The Rules of Magic (Practical Magic #2)(82)

He wrote that when he thought of the past he envisioned the three of them lying on the kitchen floor, eavesdropping on their father’s therapy sessions. There they were, children trapped in a house they couldn’t wait to get away from, but which he now missed every day.

You both rescued me every time I needed you. I hope I’m worthy of such kindness.

We were wrong about Maria’s curse. It is simply the way of the world to lose everything you have ever loved. In this, we are like everyone else.

When he went to post the letter, he also had the record player boxed up and sent to April’s address in California. He jotted a note on a piece of thin, white paper. To my dear Regina, to whom I made a promise that I kept.

He did not need to write to William. Mrs. Durant had already taken care of that.



He tossed his backpack into a trash bin in the park where it could be discovered after he was gone. Everything he had, other than his guitar, was folded inside, including the key to 44 Greenwich Avenue. It was a portion of his life he would never get back. Friends of Madame Durant’s were stationed in the Tuileries. They had hung posters on lampposts and a crowd was already gathering. There was an atmosphere of expectation in the streets. Vincent’s music was known in France and his underground tape often played.

Vincent wore a black suit. He kept a photograph of William in his shirt pocket, the one taken in California when the world was open to them. They had been standing on the dock in San Francisco and had persuaded a stranger to snap them together, arms entwined, the sky behind them a vivid blue. Tonight he had sipped a tincture of dogwood Madame had given him, so that his voice would come back to him.

For the date of the concert he’d chosen Samhain, All Hallows’ Eve, the night of death and transformation. The sky was black and filled with stars and the leaves on the chestnut trees curled up as a sudden flash of cold descended upon the city. He stood on an overpass near the Louvre facing the crowd. The lamps in the park blinked as though they were fireflies. This was the moment he had seen in the three-sided mirror when he was fourteen. When a hush fell he sang the songs he had written in New York, beginning and ending with “I Walk at Night.” He had his fans, but most in the crowd had never heard of him. The last song was a river in which he would have happily drowned.

Isn’t that what love makes you do? Go on trying, even when you’re through, Go on even when you’re made of ash, when there’s nothing inside you but the past.

He felt the wolfsbane he had ingested earlier in the evening spreading through him. He was sinking into it as the herb slowed his heart and his breathing became shallow in his chest. He could see everything he’d never seen before as time slowed down. The glimmering of the world. Those he’d loved who’d loved him in return. The gifts he’d been given. The years he’d had. He was so beautiful in that moment. Those who watched him gasped and forgot where they were. An enchantment took over and people stood in silence. White moths appeared from the grass. They spun past, higher all the time, until they disappeared into the sky.

Vincent was grateful this was the way he was able to leave behind everything he had known before. He collapsed, and when he could not be revived, a doctor who was a friend of Madame Durant’s signed the death certificate at 11:58. It was still All Hallows’ Eve. The temperature had dropped. Raindrops fell and splattered on the sidewalks. A private ambulance was sent for. Reporters had been called so they might witness his death. The leaves were curling in the cold and no one seemed to have the ability to speak. All was still, except for the siren as the ambulance pulled away, and then, at a little after midnight, the sound of the falling rain turned hard as it became ice striking against the sidewalks and the brown leaves of the chestnut trees.



Madame Durant was the one who made the funeral arrangements, acting swiftly so no questions would be asked. She had placed a very old disappearing spell over Vincent as he’d lain prone. L’homme invisible. From that moment on no one would ever figure out the private details of his life. All the same, the newspapers were filled with reports of his strange death. There were insinuations, with some convinced he had taken his own life and others vowing there had been foul play. A small vigil had begun outside the hotel where he had stayed in the Marais, with flowers deposited in a fragrant muddy pile and white candles lit so that wax flowed into the gutter. The radio stations played “I Walk at Night” and people who didn’t know Vincent’s name found themselves singing the lyrics as they walked home from work.

The burial was at Père-Lachaise, the cemetery opened by Napoleon in 1804. Jet and Franny’s plane was hours late, delayed by a storm in New York. William had traveled with them, wearing a black suit, carrying only a leather backpack. He spoke very little, and seemed so distant the sisters wondered if because he had the sight he had known this was to be his fate all along, to be traveling to France for a funeral.

They took a taxi to the main entrance of the cemetery on Boulevard de Ménilmontant, with William telling the driver that if he ignored stoplights they would pay him double his fare.

“We must be there,” William said.

“We will,” Jet assured him.

Franny simply stared out the window. She had barely spoken since the news had come. She was meant to protect him, and she had failed. Her plans had gone awry, and now he was lost to them. Once at the cemetery, they had soon become disoriented among the angels and monuments until a young man sent by Agnes Durant to search for the missing Americans guided them to the freshly turned grave.