Page 50 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland

I’d love to tell you that you can’t make a mistake when it comes to practicing your craft. But you can. Be careful. I’d hate to lose any of you.

—Evie Oxby, Bluesky

The clap of pressure resounded again, a cold, hard punch to the gut.

Beatrice’s legs collapsed under her as she fell to the ground.

Reno, too, had dropped, but Astrid and Cordelia remained upright, swaying and gasping.

Beatrice sucked in a huge breath and hauled herself back up to standing. “What was that?”

“That was Taurus.” Astrid’s voice was acid.

“We have to go after her!”

Reno clambered up on her knees. “That kid runs twice as fast as any of us. She’s gone.”

“Oh, Cordelia—” Beatrice broke off at the look on her twin’s face.

Cordelia’s eyes flamed. “What did my daughter mean, the spell you gave her?”

Confusion twisted in her chest. “I didn’t!”

“She said you gave her something.”

“No! It wasn’t a spell. I only remembered what I imagine when I do the auto-writing. I told her because she was so frantic to hear from her dad again.”

The last word dropped into the space between them with the force of a ten-ton calving iceberg plunging into a frozen sea.

“Again,” said Cordelia.

“I was going to tell you.”

“She’s a child . Who needs protecting.”

Beatrice raised her hands. “Wait, why? Why is it so bad for her to talk her own father? I know he’s a close one, but I get it, about wanting to know your parent. He’s her father. Surely that counts for something. What do you mean that he’ll hurt her?”

“This is the worst thing you could have possibly done.”

“How would I know that, if you keep refusing to tell me anything? What’s going on ?”

“When she comes back—” Cordelia shot a look at their mother. “Oh, god, Mom, she’ll come back, right? She has to come back.”

Astrid rubbed her eyes and didn’t respond.

Touching her chest, Reno said, “It’s gone now.”

Astrid nodded. “Okay. Okay, then. We’ll go home, we’ll reset the wards on the house, and we’ll do a recall spell.” She jerked her chin in Beatrice’s direction. “Unfortunately, it’ll be stronger if she helps. We need the twinship energy.”

“Of course I’ll help!”

“Absolutely not.” Cordelia’s eyes clouded. “Mom, what if Minna gets too close to him?”

Reno said, “She’s never run away before. She’ll be back by dawn.”

Hold on. Beatrice didn’t exactly want to remind them about it—she didn’t want to be that dick—but she said it anyway. “You can’t just conveniently forget about Portland, though.”

Cordelia stared at her. “Portland?”

“Oh, come on. Minna’s not a baby, and she’s obviously good at taking care of herself on the streets.”

“ Excuse me?”

“When she came out as trans? And ran away?”

Unbelievably, Cordelia laughed. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“You rejected her. You found her living in a squat in Portland?” A sick feeling rose in her gut as a realization rose. “Oh, my god. That didn’t happen.”

Cordelia’s voice crackled with fury. “The night my daughter came out, she was hysterical, thinking I was going to kick her out of the house, or worse. I got in her bed and spent the next three hours holding her, telling her how loved she was and how grateful I was that she felt safe enough to share her real self with us. We threw her a coming-out party twice as big as the one we threw tonight, and I didn’t complain once that the party was Disney princess themed.

For fuck’s sake, Beatrice. A squat? She was twelve.

How could you just believe her? How could you be that gullible? ”

And this was why you couldn’t believe things until you had proof. How could she have gotten this so wrong?

An owl called in the distance, and the darkness felt heavy and cold on Beatrice’s skin.

“I’m so sorry. She just wanted to talk to him, and I didn’t know if he’d come through, and then he did.

His words to her were so lovely and she seemed thrilled.

I was just glad I knew enough to help. Tonight she was going to try it herself, and I was supposed to be with her.

I was going to tell you and bring you with me.

” She shot a glance at Reno, who didn’t meet her eyes. “But I got sidetracked.”

Astrid smacked her hands against the folds of her cape. “What’s done is done. He’s got some part of her. Now we have to get her back. Before it’s too late.”

“I don’t understand! What’s happening?”

“Her father is a Velamen,” said Cordelia.

“But—” She looked at the headstone that read, Taurus Diaz . “I thought they were gone. Didn’t you say that?”

“They’re gone from here, from this island.

There are more out there. He was a fourth cousin to the last Skerry Cove Velamen, a connection so distant, I never felt it.

That’s exactly the way they’d planned it.

He’d played the long game, thinking he’d have time to talk Minna into joining the side of his people when she got old enough.

When he fell off that fucking ladder—” Cordelia put her hand over her mouth.

Beatrice held her breath as she waited.

“When they said he might not make it, I did exactly what Mom told me not to do. He was unconscious in the hospital bed, and I’d put the sleeping Minna on his chest, to try to comfort him, to bring him back to us.

I was so desperate to save him… I gave him the Knock while he was lying in that bed, pushed it into him with barely a thought.

I would have done anything in that minute.

When all that power flowed into him, he couldn’t hide his own, the power he’d managed to hide from me for two years.

His strength shone out at me, coming through his skin with this terrible sick glow, bile green and blinding.

I snatched Minna off him, and his eyes flew open—I swear to goddess that if his heart hadn’t given out at that exact moment, he would have tried to rip our baby out of my hands.

” Her voice trembled, but she kept going.

“I would have had to kill him with my own bare hands. But his heart stopped, probably because of the increased power. His heart monitor screamed almost as loud as I did, and nurses ran in, pushing me and the baby out of the way. They were too late.”

Beatrice tried to pull breath into her lungs. “Cordelia…”

“I didn’t stop screaming until I was sure he was all the way gone.

He’s been trying to get back to her ever since.

If he gets her, he’ll take all her power, killing her and destroying her soul in the process.

And now, the twin energy on the island has drawn Velamens back toward us with a vengeance.

They’ve been reminded of everything they lost and have double the drive to get through. ”

So Beatrice had given Minna the last piece of the puzzle she needed to reach Taurus. “Does Minna know?”

“Of course not.” Ice cracked in her sister’s voice. “She still has too much to learn. We had a plan . And you—you ruined everything coming here.”

A chilled slice of wind whipped Beatrice’s hair against her cheek. “I didn’t mean to. I thought I knew what I was doing—”

“You knew fuck all.”

“But that’s not my fault.” Oh, how stupid the words sounded coming out of her mouth.

“I’ve been trying to learn, trying to absorb everything you teach me, but with your secrets—I swear to you, I didn’t mean to hurt her.

” Beatrice took a shaky step toward Cordelia, but her sister stumbled backward, holding up her hands.

“Don’t come anywhere near me. You—what? You simply believed I was a bad mother to Minna when she came out?

You liked Minna looking up to you. I saw that.

I was fine with that. She’d gotten an aunt who would love her, and my kid deserves every scrap of love she can get in the world.

But you should have told me about her contacting Taurus.

You did the one thing that might not only kill her, but destroy her eternal soul in the process, do you understand me? ”

That was the problem. All of this was so huge, and Beatrice didn’t understand the slightest fraction of it. “What can I do?” There had to be something she could do.

“You?” Her sister glowered. “You think you can study what we do, that you can learn it by heart, line it up on a grid and make it nice and neat, but you could spend the rest of your life trying to understand, and you’d fail.

A normal person without a magical bone in their body would have known what not to do. ”

Cordelia straightened. She seemed to get bigger, wider, taller. Now she was the one to step forward this time, and Beatrice was the one to fall back. “If I lose her because of you, you will rue the day you came to this island.”

Sharply, Astrid said, “Cordelia. She was stupid, but not malicious. She didn’t know what she was doing. We’ll be so much stronger with her. We need her.”

Wheeling to face her, Cordelia said, “I don’t give one single goddamn fuck. We can’t trust her. I don’t want to see her again. Ever.”

The coldness of her voice chilled Beatrice to the core. “Astrid’s right. I had no idea what I was doing.”

Reno’s voice, though quiet, would have carried through a hurricane. “Then you never should have done anything. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Everything, apparently.

This was all her fault.

Beatrice’s heart fell to the clods of ripped-up grass at her feet, and as they turned to leave, she remained where she was. Stuck again, this time by her own stupidity.

One last try. “Please let me help find her.”

Without turning around, Cordelia said, “Goddess forbid you try.”