Page 25 of The Witching Moon Manor (The Spellbound Sisters #2)

A Sunflower

Suggests that something important will soon come to light.

Brigit had been right to warn Violet about the rickety steps, but there was more to watch out for than a few loose floorboards.

The moment she opened the door and stale tendrils of dust poured into the alley, Violet felt it: years of memories bottled up and ready to be freed once more.

Even someone without a hint of magic could have sensed the heavy layers of recollections that clung to the plaster like wallpaper, though most would have stumbled back and shut the door behind them, bewildered by the odd jumble of emotions that seemed to fill the stairwell.

As she pressed her hand to the railing and climbed the steps, Violet could feel the layers of memories pulsing beneath her palm: trinkets of the past that had sunk into the very foundation of the house and refused to fade no matter how thorough the spring cleaning.

And though some of them were dark and lonely, she could sense happiness there, too, and laughter that had settled into the cracks of the wainscoting, waiting to slip into the empty echoes once more.

For though built of brick and mortar, the walls of old houses have a habit of capturing the best moments for safekeeping, soaking them up as quickly as a cake that’s been covered in caramel.

But these ripples of joy were buried so far beneath dust and disappointment that Violet doubted anyone else would be able to sense them at all.

Perhaps the pleasures of life that lingered beneath all that neglect were more palpable to her because she’d been longing to lose herself in forgotten places.

When she reached the top of the steps, Violet stumbled into a sea of yellowed linen and shadows.

What she assumed had once been white sheets were tossed across the shapes of settees and tables, though it was difficult to tell, given that only the barest slivers of light managed to slip through the thick velvet curtains that clung to the windows.

The whole scene looked like the inside of a dollhouse that had seen daydreams come to life but was now left abandoned in the attic as it waited for a new pair of hands to wipe away the spiderwebs stuck in its corners.

Violet wondered if someone would eventually come along and do just that, but Brigit hadn’t been too hopeful about the possibility when she’d passed over the keys.

“The chimney’s toppling over, and there are so many holes in the floorboards that it’s only a matter of time before some poor soul falls clean through,” Brigit had said. “It’s no wonder the place has been empty for so long.”

When asked exactly who had lived in the old apartment, though, Brigit hadn’t been able to say very much at all.

They didn’t even know their aunt had owned any property until she’d passed away, and the neighborhood had changed so much that no one could say for certain when someone had last occupied the apartment, let alone who.

Sighing, Violet wondered how she was going to learn anything about the people who had once called these rooms their home.

As it was so often the case, she hadn’t planned beyond her first bold leap. She realized she’d barreled through the door without a clear direction, and now all she could do was stand as still as the ghostly furniture that hadn’t moved in decades.

That subtle turn of thought instantly drew Violet back to the memory of why she’d returned to Chicago in the first place.

And quicker than she could snap her fingers, the ember that had started to flicker to life within her soul was overpowered by the icy chill of her nightmares.

She could feel it numb the tips of her fingers and toes before creeping across her chest, tightening the bones there until her breaths grew faster and uneven.

After she’d completed her Task, Violet thought that everything else would fall smoothly into place, like a pearl that was being threaded from one end of a ribbon to the other.

That once she’d finally managed to find her purpose, there was no chance of ever feeling lost again, not when her destiny had been met and there seemed to be no more twists of Fate to contend with.

But here she was, a kite who’d been cut away from its anchor and was fighting to stay on course.

Shuddering, Violet reached out to find some sort of purchase and rested her hand along the mantle’s ledge. Her pulse was pounding beneath the thin skin of her temples, so quickly that she worried it would carry her away from the present entirely and toward memories that needed to stay in the past.

Lifting her fingers to her brow, Violet saw that the white fabric of her gloves was now coated in a thick layer of dust. Sighing, she moved to brush it away, but a sudden thought made her pause.

What if she used magic to help uncover a sign?

Since leaving home, Violet hadn’t made much use of her powers, preferring to embrace the fantastical sensations of flying across the circus tent.

She’d read a few fortunes at the bottom of a cup when asked, but those instances had grown fewer and further between once she started spending most of her time in the ring.

And then after the accident, it was as if she was fixed in time, unable to look toward the past or future as she desperately clung to the here and now.

If she was very honest with herself, Violet could admit that she worried her magic had faded the more she neglected it.

What if she reached for the threads of foresight and found that she no longer had the strength to pull them toward her?

Reading the remnants of their customers’ velvet oolong was one matter, a task that came as easy as breathing.

But trying to reach beyond the present without someone sitting across from her, their hopes and fears as potent as their perfume, was another challenge entirely.

Anne was the sister who seemed to have inherited their mother’s abilities, not Violet, who’d never paid enough attention during their lessons and couldn’t seem to channel her efforts in any focused direction.

And now that she’d distanced herself from the Crescent Moon, it was becoming difficult to remember the wisdom that their mother had done her best to pass down.

But you’re still a Quigley. . . .

The thought flashed through her mind so quickly that she wondered where it had come from. But as Violet turned the words over in her head, she started to believe that they might be true.

Perhaps, if she managed to push aside her own unease of the past and concern for the future, Violet could shift beyond her fears and help Mr. Crowley and Philip so that their destinies could at last be tethered together, the knots holding their bond so tight that nothing would be able to pull them apart.

And in doing so, she might just find her own way again.

Glancing back down at the dust that coated her gloves, Violet decided that if she wanted to recover her courage, she’d need to discover parts of herself that she hadn’t even known were there.

With deliberate care, Violet pulled off the cloth that covered her hands and then ran her palm against the entire mantle, pulling it from one end to the other so that by the time she lifted it up once more, her skin was covered in dust.

In a single heartbeat, she was lost in the memory of her mother showing her how to read the signs this way when she was a child.

On the first true spring day when it was finally warm enough to throw open the windows, Clara Quigley would wrap an apron around her waist, run her finger over the wainscoting, and blow the dust across the room as one does when making a wish on a dandelion.

And in the swirls that fluttered in the rays of light, she’d find not only hints of the future but remnants of the moments that unfolded when they’d been tucked away from the cold and snow.

For like dust, memories have a habit of settling into the darkest corners of our minds unless we make an effort to bring them back into the light.

“Moving forward means remembering what came before,” Violet murmured, repeating the same phrase that her mother had always said just before she let out a deep breath and blew the dust from her fingers.

And then she released the sigh that had been welling within her ever since she’d watched Emil slip out of her grasp and let it push the soot from her hand.

As the dust flew through the air, the honeysuckle notes of Violet’s magic emerged, tangling with the shimmering particles and her thoughts of Philip.

They wove together to create sharp lines that bespoke happiness and fulfillment, stretching so far across the room that Violet could almost hear laughter echoing against the walls.

But just when she felt a smile begin to tug at the corner of her mouth, the lines suddenly wobbled before shattering into a thousand tiny pieces.

The force of it threw open a door on the other end of the room, and Violet’s brow furrowed while she watched the swirls of dust fly away from her and over the threshold, as if pulled toward a window that had suddenly been thrown open.

Violet chased them, but by the time she reached the doorframe, the last of the dust had fallen to the floor, lost in the cracks between the boards.

“Medusa’s curls,” she cursed, shaking her head in frustration.

The initial signs had been so strong, but Violet hadn’t managed to hold on to them long enough to get even the barest hint of a reading.

She might be a Quigley, but in that moment, Violet felt like she’d strayed so far from her roots that she had no more power than a child wishing on a birthday candle.

She hit her hand against the doorframe then, hoping to release some of the anger and disappointment that were starting to return. But when the flesh of her palm hit the wood, she felt something unexpected, a divot where there should have been nothing but smooth oak.

Violet turned toward the frame and then slowly lifted her hand to see what rested beneath it. As she pulled her fingers away, she noticed a name embedded in the wood.

May.

Leaning closer, Violet continued to brush the grime away, studying the scrawl to see if it matched the names she’d stumbled across in the shop below.

But there were subtle differences in the letters that told her they’d been etched by another hand. The ones downstairs had been so neat and even, while whoever printed the name here had elongated the “M” so that it towered over the rest of the lines and curves.

It could have belonged to any of the tenants who’d filtered through the apartment over the decades.

People always seemed eager to leave their mark on what had felt like home, tucking their initials in grooves and corners in the hopes that the walls, at least, would remember even if those who came after them never learned of the stories that had unfolded on the floors beneath their very feet.

But something that Violet had done her best to push to the side was starting to make its way to the surface of her awareness, impatient to be heard.

It was her intuition telling her that there was more to be uncovered beneath the dust of forgotten dreams.

As of late, Violet had done her best to avoid any flicker of interest that might pull her onto an unexpected path.

She worried that her misstep had created a snag in the delicate fabric of her reality and believed the key to keeping everything from unraveling was remaining perfectly still.

But as her gaze roamed over the remnants of someone else’s past, Violet felt her foot tapping against the boards of its own accord while her mind drifted toward new possibilities that felt as fresh as breathing in the brisk winter air.

There was an answer waiting here, as quiet and unassuming as the cobwebs tucked in the corners, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, Violet was eager to take a step forward and see what she could discover.