Page 99 of Witches of Honeysuckle House
Florence grabbed her sister’s hand and squeezed it hard. “But you didn’t. That’s what matters.”
Evie leaned her head against Florence’s shoulder. “Thank you for stopping me.”
“Thank you for wanting to save my shop, even if we can’t do the same for the house.”
Evie looked up into Florence’s eyes. “You’ll do the spell with me?”
Florence didn’t hesitate to nod. “I only ever gave up our magic because I thought it would protect us. But it was never our power that endangered us.”
A pause. Then, Evie said, “It was Mom.”
Florence threw her arms around her sister and pulled her close, and for the first time in a long time, Florence felt like she was home.
Chapter Sixty
Clara, Now
Clara held Ink tightly. She pressed her face into his fur and she cried and she cried. It wasn’t fair that Honeysuckle House had to die so her mom could keep her magic and her aunt could keep her magic (which she didn’t even use) and Ink & Pages could live.
It wasn’t the house’s fault everything had gone so wrong. The house had saved her aunt. It had saved her mom.
Maybe Clara could save the house.
As the others sat preparing their cord-cutting spell, going over possible candle colors and crystals and herbs and tarot cards and every sort of magic they had at their fingertips to sever the link the siphoning spell had forged, Clara skirted the edge of the room, chewing at her lip all the while.
“Maybe add some basil for protection,” Evie suggested. “And the death card?”
“Definitely not the death card,” Owen said, horrified.
“It’s metaphorical,” Evie said, something Clara had heard her mom say more than once, and if she wasn’t so focused on saving the house, she would’ve repeated the words Evie had said when she first taught Clara about the card:Death is a transition, the end of something old to make way for the beginning of something new.
The only problem was, Clara wasn’t ready for something new.
“I’m with Owen on this,” Florence said. “We thought the tower was metaphorical, and then the house burned. Besides, we’ve never done a cord-cutting spell. We can’t afford for anything to go wrong. Regina did her spell last minute without thinking through the consequences, and look where that got her.”
If Clara had her way, they wouldn’t have to worry about the cord cutting at all. She gripped Ink close and whispered in his ear, “Go make a mess of things.”
The kitten looked up at her and blinked his little moon eyes. When she set him down, he ran straight for Florence, jumped up on the table, and sat beside her cup of tea. His tail twitched. He looked at Clara. When she nodded, he butted his head against the mug, nudging it toward the edge of the table. One. Two. Three times. It hit the ground with a crash of broken porcelain.
Florence and Evie jumped up from their seats as Ink leapt from the center of the room, forcing them to turn their backs on Clara.
“Ink!” Florence said with worry in her voice as she checked the kitten to make sure he wasn’t hurt, and it made Clara feel even worse for what she was about to do. Her aunt held him up. She inspected his paws, scratched between his ears, and said, “No harm done.”
As they set to cleaning up the spill, Clara darted in. She plucked the journal with her grandmother’s spell from the table, then slipped out of the room. Ink followed close behind.
Clara couldn’t walk all the way back to Honeysuckle House. Well, she could. She knew the way. But the longer it took her to get home, the more she risked being found out. That, and she was very tired from a very long night and it was much too dark for her to walk out there all alone. Not that Clara was afraid of the dark. But she wasn’t exactlynotafraid of the dark, either.
Instead, she headed for the back door of the bookshop. When she reached it, she said, “I’d like to go outside without the alarm going off, please.”
The door opened silently, and Clara stepped into the night. Sometime after they’d arrived at Ink & Pages, the sky had opened up again. Clara stayed as close to the wall as she could to stay dry under theoverhang. She shrugged off her backpack and hid the diary safely inside. Then, she pulled out a brown candle and a box of matches. She had several such candles nestled deep inside her backpack and had used one after her mom tucked her into bed the night before to get the candle she’d dipped from the workshop.
They were one of the first spells she taught herself. Evie wasn’t strict about much, but when it came to Clara being home before dark, she was a stickler. Clara had found a way to make sure she never had to worry her mom.
A streak of lightning flashed across the sky, and thunder rumbled so loud Ink pressed himself closer to Clara’s legs. She slid the box open, pulled out a match, then struck it against the side. She brought the red glow to the candle’s wick and said, “Take me home. And be fast about it.” She paused. “And may my loved ones be safe, my magic be good, and my work be a blessing.”
Like the taper she’d burned that brought Ink into her life, this one melted fast with the urgency of her intention. She let it fall from her hand before the wax could hit her skin, and as it did, a door appeared in the side of the shop.
Beside her, Ink looked up and gave a soft meow. Clara’s heart twinged and she started to cry all over again. But she smiled through her tears, because that’s what brave girls did, and Clara had to be brave for Ink.
