Chapter Twelve
When Catherine called it a craft room, I assumed she was talking about sewing or scrapbooking, and it took me far too long to discover the truth.
Now, the thought of her hiding away with a glass of wine, a fun podcast and a bag full of goodies from Target made me choke.
The things she had done in this room defied belief.
While I was upstairs, in the same house, she’d been in there, plotting.
Standing before the sky blue door, the air turned frigid, blasting down on me, even as the brass doorknob twisted all on its own and the door creaked open. The room wanted me to enter, but the house did not.
‘You don’t need to worry,’ I told it, one hand on the now grey-tinged wallpaper. ‘Whatever it was she did in there, that’s not what I’m looking for.’
When my grandmother ran Bell House, the hallway walls were a cool sage green. Now they changed every day, depending on the house’s mood. Or mine. We were linked in ways I didn’t understand just yet but I knew in my bones it was right and good. Unlike the acts Catherine committed in this room.
‘She’s gone,’ I reminded us both. ‘She can’t hurt us now.’
Unless she wasn’t. Unless she was waiting just a few feet away on the other side of the door. There was only one way to find out.
Without another second’s hesitation, I pushed myself over the threshold before I came up with any more reasons not to, and once inside, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
‘What the heck?’
I turned to make sure I was in the right room, in the right house. Sure enough, I saw the hallway behind me and beyond that, the foyer, as it always was. But this wasn’t the same room I’d stepped foot in before.
The last time I was in here, the small, dimly lit, windowless space was a mess.
Covered in half-burned black candles, leather-bound journals, and every kind of crystal, from the tiniest shard of black garnet to giant hunks of smoky quartz.
There were bundles of dried herbs and piles of bloody feathers everywhere I looked, with a twin-sized bed pushed up against the wall, laden with more of the same.
That was the place where Catherine had recuperated after almost killing herself in order to take my father’s life.
Today it was completely different.
It was still the same size but other than that, utterly changed in every possible way.
The walls gleamed as though made from mother of pearl and the iridescence shifted with the flicker of white candles that sparked into life when I closed the door behind me.
The pale wood shelves were well stocked with untouched notebooks and books I’d never seen before, some of them written in languages I didn’t recognize and all of them singing to me in a beautiful, harmonious tune.
All of Catherine’s uncut crystals had been replaced with tumbled rocks and polished stones, the largest piece of amethyst I’d ever seen sat on what looked like an altar, and white roses and pink carnations grew from nowhere, sweetly scenting the air.
Every trace of Catherine and her darkness was gone.
I knew the layout of Bell House like the back of my hand.
The craft room sat right beneath the curving staircase that led from the foyer up to the bedrooms yet somehow, the ceiling of this tiny space reached up to the sky.
I sank into a cream-coloured armchair in front of the built-in desk that ran along one side of the room, my legs weak as I watched a flock of doves pass overhead.
All the bitter, insidious energy I’d felt in here before was gone, replaced with only light.
A clean slate. Was this how the room started for Catherine?
I wiped away a stray tear at the thought.
‘Thank you,’ I whispered, wiping my face with the back of my hands. ‘It’s beautiful.’
A pair of crystals rolled off the desk and under the bed.
Dropping to my hands and knees, I pulled them out, weighing one in each hand.
Clear quartz and selenite. Clear quartz I already knew but the selenite whispered its name to me, the same way all the plants in the garden had introduced themselves when I first arrived.
I returned to the desk and laid my list out on the white oak surface, feeling so close to my magic and my ancestors, tears welling up behind my eyes.
Wolf attack
Catherine missing
Why can’t I see the ghosts?
How can I convince Lydia she doesn’t want to be a witch?
Prophecy
Where does the blessing come from?
Jackson
I stared at the piece of paper and felt my mouth twist at the order of my concerns. Three months ago, my worries ran to which colleges to apply to, how long it would take to get my driver’s licence and what kind of mascara could actually hold a curl. Things had changed.
With Ashley’s words still ringing in my ears, I reluctantly picked up a pen and added another item. There was no point leaving anything out.
How can I be sure Wyn loves me?
Reaching out for him, I found the connection peaceful and still.
It had been that way all morning. His phase was over, I could feel that much, but he was still so far away from me.
It was a relief, in a way. As desperate as I was to hear his voice, I knew telling him about the attack would only add to our mounting pile of problems. And that was before I attempted to explain the Jackson situation.
The blessing announced itself with a tingling sensation, the very tips of my fingers sparking ever so slightly, as if it didn’t want to scare me.
Priorities, it seemed to say, stay on track.
I inhaled as it spread through my body, seeping into my blood and amplifying my senses.
This was new. It felt like slipping into a bath that was just slightly too hot, snatching my breath away, relaxing and invigorating in equal measure.
The room was a crucible, everything was intensified, my sense of touch, of smell, and I understood at once why Catherine had chosen to spend so much time in here.
It was like being reborn and the closest I had ever felt to the blessing.
What I couldn’t understand was how she could take all this light and still turn to the dark.
Heightened intuition directed my hands to a tall white candle, a box of matches and a shallow silver bowl, all resting on the desk, and told me to add pinches of dried mugwort, valerian and yarrow to the bowl.
Instinctively, I took my list and folded it in half, towards me.
I turned it once, clockwise, and folded it towards me again before placing it in the bowl with the herbs and striking a match.
A white flame caught the yellow paper, burning it slowly and consuming the lines of black ink one line at a time.
As each item on the list disappeared, a sense of calm built inside me, until my eyelids grew so heavy, I could hardly keep them open.
The thin mattress on the bed was so much more comfortable than it looked.
It accepted my weight easily as I rolled from the chair to the bed, sinking deeper and deeper, the sky above seeming to move further and further away.
I looked over at the desk and saw the list was gone, reduced to a small pile of canary-coloured ash.
With the scent of burning herbs, roses and carnations in the air, the clear quartz in one hand and selenite in the other, I closed my eyes and let my magic take over.
The gardens of Bell House were beautiful, lush and green and full of life.
I walked barefoot over the earth, a white gossamer gown brushing against the ground, my hair long and loose, and all I felt was peace.
The blessing, the world and my magic were all in precious harmony and it felt as though every living thing was celebrating the fact.
When I touched a fingertip to the delicate petals of a blossoming azalea, I noticed a ring on the third finger of my left hand.
A dainty gold band that wrapped around three stones, a diamond, a sapphire and an emerald.
At the far end of the garden was a copper arch, wrapped in honeysuckle and Spanish moss, and beneath it stood a beautiful woman with long red hair.
The first Emma Catherine Bell. She smiled when she saw me and I smiled back, comforted by the sight of her.
My ancestor, my ghost, a piece of my heart.
To her left stood Ashley and Lydia, and to her right, Jackson and Wyn.
All four of them were dressed in clothes I’d never seen before, Lydia in a pretty yellow dress, Ashley in a lavender tuxedo and Jackson and Wyn in matching blue suits so dark they were almost black.
Ashley and Lydia looked ecstatic, a miracle given the fact they were standing so close together.
The same could not be said of Jackson and Wyn.
I sensed sadness and regret woven through with love.
All their feelings were stitched together in a complicated tapestry.
‘Emily?’ I heard a voice say. ‘Are you ready?’
A couple emerged from Bell House. A tall man with dark hair and a beard, and beside him, a petite, pale haired woman. His face was serious, a permanent frown line carved between his eyebrows. She was his opposite. Sunshine and light, the promise of laughter never far from her lips.
‘Mom? Dad?’
I took a step back, so surprised as they came towards me and gathered me in their embrace.
‘Are you ready?’ my father asked again.
‘Ready for what?’
My mother handed me a bouquet of gardenias and ferns wrapped with Spanish moss, then leaned forward to whisper in my ear.
‘Ready for what comes next.’
Standing behind me, she covered my eyes with her hands and the garden disappeared.
‘Are you ready, Emily?’
The same words. A different voice. Another time, the same place.