Page 94 of Witches of Honeysuckle House
Something in Regina considered setting the match down and letting her magic die, but the darkness was louder than whatever love she still harbored for her sister. She struck the match and brought the tip first to the brown candle, then the black.
As the darker candle started to burn, there was a cracking of wood.
The floorboard beneath Violet snapped in two. She stumbled.
“Mom!” Linda shouted. “It’s not working! The curse is going to take her!”
Regina hated that her daughter had to see whatever would come next, but maybe it was better this way.
“You’re right,” Regina said, voice flat.
The window opened wide, and a breeze blew through the attic as if to put out the flame, but the candle only burned brighter.
Another board snapped. Then another, tipping Violet forward. As she fell, a jagged plank tilted up.
Regina almost looked away, but though Violet had abandoned her, Regina owed her sister this: a witness to her final moments.
The wood pierced Violet’s sternum. At first the sound was thick and wet. Then there was a popping of bone after bone as it tore through her rib cage and came out the other side, through her back.
Violet’s eyes shifted up to meet Regina’s. She opened her mouth, but whatever she wanted to say was lost as blood spilled from her lips and her eyes rolled up in her head.
“We have to call someone!” Linda cried from behind Violet.
“They won’t be able to help,” Regina said. “They probably won’t even come, not with how afraid they are of this place. We were too late, but don’t worry, these candles will protect the two of us.”
As the brown candle sputtered out, spent, Regina lifted two tarot cards from the table and held them over the last bit of fire from the black taper. The flames started up the paper toward her fingertips. Once they reached her hand, she dropped what remained of the cards into a small cast iron bowl. Then, the candle winked out.
Across the room, her daughter leaned forward, one hand clutching her heart as the heat in Regina’s chest—that flickering flame that had threatened to go out—steadied, and her magic was safe once more.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Honeysuckle House, 1986
The sight of Violet on the front steps thirteen years ago had sent a current through the house’s wiring unlike anything it had felt before. Honeysuckle House had been heartbroken after she’d left. It had welcomed Tillie Grey with open doors and turned records and crisp sheets. It had watched as that welcoming created a rift between Violet and Regina the house didn’t understand. When Tillie had slipped under the water, the house had felt her hands pressing against the sides of the tub, unable to surface as the water pushed her down. Though it had tried to pull the drain or tip the tub over, it had lost control of itself in that moment. It wasn’t until Tillie stopped thrashing that it had any autonomy at all, and by then all it could do was rattle its pipes with grief.
It had done its best to be at Violet’s side after that, to let her know she wasn’t alone. But Violet had left anyway. For the next few years, it was only Regina and the house. Though they comforted each other, there were days when Regina went without speaking a word to the house, lost as she was in her own head. There were others where she yelled and raged and threw things at the walls, as if the spell she’d cast the day Tillie died had twisted her.
That’s why the house had been overjoyed when Regina welcomed Linda into the world. She’d dipped and burned a red candle, left forthe night, and a few months later, her belly had grown. Honeysuckle House had watched over her as she gave birth on the bed upstairs—no doctor, no midwife—just a determined witch and a host of candles in various colors to call in good health and good fortune. The house had done its best to keep the lights soft and low, but every moan out of Regina’s mouth was echoed with a flash of incandescent worry. Only when Linda’s first cry tore through the air did the house finally gain control of the bulbs, turning them all the way down so mom and babe could sleep peacefully.
It wasn’t until well after Linda had come into the world that the house learned of the curse, when Regina explained to Linda why they stayed home, why so few people visited. It didn’t fully understand how anyone could fall victim behind its walls, how Tillie had died under its watch. Shouldn’t the house have been able to save them?
This time, though, the house understood. When Regina lit that black candle, the spell had taken over. It made the house drown Tillie. It pulled up the floorboard that pierced Violet’s heart. Over the past few days, it had watched Regina prepare the spell once more.
This was why it had drawn Linda upstairs—so she could stop her.
“What is it you want me to see?”
Linda’s eyes swept over the room, landing on her mother’s altar. She approached the table slowly. There she found a list of spell components written out, and at the top of the paper, her unborn daughter’s name.
“Mom’s protection spell,” Linda said.
The pipes groaned, as if to say, look closer.
As she took in her mother’s handwriting, Linda’s eyes narrowed. The string, the blanket her mother had made for Florence, an old doorknob, and one of Linda’s tubes of lipstick. Beside them, the tarot cards and candles.
Linda blinked rapidly as she put the pieces together.
“This isn’t a spell meant to protect us from the curse.” Horror tinged her voice. “Mother plans to cast a spell on me. OnFlorence.”
