Page 101 of Witches of Honeysuckle House
“She’s already there,” Angela said, voice low with despair.
Evie whirled around. Her eyes searched Angela’s. “What do you mean?”
“The other day, when I took Clara to pack her bag after the fire, she filled her backpack with crystals and candles,” Angela said. “She had a bag full of brown tapers.”
Evie and Florence shared a look.
“She told me she uses them when she’s out playing too late,” Angela said. “I thought she was being clever. But I think she meant it literally.”
Clara meant everything she said literally.
A mixture of pride and terror shot through Evie. Her daughter’s magic was unlike anything Evie had ever seen. Her own magic—before her mother had bound her—had been strong like Clara’s, but she’d been afraid of it. Except for the hummingbird she’d summoned for her sister, Evie had rarely done any spells on her own until much later in life.
That her daughter had dipped a candle that could take her back to Honeysuckle House? From anywhere? If Evie weren’t reeling from what she knew her daughter intended to do, she’d be beaming. But if they didn’t hurry, Clara would complete the spell, siphoning not only Evie and Florence’s magic, but the house’s, too. All that power would twist her. It would change her like it had Evie’s mother and her grandmother. And in thirteen years, unless Clara cast the spell again, her magic would be gone. Forever.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Clara, Now
Clara stood peering through the hole her spell had burned into the attic, larger now thanks to her mother’s sledgehammer, but no less her fault. Even though her spell had hurt her home, without it, she wouldn’t be able to save Honeysuckle House. At the thought, she found herself feeling sad all over again and then mad—madder than she’d ever felt before. It wasn’t right what her grandmother and her great-grandmother had done, what she now had to do.
She cradled Ink in one arm and pressed a hand to the wallpaper.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” she said.
The pipes groaned and the floorboards creaked and something in the walls rattled.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said. “I know you love me.”
The room looked exactly as they’d left it. The beam still covered the far side. Rain poured through the hole in the roof. If Clara let the house die like her mom and her aunt planned to, they’d have to patch it themselves or call someone to come out and do it. A stranger would have to stomp around on the roof with no thought for what the house might feel, and it wouldn’t matter because the house wouldn’t be able to feel, and that realization only made Clara more determined to make things right.
She pulled the stolen diary from her bag.
“Light, please,” she said.
The house obliged, still not aware of why she’d come. She wouldn’t tell it. If Clara had learned anything from what the others had said about the journals, it was that sometimes you had to keep secrets from the people you loved.
Clara looked over the words her grandmother had scribbled on the paper. She was still learning to read, but these ones she knew. Most everything was still here. She wouldn’t use the brown candle—she wasn’t trying to make anyone stay where they didn’t want to be—but she needed the black one. Her mom had put her own intention into it to offer up her love for Angela, but if Clara made her offering first, maybe that wouldn’t matter. After all, the house had been able to stop her grandma’s candle.
But she didn’t want tokillInk. She just wanted to make him disappear. She still had the other taper she’d made from the day she’d summoned him. If she could use it to bring him into the world, then she could use it to take him out of the world, too.
Ink leapt up onto the altar, then sat right in the middle of the broken spell circle. His tail twitched.
“You are a very good boy,” Clara said through tears.
Her mom had taken one of the crystals with her—the obsidian. That was just as well because Clara’s obsidian had been a part of what she’d used to call Ink to her aunt. She fished the small, crystalline cat out of her pocket. She grabbed the tourmaline and quartz then set them up in a triangle in the middle of the floor—along with her figurine—leaving plenty of space for the real kitten.
The lights flickered on and off.
“Don’t worry,” Clara said. “I love you as much as I love Mom and Aunt Flo and Angela and …” her voice got caught in her throat. Clara was unused to crying so much, and she found she didn’t like it.
“And Ink,” she managed. The kitten looked up at her. She scratched him between the ears. It was only fair he get as many pets as she could give him before she had to say goodbye.
With tears streaming down her face, she took the items her mother had tied together with string—Clara’s rock and her mom’spendant, the doorknob and her aunt’s necklace. After setting them in the center of the circle, she took the black candle and the tarot cards and added them to the mix. Finally, she turned back to Ink who sat all alone on top of the table. She picked him up and buried her face in his fur.
“It’s not fair,” she said.
Ink meowed in response. Then, he began to purr, and Clara cried even harder.
