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I tensed, but Eva rolled her eyes. “Oh, please, Nova. She’s a Vesper, for goodness’ sake! Do you really think there’s anything we can tell her that she can’t find out for herself? And besides, she just told me that she’s staying—at least for the summer.”
Nova sat up a little straighter. “Really? Your mother, too?”
“Yeah. My grandmother’s will left some stuff that needs to get… sorted out. So, we’ll be here the whole summer at least,” I confirmed.
“And what about you?” Zale asked.
“What about me?”
“Are you… y’know… gonna become a real Vesper?”
I looked at his eager expression and faltered. I wanted to shout that I already was a real Vesper, but I knew that wasn’t actually true. I might have carried the Vesper name, but that was the only thing I seemed to have in common with my family. Luckily, Eva broke in and rescued me from the embarrassment of having to admit such a thing to a knot of eagerly listening strangers.
“Hey, she’s asking the questions, not us,” Eva scolded.
“Oh, right. Sorry, Wren,” Zale said, grinning sheepishly.
I smiled back. “It’s okay.”
“So, what do you want to know?” Eva asked.
Have any of you ever heard of the Covenant of the Three?was the question I really wanted to ask, but I swallowed it back down. If my own aunts were unsure of Asteria’s mysterious last message, I couldn’t imagine a bunch of teenagers being able to interpret it. And besides, what if it was some deep dark family secret no one else was supposed to know about? So, instead I said, “My aunts told me that most everyone in Sedgwick Cove has a family connection to… to witchcraft?”
Eva, Zale, and Nova all looked at each other, barely smothering their smirks. Nova scowled theatrically at me. “Are you calling us witches?”
“I… guess I was wondering if that’s what you’d call yourselves?” I stammered.
Eva laughed. It was a warm sound, deep and throaty. “Yeah, we’re all bona fide Sedgwick Cove witches. My family’s been here for four generations now, and Zale’s has been here for five. Nova’s family’s like yours… here so long they’ve probably lost track.”
Nova looked smugly satisfied by this assessment, but added peevishly, “Goddess, I wish they’d lose track. Instead, I’m just subjected to volume after volume of family history; I could cheerfully fling myself off the cliff right into the sea.”
“History none of the rest of us could even relate to,” Eva pointed out. “Sedgwick Cove has its own traditions and customs and whatnot, but when it comes to individual families, we all have our own practices and traditions.”
“Yeah, my aunt Rhi said something like that—that there are almost as many ways to be a witch as there are witches in the world.”
“And each of them thinks their way of being a witch is the best,” Eva laughed. “It makes for some pretty lively get-togethers, let me tell you.”
“Potlucks usually end in violence,” Zale added, his expression deadpan.
“And everyone in your families just… stays here?” I asked, fascinated.
Zale shrugged. “Not everyone, and not always. People get restless and pack up, but it’s never for long. Everyone always seems to find their way back here eventually.” He leaned forward and put on a spooky voice. “It’s the Cove, Vesper. It ensnares us. It calls us back.”
I couldn’t repress the shiver that shuddered up my spine. Zale saw it and laughed, delighted at his own prowess in creeping me out, but Eva frowned.
“Don’t be a dick, Zale,” she muttered.
“He literally can’t help it,” Nova said, rolling her eyes. “It’s his true form.”
“No it’s okay,” I said quickly. “I… my aunts told me a little something about it… about Sedgwick Cove being a powerful place that witches are drawn to, or something like that.”
Zale perked up at once. “She needs the origin story.”
15
“Yeah she does!” Eva agreed.
“Yawn,” Nova said pointedly.
