“Meanta lot to me. Past tense,” Persi snapped.
“Oh, come off it, Pers. If she didn’t mean anything to you, you wouldn’t have bothered to go in the first place. I know you two have history, but that doesn’t give you the right to?—”
“Rhi, I have every right! She betrayed me! She seduced me and then kidnapped my sister! Ostara might be content to let her rot in there, but I want answers! I need to… to knowwhy…” Persi’s voice broke on the last word.
Rhi fell silent. I was holding my breath. Finally, I heard a long, drawn out sigh.
“I know. I’m sorry. I just… I don’t want to see you get hurt again. That’s all.”
“If you don’t want to see me hurt then leave me the hell alone, and let me do what I need to do to heal,” Persi said. Her voice was low, but fierce. Footsteps began to click toward the staircase, and so I pulled my door shut and crept back into bed before she could realize she was being spied on.
So, Persi had visited Bernadette. I wasn’t exactly surprised. Persi had never been one for following rules, from what I could gather; and her relationship with Bernadette had been longstanding and messy. And as curious as I would have been to know what passed between them, I was much more curious about how she’d gotten into the Keep. Nova had been extremely vague about it all, probably on purpose, because it certainly didn’t sound like the kind of place you could simply stroll intowhenever you took a fancy. Knowing Persi had gotten in didn’t make me feel any better at the prospect of our impending field trip—after all, there was hardly a rule or a barrier that Persi wouldn’t shove aside to get what she wanted. I rolled over and looked at my clock—it was 6:30 in the morning. I closed my eyes, sure sleep would evade me now that I had so much more to worry about, but what felt like a moment later, Freya walked across my face and jolted me awake. The clock read 11AM.
“Shit,” I muttered. I’d slept the entire morning away. I hadn’t so much as glanced at the script for Zale or the reading Rhi had wanted me to do. On top of that, I now only had an hour before I had to be over at the playhouse to meet Luca, and it would take me a solid half hour to walk there. Maybe Rhi would let me borrow her bike again. I took the fastest shower of my life, dressed, and threw my wet hair up in a bun on top of my head. I paused in front of the mirror as I put my glasses on, and felt a little flop of disappointment in my stomach. If I was the kind of girl who knew how to do makeup, I’d likely have spent an hour and a hundred dollars worth of products on my face to impress Luca, but there was no point in worrying about it. Contouring and blending was as inscrutable to me as kitchen witchery, and I certainly wasn’t going to solve that problem in the next fifteen minutes. Poe had once sat me down at her vanity table, and made me up for the homecoming dance. I’d been basically unrecognizable when she was done, and though I thought the girl staring back at me out of the mirror looked pretty, she also looked like a stranger. I didn’t feel like myself—in fact, I felt like some kind of imposter.
“When you meet Wren Vesper, what you see is what you get,” I told my reflection. “Take it or leave it.”
I walked downstairs to find my mom on the phone with our realtor. She waved at me and blew me a kiss as I passed through to the kitchen to see my sad scones were still in a glass covereddish on the counter, alongside a fresh batch of peach cobbler muffins.
“Rhi, I promise if you put those scones in the trash where they belong, you will not hurt my feelings,” I said.
“I’m not going to do that!” Rhi said, looking scandalized. “They’re your first attempts at kitchen witchery!”
I laughed as I bypassed the scones, and reached for a muffin off the cooling rack. “What are you going to do, bronze them? It’s not like they’re edible.”
“They are so!” Rhi said, and she grabbed a scone from under the glass cloche, and took a bite. It was a testament to her good nature that she barely flinched as she chewed.
“It’s your funeral,” I said. “I’ll see you later. Oh, hey, could I borrow your bike?”
Rhi swallowed—it looked painful— but her face immediately brightened. “I’ve got an even better idea. Follow me out to the shed.”
My curiosity piqued, I followed her out the door and through the garden to the dilapidated shed. It was a slightly lopsided structure, with moss growing on the roof and roses creeping up the windows. Rhi tugged on the slightly crooked door, and it slowly scraped its way open. Then she stepped back and said, “Ta-da!”
A bicycle stood before me, a pale blue old-fashioned one with a white basket slung between the wide handlebars, and a little leather satchel strapped on behind the ivory seat.
“It’s adorable!” I said.
“It’s yours!” Rhi sang.
I turned to her, my mouth falling open. “Are you serious? Rhi, you didn’t have to do this!”
But Rhi waved me off. “Oh, stop, it wasn’t expensive. And besides, you needed a proper welcome home present. You also need a little freedom, and since you can’t drive yet?—”
The rest of her sentence was cut off with an “oof” of surprise as I slammed into her with a hug. She laughed and then put her arms around me, giving me a squeeze in return.
“Thank you!” I said, as I pulled away from her.
“You’re welcome,” she said, her voice a little husky. She wiped at her eyes, laughing. “Sorry. I don’t mean to get all sappy on you. I just… I spent a lot of years not knowing if I’d get to see you again, let alone hug you.”
“And now you have to live with meandsurvive my cooking,” I said, grinning. “Careful what you wish for.”
I pulledinto the parking lot of the playhouse only a few minutes after noon. Rhi had tucked a bike chain and lock inside the satchel, and so I secured the bike to the bike rack near the entrance. Luca had said he would be doing landscaping, but I didn’t see anyone out near the parking lot. I did hear a faint buzzing sound, though, so I followed it around the side of the building, and spotted him trimming the edges of the flowerbeds with a weedwhacker. He had oversized headphones on, and though I called his name several times, he obviously couldn’t hear me. I crossed the lawn until I was just a few feet behind him, waiting for him to turn, but he was singing along to whatever music he was listening to, completely oblivious to my presence. Finally, when I’d reached my peak threshold for feeling like an idiot, I reached out and tapped him on the shoulder.
“What the hell!” he cried out, dropping the weedwhacker and stumbling backwards. He tripped over the rock border of the flowerbed, and fell onto his back.
“I’m sorry!” I cried. “I’ve been trying to get your attention for like five minutes.”
“No worries,” he said, and to my relief he was grinning. “I was in my own world. I usually am.” He glanced down at his watch. “Wow, it’s noon already? I completely lost track of time. See what I mean? I would have worked right through my lunch break.”
