“Oh, very slowly, at first. The Darkness was still bound by the Covenant, and could not access the deep magic. Paulina tried every method of magical discovery she could find, but she, too, remained unable to connect to the magic. Her frustrations grew, but so did her determination. Paulina decided she had to convene with the Darkness again, and try to learn more. She did not expect the Darkness to give her all the answers she was looking for—she was not so naive about the creature she was dealing with. But she did hope it might tell her enough that she could come to understand the nature of the source—and through that understanding, she thought she may even be able to access the deep magic directly, without involving the Darkness at all.
“On the summer solstice, under the light of the full moon, she drew a circle and convened with the Darkness. What she learned within the boundaries of that circle changed our coven’s course yet again. The Darkness sensed Paulina’s greed, but did not seem to fear it. In fact, it laughed at her. What did it matter if she coveted what neither of them could have? Paulina was deeply troubled by this. ‘What do you mean by this?’ she asked, expending a great amount of magic—of herself—so that the question became in some way a command. The Darkness had no choice but to answer truthfully.
“The source remains impenetrable until such a time as a pentamaleficus of the first blood walks this shore again.”
Something was tugging at the frayed edges of my attention, trying to draw me away from Veronica, even as I sensed it had everything to do with her tale. My brain was trying to make a connection, but I was too slow, too confused, too scared…
As though she had heard my thoughts, Veronica’s faraway gaze became focused again, and she turned to look directly at me. Her eyes were penetrating, as though they could peer into the very corners of you, the hidden places you barely acknowledge to yourself, let alone anyone else. My blood felt sluggish in my veins as I looked into those eyes, trying to remember and not to remember something all at the same time.
“Come now, Wren Vesper. Haven’t you put it together yet?” she whispered.
And like a rubber band twanging, all the disparate parts of the situation snapped back into place, so that I could see it for what it was. It felt like a good, cold slap across the face, at once painful and necessary.
The pentamaleficus was an elemental witch who could command all five of the elements, including the element of spirit. I had recently shown an affinity for all five elements, the first four on the beach while facing down the Gray Man, and the final one just in the last couple of days, having encountered my dead grandmother’s ghost repeatedly. The Darkness told Paulina they needed a pentamaleficus to access the source of the deep magic. The Darkness had tried, repeatedly, to lay claim to me and my power since I was barely old enough to walk.
I was staring at the completed puzzle, and the picture it presented crashed down upon me, all at once.
“Whoa, Vesper! Stay with me here!”
It was Nova’s voice, and it was coming from above me. Without realizing it, I had fallen to my knees, which I supposed was better than falling on my face. My arms, which were trying to hold me up despite having turned entirely to water, wobbled dangerously beneath me. My stomach gave a lurch, and I had no choice but to fold forward and rest my cheek on the cold, damp stone of the cavern floor.
“Got there at last, have you?” came Veronica’s indifferent voice.
“What is she—” Nova began, but she was pulled up short as the truth burst out of me.
“It’s me. I’m the pentamaleficus the Darkness was talking about. That’s why it found me when I was just a child. That’s why it found me again, as soon as my grandmother’s spell of protection died with her. It’s why it almost walked away with me into the sea. It needs me. It needs my… my power, to access the deep magic.”
There it was. I had said it out loud, and I couldn’t take it back: the truth at the heart of all of this.
I looked up and found that Nova’s eyes had gone black as her pupils expanded, until it seemed they would swallow her whole face. Every bit of the horror I felt was reflected back to me in those eyes.
What do we do?those eyes seemed to ask me.
I don’t know, my eyes answered back.
“Now you understand. My grandmother couldn’t complete the work she had so faithfully begun. But still, the Kildares did not lose hope. We waited—perhaps not patiently, but diligently, and while we waited, we prepared. We studied our craft in secret. We taught our daughters and their daughters. We stayed in this place and ensured its survival, so that the source would remain protected. And we waited. We waited, of course, foryou, Wren Vesper.”
The words now caused only a dull echo of the shock I’d felt a few moments before, but my body still trembled with it. Nova was now gripping my arm so tightly it was tingling.
“How did you know?” I asked, the thought slipping out of my mouth unintentionally.
“How did I know what?” Veronica asked, her voice smooth and polite, like a teacher clarifying a point in front of a class.
“How did you know who I was? That I had… arrived?” I asked.
“Oh, that was simple enough. We had bound ourselves to the Darkness so that we would know when it had awakened to your presence. Think of it as a magical alarm going off. It was my mother, the matriarch of the coven, who made her way to Sedgwick Cove then. She expected to find a powerful witch, fully attuned to her power, ready to become either a willing ally or a fearsome adversary. What she found instead… was a mere child.”
“It became clear, as she watched and waited, that our time to claim you had not yet come. Your grandmother saw to that. She was a powerful witch. She protected you exceedingly well, in more ways than I think anyone but we, who were trying to penetrate her defenses, could comprehend. Still, we had waited so long. What was a few more years? When you had matured, her protection would be useless. You would step into your power, and then step into our waiting arms. We could be patient a little while longer.”
“And then I came back,” I whispered.
Veronica’s smile widened, a cat-in-the-cream smile. “And then you came back.”
21
Ilooked at Veronica. She looked back at me. I’m not sure what was on my face, but hers was alight with triumph.
“I knew I had to be careful. I didn’t want to be hasty and squander the opportunity to get you on your own. The first step was to offer the theater as a rehearsal space for the pageant. I knew all the covens would participate—it’s a Sedgwick Cove rite of passage, and so I thought the chances were good that you would be involved. And sure enough, when I checked the sign-in log the day after the first rehearsal, there was your name. I can’t tell you what a thrill it gave me to see it there. To know that you had been here, so close to where I needed you to be.”
