Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Clara, Now
Clara slipped around the firefighters and the guests and her mom’s not-so-watchful eye, wishing she’d thought to bring Ink with her, but of course she couldn’t have brought Ink because her magic had summoned Ink for Aunt Florence, which meant Aunt Florence needed him more.
Clara did, however, wish her aunt had come to the house with them (and Ink with her) so they could all be there together to get the news that maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.
On second thought, it was probably best Aunt Florence wasn’t there. Best that her mom and Angela were distracted. Because whether or not her Aunt Florence was right about the curse, the fire at Honeysuckle House hadn’t been from the curse.
It had been Clara’s spell, plain and simple.
She’d wanted to help her aunt and help the house, and her candle had burned so fast; then the house caught fire. There wasn’t any other explanation.
With one last look over her shoulder, she turned the corner of Honeysuckle House and ran for the back door. She rushed to the handle, held it firm, and asked, “Are you alright?”
The windows slowly opened and closed in response, though Clara wasn’t sure if it was a “yes” or a “no” or a “please don’t worry about me.” She was leaning toward the yes with a caveat about the worry.
“No matter what happened, I’m not afraid of you,” Clara said. “I’m going to come inside now. Is that okay?”
Again with the windows.
“I have to worry about you. I love you, and that’s what you do when you love someone.”
The handle warmed beneath her hand, and she pulled open the door.
The house didn’t smell of smoke any more than it usually did—the lingering hint of a snuffed candle that seemed as much a part of the place as the peeling paint or the cobwebs or the collection of pretty rocks Clara had gathered from the woods out back.
She took it as a good sign, a sign that maybe she hadn’t done something with her magic to catastrophically ruin the place she loved most.
She left her sneakers at the door. Though they let guests walk around with shoes, Clara felt she wouldn’t very much like for people to run all over her without any idea where they’d been.
Then she ran through the hall to the main staircase, which she followed up and up as fast as she could, reaching the landing short of breath with her hands on her knees.
The hallway rug lifted in response, gently brushing against her foot.
“I’m fine,” she said. “It’s you I’m worried about.”
She started down the hall toward her mom’s room. She pushed open the door and ascended the spiral staircase that led to the attic where her mom did her magic. When she reached the top of the stairs, her eyes welled with tears. She put her fist to her mouth and bit down into her knuckle.
There was water everywhere, soaking her mom’s altar and her favorite chair and the floral wallpaper.
The black candle lay overturned. The flame was out, and dried wax pooled on the ruined rug.
A charred line ran from the wax to the opposite wall, which now had a doorway-shaped hole in it to a room Clara had never seen.
“I’m so sorry,” Clara said through her tears. “I was only trying to help.”
She started for the burned wall, when a sharp pain shot through the ball of her foot.
She stopped short and stared down to find she was now dripping blood through her sock onto the already ruined rug.
She blinked back tears of pain and guilt and fear to find broken glass littered the floor, all the jars of water she and her mom set out during the last full moon, destroyed.
She started to cry louder, her gentle stream of tears now interrupted by full-on hiccups as the reality of what her spell had done sunk in.
She’d never been hurt in the house before.
She’d had close calls—slipping down the stairs in a pair of thick socks, reaching for a hot pan of cookies without an oven mitt—but always the house stepped in.
“I broke you,” she said, throat tight.
The window opened and closed half-heartedly, as if it took all the house’s energy to respond, and though Clara knew the house was trying to tell her it wasn’t her fault, it didn’t change the fact that, as far as Clara was concerned, it was very much her fault indeed.
“Clara?” Her mom’s voice came from the room below, and that only made Clara cry harder. “Clara are you all right?”
When her mom reached the top of the landing, Clara wanted nothing more than to run into her arms and cry and cry, but with the glass on the floor, she didn’t dare move.
Evie’s eyes swept over the room before landing on Clara’s foot.
“Oh, honeybee.” Evie stepped across the glass to Clara and scooped her up, one hand under her knees.
“It’s all my fault,” Clara said.
“This isn’t your fault.” Evie pulled a chair from the corner and gently set Clara on it, away from the glass. Behind her, Angela emerged at the top of the stairs.
“Are you bleeding?” Angela asked.
“It’s not me you should be worried about!
” Clara managed through her tears. She threw out a hand toward the room.
“I did this! I did that spell for Aunt Florence and the house and all I wanted was to fix things, but my magic burned up the rug and made a hole in the wall and now all our moon water is gone and the house is never going to be the same!”
Evie knelt down before Clara. “You didn’t do this. Whatever caused this started long before you were born.”
“I’ll go grab some rubbing alcohol,” Angela said before she disappeared back down the stairs.
Evie lifted Clara’s foot, and though Clara winced, her mom’s touch was gentle and cool as she pulled the shard of glass free and tugged off Clara’s sock. Blood welled at the site of the wound, but not nearly as much as Clara expected.
“Something is wrong with the house, Mommy,” Clara said. “The wall burned, and my foot got cut.”
“That may be,” Evie said as Angela reappeared.
Evie gently cleaned and dressed Clara’s wound as she spoke.
“But it did spill our moon water trying to put out the fire—and if that’s not a good use of it, then I don’t know what is.
And, yes, the rug and the wallpaper are probably ruined, but the house is okay.
And look,” Evie gripped Clara’s chin gently and guided her attention to the hole in the wall.
“We didn’t even know there was a room back there! We’ve discovered something new.”
Clara sniffled and rubbed at her nose. Angela handed her a tissue.
“And you get to stay with me tonight,” Angela said.
Clara’s eyes brightened. She’d stayed with her Aunt Florence a few times, but never with Angela.
“We’ll go to the store and get your favorite snacks, and I’ll make popcorn, and we can watch any movie you want,” Angela said.
“But won’t the house be lonely without us?” Clara asked.
Her mom’s eyes clouded as she looked over the room. “It probably will be a little bit lonely,” she admitted. “But the firefighters think we need to stay somewhere else tonight, and I’m sure the house understands.”
Again, that window opened and closed softly.
Clara nodded, still convinced she was at least partially responsible for what happened. “Can we at least look in the hole before we go?”
Evie gave her daughter a small smile. “I suppose we could take a peek.”
Clara jumped up, then winced and grabbed her foot. Evie picked her up and carried her across the room. As they approached the wall, the curtains rustled, and the glass along the floor started to move like someone was shaking the boards.
“See?” Evie asked. “The house is going to be fine.”
Clara worried at her lip but gave a short nod as her mom set her down in front of the wall.
“Let me make sure it’s safe,” Evie said before she stepped into the hidden room. Clara followed her as soon as she was through the opening.
“Seems safe enough.” Clara turned in a circle. Though her foot still stung, what she found was enough to make her forget the pain—at least for now.
It almost looked like an extension of her mom’s attic room.
Taper candles in all sizes and colors hung from hooks.
On the far wall, a bookcase had been built into the corner, packed with books and jars full of herbs and tinctures and honey.
Several journals had fallen from its shelves and lay in a heap on the floor in front of it.
Next to them sat a plush chair with a high back, all dark green and tufted like the ones she saw at the antique shop whenever she and her mom delivered candles, and in front of the chair, a small table.
A leather journal lay open in the center alongside a pool of wax, as if someone had walked out while they were in the middle of a spell.