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“I wasn’t talking to you,” Zale shot back, sticking out his tongue at her.
“You should have been more specific. After all, it was my family history, too,” Nova retorted, some sulkiness in her voice, despite her continued feigned disinterest.
“The Claires are the only other family besides the Vespers who can trace their roots all the way back to the binding of the Darkness. The Second Daughters of the Cove,” Eva said.
Nova glared pointedly at me, as though she expected me to refute this for some reason. I merely nodded and said, “That’s cool.”
“Not as cool as being a First Daughter, as every Vesper since the beginning of time has been sure to remind us, but yeah. I guess it’s cool,” she said, pursing her mouth as though she could taste the bitterness I heard in her tone.
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I remembered the odd tension when the Claire Coven spoke to us at Asteria’s funeral, but I couldn’t understand it. We were allies, weren’t we, the First Daughters and the Second Daughters? We’d worked together to bind the Darkness, or so the story went. Did Nova really think I was here to one-up her?
Some music started up again and Nova got up to go join in the dancing. Someone began passing out marshmallows speared on long sticks, and I took one, watching as my marshmallow browned slowly in the flames.
“This is honestly not what I expected,” I said.
“Really? What were you expecting?” Eva asked.
“At a bonfire hosted by witches? I don’t know. Not smores,” I said, laughing.
“We try not to mix too much magic with alcohol, as a rule, so it’s probably not much different from other teenage bonfires,” Eva said. “But then again, if someone does decide to make some poor life choices by showing off, the fallout is usually more entertaining.” She leaned in closer to me and dropped her voice. “Keep an eye on Kaia. She’ll likely start trying a little glamour to get Sergei’s attention—he’s the lanky blonde one. She’s been lusting after him for like two years. And Justin and James Sloane—those two over there, next to the cooler, they’ll likely light some shit on fire, or cause a minor explosion to show off.”
“I was surprised to find out there were male witches,” I admitted sheepishly.
“It’s definitely more common in the female lines,” Eva agreed, nodding. “And it’s not every man who can get over his damn self and connect with the divine feminine; or accept a lesser place in a matriarchal hierarchy, which most witchcraft traditions have. The female witches tend to be the more powerful, as a general rule.”
“Hence the history of demonizing witches?” I suggested.
Eva snorted. “You said it. Men intimidated by powerful, independent women. Tale as old as time, honey.” She plucked her marshmallow from the end of the stick and popped it in her mouth. “You want another drink?” she asked me when she’d swallowed it.
“No, I’m good,” I said.
She smiled and set off around the other side of the fire in search of the cooler, which someone had moved and was now using as a seat. Nova had gone off to join the dancing and Zale was over on the other side of the fire, trying to see how many marshmallows he could roast on a stick at one time. I stood up, my legs stiff from sitting for so long, and stepped away from the glow of the fire into the darkness gathered on the edges. It wasn’t that I wasn’t having fun—I was, and I was grateful to Eva for inviting me, but I still felt like an outsider—a feeling that grew as the night wore on, and people started breaking off into their little cliques and telling stories. It was like hearing a joke and being the only person who didn’t laugh uproariously at the punchline. Someone could explain the joke to me, but by then, the moment to enjoy it along with everyone else would have passed.
The scattering of clouds had all but cleared away, and the moon hung, swollen, in the sky, casting a long, glittering path from the beach out into the water. I imagined having the kind of magic that would let me walk along it like a road to the horizon. Was that a thing witches could do?
There, closer to the edge of the cliffs, the wind muffled the sounds of the merriment at the bonfire, so that it suddenly sounded very far away from me. The wind also carried the sounds of the waves, whipping them around me until, if I closed my eyes, I could imagine I was standing right at the water’s edge, instead of a hundred feet above it. I let my eyelids flutter closed and took a deep breath, trying to imagine what it would feel like to know there was magic running in your veins, to really, truly believe it. Every single one of the kids at the bonfire behind me believed it—knew it, the way they knew their own names.
Maybe I would have known it too, if it had really been there. Maybe there was no magic in me after all.
I opened my eyes to look back at the beach.
The beach looked back.
I blinked. It wasn’t the water at all, but someone was staring right back at me from the shoreline; a small, slight figure, no bigger than a child. I took another step toward the cliff’s edge. It was a child, a boy, I thought, surely no older than three or four. His lean little body was naked, his fair hair tousled in the wind.
“Hey, there’s a kid down there,” I said, first to myself and then to the group over my shoulder. “A kid! There’s a little kid down on the beach!”
If anyone heard me, they didn’t respond. Someone had lit some sparklers off the bonfire and people were laughing and drawing dizzying circles of sparks in the air.
I turned to look at the child again, and panicked when I didn’t see him right away. But my relief at spotting him lasted only a split-second because the reason I hadn’t spotted him right away was that he was now up to his waist in the water. I frantically scanned the beach for another figure—perhaps the child had merely wandered a few feet away from a parent—but there was no one down there at all except the pale little figure walking into the surf.
“Stop! Hey!” I shouted stupidly, the wind sucking the words right out of my mouth and carrying them in the opposite direction. I turned and shouted again to the other kids, but no one heard me. I was the only one who could help.
I looked to my left where I knew the cliff’s steep face softened to a sloping path. It was by no means an easy climb down, especially in the dark, but it was either that or watch helplessly from the clifftop. Waves were breaking over his chest now as he moved steadily forward—not at all like a child playing in the waves, but like a sleepwalker, insensate to the cold and the dark and the tug of water.
I fumbled my phone out of my pocket as I ran, turning on the flashlight with shaking fingers, just in time to begin the treacherous descent. Sand and small rocks slid out from under my feet as I fought for purchase, the light from my phone strobing wildly off waving grass and craggy rock face, and my own frantic legs. With a cry of frustration, I clamped the phone between my teeth, so that at least I had use of both of my hands to steady myself. A larger stone came away under my right foot, and I sat down hard and began to slide downward. I flexed my feet and dug them into the ground in front of me, while reaching out on both sides to grasp wildly at clumps of grass and protruding roots—anything I might be able to use to help slow my descent. At last I slid to the soft sand of the beach, landing hard, and sending my phone flying as my teeth slammed together. I fell forward onto my knees and scrambled for the phone, but the light had gone out; and anyway, the moonlight was bright enough that I could see across the beach.
“Hey! Come out of the water, it’s not safe!” I shouted toward the little boy. I could only see the gleam of his silvery blonde hair now—the water lapped up right to his neck. I sprinted across the beach, my breath burning in my lungs, losing both of my flip-flops along the way, the sand slipping out from under my feet as though the world itself was falling away. I swallowed a sob of panic. What if I couldn’t reach him in time? Why didn’t he turn? He must hear me by now!
