“Can I do anything for you while I’m here?” I asked Rhi, as she paced absently behind the counter, looking like she’d forgotten something.
“Huh? Oh, no thanks, honey. Why don’t you keep on with your studies? I’ll give you a shout if I need you.”
I shrugged, and settled on a velvet green settee in the back corner of the shop that was piled with decorative pillows that said things like, “I’m Here for the Boos,” and “Are You A Good Witch or A Bad Witch?” I settled in and pulled out the pageant script, feeling guilty that I hadn’t really looked at it much, but had only managed to read a few pages when the bell for the upstairs echoed down the stairs.
“I’ll be right back,” Rhi said. “Are you sure you’ll…”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, tossing the script aside, and coming around behind the counter.
“We’re not really digitized. It’s part of the charm, or so Asteria thought,” Rhi said, smiling weakly. “Just punch in the prices on the tags, and the register will total it for you. And this button opens the till.”
“No problem, I’ve had to make change before,” I said. “I’ll figure it out. Honestly, I’m fine.”
Rhi hesitated, but a second ring of the bell sent her scurrying upstairs instead. I slid onto the stool, opened my book again, and tried to pick up where I’d left off, trying to find some semblance of concentration. I listened to the gentle music of wind chimes out on the porch. I breathed in the herb-scented air. An antique clock ticked up on the wall. Rhi’s footsteps and the muffled hum of conversation echoed overhead.
And then I heard my name.
At first, I was so lulled by the atmosphere of the shop that my brain took a moment to catch up. It was almost as though I expected the sound, like it was a natural part of the soundscape of Shadowkeep. This was my family’s shop. My name belonged in this place as fully as I did. Then, I heard it again, and it sounded… insistent.
I looked up toward the ceiling, my heart beginning to race. Surely it was just Rhi, talking to the customer upstairs, and happening to mention me. That made much more logical sense than what my intuition was screaming at me. Surely the simplest explanation was the correct one. I should have realized by now that that particular adage didn’t apply in a place like Sedgwick Cove.
Wren. Wren Vesper.
This time, I felt the words inside my head even as I heard them outside of myself, and once again, I felt a pull toward the window. I abandoned the script on the counter, and approachedslowly. I knew who I would see. I knew who would be waiting for me.
Asteria stood in the garden, looking at me. Her expression was at once warm and loving, but also somehow mournful. She looked not-quite solid, and yet there was no mistaking her. She wore the dress I had last seen her in, a colorful confection of patchwork and lace. I’d nearly convinced myself that she’d been a dream that night I saw her standing outside my bedroom window, but now there she stood again, in broad and shining daylight; and I knew I had no more dreamed her then than I was dreaming her right now. Every part of me was awake, drinking her in.
“Asteria,” I whispered.
She raised a single hand in a gesture that seemed to speak at once of greeting and farewell. I raised my own hand and pressed it to the glass, feeling the longing for her to sing in my bones, and knowing that even if I ran out to her, she’d be no closer or further away than she was to me in that moment.
Wren. Tread carefully, my love.
“Why?” I whispered.
They still seek you. You must?—
The bell over the door jingled brightly, and I spun away from the window with a startled gasp to see Luca Meyers freeze with one foot over the threshold of the door.
“Oh, shit, sorry. Did I… I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, looking warily around the inside of the shop, like he was unsure if he should walk the rest of the way in. He hooked his thumb over his shoulder at the door behind him. “The sign says open.”
“Luca! No, it’s fine, I… we are open, I was just… distracted. What are you—come on in,” I said. I’d been about to ask him what he was doing there, but then I remembered it was a shop. Why did anyone walk into a shop? I tried to pull myselftogether as I chanced one last glance out the window. Asteria had vanished again.
If Luca noticed my awkward greeting, he didn’t show it. His face split into an easy smile as he loped in.
“Hey, Wren. So, you’ve got your family putting you to work this summer too, huh?”
“I guess so,” I replied. “Can I, uh… help you find anything?”
“No, I’m just—” he gestured over his shoulder, and at that moment a woman walked in through the door behind him.
She was a strikingly beautiful woman—the sort of woman that usually only seems to exist in the pages of fashion magazines. She was tall and statuesque, with impossibly long legs, made longer by four-inch stiletto heels. Her pale pointed face was surrounded by a cascade of dark curls, and her full lips, when she spotted me, curled into a smile.
“—here with my mom,” Luca finished.
I did my best not to gawk at the woman while she removed an oversized pair of designer sunglasses to reveal grass green eyes, fringed with thick lashes.
“Luca, do you know this young woman?” she asked, looking curiously back and forth between the two of us.
