Page 49 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland

Don’t forget that you’re part of the Universe. You have a responsibility to the magic that already runs in your veins.

—Evie Oxby, I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts

The glow snapped off as if a light switch had been flipped.

“What time is it?” Beatrice tugged at the gate in the dark, desperate to open it. “I told Minna I’d meet her at midnight in the cemetery. I was going to tell Cordelia—”

“I should have felt it. Why didn’t I feel it?” Reno glanced at her watch as she ripped at the latch, flipping it up. “Twelve ten.”

“Shit. Shit. ” Beatrice broke into a run, not caring that the moon wasn’t bright enough to light the ground under her feet—if she fell, she’d just get up and run faster to make up for it.

Reno matched her pace step for step. “We need Cordelia.”

“She’s coming.” She felt it somehow. Cordelia would be right behind them. “Can you lead me to Minna’s father’s grave?”

“Of course.”

Cordelia was already running through the dark toward them, her face serious and pale.

Reno turned on her phone’s flashlight. “Stay close to me.”

With so many trees, even with the light, the cemetery seemed pitch dark to Beatrice, but Reno obviously knew exactly where they were going. “Step. Jump. Hole right there. Watch that root.”

Cordelia panted next to her. “ Hurry. ”

What were they hurrying to? All Beatrice knew was that it was bad.

Very bad.

They raced through a line of bigger mausoleums and took a left on a path lined by white shells.

Then there she was.

Minna squatted in the dirt of a grave, her fingers digging deeply into what looked like fresh soil. It couldn’t be her father’s grave, could it? This must be a place where someone had been newly buried, the ground still torn and naked at Minna’s bare feet.

“Honey.” Cordelia lurched toward Minna but halted at the edge of the grave. “Stop.”

Minna didn’t even look up. Her entire right hand was buried in the dirt. She was sweating as she scraped through it, and her clothes were covered in the same soil.

The headstone read, Taurus Diaz, Beloved Father and Husband.

But the fresh dirt…

Then Beatrice saw them: the clumps of grass that had been ripped out by the handful. The whole grave had been denuded, presumably by Minna’s bare hands.

And now she was drawing in the dirt, using her fingers as a stylus. Blood showed at her knuckles, but she kept scraping.

“Minna, can you stop for a minute?” Beatrice reached a hand toward her.

Cordelia, though, grabbed her arm. “ Don’t. Don’t touch her.”

Reno swayed on her other side, rubbing her sternum, her face a grimace.

From out of the woods strode Astrid, her giant black cape billowing behind her. “What is the meaning of this? Minna, cease this nonsense at once!”

But Minna didn’t look up. She still hadn’t engaged with them or even glanced once in their direction. Beatrice wasn’t sure she even knew they were there.

“Is it him?” Astrid stopped at the edge next to Cordelia.

Wordlessly, Cordelia nodded.

Nausea roiled in Beatrice’s stomach. There was something going on that she didn’t—couldn’t—understand. But she was starting to figure out what Minna was doing in the dirt.

She was drawing a sigil, dragging it deeply through the earth above her father’s body.

A long vertical line was slashed through by a horizontal one—obviously the T of Taurus’s name.

Now she was working on adding something to it, a rounder shape, but the dirt was packed hard, even after she’d ripped the grass out of the plot.

Sweat stood out on her forehead, and she grunted with the effort.

Under her breath, Astrid began whispering words, casting sibilance into the cold night air.

Cordelia said, “Minna. You have to listen to me.”

“No.”

“Minna—”

“He talked to me. I heard him.” The girl’s head whipped up, her eyes glinting in the moonlight. Her fingers stopped dragging in the dirt, blood blooming along her knuckles and at her fingernails.

“Honey, he’s not who you think he is.”

“I just need him to tell me the rest of the sigil. Mama, I’m so close. I had a little of it, and I used Aunt Bea’s spell to get this next part of it from him, but then he left—because you came.”

“I have to tell you something—”

Minna shrieked, “ STOP IT. I just need to do the spell one more time to get the rest of the sigil. I know that’s all I need.” Tears filled her eyes. “Please go. Please let me finish this. He won’t come to me if you’re here, I know he won’t.”

Astrid’s whisper increased in volume, becoming a mutter. Reno was bent in half, her breath coming in harsh gasps.

But Cordelia’s voice stayed calm. “He’ll hurt you, sugar. He—”

A silent explosion—that’s all Beatrice could think that it was—ripped through the air in a whoomp , a clap of noiseless pressure.

A voice that was more boom than actual sound filled the space around them. “ MINNA, RUN. ”

Minna leaped to standing, gave one terrified look at her mother, and bolted, deerlike, leaping over grassy hummocks and headstones.

Beatrice was frozen.

Completely.

She tried to run, but some force locked her legs in place. She tried to shout but the yell struck in her throat. She couldn’t even blink, couldn’t control her eyelids. What the hell was going on? Her flesh was solid and unmoving, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t move a muscle.

Her heart crashed inside her chest, so she obviously wasn’t dead, but she couldn’t even move her gaze—it remained stuck in the direction of Minna’s running form.

Minna got smaller and smaller, then she darted left and was lost in the dark.

In her peripheral vision, Beatrice could see Cordelia’s hand still raised, unmoving, reaching toward her now-gone daughter. She was frozen, too.

The cemetery was soundless. The trees had stopped rustling in the wind, and Astrid’s mutterings had fallen to silence. Reno’s gasping breaths had ceased.

Fear rose through Beatrice’s body in a great red tide, cresting and breaking, sucking out, and rushing back in, as her body remained entirely fixed in place.

Help.

She couldn’t even whisper it.