Page 32 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland

If you need a sign, ask for a sign. What’s the worst that can happen? You don’t get one? Fine. Then you go get a bagel and a nice cup of coffee. But if you do get one…

—Evie Oxby, in conversation with Lisa Ling, on CBS News

It’s really that bad at the library?” Even though Beatrice had been spending so much study time there, she rarely saw Minna, whose summer intern job had something to do with archiving in the basement.

They’d already finished the churros and most of their hot chocolate.

Minna’s hair was still up in a towel, and she’d changed into a green-and-black argyle robe (which, in a masterful feat of textile engineering, was also glittery).

The angry tightness of her body had softened, and she slumped so low on the sofa that she might slide right off into a sparkly argyle puddle.

“It’s not bad at all. I’m just in a stupid mood.” Her eyes were shut tight.

Surely, Beatrice hadn’t been so self-aware, so clear about how she felt, at that age. “Is there anything that might help you feel better?”

Minna opened her eyes. “We could do manicures. I mean—oh, never mind.”

“Why do you sound so sure I wouldn’t love that?”

“Gran and Mom think manicures are dumb, and your nails look like they haven’t been polished in a year. No offense.”

“None taken.” Beatrice held them up. At least she kept them filed and rounded. “But you’re wrong—it’s been way longer than a year. Six years, I think? I had them done for my wedding day.”

A small screech. “Six years ? That is so sad .”

Ten minutes later, the room smelled of acetone and polish.

Minna insisted on being the manicurist, allowing Beatrice to touch neither her own nor Minna’s nails.

“I’m the expert here. Let me do my thing.

” They both sat on the floor, Minna on the opposite side of the coffee table.

The afternoon sun streamed in, lighting the top of her black hair with a brightness that glowed almost blue.

Outside, the afternoon shadows lengthened, and inside, music poured from Minna’s phone through the living room speakers, a dark techno-pop Beatrice didn’t know but liked immediately.

Then Minna said, “Have you been thinking about your tattoo?”

Beatrice felt almost drunk as she watched Minna wield the nail polish brush. Maybe she was high on the fumes? Her body felt relaxed and warm, her limbs heavy and content. “Not much.” It wasn’t a no.

A bright flash of a smile was Beatrice’s reward. “I’ve been working on a couple of new designs. But of course, you could design it if you wanted. Or I could help you.”

“You mean a sigil tattoo?”

“If that’s what you wanted.”

“Like Reno’s.”

“Lots of people have sigil tattoos. They just don’t always know it. You know that if you get someone’s name tattooed in a heart on your upper arm, it’s a kind of spell, right?”

I choose to believe in spells now, unless someone proves otherwise. But she couldn’t help asking, “How do you explain such a big laser removal market, then?”

“Good point. Maybe the people doing the spells aren’t very powerful.”

“You’re powerful.” Beatrice didn’t mean it as a question.

“Yeah. I think maybe sometimes Mom gets scared because of it, but that’s dumb. She’s more powerful than I’ll ever be, and I can tell that when the two of you are together, that’s even more off the charts.” She paused. “I wish I had a twin.”

“But you’re unique. There’s no one like you in the entire world, not a single copy of you anywhere.”

“Ha. That would be too much of this fabulosity for the world to handle.”

“I’m sure it would. So what are the designs you’re working on?”

A look—was it slyness?—crossed Minna’s face. “I want to tell you. I’m just not sure I should.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t trust you.”

It stung only a little. “I get it. We met two weeks ago. That’s fair.”

“Nooo.” She closed her eyes and groaned. “I know I can trust you, like, I get that. I just can’t trust you not to go to Mom with something I tell you.”

Beatrice longed so much to have a secret with Minna that the tips of her fingers ached with it. “As long as it’s not illegal and you’re not going to hurt someone else, I promise I won’t tell your mom.”

Minna peeled one eye open. “Hmm.”

How should she play it? Did Minna want to be persuaded to share?

Or would that make her clam up? Beatrice inhaled the tang of the polish and said, “I’d love to know.

But only if you’re comfortable. There’s no hurry.

I’m not going anywhere.” It felt both good to say and scary as hell—she couldn’t guarantee its truth.

But they were the right words. Minna pulled herself closer to the table.

“Okay. So. I found some old pictures of my dad, and I had them blown up so I can see the tattoo he had on his forearm. It looks like a sigil, but it’s blurry, even blown up, and I’m rabid to figure it out.

If I do, I’m going to ask Mom if I can please get my first tattoo.

I’ll even go to a professional, if that’s what she wants me to do. ”

“She must have known what his tattoo was—can you ask her?”

Minna’s gaze dropped. “She won’t talk much about him, says it hurts too much. I just think—no, I hope—that if he and I shared the same tattoo—” She broke off.

“Then you’d hear him? Wait, that’s your grandmother who hears the voices. You hope that you’ll get an image from him?”

Minna frowned. “How do you know all that? Did Mom tell you? She said we weren’t supposed to talk about it until you were ready.”

“Reno.”

“She told you? Reno told you? She trusted you like that?” Minna reached over the table and, in a surprise move, grabbed both of Beatrice’s hands, apparently confident her nails were dry. “Do you—holy shit! You do! You believe us now!”

Beatrice let Minna gaze into her eyes for two long, uncomfortable seconds, then she pulled away. “Maybe.” What a cop-out. “Yes. Why not, right? I’m trying belief on for size. Can’t hurt, right?” Unless it can.

Minna gave an adorably fierce fist pump. “Thank god . I wasn’t sure how you were going to help me out if you didn’t believe.”

Beatrice’s cheeks warmed with the thought that Minna wanted help from her, but first, she had some questions that felt like they’d been piling up inside her. “Hmmm. Real quick, is talking to people who have—uh—passed on, is that the family magic?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are Hollands special that way? Or can anyone who can do magic do that, too?” Oh, this kind of question felt so strange coming out of her mouth.

“Mediums aren’t unicorns or anything, but I’d guess they’re rarer than your average street-level psychic.”

“What’s a street-level psychic?” She’d have to add it to her spreadsheet.

Minna shook her head. “Just made it up. Don’t even know why I said it. It’s like this: All mediums are psychic. But not all psychics receive information from the dead. Some just read tarot or dreams or tea leaves or get weird feelings and cross the street right before a safe falls out of a window.”

“Why does our family have the medium part of it? Is it something you earn? Or work up to?”

“It just kind of… is, I think.”

“And it’s not just our family.”

“No way. Lots of us out there.”

“Do you all know each other?”

“Of course. Massive Facebook group.”

“Really?”

Minna gave a joyful hoot. “You’re so gullible, oh, my god. Your face!”

“Minna!”

“Honestly, some elder witches probably do have a Facebook group, but that doesn’t seem very smart. There are meetups, though.”

Beatrice narrowed her eyes. “Now I don’t know whether or not to believe you.”

“Seriously. Like huge camping trips, with lots of us. Music all night, and spells in the woods, and honestly, a bunch of meetings that require unanimous agreements and a bunch of truly mind-numbing bylaws. I skip those as much as possible.”

“It’s okay if I ask you more questions as I think of them?”

Minna’s eyes crinkled with pleasure. “I want you to. It makes me feel smart. And I’m so happy you believe us. So now, will you help me ?”

“Nothing illegal, right?”

“One thousand percent.”

Beatrice lifted a polka-dotted fingertip. “As your accountant, I must point out that a thousand percent is an impossibility.”

“It’s one hundred percent legal. I just want you to try your writing thing again.”

Beatrice should have seen that coming. Minna had seemed so brokenhearted when nothing from her father came through the week before. But then she’d lied about it to her mother. “Why did you say that about your friend? Sienna, right?”

Minna heaved a sigh. “Because whenever I bring Dad up, Mom ends up crying. Sometimes she even gets headaches. Migraines. Then I feel like it’s all my fault. But it’s not fair, that she gets to know everything about him, while I know literally nothing.”

But could Beatrice risk it? She had only three miracles left, and what if Cordelia had been wrong about auto-writing being simple magic and (probably) not a miracle trigger? “I don’t think that’s the best idea. It didn’t even work last time, honestly.”

Her niece spoke quickly. “I know we didn’t hear from him, even when I asked you to think about him—you heard from randoms instead, and that had to be hard.

But I’m wondering if your mediumship doesn’t rely on something physical from the person who’s on the other side to make that connection.

Like, Evie Oxby—have you seen her Netflix series? ”

Beatrice hadn’t watched it yet, but she didn’t feel like admitting to Minna that by now she practically had certain sections of Grant’s client’s latest book committed to memory. She knew exactly how Evie Oxby felt about holding objects while reading for a subject. “No.”

“She’s real deal as fuck, and a lot of the time, she holds something to call the spirit. You could try that? Maybe get a leftover vibration, right?”

And that, exactly, was what Beatrice had been trying to untangle for the previous couple of days.

It almost made sense to her. It wasn’t just a hippy seventies idea: According to Einstein and everyone who came after him, all physical objects actually did vibrate at particular frequencies.

If a person had an object they loved very much, an object that was frequently close to their body, then it made a certain sense that the object and the person might have shared a frequency overlap.

Beatrice had dived down this rabbit hole so deeply in the last three days that, yes, she probably did know enough about it to move forward. And if she understood it, she could keep control of it. Surely she could prevent another miracle.

But there was one problem with Minna’s logic. Beatrice kept her voice gentle. “What about those others I heard from?” Holy shit, she was admitting out loud that she’d written words that came from dead people. “I wasn’t holding anything that belonged to them.”

“Yeah, I know, but you could try, right? Would you do that? For me?”

I’d sleep in the snow wearing a swimsuit for you. I’d jump out of a plane with no parachute and build one on the way down out of my hair if it helped you in any way at all.

I’d die for you.

“Yes,” Beatrice said.