The Book of Magic, page 25
Antonia slipped on some oven mitts and took out the wretched-looking pie. But despite the fact that it was tilted, with a crust that was salty and pale, the pie smelled delicious. Antonia set it on the windowsill as the recipe instructed. A single wasp was drawn to the sweet smell, and she batted it away with the mitt. “Begone,” she said as if she had invoked a spell she didn’t wish to have interrupted. She laughed at herself then, as she opened the window for the wasp to fly out before closing it and making certain all of the windows were locked. It was totally illogical to think that a pie made on one side of the Atlantic would call to a person on the other side, still you never knew the effects that might be caused by one small action halfway across the world.
She took the pie and walked back to the Reverend’s. By now the staff knew her; she was privately referred to as the pregnant Owens medical student or the red-headed one and they waved her on, thinking she might take after her aunt Franny, and no one wished to defy her. Do what you want to, do what you will, none of us will stop you if you bring no harm to others. Antonia went directly to the dining room, emptied now after a very early dinner hour. It was only half-past four and still bright outside, but here it was later than anyone might think. Antonia grabbed a plate, along with a knife and a fork.
The Reverend was already in bed, mortified to be seen in his robe. “I thought you’d disappeared, Annie,” he said accusingly.
“I went home and made the pie.” Antonia cut him a small slice. “How does this bring my sister home?”
“She’ll know it was made with love and she’ll find you.”
“Jet told you this? You’re sure?”
“She said love was the most important ingredient.”
The pie had been made with love, that much was true. Antonia, terrible cook and levelheaded medical student, would do anything she could to locate her sister. She tried the pie, and found it wasn’t half bad. In her ninth month she was hungry all the time.
“Are you ready for your life to change?” Reverend Willard asked.
“No.” The baby kicked her, and Antonia knew she had better be ready. “Maybe,” she said.
“Greatest thing you’ll ever do,” the Reverend informed her. Antonia thought about how he had lost his beloved son; he had never gotten over it, because no one can get over such a loss, and yet here he was, being kind to her. If he kept this up, she would be on the brink of tears. Then he ruined it by saying, “If you get married, I’ll officiate. So you’d better hurry up. I don’t have that much longer.”
“There is no wedding in the future,” Antonia told him, thinking about her strange dream in which she wore a white dress. “I’m not involved with anyone,” she said in a firm tone, and yet her tongue burned, as if she were telling a lie.
“Fine,” the Reverend said. “Have it your way.”
The pats of butter inside the pie had melted and were running over the rim of the plate. When she first came to visit him, all those years ago, Jet had told him that butter melted in a house when someone was in love. He’d been a grouch in those days, but he always liked to hear Jet’s stories. He hadn’t believed in love. He’d lost his wife young, and had ruined his son’s life by refusing to accept Jet Owens. Now he was open to everything and anything. He wasn’t even the same person anymore and when he thought of the man he’d been, locked alone in his house, filled with so much regret he could barely speak, he pitied that fellow, and was grateful for the day when Jet Owens came to knock at his door.
“I think I’m exhausted,” he told Antonia.
She straightened out his blanket. “Just remember you’re not dying while I’m watching over you,” she told him. “Don’t even think about it.” She sat beside him and took his hand. She had decided to stay until he fell asleep. Sitting there quietly, not rushing around as she usually did, she could feel the baby settle inside her. Heart of my heart. My darling one.
She began to hum a song, one that came to her unexpectedly while she sat there beside the Reverend in the fading dusk, the scent of apple pie perfuming the air.
The water is wide. I cannot get o’er it.
“Jet used to sing that,” the Reverend murmured.
It was in equal parts a love song and a lullaby, a tune so old no one knew when it had first been written. Jet had sung it to Sally and Gillian when they were young, and then to Antonia and Kylie. It was a traditional folk song, handed down through the generations, one Maria Owens first heard in a field in England three hundred years earlier. Antonia sang it in the hush of the retirement home, for by now the hallways were dark, and everyone was asleep, but that didn’t mean people didn’t dream of ships and of dark water and of someone they loved too dearly to lose.
On the drive home, Antonia kept the car windows open. The pie sat on the passenger seat, in danger of falling each time she stepped on the brakes. She only had a week or two to go until the baby arrived. No wonder she was exhausted. If Kylie were here, they would meet up at Antonia’s apartment to watch an old movie and order a pizza and make each other laugh with imitations of members of their family. Kylie did a great Gillian, becoming a bombshell who was smarter than anyone in the room. Oh, how Antonia missed her sister. How she worried that she would be lost to her forever. She breathed deeply, remembering when they would pluck apples from the trees in their aunts’ garden where there was an orchard of a variety called Look No Further. Home, Antonia thought, and for all her logic, she nearly cried right then. That was when her phone rang.
IV.
Tom had sent Kylie to the shop on the outskirts of the park to pick up something for supper, which would give him time alone to more fully inspect the book. “Let me try to figure it out,” he suggested. He held out a hand to collect the book, a smile on his handsome face. “A second pair of eyes never hurt,” he urged, and, when she hesitated, he added, “You don’t have all the time in the world.”
Kylie thought of Gideon in his hospital bed. Still, she felt a twinge of anxiety as she handed over the book.
“There you go,” Tom said, once the book was his. He seemed pleased with Kylie, as if she were a student who had passed a test. It hadn’t been easy to claim the book, which she always kept with her. He’d had better luck with her phone, which he’d fished out of her backpack and tossed into a ditch while out by the orchard of twisted black apple trees behind the house. “Have a nice walk. It will take your mind off your troubles.”
Kylie did feel her spirits lift once she was in the forest. A fern, a leaf, a tree, a path, all of it was comforting and reminded her of home. She had been thinking of the house on Magnolia Street all day, missing it terribly, remembering the times she and Antonia had sneaked into the garden at dusk to look for rabbits. There were often dandelions turned to fluff in the grass that Antonia would hold up to Kylie’s face. “Make a wish,” Antonia would command. “Wish and never tell!”
Tom’s desire for revenge, intriguing at first, had become exhausting. The store was close by and Kylie cut through the forest onto the road that merged with the High Street if you went east and led to the motorway if you went west. The roadside market was small, with bins of fruits and vegetables out front. There was a single parked car in the lot, there with all the windows open and the radio playing. The group of young American hikers who had turned away from the manor when they felt the darkness within were here, exhausted from their days in the forest, now stopping for drinks and crisps. Kylie’s heart leapt; somehow she had managed to misplace her phone and she had a desperate urge to call her sister.
“Hey there,” one of the young women called out. “I thought I saw you before.” She sounded like a New Yorker. “American, right? You look a little lost.”
“I’ve misplaced my phone,” Kylie explained. “Could I borrow yours? My sister’s having a baby in Massachusetts. I just want to see if she’s all right.”
The young woman handed her phone to Kylie through the window. The hikers were all seniors in college, and this was their big end-of-the-term vacation, the sort of trip Kylie and Gideon had meant to take together. “My sister’s having a baby, too. We’ll both be aunties.”
Kylie returned the young woman’s smile, then turned and called Antonia. She was shivering even though the night was warm. She didn’t know what time it was in the States, afternoon she supposed. The phone rang and rang, and just when it seemed as if no one would answer, her sister answered with a clipped, “I’m driving.” Logical, wonderful Antonia. Kylie had never missed her more. “Who is this?” Antonia added, not recognizing the number.
“It’s me. I’m in England.”
“Kylie! Why don’t you answer the phone? They’re all over there looking for you.”
“They shouldn’t be.” Kylie thought of how angry she’d been at her mother, how she’d stalked away without a word. “I don’t need them.”
“Don’t you? What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Antonia wanted to know.
“I came to break the curse,” Kylie told her sister.
“If I wasn’t so pregnant I’d fly over and kick your ass. Forget that stupid fairy tale. You need to come home.”
“It’s not a fairy tale. Jet left a note about how to end the curse. I know I can bring Gideon back.”
Antonia had been driving in heavy traffic, and she now pulled over to the side of the road. Cars whizzed past her. She closed the windows to drown out the sound of the highway. “How do you plan to do that?” she asked.
“She left a note that she had hid an old book in the library. It has instructions for ending a curse. I just haven’t managed to find them yet.”
“If Jetty left a note it was probably for Aunt Franny, not for you. I’m sure she never meant for you to go wandering through England. Where are you exactly?”
Kylie gazed around. The sky was shadowy and dark, with bats flickering in the trees. “In Essex. The first one.”
“Well, come back to your own Essex County.” Antonia thought of her dreams, of a lake and a drowning, of a girl with red hair and their dear Jet, young once again. “You’re going to get into trouble there.”
“How is he?” Kylie was still wearing Gideon’s raincoat; it was the only thing that helped when she was shivering. She pushed her black hair out of her face and kept her back to the parked car, avoiding eye contact with the young American woman who was signaling for her phone to be returned.
“He moved his hand,” Antonia said. “He’s still in there.”
A sob escaped from Kylie.
“Come home now,” Antonia told her.
Kylie made the mistake of shifting her stance. The woman inside the car caught her eye and waved.
“I’d like my phone,” the young woman called. “We’ve got to go.”
“I’m kind of with someone here,” Kylie said.
“What do you mean with someone? Like a guide?”
“A man.”
Agitated, Antonia got out of the car. The baby was so low, standing still was uncomfortable, and she began to pace on the grass. She hated driving home to Cambridge at this hour of the day; there was too much traffic and the sun was in her eyes. Maybe that was why she felt like crying. What was left of the apple pie was in the car. Could it be that was why Kylie had phoned?
“What man?” Antonia wanted to know.
“He said he could help me. He’s cursed, too. I thought he could at first. Now I’m not sure.” Kylie felt humiliated and degraded by throwing in her lot with a stranger who wanted such dark results for those who had cursed him.
“Do you even know who he is?” Antonia asked.
“He’s somehow related to us. He’s taught himself left-handed magic.”
“Are you listening to yourself?” Antonia said to her little sister. “Even I know that means the Dark Art.”
“He understands me,” Kylie said stubbornly. She had left the book with him and it was dawning on her that her sister might be right. Trust was something a person earned.
“You’ve only just met him. He can’t understand you,” Antonia said. “He doesn’t even know you.”
“He’s told me things we were never told about our bloodline.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Kylie, stop all this nonsense and listen to me. You need to let Mom know where you are and let Franny handle this.”
Her sister was always the same, even when she was three thousand miles away. The dependable sister, the one who believed in proof, logic, and rational thought. “You don’t know who I am anymore,” Kylie said sadly.
“Of course I do. I know you better than anyone. Certainly better than whoever that man is.”
If her sister wanted proof, proof is what she would get. Kylie snapped a photo of herself on the stranger’s phone. She looked sulky, a tall, awkward young woman with long black hair standing in a parking lot.
“Hey,” the woman called to her, pissed off now. “Seriously. I was doing you a favor. We’ve got to go.”
“You’ll see,” Kylie told her sister. “You won’t even recognize me.”
“I love you,” Antonia said, but Kylie didn’t answer with I love you more. Instead, she sent the photo, then ended the call while Antonia was still talking, saying she would know Kylie anywhere and anytime. The hikers had started their car, which was roughly idling.
“That took long enough,” the phone’s owner said, a bit huffy, when Kylie returned it to her.
“Thanks, I really appreciate it,” Kylie said as she went on into the store to pick up some groceries before it closed. But maybe it had been a mistake to call. She missed her sister and she missed Gideon. She missed who she used to be, but Kylie was someone different now. She felt an attraction to Tom, to the story he told. She picked up a few bottles of beer, some local cheese, pickles, and a loaf of bread then walked out without paying. All she had to do was whisper a spell of protection and hide behind her long black hair, and before she knew it she was invisible to most people’s eyes. She felt a rush of emotion breaking this simple rule.
Do not steal, do not lie, do not trust a man you can never really know.
* * *
On the side of the road, as the traffic on Highway 93 hurtled by, Antonia clicked on the photo she’d been sent. There was a tall young woman in a parking lot. Kylie’s inky black hair had blown across her face when a gust of wind picked up, but she could be seen quite plainly. It was her sister, the person Antonia knew better than anyone. Yes, she looked different, but it didn’t matter if her hair was black or brown, if she looked frightened and desperate and alone, it didn’t matter if she was in the first Essex County or the second, in Cambridge or halfway around the world. Antonia knew her sister better than Kylie knew herself. She got back inside the car and called her mother.
* * *
The room was stuffy, and Sally had gone to open the window. There were lilacs outside in the softening air. She had been thinking about her conversation with Ian on the train. The way he leaned toward her when he agreed with her and leaned away when he disagreed, as though he’d been burned. She had wanted him to come closer, but then she happened to see the palm of his left hand, the fortune he had made. The lines matched hers exactly.
As soon as she answered her phone, all such thoughts fell away when she heard Antonia’s voice.
“Are you all right? Is the baby all right?”
“My baby’s fine. Your baby is the problem. Some man seems to have gotten a hold on her and he’s leading her over to the left-handed side.”
Sally felt a knot of panic inside of her, near her heart, something bitter, something cold. “Bad Tom.”
“Well, whoever he is, get her away from him. He’s the one filling her head with dark magic.”
Everyone in the family had heard stories concerning Maria Owens’s daughter, Faith. She was said to have practiced left-handed, and had then forfeited her magical abilities until her seventieth birthday when the sight revisited her after she’d lived a life of helping others. On the day her powers returned, she went out and found a little girl who had been missing, held against her will so that her parents would pay a ransom. She went on to do so time and time again and this way she became a finder. There were those in the Owens family who were finders and she was one, rescuing scores of missing daughters. People said she baked an apple pie every week, set out on her windowsill to cool, and that those children she hadn’t managed to locate found their own way home, often in the middle of the night, knocking at their own doors and crying out for their mothers. In the second Essex County, in the town where she’d lived, one out of every ten girls who were born was still called Faith.
“Kylie is confused.” Antonia gazed at the photograph of her sister as cars raced past on the highway. The baby was moving inside of her and she felt so comforted whenever that happened. “Let her know where you are so she can find you,” Antonia told her mother. “Bake an apple pie and put it in the window.”
“Here? We’re at an inn. Why a pie?”
“It’s Jet’s advice. The Reverend told me. I made one myself, and she phoned me less than an hour later.”
“You’re seeing the Reverend?”
It was ridiculous for Antonia to have such affection for the old man who had caused so much trouble for Jet long ago. Why, she’d heard that long before Jet and Franny and Vincent ever came to the house on Magnolia Street, the Reverend had started a petition to keep members of the Owens family out of town. That didn’t at all seem like the benevolent geezer she visited, but then again, Antonia barely knew him. All the same, she hoped his pulse rate had gone down. “Jet told him about a Lost Daughter spell. Make the pie.”
