The Rules of Magic (Practical Magic #2)(46)

She walked all the way home, following Fifth Avenue to the very end. When she came inside Franny saw that her clothes were wet, and that her dark hair was damp around her face.

“What did you do?” Franny asked. There was a circle of sorrow around her sister, a pale gray-blue, as though she were still walking through water.

“Nothing,” Jet said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“You tried to drown yourself.” Franny could see it. The edge of the lake, the water weeds, the moment when her sister gave in to the call to go deeper.

“It was an accident.”

Franny went to embrace her sister. “The world will do enough to us, we don’t have to do it to ourselves,” she said. “Stay away from water. Promise me.”

Jet promised, she crossed her heart, but in fact she now knew that if a witch wanted to drown herself, she could do so. All she needed was some assistance. A stone, a rock, a spell, a cup of poison, a steely heart, a world of sorrow. Then, and only then, could it be done.



Once a week Jet walked uptown to the Plaza Hotel at Fifth and Fifty-Ninth Street. No one knew where she was. To the crowds rushing by she was nothing, just a young woman in black standing on the sidewalk crying. She always went directly to the place where it happened, and when she did she could feel the last moments she had spent with Levi before his accident. Even though she’d lost the sight, those instants were so powerful they hung in the air and were threaded through the trees. Everything glowed with a peculiar bright light. He’d held her near. He’d told her to close her eyes. She’d said, Don’t be silly, but he had insisted. At last he’d placed something in her hands. Now look, he’d said.

What is this? She’d laughed, feeling the small circular surprise in her hands. A bottle cap?

But when she opened her eyes she saw he had given her a ring, a thin silver band with a moonstone. She hadn’t taken it off since, though the silver had tarnished.

In the park in front of the hotel she watched the trees for a sign, but there was none. No dove, no raven, no spark of light. Then one day as she was working in the shop, she stumbled upon what she needed. The potion. That week she walked into the Plaza Hotel and rented the room Levi had reserved. He had showed her the reservation so she knew the room number: 708. Sometimes that number came up in the oddest places. On the cash register in the shop when someone bought a bar of black soap. In the grocery store when she went to pay for bread and milk. If it was over the door of a restaurant she then must stop, whether or not she was hungry.

Jet told the bellman she didn’t need help, then she tipped him five dollars and went up alone. There was no one in the elevator, or in the hall. It was very quiet. She was glad she couldn’t hear the thoughts of those inside the rooms she was passing. She appreciated silence now. Even the door to her room made no noise when she slipped inside. She drew the curtains and flung open the windows. Then she peered into the bathroom to see the huge tub and all the lovely bath salts and soaps, and finally she lay down on the bed fully clothed. She could spy the tops of the trees in the small park in front of the hotel and a wedge of blue sky. She thought about what might have been if the accident hadn’t happened. How they would have walked into the hotel together, come up to their room, this very room. They would have sat on the bed, shyly at first, before daring to embrace. He would have been gentle, and kind, although mad for her, and they might have cried together afterward, overwhelmed by sex and emotion. She supposed she was weeping as she thought about this, and the sound carried, and there was a knock on the door.

She didn’t answer. Perhaps guests nearby had complained. She forced herself to be quiet. But as it turned out, she had left the door unlocked and someone came into the room.

“Are you all right, miss?”

It was the bellman. Jet didn’t answer, so the bellman pulled up a chair and sat down. He was young and had a worried expression.

“When people check in without luggage you never know what they’re going to do,” he said. “And then I heard you crying. I put two and two together.”

“I’m fine,” Jet managed to say. “Please go.”

“You’re not going to kill yourself or anything like that?”

Jet shook her head. It was safer not to speak.

“Because I would feel responsible. I would be the last person to have seen you. That would mean that I forever would carry this moment around, and think of what I could have done to stop you. My life would probably be ruined. I’d get off track and start to drink and I’d drop out of school and after a while this place would fire me, because everyone would blame me, and worst of all, I’d blame myself.”

Jet began sobbing anew. She turned away from him. There had been a plan and he was ruining it. She felt the bed sink as he lay down beside her.

“Don’t cry,” he said. He stroked her hair. “I can get you room service.”

In spite of herself, Jet laughed. “Room service? Why would that help?”

“The room service is great,” he protested. “You shouldn’t pass it up.”

Jet turned to face him. They lay side by side looking into each other’s eyes. His were very dark, flecked with gold. He told her his name was Rafael and he was taking night classes at Hunter College. She told him she had lost the man she loved and that she no longer believed in love and wanted nothing to do with it. He told her he planned never to marry and thought love was probably a foolish endeavor. He had seen what had happened to his mother, who had raised three children without any help, and who worked two jobs, all due to love, while his father went on and married twice more and had other families and never looked back. Jet had found her perfect bitter companion. She felt at ease in his presence.