The Book of Magic, page 21
“I used to believe that, but then I grew up.” Ian gave her a look he intended to be mocking, but it turned out to be something else entirely, some raw emotion that embarrassed him. Why was he debating her? He knew who he was, a self-centered man, not terribly interested in other people’s issues, always the thoughtless boyfriend who didn’t blink when a woman decided she’d had enough of his cool, selfish ways and left him, since that was what he wanted all along. No entanglements or complications. His work was more than enough for him. He’d seen what love could do, how it drove so many to practice left-handed magic; he’d been happy enough to wake alone in his bed.
“So you found your salvation in magic,” Sally said in a scornful tone. “And you think it’s fine if you occasionally go to the left to get what you want.”
He heaved a sigh. What made her think she knew him, and worse, what if she did?
“It’s written all over you. You don’t just believe in magic, you’re consumed by it.”
Now he was provoked. There were a thousand other things he could be doing this morning. “If you so disapprove, maybe you should go your way and I’ll go mine.”
Whenever Sally was vulnerable she was unpleasant and she knew it. Could it be they were alike in this? “I shouldn’t have said those things,” she admitted. “I’m desperate.”
“We can find her.” So now it was we, was it? Ian felt ploddingly stupid. He was overthinking. What they were forging was a business transaction, the oldest one of all. A life for a life.
He went to speak to the librarian, who had helped in his research before. When he began asking questions about The Book of the Raven, the librarian nodded, and led them down a long corridor to the reading room. Ian glanced over at Sally, who seemed folded in on herself. Magic hung in the air, thick moody gasps of it in every breath.
Vincent had been at work for well over an hour. He’d been given a pair of black cotton gloves to use as he looked through stacks of Grimoires, some donated, others stolen or found by accident, still others having narrowly managed to escape being burned, their pages singed, the paper emitting the acrid green scent of smoke. So far, he’d unearthed several references to Amelia Bassano, who knew astrologers and royals and theater people, but no mention of The Book of the Raven.
Sally wasn’t surprised to find that her grandfather had beaten them to the library. Her aunt Franny had confided that long-ago Vincent had practiced on the left-hand side, and that he’d been born with the temperament for magic, always curious, able to see what others could not.
“Your girl was here,” Vincent told Sally. “Yesterday. She has the book, but it refuses to open.”
Stunned, Sally turned to the librarian. “Did you help her?”
David Ward explained he’d found little concerning The Book of the Raven, only a mention of Amelia Bassano’s practice of magic. The librarian seemed to be more interested in references to the Owens family history.
“Our history?” Sally said, wary.
He thought it wise to pursue that avenue of research, for every curse began in the past.
Sally quickly scanned the entries which recorded that a woman named Hannah Owens had been tried as a witch then set free when the witch mania temporarily passed and those imprisoned were released for no reason, just as they were arrested without cause.
“That’s my home,” Ian told them. They waited for him to say more, but he remained silent, confused by the turn of events. He had not believed in the concept of fate, and yet here they were, with ties to the same county. He thought of himself as a boy of ten, standing at the edge of the fens, certain that if he only waited long enough he would know why he’d been fated to grow up in a place he despised.
Ian asked to look at the book, a genealogical record of his own hometown, Thornfield. He had a bone-rattling chill of recognition when he saw the name Lockland.
“Hannah Owens was involved with the Locklands in the mid-seventeenth century,” David Ward said. “As far as I can tell, the original ancestor saw to it that she was burned as a witch.”
Sally felt a shiver run through her. “Did you mention this to my daughter?”
“I suggested the Locklands might have retained documents. There was a reference to the last remaining member of the family, Tom Lockland.”
Bad Tom, Ian thought. That piece of shit. He’d heard Tom Lockland was stealing magic books from practitioners and historians in an attempt to access magic. A few months earlier, Tom had come slinking around Ian’s office, with the nerve to ask if Ian wanted to hire him as an assistant. The answer had been no, and ever since Ian had wondered what Tom had really wanted. Now he wondered if Tom Lockland was responsible for the disappearance of Rauðskinna and if the hex might have been an act of revenge for Ian dismissing him out of hand.
Ian had known Tom since Lockland had been a boy lurking around the town where they’d both grown up, seeking vengeance in whatever small way he could. Tom was twenty-five years younger than Ian, but he had a reputation in town by the time he was twelve. It was a bad age, set between being a child and being a man, and people often were lost during that year. Tom had been tossed out of school time and again, known as a fellow who set fires in the thickets in the forest and it was thought he might have a hand in a fire begun in the bins behind the local library, which thankfully was put out before the flames could leap to the building. After prison, Ian was trying to make amends, he’d imagined Tom was a kindred spirit who could use help in steadying himself. Ian’s wild youth had not defined him and he wanted to share that knowledge. He knew the rumors about the Locklands; the family that had gone downhill, from great wealth and near royal standing to ruin. Ian had imagined they had something in common, and had been arrogant to think of himself as a potential mentor, but Tom sneered at the friendship he’d offered, stalking away and telling Ian to piss off.
In the years that followed, he’d heard gossip that Tom often camped out at Lockland Manor, once for an entire year, flinging up a tent inside one of the derelict rooms, living there through a brutal winter, stealing boots and a coat from an old couple who phoned the police when they saw a teenager break into a run in the field, but who, when a detective came to question them, found they couldn’t speak to lay blame on Tom. There was madder root on their hands and feet and dusting their front hallway and they never did press charges. Tom knew about poison even then, Ian realized.
He remembered how Tom had set out glass around the perimeter of his tent, arranged in the shape of a pentagram to reverse any ill will. Tom was headed toward the left even then, happy to use the Crooked Path to get back at anyone and everyone. He didn’t care that the manor house was in shambles, too expensive for the county to keep up, little more than a relic, he thought of the estate as his even then. Magic didn’t come naturally to him, but he had some learned skill. Once when Ian was visiting his mother, taking a walk with her Labrador retriever, Jinx, the dog had rushed over to a barn on the Lockland estate, barking like mad. Because of the dog’s racket Ian had stopped to peer into the house. Tom was naked in front of a bonfire that spat out flame and smoke, fed by the fuel of books he’d found in the manor house. The act of burning a book was such a brutal and meaningless act Ian had shouted out, but Tom turned to him and jeered. “I’ll do whatever I want. You can’t stop me. Nobody can.”
Ian had told his mother what he’d seen, and Margaret Wright had shaken her head, though she hadn’t been surprised. She practiced the Nameless Art and therefore saw through people to their core. “If you knew the whole story, you’d know the reason. The past can take over if you let it. This town is not the reason he’s cursed, yet he blames each and every one of us. It’s what’s inside him that’s the problem. The neglect he suffered, that’s what ruined him. If you think you’re nothing, that’s what you become.”
Ian thought it would be faster if he ran home, considering London traffic at this hour, but Vincent insisted on getting them a taxi. The librarian had given Vincent his phone number, in case more research was necessary, something he’d never offered to Ian despite all the time the historian spent at the library. Vincent noticed he’d been given Ward’s personal number. “You could call to let me know how the girl is,” David said. “If you don’t mind.”
The rain that had previously eased had returned, pelting down upon the streets. The world was dim, and they were fortunate to get a taxi, or maybe it wasn’t luck. Maybe it was Vincent out there on the pavement beneath a streetlamp that flickered gray and then bright once more.
“Are you ready for this?” Vincent asked Sally as he opened the taxi door for her.
Sally had always avoided her talent, but now, she could feel herself opening to that side of herself. She could already see the inside stories of those around her, a trait of those who have the sight, whether they want it or not. There was the taxi driver’s remorse over an argument with his son, and the librarian’s suffering over the loss of a child, and the man beside her, leaning forward to give the driver his address, who believed he was immune to love. For twenty years he had thought of nothing but his book. Without it, he feared he could become his old self, drawn to the left for his own selfish reasons, forsaking love. His mother had always insisted that no one was immune to love. It was impossible, she vowed. On his last visit home, she’d grabbed his hands to see what his fate might be. As she read him, she breathed out an audible sigh of regret as she scrutinized the lines on his right hand, the fate he had been given, but then she’d stunned him by laughing out loud when she looked at his left hand. “Won’t you be surprised,” she had said.
“You can’t keep it from me if you know what’s to be,” Ian had insisted.
“Fate will make the best of you,” Margaret Wright scolded, using an old adage that many mothers told their children in their village. “If you don’t make the best of it. That’s what the witches say.”
Now in the taxi, he thought his mother would be amused to see how baffled he was whenever he was in Sally’s presence. He could barely bring himself to look at her. His first instinct was to leap out of the taxi at the next red light and run in the other direction, but he stayed where he was, already reproaching himself for being a fool.
“We’ll pick up the others, then take the train to Essex,” he told Sally. “We should get there as soon as possible. All right?”
She knew she would say yes even before Ian asked the question. Her world had already begun to change. If magic was what was needed, magic it would be. And so she said yes to the man who would lead her to the first Essex County, where the land was so marshy unwitting people sank into the fens if they weren’t careful, where the crows protected each other and Devotion Field was often the setting used to celebrate weddings, where it was possible to find what you’d lost, where there had been ashes rising on a day when a woman burned, when Maria Owens first decided that love was not a blessing but a curse.
PART FOUR
The Book of Love
I.
As the train hurtled through the darkening evening, Gillian hunched back in her seat to observe the rising pink moon from the window. When she was young, people said she could bewitch men with a single glance, but the truth was she’d never had the power to do so. She’d veered onto the Crooked Path when she got involved with a man who was nothing but trouble, and she’d learned her lesson. Never love someone who cannot love you back, Jet had told her. That is the way to heartbreak and nothing more.
Gillian had been glad to sit by herself on the train so that she might have her own private thoughts uninterrupted. They were passing near the village of Canewdon, once called the village of witches, and Gillian gazed out, assuming she would spy only the sky and the countryside, but there was more. She leaned forward, rapt, as she did her best to make out the shape on the other side of the glass. No one else looked out. No one else noticed anything unusual.
Franny and Vincent were in seats next to one another, their heads close, chuckling as they spoke about the past. Sally and Ian had wound up together accidentally. As soon as Ian sat beside her Sally called out, “Oh, Gilly, come sit with me.” Ian had immediately risen to his feet, assuring them he would be happy to move, but Gillian had begged off, explaining that she was drained from the time change and wanted to sleep. Ian and Sally then exchanged glassy looks. “I don’t talk while traveling,” Sally had warned him, sounding haughtier than she meant to. Ian understood completely. What she’d meant was simply Leave me alone.
“Fine,” Ian had assured her as he’d retaken the seat beside her. He wished she didn’t have a heart-shaped face. He hadn’t even known there was such a thing, but there it was, scowling at him. “Don’t say a word. That will be a pleasure for me as well,” he said flatly. Distance, he told himself. And yet he couldn’t heed his own advice and edged closer to her. “We can never speak if that’s the way you’d like it to be.” Good lord, he thought, what was wrong with him?
Sally had started, indignant. “Are you trying to be rude?”
“I don’t have to try.” Why not be blunt? That had always been his method of navigating the world. “I was born that way, and I’m sure my mother, who you’ll meet before long, would agree.” When Ian saw the curious look on Sally’s face, he added, “If you don’t want me here, that’s your choice.” He sounded like a besotted lunatic, even to himself. “I can go sit in the loo.”
Sally laughed, charmed despite herself by the way he held forth, for at heart he was his mother’s son. You could judge a man by whether or not he got along with his mother, and beneath his bad-mannered façade, Ian was devoted to his. “Of course, I want you here. You owe me that. But you have my solemn promise, I will ignore you,” Sally assured him “It should be easy to do.”
Whatever was inside him flared, and he looked hurt.
“Now I’ve insulted you.” Sally was surprised, not expecting him to be so thin-skinned. Perhaps that was the reason for all of the ink. Beneath his clothes, his tattoos were his armor.
“I owe you and I’m here.” Ian was doing his best to sort it out. “Shall we leave it at that?” He was bringing her home to his mother, who had never met a woman he was involved with, since none lasted, not that he was involved with Sally, but mothers will think as they please and his would get a good laugh out of this.
“Yes,” Sally said, chastened. “I’m sorry. I’m the rude one.” She turned away, overcome. For a moment, she stared out at the darkening light. Bats flickered over the trees. There was a false story that had passed through generations claiming witches couldn’t cry. Perhaps that made it easier to burn them; perhaps you could drown a woman if you convinced yourself she had no feelings at all.
“Your girl will be found.” Ian sounded sure of himself. He knew Essex as well as anyone, having spent hours out in the fens and the bogs, despite his mother’s warnings that he would drown if he wasn’t careful. There was an old abandoned house past where they lived, nearly surrounded by water when the tide was high. He’d spent a good deal of time out there, watching the herons and egrets and spoonbills perching in the trees and wading through the water. In his opinion, that was magic.
Gillian looked out the window and wondered if she was too greedy. She had a perfectly good life and yet she wanted more. As she gazed out she saw something, an unexpected shadow. It was a figure out in the fens, what people called a shade, not a ghost exactly, but rather a memory, as if a person was caught in an unending cycle of time they couldn’t break, unable or unwilling to move on to the world beyond. Gillian had heard about such sightings in Salem and Boston, layers of regret set in between the brittle history of the past which caught a soul and kept it there to repeat a moment or a deed. It was said you could walk down Beacon Street at dusk and glimpse half a dozen of these shades. Though witches were born with the ability to see spirits, Gillian had never come upon one herself, and now she craned her neck to see, moving so near the window her nose touched the glass.
In the distance a girl of eleven was plodding through the water weeds, carrying her possessions above her head so they would not be soaked. A crow soared across the sky, black against the violet twilight, difficult to see, but clear enough when Gillian narrowed her eyes. The bird had been circling above the trees for three hundred years, following a girl who had left the mortal world long ago. On some nights the machinery of time was rewound as the past leaked into the present. It was as if the back of a watch had been slid open to see its workings. Even for those with the sight it was a marvel to behold time in all its beauty and confusion: What has been, what is, what will be.
The girl in the fens turned as if she could hear the train that wouldn’t exist until hundreds of years later, cocking her head, so that strands of her long dark hair nearly covered her face, for she seemed to catch a glimmer of Gillian, who had cupped her hands against the glass so that she could stare out without any flickering reflections to obscure her view. The girl walking through the water-logged landscape was carrying a black book. It all seemed familiar, as if it were an image Gillian had seen in a dream.
Do you see me as I see you? Do you wish me to know what you know?
The train moved on and soon enough there was nothing beyond the glass, only the dark settling over reeds and water, fish and fox and crows. Gillian leaned forward to talk to Sally through the split in the seats. “Are you okay?” she asked her sister.
The historian was reading; he was never without a book, and this small volume was a Grimoire written by a girl in Manningtree, whose mother and sisters had been put to death during the witch mania. His gaze shifted; he saw Gillian take her sister’s hand and found himself moved by their tenderness.
“Of course,” Sally said. “I’m fine.”
Exactly what she would say, not that Gillian believed it for a minute.
“I saw a shade out there,” Gillian murmured.
“A shadow,” Sally was quick to correct her sister, denying magic as always. “Likely a tree.”
