Page 76 of The Book of Magic

The curse Maria Owens placed on herself and us to protect us from love has nearly ruined our family. Look where we keep our books. There is a cure in The Book of the Raven.

But beware, it is the most dangerous book of all. It grants your heart’s desire, but the price you pay is steep. I was already dying, so I couldn’t be the one.

The one among us with the most courage will break the curse.

It’s always been you.

Kylie thought of the cousin at the funeral, going on about an Owens curse. It was nothing, she’d been told. It was a myth. Clearly, her aunt Jet had thought otherwise. All the same, Kylie folded the note and stored it in her drawer. As far as she was concerned, she already possessed her heart’s desire, and he was waiting for her just around the corner.

Kylie and Gideon Barnes were sprawled in the grass on the Cambridge Common where General George Washington had amassed his troops during the American Revolution. May had come at last, bringing with it the end of the term. Gideon was studying, and she was looking at the sky, thinking about the letter she’d found.

“Do you believe in curses?” Kylie asked.

“I believe Latin is an impossible language.”

“Seriously.”

He kissed her as his answer.

She drew away. “Does that mean no?”

“I believe in us,” Gideon said.

“Do you?” Kylie grinned. It was a very good answer.

“Oh, I do,” he assured her, better still.

She let it drop then. Her aunts had some strange practices, and surely the note from Jet must have another meaning, for curses were fairy tales, not part of real life. Kylie and Gideon were so young they didn’t notice this spring was a season of darkness. All they saw was the world around them, the small triangle of Cambridge that contained their lives, and each other. They paid no attention to the fact that the sun often didn’t break through till late afternoon. There were sudden frosts and the temperature rarely rose above fifty, most often lingering in the thirties so that squill and trout lilies turned to bruise-colored ice carpeting the gardens of tall Colonial-era houses. All along Brattle Street, the lilacs faded, their heart-shaped leaves turning black around the edges. People who had been married for thirty years suddenly filed for divorce, children refused to sleep and couldn’t be comforted with warm milk and stories they’d heard a dozen times before. People knew something had gone wrong, not just with the weather but with fate itself. Yet all Kylie and Gideon saw was each other. They were in love and always had been, but they kept their love secret, it was theirs and theirs alone. They lounged beneath the canopy of the beech trees, studying for exams, longing for summer when they intended to travel through France, taking a route Gideon had planned, which included wineries and campgrounds.

“We’ll sleep and we’ll drink,” he boasted.

Gideon gazed at her with hazel eyes speckled with green or yellow, depending on the light. When he did that, there really was no one else in the world. Maybe we’ll never come back, Kylie thought, for she’d always considered her hometown to be provincial and did her best to stay away. She flicked at her waist-length braid of brown hair streaked with red and gold. If they ran off together, she wouldn’t miss Harvard one bit; she felt she was an imposter who only pretended to care about her studies, an outsider yet again.

At this time of year, Cambridge was quiet, with only the coffeehouses jam-packed with bleary-eyed students in need of caffeine and sugar so they could pull all-nighters and prepare to pass or fail, win or lose. Kylie and Gideon had been best friends ever since they were twelve, which had made falling in love easy, once they gave in to it. Gideon had too many winning traits to ignore. He had large, handsome features and an open face that hid little. In high school, he had been the president of the chess club, the county spelling champion, the tallest boy in their class, which mattered greatly to Kylie, and the smartest, which mattered even more, and the one Kylie fell for once she stopped fighting her attraction to him. For years they told each other they didn’t want to ruin their friendship with anything as complicated as sex, then went ahead and ruined it anyway. When they admitted that they were indeed in love, and likely always had been, it was a great relief to both. Kylie continued to tell her mother that she and Gideon were just friends; she didn’t need anyone prying into her business, least of all her mother, who always looked so concerned when questioning Kylie about her love life. Kylie kept her thoughts and dreams and deeds to herself. She and her sister, Antonia, had made a pact never to tell their mother more than she needed to know.

Kylie always felt comfortable with Gideon; it was as if they were both members of a rare species, set apart from the rest of the world, striking, lanky creatures who managed to sleep together in the single beds in their dorm rooms, arms and legs thrown across one another, often dreaming the same dream, as Kylie clutched the black baby blanket her aunts had knitted for her when she was a newborn. Embarrassing to admit, but she couldn’t sleep without it, even now as a sophomore in college.

On this gleaming day, when all the trees were a vivid green, Gideon was reading for his Latin exam, the one he feared most of all. I can only speak one language, he always said, and Kylie always teased, And not well. Then he would kiss her and she wouldn’t have minded if he couldn’t speak at all. He was awkward and endearing, and best of all, he was hers. It was a perfectly ordinary Cambridge afternoon, the sky flecked with pale clouds, the hum of bees rising and falling, the joyful cries of children echoing from the playground, until Kylie looked up from her copy of the Odyssey to catch sight of a circle of ashy black specks looming around Gideon. She had always seen auras of color around people, and usually there was an orange glow over Gideon’s head, signifying good health and a full heart, but his aura had changed, with the ash becoming darker even though the afternoon was streaked with pale bands of light. Something is about to happen, she thought.

Kylie sat on her haunches and closed her book. Gideon gazed up from his text, concerned when he saw her expression. He knew Kylie was sensitive and could often tell what was to come. She could foretell when it would rain and when classes would be canceled. She’d phoned the school police before a fire started in the entranceway, and rang them again a few months later, a full hour before a quiet girl down the hall attempted to take her own life. Gideon didn’t call it witchery, but instead referred to her premonitions as her talent, as if the sight was no different than an aptitude for music or dance.

“I’m going to fail, right?” Gideon said when he saw the dread on her face.

Kylie had a flash of vision. A blank paper, an empty chair, a day of scarlet rain, a lake with no bottom, a man with black hair.

From her expression it was clear the future contained something worse than a failed exam.

“I’ll be expelled,” Gideon guessed.

“No, it’s nothing like that. Let’s go.” Kylie herself didn’t know what it meant. She had never seen that sort of aura before. Violet, gray, silver, ash, black, scarlet. None of it boded well. She stood and reached out her hand to him. She didn’t know if other people loved the way that she did, completely and utterly, and she didn’t much care.

Gideon rose from the grass, and when he did his height blocked out the sun and he saw that there were black tears in Kylie’s eyes. She never cried. Or at least rarely. He thought she’d shed tears at her aunt Jet’s funeral, but that was to be expected.

“Did I do something wrong?” he asked.

Kylie looped her arms around him. “Never,” she said. And then she leaned up to whisper that she loved him and always would. It was the first time she’d said so aloud, and she immediately felt flushed with raw emotion.

“I’ve always loved you,” Gideon told her. “From the first day we met.”