Page 58 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland
So for the second time in four days, Beatrice found herself telling a fire official what had happened, how she (and this time, three others) had escaped certain death. Without discussing it, neither she nor Minna mentioned exactly how they’d ended up in the right place at the right time, and people seemed to accept her explanation.The storm was starting to rage—I just didn’t think it was safe for the girls to be in there.
Then Cordelia was there, and before Beatrice knew what was happening, she and Minna had been herded into Which Craft.
Cordelia flipped the Open sign to Closed and locked the door. Then she moved three afghans and a basket of yarn from the sofa. “Sit. Breathe. Then tell me everything.”
Astrid appeared from the back room, sweeping out in a long black linen tunic, her white hair piled artfully on top of her head. “You’ll telluseverything. And only us.” She raised an eyebrow at Reno, who was behind the counter, pulling waters out of a mini fridge.
“Reno is us, Mom. You should know that by now.”
“Oh,fine.” Astrid sank into the largest armchair. “What happened? I saw the tree fall and the fire start, so lightning, yes? But all that screaming—a little dramatic, don’t you think?”
Cordelia sat next to Minna, draping an arm over her daughter’s shoulders. “Mom, how about we let them tell us? In their own words?”
Reno handed each of them a water, and then, instead of sitting in the spare chair, she sat next to Beatrice. Her dark curls fell over her forehead as she glanced at Beatrice. In a low voice, she said, “Still okay?”
Was she? Maybe. She nodded.
Cordelia pointed at Minna. “Okay, my darling. Go.”
Minna’s words tumbled quickly from her mouth. “Okay, so we went to the graveyard because I wanted to introduce her to the relatives. We saw Anna and Rosalind’s crypt, and we sat with Xenia, and then we tried some things from the grimoire and no offense, Aunt Bea, but Mom, she wasn’t good atanything, and then I—” She broke off and stared up at her mother.
“You’re not going to get in trouble.”
“Okay, so I talked to a guide—”
Cordelia’s jaw tightened. “I told you not to do that without me.”
“—and it showed me this image sent from Aunt Bea’s stepmom, and then she kind of believed me a little more, and thenshetried it, and oh my god, you should have seen it, she reached for my pen and then she was writing—”
Astrid started. “She wrote in our grimoire?”
“She wrote in the notebook I’d brought because I’m not the dumbass you sometimes think I am, Gran, and then she went super red in the face and wrote a bunch of things, and none of them make sense, but I bet theydosomehow, we just don’t know it yet, and she still didn’t really believe, so I told her—” Minna broke off.
Cordelia squeezed her shoulder. “Yeah?”
“I. Um. I asked her if she would try again, as a favor to me. Um.”
Cordelia’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you want that?”
“I know I shouldn’t have. But I wanted to hear from Sienna.”
Beatrice stared at Minna—no matter who Sienna was, that wasn’t the truth.
But Minna gave her a miserably piteous look, the look of a lost kitten taking shelter from the rain under a truck’s rusted bumper.
So Beatrice shut her mouth. For now.
Astrid said, “Who?”
Cordelia stroked Minna’s hair. “Her friend who drowned last year, remember, Mom? Baby, we talked about that. I know you’re sad, but Sienna’s just fine where she is.”
“I know. I mean, I should have remembered. But then—this is the weirdest part—Aunt Bea didn’t even get to the end of the incantation. Maybe not even halfway! So I don’t get that, but she did it again, went all red like a tomato again and wrote down—wait, I have it here. Look.” Minna shook the notebook out of her backpack and flipped it open.
run to the tree house get them out don’t wait run and then run more go NOW
“So we ran.”
Cordelia traced the words on the page with her index finger and Astrid demanded they be read aloud to her. Minna did, andthen said, “Beatrice scaled the tree like a cat, I swear, and then the kids came out so fast, it was like she’d turned the whole thing upside down and shook it.”
