Page 102 of Witches of Honeysuckle House
The window opened and closed.
“I have to do this,” she said. “I’m not ready to let you go.”
She took Ink and set him in the middle of her spell circle. He looked up at her through his big yellow eyes, then he turned around a few times before lying down and resting his little head on his little paws.
Clara bit her lip.
“Big girls don’t cry,” she said to herself. It wasn’t something her mother had ever said to her. In fact, Evie told her all of her emotions were beautiful and important and needed to be given space. But she’d heard a teacher at school say it to one of her classmates, and it had seemed to work then. She thought it might work now.
It didn’t.
With shaking hands, she pulled the extra blue-and-pink candle from her bag. She picked up a knife from the table to cut off the top. The blade slipped the first time, nicking her finger. Though blood welled from her skin, she made the cut, then she flipped the candle over, and made two more on the bottom so she could light the wick. She set it in the circle beside Ink. He rubbed his head against her hand, and Clara bent down to press a kiss on the top of his head.
She struck a match, and the house began to shake.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Evie, Now
“We’re never going to make it,” Evie said as she dug her keys from her pocket and took off at a run for the door. Nothing mattered to Evie as much as her daughter—nothing—but she’d been so worried about the fate of her own magic she forgot to keep an eye on Clara. Now, Clara was about to do something she’d never be able to undo, and it was Evie’s fault.
“Evie!” Florence called. “Wait!”
But she didn’t stop. She didn’t even look back.
“Evie!” This time it was Angela, and she was right behind Evie. She grabbed Evie’s hand, slowing her movement.
“We don’t have time.”
“Look,” Angela said. Evie paused at the wonder in her voice.
She turned to find Angela pointing back the way they’d come. There, beside the door to the room the shop had created for them, was another door. Florence and Owen stood in front of it, and when Florence turned the knob, it opened into the hallway outside Evie’s bedroom.
Evie’s breath caught in her throat. Though she knew her sister had not cast a spell to bring the door into being, she also knew thiswasher sister’s magic. Ink & Pages was the home her sister had created after she’d left Honeysuckle House behind. It knew her, it loved her,and because Florence loved Clara, because she loved Evie, it had given them a chance.
Evie ran for her sister, for the door, for her daughter.
She stepped through it and into Honeysuckle House. The floorboards shook beneath her feet. She stumbled, but Florence caught her as she, too, crossed into the hallway. Once Evie regained her footing, she pushed through her bedroom door and took the spiral stairs up to the attic. She landed on the threshold to find the lights flickering on and off on the other side of the broken wall.
Lightning crackled across the sky.
“Clara!” Evie shouted as she ran through to the other side to find her daughter with a match burning in her hand.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Clara, Now
“Mommy?” Clara asked, taking her eyes off the match. The flame traveled down the stick and brushed up against Clara’s fingers. She yelped and shook it out. Then, she cried harder.
“I can’t do it.”
She felt the failure of the moment in her chest and her throat and her stomach. She wanted so much to save the house and to save her family’s magic. She was so close to doing just that, but she loved the kitten too much to give him up.
“I can’t hurt Ink.”
As the words left her mouth, the house stopped its shaking. The lights steadied, electricity humming softly in the air. Thunder rumbled outside as the rain continued its assault.
One minute Clara’s mom stood at the top of the spiral staircase, in front of Florence and Angela and Owen, the next she was right there beside Clara. She scooped her up off the floor and crushed her against her chest, somehow both gentle and firm and Clara wished she’d never let her go.
