Page 20 of The Book of Magic

“London,” Vincent said. “That’s where she is.”

It was said that there were two triangles in the world that contained the strongest magic. The White Triangle that included Lyons, Turin, and Prague, and the Black Triangle, containing San Francisco, Turin, and London. Franny and Vincent looked displeased, for reasons neither Sally nor Gillian understood. But the clerk at Amulette was aware of what the meaning of the finding was. He gave Vincent the card of a professor in London and assured them this fellow, Ian Wright, had been working in the field for decades and was well regarded for his scholarship.

“Working in what field?” Gillian asked, confused.

As the clerk closed the atlas ash speckled his hands, and he quickly took up a small tea towel to wipe off the black residue. The Dark Art left a stain that was wise to quickly clean up. That was when Sally and Gillian knew. It was the Crooked Path. Kylie was being drawn to the left-handed side.

No one spoke as they left the store. Vincent looped the key around his neck once more. He could feel it there, a quickened pulse. For the first time in a long time he felt as if anything could happen. Because they would travel on this night, he insisted they take a taxi back to Boulevard de la Madeleine rather than walk.

Franny gave him a look and said, “I’m quite fit.”

“It’s for me, dear,” Vincent said, so small a lie it didn’t even burn his tongue. “I’m exhausted.”

“I Walk at Night” was playing on the radio when they got into the taxi. The driver was singing along in muddy English. Vincent was embarrassed to hear himself, but Franny patted her brother’s back. “So beautiful,” she said proudly. “No wonder they still play it.”

Sally had never listened to her grandfather’s song before; she hadn’t been interested since he clearly had never been interested in them, but now she had little choice.

Isn’t that what love makes you do? Go on trying even when you’re through.

Sally had grown up convinced that Vincent Owens was a coward who had deserted them all, but now she wondered if there wasn’t more to it. He was sitting up front with the taxi driver discussing whether or not the rain was gone for good, and then he suddenly turned to look back at Sally, as if he knew what she was thinking, as if he thought the very same thing.

What wouldn’t I do for love?

The taxi waited outside while they went to fetch their luggage. They would leave for London on the night train. Why wait, they all agreed. Agnes packed a bag with supplies they might need to ensure they were safe. Red thread, sage, salt, lavender, red and black ink in iridescent glass jars, a length of rope, thin sheets of red paper bound in red leather, long sharp pins. “It’s always best to be prepared,” she advised. As the sisters and Vincent carried their suitcases downstairs, Agnes beckoned to Franny. “Come into the pantry for a moment. I have something for you.”

“Completely unnecessary,” Franny assured her. The others were waiting impatiently in the front hall with their suitcases. They had a train to catch. Yet Agnes insisted. Once they were alone, she handed Franny a small leather pouch. Inside was a charm in the shape of a triangle, made of pure, elemental gold found in river sand. The talisman, which was known to protect its wearer from evil, had been in Agnes’s family for hundreds of years, and had belonged to her six-times great-grandmother, Catherine. On one side was an eye, on the other side a crow. The amulet was strung onto a thin length of cord, and Agnes encouraged Franny to slip the talisman over her head. Franny did so, but she wasn’t happy about it. “It should go to Sally. It’s her daughter who’s missing. Her mission.”

Agnes smiled faintly and gave a tiny shrug. They were both old, and because of this they likely knew too much. How dark the world could be, how great the losses we all must eventually face were. “It’s for you, Franny. When evil comes looking for someone, you’ll be ready.”

II.

On the flight to London, Kylie had stayed awake all night long, sandwiched in between a large snoring man beside her on her right and a dead-to-the-world eleven-year-old on his way to visit his father in London on her left, doing her best to ignore them both. She’d appropriated a pair of gloves from the library so that The Book of the Raven wouldn’t burn her hands as she finished reading it. Inside were the principles of the book.

Language was everything. Trust was for fools. Love came and went. Words could be stolen.

The text gave off a faint orange glow and there was the stink of sulfur, but everyone on the flight was asleep and no one paid any attention to the tall young woman with a wash of red in her hair who was so engaged in her book she didn’t notice when there was turbulence halfway across the Atlantic. No one knew who Kylie was or what she’d been through. She had left the person she cared about most in the world in a deep coma at Mass General, where the doctors were concerned he might never be roused, and, if he was, whether or not the damage he’d sustained might be irreversible.

Images of Gideon on that afternoon in the Cambridge Common continued to surface, how alive he was, how carefree, other than his worries about an exam he was certain to pass. All Kylie could do was try her best to concentrate on the book. Nothing else mattered other than lifting the curse. The prose was written on thin pages of vellum, bound in black calfskin that had been tied together with knotted black thread. It contained fewer than a hundred pages, but was difficult to read; parts had been written in Italian, and some of the script disappeared as it was being read, vanishing from the page as if washed clean before her eyes. This was literary magic, written by Amelia Bassano, who had studied astrology with a great master, and the conjurations and charms she had known were so powerful they flared in the dark and could be read by the light of their meaning alone. Kylie had taken a class in conversational Italian, but she was far from fluent and so she’d bought a phrase book at the airport bookstore to help her decipher sections of the text, not as helpful as she’d wished, for it appeared an archaic version of that language had been used.

The book advised the practitioner on the practical uses of what the author referred to as magia nera, black magic. How to call up maladies to befall one’s enemies, how to force a liar to tell the truth, how to conjure demons that would haunt men’s daily lives as well as their dreams, how to bring a rain of destruction down from the sky.

Know what you want, and be sure of it, for regret gives birth to more regret and nothing more.

The light that emanated from the writing caused the flight attendant to rush over to see if the flickering was created by a lit cigarette, but Kylie had quickly covered the book with a napkin, and the flight attendant, who then assumed she must have imagined the wavering yellow flare due to her own exhaustion, apologized for disturbing her.

Once she’d arrived in London, Kylie found a small, shabby hotel in Bayswater. The bedsheets were grimy, and the bathroom was down the hall. “We plan on sprucing up,” the desk clerk told her, as if she cared. She felt a million miles from home, alone in a world to which she didn’t belong. Kylie took a few bites from one of the packaged sandwiches she’d bought in a quick mart at Heathrow, but it was stale and she had no appetite. She had to hurry and she knew it. She didn’t take a shower or change her clothes. The longer it took to discover a way to end the curse, the more likely she was to lose Gideon. According to The Book of the Raven, her first act should be to create the sign of the pentacle of Solomon to summon the spirit of Hecate, goddess of the crossroads and of sorcery. If she did so, she would discover the direction in which she would find the knowledge she needed.

Kylie lifted the fringed throw rug and used a black felt pen to sketch a pentacle on the scuffed wooden floor. She burned sage and sandalwood in the metal dustbin, herbs her aunts had given to her to smudge her dorm room. “Never be without these,” her aunt Jet had advised, but Kylie had stuffed the herbs into a drawer, remembering them only when she stopped at Dunster House on her way to the airport to toss her passport and a change of clothes into her backpack. Now as the pungent smoke arose in the dingy hotel room, she stood in the center of the circle that was intended to unite the four sections of the world and the four elements. She would do whatever she must to follow the instructions set down in The Book of the Raven, although she worried about her abilities. She had few skills, other than spying auras and telling what the weather would bring, and no reference for magic—her mother had seen to that. Surprisingly, that had begun to change. Ever since she’d opened the first page of The Book of the Raven she could see what was previously unseen; she could feel what she’d never felt before. She could view the edges of the future, which caused a strange double vision. It was the sight, the inherited ability to see what was to come, a skill that had been repressed and rejected by her mother, a talent Kylie now welcomed.

Before the plane had landed at Heathrow, she’d reached the last page of The Book of the Raven. Her skin continued to blister as she touched the paper, but that didn’t faze her. A practitioner of left-handed magic must not flinch or fear. So said the raven, the writer of the book. Without courage, you will never find the answer. The book was divided into six sections. “How to Gain Your Deepest Desire.” “How to Make Him Love You.” “How to Protect Yourself and Others.” “How to Seek Revenge.” “How to Curse Those Who Have Wronged You.” “How to Break a Curse.”

There it was, the last chapter, exactly what Kylie needed, yet despite all attempts, the last two pages were inexorably bound together. Kylie feared she would ruin the book in her attempts to separate the fragile vellum. She must discover a way to convince the book to open to her, to decide that she was worthy, the person the book had been waiting for. Now, in her hotel room in Bayswater, so far from home and from everyone she knew and loved, thinking of Gideon, she stood in the circle and breathed in the scent of sage and sandalwood, hoping the smoke would not set off the fire alarm and bring the desk clerk running. She recited her vow to do what she must, cutting her hand with a corkscrew left atop a tiny, foul-smelling fridge, and adding her own blood to the fire. When thick beads of blood, so dark they appeared black, spilled into the mixture, the smoke billowed a brilliant red. Kylie ran to open the window and waved her arms to disperse the crimson swirls, but the smoke would leave its mark on the ceiling, so the next guest would wonder what on earth had happened, never knowing that in this small room, the door to left-handed magic had been flung open on an ordinary day. It was here that a young woman gave herself over to the darkness, to blood and bones, to black thread and knives and ashes, to the curse that had been growing stronger for three hundred years, once planted in the earth in Salem, Massachusetts, and now blooming here, in London, and inside her heart.

Kylie paid for a two-night stay, informing the clerk that she was a student whose goal was to finish up some research at the British Museum. She then found her way to a store near Covent Garden known for its collection of magical provisions. It was a small, untidy shop, rather seedy, mostly frequented by women in search of herbal remedies for beauty or health. Here one could find infusions that contained yarrow and rue for women’s monthly problems, peppermint for ailing stomachs, white willow for headache. The owner was a retired midwife named Helene Jones.

“How did you find us, dear?” Helene asked as Kylie bought a small bundle of herbs, along with a bottle of cologne containing rosewater and a wand made of hazel wood.

She’d looked up a directory of magic stores and this particular shop, Helene’s House of Magic, was simply first on the list. “Just lucky,” Kylie said, and Helene had given her a discount since she appeared to be a student, newly arrived in the country and new to the Nameless Art. The girl was clearly naive, for she asked Helene where she might find those who practiced left-handed, an issue that was never discussed, for those who practiced did so in private.