The Lingering Grace (3 page)

She pulled a book out of her backpack and let it fall open on the desk. A smell like rancid wheat made her nose wrinkle. Glancing down at it, she suddenly remembered her theft at the library. She knew she should have felt guilty, but the thrill that shot through her from head to toe didn’t leave even a trace of regret. Eagerly she thumbed through the pages. Just a few minutes and then she’d start her paper.

Alice skimmed the titles as she glanced at the pages. Some of them were innocuous (
A Spell to Induce Laughter
), even helpful (
To Speed Healing of Bruises
). She stared for a long time at a spell that claimed to cause in its subject a deep infatuation with whomever the caster chose.

Love we dare not claim power over
, she read from the little paragraph above the instructions,
but obsession is often confused for affection. Obsession can be created; the mind of the victim can be so strongly tied to the chosen subject that he will think he sees her constantly in the shimmer of the sunlight. He will see her face in every leaf that falls, in the way the wind shapes the long grass. Beware. Do not draw the spell too strong, for obsession and madness are but two shades of red, and what begins as innocent preoccupation can turn dangerous in an instant.

She started to turn the page, then curiosity got the better of her and she flipped back. The ingredients list was long.

One pinch of rosemary, picked at the new moon

Castor oil, heated

The left eyes of three white mice

She stopped reading, disgusted. Her eyes wandered to the phone on her desk. The screen was black; Tony had not yet texted back and that made her panic even though she knew he was never prompt with texts. Had she come on too strong? She wondered what it would be like to know for sure that he wanted her. To have the certainty that he would always want her. Only her.

Then she remembered—
Beware
. Her cheeks flushed, partly out of embarrassment and partly from relief. No one ever need know the thought that had just crossed her mind—thank God.

She skipped a few pages and started to read again, eager to put some distance between herself and any love spells. The spell to create fire (one empty triangle) was enticingly simple and she read through it slowly, mouthing the words to herself.

Mastery of the elements is a most basic skill and necessary for one who desires to progress to greater feats of power. Elements must be conjured from opposites; they cannot be created from nothing. Fire is the simplest to create. Power is only heat and heat is only flame. Forcing one’s power into corporeal form is a task all acolytes must perform.

To prepare:

Wet the fingers of your right hand and trace a circle on the palm of your left. Close both hands into fists and hold them to your heart.

Recite:

Out of rippling blue,

Rippling blue—white—gold

Into yellow.

Into red.

Into air.

Wings of light.

Alice grabbed the glass of water in front of her and dipped her right hand into it. She didn’t leave herself time to hesitate—barely left time to think.

“Out of rippling blue…”

She whispered the words even though there was no one to overhear. The minute she began, she found herself out of breath. Panting slightly, she continued, noticing (or imagining?) that the words felt unusually solid in her mouth. Her ears seemed plugged as if she were speaking with her head underwater; the words swirling over her tongue were heavy—like seawater—and she tasted salt. Every syllable took so much energy that she might have stopped if she felt she had the option. But something kept her going. Maybe it was simply stubbornness. Maybe curiosity. Maybe it didn’t matter why she continued. After all, it wasn’t like anything would happen. It was make believe, imagination.

“… Wings of … light …”

She swallowed hard over her heavy tongue and hung her head. She thought she felt something brush over her—something warm—and when she looked down at her palm, the wet circle she had drawn glowed gold. But when she lifted her hand for a closer look, there was nothing, not even a trace of water. Of course there wasn’t—she hadn’t expected anything to happen. She wasn’t delusional. And what she was feeling wasn’t disappointment—it was simply the sting of reality’s gentle slap in the face.

From downstairs came a piercing scream followed by a crash.

Alice leaped to her feet and threw open her door.

“Mom?”

She ran down the stairs. Her palms were stinging and she rubbed them together as she rounded the corner into the kitchen—just in time to see an orange spike of flame shoot up from the gas stove. A teakettle was lying on the floor, lid ajar, water spilling everywhere.

Alice dove for the stove, but her mother shoved her back.

“What’s going—”

“Stay back,” her mom ordered, gripping Alice’s shoulder tightly. “I think something’s wrong with the gas.”

Alice watched the stove over her mother’s shoulder as the flame died down to normal height. Her palms went cool. She glanced down at them, her fingers trembling, and wondered if it could possibly have had something to do with …

“I’m calling the gas company,” her mom said. She darted forward and turned the stove off, then quickly stepped back. When nothing happened, her shoulders relaxed and she reached down to pick up the dripping kettle.

Alice grabbed a towel and started mopping up the water. “Has this happened before?” she asked. Her bottom lip hurt and she realized she’d been biting it.

“Never. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Her mother was a little pale but otherwise looked more stable than Alice had seen her in days. Alice knew that this was her mom’s emergency mode; immediate danger always jarred her into a state of controlled efficiency that was almost unnerving to watch.

“Are you ok? Are you burned at all?” her mom demanded.

“I wasn’t even near the stove.”

She was already reaching for the phone. “Ok. Good. I want you to make sure Jeremy knows not to touch it—tell him to stay in his room. I’m going to have your dad pick up takeout on his way home from work. I don’t want anyone cooking until we’re sure it’s safe. Maybe they can get someone out to check the gas lines.”

“That’s a good idea. They’ll take care of it. I’m going to go back …” she trailed off as her mother started talking.

“Cus-to-mer-ser-vice,” she said loudly, one syllable at a time. “No, no—
cus
tomer
ser
vice,” she repeated, her lips thinning. “Whoever thought forcing people to talk to a computer was a good idea is an idiot,” she muttered.

Alice was edging toward the stairs; her mother was too busy battling the machine on the other end of the line to notice. “Uh-huh,” Alice agreed, “I’m gonna—”

She put one foot on the staircase, waiting to see if her mother would protest. She got a half-hearted wave and took that as permission to bolt up the stairs. Her little brother’s door was closed and the TV was on. She didn’t bother telling him to stay in there; he wouldn’t emerge until dinnertime anyway.

When she reached her room, she slammed the door behind her and grabbed the book from her desk. She leaped onto her bed, holding the leather binding against her stomach, breathing in gasps. She could hear the blood pounding in her ears. Before last summer, she would never have connected the gas accident with her attempt at magic; before last summer, Alice had always been reasonable, always predictable, always had her head screwed on straight. Before last summer, she had been …

“Boring,” she said.

But not anymore.

She ran her fingers down the spine of the book and a thrill ran down her neck. She had done magic—she was sure of it.

It was amazing how quickly she could accept as reality what she had moments earlier brushed aside as fantasy. Also amazing was how little surprise she felt. The primary sensation in her chest was not the echoing emptiness of shock, but rather a warm swish of relief. Up to this moment, she had been trying to convince herself that she was normal—even after the hotel. Now, at last, after trying and failing to be a normal girl in a normal world, she knew that she wasn’t normal anymore.
This
girl—the girl who could do magic—was the new normal.

In a moment, her world ripped open at the seams. Her world was no longer Monday through Friday with gasps of freedom in between. Her world was power. Her world was magic. Her world was anything she wanted it to be.

She was about to open the book and hunt down the spell for fire again when something next to her buzzed. Her phone was partly hidden under her leg and she tugged it free. She read the text through once without really registering it, then slowed down and started again.

Tony: Maybe I’m crazy, but when I heard about the accident I wondered if it had anything to do with … you know what.

With the hotel. With the witch. With magic.
There were about ten different ways to finish the sentence, and all of them had crossed her mind. Maybe he thought that, by merely hinting at the possibilities, he would spare her the pain of reliving those memories. As if she could just
forget
what had happened to her. She quickly texted back, feigning ignorance.

Alice: I don’t know what.

She was too preoccupied to spare much time for anything but this new reality she had discovered. She grabbed the book and roughly flipped through its pages. She wasn’t looking for the fire spell anymore. She needed something harder—something that would
prove
her abilities beyond a shadow of a doubt. Stopping at a page on glamours, she started to read through a spell.

Three drops of walnut oil

A spoonful of rosemary

Six mustard seeds
…

The phone buzzed and she picked it up the same way she would rip off a bandage.

Tony: Magic.

The word startled her and, almost subconsciously, she slammed the book shut, as though Tony were spying on her. She had to reread his first text to realize what he was talking about.

Alice: I’m sure it was just an accident.

This time he responded so quickly that she didn’t even have a chance to look at her book again.

Tony: You’re probably right. I’m being paranoid. I just never want anything to do with magic again.

She inhaled sharply; the air was cold and tasted like cheap floral body spray. The book on her lap seemed to weigh a ton, and her fingers, still stuck between the pages, tingled.

Downstairs, her mother was speaking sharply to someone—presumably, she’d finally gotten through to an unfortunate employee. Alice thought drily that the computer system was the lucky one; her mother could be brutal when upset.

Glad to be far away from that conversation, she turned her attention back to her phone. If only she could find a way out of
this
conversation. Rereading his text, she decided it didn’t require an answer. Plus she wasn’t in any mood to come up with one.

He didn’t want anything to do with magic. But magic was what had brought him to her. If he could only see that, maybe he would realize that magic wasn’t the enemy. It was the witch who set the curse that he should hate. Hating magic would be like hating gravity because someone knocked over a vase and it shattered against the floor. It wasn’t gravity’s fault that some clod bumped into a fragile object. Gravity was just doing its job.

But even as she began to think through the many arguments she could make, she had a sinking feeling that Tony would not be convinced. He hadn’t been the one under a curse; he hadn’t experienced what life was like outside his limited reality, and frankly, he had never wanted to. Alice loved his stability but hated the intractability that accompanied it.

It would be better to wait, she decided. In the meantime, she would quietly do some experiments, and learn more about this sudden power. And when the time came (if the time came), she would tell him. She had plenty of time.

“You seem happy.”

Tony grinned at her as she climbed into the car. He’d been picking her up for school every morning lately—her mother’s idea, oddly enough. She had casually suggested it one evening when Tony had been over watching a movie. “I just wish Jeremy’s school started a little later,” she had lamented. “It’s so hard to get him there by eight thirty when I have to drop Alice off halfway across the city at eight fifteen. But I won’t let her take those awful buses, and what other option is there?”

This, of course, led to an immediate carpooling offer. Alice had initially protested, saying it was too much trouble for Tony to come pick her up when he didn’t have to be at his school until half-an-hour later. But she had, after all, said that to be polite. It hadn’t taken much convincing for Tony to change her mind. Anything that gave her an excuse to spend time with him was an easy sell.

Her mom liked Tony. When he wasn’t around, she referred to him as “your cute boyfriend.” Alice was sure that “boyfriend” was the key word here; the fact that Alice had finally managed to snag one seemed to give her mother a sense of relief. And the fact that said boy was both smart and gorgeous gave her extra bragging rights at her weekly brunch with a few other neighborhood moms.