Page 21 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland

Surprises wouldn’t be surprises if you saw them coming. So I can’t tell you everything they say, not even about who’s going to win tonight. I wish I could.

—Evie Oxby, to Rihanna at the Grammy Awards

Beatrice frowned. “To be honest, that wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for.”

Her sister held up a finger. “The blade that flew off the wood chipper.”

They hadn’t talked about the incident at dinner. “How do you know about that?”

“Small town. Everyone knows.” She held up another finger. “Us, finding each other.”

“Could be coincidence.”

Cordelia shook her head. “It was an unearned gift that took no energy from us. It was a miracle. Have there been any more?”

“No. I don’t think so. I’d know, right?”

“Miracles tend make themselves known kind of obnoxiously. Usually. Holy shit.” Her eyes got a glossy sheen. “Did she give you a time frame?”

“She said she saw the number one. She didn’t think it was one day or one year, but couldn’t tell if it was one week or one month. Could have been one decade by that argument, right?”

Cordelia made a strangled noise that wasn’t quite a sob, but her nose went red the same way Beatrice’s did when she was fighting emotion. “Sorry. Shit.” Cordelia held up a hand. “Sorry.”

“So—” Beatrice’s voice cracked. “So you believe it?”

The effort Cordelia put into pulling herself together was visible, her face relaxing and softening, her body language easing. “Okay, while some psychics can predict the future, it’s only ever a guess. A suggestion, one that can be refashioned.”

At Cordelia’s calm words, Beatrice felt her own heart rate steady. Her sister helped people die, right? No wonder she was good at the whole calming thing. “Refashioned. Like, undone?”

Cordelia pulled the book closer to her on the table. “That would imply a prophecy or a vision could be erased, and while it can’t, it can sometimes be turned into something else. We might be able to bend it a little.”

Beatrice released a tight, stale breath. “So maybe I’m not going to die? Or can we find a way to block the miracles? Not that… not that I believe any of this.”

Cordelia’s smile wobbled. “Well. I hate to break it to you, but yes, you’re going to die just like the rest of us, but maybe we can do something about the timing. Because I’m not going to be okay with losing you after I’ve only just found you.” She closed her eyes, swallowing hard.

Beatrice’s fingers worried at the edge of the paper cup. “You do this all the time, though, right? Help people die?”

“Not you. I refuse to help you with that, just for the record. Okay?”

“But how do you do… wait, what do you do, exactly?” And why wouldn’t she do it for Beatrice? Was there something scary or bad about whatever it was she did?

Cordelia touched the book’s cover with just one fingertip, tracing a decorative fold in the dark leather.

“It’s just about being present. Not letting anything else get in between the dying person and what’s really in the room with them at that moment.

Allowing whatever love is there to flow without interruption, ideally.

” She cleared her throat. “It’s also about helping them understand what leaving this plane might feel like and sound like.

Hospice often works with the families, and so do I, of course, but my job is to be there at the end, even when no one else might be. ”

An image of Naya’s last few moments rose in Beatrice’s mind. “How do you handle the rage?”

“Same as any other emotion. I let it move through and blow on out to the other side.”

Beatrice’s fingers tightened on the hanky as she remembered Naya making those terrible deep dry gasps that sounded like painful snoring.

Her father sobbing. The hospice worker saying it was normal, telling them that Naya couldn’t feel pain anymore.

The snow globe from their Bryce Canyon trip on the shelf above Naya’s head, the souvenir mocking them with the memory of happiness.

The hospice worker saying, Beatrice, put down your phone and be here with her now.

Her father begging, Please, Button, just hold her hand.

But the hospice worker herself had said it—Naya was beyond pain, so she was beyond knowing who was in the room with her, which meant Beatrice could keep poking at her phone, keep looking for a solution for the terrible snoring sound.

She could keep reading about agonal breathing, trying to find any source that said it was reversible, that Naya could be saved.

She’d come through so much already. She could do it one more time, and Beatrice would figure out how to make it happen.

Only she hadn’t. The snoring had stopped, and Naya was just… gone.

Now, she tucked the handkerchief into her pocket so she’d quit messing with it.

Her sister’s gaze was kind. “You’ve watched someone you love die.”

It took Beatrice a second to find her voice around the heat in her throat. “Naya. My stepmother. I’m still so angry.”

“At what?”

Such a dumb, impossible question. But she had a dumb, impossible answer to it.

“At life. For the whole death thing.” She ripped another piece of sharp plastic from the coffee cup’s lid.

“My mother died when I was little. It was the truest thing about me. I was a motherless girl, and I was so mad about it for so long. I did everything I could do to understand it, to figure out what cancer was, and why it had taken her from me. The things that were important to me—I didn’t get to keep them.

I think I was just starting to get over it, honestly.

My husband’s kids weren’t going to be some magic fulfillment for me, and we’d tried to have a baby, but it didn’t work out.

So maybe I was just about to accept that and—oh, shit, what am I saying? ”

Cordelia waited.

“I guess I was about to accept that it was all going the way it was supposed to go. I didn’t have a mother and I wasn’t going to be one.

It didn’t have to mean I was broken. But then—Astrid is alive, and it didn’t go the way it was supposed to, it just got fucked up, and now, if I end up believing in magic and miracles, I have to also believe that I have no time left?

” The steaming fury built up into a scream inside her brain. “I just can’t.”

No to magic.

No to predictions.

The butter hadn’t flown. That could have been an accident.

Wasn’t that the only “magical” thing that had actually happened?

She could have imagined the tug in her chest when Minna had written her name with the word love around it.

In fact, she was feeling that same warmth now, just thinking about Minna’s sweet face.

Grant’s house hadn’t burned down. A butter dish crashing to the floor in another room, something that no one had actually witnessed happen?

That was nothing. She hadn’t even asked if they had a cat.

They totally had a cat. She was sure of it.

Cordelia patted the back of her hand. “We’ll figure something out. Together.”

She wasn’t getting it. “I don’t believe in any of it.”

“Okay, the truth is, you don’t have to believe any of it—it’ll still work.”

Great. Yet another assumption, shot down. “You don’t have to have, like, complete faith in magic?”

“Pffft. Please. Who has that?”

“I used to, when I was a kid.” Beatrice wanted to turn the book toward her, so that she could see the symbols scratched on the pages Cordelia was turning. “I used to stand in the backyard, convinced if I tried hard enough, I could fly.”

“Now, that would be a miracle.”

It was stupid, the tiny twist of disappointment Beatrice felt. “Got it, no flying allowed.”

“Think about it like this. We can’t disable the laws of physics, because we’re bound to the system that we all share. We live inside gravity, so we abide by its rules. But we can push and pull at it, at the edges. Ah, here.”

Cordelia turned the book so they could both see.

Spidery writing traced down the page, and at the bottom was a snarl of lines that could have been undecipherable letters.

“Like I said, this grimoire is where our family has kept our spells for the last two hundred years. Before that, they were passed down orally. This, right here, is a spell for a sick person. It pushes out the illness and pulls in healing, always in equal measure.”

“So why don’t you just heal the dying, then?”

“It’s energy work, so it all has to equal out in the end.

Every reaction, and all that. With the right tools, I probably could stop one person from dying, but it would be at the expense of my own life.

But I can siphon off other kinds of energy and push them into my patients, giving them some relief when they need it.

Likewise, I can pull out some pain, but it means I have to accept it myself. ”

“So, what, you just sign up for extra pain?”

“I get migraines. When I’m in one, it doesn’t really matter if there’s a little extra pain in there.” She laughed. “I’m not a martyr. I’ve got good meds from both my doctor and from Maizie Marco, who distills the best cannabis tinctures on the island.”

“So how did the butter fly ?” Beatrice put air quotes around the last word.

“Your energy gave it a push, that’s all.

It wouldn’t have taken much out of you—you might not have felt it at all, just a small muscle cramp in your calf for a second, maybe—and it’s not like the dish rose into the air, defying gravity altogether, and whizzed in loops around our heads, right?

It got pushed, then gravity brought it crashing down. ”

“Or your cat knocked it off.”

Cordelia’s smile was gentle. “We don’t have a cat.”

Well, damn. Taking a deep breath, Beatrice said, “So do you have a plan?”

“Absolutely not. I wish I did. But we can go through the book together and I’ll tell you about what’s in it, and maybe together we can come up with something.

I think Mom knew something was wrong. She’s a pain in the ass, but she’s powerful.

She told me as I left this morning that we’ll be stronger if we work together.

Honestly, she wanted to come with me, but I said you might have questions, and that you’re probably not ready for her to answer them yet. ”

Cordelia was right, but it didn’t take much intuition to figure that out.

“I might never be. I’ve run away, except when I left, I didn’t know I was running, so I’m hoping that my best friend can ship me up some clothes soon.

I’m staying here for a while because you and Minna are here, and I’m…

curious.” What a lightweight word for the heaviness in her chest. “But Astrid? I have zero interest in her.”

“I feel the same way about Mitchell.”

A ridiculous urge to defend her father rose inside her. He’s a good man. All he cares about is his family. Naya and I were everything to him.

Now he had neither.

But losing his daughter—both his daughters—was entirely his own damn fault.

Beatrice pulled the book toward her. Cordelia said she didn’t have to believe for it to work, and that was a good thing. “So show me some things.”

But they’d gone through only the first two pages (a method of encouraging bees to make more honey, and a ritual for full-moon house cleansing) when her sister’s cell buzzed with a text.

“I’m so sorry.” She tapped something back. “I have to go.”

“A patient?”

“Yeah. I honestly don’t think it’s her time yet, but her husband is scared.” She reached for the book, but Beatrice closed her fingers around the edges.

“Can you… can you leave it with me?”

“Oh, wow. No. I’m sorry, I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s… precious.”

“And you don’t trust me.”

“It’s not that—it’s just that everything we know is in there.”

“And I know none of it. Please?” The smooth leather warmed under her touch, almost as if it were alive. She wanted more of it, even though deciphering the wobbly script hurt her eyes. “I won’t… do anything with it.”

“Astrid wouldn’t like it.”

“That just makes me want to keep it more. Pretty please?”

Cordelia’s cell pinged again. Blowing out a breath, she said, “Okay. But I need you to look in my eyes and promise with your whole heart not to open the page that’s folded in on itself. The one in the middle that’s sealed with wax.”

A chill raced down the back of Beatrice’s neck. “What is it?”

“I can’t even tell you that much. I just need you to promise that you won’t unseal it.”

“I promise I won’t.”

“Thanks. It’s really important. Okay, make a list of the new questions you come up with, and we can go over them tomorrow. Come by Which Craft when you can? Shit, I have to run.”

Unexpectedly, she kissed Beatrice on the cheek.

Long after the door had shut behind her, after the boat had stopped its tiny movement from her disembarking, Beatrice could still feel the kiss there, warm against her skin.