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“I promised to come back. I promised to speak with her again,” Bernadette went on, interrupting my thoughts. “And I would have! It wasn’t a lie. But she didn’t want me to go. She didn’t believe that I would come back. But a dangerous storm was gathering over the ocean, and I hurried to close out the circle as the first of the rain fell.” She shook her head, and her voice fell to a whisper. “It all happened so fast. I tried to close it properly, but the wind whipped everything around, toppling the candles, scattering the salt. And somehow, in all the confusion… Sarah slipped through.”
“Slipped through?” I repeated, uncomprehending.
“She didn’t close the door successfully. Sarah remained on this side of the veil,” Eva muttered, her eyes still fixed on Bernadette in fascinated horror.
“She whispered to me,” Bernadette said, fear illuminating like torches behind her eyes. “While I slept, while I was awake. Sometimes, in the very corner of my eye, I could see her beside me, but when I would turn… nothing at all. I would fall asleep to her whispers and wake up standing in the hallway, in front of one of my paintings. She was trying to ask me something… or tell me something, but I couldn’t hear her. Night after night, I woke up staring at those paintings, without having any idea why. I tried to open another circle, even went back to the clifftop to do it; but she hid from me, clung to the shadows of me, afraid that if she showed herself, I would slam the door again and leave her on the other side of it. I needed a better way to communicate with her. I needed a conductor.”
Bernadette’s eyes flickered to the mirror, and we all followed her gaze. For the briefest of moments, I thought I saw movement in the mirror, like a shadow, but it was gone again before I could be sure of it.
“Conductors are dangerous, Bernadette,” Nova said, unable to keep the impatience out of her voice. “Everyone knows that. You don’t mess with the integrity of the veil, it’s like… witchcraft 101.”
“Fear is simply the name we give to things we do not understand,” Bernadette said, her eyes taking on that glazed, faraway look again. “We would rather fear something than acknowledge and embrace our own insignificance and ignorance. When we humble ourselves, then we truly see.”
“How very Zen of you,” Nova murmured, sarcasm in full effect, though I could feel the tremble in her legs where they pressed against mine.
“So, what happened then, Bernadette? How did you find a conductor?” I asked, endeavoring to keep my voice politely interested, even as I glanced around for a weapon or object that might be within reach.
“I tried other Claire family heirlooms, but I still couldn’t connect clearly enough with Sarah,” Bernadette said. “I knew what I needed—something of hers. But the only known relic of the Lost Second Daughter was in the museum at the Historical Society. And so, I had to break in.”
“I heard about that,” I said, another piece of the puzzle falling into place. “That first day, at the gallery. Ostara mentioned the break-in, and the mirror.”
Bernadette nodded. “Sometimes I wondered if she knew. I thought someone must surely sense Sarah in the house, attached to me. But no one ever said a word.” Her voice hitched and shuddered. “No one saw the way she was consuming me, using me up. No one.”
“So you had the conductor,” Eva prompted suddenly, her voice higher than usual in her fear. “What happened then?”
Bernadette looked up at Eva, as if almost surprised to find her standing there, and took up the thread of her story once again. “It took me ages, but I found the spell that would bind Sarah to the mirror. Once I had done that, we could communicate at last. It was very tiring at first,” Bernadette said, her face taking on a hollow sort of expression that suggested something a good deal worse than ‘tiring’. “We had to deepen our connection over time, but soon the whispers were clear. I could see her face in the contours of mine. And finally, I could understand her heart.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Such a heart,” she murmured through trembling lips. “And that was when she told me.”
We all waited in utter stillness for her to go on, but she seemed lost in a fearful reverie; and so it was several seconds before Eva nudged Nova, and Nova cleared her throat and asked, “What did she tell you, Bernadette?”
“She told me about my paintings. You see, she’d understood them even when I had not, for she had seen the same thing in her own visions. She explained that a First Daughter would be taken and offered up to the Darkness. The paintings were not just prophesies, but instructions. We were all bound together now: Sarah, the Darkness, and I. We were all too intertwined, separate beings and yet dependent on each other—conjoined with a single beating heart.”
“Conjoined? More like a parasite, leeching off you and your magic!” Nova cried. “You expect me to believe you’d have done all of this if Sarah hadn’t been controlling you?”
“Not controlling! Illuminating! This was always meant to be. I just didn’t know what it all meant. But Sarah knew. It was the Darkness’s will, waiting to be done.”
“And you think you were meant to do it?” Nova cried out, and although I couldn’t see her eyes, I could hear tears in her voice. “What if you were only meant to discover it? To warn others? What if you were meant to save us from the Darkness again, rather than feed us to it? Have you ever stopped to think of that?”
Bernadette had thought of it. I could see it in the twitching muscle below her eye, and in the set of her jaw. “No. This was foretold. I would serve him. I was… weak, as she was.”
“No, you were gullible! When have you ever been drawn to the Darkness before?”
“I was drawn to Sarah’s story, and she was the Lost Second Daughter! Don’t you see? The weakness in me was drawn to that weakness in her!”
“Bernadette, that’s not true!” Nova cried. “Are you even listening to yourself? Your pity and compassion is what drew you to Sarah. You thought she must be misunderstood, like you. It was empathy, don’t you see? For someone you’d never even met. You wanted to give her redemption, not join in her disgrace. But she took that pity and she twisted it, used it to her own advantage. She made you into the tool she needed to—what the hell even are you doing? Why have you done all of this?”
Bernadette’s confusion seemed to concentrate, to solidify itself into certainty at Nova’s last question. Perhaps she didn’t fully understand how we had gotten here, but she understood fully the reason. “We are restoring the balance,” she said, with a placid little nod of her head.
“What balance?” I asked, stealing another glance at my mother. “I’m sorry, but we don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s like an eye for an eye,” Bernadette said, with all the patience of a school teacher trying to explain a complex concept to students who were barely paying attention. “When the Darkness rose, a Second Daughter was lost in the struggle. It’s only fair now, that in the second rising, a First Daughter should rectify this loss.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“Meaning that your mother will provide the vessel for Sarah to return. In Sarah, the Darkness has the servant he had always searched for. He was robbed of her all those years ago. Today, at last, she shall be restored to him, a Second Daughter in the body of a First Daughter, binding both covens to him for all time.” Bernadette sighed contentedly, for all the world as though someone had just handed her a cup of tea after a long day. She had told her story. She had arrived at last at the end of the confession, and the weight had been lifted from her. I stared at her almost-euphoric expression—the relief, the sheer gratitude for having excised it all from her breast.
“So you’re… you’re saying that Sarah is going to… to what, possess my mother?” I asked, the words hollow.
“She will replace her. Your mother’s spirit will pass on,” Bernadette said mechanically.
