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Phoebe was there, bent over a very old book, and wearing a pair of rubber gloves as she did a repair to the binding. She looked up over the tops of her glasses and smiled kindly at us.
“Well, hello, there! Is there a field trip I wasn’t aware of?” she asked with a chuckle.
“Hi, Phoebe,” Nova said, in a voice that betrayed no hint of her usual sarcasm or general malaise of boredom. “No, we just thought we’d bring Wren by to catch up on some local history.”
“Oh, well, that’s very nice of you. Wren, I’m glad to see you’ve found some friends to take you under their wing and show you the sights!” Phoebe said, with grandmotherly warmth.
I forced a broad smile that I hoped looked happy, instead of manic. “Me too,” I said.
“Shereallywants to see the Claire collection, so I think we’re going to start downstairs,” Nova said. “So, we’ll just need the key.”
Phoebe’s smile slipped just a little. “Oh. I… I haven’t given out the key since… that is…”
Nova nodded, her expression almost beatific. “Since the artifact of the Lost Second Daughter was stolen? That was shocking, wasn’t it? I’d be very careful as well if I were you. But of course, you can trust us. I would never let anything happen to my own family heirlooms, obviously.”
The girl was a genius. If it had been a cartoon, a halo would have appeared spontaneously over her head. I watched as Phoebe’s anxious face relaxed.
“Of… of course. Here you are, dear. Please make sure you lock it behind you when you come back up, all right?” She plucked the keys from where they hung on the wall and dropped them into Nova’s hand.
“Thanks so much, Phoebe. You’re a peach,” Nova said, blowing her a kiss before turning and strolling confidently to the basement door, the rest of us scuttling along behind her, trying not to look too guilty.
“That was diabolical,” Zale said, once we had safely reached the other side of the door.
“Thanks,” Nova said, with a flip of her hair. “Although, I don’t really think she would have said no, regardless. People don’t really say no to the Claires, as a rule.”
She didn’t sound boastful; more like she was stating a fact of life. And as neither of the others contradicted her, I took her at her word.
The basement wasn’t what I expected. I’d been picturing stacks of boxes, but in reality, it was simply an extension of the museum-like atmosphere above. One wall was lined with paintings, another with glass-topped display cases full of a random assortment of artifacts—although I noticed one major difference. The displays upstairs had a much more tourist-friendly theme. Down here was where they kept thereallywitchy stuff. I drifted toward the back corner, where a sign affixed to the wall said, “This Collection on Loan from the Claire Family, settled in Sedgwick Cove circa 1720.” Beside it, several tall display cases contained a wide assortment of items: a silver-backed hairbrush, several journals, a collection of silverware, a set of decorative statues, and the like. Most of it would look at home in a normal local history museum, except for a small iron cauldron, a set of candlesticks engraved with sigils, and a collection of spell books. On any other day, I would have found it all fascinating. Today, however, I barely glanced at it.
“The Archive is back here!” Nova called, and I followed her to the other side of the room, where she was unlocking a second door. She hesitated only a moment before pushing open the door and flicking the light switch.
Fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed to life, casting the kind of light that sucked all the color from the room. I think I’d been expecting something like the Manor’s library—a massive dusty collection of books—but the Archive was much smaller. A single wall of shelves contained two rows of books, identical except for the volume numbers stamped on their leather spines, in peeling gold leaf. They looked like a set of encyclopedias, except that the volumes clearly got older the further down the shelves you looked.
“Here it is! A detailed history of all the dark magic recorded in Sedgwick Cove,” Nova said, gesturing grandly. “When we enter into more advanced magical study, we can ask for access to these, but only by special petition to the Conclave. They have to approve all requests. And every five years, they elect a new town secretary whose job it is to update and maintain the collection.”
“Why is it so secret?” I asked. “I thought knowledge was power.”
“Well, around here, knowledge can be hell-raising, coven-crushing power,” Zale said. I stared at him and he added, “They think we’ll get in less trouble if we don’t have, like, a centuries-old instruction manual on how to do it.”
I just nodded. “So where do we start?” I asked.
“How about at the beginning?” Eva suggested, pointing to the very bottom of the shelves, where the oldest volumes sat covered in dust.
I thought it would help me to have a task, something to do, to distract me; but the longer we spent in that windowless basement, the more it felt like being buried alive. I was distracted and jumpy. I checked my phone every few minutes, desperate for news. I flipped through musty page after musty page with hardly a clue as to what I was looking for. My heart leapt at words like “shadow” or “man”, only to read more closely and realize it was another dead end. We’d been at it an hour or so when my phone started to buzz. I didn’t recognize the number, but I picked it up anyway, nearly dropping the phone in my haste.
“Hello? Mom?”
I heard a disjointed syllable or two and looked down to see I only had one measly bar of cell service. I jumped up from the chair I’d been sitting in, and ran to the door, flinging it open and running out into the main basement room again.
“Mom? Is that you? Can you hear me? Where are you?” The questions tumbled over each other in my desperation, but the voice that answered wasn’t the one I needed to hear.
“Wren, it’s Rhi. Where are you, honey?”
“I’m… I’m with my friends, they’re helping me,” I said, which technically wasn’t a lie. “What’s going on, did you find her? Did she call, or—”
“Not… not exactly.”
My heart felt like a throbbing fist in my throat. “What does that mean? Tell me!”
