Seasoned wood and old copies of the Times lay ready next to the fireplace. I set logs and paper in place for a fire.
Returning to the open book, I read aloud: “Subdued light.” I left Prospero’s room and dimmed every light in the apartment for good measure. “Never let the room be overheated.” I cracked a window and a cold draft sliced into the room. Opening a second window in the parlor created a freezing cross-breeze. “Prayer or music.” I’d thought of playing music on my phone, but the idea seemed ridiculous standing in Prospero’s room.
Instead, I went to the Victrola and looked inside the cabinet. A record already lay on the turntable: “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (Longing to Be Near Your Side).”
I turned the crank and the music crackled out of the horn.
Promise then you will not sever
From the ties that bind us two.
Say you will be mine forever,
Tell me that you still are true…
I was ready. Almost.
“Let’s light it up,” I said. I kneeled by the fireplace and extended my hand, palm-out. Silver magic sparked like tiny fireworks, hitting the paper and wood. Orange flames lit and smoke curled upward as the fire spread.
In my mind, Patty Melt the fire mouse stirred to life, ears and whiskers twitching.
“Hello, girl,” I said, adding a few logs to the fire. “Stand by.”
She hunkered down and half closed her eyes.
I straightened up and fished in my pocket, then pulled out Prospero’s bow tie, the one I’d shown to Lily.
I brought it to my nose, realizing I was holding my breath against the weirdness of what I was about to do. You don’t go around sniffing people’s clothing without a damn good reason.
I forced myself to inhale.
Prospero’s bow tie didn’t smell all that different from the rest of the apartment—a little antique, a little musty, some kind of faint old-world cologne—but it was the closeness of it I was going for. The intimacy. As if I could find Prospero’s ghost in the ghost of the scent he’d left behind. This was how Jester went through the world: by smell. All that information, coming through in signals that dodged the conscious brain and burrowed right down to something more instinctual.
I lowered the bow tie to my lips. “Prospero,” I whispered, my breath clinging to the silk and warming it.
Meanwhile the fire warmed my feet, and the Victrola droned on.
I regret the harsh words spoken,
That I know have caused you pain,
And my heart is nearly broken,
Say you love me once again…
“Come on, Prospero,” I said, placing my free hand on the sword cane and concentrating harder, remembering every interaction we’d had: the charity market, the museum, the apartment, the abandoned church, the ice field.
The wind whistled and the fire danced, but no Prospero.
What would get his attention?
I set the bow tie on the mantel and picked up the bag of glass. I felt its weight—physically, but also in magic and memories—and then I carefully placed it on the fire.
The fabric burned slower than I expected, blackening and curling before disappearing into flakes of ash.
I held my hand palm-up and summoned Patty. She appeared in my hand in a burst of light and jumped into the fireplace. She seized a corner of the pillowcase and bit down, all the while glowing brighter and brighter, hotter and hotter. My borrowed fire magic shielded me from the worst of the heat but I still felt it, like the Florida sun in early September when it feels like there will never be any relief.
I turned both hands toward the fire and stoked it with magic. It couldn’t burn bigger—I’d burn the building down—but within the strong old bricks lining the fireplace, I could burn it like a lighthouse beacon, strong and concentrated.
