Page 57 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland

When you’re looking for one ghost, but the wrong one bashes through? Run, honey. Just run.

—Evie Oxby, guest appearance on Ghost Hunters

The despair that filled Beatrice was icier than the frigid water illusion. The bleakness in her soul felt worse than the day of Naya’s burial.

Naya wasn’t with her. She hadn’t written through Beatrice’s hand, nor had she told Beatrice where Minna was.

Taurus had.

That laugh rose again, the one that made her skull ache. For someone who wants to understand, you’re very slow sometimes.

“What do you want?” Beatrice tried to sound strong, but her voice wavered on the last word.

Give her the sigil.

Beatrice looked at Minna. “What’s he talking about? I don’t know his tattoo sigil, and I wouldn’t give it to you if I did.”

Instead of looking victorious, Minna looked scared.

“I’ve been trying to get to Valeska to receive the rest of the sigil, but she won’t come to me.

He said only one person could help. I thought we would raise the answer by starting the tattoo.

” She looked down at her arm, the dark black ink mixing with the red of her blood.

“But then you came. So I think… you might be the answer. The lost twin.”

“I don’t know shit.”

“Did you open the sealed page?”

Beatrice sucked in a breath.

“You did. I know you did. What was it?”

The page of the other lost twin. The curse.

But she’d never, ever tell this girl. The sigil was how to die for love. Of course that’s why Taurus wanted it—he wanted his child to die of love for him, to cross over to a place where he could take her power and leave her carcass to rot.

“You have to tell me.” Minna held up her arm. “He was only able to give me this much.”

Taurus did know part of the symbol—she could see that now.

The T she’d seen on Minna’s arm, the one she’d been drawing on his grave, wasn’t for Taurus.

It was part of the broken scale, but there were no slashes, no arrow, no bleeding teardrop.

Shit. She shouldn’t even think about the image, in case he could see inside her mind.

“Please tell me, Aunt Bea.”

Tell her.

Minna’s voice broke her heart, but Taurus’s voice inside her chest almost stopped her breath completely. It hurt so much, she wondered if he was tying the ventricles of her heart into knots.

“It’s a love sigil. It’ll bring me and Dad together. You’ll see. You have to tell me.”

“Honey, that’s so not what it is.” She sucked in half a breath. “It’s a Velamen curse so dangerous, it needed to be sealed away forever.”

“You’re so full of shit—he was right about all of you.” Minna rubbed her hands together slowly, reminding Beatrice of when Astrid rolled the bloody threads into a ball in her palms. “I didn’t want to do this, but he was right. I have to.”

Minna began chanting the words of the auto-writing spell.

Fine, while she did that, maybe Beatrice could figure out how to get them both out of here—

But something was wrong. The spell was being said inside her own chest. Taurus was there, his voice reverberating against her lungs, mixing with Minna’s higher voice.

Beatrice’s own lips began to move. She pressed her fingers against her mouth, but she couldn’t stop the spell from slipping out between her teeth. “ Bent canth ilno trill— ”

Minna was helping him take over her body.

Maybe that had been his plan all along. He obviously couldn’t read her thoughts, or he’d already have seen the cursed sigil in her mind, so he needed her to write it down.

But she wouldn’t. If she had to throw herself against the marble walls until she knocked herself out, she would, and no matter what, she wouldn’t imagine—she would not imagine—no, she wouldn’t—

Her hand cramped, and she looked down. Somehow, she was holding an old-fashioned fountain pen, dripping with dark red ink.

Minna kicked a notebook toward her, sliding it through the dust on the marble floor.

Fine. They wanted her to auto-write? She’d fake it, then.

She’d fake it so well that Taurus would believe it, and somehow she’d get Minna out of here if she had to grind through the stone walls with her teeth.

Dropping to sit cross-legged, she picked up the notebook. “I don’t know why you want this, but okay.”

She drew a square and then fit a slim oval into it. A peaked roof—the crypt, with Minna inside it. Maybe if she could draw a door crumbling to dust—

But the chant kept going, kept sounding inside her chest and, no, please, no , she wouldn’t—she wouldn’t

she wouldn’t imagine the pen slipping into the lock she wouldn’t—

no she couldn’t she wouldn’t—

A girl’s laugh bounced off the walls, and Beatrice’s eyes flew open.

She’d fucking done it, hadn’t she?

Yes. She knew she had, could feel the spent, empty place in her core. Looking down, she saw the full sigil, captured on the page. She’d drawn the sigil of the lost twin, the one that held the long-ago-stripped-away Velamen power.

Her fingers flexed and clutched, but she couldn’t hold on to the notebook—it was ripped out of her hands, flying across the small space into Minna’s hands.

Now Taurus had what he needed. Now Minna would be able to complete the tattoo.

It wouldn’t make any difference now if Beatrice tore the book away from her—Minna had seen it. That was all she needed.

The gun whined frantically. Minna glanced over her shoulder. “He’ll get to hug me,” she said almost apologetically. There she was again, the true Minna, the one Beatrice couldn’t lose. “It’s my first tattoo, Auntie Bea.”

“Please. Don’t do this.”

Minna grimaced as she pushed the needle against her skin. “It kinda hurts more than I thought it would.”

Of course it did. It was more than a tattoo—it was the curse that would bind Minna to him.

A rumble rose below the whine of the tattoo gun.

Taurus. Beatrice could feel him. The coldness. The sheer fury of him.

Minna blinked quickly, a tear streaking down her cheek. But she smiled. “He’s getting stronger.”

“I’m here.” Taurus’s voice wasn’t just in their heads anymore—it was audible in the air now, a booming, hollow pulse.

“Daddy.” Minna moved the gun faster. “I’m doing it.”

“I’m so proud of you, my son.”

No.

His words hit the air and bounced off the marble, echoing again and again, becoming crueler every time. My son, son, son…

Minna’s hand stilled as her head dropped.

Beatrice could almost see the pain shoot through her body. “Honey, you can still stop. Don’t complete it. Drop the tool.”

Her niece’s hand shook so badly that Beatrice could see the ink skip on her skin. Good. If the tattoo was broken, damaged somehow, would it not work?

That was it—she’d break the gun. Why hadn’t she thought of that? It was probably strong, but so was she, and while Taurus was now a real voice, he didn’t have a real body. She’d only be fighting Minna. And this was a fight she would need to win.

She leaped toward Minna. Or rather, she tried to.

Her legs, though, didn’t move. Her body froze as solid as it had in the cemetery when Minna had run away.

She could breathe, and she felt her heart pounding in her chest, so presumably blood was still circulating in her veins, but any movement that was usually under her conscious control was impossible. She couldn’t even blink.

And everything hurt—each muscle in her body felt strained to the breaking point, as if the supernatural tension placed on them was what kept her from moving. The only part of her that didn’t hurt was the spot on her wrist where Naya’s new sigil was tattooed.

When Minna had put it on her—how could it have only been yesterday?—Beatrice had felt Naya inside her. No matter what illusions Taurus had created today, Naya had been with her yesterday. She had sent them the letters in the bottle as confirmation. Taurus couldn’t have faked that.

Beatrice had to believe.

Minna was sobbing now, but her hand still moved the tattoo gun along her left forearm, faster and faster. It wouldn’t be long now before the cursed sigil was complete. Then it would be inside Minna’s body, just as Naya’s tattoo was inside Beatrice’s, flowing through her veins.

The image of the S on Reno’s chest rose in Beatrice’s mind. The dead body of Scarlett, her ash, was now part of Reno’s living body because of the tattoo.

She tried to suck in a deeper breath. Move.

The dust in this tomb—it was the dust of their ancestors.

Sure, probably some of it was made of dead spiders and crumbling marble, but a big part of it would undoubtedly be microscopic bits of Anna’s and Rosalind’s bodies floating out of the cracks of the crumbling tomb.

Some of the particles were bound to be getting into the wound Minna was dragging into her skin.

Would that help or hinder the power Taurus hoped to take?

Beatrice’s heart rate was too fast now, so fast she saw silver flashes of stars at the edges of her vision, but it wasn’t as if she could sit down and put her head between her knees.

The corrugated spite of Taurus’s laugh ricocheted in her head.

No one else was coming to save Minna. Even if Beatrice’s text went through, what would they do, hire a bulldozer to knock their way into the tomb? Surely Taurus would have strengthened the spell Beatrice had broken to get in.

It was up to her.

Evie’s words came flooding back. Sometimes we have to act before we think. Sometimes that means we get arrested for indecent exposure, but other times it means we’re following Spirit. There are times when the only thing to do is to act before thinking a single damn thought.

Act without thinking. Act without knowledge.

Act without even being able to move.

A sigil was simply a symbol imbued with energy.

She’d drawn one with bubbles, and it had worked.

So, then, she would draw a symbol with the only thing she had left.

Her mind.

Beatrice’s eyes stayed open because she couldn’t close them. But Minna faded from her sight as she went inward.

With every ounce of will she had left, Beatrice placed a whiteboard in her mind. She chose the one from her home office, the triple-size one that she used daily. In her mind, she erased the calendar and her to-do list. Then she focused on the new lines she drew with her mind.

She drew a capital B and made the top and bottom holes into a pair of handcuffs. The simplest spells are the strongest.

Carefully, she drew a horizontal line through the middle of the B . That was the fuse.

Her breathing continued, autonomous. She could neither take a deeper breath nor hold one. But she could picture blowing air out of her mouth, flammable air that took only one flick of an imagined yellow lighter to light the end of that fuse.

The line through the B wobbled as it burned.

And then the midsection blew, separating the B -shaped handcuffs.

Beatrice was free. She blinked as she fell sideways, catching herself painfully against the marble chair underneath Anna’s name.

In front of her, Minna swam back into focus. She’d slumped, and sweat mixed with the tears rolling down her face. “I can’t make it stop,” she whispered in Beatrice’s direction. “Tell Mom I’m sorry.”

Beatrice leaped at Minna, but the tattoo gun made one last buzz, connecting the tip of the teardrop to the scale, before clattering to the floor.

Minna collapsed sideways.

Frantically, she grabbed Minna’s shoulders. “No. No. ”

But the sigil was complete. A cold wind kicked up the dust inside the tomb, and Minna’s body slumped, as Beatrice heard her last breath leave her lungs.

Beatrice knew what to do.

Finally, she knew exactly what to do. She’d done so many CPR certification classes, just to be on the safe side, that she knew more about the recent Heart Association changes than some of the instructors did.

She knew she should flip Minna from her side to her back and start compressions.

With a huge amount of luck, that would get Minna’s heart started, and it would have to, because it wasn’t like she could call an ambulance, but maybe if she screamed so loud, the sound made it through the slab of marble…

But she didn’t flip Minna in order to start compressions.

She didn’t do the one thing she knew she should do.

Instead, she stood.

She threw back her head.

And then Beatrice roared, “Give her back, you fucking son of a bitch .”