Page 57 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland
“What?”
“Whoareyou?”
“Throw them down if you have to!” Minna shouted from the base.
“It’s not safe. Get out,now!”
Her roar was enough to terrify them into motion, and they leaped around her and out, tumbling down the ladder, Beatrice scrambling down after them.
run more go NOW—she could almost hear the words she’d written reverberating in her ears.
“Keep going! To the gazebo!” The five of them ran the fifty yards, Minna in front, Beatrice bringing up the rear.
Once in the gazebo, out of the rain, the tallest girl demanded answers Beatrice didn’t have. “What’s your problem? Now we’re soaked.” She held out a comic book. “And so are these!”
“I’ll buy you new ones,” mumbled Beatrice, feeling sick to her stomach. The smallest girl’s lower lip was trembling. WhathadBeatrice been thinking? Had she just kidnapped these kids?No, that required keeping them, right? She’d merely forced them quickly to a new place, but that was probably some kind of crime, too—
CRASH.
The sky lit up—everything did, going white-bright, the noise so loud, it was almost soundless, registering only as pressure and a terrifying heat.
Just as quickly, the light and heat and pressure were gone.
And the tree that held the tree house just… disintegrated. The lightning must have destroyed the trunk itself from the inside out, because instead of simply burning, as the tree house was doing—flames leaping from all sides—the trunk began to crumble, and then, with a thunderouswhoomp, it collapsed into itself, the biggest limbs cracking as they hit the ground, the smaller limbs catching fire.
Two of the girls burst into tears. The tallest one walked to the edge of the gazebo’s platform and threw up neatly into a trash can.
The handkerchief Cordelia had given her was in Beatrice’s hand, but she didn’t remember taking it out of her pocket. She gripped it so tightly a French knot indented the tip of her finger.
Two women and three men hurtled out of Fritz’s café, throwing themselves at the girls, shouting in confusion, their voices merging with the siren that rose in the distance.
If Beatrice had arrived a few minutes later, the parents clutching their kids would have had no one to hold.
Fritz arrived, followed by Keelia. A girl Minna’s age detached herself from Keelia’s side and wrapped her arms around Minna.
Beatrice didn’t notice her legs were giving out until Reno, who had arrived along with the parents, guided her to sit crossed-legged on the gazebo’s wooden floor.
“It’s okay,” said Reno.
“But—” Beatrice clutched at Reno’s warm, strong hands. “What if I hadn’t—what if—”
“It’s amiracle,” said the woman holding the tall girl.
It couldn’t be a miracle. She and Minna had simply done something, something that had given Beatrice information that she couldn’t have had any other way, information that had allowed her to save those kids.
Had that been… areallybig coincidence?
No, of course not. Coincidences didn’t work that way, written on paper in some kind of bizarre fugue state.
That was—it had to be—magic.
But magic didn’t exist.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Starting to learn about your own psychic power is like being alone in a tiny boat in an immense sea. During a hurricane. And your boat’s just sprung a leak, your period’s just started, you have no tampons, and your cell phone just went overboard.
—Evie Oxby,Come at Me, Boo
