She grunted an affirmative and opened her eyes again, now surveying me as I spoke.
“She said something about the Source, remember? About someone tied to it?” I worded it so carefully, leaving out the mention of the book in hopes that Xiomara would not recall it.
Xiomara sat up a little straighter. “Yes.”
“Maybe, if we’re able to make contact with Asteria tonight, we could ask her about it.”
“But you’ve had no luck in connecting with her. Not since that night.”
I shrugged. “That could just be my lack of experience. Have you tried contacting her since that night?”
“No. My own spirit guides are usually much easier to communicate with than other spirits. Besides, if your grandmother wanted to send me a message, she would well and truly send it. It would be unmistakable.”
“Unless the same thing that’s keeping your spirit guides silent is also keeping her silent.”
Xiomara pressed her lips together. She clearly didn’t like this observation, but she wasn’t dismissing it either. Finally, she asked, “You’re saying you want the two of us to attempt contact? Joint contact?”
“I think it’s worth a try,” I said. If Asteria mentioned the book, I could just play dumb or deflect. This might be my onlychance to connect with her.
“Very well,mija,” Xiomara finally said with a sigh. “We will do as you have suggested. Let’s see if Asteria has anything to tell us.”
6
According to Xiomara, we would have better luck contacting Asteria if we were in a place she was connected to.
“You mean Lightkeep?” I asked, my heart speeding up. “I really don’t want to do this in front of my mom or my aunts.” This would have been true even if I wasn’t trying to hide the fact that Asteria had been communicating with me. Given how spotty our connection was, it would be humiliating to try to communicate with her in front of an audience—attempting it in front of Xiomara would be embarrassing enough.
“No, we don’t need to go that far. Any garden will do, as she channeled her magic through plants. We’ll walk up the block to Shadowkeep and use the garden there. Her presence will be closer there and therefore easier to manifest.”
Maricela watched us come out through the kitchen, her expression puzzled. Xiomara waved an impatient hand at her with a muttered, “Regresaremos enseguida,” as though there was no time for such mundane things as explanations. I managed a weak smile over my shoulder, hoping it reassured her, but Maricela looked troubled as I closed the door behind us.
We set off down the sidewalk in the gatheringdarkness. There had barely been a cloud all day, and the cloudlessness continued now, so that the stars winked down at us in an uninterrupted display. The moon was barely a sliver—the new moon would arrive the next night, and with it we would usher in Samhain. I wondered what Sedgwick Cove tradition Eva and Zale had in store for me the following night. I considered asking Xiomara as we walked, but then I realized I didn’t know if this tradition was sanctioned by the adults. If this was going to be some rebellious teenage shenanigan, I didn’t want to blow our cover.
We arrived at Shadowkeep, and I let us in through the gate. Instead of going up the porch steps, we cut around to the side garden, where a glamour hid the staircase up to the second level. Even though I knew it was there, I couldn’t see it unless I looked at it just the right way, out of the corner of my eye. Xiomara stopped in the middle of the garden and turned on the spot, considering. Then she pointed over into the north corner of the garden.
“Asteria planted those hydrangeas herself. We should conduct our seance there,” she said firmly. “And if I remember correctly… yes, the birdbath is still here.”
I followed her into the clump of enormous hydrangea bushes. They formed a rough circle around a wide stone birdbath so old and overtaken by moss and vines that it looked like it had sprung naturally up from its surroundings, instead of being placed there by human hands. The water inside it was perfectly still, the sky above reflected in it like a mirror.
Xiomara pointed a finger over her shoulder and said, “Bring down one of those chairs from the porch, Wren. I’m on my feet too much as it is, and this could take some time.”
I hurried over to the porch, and dragged one of the rockers back to the hydrangea bushes. Xiomara settled herself in it with a groan, and then gestured for me to stand on the opposite side of the birdbath. I went and stood where she indicated, bouncing on the balls of my feet, and shivering slightly in the rapidly cooling breeze that was rolling in off the water. Maybe the weather was starting to turn at last.
“What exactly are we doing?” I asked, after a few moments of quiet.
“We are scrying,” Xiomara said.
“We are?” I asked, swallowing hard against the anxiety now sitting in my throat, like an obstruction.
I had never attempted scrying, as Xiomara knew. It was not one of the methods of spirit magic we had yet tried in our lessons together, but that didn’t mean I was completely unfamiliar with it. In fact, scrying was one of the reasons I’d almost died in June.
When Bernadette Claire made contact with her ancestor Sarah Claire—the same Sarah Claire, incidentally, who had stolen the grimoire now sitting back at Lightkeep Cottage for the first time in centuries—she had strengthened that connection using a mirror that had once belonged to Sarah. She had, in essence, bound Sarah to that mirror, and used it to communicate back and forth. At the time, I had not realized there was a name for spirit communication through a reflective surface. Now, I knew that it was a very old magical practice called scrying. All the times as a kid I watched a fortune teller gaze into a crystal ball, or an evil queen demand answers from the “mirror, mirror on the wall,” I had actually been watching pop culture versions of scrying. The real thing—watching Bernadette whisper brokenly into that haunted mirror—had been far more terrifying than any evil queen on a movie screen could ever be.
“M-maybe we should try a method we’ve tried before,” I suggested, trying to sound robustly practical and logical. “We’re not likely to have much success with something I’ve never even?—”
“Wren.” Xiomara’s voice, as she spoke my name, was unusually gentle. “You cannot judge scrying on what you saw in the lighthouse.”
Damn it. I really was a terrible actress.
