Chapter 42
Chapter Forty-Two
Though Regina may have tried to ease Linda’s fears about the curse, the house knew Linda was worried about what the day’s magic might bring.
Just as worried as Honeysuckle House itself.
It had lost so many of the people it loved.
It didn’t know if it could handle any more deaths.
When the sun rose, it pulled Linda’s quilt from her sleeping form.
She tried to tug it back up, but the house wouldn’t let her.
Linda rose from bed with a hand on her lower back and threw a robe over her nightgown, then slid her feet into a pair of slippers.
The house watched as she made her way downstairs, carefully cradling each of her footsteps to prevent even a single creaking floorboard. When she reached the kitchen, a steaming cup of raspberry tea waited for her on the counter beside still-warm toast.
“Thank you,” she said.
The house was glad to offer her this comfort.
“Mom wants to deal with the curse herself, but I’m not so sure,” Linda said, hands wrapped around her mug. “She has only me to lose. I have Robert.” She set the tea down and held a hand over her belly and, with a certain reverence in her voice, said, “I have Florence.”
The house opened the window above the sink, sending a gust of cold October air into the room, trying to draw Linda’s attention to the yard.
“A little chilly, don’t you think?” Linda started to close the window, but the house wouldn’t let her. Not until she saw her mother outside making her way toward the apiary. Because if Regina was at the apiary, it meant she wasn’t in the attic with the spell she’d been preparing all week.
The house made the lights in the kitchen glow a little brighter.
“You wanted me to see her?” Linda asked.
The kitchen bulbs blinked off then on. Behind Linda, the house dropped a frame from the wall, drawing her attention back to the doorway. When she turned, the house turned off all the lights save one in the hallway.
Linda set her cup down and walked toward it; as she did, the house made the next bulb glow and the next, leading Linda all the way up to the third floor.
She paused at her mother’s bedroom, gripping the doorframe as she took several steadying breaths.
If the house could’ve, it would’ve carried her the rest of the way.
“Just hold on a little longer,” she said as she rubbed her belly before she made the final climb into her mother’s attic room.