Page 50 of The Witching Moon Manor (The Spellbound Sisters #2)

An Opened Cage

Emerges when dreams are about to take f light.

By the time the lingering notes of rosemary and chrysanthemums had faded from the kitchen, the Quigleys were settled in the family parlor enjoying the peaceful glow of the candlelight.

The moment that a spark struck in the grate, cedar and citrus had infused the room, kindling a sense of warmth that went beyond toasty fingers and toes.

As the house watched the sisters tuck themselves beneath quilts softened by slumber and took in the sight of their hands wrapped around hot porcelain, it breathed out a longheld sigh of satisfaction and drifted into the delights of an evening undisturbed by the clicking of a clock.

For what felt like the first time since they’d all returned home, the silence that enveloped the room wasn’t teeming with unspoken worries.

The sense that something had been left behind or forgotten was gone now, snapped away the instant that Vincent had slipped on the ring, leaving behind only the crackle of the logs and the gentle sound of the wind brushing against the windows.

It wasn’t until Violet’s foot began to tap against the rug, the steady thump-thump-thump eclipsing the gentler noises in the room, that the house remembered some things were still waiting to be put to rights.

“Do you think that they are truly gone?” Violet asked suddenly, breaking the easy quiet that her sisters had fallen into.

Though she kept her eyes fixed on the flames in the grate, Violet could feel Anne and Beatrix’s gazes shift toward her.

“Philip and Mr. Crowley?” Anne asked.

Violet nodded then, still turned away from her sisters.

“Yes,” Anne replied, sounding surprised by the question. “They have well and truly passed on.”

“What’s wrong, Vi?” Beatrix asked, leaning toward her sister to place a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Aren’t you pleased?”

“Of course I am,” Violet said.

“Then what’s troubling you?” Anne asked.

The texture of the room shifted, as if a space in the comfortable silence was starting to open to make room for another revelation.

“I think he was trying to show me something,” Violet whispered.

“Mr. Crowley?” Beatrix asked, her brows furrowing in confusion.

“No,” Violet answered. “Philip. The scent of rosemary started to slip into my dreams, pulling me away from the worst of possibilities and toward something else. But now that he’s gone, I’m afraid I’ll never quite know what he was trying to show me.”

“What kind of dreams were these?” Anne asked, her question slow and steady, as if she knew the answer would finally reveal what had brought her sister back to the Crescent Moon.

“Nightmares,” Violet said, the word rough and breathless. “Of a mistake that I made.”

“What kind of mistake?” Beatrix asked.

Violet paused then, worried that sharing the memory would give it even more life than it already had.

But then she smelled peppermint and sandalwood, the familiar notes drawing her away from the worst of possibilities and toward the present moment.

“I made Emil leap into an act we weren’t ready for,” Violet finally confessed. “And when the time came for me to catch him . . . I couldn’t.”

Anne and Beatrix leaned forward then and grasped Violet’s hands in their own, surprise and sympathy etched into every gesture.

“He’s fine,” Violet continued, wanting to reassure her sisters. “He’s recovering and eager to perform together again in the spring.”

“But you aren’t so certain,” Beatrix said, her thoughts obviously trailing back to the way Violet’s feet had grown unnaturally still against the floorboards when she’d first returned to the shop, as if she had commanded them to conceal her desire for movement.

“How can I be when I keep reliving the moment his hand slipped farther and farther away from mine?” Violet replied. “It’s all I’ve dreamed of for months.”

Distracted by Violet’s confession, the house loosened its hold on the windowpane, letting in an icy breeze that instantly sank into the sisters’ skin and caused them to shiver.

“But what does this have to do with Philip?” Anne asked as she shook away the chill.

“My dream started to change,” Violet explained. “I wasn’t reliving the past anymore. But I don’t think I was seeing the future either. It was like a lucid dream, where I had a choice in what was going to unfold.”

“And what choice did you make?” Beatrix asked.

“I was going to tell Emil that I couldn’t perform,” Violet replied. “But when I opened my mouth to say the words, the scent of rosemary became so potent that I woke up.”

Her sisters sat in silence for a moment, seemingly trying to decipher the meaning of what Violet had just said.

“Do you think it’s a vision?” Violet finally found the courage to ask, turning to Anne with a pensive expression. “Am I starting to be able to see my own future?”

Anne considered her for a moment, pausing long enough to make Violet’s heart begin to race, but then she leaned forward and grasped her hand.

“I think it’s something much more significant,” Anne answered.

“What’s that?” Violet asked.

“What you want from the future,” Anne said.

“Fantasy can be even more powerful than fortune. Possibility begins in our imagination, after all. And when we start to envision what could unfold, we give it a magic all its own. Philip must have tried to stop you from giving power to a choice that he thought you might regret. After watching May linger for so long in the mistakes of the past, it’s likely he couldn’t let you meet the same fate. ”

“But I don’t know what I want,” Violet said, her voice breaking. “Not when my instincts have already led me toward disaster.”

“If you don’t give yourself the chance to fantasize about the best of what’s to come, how can you expect to recover what’s been buried beneath your pain?” Anne murmured.

“I’m not certain that what I’ve lost is worth keeping,” Violet sighed.

“Oh, Vi,” Beatrix said as she laced her fingers through Anne’s free hand so that the three of them formed an unending link. “Of course it is.”

They sat for a moment there, threaded into a single braid as they had been before, savoring the sensation all the more because they knew it was only that .

. . a moment. Eventually, they’d have to let one another go again so that they could continue their journeys down the paths that had parted for them.

But for now, they were simply the Quigley sisters once more.

“Let yourself dream of the best to come, Violet,” Anne whispered, her tone taking on the same hue as when she was gazing over tea leaves or tarot cards. “And by the morning, you’ll find what has been lost.”

And in less time than it took for the next ember to crackle in the hearth, Violet decided to do just that.

Let herself fall into fantasies that could become the fabric of her reality.

Later that night, as Violet slipped between the warm sheets and drew in a breath laced with lavender, she wondered if what Anne had said was true—that by sunrise, she’d recover what had been lost.

Releasing a shaky sigh, Violet closed her eyes, expecting to toss and turn for so long that her shoulders would grow stiff and there’d be no hope of rest.

But, to her surprise, the moment she grew still on the pillow, she found herself drifting into that place between the here and now and dusty dreams beyond the firm grasp of time.

With each softening breath, Violet felt as if she was drawing on an unfamiliar power that sank into the tips of her toes like liquid gold and pushed aside the stony emptiness that she worried might never crack.

It wasn’t long until she felt strangely full and weightless all at once, losing touch with the worn sheets beneath her body and shifting into another place entirely, one that was tinged with candlelight and the soft murmur of a crowd.

In what could have been an eternity or a blink of an eye, Violet was standing on the wooden platform, the hem of the same blue satin dress from her last dream kissing the tops of her bare feet.

She could see the gold halo of the performers below, the light of their sparklers and ribbons set aflame, tempting her forward. Instead of feeling repulsed by the effect, though, Violet found herself taking the barest step toward the edge, a moth drawn to the sheer beauty of the glow.

And then the fragrance of midnight smoke slipped into her awareness, and she knew what she would hear next.

“Are you ready, Wildfire?” Emil’s voice rumbled against her back as his hands traced the gentle curves of her shoulders.

Violet thought of what her sisters had said about the power that came from fantasizing about what you wanted your own future to look like.

About learning from your mistakes instead of being ensnared by them.

And in that moment, Violet let go of the guilt and fear that had bound her and grasped on to what she knew was worth keeping: a thirst for life and unexpected turns of Fate.

“Yes,” she said, the tail end of her answer dancing in the wind as she leapt toward the edge, picturing exactly how she wanted the scene to unfurl.

In what could have been an eternity or a blink of an eye, Violet was throwing herself from the top of the platform and into a performance.

She heard the satin fabric of her dress flitter through the air as she flew from one bar to the next, the gasps and appreciative claps of the crowd entangling with the beat of her own heart.

The sound of it made Violet feel at home again, a smile working its way into the corners of her mouth as the flash of sparklers and turn of a ballerina’s skirt reminded her of how she must look to the spectators, a shot of light that couldn’t be stopped.

As her hands grasped what she knew to be the final bar, Violet felt a sudden pulse of worry start to slip down her spine, as it always did when she reached this part of her dream.

But then she remembered that this wasn’t the past any longer but her deepest desire for the future, and she shook away the fears lapping at her dangling ankles, feeling them slip from her skin just like ribbons that had loosened and were now drifting toward the sawdust.

“Wildfire,” she heard Emil call to her, his voice carrying above the roar of the crowd.

Violet glanced up and saw that Emil was moving toward her, his body flying from one bar to the next until he was only a swing away, his hand outstretched as he sought to close the distance between them.

Before Violet gave herself a chance to fear the worst, she stretched her arms as far as they would go, her heart beating so hard in her chest that she thought her bones were going to break beneath the pressure.

But instead of grasping at air, as they always had before, Violet’s fingers wrapped around Emil’s wrist, giving him just the help he needed to grab hold of the bar.

When she could be certain that he was dangling there beside her and not crashing toward the ground, Violet turned to face Emil.

He was gazing at her with the same mischievous smile that he had that first night he’d found her in the crowd and given her a taste of what it might be like to feel at home within herself.

And in that instant, Violet was no longer lost.

How could she when it was so clear where she wanted to be?

“Wildfire . . .”

Though Emil’s body was pressed against hers, the sound of his voice felt far away, as if it was coming from somewhere outside the boundaries of her dream.

She moved closer, wondering if his words would sound clearer that way, but as she shifted, a rattling noise began to ripple the red and white stripes of the tent.

Violet’s eyes flew open then, and she saw that the frames along the walls were shaking in the way they always did when the house was trying to wake her.

When she turned over, Violet realized that the window had been thrown open, the curtains covered in a fine layer of snow.

“Wildfire . . .”

The word whipped into the bedroom on the edge of the midnight wind, but instead of chilling Violet’s skin, it warmed her to the bone.

Not bothering to throw her dressing gown about her shoulders or shove her feet into the slippers that the house was trying to nudge her way, Violet sprang from the bed, racing through the hallway and down the stairs in such a rush that the banisters began to shake for fear she’d slip and fall before she could reach the first floor.

But Violet couldn’t be slowed, and before the railing could so much as bend forward a few inches to make it easier for her to grasp, she was already flinging open the front door, knowing with absolute certainty who would be waiting there to meet her.

Emil stood just beyond the threshold, his black curls sprinkled with snow.

Before the bitter cut of the wind could slip past the open door, Violet had pulled him close, needing to feel the touch of his skin to be certain that they weren’t in her dream any longer.

“I know you wanted me to come in the spring,” Emil said as Violet rested her face against him, one of her cheeks exposed to the harsh night chill and the other warmed by the rumble of his chest. “But I couldn’t wait any longer.”

He wrapped his arms tight around her then and shuddered, and Violet knew in an instant that it wasn’t from the cold, but rather from the sheer relief of being able to pull her close again.

“This is exactly what I wanted,” Violet answered, tucking herself deeper into Emil’s embrace.

And as they stood there in the faint light of a crescent moon, Violet thought about the future and smiled.