Page 98 of Witches of Honeysuckle House

The walls around them creaked with a sound so low and sad it felt as if they were crying. Florence brought a hand to her mouth.

“No,” she whispered. But the shop had been born of the magic inside Florence. Without it, the shelves and books and lights would go back to what they’d once been.

“Isn’t there anything else you can do?” Angela asked.

“It’s too late,” Evie said. “It’s almost midnight.”

They all glanced up at the clock above the door. It hadn’t been there when they’d walked into the room, but once the bookstore understood what was happening, the clock had suddenly appeared. With the small hand past the eleven, they had less than five minutes to go. Less than five minutes until Florence’s magical bookshop turned back into an ordinary storefront.

Florence gripped her sister’s hand as they watched the minutes tick by. Soon, the fire in her heart would die. The house as they knew it would be gone, the bookstore right along with it.

“We have to go home,” Clara said, pulling Ink close to her chest. “We have to say goodbye.”

But Evie shook her head. “We’ll never make it, and with the house’s magic as unsteady as ours, we don’t know if it’s safe.”

Both hands aligned on the twelve, and Florence closed her eyes, afraid of what she’d find when she opened them. She took a deep breath, gave Evie’s hand a squeeze, then forced herself to face the loss of her store.

She blinked her eyes open to find the room exactly as it had been moments before. The warmth in her chest still pulsed alongside her beating heart, erratic, but there. Even the witch’s mark on Evie’s cheek was as dark as it had been the day it appeared.

“Shop?” Florence asked.

The lights glowed brighter.

Florence shook her head slowly. She turned to her sister.

“I don’t understand,” Evie said. “I can still feel my magic.”

Owen reached in front of Florence and picked up one of the journals. “Linda completed her spell on the morning of the thirteenth.”

Beside Florence, Evie gasped. “Dad died in the morning, too.”

“And Mom in the afternoon,” Florence said.

“The spell isn’t finished at the start of the thirteenth, but at the end,” Angela said.

“We still have time.” The hope in Evie’s voice was contagious.

“To do what?” Florence asked. “How can we fix this?”

Evie tapped a finger against her nose—a gesture they shared. For the first time in years, Florence loved seeing herself in her sister. “With temperance reversed, the cards showed us the curse was actually a siphoning spell. Maybe …” She reached for Florence’s deck but glanced up at her sister before taking it. When Florence nodded, Evie started to shuffle.

She fanned out the cards and held her hand over them. “Come on.” She shook out her hand and tried again. Then, she flipped a card, revealing an illustration of a honeysuckle vine with a single, unnatural, thorn in its center. The ace of swords.

Evie glanced up, meeting Florence’s gaze. They spoke the words at the same time.

“A cord-cutting spell.”

“The tower,” Angela said, a little breathless. “It was about more than the house dying.”

Evie nodded slowly at first, then more quickly. “The tower is an undoing. A breaking of foundations.”

“If we can sever ourselves from the house before the siphoning spell ends, then we won’t lose our magic,” Florence said.

“It wouldn’t save Honeysuckle House.” Evie had tears in her eyes. “But it would save your shop.”

“And it’s what the house wants.” The words were thick in Florence’s mouth. “It’s what it wanted all along. It wasn’t Mom’s magic keeping you from the attic room. Honeysuckle House didn’t want us to find the spell because it was prepared to be the final victim.”

“It was afraid I would siphon Clara and keep the cycle going,” Evie breathed. “I almost did.”