The clerk smiled. Vincent was still exceedingly handsome, of course he would want to gaze at himself. But Vincent shook his head when the clerk brought out a hand mirror. “A black one.”
A black mirror was much more expensive and not for the fainthearted. It was used for scrying, to glimpse what was to come. Only those who could see into the future would be able to use such an item. In Amulette, these things were kept in a locked drawer in the back of the shop.
“Perfect,” Vincent said when the black mirror was at last presented to him.
The clerk wrapped Vincent’s purchase in three sheets of brown paper, for safety’s sake. Vincent carried it under his arm as he walked back to Agnes’s house. The night was dark and for the first time in months, Vincent felt alive. Something was about to happen. It was beginning all over again, he could sense it in his bones. He’d felt this way on the bus to their aunt Isabelle’s house when they were young, and when he’d first walked through the streets of Greenwich Village, and when he fell in love.
When Vincent arrived back at the apartment, Agnes was in the parlor having a glass of Pineau des Charentes, as she did each evening. She took one look at the parcel he carried and instantly knew what was inside.
“Are you sure about this?” she asked.
Black mirrors were dangerous. Look into one and you could never forget what you’d seen.
Vincent shrugged. “Who can be sure about anything?”
“That’s the spirit,” his old friend agreed wholeheartedly. Why not take a chance as long as you were still alive? At this age there wasn’t much more to lose, only the beautiful world, only every morning and night.
They had a quick dinner, and then Vincent excused himself and went up to the guest room. He sat at the dressing table, seized a pair of scissors, and cut the string to unwrap the mirror, which he placed on the walnut table. He thought about the first time he’d looked into a black mirror, in the greenhouse of the Owens home in Massachusetts with his aunt Isabelle beside him. It was the first time he had truly seen who he was.
He used a handkerchief to clean the dust from the mirror, then gazed down. There was a black book and a girl he didn’t recognize. Left-handed magic arose in a circle of smoke, the brand of the Art he’d been attracted to as a younger man. He’d been wise to give it up, yet he remembered the dark side’s pull. It was there once again. Something was about to happen. Something that hadn’t happened for years. The mirror told him that he would soon see his dear sister Franny, his protector from the time he’d been born, his coconspirator in all things, the person he’d missed most during his disappearance. A mirror such as this always told the truth about a person’s fate, and that was why only a few had the courage to look. The future was an unsteady place where anything might happen, but Vincent intended to look no matter the cost. Whatever his flaws might have been, he had always had courage. That was what he needed now as he observed the inside story of everything that would come to be.
He would see those he loved and the past would come back to him in three ways. His fate was before him and he now had the key. There was the treasure map, there was the treasure, there was the curse that had afflicted them all.
IV.
April had arrived, the most beautiful month of the year, but time had stood still for Franny ever since the funeral. It was the spring of sorrow when the beautiful world had turned dark. There was a scrim of ash over everything, covering the trees; black leaves fell onto sidewalks all over town. Death was in the air and the birds were hushed. Lilacs refused to bloom. People went through the cemetery gates to leave tokens of their respect on Jet’s grave: apples, mint, sage, blue ribbons, photographs of babies who had grown up to be men and women because of Jet’s tonics, wedding pictures of those who had found love after knocking at her door. Now that she was gone, there was no one to go to for help. On the day after her funeral, Franny brought out a stepladder and removed the bulb from the porch light.
“We can just keep it turned off,” Sally suggested, but Franny wanted to make certain no one accidentally switched on the light. She might have offered her expertise in matters of the heart, as Jet had done, but she no longer had reason to do so. Without her sister, magic meant very little to her, and the problems of her neighbors even less. She went to bed before it was dark. She refused the dinners Sally insisted upon offering her. She saw death everywhere. Mice neighborhood cats had left on the doorstep. Spiders curled up in corners. Sparrows fallen from the sky.