Chapter 58
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Evie, Now
After they’d shared their findings, they sat in silence for a few moments. Finally, they had the truth. Evie pressed her fingers to her witch’s mark. When she was a child, she’d wished to have one just like Florence, but it wasn’t until after her father died that it appeared.
“She siphoned our magic.” Evie tried to imagine the amount of power her mother must’ve had once she’d claimed Evie’s in addition to her sister’s. It was no wonder they’d never been a match for her.
Evie bit her lip to try to stop herself from crying.
Her mother had feared for her family, and she’d made a choice.
Seeing her mother’s pain and her fears right there on the page had shifted something inside of Evie.
She would do anything to protect her daughter.
She recognized that same resolve in Linda.
She knew, were she the one trying to stop Clara’s magic from being siphoned or protecting Angela from being offered as a sacrifice, she would’ve pushed her mother over that railing, too.
But that’s where things would’ve ended. Evie would rather lose her magic than force this on Clara.
“This is what Mom was doing thirteen years ago.” Florence held a hand to her throat as she said the words. “It’s why the honeysuckle attacked me. I’d been her offering.”
“But it didn’t work,” Angela said.
“Your mom died,” Owen said. “Not you.”
“Then how do we still have our magic?” Evie asked. “Why is all of this happening?”
Beside her, Florence clapped a hand over her mouth. “The house,” she whispered. “The chandelier.”
“It stopped her,” Evie said.
“It saved me,” Florence replied.
“But not in time.” Evie had seen the remnants of the completed spell on her mother’s altar.
Florence nodded slowly. “The spell took Mom’s death as the offering.”
“And the house has been siphoning our magic ever since,” Evie said.
“Is that why it’s been so scary?” Clara asked.
“I think so, honeybee,” Evie said.
From what they’d read in those journals, completing the spell hadn’t only put their magic at risk, it changed the witch who cast it, twisting them.
Tillie’s death had been unintentional. Yes, Regina had offered Violet’s love.
But she hadn’t meant to kill her—like what Evie had almost done to Angela.
But Violet’s death had been calculated. The very person Regina wanted the most, she’d murdered.
Linda, too, had gone from protecting Florence and their dad only to take Robert’s life thirteen years later.
Though the house hadn’t tried to hurt them, it had changed in other ways.
The paint chipped; the cobwebs ever present.
But the past week had been different, almost like the house couldn’t control itself.
“It’s about to lose its magic,” Evie said. “And mine and Aunt Florence’s along with it.” The two of them would live, but it would be a magic-less existence. The same one her grandmother and her mother had been unable to contend with.
“That’s why it gave you Mom’s journal thirteen years ago,” Florence said sadly. “It knew our magic would end, and it wanted you to use it to the fullest.”
Evie gasped and held a hand over her mouth. “And our tarot reading,” she said. “The hierophant was never about the house at all.”
Her sister had thought it meant the house couldn’t be trusted as a guide.
Evie had thought it meant Florence couldn’t be trusted as a guide.
But more than a helping hand, the hierophant was a card about the passing along of tradition, and it seemed the only tradition their family had was one of abuse and control.
The card had been a call to put an end to the siphoning spell.
“Temperance reversed pointed to our magic being out of balance because of the spell,” Evie realized.
“And the hermit never meant that we needed to give up our magic or to stop hoarding it,” Florence said. “It was telling us the house planned to give up its magic by not repeating the spell.”
Clara shook her head, hard. “But magic is what makes the house alive!”
“It is,” Evie said, the weight of it almost too much.
“You mean …” Clara paused, her voice thick. “The house is going to die?”