I didn’t need her to elaborate. It only made sense that spirits were as varied in their nature as living people were. There were a lot of kind and wonderful humans in the world, but not all people were good.
“What do you say we both go down there, and you talk to Xiomara about it?” I suggested. “Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe it will even be okay.”
Bea hesitated. “Will you hold my hand while I tell her?” she asked.
I smiled at her. “Only if you promise to hold mine when it’s my turn.”
She considered this. “Okay.”
I took her hand to shake it, but she didn’t let go. Instead, she flipped it around, so I was holding hers in mine. She picked up her sketchbook with her free hand, and tucked it under her arm. Then she stood up with a grimace.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
23
When we finally arrived at Lightkeep Cottage that night, I was sure I’d be up for hours, hyped up on anxiety and unanswered questions. So imagine my surprise when I flopped down on the couch next to my mom, and immediately fell into such a deep sleep that I didn’t so much as move for almost ten hours. It was as though my body knew I had to unplug, before I short-circuited. Like a glitching gadget, I needed to be turned off and then turned back on again, if I had any hope of functioning properly.
The sleep may have been deep, but it was full of nightmares, a vivid but confusing collage of images that made little sense: Asteria’s spirit wandering across a stage full of entranced performers. Flowering vines bursting through my walls and winding up my legs like snakes. Bea drawing a sketch of Veronica Meyers, which immediately leaped off the page and pulled a gun from her pocket to point at my face. The Gray Man, with Sarah Claire standing on one side and Veronica Meyers on the other, all three of them gesturing at me to join them, to wear the crown they offered…
I jolted awake.
My mom was no longer lying against me. At some point, she had extracted herself, placing a pillow under my head, and a blanket over my curled limbs. Before I could panic about where she had gone, I heard her voice from the kitchen. She, Rhi, and Persi were talking quietly together at the kitchen table. I could smell a pot of Rhi’s herbal tea. I supposed I didn’t blame them for not waking me. They certainly had an awful lot to discuss. I wondered if they were still feeling as calm as they’d seemed last night while Bea, I, and the others had given them all the details we could about what had happened to us that night. It was true that my mother held my hand tightly the whole time I was speaking, true that my fingers were numb and tingling from the pressure she placed on them at times, but overall, she’d taken it all in her stride. I had to admit, I’d been worried that she would pack us up and leave town again, maybe even leave the country, but I should have given her more credit. I knew she’d learned from that mistake. She was scared, sure, but she was also stoic. She’d made her choice, and she was sticking to it. As I listened now, the tones of their voices were serious, but calm. It helped me feel calmer, too, for the moment. Calm enough for their voices to lull me back to sleep.
Another dream found its way into my slumber, but it was not one of the chaotic ones I’d endured in my first stretch of sleep.
I was standing in my mother’s garden. I could hear Asteria calling to me. I looked and looked for her. Her voice was playful at first, then worried, like she’d expected me to find her by now. I began to call her name as well, unease growing in me. At last, I saw a scrap of flowing purple fabric fluttering from the shadow of a nearby willow tree. The fronds waved in the breeze, obscuring the figure who stood there. I paused, uncertain.
“Asteria?”
There was no reply. I almost turned to run. Then…
“Wren?”
It was Asteria’s voice, but though the figure stood only a few feet from me, the voice sounded very far away.
“What is it?” I asked her. “What do you want to tell me?”
Another pause… and then…
“I don’t know. I don’t remember,” came the faintest reply.
“Please, Asteria! It might be important!”
“I… don’t remember.”
I stepped through the fronds in a surge of frustration, but instead found myself falling down, down, down into pitch-black darkness, and then…
It felt like I hit the couch as I jerked myself awake again. I managed not to cry out, smothering my yelp of surprise with the pillow under my face. I sat up. The kitchen was dark, the table silent. A cup of tea had gone stone cold on the table in front of me, beside a plate of untouched cookies. The dream felt like it had lasted only a brief moment, but I’d clearly been asleep for hours once again. I glanced at the clock. It was after midnight.
Screw it. I didn’t care how late it was.
I’d woken from that dream not only with a physical jolt but a mental one as well, as though waking up had jostled loose a decision I hadn’t even realized I’d made. I could no longer wait passively for Asteria to find me. I had to reach out to her. I had to forge a connection strong enough that she could finally tell me whatever it was she was trying to say. And there was only one person I knew who could help me.
As I flew along the road to town, my legs pedaling furiously beneath me, I prayed that my mother wouldn’t wake up, and that if she did wake up, she wouldn’t absolutely murder me for sneaking out like this. Part of me knew it was stupid, of course—after all, there was still no sign of Veronica. Before I’d agreed to lay down, I’d made my mother promise to wake me up if Veronica had been found. I definitely shouldn’t be out alone at night with that woman on the loose. At the same time, though,something very powerful was propelling me forward. I couldn’t confidently say what it was, but I thought… well, I thought it might just be my magic.
For weeks, Rhi had been trying—and failing— to convince me to trust myself.It’s the key to everything, Wren. You sabotage yourself with doubt and skepticism. If part of your brain intends for you to fail, then that intention will interfere with your abilities. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.And she was right. Every time I’d felt an instinct, I’d questioned it rather than trusted it, and so I’d burned, undercooked, overcooked, or in some other way ruined every magic recipe I’d tried. All that self-doubt that started in the kitchen had left me paralyzed with indecision in the cavern, unable to save my friend. I no longer had the luxury to take my time. I had to take my magic by the horns, to embrace what I was now realizing I feared. I didn’t want my magic. I’d been running from it all along, like my mother before me. Even when I thought I was trying my hardest to find it, I’d been hiding from it.
I was scared. But I wouldn’t be scared anymore. I was going to listen to my magic when it spoke to me. I wasn’t going to second guess, or defer, or delay. My magic was telling me this was what I needed to do, and damn it, I was going to do it. I felt my fear fall away like the moon-bathed road stretching away in a ribbon behind me. I felt so much lighter, that I was surprised the bike didn’t become airborne.
