Page 53 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland

Be brave, new witch. We all had to start somewhere. Trust your gut. Especially if that gut says you need black-and-white striped stockings. Who doesn’t need those, am I right? Some things never go out of style.

—Evie Oxby, at Paris Fashion Week

On the little table in Beatrice’s galley kitchen stood five candles. All were lit and flickering. It was midafternoon, but she’d drawn the curtains in an attempt to set a helpful mood.

As if she knew how to do that.

She’d already lit incense and rung a small bell four times, to the east, west, north, and south.

In front of her, she’d set a notebook, a pen, and a small, sharp knife.

Every book and website she’d read had different ideas on how best to ground oneself before spell casting, so she was taking a little of each and hoping for the best. Beatrice breathed deeply, and just as Cordelia had instructed her, she tried to feel her roots sink down through the boat’s hull, through the water, and into the rock below, moving down through the layers of the earth.

I can do this.

I know enough.

Was she really feeling her roots spread into the earth? Was that the cool energy she felt spreading through her? Or was it the placebo effect?

Did it matter? The placebo effect worked, after all.

“I know enough,” she whispered to herself while flipping the pages of the grimoire. “I know enough.”

At the doubled-over folded and sealed middle page, she paused. She fingered the waxed edge.

No, she couldn’t do that.

There was something in here on an unsealed page that would help. Surely.

Quickly, she flipped through. No, not a casting-off spell, not a mending—

Wait. Would this one work? She read over the words of a finding spell, and something about its words rang a bell.

Beatrice scrolled through her Magic spreadsheet (the computer was the least magical thing on the table, but she needed it). In one of the cells she’d written: Sympathetic magic uses the power of like calling like, e.g. cave drawings of animals made to lure the hunted close.

It couldn’t hurt to give it a try.

Well.

She hoped it wouldn’t hurt much.

Like-to-like. Okay, so who was like Minna? Her mother. Cordelia had given Minna fifty percent of her DNA.

From the research she’d done recently, Beatrice knew identical twins shared most of their DNA.

Which meant that her own body was very like Minna’s, too.

She took out the handkerchief Cordelia had embroidered for her.

Cordelia had said it was for protection, not for finding, but Beatrice was pretty sure she knew how she could make this work.

She scanned another webpage she’d bookmarked, flipped through Evie’s book to a highlighted passage, and then cross-referenced her spreadsheet.

Yes. This should work.

Beatrice took out a blue ballpoint pen. She held the tip against the cloth, next to the embroidered sigil her sister had made.

She watched the flames wobble for a count of three, and then she closed her eyes. Evie said the simplest spells were the strongest. The fewer words spoken, the fewer she could screw up.

“One, two, three, show Minna to me.”

Then she opened her eyes and drew her own sigil on the handkerchief.

An M , tall and sharp and sweet, just like her niece.

She drew a circle around it for the sun, then she drew wavy lines to symbolize the sun rising in an unmissable ball of brightness.

To make it really clear what she needed—this had to reveal Minna’s whereabouts—she drew below the sun a line of water, connecting that line to a jagged rock.

The sun, rising above this island, to show where Minna was.

Carefully, she connected the last line to the embroidered sigil, so that both she and her sister’s energy were connected.

It would take energy to activate. Serious energy. No more fucking around.

Without hesitation, she picked up the knife and cut the tip of her first finger deep enough that blood rose in a sudden bloom.

“One, two, three, show Minna to me .”

She squeezed a drop of blood onto the white of the hanky, and the reaction was almost instantaneous: the blue inked lines of her design began to glow a bright red, as if she’d drawn the whole thing in blood, as if the sun itself were glowing behind it instead of just the candlelight.

The lines of her sister’s embroidery glowed red, too.

Beatrice’s heart hammered painfully in her chest—she’d known it would work, but that didn’t quell the fear.

She kept her eyes on the handkerchief. Any minute, Minna’s location would be revealed, and Beatrice would be the one to find her. She would save her.

The boat jolted violently, as if an enormous wave had hit it. She jumped, but kept her gaze on the glowing fabric. She waited.

Then the door crashed open.

Through it came water and all Beatrice could think was that the houseboat was suddenly sinking, but not in the slow way of a leak. It was as if it were already underwater. Had the house been hit by a cruise liner? What could possibly—

Waves smashed through the windows then, and before she could even stand up from the table, the entire cabin of the galley was not just taking on water, but was full .

The seawater was dark and green, and her lungs strained, holding the deep breath she’d taken just as the freezing flood hit her body.

Another surge of water hurled her against the wall. She managed to catch one quick breath before another wave slapped her sideways.

Her brain flew into overdrive. The computer didn’t matter—the spreadsheet was in the cloud.

None of her paper notes were consequential enough to die for, and the library books were just books.

But the hanky that had been ripped from her fingers—she needed that.

And the grimoire. She had to get the grimoire.

She could just see it, six feet below her, giving off its own reddish glow. Her lungs burning, she kicked her way down into the frigid water, but the closer she got to the book, the smaller it became, as if the galley of her boat were getting bigger and wider as she got smaller and weaker.

From the corner of her eye came a brighter glow. When she turned her head, she saw the handkerchief floating just a few inches from her face. She made a grab for it, her motion sluggish in the water.

Her hands went right through it. It wavered as if it were water, too.

An illusion.

Somehow, she’d conjured an illusion. Whatever like-to-like she’d meant to call, she’d done it wrong and gotten this instead.

Help.

But there was no one to call, no one to protect her. And the water in this illusion was very real, very cold, and very drowningly wet. She surfaced an inch from the ceiling and sucked in a breath that was half seawater.

As she choked on the brine, the only sigil of protection that she could drag to her mind was the one her sister had embroidered—but how could she draw it now? How could she charge it? How was she supposed to know what to do in this kind of emergency?

You were born knowing how to do it.

She’d rejected the idea when Evie had said it.

But what if she wasn’t wrong?

Beatrice heaved in another breath and then went back under.

In one long blow, she drew her sister’s sigil in bubbles, feeding the sigil her own oxygen. It was all she had left to give.

Another crash shook the boat. This was it, then. This was when she would die.

Then came another thump, but that was her own body crashing to the floor of the galley.

The houseboat swayed as a slight swell passed below it.

The interior of the cabin was dry. The five candles on the table still burned. The spreadsheet on her computer still displayed its regimented, orderly boxes.

Beatrice sat up, her clothes as dry as the floor. The only wet thing in the whole cabin was the handkerchief on the floorboards next to her. She lifted it, heavy and dripping. The sigil she’d drawn in blue ink was smeared, almost gone.

Beatrice put the edge of the handkerchief to her tongue: salt.

As she stood, her legs trembled. The grimoire was still on the table, too, smack-dab where she’d left it.

Only one thing had changed.

Instead of being open to the finding spell, the pages had been flipped.

The book was now open to the sealed page. The one she’d promised Cordelia she’d never look at.

Even if it made her sister and everyone else hate her even more than they already did, there was only one thing to do.