The Rules of Magic (27 page)

“Franny,” he said. “We were meant to be together. Your coming here proves it.”

She had no idea what she would do next, if she would stay or go.

“You can't leave me now,” Hay urged, and she might have said she would never leave him again, but just then a tall blond girl stepped into the room, breaking their intimacy. The girl was perhaps twenty, pretty, with a huge smile, her cheeks flushed from walking along the Charles River, which she complained about as soon as she arrived. Her sleek cap of hair was in place despite the windy day. She wore a plaid skirt and a blue cashmere sweater and a scarf knotted at her throat. She, too, carried a bag of jelly doughnuts.

“I'm freezing!” the girl declared. “And oh, my God, Hay, I was out of my mind with worry last night.” She went to Haylin's side. “I didn't even get to call your parents until this morning. They'll be up tonight.” She pulled off her scarf. “I didn't leave here until the doctor assured me a hundred percent that you were fine.”

“I am,” he said roughly, his eyes still on Franny.

The girl had been so intent on Hay she hadn't even noticed Franny lurking by the window, wearing her ill-fitting black coat. “Oh, hello!” the girl said brightly. “I didn't see you there.”

Lewis tapped on the window glass, but Franny was distracted. Her heart was pounding. She'd gone white as a sheet,
her freckles splotchy across her pale face. “Hello,” she said. Her voice cracked with the fever of resentment.

The girl came forward and stuck out her hand. “I'm Emily Flood.”

Being in such close proximity to this interloper caused a series of images to flicker behind Franny's eyes. “You're from Connecticut and you went to an all-girls private school and you're Haylin's roommate.”

“Why yes! How did you know all that! I'm not officially a roommate, but since I'm there every night, I guess so! It's a good thing I am. Otherwise who would have called the ambulance? Hay is so stoic. He would have shivered there uncomplaining until his appendix burst.”

“Oh,” Franny said. “It was you who saved him.”

“Franny.” Haylin seemed truly in pain now.

Emily looked at Hay, then at Franny. “You're Franny? I've heard so much about you. How brilliant you are.”

“Well, I'm not. I'm actually stupid.” Franny went to retrieve the backpack she'd dropped on the floor when she climbed into bed with Haylin. “And I've overstayed my welcome.”

Hay got out of bed, gripping his side, lurching forward so that the IV stand nearly toppled. Emily caught the IV and righted it, but no one was paying much attention to her.

“Franny, do not leave,” Hay said. “Things changed. You were gone for two years.”

He had the nerve to reproach her with Emily Flood standing right there. If that pretty roommate of Hay's spoke to her again, she couldn't be held accountable for her actions.

“That's right,” Franny said. “I didn't get to go to school. I couldn't be your roommate.”

She went to the door, past the dying man. The shroud was almost completely encircling him now, but he murmured his gratitude when Franny stopped to touch his forehead. She stayed until he had passed over; it was so brief, like a sigh. Then she went on, despite Hay calling out to her. She ran all the way to South Station, her heart thudding against her chest. Emily. His roommate. Well, what had she expected? She had sent him off. She had told him to go and not to look back.

On the train, Franny smoldered with fury and hurt. At Penn Station she cut a path through the crowd and walked home in the dark. That night she cried tears so black they stained the sheets. She didn't change out of the clothes she'd worn when she was beside Haylin in bed. They still carried his scent. In the morning, she went into the garden.

Jet spied her sister from the kitchen window. She went outside and they sat together on the back steps. Snow had begun to fall but the sisters remained where they were.

“He found someone else,” Franny said.

“There will never be anyone else.”

“Well there is. Her name is Emily. She's his roommate.”

“Only because you told him to go.”

“Either way, she's the one who has him.” Oh, it was horrible. Franny was crying. She was mortified. She quickly buried her face in her hands. “I let him go and now he belongs to someone else. And it's better for him that way.”

“You can love him if you want to,” Jet told Franny. The scar on her face bloomed in cold weather, turning the color of violets. “To hell with the curse. You don't have to make the same mistakes all the other women in our family have made.”

“Why would I be any different?”

“You'll be the one to outsmart it.”

“Unlikely,” Franny said sadly.

“You will,” Jet insisted. She didn't have to have the sight to know this. “Wait and see.”

April Owens arrived on a Greyhound bus on a bright spring day in 1966 and walked to the Village from Forty-Second Street. It had been nearly six years since she had first met Franny and Jet and Vincent, but somehow it had felt as though she'd known them forever, so it made perfect sense to show up in New York without bothering to write or call. It was a long walk, but she didn't mind. All she wanted was to be free. Every mortal being was entitled to that right, no matter what her history might be. April was still fierce, but now she was most fierce in her devotion to her daughter. She didn't mind when Regina, only five and usually very good-humored, grew tired and cranky by the time they passed Pennsylvania Station, and had to be carried the rest of the way.

Regina was dressed in a T-shirt and a gauzy little skirt that she referred to as her princess outfit, but now she was an exhausted princess. She fell asleep in her mother's arms, heavier in sleep than she had been while awake. No matter. April kept going. She was wearing jeans and a fringed vest and her long pale hair was in braids, bound with beaded leather ties. She stood out in midtown among a sea of suits and proper dresses, but as she headed downtown she looked like anybody else on the street. She found number 44 Greenwich and rang the bell. She liked what she saw. The tilted house, the trees in the garden,
the shop that sold enchantments, the school yard next door where scores of children were out at play.

When Jet threw open the door, she embraced April and her daughter, who resembled Franny, though her hair was as black as Jet's and Vincent's. For the first time since Levi's death Jet felt a bit of happiness when she looked into the face of the little girl. She wasn't even grumpy to have been woken and introduced to a stranger. She was very serious and she shook Jet's hand and said, “Very nice to meet you.”

“I can't believe how big Regina is! And how polite! Are you sure she's an Owens?”

“She most assuredly is.”

“You should have told us you were coming for a visit. I would have prepared something special. Now the house is a mess.”

“That's immaterial. And this is not a visit, dear Jet. It's a jailbreak.” April had an overstuffed backpack and a duffel bag, both of which she deposited on the couch in the parlor. There were dark circles under her eyes and she appeared drained. “My parents want to take Reggie from me. They want her to grow up on Beacon Hill and go to a private school in a chauffeured car. It's everything I don't want for her. Everything I wanted to escape from. They said they'd fight me in court if they had to. I think they've already retained a lawyer. So I'm headed to California. Let them try to find me there. This is just a pit stop. I hope you don't mind.”

“You know you can stay as long as you'd like.”

Franny came in from the garden with a basket of herbs she had just picked, comfrey, mint, and, though it was not as often needed these days due to the birth control pill, pennyroyal. City soot had veined the herbs' leaves black, so Franny always had to
soak them in cold water and vinegar in the big kitchen sink. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the little girl.

Regina looked up at her and smiled. “You're the good witch,” she said.

Franny laughed. She'd certainly never thought of herself that way, still she was charmed. “Have you ever heard of a tipsy cake?” she asked.

Regina shook her head no.

“Why, it's absolutely delicious. It's the most chocolaty chocolate you'll ever taste. I think I'll make you one.”

Franny nodded a greeting when April came into the kitchen in search of Regina. She thought their cousin looked the worse for the wear, with her pale hair lifeless and her already slender frame now excessively thin. “We're just about to make a tipsy cake, but I'll leave out the rum,” Franny said. “For Regina's sake. I must say, this is a surprise. But then that's your style, isn't it? Just show up out of nowhere.”

“I won't impose, Franny. I just need a night. We're leaving for California tomorrow. I've got a ride on something called the Sorcerer's Apprentice, a van that goes cross-country.”

The little girl shivered when California was mentioned. She was so sensitive she seemed a walking prediction, as if she had the sight times two.

“You don't think you'll like California?” Franny asked the child.

“Maybe. But I know what happens there.”

“Which is?” Franny pressed.

“Well, people die,” the little girl said.

“For goodness' sake,” April said. “People die everywhere.”

“You should avoid California,” Franny told her cousin. “She
has a premonition. There are better places to raise your daughter.”

“You sound like my mother. Say whatever you want. I've made up my mind. I've got my degree from MIT, despite my mother's protests. Biology. That's what I've been doing for the past four years. I have a friend at a geo lab in Palm Desert. I can work there and Regina can be safe for a while.”

Jet came in to make tea. “Safe from what?”

April glanced over at Franny, who was studying the child. “You see it, don't you?”

Franny did. There was a halo around Regina that usually indicated a shortened life span. Such people seemed more alive when they were young, filled with light. She had never told a soul that Vincent had had the same halo around him when he was a baby, and perhaps this was why she'd always been so protective of him.

Regina sat cross-legged on the floor to play with Wren. “She's got gray eyes, Momma. Like us.”

“Of course,” Franny told the little girl. “That's because she's an Owens cat.”

When it came down to it, Franny was sorry she and April always had quarreled. She wished she could console her cousin, but there was no way to skirt around some things. Not when they both had the sight.

“I want her to have a happy life, a free life,” April said, resigned. “I'm going to do everything I can to see that she gets it. She'll find that in California. People are more open there. Not so quick to judge.”

Jet had collected a pile of books for the child. “I really don't know what you two are talking about.”

April turned to observe Jet. “You've lost the sight. Maybe that's for the best.”

“I had no choice in the matter,” Jet said. “My fate wasn't what I thought it would be.”

“I know what that feels like,” April said in a soft voice, just as the front door was falling open.

Vincent had arrived. Jet had telephoned and insisted he come to dinner. Hearing his cousins' voices he now knew why. He wandered in with his dog at his heels and bowed to April. “To what do we owe this visit?”

“Bad luck and the need to run away.”

“It's always the same story,” Vincent said with a grin. “Parent trouble.”

“You know so much and yet so little,” April remarked.

No one mentioned Vincent's involvement with William. Franny because she didn't think to do so, and Jet because she knew it would be painful news for April. She wanted this evening to be a happy time, and it was exactly that. Thankfully, April had never had the ability to get inside Vincent's head. Regina took to him, just as she had when she was a baby. After dinner, she begged him to read aloud from
Half Magic
by Edward Eager, her favorite book, and he obliged. Vincent thought the novel was advanced for her age, but Regina was not a typical child. She had taught herself to read, and always carried a book with her. Vincent was especially funny when he acted out the dialogue of a cat that was half real and could only half talk. Regina was soon enough in fits of bright laughter.

Vincent's dog was at his feet, his shadow, silent and dignified and more than a little mortified when Regina laid her cuddly stuffed bunny rabbit beside him.

“I call her Maggie,” Regina said.

“Do you?” Vincent said, giving April a grin.

“What did you expect her to call it? Mrs. Russell?” April teased.

“How did you know about that?” Vincent asked. Then he saw a look exchanged between April and Jet. “Does everyone know all the details of my life?”