“Where did you get that book?” The words were barely a whisper through her unmoving lips.
“I just told you, this woman… Mom, are you okay?”
At that moment, my mother sank into one of the kitchen chairs. For one awful moment, I thought she was going to pass out. Then she pushed her hair back from her face with shaking fingers.
“Wren, put that book down, and don’t touch it again,” she whispered. “We need to find my sisters and get them home. Now.”
4
The air in the room was so thick with tension, I felt like I couldn’t breathe it. My head was absolutely spinning with the events of the last sixty minutes. My mother and my aunts, whispering and gasping and running around digging through family records. The interrogation, all three of them asking the same questions over and over again, and me repeating the same bewildered answers.
Where had the book come from?
Who was the woman?
What did she look like?
Where did she go?
What did she say?
No matter how many times I replied, my answers never seemed to be good enough, and they would repeat the questions again, as though I would somehow answer differently. Then they all left the room and huddled together out on the porch, whispering frantically to each other, their voices only occasionally rising to a volume where I could catch a phrase or two:
“…can’t possibly be the same book, there’s no way…”
“…it must be a trick…”
“…but didn’t youfeelit?!”
After that, Rhi took her phone out into the garden and paced back and forth between the riotous hydrangea bushes, arms gesticulating wildly. Finally, after about fifteen minutes she joined Persi and my mom, and after a quick whispered conference, all three of them came back into the kitchen.
“Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?” I snapped, the stress and uncertainty finally fraying my patience.
Rhi leaned forward, taking the corners of the velvet wrappings and covering the book with them, being careful not to touch it. Once it was completely enclosed, she lifted it gingerly from the table and said, “Back up from the table, Wren. Go ahead, Persi.”
I slid back from the kitchen table, my chair legs squeaking across the wood floor, as Persi reached down and took a hold of the tabletop. It was a round table, with a blonder wooden circle inset within a darker wood border that was carved and painted with flowers and vines and birds. I’d always assumed the design was merely decorative, but now I watched with astonishment as Persi reached beneath it and, with a couple of faint clicks, caused the entire center circle of the table to drop and flip over. Then she engaged some sort of crank and the center circle rose into place again, revealing some kind of intricate circle carved into the wood.
“Permanent protective circle,” Persi explained as I gaped. “A Vesper is always prepared in her own home.”
“It was our grandmother’s invention,” Rhi added with a hint of pride in her voice. “She had it specially made.”
Once the inner section had clunked into place, Rhi set the book down once more, this time at the heart of this hidden circle, and carefully pulled the wrappings away. Wordlessly, my mother and aunts spread out around the table naturally, taking up places at the south, east, and west directions. Persi looked pointedly at me, and I jumped up from my seat to stand at the section of the table that pointed north. As I watched, Rhi pulled two stones from the drawer behind her—citrine and tiger’s eye, I thought—andplaced them in a little mesh pouch on the end of a string, all the while muttering under her breath. Persi and my mom began to mutter, too, as Rhi lifted the little bag so that it swung like a pendulum over the book. She swung it first in a counterclockwise, and then a clockwise motion. Then she went still, all muttering stopped, and her sisters did the same. I felt frozen with anticipation, waiting for something to happen.
Nothing did.
After about half a minute, Rhi let out a long breath. Her shoulders sagged with relief, and she lowered the mesh bag to the table.
“It hasn’t been cursed. So it’s safe to handle, at least,” she announced.
I felt afraid instead of relieved. Could it really have been so dangerous simply to touch the book? Even though I now knew it was safe, I had a sudden desire to wipe my hands on my shorts, feeling contaminated despite Rhi’s reassurances.
“What do we do with it?” Persi asked. “It can’t possibly bethatbook. Can it?”
My mom sat down, pulling the book toward her while the rest of us took our seats around the table. Despite the fact that Rhi had pronounced it safe, my mother was extremely careful as she opened the cover of the book. There she spotted the same strange words I’d read earlier:In sanguine tuo, clavis ad vim occultam.Unlike me, however, she understood exactly what they meant.
“Well, there’s one way to find out,” my mom said. She reached into her gardening belt, dug out a pair of garden shears and, without any kind of warning, dug the tip of one sharp blade into the callused pad of her thumb.
I cried out, but she silenced me with a look. Then, using the hand that wasn’t currently dripping blood, she flipped through the book until she found one of the many blank pages scattered throughout. With one swift, serious look at her sisters, she pressed her oozing thumb to the paper.
