I blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”
Bea looked puzzled. “You said you wanted to know why your grandmother was here, right?”
“Yeah, but?—”
“Well then, that’s easy. You go to see Xiomara. She can tell you.”
Her words felt like a slap to the face. All I could do for a few seconds was sit there and blink at her, my brain slowly turning sounds into words, and words into thoughts. Finally, I managed, “Has… has Xiomara seen Asteria, too? Did she tell you that?”
“No,” Bea said, shaking her head. “But she has a steadier connection than any other witch in Sedgwick Cove. If you want to communicate with a spirit around here, you call Xiomara.”
“I… wow, I knew she was sensitive to spirit, but I didn’t know it was… do you think she could help me?”
“I know she could. She could have helped me, too,” Bea said, her voice and chin dropping suddenly. “But I didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell anyone until right now.”
“What do you… oh!” It suddenly occurred to me that, once Bea had started sensing spirits, she’d had the perfect person toconfide in right there in her house, a person she was close to, who had enough experience to answer all her questions. Then…
“Why didn’t you tell Xiomara?” I asked. “Didn’t you think she would understand?”
Bea swallowed. “I was too scared,” she whispered.
“Of Xiomara?” the words came out more skeptical than I’d meant them, and Bea flinched a little. Luckily, she still answered my question.
“Shh!” Bea hushed me, and I pressed a hand over my mouth automatically. “And no, I’m not scared ofabuela. But I am scared of…” She sighed, a sigh much too big and heavy for such a little girl. “I know Eva told you about the trouble I was having finding my affinity.”
I flushed, ready to apologize, but she plowed on, “It’s okay. Really, Wren, I don’t mind that she told you that. But you should know that it’s not true. Well, Eva doesn’t know it’s not true,” she added, chewing on her lip, “and neither does anyone else in my family. The truth is that I’ve been lying to them about my magic.”
“Lying? Why?” I asked, dropping my voice even lower.
“It’s true that my affinity revealed itself a little later than most people,” Bea said. “That part wasn’t a lie. But then all of this started happening with my sketches.” She waved a hand at the sketchbook, looking at it like it was a beloved pet that had lashed out and bitten her. “I’d draw a picture of our house, and without meaning to draw it, there’d be a man sitting on our front steps. I’d try to draw the beach, and it turned into the image of a woman standing up on the cliffs. I wasn’t seeing them… only drawing them. But I could feel them, too, sometimes.”
“How did you feel them?” I asked.
“Their feelings. They sort of just… came over me. Like I’d be doing my homework, and suddenly I’d feel really sad, like I was going to cry. But it didn’t make sense, because nothing was happening to make me want to cry, even if it was math.” Shemade a face. “It was so weird. So when it happened, I would pull out my sketchbook and then… well, I would usually be able to draw who was making me feel that way.” And again, she flipped through the pages, stopping to point at certain sketches to show me that they were of spirits, rather than living people.
“How long has this been going on?” I asked.
“It started right after my ninth birthday. That was in April.”
“And you were scared.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t tell your family? Even though you knew they would understand?”
“I didn’t want them to understand,” Bea whispered. “I didn’t want it to be true.”
I shook my head. “Bea, I’m sorry, but I still don’t underst?—”
“Abuelais very strong. But the spirits weigh on her. I can see it sometimes, the way they wear her down. And then Bernadette… she’s the other most powerful spirit witch in our town, and she…” Bea shuddered. “Her gift drove her mad. They had to lock her up.”
“Bernadette sees prophecies of the future, though, doesn’t she?” I asked. “That’s very different than what your gift seems to be.”
“But it’s her connection to spirit that allows her to see the future. I was afraid, Wren. I’m still afraid. I don’t want to be a spirit witch. I don’t want to feel all those feelings that don’t belong to me. I just want to… to shut it off. Like a light switch. Just… click.” She pressed an invisible button in the air, her little finger trembling.
“Keeping it a secret won’t make it go away,” I told her, keeping my voice soft. I didn’t want her to think I was chiding her.
She sighed again. “I know. But I also know that when I tellabuela, she’ll say it’s time to start my training. She’ll say I haveto start practicing. Instead of waiting for spirits to find me, I’ll have to go out looking for them to build my skills. But… they aren’t all nice. Some of them are…” Bea shuddered.
