Page 26 of Witches of Honeysuckle House
Evie glanced around the room, looking for something she missed. She stepped past her mother’s altar, stopping in front of the bookcase where several journals lay as if they’d only just been dumped off the shelf. There among them sat her mother’s diary from 1986, the sameone Evie thought she’d lost. If the journal was in this room, then it couldn’t have been her mother who put it there. She knelt down and started stacking up the fallen books.
“Find something?” Angela asked.
Evie tilted her head back, but before Angela came into view, Evie’s eyes landed on a broken rod and chain hanging from the ceiling, the edge of the metal jagged from where it had snapped from an old lighting fixture. The day of her mother’s death flared bright in Evie’s memory. The honeysuckle vines that had attacked Florence the moment they’d stepped on the property. Evie’s inability to stop them. The fear that the curse had claimed her sister. And then, a crash had echoed from somewhere deep inside the house, and with it the cracking of wood and metal and glass. Evie could still hear her mother’s scream if she closed her eyes. When they’d found her, her mother was already dead, her body pinned beneath the chandelier.
A sense of unease tapped its fingers along her spine, but Evie forced her voice calm.
“Mommy?” Clara asked.
“That is a very interesting theory, honeybee,” Evie said slowly. “But she would have no reason to bind the house. The house is our friend.”
“And our family!” Clara said brightly.
At their words, the house’s moaning stopped. Though the attic grew quiet, Evie’s pulse quickened.
“Right,” Evie said, something in her heart breaking. Because despite everything, the housewastheir family. Even if it had deceived Evie, she couldn’t blame it. She wouldn’t want to be left alone, cursed to hurt the ones she loved.
“If it wasn’t the house, maybe Grandma was trying to bind the curse,” Clara said before she turned her attention back to exploring the rest of the room.
“Now there’s an idea.” Evie tried to keep her voice light and thoughtful.
Angela saw right through it. She came to stand beside Evie, close enough for her to whisper, “Are you alright?”
Evie brought her mouth the Angela’s ear. “I think Clara was right.”
“You can bind a curse?” Angela asked.
Evie shook her head subtly, then nodded to the ceiling directly above them. Angela glanced up at the remains of the old chandelier, then back down, one eyebrow arched. Evie dropped to her knees and lifted the edge of the rug. There, in the wood, markings as if something had crashed through once, long ago.
Evie stood and brushed the dust from her knees. She leaned in close to Angela once more. “The house kept this room from us.” It had shut away her mother’s spell and the very journal Evie had read that made her think her benevolence could break the curse.
“Then how are we in here now?” Angela asked.
Evie glanced at her daughter who held her mother’s quartz in the palm of her hand.
“Why did you think the fire was your fault?” Evie asked her.
Once more tears welled up in Clara’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to hurt the house.”
But Evie took her hand and said, “Don’t you see, honeybee? You made this possible. Your magic broke through whatever kept us from finding this place.”
Clara’s eyes brightened. “When we made the candles yesterday, I was thinking about you and Aunt Flo. I know she doesn’t ever come here, and I wanted her to. You and Angela are always talking about how lonely she is, so I put all of those feelings together. I did the pink wax because you love Aunt Flo and I love Aunt Flo and everyone should love Aunt Flo, and then I added the blue mostly because it felt right.”
Evie smiled softly. “Trusting your intuition.”
Clara nodded emphatically. “When I lit the candle I spoke my intentions, like you taught me. I asked for the fire to bring her a friend, and after everything I heard you and Angela talking about this morning with the house … I asked it to show me how I could help. Then the whole candle burned, fast. Really fast. And then … and then …” She looked back toward the hole in the wall and sniffled. “I wanted to help it, not set it on fire.”
“Fire is part of our magic,” Evie said. “And I’m the one who left that candle burning.”
“And,” Angela chimed in. “From what the firefighters said, there really isn’t much damage at all.”
“Does that mean we can come back tomorrow?” Clara asked. “And maybe this time Aunt Florence will come!”
“We could call her,” Angela said. “If anything is going to bring Florence back here, this is it.”
Part of Evie knew Angela was right. The spell would be stronger with the two of them, and with the way Florence felt about Honeysuckle House, she’d have no qualms binding it. But if Evie were going to do this, she had to find a way to make sure the spell would only bind the darkness in the house—whatever it was that caused the house to kill—rather than putting out its magic all together.
No, binding the house was something Evie had to do alone.
