“Do you understand now?” Persi asked.
I nodded, because the pieces had fallen into place. Ostara’s fear was true, and Nova had been right. Sarah Claire was somehow attached to Bernadette.
“We will never understand how culpable Bernadette is until we untangle this mess of spiritual coercion, and that means we have to sever the ties between them,” Persi said.
“Persi.” I waited until she was looking directly at me before I continued. “Even if this Cleansing works, even if we’re able to completely separate the two, there is every chance that Bernadette was a willing participant in all of this. You may do all of this, and find out that that was the case all along. Are you okay with that?”
There was a muscle jumping in Persi’s jaw as she stared back at me. Then she let her eyelids flutter closed, and took a long slow breath in and out before opening them again.
“Yes,” Persi said, and I heard no defiance, no defensiveness—only acceptance. “I have had to make my peace with worse things. Not many, but still. I will be fine. I still want to know. I need to know. I can’t move forward unless I do, and I will move forward regardless of the answer.”
She may have been looking at me, but the promise she was making was to herself, and we both knew it. I also knew—and I wasn’t sure how I knew—that she would keep it.
“Okay,” I said. “Then let’s do this.”
Persi smiled at me—it was quick and small, but sincere. Then her face dropped back into a furrowed expression of concentration as she emptied the contents of her backpack onto the table. There would be no more bonding tonight. We had work to do.
Persi handed me a fragrant bundle tightly wound in string, along with her lipstick lighter. “Light this, then count to ten and blow it out, so that it smokes, but you can no longer see any flame.”
“What is it?” I asked, fumbling with the lighter.
“Lavender, rosemary, and cedar,” Persi replied.
Behind the bars, Bernadette had gone very still. She was no longer talking and singing to herself, and she had lost the almost playful attitude she had been exuding from the moment Persi had entered. It was as though Bernadette had been playing a game, in charge of the rules, and suddenly Persi had pulled the rug out from under her. The game had changed, and Persi was now making the rules. Bernadette watched unblinkingly as I lit the bundle and counted.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Walk in an unbroken pattern around the four corners of the room, waving the bundle up and down. Start here, in the north corner. The idea is to touch as much of the room as possible with the smoke.”
I did as she instructed, taking slow and careful steps, and watching the tendrils of smoke curl up into the shadowed recesses of the corners. A rich, heady fragrance began to fill the room, and my eyes began to water; but I continued doing as Persi had instructed me. As I walked past the cell where Bernadette was sitting against the bars, I felt her eyes on me.
Don’t look at her.Whatever you do, don’t make eye contact.
I couldn’t explain to myself why this directive was so strong in my head, but it was as though I was screaming at myself. Whatwas this feeling? I didn’t remember feeling this way when I’d seen Bernadette in the lighthouse that night. I was much more frightened of the poisoned knife she had clutched in her hand than I was of her personally. Had I been too distracted, or was something different about her now? I certainly wouldn’t have blamed myself—or anyone else there that night—for being too caught up in the chaos to notice something subtle, but strange, lurking in the back of Bernadette’s eyes. Had it even been there yet? Had Sarah already curled up inside Bernadette like a hibernating creature, or had that come later, after the Darkness had been defeated? I finished my walk of the room’s perimeter, and arrived back beside Persi.
“Lay it here,” she said, pointing to a small bowl, like a mortar. “And let it burn out on its own.” I did as she instructed, laying the bundle carefully in the bowl, where it continued to release curling smoke like spectral threads up toward the ceiling.
I watched as Persi reached into a leather pouch, and extracted a handful of coarse sea salt. She tossed the salt into the four corners of the room, her lips moving in a constant but silent incantation. For the first time, as the salt hit the floor with a soft shushing sound, Bernadette reacted. An undulation rolled through her body, like a wave toward the shore, and a strange hissing sound escaped her lips. The sound seemed to startle her, and for the first time, her expression shifted. Initially, she had seemed only curious about what we were doing. Now, there was a tentative wariness to the cock of her head, and the lines around her mouth.
“There she is,” Persi whispered.
“There who is?” I asked.
“Sarah Claire. We’ve lured her out,” Persi said. There was a deep, ringing satisfaction in her voice, the kind of satisfaction that can only come from being proven right in a crucial moment.
The name, meanwhile, acted like a trigger for Bernadette. She slammed her hand down against the bars, and the sound echoed brightly through the room.
“This isn’t about Sarah Claire. This is about me!” she said.
“You’re right, Bernadette, if that’s even who I’m talking to,” Persi said, not bothering to look up from her preparations. “It is about you. It’s about finding you in all of this.”
“You can’t do this,” Bernadette hissed through clenched teeth.
“I am already doing it,” Persi replied.
“There’s nothing to find. I’ve done what I’ve done, and I’m proud of it. Why does everyone feel they must take away my agency, simply because they don’t approve of what I’ve done? Are my own actions no longer mine? Am I not allowed to own my mistakes?” Bernadette asked.
“If I’m wrong, which I’m not, then this Cleansing will do absolutely nothing. You will still be yourself, in full control of your words and actions, and you will have all the agency you could ever desire,” Persi said. “You’ll be able to confess and take responsibility, if that’s what you want to do, and I will personally lock the door and throw away the key.”
