Page 11 of The Rules of Magic

There were varieties of plants that needed special care on the shelves, including night-blooming cereus, jasmine, foxglove, miracle leaf, angel trumpet, and comfrey. From beneath the rows of plants, Isabelle looked through a heavy black book Vincent hadn’t previously noticed.

Isabelle opened the book. “It’s easy to bring love to you,” she told him, “but getting rid of it is another matter entirely. If you can call whatever just went on love.”

“I wouldn’t call it that,” Vincent admitted.

“I’d agree with you there.” She leafed through the book. “There are rules to all this, you know. First, do no harm. You need to remember that.”

“I’ll try,” Vincent said.

“Trying is not quite good enough.” Isabelle turned to a page marked Protection.

Black cloth, red thread, clove, blackthorn.

When Mrs. Russell woke to find Vincent gone, she had rushed after him, not caring if she caused a scandal. She was enchanted; much like the nurse who had tried to kidnap him hours after his birth, when her attraction to him was impossible to fight. They could hear her on the porch, banging on the door so hard the sound echoed across the garden. She really had no shame. Isabelle muttered a few words, which forced their neighbor to retreat to her own home. Then Vincent’s aunt turned to him. “You seem to be addictive, so you’d better learn to deal with the problem now. I assume you already know your fate. Or do you fear knowing?”

“I don’t fear it,” Vincent said, bravely, but in fact he did.

Isabelle reached for the black cloth that covered an object stored on the floor beside the potting soil and the bulbs which would be planted in autumn. There stood a three-sided mirror, the glass painted black. There were no mirrors in the old house, and when he now spied his image he understood why. Members of their family saw not only their current reflections but also the images of what was to come. There in the greenhouse, on this cool morning, Vincent saw his future before him. It was a twist of fate he had guessed at before. But seeing it so clearly, he turned chalk white.

Aunt Isabelle offered him a glass of water, but he shook his head and continued to stare. There were blurred images of a little girl on the grass and of a man on a hillside and of a park he didn’t recognize where the paths were made of stone. And larger than any of these images there was the shadowy twin he had caught sight of throughout his life, whenever he peered into mirrors or passed by store windows. A self inside him, one he’d done all he could to avoid. Now, however, he had no choice but to look. In doing so, he understood who he was. In that moment, in his aunt’s greenhouse, he felt more alone than ever.

Isabelle made the charm for him, sewing so quickly her fingers seemed to fly. Vincent had to wait through the day, for he was told to leave the amulet on Mrs. Russell’s porch when the moon was waning, then he must draw a circle around himself in the dust and stand in place until he knew it was time to go.

“How will I know?” he asked.

Isabelle laughed. “You’ll know.”

Vincent kissed his aunt, thanking her.

He lay low for the day, holed up in the greenhouse, ignoring his sisters when they called to him. At last it was time. As he walked back to the neighbor’s he realized that the magic tricks he’d taught himself were childish foolishness. What mattered was the blood that ran through him, the same blood that had flowed through Maria Owens. Once, when he’d cut himself in a tangle of brambles on the way to the lake, drops of his blood had burned through the fabric of his shirt. This was what bloodline magic was. It was inside him.

On this night he followed his aunt’s instructions. He left the charm on a wicker chair on Mrs. Russell’s porch and stood within a circle of dust until he felt her attraction to him evaporate. The electricity around him fizzed, and the air turned calm. There was the sound of crickets calling and a wind arose that would end later the next day. Upstairs, in her bed, Mrs. Russell fell into a dreamless sleep and when she woke she had no aspirations other than to have a decent cup of coffee and a toasted English muffin. Her son came home from summer camp. Her husband returned from one of his many business trips.

When Vincent next ran into Mrs. Russell, in his aunt’s kitchen, come for a bottle of vinegar from an old Owens recipe that used molasses and rainwater, he felt a chill. The vinegar was useful for impotent men, of which her husband was one. When Mrs. Russell raised her eyes to meet his, Vincent could tell she didn’t recognize him. It was as if she had never seen him before, let alone taught him the intricacies of what a woman such as herself wanted in bed.

In the days that followed, Vincent tried his best to uncover his natural abilities. As he sat with his sisters on a wooden bench in the park, he decided to teach the two vicious swans in the pond a lesson. He studied them with absolute concentration, and soon enough they rose into the air, hanging above the water for a terrified instant before splashing back down. They were stunned for a moment, then took off on wing across the pond, squawking like chickens.

“That should teach them,” he said.

“All swans fly,” Franny insisted. “That’s not magic.”

But between April’s assertions and the swans’ reactions, Franny was intrigued. She embarked on a quest to methodically test her siblings’ abilities.

When she began her experiment, Vincent shook his head. “It’s a waste of time. We have the sight, Franny. Just admit it.”

Still, Franny wanted evidence. She had her brother remain in the parlor and stationed Jet in the attic, with no possibility of communication as they scanned duplicate index cards. Each could guess the word that the other had seen one hundred percent of the time. Franny tried it with numbers as well.

“We may simply have ESP,” Franny said. “I’ll need further documentation.”

Vincent laughed at that assessment. “Franny, we have more than that.”

Secretly, Franny had also been testing herself. Interested in the idea of levitation, she placed small items on the cherrywood desk in the parlor, then closed her eyes and willed them to move. When that didn’t work she asked nicely and soon had the ability to cause a tape measure to jump off the desk. She practiced daily, but it was clearly Vincent who had the strongest power. He didn’t even have to try. When he sauntered into the room books leapt from the library shelves. It was so effortless, like a bird lifting into a tree, the papers fluttering, the volumes crashing to the floor. You have the gift, Franny thought as he sprawled onto a velvet love seat. She hadn’t before realized how much he resembled Maria Owens. She thought it likely that he had as much power, perhaps more.

Vincent laughed, as if she’d spoken aloud. “Yes, but I’ll probably waste it,” he said. “And don’t kid yourself, Franny,” he told his sister. “You have it, too.”

As it so happened, Franny soon found herself pulled into consciousness in the middle of the night, awaking with a gasp. It was as if someone had reached into her soul and grabbed her to pull her out of her sleep. Her name had been spoken, although how, and by whom, she had no idea. It was the green heart of the summer, and cicadas were calling as heat waves moved through the air. It was a perfect night for dreaming, but Franny felt she had no choice but to answer the call. She left the attic and slipped down the back stairs in her nightgown. She pushed through the screen door and went past the porch, where the wisteria was so twisted children in town swore the vine had been fashioned out of an old man’s arms and legs.

It was pitch dark, and Franny crept forward carefully, doing her best not to trip over the holes the rabbits had dug. When she narrowed her eyes she noted that she wasn’t the only one out in the yard. Aunt Isabelle was making lye by pouring water through wooden ashes while talking to herself in a low tone. Now that Franny’s eyes had adjusted to the dark, she spied a mound of dried lavender on the ground, along with a basket of spices, and a pail of what looked like liquid midnight, but was in fact licorice-infused oil.