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I perked up. “Really?”
She nodded. “I know you had a summer job lined up, but I’m sure Rhi would let you work at Shadowkeep, if you wanted to. And I know you’ll miss your friends…”
“Poe and Charlie can come visit,” I said hastily. “It’s not that long of a drive from Portland, and Charlie has their own car now. Or I could take the train down for the weekend.”
“That’s true.” She looked at me more closely. “Youwantto stay, don’t you?”
“I want to know more about this place,” I hedged. “And I want to get to know our family. Even Persi.”
At this my mom threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, my brave girl. Okay, then. We have a lot of arrangements to make. I’ve got to figure out work, and—”
“That can all wait until tomorrow, Mom,” I said, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “Let’s just get through the funeral, okay?”
She squeezed back. “Good idea.” She looked down at the paper one more time and then folded it up again, placing it back in her bedside table. “I suppose this can wait until after the funeral, too. Oh, and one last thing.” She opened the drawer in the bedside table again and pulled out the key to the inner garden. “I’m sorry, I stole this from you last night. It’s the only key to that door,” she admitted sheepishly.
I held out my hand and she dropped the key into my palm. I looked down at it, and remembered Asteria’s words regarding me and the house that was now mine:It holds answers for her.
It looked like I might actually get the time to discover them after all.
* * *
I knew enough about my family now to know that Asteria’s funeral would be unlike any funeral I’d ever been to—not that I’d been to many. But my first hint at just how different it would be came an hour later, when I saw the trucks driving past the cottage up the winding sandy road to the cliffs. I watched them pass from the front porch, where Freya and I were amusing ourselves with a ball of yarn swiped from Rhi’s knitting basket. At the same moment, Persi appeared at the front gate, wearing the same dress she’d been wearing at last night’s seance, her stiletto heels dangling from a single careless finger.
“What’s with all the trucks?” I said aloud, not really expecting her to answer; but she paused to chirp at Freya, who trotted forward for attention, and replied as she scratched my cat behind the ears.
“Funeral pyres don’t build themselves. They take a lot of wood, you know.”
“F-funeral pyre?” I gasped, watching the trucks with mounting horror. Their flatbeds were piled high with logs. “Like… like Vikings?”
Persi scooped Freya into her arms, cooing softly at her. “I suppose, though I don’t think there’s a direct connection between the traditions. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that we’d choose to burn ourselves, given how frequently and historically our enemies got in line for the privilege?”
“Oh, God.” I instantly regretted my huge breakfast as my stomach began to churn in horror.”
“I went to my first Sedgwick Cove funeral when I was five,” Persi went on, scratching absently at Freya’s chin as she watched the trucks make their slow winding progress past the dunes. “It’s really quite magnificent, once you get past the smell.”
“The what?!”
Persi glanced down and spotted the look on my face. “Just a little joke, Wren. Head between your legs, darling.” She deposited Freya on the ground and placed a cool hand on the back of my neck, pushing gently on my head until it hung down between my knees.
“Is this supposed to help?” I asked.
“Personally I prefer a swig of gin, but I don’t think it’s your thing.”
“Anything else I should be warned about?” I asked, and I could hear the hysteria creeping into my voice as it got progressively higher. “Animal sacrifice? Brooms flying in formation? Dancing naked under the full moon?”
“Not at funerals,” Persi replied lightly. I lifted my head to find her smirking at me. “It’ll be okay—beautiful even. The other Sedgwick covens will be there. There will be music and feasting and words of power spoken to the night. It will be magical—just the kind of celebration Asteria deserves.” She just managed to hide the hitch in her voice. “We don’t believe in somber or sullen send-offs. Our spirits burn bright, and so do our goodbyes.”
I felt like I should say something—anything—to help ease a little of the pain in her eyes. It was strange to think that Persi could be anything like vulnerable, and certainly not in front of me, the stranger niece who swooped in and ruined her life. But what could I say? I didn’t know her. I didn’t know this place. I was starting to wonder if I knew anything at all. And so when I opened my mouth, what came out was, “I wish I’d known her better.”
Persi stood up and smoothed her dress. I noticed a smear of blush lipstick on the neckline—a very different shade than the vibrant red on her lips. “Well, if you stay here, you’ll soon have more Vesper knowledge than you’ll know what to do with, I promise you that. She gestured to my outfit. “Please tell me that’s not what you’re wearing.”
I frowned down at the simple black dress and cardigan. “It was the only appropriate thing in my closet.”
“Appropriate for funeral homes and standing under umbrellas by freshly dug graves, perhaps.” She pointed out to the garden. “You see any black out there?”
I looked all around me and then shook my head.
“Well, you won’t see any at the funeral either,” she said firmly. “So, go back upstairs and find whatever you’ve got that would help you blend in out in the garden.”
