The Rules of Magic (Practical Magic #2)(70)

The girls’ mother came to the door with a skeptical expression. “Lunch,” she called, clapping her hands. When the girls skittered into the house their mother walked onto the porch, hands on her hips, eyes fixed on Franny. “Is there something I can help you with?”

Franny detected a stain on the porch beneath the gray paint. Crimson. She felt her face grow flushed. She knew what it was and it didn’t bode well. “What happened to Mrs. Russell?”

“Are you a relative?”

Sometimes the truth was the best way to find out more of the truth. “I’m Franny Owens. I think you got some sage from my aunt.”

The neighbor continued to be wary. “What if I did?”

“If you did, I’m glad she could help you.” The woman relented and came a little closer. She no longer seemed quite as guarded, so Franny went on. “Mrs. Russell was involved with my brother,” she explained. “So I just wondered.”

“Well, it’s a good thing he wasn’t around when it happened. Her husband? He was kind of a mild-mannered guy? He murdered her. I take it she had all kinds of improper flirtations. We got a great price on the house because of the crime, but I’ve had to go to your aunt half a dozen times to try to rid the place of her aura. It still smells of burning rubber in the basement.”

“Try some lavender sachets. Put them in every room and bury one under this porch.”

“Frankly, it’s good you’re here,” the neighbor confided. “Your aunt hasn’t had the porch light on for weeks. People in town are a bit worried about her, but we all know she values her privacy.”

Franny thanked the neighbor and walked on. October was such a tricky month. Today, for instance, it was as chilly as wintertime, but the sun was bright. The weather report predicted that the following day would be in the sixties. Vines snaking around the old house were still green, but there were no leaves, only thorns. When Franny went through the gate she noted the garden hadn’t been put to bed as it usually was at this time of year. The beds had not been raked, tender plants had not been taken into the greenhouse, where they would winter over in the faint sunshine. The new neighbor had been correct: the porch light, always turned on to let those in need of a remedy know they were welcome to call, burning for more than three hundred years, was turned off. Moths caught inside the glass dome were fluttering about helplessly.

Finding the door unlatched, Franny shoved it open. Colder inside than out. A sign of a passing over to come. Franny kept her coat on. Her throat tightened as she walked through the house, the echo of her heels clattering on the wooden floor. There were dishes in the sink, unwashed, and dust glazed the furniture. Isabelle was always meticulous to a fault. Now there were ashes in the fireplace. Herbal encyclopedias were scattered over her bed. There was one book of poems, a present from Jet one Yule. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.

Franny came to see that the back door had been left open. A beetle squatted on the threshold. Deathwatch beetles are wood borers; they can be heard in the rafters calling for mates and there was a call from somewhere inside the ceiling. There was nothing Franny could do about the beetle hiding in the attic, but she stepped on this one and crushed it flat, then went on to the garden. The lilacs were bare but she swore she could smell their scent. If there are lilacs, her aunt had told her once as they’d worked in the garden, there will be luck. The spindly plant in the backyard of 44 Greenwich was one of the reasons she’d decided it was the right house for them.

She went on to the greenhouse, thinking of the night she learned to make black soap, and in doing so learned who she was. The door was ajar and she peered inside. There was Aunt Isabelle sitting in a wicker chair.

“You received my note,” Isabelle said when Franny came to her, her voice a dry rasp. Her skin was sallow and she was clearly chilled to the bone, for she wore a sweater, a coat, and a shawl. Still she trembled. “I won’t play games with you. It’s pancreatic cancer. One can’t escape every evil under the sun.”

Franny sank onto the wicker ottoman and took her aunt’s hands in her own. Her emotions swelled into panic. “Is there no cure?”

“Not yet.” Isabelle was honest above all things, a trait Franny admired. It was an important rule. Nature could be shifted, but not controlled. “Not for me,” Isabelle said. “But, darling, you can cure yourself. I wanted to make certain I spoke to you about this matter right away.”

Franny smiled softly. It was so like her aunt to worry about her when she was the one who was dying. “I have no disease.”

“You will,” Isabelle said. “Unless you love someone.”

Franny bent to rest her head on her aunt’s knees. “You know I can’t. It’s not possible in our family.”

“Maria Owens did what she did for a reason. She was young and she thought damning anyone who loved us would protect us. But what she had with that terrible man wasn’t love. She didn’t understand that when you truly love someone and they love you in return, you ruin your lives together. That is not a curse, it’s what life is, my girl. We all come to ruin, we turn to dust, but whom we love is the thing that lasts.”

“Maybe I’m afraid of love,” Franny admitted. “It’s too powerful.”

“You?” Isabelle scoffed. “Who chose courage? You’re stronger than you know. Which is why I’m leaving you what matters most. The book.”