The Rules of Magic (Practical Magic #2)(75)

All that winter Vincent refused to tell William the date of his induction. He didn’t want an emotional scene, so he began pulling back. He took to leaving Charles Street right after sex. He didn’t speak much. He often looked out into the street as if memorizing the view, in case he should never see it again. He did not wish to fight in a war he considered to be unfair. He was not a warrior and he hadn’t the skills to be a soldier.

“Are you angry with me?” William wanted to know.

“Of course not.” But Vincent sounded angry even to himself. Angry to be in this situation where he felt he was a traitor with no courage at all.

He began to slowly move his belongings out of William’s apartment. Each evening he went through the dresser where he kept his clothes and took a few shirts, a pair of jeans, some socks. He took a coffeepot, a hairbrush, his dog’s water bowl.

“Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing?” William asked.

“I’m getting rid of things I don’t need. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“You’re getting ready to leave. I can tell when a man is in denial. I grew up with one. I’m an expert. You won’t even stay the night anymore. You’re thinking of leaving me.”

Vincent leaned to kiss William, who backed away.

“You don’t trust me,” Vincent said.

“You have that so wrong,” William remarked. “It’s you who doesn’t trust me.”

Vincent refused to discuss the situation any further. He would not allow William to be shattered by sorrow that belonged to him alone. Was this the curse, succeeding at last in breaking him? He went down to the Lower East Side, returning to the building where he’d once set up shop. He had The Magus with him, tucked inside his coat. It was as if he had two beating hearts, one his own, the other belonging to the book. All this time, the book had been his closest companion. He hadn’t really needed anyone since the day he had found it, until now. Back in the abandoned apartment covered with graffiti, he brought from his shirt pocket the photograph William had taken of them when they were first together. Some love magic was brutal and quick and didn’t give the other person a choice in the matter. It was dark and irrevocable, but in Vincent’s opinion it was for the best if it would save his beloved from pain and grief. He tore William out of the picture. He had brought along the ingredients necessary to undo their attraction. His own blood, black paint, pins, a bird’s broken wing, a thin strand of lead. He could fix it so that William would never even see him. It was emotional camouflage. Whom you had loved, you would no longer recognize. He would not know his voice, his touch, their history. Without knowing why, William would throw out anything that might remind him of Vincent, letters he’d written, the tape of “I Walk at Night.” He would open a book Vincent had given him and not know where it had come from. He would toss out the second pillow on the bed.

But when Vincent imagined William no longer knowing him he found he could not proceed. What would he feel when they walked past each other on Bleecker Street and William gazed at him as though he were a stranger? What was this world without love?

As Vincent passed a sewer he tossed the magical ingredients down through the grate into the watery depths below the city. Then he took out the book that had been with him since he was fourteen. He went to Washington Square and left The Magus on a bench for the next person in need to find. It was wrenching to do this. He had so treasured the book; it had spoken to the darkness inside him, it had been his true voice when he’d had none. But that time was over, and what magic there was, was inside him.

Know yourself, Aunt Isabelle had told him. They had stood in the garden when he had been so lost. He hadn’t known how to reach the surface, all he knew was that he was drowning. Yet on the morning when his aunt tested him, he had chosen courage. So he walked on, to Charles Street, where William was waiting for him in his apartment, which overlooked the green plane trees and open sky right in the center of a city where anything was possible for those who were not afraid to try.



Before his appearance at Whitehall Street, Vincent called his sisters into the kitchen. “There’s something I need to say in case anything happens to me.”

“It won’t,” Jet assured him. “You’ll be fine.”

“But if something does happen,” Vincent went on, “you should know about me and April.”

Franny furrowed her brow. “Did you have an argument? I didn’t even know you were in touch with her.”

“No one can argue with April. She’s always right.” He paused. “We’re in touch on and off. We have to be.” When Franny gave him a look, he added, “Jet knows what I’m talking about.”

“Does she really?” Franny said, annoyed at having been left out. “She no longer has the sight, so you must have confided in her.”

“It was a long time ago,” Jet was quick to say.

“I didn’t confide in her,” Vincent told Franny. “April did. It happened the summer we first went to Aunt Isabelle’s. When I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted. For a brief moment I thought I wanted April.”

“Seriously?” Franny shook her head. “That’s hard to picture.”

“Well, picture that it ended up with Regina.”