Page 35 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland

Some souls play such important roles in our lives that we can’t escape them. Would we really want to?

—Evie Oxby, in conversation with Glennon Doyle on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast

Was it okay to stab an old lady with a silver needle? Because Beatrice really, really wanted to. It was a thin needle—it wasn’t like it would kill her.

“Twins!” Minna looked gobsmacked. “But I only know about Anna.”

Cordelia pressed her fingertips into the table so hard, her nail beds striped pink and white. “Twin girls. Anna and Louise. There’s no way you would have known, honey.”

“But it’s not in the book—”

“Let me finish, okay? Not everything’s in the grimoire. There are some things we pass on orally. One of those things is that the power of Holland twins is immense. The power is multiplied by more than just a factor of two.”

Beatrice’s hands and feet tingled painfully, as if they’d fallen asleep without her noticing.

Her sister’s voice was strangled. “And… we’re back to Theodore. He was a—”

“Just tell them,” said Astrid.

Cordelia shot a look at Minna. “We don’t know how she found out, but Valeska learned that Theodore had a terrible plan for their daughters.

He… oh, crap, I don’t want to say this.” She took a deep breath.

“He planned to have children with their daughters when they grew up, so that their combined familial powers would multiply exponentially.”

Minna blanched. “That’s the worst and grossest thing I ever heard.”

Cordelia inclined her head. “Then Valeska and Theodore disappeared. Not long after they left, his remains were sent back in a pine box to his family on the island, along with a rather murky story about him contracting an unnamed infection, but Valeska didn’t come back with his body. She never returned to the island.”

Sitting forward, Minna said, “What about the babies? Anna and Louise?”

“They were only thirteen months old. Valeska left them with her mother, Xenia.”

The same age I was when Astrid left. Beatrice shifted in her seat.

Cordelia continued, “From the grimoire, we know a couple of things. Most importantly, we know that Xenia stripped the Velamen power out of her granddaughters, attempting to keep their powers solely of the Holland lineage.”

Beatrice’s head ached. “How?”

“We don’t know that exactly, but we think that whatever method she used went badly for one of the babies.

Louise died shortly after her parents disappeared.

The power Xenia removed from the girls is probably the power she put into the forbidden sigil that’s sealed in the book.

We also know that she kept teaching Anna, and that Anna became more powerful than her grandmother.

Anna eventually married and gave birth to Rosalind”—Cordelia looked at Beatrice—“our grandmother.”

Astrid said, “My mother, Rosalind, was the strongest one. Until I came along. Hollands get stronger as our lineage lengthens. So then… then there were you two.”

The twins. What had Cordelia meant by the power of twins multiplying? If that were true, why couldn’t Beatrice do more than shove around a plastic utensil and occasionally write for the dead?

“And then there was me,” said Minna in a small voice.

Cordelia squeezed her daughter’s hand. “And all that time, the Velamens were growing stronger in their hatred of the Hollands for what they believed was the murder of Theodore Velamen, and the theft of their power.”

Minna’s eyes were huge. “Theft?”

“It’s not like we actually stole it. The power that Xenia stripped from the twins and put in the grimoire was energy they never got back, but the thing is, the Velamens tend to have big, loud energy, and they burned themselves out, wearing their magic down like an eraser until all that was in them had bled back into the land. ”

Bluntly, Beatrice asked, “Are they all dead?”

A nod. “The last one, Otis Velamen, died six years ago.”

Minna blinked. “Wait, Otis, the shoe repair guy?”

Cordelia nodded.

“But he was so nice. He was always offering to shine my shoes for free. That’s why you wouldn’t ever let me talk to him?”

“Remember how I always made you wear a friendship bracelet?”

“When it would fall off or get too small, you’d make me another one.” Minna rubbed the skin at her wrist. “I just thought you stopped wanting to make me one. Like maybe you were embarrassed of me when… But it was charmed. I should have known.”

Cordelia shook her head sharply. “I would never be embarrassed of you. Never.”

Really? What about when Minna had come out and Cordelia had rejected her? Beatrice kept her mouth shut, though, and her ears open.

Astrid leaned forward. “The bracelet was a bit of light magic, but it was enough to keep you safe until Otis was gone. In other, older times, according to our history, we knew that evil could move through ether, that evil could be called back to earth via the undead.”

“Zombies?” said Beatrice. “Come on.”

Astrid continued, “Families like the Velamens have been eradicated before, only to fight their way back to this mortal plane by twisting and using the energy of their enemies. Once banished, they tend to stay stuck unless a huge amount of their enemy’s energy is gathered in one physical location.

If they manage to pierce the veil, they can suck from that energy and return. ”

“Zombies and vampires. Oh, my.” It was getting more and more ridiculous.

The glare Astrid shot her scorched her skin. “That crossover has been a real danger in the past, but in this generation, we didn’t have to worry about accidentally drawing the Velamens back, because… Well, we weren’t as strong as we used to be. Until now.”

A thunk from something falling over in the wind outside made Beatrice jump. “What does that mean?”

Astrid said through gritted teeth, “It means that the prodigal daughter fucked everything up by coming here. You’re to blame for the danger threatening my family now.”

It was a tragedy that half of Beatrice’s genes came from Astrid, the woman who would never quit rejecting her apparently. “Well, you’re unbearable.” It was a childish retort, but it was better than telling her to fuck off, which felt like her only other option.

Reno, silent until now, held up a hand. “May I?”

Cordelia said, “Go ahead.”

Focusing her dark gaze on Beatrice, Reno said, “I told you that when Scarlett died, Cordelia talked to her.”

I choose to believe. Even when it sounds like a fairy tale, I choose to believe. Slowly, Beatrice nodded.

“She was a close one, as they say. I shouldn’t have wanted more than just that single, short connection. Cordelia made it clear that Scarlett’s soul would always be close to me, wherever I was. But I wanted to feel her more. So one night, I got Cordelia really drunk.”

Minna’s eyes widened. “What? Have I heard this story?”

Reno looked ashamed. “I didn’t want you to know.

It was a shitty thing for a sober person to do.

I got her really, really drunk and then I started crying and saying that I wanted a family again.

She said that we were family, and I insisted it wasn’t enough.

I talked in circles around her, asking her questions until she told me about the Knock.

” She took a breath. “She was so out of it, I managed to convince her to give it to me.”

Cordelia said, “It was my fault. Even blasted out of my gourd, I should have known better—”

“Mom!” Minna’s body was rigid. “After everything you’ve told me about consent. A drunk person can’t give it! It wasn’t your fault.”

Reno looked physically ill. “She’s right. I’m never going to stop regretting that I asked you to do that.”

“Oh, please,” said Cordelia impatiently. “You got the short end of that shitty stick; you know that.”

Minna said, “ That’s why you get those feelings. And why you can’t control them.”

The more they said, the less Beatrice understood. “What feelings?”

Reno looked at her. “I told you. Astrid hears voices of the dead, Cordelia communicates with them right after they pass over, and Minna sees images they give her. Me—I feel them.”

“What do you mean?”

She rubbed her sternum again. “I feel their emotions. Sometimes I feel what they felt when they died. Other times I feel their current emotions.”

“Who?”

“Anyone. Anyone dead. I can’t block it, and I can’t choose who comes through. Can’t even tell who they are, usually.”

“So,” said Beatrice, “you’re, like, emotionally possessed?”

Astrid scowled. “That’s a ridiculous way of saying it.”

“Exactly right,” said Reno. “But I’m protected in this house and in the hideout.”

It made sense now. “The sigils over the doorways. But only here and the hideout, not in your motor home? Which you park just outside a graveyard ?” She turned to Cordelia. “Why don’t you protect her in her vehicle? Or draw a sigil like that on her body?”

“You think we haven’t tried?” Cordelia pointed at the tattoos writhing from below Reno’s shirtsleeve. “It only works where we live, where the power’s the highest, we think. And she refuses to stay with us in the house.”

Reno said, “I prefer it out there. The dead don’t actually like hanging out in the graveyard, unless that’s where they spent most of their time when alive.

They tend to go to where they lived, where their emotions were the most intense.

If they do come through the cemetery, their emotions pass through me like wind. ”

Minna snickered, and the sound of it lightened the tone of the room. The candle in front of Beatrice flickered more brightly.

“Okay, yeah. I pass spirit gas.” Reno smiled.

“Anyway, I was in the motor home, and I felt this total blackness roar through me like a hurricane of the soul. This one wasn’t like the others; it had a direction.

A physical one. I was just in the way. It was headed right for the hideout.

So I ran at it. Astrid, what you told me about how it would arrive—you were right. ”

“Mom?” Cordelia stopped twisting the thread in her fingers. “What is it? We know it’s bad. And now we know you warned Reno, which, no offense, Reno, you know I love you, but Mom, that’s not cool. You should have warned all of us.”

Astrid drew herself up straighter and rubbed her upper teeth as if wiping off lipstick. “I knew she’d feel it coming first.”

Cordelia snapped, “You do know that the canaries in the coal mines were sacrificial?”

“I don’t mind.” Reno looked at her hands, the fingers interlaced tightly. “As long as I get it right.”

With a shake of her head, Cordelia said, “You know you can trust yourself. We trust you, and—”

“ I’m the one who got it right,” said Astrid. “Thread your needles. All of you.”

“Mother! Tell us!”

Beatrice fumbled with the thread—it had been years since she’d picked up a sewing needle. Maybe decades, come to think of it. The eye of the needle was so small, difficult to see in the low, flickering candlelight. This might take a while.

“The Velamens know the Holland power comes from its aggregation.”

“Can you put that in English, please?” Minna also seemed to be struggling, tilting her hands toward the light.

“Pfft.” Astrid snapped her fingers, and when Beatrice looked at her needle again, it was threaded.

So was Minna’s needle. And Reno’s. “Together, we Hollands have our full power. Twins, like you, make that power even greater. Together, we have what they desire most, what they feel cheated of. When we’re together, they’ll do anything to get across the veil to us.

Because we’ve been involved with them for so many generations, our strength calls to the strength they used to have.

Separated, our family’s power is fractured.

Separated, they ignore the Hollands. They’d almost forgotten us; I could feel it. ”

“Oh, my god.” Cordelia stared. “Mother. That’s why you split us up?”