The Rules of Magic (Practical Magic 0)(84)

“And we don’t speak of William either? I’m not even sure where he is. What do I do when his father calls me and asks where he is?”

“William is where he wants to be. How many among us can lay claim to that?”

Franny rushed back to the hotel and Jet’s room.

“William lied to us,” she told her sister. “He let us go through that charade of a funeral. All the while, that Madame Durant had placed a disappearing spell on Vincent so we wouldn’t know the truth. He’s alive, Jetty.”

“If William lied, he did it for Vincent. You knew we were going to lose him. I suppose this was the best way.”

“To make us think he had died?” Even for a few hours it had been horrible.

“He has died. For us. And we must keep it that way if we want him to be safe.”

At the hotel, Jet was happy to leave Franny and Haylin to each other. She preferred to be alone to grieve. The loss of her brother affected her deeply. She went to her room and when she took off the hat she’d been wearing all day, she found that her hair had gone white all at once. It had happened at the funeral. Her best feature, her long black hair, gone. She gazed into a mirror above the bureau and spied the woman she had seen in their aunt’s black mirror. She wondered what Levi would have thought if he was with her. Perhaps he would have lain down beside her and told her she was still beautiful, even if it wasn’t true. He would have read to her from a book of poems, then perhaps planned where they would go for a drink, someplace somber, but warm, where they could sit close together. But now, without him, she had stepped into her future, and, like it or not, this was who she’d turned out to be. He was a boy, and she was now a woman who had lost nearly everyone she’d ever loved. She thought of what she’d told April once. This was what happened when you were alive. She called the desk and asked for some coffee, since she already knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Paris was too noisy, the room was too cold, the injury of losing Vincent too fresh. She did not mind being alone. She sat beside the window and wrote a postcard to Rafael. She always wrote him postcards, even when they were both in New York City, and then when they got together they would read the postcards in bed. She wished he were here with her now. Just as a friend, of course. The friend she wanted to be with more than any other.

It had begun to rain, a thin green drizzle that made the sidewalks shine.

Paris is sad, she wrote, but beautiful enough to make you not care about sadness.



Franny fell asleep beside Haylin, exhausted. When she woke he was sitting on the edge of the bed watching the rain falling. They were supposed to stay away from each other, but their pact didn’t need to apply yesterday, nor today. The sky outside was thick with rain clouds. Paris was so gray in November. Wood doves were gathering on the small balcony. Franny held out her hands to them and they pecked at the glass. She wished they never had to leave this room, but they did. Haylin had told her he was being transferred to the field. He would be leaving in less than eight hours for Vietnam. They spent those eight hours in bed, telling each other they didn’t love each other; they did so for luck and to do their best to ensure they would one day see each other again.

The sisters packed up and called a taxi. They went to the Tuileries and walked down the gravel paths. The leaves were turning brown. They had their suitcases with them, so they stopped at the first café they came to in the park. They ordered white wine, but they didn’t drink much. They were thinking about their mother when she was young, and the rules she’d made up to protect them. They had their own rules now. Franny cast a circle in the gravel beside their table. Then she took one of Lewis’s feathers that she had in her pocket. She let the feather fall. Outside the circle, and their brother was gone. But it landed inside, right in the center. Jet let out a sob. Franny reached for her hand. It was good news. He was somewhere close by, but when the feather blew away they knew the other side of the truth. He was lost to them now.



When the sisters returned to New York, Franny took to spending the night in Vincent’s room. From here she could hear the echo of children in the school yard in the mornings. She let the crow remain inside. He was aging and he liked to perch on the desk near the heater, where he dozed in fits and starts. The dog followed Franny around, but she was a poor substitute for Vincent, and he began sleeping at the front door, waiting for his master to reappear.

Both sisters slept uneasily upon their return, disturbed by sounds of the city, the rumble of buses, the shrill sirens, the ever-present traffic on Seventh Avenue. When Franny opened the window she found that New York City had only one scent now and it never changed. It was the sharp tang of regret. She longed for something darker and greener, for a silence that might allow her to find some peace.

One night she dreamed that Isabelle was sitting on the window seat of the old house in Massachusetts.

You know the answer, Isabelle said. Fate is what you make it.

When Franny awoke, she realized she was homesick. She was at the kitchen table when Jet came downstairs. To Franny, Jet seemed even more beautiful with her white hair, for her beauty was rooted inside of her now.

“I’m ready to go,” Franny told her sister. In fact, she had already packed up her room.

Jet looked at her surprised. “Go where?”

“The place we feel most at home.”

“All right. We’ll shut down the store.”