Page 113 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland
She felt it then—the fear receded, followed by a quick piercing joy and a wave of heat. Could Reno feel it, too?
“Welp.” Reno patted Beatrice’s hand in a friendly way, so kind that it almost felt paternal. “I think I’ll go check on Cordelia and see if she needs help with anything.”
Ah.
So the answer was a very clear no. Reno felt nothing between them.
Beatrice swallowed the bitter taste of disappointment, and worse than that, shame. How ridiculous she was. What a fool.
She stood as Reno ambled to the gate with her hands stuck in her pockets. She’d wait until Reno was safely up the path and then she’d go find her father—it was getting late, and she would need to get him back to his hotel. Quiz him about his meds.
But Reno had stopped moving, her back rigid. Through the dimness, Beatrice could see her hand shake on the garden gate’s latch.
Get over yourself.Reno was obviously having another wave of ghost feelings swamp her—the least Beatrice could do was swallow her hurt feelings and check on her.
She hurried down the path. “Can I help?”
Reno’s jaw stayed clenched, and she looked straight ahead, out to the edge of the cemetery.
“Is the feeling back?”
Reno shook her head.
And something about the way Reno was holding herself made Beatrice ask, “Is it Scarlett? Do you… feel her?”
Reno gripped the top of the gate and gave a low rumble in the back of her throat.
“How can I help? What’s going on? Should I go find Cordelia?”
Instead of answering, Reno held out her hand.
There, resting on her ring finger, was a firefly. It fluttered, glowing unsteadily.
Beatrice gasped, wordless for a moment. Then, “But—you said they don’t exist here.”
“They don’t,” Reno whispered.
It glimmered there for a few more seconds, blinking its tiny light off and on in some kind of code Beatrice didn’t understand. Then it rose. It flew from Reno’s finger and landed on Beatrice’s ring finger.
It was so lightweight, she couldn’t feel it. Was it even real? Could it be a shared hallucination?
Beatrice squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, the firefly was still there.
Then it flew up into the night sky, blinked twice, and disappeared.
“Reno—”
Reno spun toward her. Putting both hands behind Beatrice’s neck, Reno looked into her eyes for one long, stunned moment.
Then she kissed Beatrice.
Hard.
Long.
Devotedly.
The kiss—how had Beatrice lived her life this long withoutbeing kissed like this before? It was rain falling on a hot day. It was a lightning strike in a dry forest. It was a new country, one Beatrice didn’t know existed and had never wanted to travel to, but now, it was the only nation she wanted stamped on every single page in her passport.
