreamed, my memory refused to conjure the images to my waking mind when my phone buzzed at not quite 7 a.m.
Are you okay? I’ve barely heard from you! How is it going?
I stared down at the text from Poe with bleary eyes. I considered, just for a moment, telling her the actual truth.
Well, I caught my mother and her sisters communicating with the ghost of my dead grandmother out in the garden and SURPRISE! We’re all actually witches and they summoned something dark and terrifying into the garden that seems to know me. Oh, and also I’m now a homeowner.
Just imagining the look on Poe’s face caused hysterical laughter to bubble up in my throat, and I had to swallow it back down with half a sob as the reality of the words hit me again.
Witches. We were witches. Well,theywere—my mother and her sisters and my grandmother. I was nowhere near convinced that I possessed any of the alleged powerful generational magic that the women of my family were supposed to be born with. Maybe this kind of thing skipped generations.
Thinking back to my memories of Asteria, and what I knew of Persi and Rhi so far, I guess it wasn’t all that hard to believe, but mymom? The practical, no-nonsense nurse, the woman who didn’t even read fiction or burn candles or have houseplants? In all the years I’d grown up, never once had she shown even the slightest hint of anything approaching magic or witchcraft of any kind; and yet, if her sisters were to be believed, she’d been born and raised a powerful, practicing witch. How was it possible that there was never a hint, never the slightest sign of where she had come from, or what she could do?
Because she rejected it, I reminded myself. Not only that, I suddenly realized, but she over-corrected. She went to the exact opposite extreme, the way that rebellious young people often do, just to spite their families and defy their expectations. She didn’t want her life to be planned out for her. She didn’t want us to be trapped here.
And after everything she did to get away, here we were. Trapped. Only…
Only it didn’tfeellike being trapped—not to me, at least. I knew my mother was angry and bitter about it, but there was no trace of that feeling in me as I stared up at the ceiling of the little back bedroom by the sea. I didn’t feel like something had been taken from me. Quite the opposite. I felt as though I had been given something—a kind of gift. What the hell I was supposed todowith that gift was an entirely different story. I felt a little like a kid who’d been handed a professional painter’s palate, a blank canvas, and a beautiful set of brushes and told to make art… with no paint.
And it wasn’t just me. If Aunt Persi was to be believed, Sedgwick Cove was full of witches, and had been since its founding; generation after generation of powerful magical families, their roots running under every square inch of this town. I thought of all the people I’d seen wearing the black ribbons yesterday—were they all witches? What about Xiomara and Eva and Nova and Zale? Xiomara and Rhi were trading herbal family remedies back and forth. Eva had mentioned that Nova’s family, the Claires, had been in Sedgwick Cove almost as long as the Vespers. And all of them said they would be at Asteria’s funeral today. Would I be walking into a funeral home packed with broomsticks and black hats? The absurdity of it all made me want to pinch myself to see if I’d actually woken at all last night, or if the events in the garden were just a bizarre dream from which I still hadn’t roused. Then Freya stretched and caught me in the forearm with one of her claws.
Ouch. Nope. Definitely awake.
In the midst of this tangle of the incomprehensible, at least one single aspect of my past had finally become clear: now I finally understood why my mother was in full-fledged panic every time Asteria came to see me on my birthday. She was terrified that Asteria would let something slip, say, or do something that would give it all away. I thought back to the way my mother hovered nervously on the periphery of every interaction I’d ever had with my grandmother. The way her voice always carried a warning note in it, the way she seemed to count the seconds until it was all over, and she could breathe again. And what had been the moment that had brought her to her breaking point? What else but a witch bestowing a literal black cat on her granddaughter. No wonder she panicked.
I didn’t know how to feel. How to deal with your family’s hidden magical history isn’t the kind of shit they cover in high school—or even therapy. There was definitely one feeling I could parse out, though… one that I wasn’t at all sure was fair to my mom, but which I was feeling just the same: anger. I was angry at her for keeping this from me. Angry that, if I hadn’t snuck out into that garden last night and spied on her, I’d still probably be in the dark—wandering like the village idiot through a town full of strangers who knew more about my own life and family than I did. And the worst part was that they all seemed to know that I didn’t know. Everyone handled me with kid gloves, talking to me in vague riddles and trading looks I couldn’t interpret. I thought back to Eva’s warning words to Nova in the cafe:Take it easy. She just got here.My face burned with shame at the memory, and suddenly I couldn’t lay there for another second. I needed distraction and, I suddenly realized as my stomach grumbled at me, I needed food.
I slid my feet into my slippers and an oversized cardigan over my pajamas, wondering ifbuñueloscould possibly be as delicious cold out of the fridge as they were hot out of Xiomara’s kitchen. I tried to coax Freya to follow me, but she was entirely too comfortable, so I ventured out into the hallway myself. My eyes felt like sandpaper as I rubbed them behind my glasses and blinked around. It was early—the light outside was bright and golden. At the top of the stairs, I laid my ear against my mother’s closed bedroom door. I could hear the soft, even breathing that meant she was still asleep. That was probably a good thing. I wasn’t ready for a confrontation on an empty stomach, and anyway, she probably needed the sleep even more badly than I did. As unreasonable as I wanted to be, I knew that this whole situation was probably harder on her.
