“Here I go. Back to Beantown, where I’ll never hear the end of my failures.” She took Henry and went to pack, running into Franny in the hall. The ferret looked especially sad, as if he knew his fate as well. “We’ll always be involved with each other,” April told Franny. “You know that, don’t you?”
Franny had the sense that her cousin was right, still she said, “I doubt it. We live in different worlds.”
“Actually, Franny, we don’t.”
Because of the sad tone of her cousin’s voice, Franny offered to carry her suitcase to the door.
“The next time I see you everything will be different,” April mused.
“Isn’t it always?” Franny said, sounding harsher than she felt.
“I suppose your brother can’t be bothered with saying good-bye,” April said.
“Vincent does as he pleases,” Franny remarked. “Anyone who truly knows him knows that.”
When Jet came to say her good-byes, she and April lingered near the green-tinged windows. From this vantage point, they could see through the glass into the garden. Vincent was out there, dozing in the hammock. He picked up his head when the horn beeped again, gazing at the limo with disinterest before resuming his nap.
April turned away from the window. “What’s done is done.”
Jet went to embrace her cousin, for she knew what April was thinking. He couldn’t even say good-bye. April certainly wasn’t the first person to have fallen for Vincent, or the first to be wounded by his indifference. She’d been new and daring and exciting, but that had faded as time went on. Now she was just a girl who could easily be hurt.
“Good luck,” Jet said.
“Thank you.” April’s eyes were filling with tears. Not everyone was who she pretended to be, including their out-of-control cousin. “Good luck to you, too.”
Franny and Jet continued to work in the garden early in the mornings, before the heat of the day was upon them. They wore heavy gloves so they could tear out the poisonous plants that grew wild: jimsonweed, holly, foxglove, nightshade, mandrake, rue. While they sweated, Vincent lay in the hammock strumming his guitar. He had been composing a song about April. Called “The Girl from Boston,” the ballad was about a young woman who will do anything to win her freedom. In the end she drowns in Leech Lake, sinking into the green water.
“Can’t it end differently?” Jet asked her brother. “Can’t love conquer all?”
“I think it’s a perfect ending,” Franny piped up. “She should get her comeuppance.”
“A song is what it is.” Vincent shrugged. “This one’s tragic.”
Despite the warning girls in town had been given by their mothers, many of them came to peer over the iron fence, enthralled by the handsome young stranger, won over by his long, dark hair and his pure, expressive voice and his tender rendition of “The Girl from Boston.” Vincent would occasionally wave, which sent his fans into hails of giggles. The girls applauded and shrieked as if they were in the presence of a star.
“Don’t they have anything better to do?” Vincent muttered.
“You know this town,” Franny answered. “Apparently not.”
Vincent was beginning to wish he could be released from his own rakish charms. His reputation had reached fever pitch, with increasing crowds of high school girls circling the house. Finally he gave in and let them have him. He tried one girl after another, but none held his interest. In the end he couldn’t tolerate their foolish notions. The locals seemed silly and unsophisticated. When it came down to it, he simply didn’t feel anything for them; they barely registered.
Then came an evening he was seduced by someone far more experienced, a neighbor who’d come to buy Aunt Isabelle’s black soap, the very stuff their mother used every night. When Mrs. Russell spied Vincent in the kitchen she was instantly in thrall. How lazy and gorgeous he was, so tall and darkly charismatic. As soon as Isabelle left the room to fetch the soap, the neighbor went right over to Vincent to whisper in his ear, saying she would make his dreams come true. She slipped one hand down his jeans to entice him. No one could call her subtle, but Vincent was drawn to rule breakers. Who was he to deny her the opportunity to defile him? She told him it was only an inappropriate flirtation; no one could fault them for that. After all, she had a son his age who was away at summer camp.
Vincent began climbing into their neighbor’s window at night. He learned far more about sex on this summer vacation than most fourteen-year-old boys learn in a lifetime, for Mrs. Russell seemed insatiable. Vincent tolerated her because when he closed his eyes, she might have been someone entirely different, and sometimes he was surprised by his own imaginings. All the same, he considered his escapades to be an education, nothing more.
When Mrs. Russell’s husband went on a business trip, Vincent was convinced to spend the night and then it went too far. She’d suddenly said something about being in love. Fear coursed through him at the very idea. Mrs. Russell was in her late thirties, the age of his mother. He realized how old she was when he stayed all night and saw her in the glare of the bright morning sun. It was something of a shock. She was haggard and dull, with sagging breasts. Her nose appeared to be crooked, and there were hairs in her chin he hadn’t noticed before. If anything, she reminded him of a very large rabbit.
Vincent came to his senses all at once. This was not what he wanted. He climbed out the window in a panic, not bothering to dress, while Mrs. Russell slept on unawares, snoring softly. Vincent fled in shame, clothes in hand, desperate to get away. To his chagrin, he bumped into Aunt Isabelle on the porch. He was stark naked and mortified, thankful the vines cast shadows in which he could hide himself, at least a bit, from the spotlight of his aunt’s fierce glance.
“Your fling not what you thought it would be?” she asked in a knowing tone.
Though Aunt Isabelle had a sober expression, Vincent could tell his exploits were a source of amusement for her. She turned her back while he dressed, then brought him out to the greenhouse, where there were dusty pots of Spanish garlic and rosemary. In a corner there grew lemon thyme and lemon balm and lemon verbena. Vincent had already broken in and explored and it was here that he and April had often come to smoke marijuana.
There were varieties of plants that needed special care on the shelves, including night-blooming cereus, jasmine, foxglove, miracle leaf, angel trumpet, and comfrey. From beneath the rows of plants, Isabelle looked through a heavy black book Vincent hadn’t previously noticed.
Isabelle opened the book. “It’s easy to bring love to you,” she told him, “but getting rid of it is another matter entirely. If you can call whatever just went on love.”
“I wouldn’t call it that,” Vincent admitted.
“I’d agree with you there.” She leafed through the book. “There are rules to all this, you know. First, do no harm. You need to remember that.”
“I’ll try,” Vincent said.
“Trying is not quite good enough.” Isabelle turned to a page marked Protection.
Black cloth, red thread, clove, blackthorn.
When Mrs. Russell woke to find Vincent gone, she had rushed after him, not caring if she caused a scandal. She was enchanted; much like the nurse who had tried to kidnap him hours after his birth, when her attraction to him was impossible to fight. They could hear her on the porch, banging on the door so hard the sound echoed across the garden. She really had no shame. Isabelle muttered a few words, which forced their neighbor to retreat to her own home. Then Vincent’s aunt turned to him. “You seem to be addictive, so you’d better learn to deal with the problem now. I assume you already know your fate. Or do you fear knowing?”
“I don’t fear it,” Vincent said, bravely, but in fact he did.
Isabelle reached for the black cloth that covered an object stored on the floor beside the potting soil and the bulbs which would be planted in autumn. There stood a three-sided mirror, the glass painted black. There were no mirrors in the old house, and when he now spied his im
age he understood why. Members of their family saw not only their current reflections but also the images of what was to come. There in the greenhouse, on this cool morning, Vincent saw his future before him. It was a twist of fate he had guessed at before. But seeing it so clearly, he turned chalk white.
Aunt Isabelle offered him a glass of water, but he shook his head and continued to stare. There were blurred images of a little girl on the grass and of a man on a hillside and of a park he didn’t recognize where the paths were made of stone. And larger than any of these images there was the shadowy twin he had caught sight of throughout his life, whenever he peered into mirrors or passed by store windows. A self inside him, one he’d done all he could to avoid. Now, however, he had no choice but to look. In doing so, he understood who he was. In that moment, in his aunt’s greenhouse, he felt more alone than ever.
Isabelle made the charm for him, sewing so quickly her fingers seemed to fly. Vincent had to wait through the day, for he was told to leave the amulet on Mrs. Russell’s porch when the moon was waning, then he must draw a circle around himself in the dust and stand in place until he knew it was time to go.
“How will I know?” he asked.
Isabelle laughed. “You’ll know.”
Vincent kissed his aunt, thanking her.
He lay low for the day, holed up in the greenhouse, ignoring his sisters when they called to him. At last it was time. As he walked back to the neighbor’s he realized that the magic tricks he’d taught himself were childish foolishness. What mattered was the blood that ran through him, the same blood that had flowed through Maria Owens. Once, when he’d cut himself in a tangle of brambles on the way to the lake, drops of his blood had burned through the fabric of his shirt. This was what bloodline magic was. It was inside him.
On this night he followed his aunt’s instructions. He left the charm on a wicker chair on Mrs. Russell’s porch and stood within a circle of dust until he felt her attraction to him evaporate. The electricity around him fizzed, and the air turned calm. There was the sound of crickets calling and a wind arose that would end later the next day. Upstairs, in her bed, Mrs. Russell fell into a dreamless sleep and when she woke she had no aspirations other than to have a decent cup of coffee and a toasted English muffin. Her son came home from summer camp. Her husband returned from one of his many business trips.
When Vincent next ran into Mrs. Russell, in his aunt’s kitchen, come for a bottle of vinegar from an old Owens recipe that used molasses and rainwater, he felt a chill. The vinegar was useful for impotent men, of which her husband was one. When Mrs. Russell raised her eyes to meet his, Vincent could tell she didn’t recognize him. It was as if she had never seen him before, let alone taught him the intricacies of what a woman such as herself wanted in bed.
In the days that followed, Vincent tried his best to uncover his natural abilities. As he sat with his sisters on a wooden bench in the park, he decided to teach the two vicious swans in the pond a lesson. He studied them with absolute concentration, and soon enough they rose into the air, hanging above the water for a terrified instant before splashing back down. They were stunned for a moment, then took off on wing across the pond, squawking like chickens.
“That should teach them,” he said.
“All swans fly,” Franny insisted. “That’s not magic.”
But between April’s assertions and the swans’ reactions, Franny was intrigued. She embarked on a quest to methodically test her siblings’ abilities.
When she began her experiment, Vincent shook his head. “It’s a waste of time. We have the sight, Franny. Just admit it.”
Still, Franny wanted evidence. She had her brother remain in the parlor and stationed Jet in the attic, with no possibility of communication as they scanned duplicate index cards. Each could guess the word that the other had seen one hundred percent of the time. Franny tried it with numbers as well.
“We may simply have ESP,” Franny said. “I’ll need further documentation.”
Vincent laughed at that assessment. “Franny, we have more than that.”
Secretly, Franny had also been testing herself. Interested in the idea of levitation, she placed small items on the cherrywood desk in the parlor, then closed her eyes and willed them to move. When that didn’t work she asked nicely and soon had the ability to cause a tape measure to jump off the desk. She practiced daily, but it was clearly Vincent who had the strongest power. He didn’t even have to try. When he sauntered into the room books leapt from the library shelves. It was so effortless, like a bird lifting into a tree, the papers fluttering, the volumes crashing to the floor. You have the gift, Franny thought as he sprawled onto a velvet love seat. She hadn’t before realized how much he resembled Maria Owens. She thought it likely that he had as much power, perhaps more.
Vincent laughed, as if she’d spoken aloud. “Yes, but I’ll probably waste it,” he said. “And don’t kid yourself, Franny,” he told his sister. “You have it, too.”
As it so happened, Franny soon found herself pulled into consciousness in the middle of the night, awaking with a gasp. It was as if someone had reached into her soul and grabbed her to pull her out of her sleep. Her name had been spoken, although how, and by whom, she had no idea. It was the green heart of the summer, and cicadas were calling as heat waves moved through the air. It was a perfect night for dreaming, but Franny felt she had no choice but to answer the call. She left the attic and slipped down the back stairs in her nightgown. She pushed through the screen door and went past the porch, where the wisteria was so twisted children in town swore the vine had been fashioned out of an old man’s arms and legs.
It was pitch dark, and Franny crept forward carefully, doing her best not to trip over the holes the rabbits had dug. When she narrowed her eyes she noted that she wasn’t the only one out in the yard. Aunt Isabelle was making lye by pouring water through wooden ashes while talking to herself in a low tone. Now that Franny’s eyes had adjusted to the dark, she spied a mound of dried lavender on the ground, along with a basket of spices, and a pail of what looked like liquid midnight, but was in fact licorice-infused oil.
“The best soap is made in March in the dark of the moon. But since you’re here now, we’ll do it tonight. Soap must be made by someone in the family. That’s why I called you. If you weren’t the right person you would have gone on sleeping. But you woke, so the job is yours.”
Isabelle had interrupted a curious dream Franny had been having about a black bird eating from the palm of her hand as she sat on a bench in Central Park. The crow had told her his name, but now that she was awake she’d forgotten what it was. She’d read that Maria Owens was thought to have the ability to turn herself into a crow in order to accomplish her witchery. This conclusion was based on the account of a farmer who had shot at such a bird in his cornfield. The very next day Maria was seen with her arm bandaged.
“I don’t see why it has to be me.” Franny was barefoot and the earth felt damp. “Jet can do it.”
Isabelle gave her a hard look. Her expression sent a deep chill through Franny. It was to be her, that much was clear.
Franny noticed the book that was kept in the greenhouse had been brought outside. The fat, overstuffed tome reminded her of a black toad, for it was bound in a covering that resembled frog skin, cool to the touch. It was filled with deeply personal information, some too dangerous ever to repeat. If there were no family member to inherit it, it would be burned when the owner died, out of respect and according to tradition. Some called such a collection a Book of Shadows, others referred to it as a Grimoire. By any name it was a treasured text of magic, and was imbued with magical power. Writing itself was a magical act in which imagination altered reality and gave form to power. To this end, the book was the most powerful element of all. If it wasn’t yours and you dared to touch it, your hand would likely burn for weeks; small raised lumps would appear, causing a rash that was often impossible to cure.
The journal in the library had been
written during the last year of Maria’s life, but this, her secret book of spells, had been hidden beneath the floorboards of the house. The Grimoire contained instructions on how to craft talismans, amulets, and healing charms. Some formulas were written in ink that was specially made from hazelnuts or madder; others were written in the writer’s blood. There were lists of herbs and useful plants; remedies for sorrow, illness, childbirth troubles, jealousy, headache, and rashes. Here was a repository of a woman’s knowledge, collected and passed on.
“This is where the recipe for our soap came from. They may have the journal Maria wrote in her last year at the library, but we’ve kept the important book hidden. It may be the oldest Grimoire in this country. Most are burned when the owners pass on, to ensure that they don’t get into the wrong hands. But this one never gets into the wrong hands. We make sure of it. From Maria onward, it has gone to the strongest among us.” The Grimoire was so crammed with papers that scattered pages fluttered to the ground as Isabelle handed it over. “When the time comes, you’ll be next.”
The book opened in Franny’s hands. On the first page were the rules of magic.
Do as you will, but harm no one.
What you give will be returned to you threefold.
Fall in love whenever you can.
The last rule stopped Franny cold. “How is this possible?” she asked. “We’re cursed.”
“Anything whole can be broken,” Isabelle told her. “And anything broken can be put back together again. That is the meaning of Abracadabra. I create what I speak.”
The Rules of Magic Page 5