Page 35 of The Book of Magic

He would have to pay back Sally Owens for saving his life. Last night they’d had a quick supper of soup Franny Owens had made, using all the ingredients in his pantry it seemed. “What are you staring at?” Franny had asked him. He’d been fumbling around in a drawer, searching for spoons, then had suddenly stopped and looked up, riveted.

“Nothing,” he said, as if he were a guilty boy caught stealing.

“You’re staring at my niece,” Franny declared. “Do you think I’m a fool?”

“Actually, no. I think you’re a witch.”

“Then you’re not so stupid after all.”

“Did you think I was?” Ian found he was both hurt and offended by the notion that she’d formed a bad opinion of him.

Franny had laughed then, a lovely surprising sound. “I think you’re too smart for your own good.”

They’d exchanged a look, and at that moment he was able to see Franny as a young woman. He felt both drawn to her and afraid of her, and more than anything he felt that even at this stage, he had a lot to learn.

“I fell in love when I was fifteen,” Franny said, wistful.

“Did you?” They had lowered their voices conspiratorially. Somehow they’d leapt forward to become allies.

“I still am, even though he’s gone. Not everyone’s that lucky.”

“I suppose not,” Ian agreed.

“You could be.”

“Unlikely,” he told her. “No heart.”

Franny laughed again and he grinned, pleased to have amused her. He was an excellent liar, but apparently she saw right through him. “To find out where my great-niece is, we have to find out who we are,” Franny went on. “You’re the historian. You’re the one we need.”

Ian was grateful that Frances Owens would have such faith in him, but he felt a stab of uncertainty all the same. He gazed at the others, Sally setting the table, Gillian curled up in his leather chair talking to Ben on the phone, Vincent paging through The Magus, the volume that had changed his life when he first broke the rule not to read magic books.

“The question is, are you willing?” Franny asked, sounding as if she were his therapist. He’d been to one of those and he knew they always threw everything back at you so that you would answer your own questions.

“Willing to?” he asked.

“You know exactly what I mean.”

All at once Ian understood the discussion they were having was about Sally. “I don’t know what to think,” he admitted.

“That’s your problem,” Franny said. “You should be sure.”

He mulled her comment over in silence as they finished dinner. It was true that the one image he couldn’t dispel was of Sally leaning over him, telling him to do as he was told if he wanted to live. He could not forget the way she looked at him with her cool gray, disapproving eyes.

“Cat got your tongue?” Gillian asked Ian when he hadn’t spoken a word through the meal.

The two sisters regarded one another and laughed. Could it be? It could not, and yet the butter was melting in its dish on the table, a sure sign that someone had fallen in love.

“What do you want from the poor man? He’s just escaped death,” Franny said on Ian’s behalf. “He’s in recovery.”

Ian understood how true this was. He’d been in recovery for more years than he could count, distancing himself from people. Somehow, plummeting into that strange red paralysis had woken him. He could now see people as they truly were, despite their age. Franny as a red-haired girl who would do anything for those she loved, Vincent as a wild, free spirit walking down a city street with a wolflike dog at his heels, Gillian as a child spinning with her arms out, hoping not to fall, but not really caring if she did, and Sally, Sally was right there before him, a dark, serious girl who wished she would never fall in love, so afraid her heart would break that she had never unmasked it and had thereby broken it herself.

“Are you all right?” Sally asked Ian as she ladled out more soup.

He nodded, unable to take his eyes off her. They laughed at him when he didn’t speak and asked what sort of answer was that? Ian didn’t blame them for being entertained by his lack of speech, an unusual state for him; he was a talker, a man who could lecture for three hours straight, barely stopping long enough to take a breath. His mother had always said that his arrogance alienated people on the spot. This time he kept quiet, knowing how obnoxious he would sound if he spoke the truth. You need me more than you know.

He left the sleeping Americans and headed directly to Lancaster Gate so that he might dig around for references to The Book of the Raven unhindered by his guests. He was a member of the Invisible Library and had his key with him. When he reached his destination, he pulled on his jersey, then took the steps two at a time up to the door. He knew he was setting out on the Crooked Path, magic that had no beginning and no end and instead circled like a snake, its tail in its mouth, so that you could not venture off the route you set out upon. He had a dark side, and, he feared, a deeply emotional side as well. Ian felt the stirrings of his other self inside of him, the one who’d been a thief, locked up long ago then discarded, but there all the same, the flinty part of him that made him fearless when a wiser man would have been alarmed enough to turn away.

Sally had heard him in the front room before he left, brewing a quick cup of tea before he headed out the door. She had no reason to trust Ian, and every reason to need him. She’d thrown on some clothes, slipped on her boots, and followed him onto Westbourne Grove, where she caught a taxi in order to keep up.