“Not when there was an actual entity involved, no,” Nova said, not even looking up from her texts.
“Oh, excellent. My confidence in this whole plan is soaring,” I said, a note of hysteria in my voice that I didn’t even bother to suppress. I shoved the mirror into my backpack and zipped it up. Just the sight of it made me anxious. “Is there anything I can do to help us not royally screw up this whole venture?”
Nova considered for a moment. “Well, I’ve broken into our collection of banned books, and read everything I can find on spirits and bindings and all of that. I have to assume Bernadette did the same to pull off her scheme in the first place. So now, I just have to pull together everything I can get my hands on about Cleansings, and we’ll have to wing it from there.”
I swallowed back the almost maniacal peal of laughter that was trying to bubble its way up my throat. “Right. Winging it. Always a good plan when we’re dealing with evil forces beyond our comprehension.”
“Vesper, you’re not cracking up on me, are you?” Nova asked, eyeing me critically as she glanced up from her phone screen.
“Have you looked in a mirror recently? Maybe cut me some slack on the whole ‘cracking up’ thing, given the several felonies you committed just to get me to agree to this travesty of a plan,” I snapped.
Nova raised her hands like I’d just trained a weapon on her. “Okay, okay. You’ve got a point. Do you think you could find anything here in Lightkeep about Cleansings? I always heard that Asteria’s collection of magical texts was extensive.”
I took a deep breath. “Yeah, I can look. If I find anything, I’ll let you know. When are you thinking you want to do this?”
“Tomorrow night. It’ll be a full moon, which can only help the cause. Does that give you enough time?”
“Sure, why not,” I grumbled. Asteria only had about a thousand texts in the library, and there was no way I couldsearch them without arousing suspicions from my aunts or my mom. It looked like I wasn’t going to be sleeping tonight. “Another question: where do you want to do this? Does the location matter? Because I can maybe get away with creeping through the library collection, but we’re not going to be able to stage a Cleansing here.”
Nova looked nervous again, and I braced myself for the worst. “Well, that’s the other part. The Cleansing will work best if every entity involved is in the same space.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning Bernadette should be present, too.”
I stared at Nova, waiting for her to crack a smile and tell me ‘Just kidding! You should see the look on your face, Vesper.’ I waited. And waited. Her expression didn’t change.
“So what does that mean? Where do we have to go?”
Even Nova couldn’t disguise the grimness that came over her expression then.
“It means we’ll have to go to the Keep.”
9
After Nova climbed back out my window, I tried to distract myself with the books Rhi had left on the bed for me, but the sentences all slid together, meaningless in my churning brain. I gave up and tried to look over Zale’s script for the pageant, but there, too, I couldn’t concentrate. I tossed the pages aside and stared up at my ceiling, letting my myriad new worries chase each other around and around inside my skull, until I was sure that my mom and Rhi had both gone to bed. I didn’t think Persi was home, but it was her custom to be out until all hours of the night, and if I waited to hear her bedroom door shut, I might well be waiting until morning. I would just have to risk the possibility that she would find me in the library in the middle of the night. I’d come up with an excuse, but I hardly thought I’d need to use it. I couldn’t really imagine Persi showing much interest in anything I did.
I crept down the stairs as quietly as I could, and made my way to the library. It wasn’t a particularly large or grand room, but every inch of the walls from floor to ceiling was covered in bookshelves. The sheer number of texts was daunting, and I had no idea where to start. A quick glance was enough to confirm that Asteria had not organized her books alphabetically, and Ididn’t know enough about magic to know whether they were grouped by subject. I knew I wouldn’t be lucky enough to find something called “Cleansings for Beginners,” so I just picked the corner by the door and started scanning titles, pulling anything that looked like it might contain the information I needed. Then I curled up with the first armload of books and started searching.
By three o’clock in the morning, I had only made it through one wall of books, and was nodding off over the tome in my lap. I decided to give up for the night and try to salvage a few hours of sleep. I took three books with me, the only ones in which I’d found any information about Cleansings at all. I wasn’t convinced they would be helpful—the information felt very basic, and the only Cleansing spells I had found in them talked about banishing “negativity” and “bad intentions,” not “300-year-old ghosts bent on your destruction,” but it was a start. I fell into bed fully clothed, and woke with a start to the sounds of shouting. I slid out of bed, crept over to my door, opened it a crack and listened hard.
“—stop shouting, please? Wren is still asleep!” It was Rhi’s voice.
“Oh that’s right, it’s her house, her rules, I forgot,” Persi snapped back.
“You’re only saying that because you’re trying to change the subject! This has nothing to do with Wren, leave her out of it! This is about you, Persi.”
I opened the door another inch, just in time to hear Persi sigh like an overwrought teenager. “Fine. You’re obviously determined to give me a lecture, so let’s have it.”
“I’m not interested in lecturing you at all,” Rhi said. “Believe me, when Asteria died, I did not relish the idea of becoming the person who has to rein you in. But someone has to say something, Persi, or you’re going to land yourself in serious trouble.”
“It was just a quick visit. I was barely there an hour,” came Persi’s sulky voice.
“You shouldn’t have been there at all!” Rhi cried. “The Keep is not a social meet-up, Persi, it’s a stronghold against powerful magic, and you had no business going there.”
“Oh, so now Bernadette is none of my business? You can’t honestly be saying that to me with a straight face.”
“That’s not what I… I know Bernadette means a lot to you?—”
