Page 8 of The Book of Magic

There were blisters on Jet’s fingers that had risen from touching the last page. A line of invisible writing revealed itself.

When you are ready and have nothing to lose. When you are unafraid. When you wish to save someone else more than you wish to save yourself.

It was only when Jet read the last line of the curse-breaker that she realized just how dangerous the book was. The price of using it was far too dear for most practitioners. In good faith, she could not leave this book in her room for Franny to find. She wished she could be the one to break the curse, but because it was her seventh day, only someone else could complete what she had begun. She did what she must with great haste, knowing that time would not wait. She took a pot of paste she used whenever she attached samples of herbs or plants to the Grimoire. It was strong stuff, made of bird bones and black stones and, once it had set, was impossible to remove unless you knew the secret to doing so. She glued the last two pages together, so that the dangerous remedy would be hidden, and set a privacy spell upon the last section of the book so that no one would accidentally stumble upon it. At last, she scrawled a note that she folded in between the pages of The Poems of Emily Dickinson, always kept on her night table. If Franny ever did use the curse-breaker, she would have to search for it, and perhaps it would be better if The Book of the Raven was never found again.

Jet left the dog behind and went downstairs, and while Sally was asking Franny what might have caused Jet to retire so early, with Gillian assuring her that it was likely the effects of the whiskey, and Franny keeping her knowledge of the future to herself, Jet lifted her coat from the peg in the hallway. She could hear the deathwatch beetle clacking at her feet as she swept up Sally’s set of keys to the library before stepping outside. Jet felt she had never been as wide awake nor as focused on her surroundings. The rustling of the gauzy leaves on the trees. The birds in the thickets, waking as she passed by. She hurried as fast as she could. The beautiful world was already slipping away.

Jet was gone less than an hour, the beetle following along on the dark, windy street, a shadow it was impossible to dodge. Franny was waiting at the gate when her sister returned. Daisy was beside her waiting as well, barking, comforted only when Jet lifted her up. Both Sally and Gillian had gone up to bed, sharing the attic room where they’d grown up, with Kylie and Antonia each taking spare bedrooms on the second floor that were usually considered too fancy for family, not that they ever had any other guests.

Franny had been out on the porch the entire time, pacing. “You weren’t in your bed,” she said accusingly. She didn’t usually fuss, but her deep worry showed now.

“One last look around town. Remember the day we first came here with Vincent? When everyone on the street stared at us?”

“We were worth staring at,” Franny said. “We were marvelous.”

They went into the garden. There were the old wicker chairs, near the herb garden. There was the beehive, empty now. Long ago their aunt Isabelle had raised brown and white chickens and they’d loved to collect the blue speckled eggs, warm in their hands. They’d had a dozen cats, every single one black, but all had grown old and died. The greenhouse was padlocked shut and the cloudy glass shone. Everything was white as parchment in the light of the moon. They held hands and scanned the sky as pale moths flitted up from the damp grass. Once upon a time there were two sisters, as different from each other as night and day. In their family a sister was everything, your heart and soul, and here they were together on the last evening of Jet’s life, grateful to be so. Oh, seven days. Oh, beautiful world. Oh, how lucky they were.

II.

The funeral was held on a bright blue morning. By now the bees were quiet, having returned to take up residence in their hive where they were working away as if the world was still the same, which, for them, perhaps, it was. The family had gathered earlier in the garden to partake in old family recipes, Honesty Cake and Courage Tea, then had walked en masse to the graveyard. When Franny and Jet and Vincent first arrived in town, more than sixty years earlier, people had, indeed, come to stand at the windows and stare. They’d been tall, moody New York teenagers dressed in black. Vincent had carried a guitar, Franny had blood-red hair that left scarlet pools on the cement when she was out in the rain, and every black cat came yowling out onto the street when Jet approached. Now, Jet was leaving, and people in town did the very same thing, stepping out of their houses to observe the family’s procession to the cemetery, only this time many of their neighbors were moved to tears. Jet Owens had been a lovely person, both kind and practical, the one woman people in town could go to when their lives were in shambles or when love was out of reach.

The mourners weren’t headed to the Owens family cemetery, a small patch of land most people avoided, especially on dark nights, for Jet had decided to be buried in the town cemetery, beside Levi Willard, her first sweetheart, the Reverend’s only son. Franny and Jet had seen to the arrangements together, choosing a white marble headstone. Beneath Jet’s chiseled name and the date of her birth and death was a quotation that had been her favorite, written by the poet she most admired.

Unable are the Loved to die

For Love is Immortality.

Unbeknownst to Jet, Franny had added another line beneath her sister’s name.

Beloved by all.

It was easy to praise Jet, and many in the gathering came forward to do so on this sorrowful day. The crowd was far larger than anyone in the family had expected. The Owens cousins from Maine were in attendance, along with family members from Boston, and a few distant cousins from New York, who were sulky and standoffish, the men known to be rakish heartbreakers, the women doctors and nurses. The town doctor, who had taken over Dr. Haylin Walker’s practice, and was himself now poised to retire, recalled the packets of tea Jet left on his doorstep each New Year’s Day, a blend that gave him courage. The postman stood up to confide that Miss Owens always tipped him a hundred dollars on Midsummer’s Eve, reciting an incantation that she vowed would ensure he would be safe in every storm. Even the children who gathered around Jet during the library’s story hour were in attendance; boys and girls held books in their hands and had tears running down their solemn faces, and several carried collections of fairy tales to set beside the gravesite, favoring Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book.

Jet had passed away on March 21, the date some people believe to be the unluckiest day of the year, Franny’s birthday, a day that had always proved inauspicious for her, now more than ever. Still, March had been Jet’s favorite month, and another Emily Dickinson poem had been read at the graveside, the verses shared by Antonia and Kylie, who spoke in hushed voices.

Dear March—Come in—

How glad I am—

I hoped for you before—

Put down your Hat—

You must have walked—

How out of Breath you are—

Dear March, how are you, and the Rest—

Did you leave Nature well—

Oh March, Come right upstairs with me—

I have so much to tell—

At the edge of the crowd, Rafael Correa stood alone without introducing himself. He had never encountered anyone in the Owens family, though he had been involved with Jet for more than sixty years. Rafael didn’t mind that she was laid to rest beside Levi, who’d been little more than a boy when he’d met his sad fate. On a night of too much champagne, Jet had slipped, allowing that Rafael was her true love, then in a panic that she might have activated the curse, she had mixed up a concoction of vinegar and lemon juice, which she drank down in gulps to cleanse her confession. Rafael had listened in disbelief when she first told him that her family had been cursed; all the same, he’d agreed to do his best to trick the hex, a lifetime of love kept secret.

Rafael wept during the service, and came to help shovel the crumbling earth over the simple pine box. Everyone noticed him when he returned to his place at the rear of the gathering. Gillian gazed behind her to study the stranger who stood beside a stone angel that honored local boys who had fought in the Civil War. “Who do you think he is?” she asked her aunt Franny.