Page 48 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland

The dead loved just as hard as we do now. Think about that, how many people have been loved over the millennia. Isn’t that the most gorgeous thing you ever heard?

—Evie Oxby, in conversation with Hilton Als

How quickly Reno’s expression changed, hope skating across her eyes, her mouth—and then, just as rapidly, the hope was gone. “Nah. She’s not the type.”

“What do you mean?”

A shrug. “Dunno. Just think she’d make it to wherever it is they go, and get pretty busy doing things. She’d be loved. Popular. Probably on three committees and managing a minor galaxy or something. I don’t want to bug her. Besides, she’s a close one, and I get it. We don’t fuck around with them.”

Reno rubbed her sternum, and another cloud passed over her face.

“What is it?”

She closed her eyes. “That darkness keeps rolling through, like some kind of ominous lightning storm. It was here for a second, and now it’s gone. I didn’t think it was anything but… I don’t like it.” She rested her hands flat on her knees and stared forward into the darkness.

“That scares me.”

Reno nodded. “Me, too.”

Mustering all the courage she could, her breath high and tight at the top of her lungs, Beatrice placed her hand on top of Reno’s.

She felt it then—the fear receded, followed by a quick piercing joy and a wave of heat. Could Reno feel it, too?

“Welp.” Reno patted Beatrice’s hand in a friendly way, so kind that it almost felt paternal. “I think I’ll go check on Cordelia and see if she needs help with anything.”

Ah.

So the answer was a very clear no. Reno felt nothing between them.

Beatrice swallowed the bitter taste of disappointment, and worse than that, shame. How ridiculous she was. What a fool.

She stood as Reno ambled to the gate with her hands stuck in her pockets. She’d wait until Reno was safely up the path and then she’d go find her father—it was getting late, and she would need to get him back to his hotel. Quiz him about his meds.

But Reno had stopped moving, her back rigid. Through the dimness, Beatrice could see her hand shake on the garden gate’s latch.

Get over yourself. Reno was obviously having another wave of ghost feelings swamp her—the least Beatrice could do was swallow her hurt feelings and check on her.

She hurried down the path. “Can I help?”

Reno’s jaw stayed clenched, and she looked straight ahead, out to the edge of the cemetery.

“Is the feeling back?”

Reno shook her head.

And something about the way Reno was holding herself made Beatrice ask, “Is it Scarlett? Do you… feel her?”

Reno gripped the top of the gate and gave a low rumble in the back of her throat.

“How can I help? What’s going on? Should I go find Cordelia?”

Instead of answering, Reno held out her hand.

There, resting on her ring finger, was a firefly. It fluttered, glowing unsteadily.

Beatrice gasped, wordless for a moment. Then, “But—you said they don’t exist here.”

“They don’t,” Reno whispered.

It glimmered there for a few more seconds, blinking its tiny light off and on in some kind of code Beatrice didn’t understand. Then it rose. It flew from Reno’s finger and landed on Beatrice’s ring finger.

It was so lightweight, she couldn’t feel it. Was it even real? Could it be a shared hallucination?

Beatrice squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, the firefly was still there.

Then it flew up into the night sky, blinked twice, and disappeared.

“Reno—”

Reno spun toward her. Putting both hands behind Beatrice’s neck, Reno looked into her eyes for one long, stunned moment.

Then she kissed Beatrice.

Hard.

Long.

Devotedly.

The kiss—how had Beatrice lived her life this long without being kissed like this before?

It was rain falling on a hot day. It was a lightning strike in a dry forest. It was a new country, one Beatrice didn’t know existed and had never wanted to travel to, but now, it was the only nation she wanted stamped on every single page in her passport.

The kiss burned with sex and heat, but also, Reno’s lips were so soft, Beatrice wanted to write an ode to them.

They, by themselves, deserved to be worshipped.

Suddenly, she felt more religious than she ever had in her life.

At the same time, impure thoughts made her want to sacrifice herself to a creature with devil’s horns.

She pressed closer to Reno, feeling the shape of her breasts beneath her shirt, the hardness of her hipbones against her own softer hips.

As their mouths tangled, the way Reno’s fingers moved through her hair made Beatrice’s breath catch, and the more she panted against Reno’s lips, the tighter Reno pulled her against her body.

Then Reno gasped, and it sounded different—it wasn’t a gasp from something Beatrice had done to her.

Beatrice opened her eyes.

Reno was gazing at the garden around them—the roses, the violets, the hollyhocks, and the dahlias—no matter their normal color, they’d all gone white.

And they glowed , each bloom seemingly lit from inside.

Their luminescence put the twinkle lights hanging above them to shame.

Beatrice could almost see them breathing, exhaling the opalescent light that swirled up and around them.

No, she wasn’t imagining it—they were getting taller, reaching for the sky, growing inside the glow.

The arbor of jasmine that Reno had made for her Scarlett was the brightest of all, each tiny white flower expanding to shine with the light of the stars above.

Reno said, “You.”

It wasn’t just the flowers. Reno’s skin radiated a pale blue gleam that made no sense at all against her normally warm skin tone but turned out to be the most beautiful thing Beatrice had ever seen. She followed Reno’s gaze to her own body, and she, too, was emanating the same blue-silver shimmer.

And wherever Reno’s wondering fingers touched, a soft trail of pearlized light was left behind, as if her fingers were sweeping through a sea’s bioluminescence rather than touching the skin of Beatrice’s arm.

Beatrice leaned forward to kiss Reno, softly. A test.

The brightness on Reno’s lips intensified, and in almost exact measure, so did the glow of the flowers.

It was as if the moon had dived out of the sky and moved under their skin, into the petals, into the very air around them, the air that trembled with something bigger than just desire. Bigger than just need.

“What is this?” Reno raised her hands, palms up, as if testing the air for rain. The jasmine arbor above her head seemed to sigh with pleasure. “Is this…”

“A miracle,” breathed Beatrice. “I think so.”

“Shit.” Reno pulled her against her body. “What number?”

“Six.” Beatrice ran her finger over Reno’s bottom lip, and the white-blue glow increased. The color should have been cold, but it wasn’t. It was life .

“It can’t be.”

She knew. She agreed. “But… it might be.”

How can I be falling in love?

Reno said, “I think I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Me, too.” Beatrice closed the gap between their lips.

The light filled each tiny pocket of air between and around them. For a few moments, as they kissed, the light was them. They were the roses that gleamed, they were the shimmer, the brightness, the hope.

Keeping her hand on the side of Reno’s face, Beatrice whispered, “But it doesn’t make sense.”

Reno’s gaze was equal parts hope and fear. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that things don’t have to make sense?”

Of course things have to make sense.

She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, a sharp cry rose in the dark—a thin wail of pain that went on much too long.

Minna.