Chapter 63
Chapter Sixty-Three
Evie, Now
“We’re never going to make it,” Evie said as she dug her keys from her pocket and took off at a run for the door.
Nothing mattered to Evie as much as her daughter—nothing—but she’d been so worried about the fate of her own magic she forgot to keep an eye on Clara.
Now, Clara was about to do something she’d never be able to undo, and it was Evie’s fault.
“Evie!” Florence called. “Wait!”
But she didn’t stop. She didn’t even look back.
“Evie!” This time it was Angela, and she was right behind Evie. She grabbed Evie’s hand, slowing her movement.
“We don’t have time.”
“Look,” Angela said. Evie paused at the wonder in her voice.
She turned to find Angela pointing back the way they’d come. There, beside the door to the room the shop had created for them, was another door. Florence and Owen stood in front of it, and when Florence turned the knob, it opened into the hallway outside Evie’s bedroom.
Evie’s breath caught in her throat. Though she knew her sister had not cast a spell to bring the door into being, she also knew this was her sister’s magic.
Ink & Pages was the home her sister had created after she’d left Honeysuckle House behind.
It knew her, it loved her, and because Florence loved Clara, because she loved Evie, it had given them a chance.
Evie ran for her sister, for the door, for her daughter.
She stepped through it and into Honeysuckle House.
The floorboards shook beneath her feet. She stumbled, but Florence caught her as she, too, crossed into the hallway.
Once Evie regained her footing, she pushed through her bedroom door and took the spiral stairs up to the attic.
She landed on the threshold to find the lights flickering on and off on the other side of the broken wall.
Lightning crackled across the sky.
“Clara!” Evie shouted as she ran through to the other side to find her daughter with a match burning in her hand.