The Rules of Magic

by Alice Hoffman

  “What’s wrong?” William asked.

  Vincent couldn’t bring himself to speak of the curse or let the idea of it into the room with them, even though William would have understood in a way another man would not. He was a bloodline whose relative Matthew Grant had been tried for witchcraft and then acquitted in Windsor, Connecticut, before disappearing. There was no official record of William’s ancestor after his trial, but there didn’t need to be. He’d come to New York, where the family had settled on Long Island, and William had spent every summer at his family’s house on the shore. He had an easy manner, but was direct and comfortable with himself. He’d been to Harvard, so he understood Massachusetts as well, and he’d written his thesis on John Hathorne, the witch-finder and judge who had sentenced so many of their kind to death, and several of the classes he taught at the New School centered on outsider societies.

  “Do you know your fate?” Vincent asked as they lay together, entwined.

  “I know yours.” William laughed. “I told you when I met you.”

  “To sing in Washington Square Park?”

  William grinned. “To be mine.”

  When Vincent went missing Franny was worried sick the first two days, furious over the next two days, and hurt every day that followed.

  “He’ll be back,” Jet insisted. “You know Vincent.”

  Franny walked the dog, who continually pulled on his leash to the corner of Bleecker Street, then would stop, puzzled, refusing to walk on until Franny dragged him home. She wondered if her birthday wish had gone wrong, and had driven Vincent further away.

  “You would know if something was wrong,” Jet assured her sister. “You still have the sight.”

  At last Vincent phoned to say he was sorry to have been out of touch.

  “Out of touch?” Franny had barely slept a wink since her brother had disappeared. “I was afraid you were murdered.”

  “Worse,” Vincent told her. “I’m in love.”

  “Very funny,” Franny said.

  He’d had so many admirers and he’d never cared about a single one. He laughed, understanding his sister’s response. “This is different, kiddo.”

  “You don’t sound like yourself.” Franny was already looking for a canister of salt and some fresh rosemary to dispel whatever afflicted him.

  “I am myself,” Vincent told her.

  He gave her an address and told her to come see for herself. Franny packed up the ingredients she thought she might need, then leashed the dog and took off. Vincent’s instructions were odd, however, and the streets unfamiliar. Finally she came to Conjure Street. It was dusk when she thought she saw Vincent on the stoop of an old town house, but Harry didn’t bark to greet him and it was another man who waved to her. Franny approached, suspicious. The dog, on the other hand, went right to the stranger, who introduced himself as William Grant. Although he wasn’t especially handsome he had charisma and even Franny was engaged by his manner.

  “I’m meeting my brother here.” Franny was studying William more closely. His dark sensitive eyes, his intensity.

  “I am as well.”

  “Really?”

  There had been so many people who’d been mad for Vincent; Franny assumed she’d simply come across one more admirer. She had persisted with her childhood task of watching over her brother. Every week she dropped a protection amulet into his jacket pocket, made of black cloth and bound by red thread, containing clove and blackthorn. Often, however, she found the amulets discarded in the street.

  “And I’m here to meet you, too,” the fellow said. “Your brother was too shy to be here when we first spoke.”

  “My brother? Shy? We’re not talking about the same person.”

  William laughed. “This is all very new to him.”

  “But not to you?”

  “Well it is if you mean falling in love.” When Franny didn’t answer, it was William’s turn to study her. “You can’t be surprised. He thinks you knew before he did.”

  She’d certainly known that Vincent had never been in love with a woman. That neighbor of their aunt’s who had seduced him, the college girls, the waitresses, the fans of his music, all were meaningless. He rarely saw them more than once, and often couldn’t remember their names. But William Grant was different. Franny knew it as soon as her brother came outside to join them. She could tell when he looked at William.

  “So now you know,” Vincent said.

  “I think I always knew,” Franny said.

  “Well, then, now it’s out in the open.”

  “I’m sure you don’t mind if we speak privately,” Franny said to William, taking her brother by the arm.

  “Not at all.” They left William with the dog, who seemed perfectly content to be entrusted to this stranger.

  “He has the sight,” Vincent protested as Franny directed him toward an alley. “There’s no privately. It’s all out in the open. You might as well speak in front of him.”

  Her brother could be so irritating when he pretended to be dense. “You know you’re not supposed to do this,” Franny said.

  “Be with a man?”

  “Fall in love!” They both laughed, then Franny’s expression darkened. “Seriously, Vincent. The curse.”

  “Oh, fuck it, Franny. Aren’t you sick of being ruled by the actions of people who are long dead? Maybe everyone is cursed. Maybe it’s the human condition. Maybe it’s what we want.”

  Franny was truly worried. There was no one of whom she felt more protective. She thought of sitting beside his crib with a canister of salt, refusing to leave him after he’d been returned to them. She had seen a halo around him, the sign of a beautiful, but short, life. Franny had the salt with her now, but here he was with a grin on his face. And there was William Grant, watching them, concerned, clearly mad for her brother.

  “Franny,” Vincent said. “Do not argue with me. Let me be who I am.”

  As she threw her arms around him, she forgot about the salt and the rosemary and the curse and the ways fate could surprise you.

  “Then I wish you happiness,” she said, for that was really all she’d ever wanted for him.

  There was a crow on the lamppost on New Year’s Day. They’d had a small dinner, stuffing a goose with Aunt Isabelle’s recipe, which included chestnuts and oysters sure to inflame the erotic center of anyone who partook of the meal. Vincent and William took off after helping to wash up, laughing as they packed some of Vincent’s belongings. He was so often at William’s apartment it seemed he lived there. After he’d gone, Franny saw that he’d left The Magus at home, which she took to be a good sign. She went after it, thinking she would hide it under a loose floorboard in the kitchen, and perhaps Vincent would forget about it entirely. But when she went to grab the text, it burned her fingers. “Fine,” she said to the book. “As long as you leave him be.”

  As Franny and Jet stored away the dishes, Jet noticed the crow in the yard. “Isn’t that Lewis?”

  Franny went to greet him, having not seen him in more than two years. When she held up her arms he came to light on her shoulder. No matter what anyone said about crows, there were indeed tears in his eyes.

  “Is it Haylin?” Franny asked.

  The crow rested his beak against her cheek and she knew that it was. She went inside and found the phone number of Dunster House.

  The crow paced on the coffee table and kept an eye on her. Jet paced as well, as Franny did her best to get through to the school. It was a holiday, and Harvard was all but deserted. At last a custodian answered. As Franny wasn’t a relative, he couldn’t give out any information.

  “Don’t take no for an answer,” Jet urged. “Stand up for yourself.”

  Franny pleaded with the custodian, who at last gave in, telling her that the student in question had been taken to Mass General Hospital.

  “Of course you’ll go,” Jet said. “There’s no question about it.”

  “But what if I ruin him?” Franny asked her sister. “May
be I should stay.”

  Franny had never before asked for her sister’s advice and Jet was somewhat startled, especially because she had not been forthcoming about her own life. She had intended not to see Rafael again, but that’s not how things turned out. They often met outside the hotel, then walked through the park. Jet read the papers he wrote for class, and later when he wrote a book about teaching kids who had been labeled unteachable he thanked her in his dedication, although no one in his family had ever met her. She had not regretted a moment.

  “Go,” Jet told Franny. “What’s meant to happen will.”

  Franny stored her toothbrush and an extra T-shirt in her backpack, then had Lewis climb into the cat’s carrying case, for it was too miserable a night to fly such a long distance. She took a cab to Penn Station and bought a ticket on the first train to Boston.

  The car was overcrowded, and Franny had to stand until they reached New Haven, when she could finally slide into an available seat. By then she had a deep sense of foreboding. The other passengers must have felt it as well; as crowded as the train was, no one would sit next to her.

  When she got to Boston she let Lewis out of his case and he lit into the sky. She stopped at a shop outside South Station and bought a bag of jelly doughnuts, then took a taxi to Mass General. This time she knew she would be questioned about her relationship to the patient. When she said she was his sister, she was told that Hay had suffered from appendicitis. His roommate had found him curled up in a fetal position, teeth chattering, unable to respond, and had frantically called an ambulance. It was touch and go, the nurse divulged as she led Franny along the hall; they had feared septic shock and Haylin was still weak.

  He was in a shared room, which meant Franny had to edge past the man in the bed closest the door. He was exceedingly old and she could tell he was dying. There was a dark circle tightening around him like a shroud, instant by instant. Franny paused to take his hand, and the old man clutched at her, grateful. “Are you here to see me?” he asked. “Will you say good-bye to me?”

  “Of course,” Franny assured him.

  Haylin had been dozing, but he rose up through his half sleep, brought fully awake by the sound of Franny’s voice. He was pale and much thinner. There was the dark stubble of a beard on his face. The old man now soothed, Franny went on to Haylin’s bed. She dumped her backpack on the floor and lay down beside him, careful not to disturb the IV tubing inserted into his vein. She circled her arms around him.

  “Franny,” he said. “You came.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “It’s always been us,” Haylin said.

  Franny told him how Lewis had come to the city to fetch her. “He’s never really liked me,” she said. “He’s always preferred you.”

  “You’re wrong,” Haylin told her. “He’s crazy about you. I have a photograph of you on my desk and he sits there and stares at it, lovesick.” Hay chuckled, then clutched at his abdomen, in pain. Franny had brought along a protection spell. She tied a blue string that had been coated with lavender oil around Haylin’s wrist, then kissed his open hand.

  “Is this to bring me back to you?” he asked.

  “It’s to make you well.”

  She delivered the bag of jelly doughnuts, which brought a grin to Haylin’s face. “You remembered.”

  “Of course I did.”

  Hay then launched into praising Cambridge, how much Franny would appreciate the narrow streets and the riverside. She could take a class or two at Radcliffe. They could get an apartment in Central Square. He had been taking extra courses, and planned to graduate a year early so they would have more time to spend together. She submitted to this dream of happiness, but only briefly, until she gazed out the window. The crow was on the windowsill, watching, his head tilted. He knew what she was thinking. She was too afraid of the curse to ever place Haylin in danger. Franny slipped off the bed. It was too difficult to be near him. She poured Haylin a cup of water.

  “Franny,” he said. “We were meant to be together. Your coming here proves it.”

  She had no idea what she would do next, if she would stay or go.

  “You can’t leave me now,” Hay urged, and she might have said she would never leave him again, but just then a tall blond girl stepped into the room, breaking their intimacy. The girl was perhaps twenty, pretty, with a huge smile, her cheeks flushed from walking along the Charles River, which she complained about as soon as she arrived. Her sleek cap of hair was in place despite the windy day. She wore a plaid skirt and a blue cashmere sweater and a scarf knotted at her throat. She, too, carried a bag of jelly doughnuts.

  “I’m freezing!” the girl declared. “And oh, my God, Hay, I was out of my mind with worry last night.” She went to Haylin’s side. “I didn’t even get to call your parents until this morning. They’ll be up tonight.” She pulled off her scarf. “I didn’t leave here until the doctor assured me a hundred percent that you were fine.”

  “I am,” he said roughly, his eyes still on Franny.

  The girl had been so intent on Hay she hadn’t even noticed Franny lurking by the window, wearing her ill-fitting black coat. “Oh, hello!” the girl said brightly. “I didn’t see you there.”

  Lewis tapped on the window glass, but Franny was distracted. Her heart was pounding. She’d gone white as a sheet, her freckles splotchy across her pale face. “Hello,” she said. Her voice cracked with the fever of resentment.

  The girl came forward and stuck out her hand. “I’m Emily Flood.”

  Being in such close proximity to this interloper caused a series of images to flicker behind Franny’s eyes. “You’re from Connecticut and you went to an all-girls private school and you’re Haylin’s roommate.”

  “Why yes! How did you know all that! I’m not officially a roommate, but since I’m there every night, I guess so! It’s a good thing I am. Otherwise who would have called the ambulance? Hay is so stoic. He would have shivered there uncomplaining until his appendix burst.”

  “Oh,” Franny said. “It was you who saved him.”

  “Franny.” Haylin seemed truly in pain now.

  Emily looked at Hay, then at Franny. “You’re Franny? I’ve heard so much about you. How brilliant you are.”

  “Well, I’m not. I’m actually stupid.” Franny went to retrieve the backpack she’d dropped on the floor when she climbed into bed with Haylin. “And I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

  Hay got out of bed, gripping his side, lurching forward so that the IV stand nearly toppled. Emily caught the IV and righted it, but no one was paying much attention to her.

  “Franny, do not leave,” Hay said. “Things changed. You were gone for two years.”

  He had the nerve to reproach her with Emily Flood standing right there. If that pretty roommate of Hay’s spoke to her again, she couldn’t be held accountable for her actions.

  “That’s right,” Franny said. “I didn’t get to go to school. I couldn’t be your roommate.”

  She went to the door, past the dying man. The shroud was almost completely encircling him now, but he murmured his gratitude when Franny stopped to touch his forehead. She stayed until he had passed over; it was so brief, like a sigh. Then she went on, despite Hay calling out to her. She ran all the way to South Station, her heart thudding against her chest. Emily. His roommate. Well, what had she expected? She had sent him off. She had told him to go and not to look back.

  On the train, Franny smoldered with fury and hurt. At Penn Station she cut a path through the crowd and walked home in the dark. That night she cried tears so black they stained the sheets. She didn’t change out of the clothes she’d worn when she was beside Haylin in bed. They still carried his scent. In the morning, she went into the garden.

  Jet spied her sister from the kitchen window. She went outside and they sat together on the back steps. Snow had begun to fall but the sisters remained where they were.

  “He found someone else,” Franny said.

  “There
will never be anyone else.”

  “Well there is. Her name is Emily. She’s his roommate.”

  “Only because you told him to go.”

  “Either way, she’s the one who has him.” Oh, it was horrible. Franny was crying. She was mortified. She quickly buried her face in her hands. “I let him go and now he belongs to someone else. And it’s better for him that way.”

  “You can love him if you want to,” Jet told Franny. The scar on her face bloomed in cold weather, turning the color of violets. “To hell with the curse. You don’t have to make the same mistakes all the other women in our family have made.”

  “Why would I be any different?”

  “You’ll be the one to outsmart it.”

  “Unlikely,” Franny said sadly.

  “You will,” Jet insisted. She didn’t have to have the sight to know this. “Wait and see.”

  April Owens arrived on a Greyhound bus on a bright spring day in 1966 and walked to the Village from Forty-Second Street. It had been nearly six years since she had first met Franny and Jet and Vincent, but somehow it had felt as though she’d known them forever, so it made perfect sense to show up in New York without bothering to write or call. It was a long walk, but she didn’t mind. All she wanted was to be free. Every mortal being was entitled to that right, no matter what her history might be. April was still fierce, but now she was most fierce in her devotion to her daughter. She didn’t mind when Regina, only five and usually very good-humored, grew tired and cranky by the time they passed Pennsylvania Station, and had to be carried the rest of the way.

  Regina was dressed in a T-shirt and a gauzy little skirt that she referred to as her princess outfit, but now she was an exhausted princess. She fell asleep in her mother’s arms, heavier in sleep than she had been while awake. No matter. April kept going. She was wearing jeans and a fringed vest and her long pale hair was in braids, bound with beaded leather ties. She stood out in midtown among a sea of suits and proper dresses, but as she headed downtown she looked like anybody else on the street. She found number 44 Greenwich and rang the bell. She liked what she saw. The tilted house, the trees in the garden, the shop that sold enchantments, the school yard next door where scores of children were out at play.