Page 65 of The Rules of Magic

“Of course I know,” Hay said. “How could I not? You knew, so I knew, too. There was a time when I always knew what you thought. Or at least I believed I did.”

“So you’re a mind reader?”

“I’m a navy doctor with no power to help him.”

“Well, that is not the reason he can’t serve. Vincent cannot do harm to another. It’s out of the question.” It was the very first rule of magic. “And if he goes he won’t come back.” Anyone with sight could tell that her brother was a man whose fate was a brief life. “You can help him, and I know how. If there was any other way, I wouldn’t ask.”

“Will I wind up in jail if I do what you ask?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so? That’s rich. This is the way it always is. Do you care about me at all or am I just some pawn?”

She cried then, hands over her eyes.

“Not that,” he said, taking little comfort in how agitated she had become. She so rarely wept. “All right, fine. I’ll dive in. I’ll drown if that’s what you want.”

She went to sit in his lap. She didn’t care if she was supposed to stay away.

“Franny,” he groaned, as if in pain. “Let’s not start this all over again.”

“You’re still angry because I didn’t go after you into the pond. Because I wouldn’t steal you away from your engagement party.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” he said pointedly. “I’m likely going to wind up in jail doing whatever you want me to, so let’s not talk about the damned pond.”

“I want to explain! I physically can’t go underwater. I can’t be drowned. None of my family can, not unless they fill our boots with stones.”

Hay laughed. “You’re all witches?”

He likely didn’t believe anything she’d told him, but still he kissed her and told her he didn’t care if they were witches or warlocks or zombies or Republicans. He was a rational man, a doctor, ready to throw his life and career away for her, so what did it matter? They were entitled to do as they pleased, at least in bed. Eyes brimming, she now told him that what they did mattered greatly, for her family was afflicted and whomever they loved would be brought to ruin unless she could figure a way to break the curse.

“Is that why you were always running away?” Hay was moved to see her distress. “You should have told me, Franny. I have the answer. We’ll trick the curse. We won’t marry and we won’t live together. We’ll never speak of love. That’s how we’ll fight it. We’ll just outwit the damned thing. We’ll never say the word love aloud. We’ll never think or breathe it. If we do that, nothing can get in the way.” He shrugged then. “Well, almost nothing.”

They went upstairs to her room. Haylin took his deployment orders from his inner coat pocket before he got undressed. He would be leaving for Germany in a few weeks. His specialty was surgery, and there, where the worst of the wounded would be airlifted from Vietnam, he would get his share of practice.

Once in bed Franny knew that, despite the curse, she could no longer fight what she felt even if she never spoke of it aloud. She thought of one morning at Aunt Isabelle’s when she’d gone into the garden alone. The air was still and dark, the light just beginning to lift in the east. There was the rabbit in the grass. Franny went as close as she could to lay down a saucer of milk. I will never be you, she insisted. I won’t pretend to be something I’m not. At last it was true. It felt grand to be herself, a woman who knew how to love someone. They would simply pretend, to everyone except one another. Franny whispered to Haylin all that she ever was and had been. She told him that she had always known what the future would be, and he said that if what she said was true, then she should have known a very long time ago that this was meant to be.

All that winter Vincent refused to tell William the date of his induction. He didn’t want an emotional scene, so he began pulling back. He took to leaving Charles Street right after sex. He didn’t speak much. He often looked out into the street as if memorizing the view, in case he should never see it again. He did not wish to fight in a war he considered to be unfair. He was not a warrior and he hadn’t the skills to be a soldier.

“Are you angry with me?” William wanted to know.

“Of course not.” But Vincent sounded angry even to himself. Angry to be in this situation where he felt he was a traitor with no courage at all.

He began to slowly move his belongings out of William’s apartment. Each evening he went through the dresser where he kept his clothes and took a few shirts, a pair of jeans, some socks. He took a coffeepot, a hairbrush, his dog’s water bowl.

“Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing?” William asked.

“I’m getting rid of things I don’t need. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“You’re getting ready to leave. I can tell when a man is in denial. I grew up with one. I’m an expert. You won’t even stay the night anymore. You’re thinking of leaving me.”

Vincent leaned to kiss William, who backed away.

“You don’t trust me,” Vincent said.

“You have that so wrong,” William remarked. “It’s you who doesn’t trust me.”

Vincent refused to discuss the situation any further. He would not allow William to be shattered by sorrow that belonged to him alone. Was this the curse, succeeding at last in breaking him? He went down to the Lower East Side, returning to the building where he’d once set up shop. He had The Magus with him, tucked inside his coat. It was as if he had two beating hearts, one his own, the other belonging to the book. All this time, the book had been his closest companion. He hadn’t really needed anyone since the day he had found it, until now. Back in the abandoned apartment covered with graffiti, he brought from his shirt pocket the photograph William had taken of them when they were first together. Some love magic was brutal and quick and didn’t give the other person a choice in the matter. It was dark and irrevocable, but in Vincent’s opinion it was for the best if it would save his beloved from pain and grief. He tore William out of the picture. He had brought along the ingredients necessary to undo their attraction. His own blood, black paint, pins, a bird’s broken wing, a thin strand of lead. He could fix it so that William would never even see him. It was emotional camouflage. Whom you had loved, you would no longer recognize. He would not know his voice, his touch, their history. Without knowing why, William would throw out anything that might remind him of Vincent, letters he’d written, the tape of “I Walk at Night.” He would open a book Vincent had given him and not know where it had come from. He would toss out the second pillow on the bed.