Page 124 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland
Beatrice wasn’t born knowing how to do anything except pine for a mother who’d abandoned her without glance in the rearview mirror. “You really can’t tell me where my niece is? Her life truly is at stake.”
“So many times. So manygoddamntimes they say that to me.” A pause, another long, indrawn breath.
She waited. The neighbor next door finished washing the last window and went inside without glancing at her. A seagull landed on the railing of her deck, eyeing her nervously.
Then Evie said, “No. Nope. I’m not getting anything. This one’s gonna have to be all you.”
Beatrice spoke quickly, before she lost Evie entirely. “I’m so sorry I bothered you. I’m very grateful for your time, I swear. Just one last question: Do you… do you think I know enough to do this?”
“Shit, I have no idea. All I know is that my ganache just broke. Tell Grant that if I don’t fire his ass, he owes me three free billable hours, because if I’d been watching this like I should have, it never would have separated.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Be brave, new witch. We all had to start somewhere. Trust your gut. Especially if that gut says you need black-and-white striped stockings. Who doesn’t need those, am I right? Some things never go out of style.
—Evie Oxby, at Paris Fashion Week
On the little table in Beatrice’s galley kitchen stood five candles. All were lit and flickering. It was midafternoon, but she’d drawn the curtains in an attempt to set a helpful mood.
As if she knew how to do that.
She’d already lit incense and rung a small bell four times, to the east, west, north, and south. In front of her, she’d set a notebook, a pen, and a small, sharp knife. Every book and website she’d read had different ideas on how best to ground oneself before spell casting, so she was taking a little of each and hoping for the best. Beatrice breathed deeply, and just as Cordelia had instructed her, she tried to feel her roots sink down through the boat’s hull, through the water, and into the rock below, moving down through the layers of the earth.
I can do this.
I know enough.
Was she really feeling her roots spread into the earth? Was that the cool energy she felt spreading through her? Or was it the placebo effect?
Did it matter? The placebo effect worked, after all.
“I know enough,” she whispered to herself while flipping the pages of the grimoire. “I know enough.”
At the doubled-over folded and sealed middle page, she paused. She fingered the waxed edge.
No, she couldn’t do that.
There wassomethingin here on an unsealed page that would help. Surely.
Quickly, she flipped through. No, not a casting-off spell, not a mending—
Wait. Would this one work? She read over the words of a finding spell, and something about its words rang a bell.
Beatrice scrolled through herMagicspreadsheet (the computer was the least magical thing on the table, but she needed it). In one of the cells she’d written:Sympathetic magic uses the power of like calling like, e.g. cave drawings of animals made to lure the hunted close.
It couldn’t hurt to give it a try.
Well.
She hoped it wouldn’t hurt much.
Like-to-like. Okay, so who was like Minna? Her mother. Cordelia had given Minna fifty percent of her DNA.
From the research she’d done recently, Beatrice knew identical twins shared most of their DNA.
Which meant that her own body was very like Minna’s, too.
She took out the handkerchief Cordelia had embroidered for her. Cordelia had said it was for protection, not for finding,but Beatrice was pretty sure she knew how she could make this work. She scanned another webpage she’d bookmarked, flipped through Evie’s book to a highlighted passage, and then cross-referenced her spreadsheet.
