Page 14 of The Book of Magic

The weather was changing. It was turning wicked. As they crossed Mass Ave, Kylie had the chills, as if the west wind had cut right through her. The sky had begun to glaze over with windblown clouds, as if it were the witching hour rather than three in the afternoon. Kylie decided she wouldn’t let Gideon out of her sight. Curse or not, nothing could happen if she watched over him.

They went to Dunster House, took three strides to cross the room, then fell into bed. That was when the rain started to pelt down on rooftops and roads, but Kylie didn’t hear the torrents of rain because she was kissing him. She was kissing him the way you do when you’re afraid you will lose someone, when you need their breath and life inside you, when your souls melt together in the act of kissing. The silence was broken by a slow, methodical clicking, somewhere in the wall, the sound anyone with any knowledge never wishes to hear.

Dunster House had been built in 1930 as a student residence, and people were charged by the floor they inhabited, with the poorer students required to walk up six flights. There was a great deal of old, dead wood, and deathwatch beetles were wood borers that could infest old buildings. Kylie heard one tapping now, a sound people said could portend a death. She had never been told about the deathwatch beetle, and was too young to remember her mother tearing the floor apart in search of just such a horrid creature before her own father met with his accident. Kylie hadn’t been told that there had been the same clicking in the stable where Gary Hallet had kept his horse, although Gary had insisted it was the echo of wood settling, refusing to believe it marked the time of his death. Still, the sound itself was unnerving.

Kylie had once overheard her aunts discussing that a black aura meant death and destruction and danger, wickedness in a world where there had previously been none. When this happened, an individual must place salt on her windowsills and in the four corners of her house. Now a black cloud rose up toward the ceiling of Kylie’s dorm room, but she didn’t intend to search for packets of salt. She didn’t believe in the curse, why should she? All the same, she would keep Gideon close to her, until the circle dissipated. If they missed finals, so be it. If they stayed in bed for a week, well, they’d done that before. While she slept Kylie dreamed of rain, for by now it was pouring buckets. The Common was flooded, and the birds hid in the bushes and under the eaves, doing their best to avoid the deluge. The women in the Owens family were attracted to water, even though it could be dangerous for them, for water always revealed the truth about who they were. That had been a problem for Kylie and Antonia Owens, for their mother feared that a single glimpse of the truth would rock their lives. Kylie and her sister had never been allowed to go to the town pool for swimming lessons, but every summer their aunt Gillian had brought them to Leech Lake on the sly, permitting them to break the rules and float in the cool, glassy water for hours. Still, there were some issues even she refused to discuss. When asked why they could never remain underwater and always popped up, as if made of cork, Gillian would tell them that some gifts should never be questioned. Be happy you can’t sink! she would cry. Enjoy every minute!

Kylie slept fitfully, immersed in her dreams; try as she might, she couldn’t wake, but instead fell even more deeply into a twilight she couldn’t escape. In her dream she was in the garden at home sitting across from Jet, who had a book open on her lap. If you want to know the cure, Jet told her, all you have to do is turn the page.

Gideon left their bed so quietly, his long legs extended, that Kylie didn’t notice his absence. He pulled on his clothes and found an umbrella that had been stuffed into the closet. It wasn’t too late to go to the florist on Brattle Street. Kylie had been so sad and preoccupied ever since her aunt’s death, he wanted to cheer her up and present her with something beautiful, roses that would erase the gloom of the day. He knew she preferred yellow and hoped they were in stock. Yellow, the color of courage and hope, loyalty and joy. He did not think of its other meanings, jealousy and sickness and deceit. He thought only of how lucky they were to be at school together. How lucky to have found each other when they were so young. He might have had to go through a dozen people before he found his true love, he might have never found her at all, but instead he had spotted her on a soccer field when they weren’t yet thirteen. They both had a fierce dislike of sports, other than running, which they loved. On the day they met they’d walked toward one another with grins on their faces, their feet lifting off the grass, their hearts pounding, as if they had already run ten miles.

Let’s get out of here, was the first thing Gideon had ever said to Kylie, and her first remark to him was Yes.

Yes, I’ll love you. Yes, I’m yours. Now I’ve said it aloud.

He left Dunster House in the stinging rain, and headed over the wet pavement down Brattle Street, a fortunate young man who dreaded nothing more than Latin class. When he dashed across the street there was thunder and he looked up at the mottled sky when he should have been watching the traffic speeding down the road. He heard the horns blaring before everything around him was ashes, a world black as night.

When Gideon’s mother called, the shrill wail of the phone woke Kylie from her terrible bottomless sleep. The garden in her dream had been on fire, and she’d been running through the flames. The moment she woke, she saw a smoky cloud on the ceiling of the room. Kylie scrambled to get to her phone, her chest tightening. She knew something terrible had happened even before his mother began to speak, only she didn’t know how terrible until Mrs. Barnes began to talk about the accident. He’s been hit, she said, and Kylie felt her world come apart. She could feel the curse lodged beside her heart, a black moth that had been inside her chest all along, waiting for the moment when she professed her love and it could at last rise. She’d told him today that she loved him. She’d opened the door to whatever came next.

Gideon’s mother and stepfather lived in New York, and were heading for LaGuardia; they would be there as quickly as possible. But what was done was done. Gideon had been struck while crossing Brattle Street, while Kylie was dreaming. She flung his raincoat over her T-shirt and pajama pants, then jammed her feet into a pair of boots. The taxi ride was a blur, the hospital one corridor after another until she found him. Kylie scrambled into bed beside Gideon, slowing her breath to match his. She felt a rush of love for him, but for herself she felt only recriminations. She should have watched over him; she was meant to protect him and now here he was. There were wires and tubes and machines whose purpose Kylie didn’t understand. Gideon was ghastly pale, his scalp and face bruised and cut; he was both there and not there, in a world of his own.

Wake up, she told him. Wake up now, she whispered, and when there was no response she shouted, but he couldn’t hear her. She circled her arms around him and wept until his hospital gown was drenched. When the doctor came by, he told Kylie she could easily disrupt the electrodes attached to his skull; she had best leave him be. Do not be so close to the patient, she was told in a calm, measured tone. Caution was everything; courage was a fool’s errand. The team didn’t yet know how severe Gideon’s head injuries might be. When the doctor left the room, the nurse murmured that Kylie could stay where she was as long as she was careful. But how was one to be careful when the world was in ruins, when it was no larger than a hospital room and the thrum of the pump assisting with each of Gideon’s inhalations was so very loud she couldn’t hear his heart? Usually Gideon’s beating heart was all she could hear, whether they were in bed or on the street. She fancied she could hear it even when they were a hundred miles apart. Now there was nothing. As Kylie held his hand, which was limp in her own, she thought about her aunt Jet’s letter. All at once she knew what had happened to Gideon had been the work of the curse.

As soon as the rainstorm lifted, Franny went into the garden, cringing to see the damage. There was a spell of protection over their house and even hurricanes passed by their address, but that wasn’t the case in this dark spring. Leaves had been blasted from the trees by gusts of wet wind, the tomato seedlings had been washed away, the herb garden was flooded with murky pools, flowers that had bloomed had wilted in a matter of minutes. Jet had planted a rare variety in 1978, the Osiria rose, which had both white and red petals, but now the leaves were darkened and spotty, and the scarlet buds had cracked open to reveal that moths had devoured the petals from the inside out.

As Franny gathered several mud-slicked sprigs of mint, she heard a clacking that made her stand up straight. She recognized the deathwatch beetle, and immediately thought her time had come. She looked up through the branches, wondering what might happen next here in the center of the dark spring, where hope was all but impossible to find. But instead of death stalking her, the garden gate swung open and there was Kylie, who had taken the bus from Boston. Kylie’s hair was in knots and her face ashen, so that her freckles stood out as if blood had flecked her pale complexion.

“Tell me what to do,” she begged. Her face was swollen and tearstained. “There has to be a way to stop it.”

The story came out in a rush. Hit by a car. Unresponsive. A declaration of love. Then Franny knew, the beetle was calling for Gideon. It was the curse. She could smell it, the stink of sorrow, and blood, and desperation, all braided together until it became one. “I don’t know the answer,” Franny told her distraught great-niece. “None of us do. Once the curse begins, there’s nothing to stop it.”

Kylie dug her nails into the palms of her hands until beads of burning-hot blood fell to the ground. “It’s not a good enough answer.” She sounded fierce, so much so that she frightened herself. She had no idea that she had risen off the ground until Franny took hold of the sleeve of Gideon’s raincoat and tugged at her. “What is happening to me?” Kylie asked. The magic inside her was surfacing, like it or not, brought on by raw emotion.

“It’s who we are,” Franny said simply, no longer adhering to Sally’s insistence that they keep silent about their heritage. Franny knew what it was like to be raised in a household of secrets; such an upbringing never boded well. Sooner or later you would find out the truth. Usually at the worst possible moment.

“What are you saying?” Kylie asked.

“Darling,” Franny said, for this was never easy. “We have a history of magic.”

Kylie let out a sharp laugh. “We’re not witches.”

Her aunt stared at her, a serious expression crossing her face.

“That’s just what people say,” Kylie insisted.

“Your mother didn’t want you to know,” Franny said. “So we kept quiet.”

“Is that why those women always come here at night?” Kylie asked. As a girl she’d seen neighbors approach the door after dark at a time when they hoped their family or friends wouldn’t spy them in the shadows of the Owenses’ yard. Some had been crying, some carried babies, some brought gifts, baskets of fruit, caged birds, boxes of fancy chocolate; all made certain to latch the garden gate when they left.

“They don’t come here anymore. Not without Jet. We’ve turned off the porch light. They know there’s no one here to help them anymore. Certainly not Sally. Your mother stays away from magic. Always has. She meant the best. She wanted to protect you.”

“But she didn’t, did she?” Hot, black tears brimmed in Kylie’s eyes.

“You should have told us you were in love,” Franny said sadly.

“It wasn’t your business! It was between us!”

It was then Kylie remembered the Grimoire, which she had stumbled upon in the greenhouse one summer. When she’d brought the heavy tome into the kitchen, her mother had pitched a fit and quickly returned it to its proper place, only this time under lock and key.