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My eyes scanned the room for any sign of Bernadette, but it was clear she wasn’t there. More half-finished sketches of the Gray Man were spread haphazardly over the work table. I picked one up, then another, revealing dozens more beneath. I slammed my hands down on the tabletop in frustration and heard something clatter to the floor near my feet.
I gazed down at the source of the sound: a set of keys. I dropped to my knees, snatching them up into my shaking fingers. My mom’s keys.
“Mom,” I whispered. Then I called out to the others. “These are my mom’s keys!”
Eva dropped to her knees beside me. “Oh my God,” she gasped. “Are you s—”
“Of course I’m sure! I know what her keys look like! I gave her this keychain!” I staggered to my feet, holding the keys like a talisman. “Nova, we have to find Bernadette. She knows where my mom is!”
But Nova didn’t answer. She was still standing on the other side of the room, looking down at something in her hand.
“Nova? What is it?” Zale asked.
Nova looked up at us, her expression one of devastated bewilderment.
“I… I have to tell you something,” she whispered.
“What is it?” I asked, taking a numb step toward her. She had dropped her gaze again, back to the object she was lifting from a nearby table. It was a wooden box with a glass cover—a shadowbox. The glass had been shattered. Little shards of it still glittered around the edges of the opening.
“Bernadette had a little brother. His name was Jacob… Jake, they used to call him. He was hit by a car just before his fifth birthday. The whole family was devastated. This memorial shadowbox is usually downstairs on one of the mantels. It’s got Jacob’s baby blanket, and a teddy bear, and… and a pair of shoes.”
I shook my head, bewildered. “O-okay.”
“I found this on the beach, the night of the bonfire,” Nova said, her voice blank, almost mechanical. “I… thought I recognized it, but I wasn’t sure.”
Nova reached into the box and pulled out a tiny shoe with shaking fingers and placed it on the table in front of us. “The spell we found in the library, the one that creates a living effigy? It needed a personal object to bring it to life. You said you saw a little boy, right?”
The figure of the boy flashed into my head. White-blonde hair, like every Claire I’d met since I’d arrived here…
“Yeah…” I said, still not comprehending.
Nova’s voice was a tremulous whisper. “This… this washed up on the sand right after Zale dragged you out of the water.”
And she reached into her purse and pulled something out, placing it on the table.
The matching shoe, water-stained but unmistakable.
“You knew this whole time?” I asked blankly.
“I didn’t want to believe it!” Nova cried, and there was a plea in her voice. “I thought there must be some kind of mistake! Bernadette has always been so gentle, so… I thought there must be a different explanation!”
“Nova, we’ve been trying to figure this out for days!” Eva cried, firing up. “That spell almost got Wren killed!”
“I know, but… I just… I didn’t want it to be another Claire!” Nova cried, tears streaming down her cheeks now. “It’s like a family curse, don’t you get it? The Lost Second Daughter, she was a Claire! And you see the way Ostara keeps those old books under lock and key, because even she doesn’t trust our family to stay out of trouble! She thinks we’re all going to turn evil and disgrace her if we get even a glimpse of the dark arts!”
“You’ve been lying to us this whole time!” Zale said, shaking his head with disgust.
“I know, I’m sorry! But I just didn’t believe that Bernadette would hurt someone on purpose! I swear I never meant to—”
“I don’t care what you meant!” I shouted. “My mom is missing, and Bernadette took her!”
“We don’t know that for—”
“Of course we do!” Eva snapped, snatching the keys from my hand, and holding them up in front of Nova, jingling them loudly, so that Nova flinched away from them. “How else would these keys have gotten here?”
“There still might be an innocent explana—”
“I don’t care what the explanation is!” I shouted. “Bernadette has my mom, and now they could be anywhere, and if we don’t find them—”
