“For someone who’s been running about all day, you seem rather restless,” Celeste remarked, her gaze flitting to Violet’s hands, which were tapping against the red tablecloth, causing the fabric to wrinkle.
“I suppose I am,” Violet sighed, not bothering to deny what was so apparent from the tempo of her feet and fingers. “I’m having a bit of trouble piecing something important together.”
The memory of the name carved into the doorframe of the apartment flashed through her thoughts then. To move forward, Violet had to discover how May fit into the puzzle of the past, but she was uncertain where to turn.
A year ago, she would have simply let her impulses whip her along where they may, but she couldn’t give herself permission to be so reckless again, even when her very pulse seemed to beg her to let go once more.
“Are you?” Celeste murmured, clearly surprised. “I wonder why when you’ve always seemed so trusting of your instincts. As if you knew exactly what to do before even realizing it.”
“My instincts haven’t served me well as of late,” Violet answered with a shake of her head, just as Franny appeared with a pot of piping hot tea.
“Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is ourselves,” Celeste said with a knowing nod, her words mingling with the sound of the tea pouring into the porcelain as she lifted the pot and began to fill their cups. “Our mistakes have a habit of staining our souls, even when they should have washed out long ago.”
“All I want is to forget,” Violet replied, wrapping her fingers around the smooth sides of the porcelain and drawing it closer.
“But you can’t forget,” Celeste insisted. “Not when moving forward means finding the best of yourself to take along. Even with a fresh start, you can’t leave everything behind.”
Violet wondered if what Celeste said was true, if the parts of herself that she’d tried to shake loose could be embraced again, but before she could follow that thought, the scent of the tea tickled her nose and began pulling her in another direction entirely.
As she touched her lips to the cup’s rim and took her first sip, she could sense the texture of Anne’s magic washing over her, the threads of it coaxing Violet from her doubts and toward something coated in nostalgia: a moment that the aroma of vanilla and cloves was coaxing from the depths of her memory.
By the time the undernotes of nutmeg and cinnamon hit the back of her tongue, the tightness in her chest had all but disappeared, leaving her free to enjoy the sensation of slipping into the past. Her toes tingled, as if they’d just skittered across the hot stones of the hearth, and she could smell the fragrance of freshly cut pine, the same aroma that had saturated the family parlor whenever their father dragged in a tree to celebrate the longest night of the year. And her ears rang with the faint echoes of youthful laughter and the tinkling of delicate glassdecorations that rattled as she and her sisters tried to push one another to the side so that they could have their heights marked along the doorframe of the parlor and see how tall they’d grown. Violet could nearly feel the grip of their hands against her forearm and waist, tugging her this way and that to ensure she wasn’t standing on her tiptoes as they pressed a pencil just above her head.
She had been drawn back to her warmest memory of winter, the sensations of that moment sinking into her skin long enough for her to remember those few seconds with striking clarity.
But mixed among the smell of pine and citrus was something that didn’t belong, the same rich scent of rosemary that had laced her birthday vision and appeared in her dream. It drew her just enough into the present for her mind to wander toward other thresholds where she’d seen similar marks along the frames. And before Violet could think to shy away from her intuition again, a realization struck her and took hold.
Her feet stilled as she worked to catch the pieces and put them together before her fear of making a misstep could stifle her racing thoughts.
Hadn’t she done the same with Anne and Beatrix? Marked the doorframe to leave some kind of proof that they were shifting away from childhood with every added inch of height?
“May,” Violet murmured as she sank back into her chair.
“What was that?” Celeste asked, startling Violet so much that she nearly jumped from her seat.
“Nothing,” Violet replied quickly. “Nothing at all.”
But as she remembered the symbols that emerged from the dust, Violet became certain that the joy and grief lingering in the apartment were connected to Philip and what he was still clinging to, even after all this time. . . .
A sister.
CHAPTER 27
A Hand Mirror
Symbolizes the need for looking inward.
Just as the spicy notes of nutmeg and cinnamon were pulling Violet back into her warmest memory of winter, Anne was fighting through the icy gusts of wind that whipped through the streets.
Though she’d managed to fall asleep after she and Violet parted the evening before, ill omens had been creeping to the surface of her awareness since the moment she’d awoken to a flock of birds fluttering near the windowsill.
Threads so tangled that they hadn’t a hope of being undone slithered among the flames that flickered in the grate. A teacup fell to the floor, cracking so that the handle broke away from the base. And worst of all was the sensation that her sleeves were slipping down her forearms, though the buttons were clasped tightly around her wrists.
When she’d seen the first of these signs that morning, Anne’s thoughts instantly flew to her troubles with Vincent. But as the hours slipped by and she’d brushed against the lines of Fate thateach witch carried with them into the shop, Anne recognized the omens for what they were: warnings that the threads of destiny were continuing to untether.
She’d spent the rest of the afternoon locked in the divination room, struggling to find a means of uncovering a solution on her own before sunset, when she’d need to leave the Crescent Moon and return to Vincent.
But the shadows that flickered across the crystal ball refused to weave into a coherent impression, and all the leaves at the bottom of her cup washed away when she turned the rim atop the saucer, seemingly pushing Anne down a path she wasn’t certain she wanted to follow.
