Page 34 of The Book of Magic

It was now so dark that when a sheep in the meadow they were passing suddenly appeared at a fence, looming in the night like a ghost, a scrim of panic overcame Kylie, head to toe. Everyone was so far away. She’d only been in Essex for a few hours, yet she felt understood by Tom Lockland. As they’d walked along, he slipped an amulet into the pocket of her raincoat, an unbreakable knot that would keep her close to him, a binding spell, what the Greeks called katadesmos.

Once at the house, they said good night and Kylie went up the narrow stairs to the bedroom. She could hear Tom downstairs, making up the couch, and she considered all that magic had done to them. Gideon, who was so good at heart, would never understand what had ruined them but Tom Lockland knew what it meant to be cursed. Kylie turned off the light. There was a candle on the bedside table, which she lit before opening her bag. In the flickering yellow light, she slipped out The Book of the Raven, turning to the last two pages that were stuck together. What are you willing to sacrifice? How much are you willing to pay?

“I need to read you,” she commanded, but the pages would not open. Magic was thwarting her and time was spinning away. She recalled Jet’s warning that whoever ended the curse would face danger, but that everything worthwhile was dangerous.

Kylie made her way downstairs in the dark and found Tom sprawled on the couch, a book in hand, one he planned to toss onto the flame of his small fireplace when he was done. Worthless, he thought, as most books were in his opinion. He was pleased when Kylie appeared, but not surprised. He’d concocted a Need You spell, made of wax and pins and a small straw poppet, hidden beneath her pillow.

Who one dared to love was complicated, but who to trust was even more confounding. Kylie thought of the warnings from the waitress at the inn, and of the librarian in London, and from her aunt Jet. She felt such shame each time she thought of her beloved Gideon, whose life she had all but destroyed. Perhaps it was best if she stopped considering every option and simply acted on instinct. It was dark in the parlor, but there was the glow of bright moon shining through the window and they could see each other quite clearly.

“I don’t know how to do this by myself,” Kylie admitted to Tom. She had The Book of the Raven in hand, but Tom pretended not to notice the text and gestured for her to come sit beside him. He felt pins and needles. Right away, he sensed this was the book he’d been searching for.

Tom ran a hand over Kylie’s. “Let me help you,” he said.

A partnership such as the one they were forging was a dark agreement in which one person was certain to win and the other was fated to lose, a contract bound in desperation with red thread that grew tighter every time you tried to break what tied you together. Don’t think, don’t wait, you are here and they are far away. It is dangerous, it’s a risk, trust no one or trust the person beside you. In a daze, Kylie offered him the book that had been waiting for three hundred years for the right person to find it, only to be given over to the wrong man.

IV.

While the others slept, Vincent let himself out of the flat so that he might walk alone, something he’d done as a young man, an old habit that had been renewed ever since William’s passing. He walked blindly around the island where they lived, and then in Paris, a city he knew well. Here in London he took his time on unfamiliar streets. Before he knew it, morning had approached, and the black skies were turning to pearl along the horizon. It was the most difficult hour for Vincent, when he felt most alone. For more than fifty years he’d woken with William in his bed, and now sleep eluded him; he couldn’t bear to wake without the man he’d loved for so long. After a year, it still had not quite sunk in that William was gone; perhaps it never would.

Walking through London made Vincent’s heart impossibly heavy. He had become accustomed to having the company of the stray dog, Dodger, who was now enjoying the guest room at Agnes’s house. Still, Vincent had a purpose for this walk. He’d always been a finder, able to locate places, whether they were on the map or off the grid. He had come upon a reference book in the historian’s office marked with an unusual stamp formed with pale red ink and as usual he had been able to locate the address without a map or any guide, though it was a place that most people walked past without seeing. The Invisible Library. Bayswater. Vincent took his time crossing Hyde Park, happy for the solitude he found there. The only noise that could be heard were birds stirring in the bushes, and then, as Vincent approached the Serpentine, there was a sudden wild squawking from a group of ring-necked parakeets perched in the wavering branches of the lime trees. The birds were said to be descendants of two parakeets Jimi Hendrix had set free from their cage in Mayfair years ago. It was so early that Vincent spotted several foxes outside their hidden dens and a shadowy vixen at the edge of the lake. The streetlights were flickering out as dawn approached and the city looked ashy, a vista in black and white.

When he reached the street, he spied the outline of a building shrouded in protective spells, set off from prying eyes. It contained more magic literature than all of the museums and bookstores in London combined, much of it under lock and key, with access to its private members and occasionally available to serious scholars. Vincent stood outside the building and breathed in the chilly morning air. When the library came into focus, it looked like any other house on the street, a tall milk-white Georgian-style building, but there was no actual address, only the numbers 17608415 on the door, healing numbers that are meant to repel black magic. He went up the steps and did his best to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. When they find the lock, you’ll have the key, Jet had told him in his dream, but he had no way to unlock this particular door, for it was forged out of iron, then encased in hazel wood and painted a slick black so that it looked like any other on the street. Quite suddenly Vincent felt a fool when he thought of his dream. Perhaps he’d misunderstood Jet entirely. A lock needn’t be made of metal. A key was not necessarily something you held in your hand. He swore softly at his own stupidity. By now Vincent knew, nothing was what it seemed.

He returned to the park, where he sat on a bench facing the library waiting for someone to arrive. Vincent had never been terribly good at being patient; he’d been a rebel, too wild to listen to reason, he’d wanted what he’d wanted, but the years had taught him something. William’s harrowing illness at the end of his life had revealed what real patience was. Wait and see, William always said. Tonight might be better, tomorrow might be pain free. As William’s health plummeted from a cancer that was untreatable, he had appeared luminous, resolved to have as many days as he could with Vincent. They stayed in bed, the windows open, light reflecting from the sea. Love of my life, the one loss I will never survive. Yet he had survived, but barely, often wondering why he was still here.

“Do you ever regret running away?” Vincent had asked William during his final day, for it was in this way they had escaped the curse; they had started new lives and never looked back. It was their last night together, but they didn’t know it. The lines on their hands were blurred, their futures unsure.

“I didn’t run away. I ran to you,” William told him.

It was the perfect answer, the one that broke Vincent’s heart. He should have been more patient, he shouldn’t have rushed through his life, for now he had arrived here, alone, in a city he didn’t know, in the early morning light, filled with an absurd desire for the past. If only he could close his eyes and be transported to Greenwich Village on his birthday when they first met, when their lives were ahead of them, when he had no patience and plunged into love.

Now he was a man who could wait when he had to. Less than forty minutes later, the librarian arrived. Now it begins, Vincent thought. And then he had the oddest thought. Here is the key.

David Ward noticed the man on the bench who was observing him. He recognized Vincent immediately, the same handsome profile that had been in magazines and newspapers after his sudden death. David had been a fan of Vincent’s back when he was young, and had listened rapt to “I Walk at Night” over and over again, wishing he’d had the courage to announce who he was, as Vincent had. This was in the days when people more often hid their sexual nature. It was easy to do, if you didn’t mind breaking your own heart. David had been married and he’d kept his most authentic self a secret even from those to whom he was closest. He’d forsaken his true self to be a family man. He’d thought there were no other choices.

He remembered the day he first heard Vincent’s song on the radio. He was still working at the British Museum back then, specializing in artifacts from Persia and Mesopotamia; he hadn’t yet been contacted by his current employers, a board of magic practitioners who understood that David Ward was good at keeping a secret. Too good, perhaps.

Before he became the keeper of the magic stored here, he’d been to the left side and had been in a state of spiritual agony ever since. Working here was a penance of sorts; he would now do good in the world where before he had been willing to do evil. His daughter, Eve, had come down with meningitis; it had occurred suddenly, on an ordinary day. Eve was ten, the light of his life, and the reason David had stayed married. He’d furtively begun a separate life on nights he was away from home, fearing that if he made an admission regarding his sexuality, his wife would be granted full custody. When Evie became ill he knew where to go for help, a practitioner of the Dark Art who often visited the museum. David went to a mansion in South Kensington knowing that in exchange for his daughter’s life, he would be required to complete a task. He knew the city was in the triangle of black magic, and that it could be found on streets and alleyways for those willing to look for such things.

David was to commit a murder on behalf of another of the magician’s clients. He didn’t even argue. That’s what desire mixed with desperation could do. He sat at a bar and poisoned a stranger’s drink. In the mayhem of waiters doing their best to help the young man having a heart attack at the bar, David had found his way out, continuing on to the hospital where his daughter had miraculously recovered. It was a misdiagnosis, the doctors said, but David knew the truth, he had traded one life for another. He had chosen the Crooked Path and he would pay for it for the rest of his life.

It was never the same with Evie. That was the price. When she’d found love letters he’d written to a man he was involved with, she called him a liar and a hypocrite and his wife told him to leave and he’d gotten into a taxi and fled in shame, without putting up a fight. He shouldered his guilt and there was no room for anything but self-recrimination. He accepted the job at the Invisible Library, and one day a black-edged note was slipped under the door and he knew that Evie was gone. She and her boyfriend had been in a motorcycle accident, skidding on wet pavement late at night. He knew it was his fault. His daughter’s original fate had caught up with her because he hadn’t been able to bring himself to slip the full dose of poison in his target’s drink. The stranger he was meant to do away with had a heart attack, but he had survived.

Even then, Vincent’s song had spoken to him in a deep, fierce way; he played it constantly for several years and could recite it word for word even now. And here was the musician himself, a man who was supposed to be dead for nearly sixty years. Instead of unlocking the library door, David crossed the street and entered the park. A message was a message, a sign was a sign, and it appeared that Vincent Owens had returned from the grave. For years, David had sought out a spell that would bring back the dead, even though he knew that what came back from the other side would be dark and unnatural. The sheer permanence of the loss of his daughter undid him in a thousand ways. But now here he was, about to meet a man who had risen. The trees in Hyde Park were leafy and green, but at this hour they appeared black. Funny, he had worn a black suit and a black tie today, as if he would be attending a funeral.

“Have you returned from the dead?” David Ward said. Necromancy was referred to as The Knowledge and human history was littered with those who had chased after a cure for death. “Is it possible?”

“I’m not back from anything. I’ve always been here.” When David shot him a puzzled look, Vincent added, “In hiding.”

“Too bad,” David said. “I thought you had The Knowledge.” It was a joke, a play on taxi drivers’ crash course in knowing the city, only the left-handed version had to do with raising the dead. David tried such a spell once and no good had come of it. Afterward, he’d been sick for weeks, vomiting up strange items: beads, feathers, earrings, cigarette butts. All of it, he’d come to realize, were items that had belonged to his daughter. He ceased fooling around with necromancy then, and was wise to have done so.

“Actually, I thought you might be able to help me.” Vincent handed the librarian his great-granddaughter’s photograph, a lovely girl Vincent had yet to meet, cursed in love, but blessed in all other things, for whose safety, he believed, only he held the key. “She’s gone missing.”

“Kylie,” David Ward said, wondering if he would remember this day as unlucky or if he would be grateful for it forever more. “I know where she is.”

Ian went running early, out the door before six. He did this every day and he wasn’t about to stop due to the attack that had, frankly, left him a bit weak even after his cure. He certainly wasn’t about to allow the presence of his uninvited guests to interrupt his schedule, even though Sally was among them. Sally, who wouldn’t speak to him, who gazed away if she caught him observing her and had once said, “Stop it right now!” Well, of course, she was right. He had no business getting involved with her, or with anyone else for that matter. As for Sally, she’d be gone before he knew it. All the same, he was affected by her presence and needed a run more than ever to clear his head.

The Americans had taken over Ian’s flat, leaving him to sleep on a blanket on the floor of the front room beside the bookcases, where he couldn’t get any rest. He still ached and his pulse was ragged. Ian hoped exercise would help to restore him. He had first considered that running might be his salvation when he was in jail, and as soon as he got out, he began to run in earnest. Each time he hit the streets, he remembered what it had been like to be locked up, as this morning he remembered being trapped inside a frozen body, spellbound and incapable of moving.