“Of course, I want to be.” It was true, Sally had been more and more distant, and she regretted it. She was grouchy and had become something of a loner, and that was not who she wanted to be. “Let’s kick the girls out of the attic and sleep up there.” Long ago, Sally and Gillian had shared the attic; they’d sat out on the roof on summer nights counting stars.

  “Don’t you look wonderful,” Jet said to Antonia, who frankly was relieved that there was something to eat set out on the table. She didn’t understand how it was possible for her to be so hungry, but she was and she spooned up the macaroni and cheese.

  “I’m uber-healthy,” Antonia told her aunt. “No sugar, no coffee, no alcohol.”

  “You don’t wish there was someone to help you when the baby comes?” Jet wanted to know.

  “Women have been having babies on their own since the beginning of time, Jetty. And besides, I have Scott and Joel. We’re in this together, and they’re constantly on my case. I don’t eat enough, apparently.” Antonia took note of the worry on Jet’s face. “I don’t need someone special, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m too busy to fall in love. Besides, I’m not even sure I believe in it.”

  “You will,” Jet assured her. “It will make a mess of things and your life will never be the same, but it will happen. No one is immune.”

  It was lovely to all be together, but as time wore on, Jet realized that the beetle had followed her and was now directly beneath her chair. She could hear it chirping, more softly now, as if it barely had any energy. The time had nearly come.

  Jet would never know the end of Kylie’s story, her darling great-niece who had been such a charming, awkward child, who loved to work in the garden and get dirty, who borrowed Jet’s novels and sprawled out on the window seat below Maria Owens’s portrait to read Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre. She would never get to meet Antonia’s child, or spend summer afternoons with her beloved Gillian, canning tomatoes or making soap as they did every year in the old cauldron they set up at the rear of the garden. She wouldn’t get to see Sally fall in love, the sort of love that would take up her whole heart, so that she didn’t hold anything back the way she had even with that wonderful Gary, the kind of love Jet had found with Rafael, despite the fact that they were forced to hide from the curse. Life was like a book, Jet thought, but one you would never finish. You would never know how people would wind up; the good often suffered and the wicked prospered and there was no explanation for the way in which fate was meted out as there was in novels. Fiction made sense of the world, perhaps that was why Jet had been a fanatical reader as a girl. When Levi Willard died, so tragically and before his time, novels had saved her. Sometimes, when the world looked especially gloomy, Jet returned to the ones that had helped her through her darkest hours. Wuthering Heights, The Scarlet Letter, and Fahrenheit 451, her favorite, a love letter to books.

  “I’m tired.” Jet explained as she called for the check. “We’ve had a long day.”

  Franny paled when she heard this. It was the evening of the seventh day, the time she had dreaded ever since the bees appeared. They left through the bar and perhaps Jet couldn’t quite bear for their night to end. She stopped to order a whiskey. For what was to come, she needed strength.

  “Good idea,” Gillian said, calling over the bartender, a fellow named Jed who swore they had dated in high school, though Gillian, for the life of her, couldn’t remember him.

  “Seriously?” Sally said to Jet, disbelieving. “You don’t drink.”

  “Now and then.” Jet shrugged. “It helps me sleep.” As a matter of fact, the whiskey was delightful, tasting of smoke and wood.

  “Why not?” Franny, who had never once ordered anything at the bar of the Black Rabbit, relented and joined her sister in a toast. It was their last night after all. They might as well do as they pleased. “To us,” Franny said.

  Jet nodded. “Always and forever.”

  Antonia and Kylie stood at the bar, Antonia because her belly wouldn’t fit in the space allotted when perched on a barstool, and Kylie to keep her company.

  “Something for you, ladies?” Jed the bartender asked, though he was still gazing at Gillian.

  “I’m pregnant and she’s underage,” Antonia answered. “So, no.”

  “Thanks,” Kylie said to her sister. “I was just about to get my first Black Rabbit martini.”

  Gillian overheard and came over to order one, letting Kylie have a sip. “Happy now?” Gillian asked. The martinis at the Black Rabbit were especially dreadful.

  Kylie made a face and pushed the glass away. “Why do people drink these?”

  “To get drunk,” Gillian said. “There’s no other reason.”

  “Do you get the feeling something isn’t right?” Antonia asked their aunt.

  Gillian looked past Sally, who was paying for the drinks, to the end of the bar where the aunts were on their second round of whiskeys.

  “It all ends,” she said for some reason. There was no point in getting moody, so she shook her head, snapped her fingers, and grinned. “Even a night at the Black Rabbit.”

  * * *

  By the time they turned onto Magnolia Street, the aunts were tipsy. The magnolias had bloomed early this year, the white and mauve cups of petals high above them in the dark on twisted black branches.

  How lucky, Jet thought. How I wish I had all the time in the world.

  Franny and Jet walked slowly, their arms linked, taking so long to reach their corner, Sally had a feeling of dread when she turned to look over her shoulder. Her beloved aunts were old. She’d thought they were old when she was a little girl, for back then anyone over forty had seemed ancient. Now she was nearly to the middle of her forties, likely the age the aunts had been when she and Gillian arrived, and Jet and Franny were in their eighties. Franny carried an umbrella these days for she’d be damned if she used a cane and her knee had been bothering her, despite applications of lavender oil. As for Jet, she seemed both exhausted and jittery, a worrisome combination.

  “I’ll just have a little rest,” Jet said once they reached home.

  “What is wrong with her?” Gillian asked Sally after Jet had retired to her room, the Reverend’s dog at her heels. It was barely seven.

  “I don’t know,” Sally said. “I’m worried.” If she had allowed herself to call up the sight, she might have known exactly what was happening, but it had been many years since she’d accessed any magic, and like all things that aren’t used, her talent had begun to waste away.

  Franny reached to stroke Sally’s hair, which was not at all like her. She was not the touchy-feely sort. Not one bit. “She just needs some peace and quiet.”

  Jet was already behind her locked bedroom door, sitting at her desk, another woman’s spell book open before her, a rare occurrence, for such books were meant to be burned upon the death of the writer, unless there was a family member to inherit the text. Jet understood that the Owens family beginnings were in England, in a rural area they referred to as the first Essex County since they lived in the second, which had been named by the Pilgrims for the home across the sea they had left.

  The Book of the Raven had escaped destruction since the time it had been hand-printed in London, in 1615. On the first page, in sloping script, was the name Faith Owens, for Faith had found the volume in a New York City market. It begins at the beginning, had been written on the very first page. Below that line there was a quote from William Shakespeare, who had written of his admiration and desire for Amelia Bassano.

  Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.

  How to exact revenge, how to break another’s heart, how to cause a rival to fall ill, how to escape from a cruel man, how to set fires without touching a candle, how to make figures of wax and cloth and blackthorn and scarlet thread that would cause grave results to an intended enemy, how to bring on a curse, and more important, how to end it. Near the end of the book, there was a warning. To end a curse, be prepared to give up everything. There was always a price to pay, one higher than anyone might have imagined. All the same, there would always be women in such dire situations they were willing to yield to the left side, those who had no choice, who had been trapped, chained, reviled, cast aside, cursed.

  There were blisters on Jet’s fingers that had risen from touching the last page. A line of invisible writing revealed itself.

  When you are ready and have nothing to lose. When you are unafraid. When you wish to save someone else more than you wish to save yourself.

  It was only when Jet read the last line of the curse-breaker that she realized just how dangerous the book was. The price of using it was far too dear for most practitioners. In good faith, she could not leave this book in her room for Franny to find. She wished she could be the one to break the curse, but because it was her seventh day, only someone else could complete what she had begun. She did what she must with great haste, knowing that time would not wait. She took a pot of paste she used whenever she attached samples of herbs or plants to the Grimoire. It was strong stuff, made of bird bones and black stones and, once it had set, was impossible to remove unless you knew the secret to doing so. She glued the last two pages together, so that the dangerous remedy would be hidden, and set a privacy spell upon the last section of the book so that no one would accidentally stumble upon it. At last, she scrawled a note that she folded in between the pages of The Poems of Emily Dickinson, always kept on her night table. If Franny ever did use the curse-breaker, she would have to search for it, and perhaps it would be better if The Book of the Raven was never found again.

  Jet left the dog behind and went downstairs, and while Sally was asking Franny what might have caused Jet to retire so early, with Gillian assuring her that it was likely the effects of the whiskey, and Franny keeping her knowledge of the future to herself, Jet lifted her coat from the peg in the hallway. She could hear the deathwatch beetle clacking at her feet as she swept up Sally’s set of keys to the library before stepping outside. Jet felt she had never been as wide awake nor as focused on her surroundings. The rustling of the gauzy leaves on the trees. The birds in the thickets, waking as she passed by. She hurried as fast as she could. The beautiful world was already slipping away.

  Jet was gone less than an hour, the beetle following along on the dark, windy street, a shadow it was impossible to dodge. Franny was waiting at the gate when her sister returned. Daisy was beside her waiting as well, barking, comforted only when Jet lifted her up. Both Sally and Gillian had gone up to bed, sharing the attic room where they’d grown up, with Kylie and Antonia each taking spare bedrooms on the second floor that were usually considered too fancy for family, not that they ever had any other guests.

  Franny had been out on the porch the entire time, pacing. “You weren’t in your bed,” she said accusingly. She didn’t usually fuss, but her deep worry showed now.

  “One last look around town. Remember the day we first came here with Vincent? When everyone on the street stared at us?”

  “We were worth staring at,” Franny said. “We were marvelous.”

  They went into the garden. There were the old wicker chairs, near the herb garden. There was the beehive, empty now. Long ago their aunt Isabelle had raised brown and white chickens and they’d loved to collect the blue speckled eggs, warm in their hands. They’d had a dozen cats, every single one black, but all had grown old and died. The greenhouse was padlocked shut and the cloudy glass shone. Everything was white as parchment in the light of the moon. They held hands and scanned the sky as pale moths flitted up from the damp grass. Once upon a time there were two sisters, as different from each other as night and day. In their family a sister was everything, your heart and soul, and here they were together on the last evening of Jet’s life, grateful to be so. Oh, seven days. Oh, beautiful world. Oh, how lucky they were.

  II.

  The funeral was held on a bright blue morning. By now the bees were quiet, having returned to take up residence in their hive where they were working away as if the world was still the same, which, for them, perhaps, it was. The family had gathered earlier in the garden to partake in old family recipes, Honesty Cake and Courage Tea, then had walked en masse to the graveyard. When Franny and Jet and Vincent first arrived in town, more than sixty years earlier, people had, indeed, come to stand at the windows and stare. They’d been tall, moody New York teenagers dressed in black. Vincent had carried a guitar, Franny had blood-red hair that left scarlet pools on the cement when she was out in the rain, and every black cat came yowling out onto the street when Jet approached. Now, Jet was leaving, and people in town did the very same thing, stepping out of their houses to observe the family’s procession to the cemetery, only this time many of their neighbors were moved to tears. Jet Owens had been a lovely person, both kind and practical, the one woman people in town could go to when their lives were in shambles or when love was out of reach.

  The mourners weren’t headed to the Owens family cemetery, a small patch of land most people avoided, especially on dark nights, for Jet had decided to be buried in the town cemetery, beside Levi Willard, her first sweetheart, the Reverend’s only son. Franny and Jet had seen to the arrangements together, choosing a white marble headstone. Beneath Jet’s chiseled name and the date of her birth and death was a quotation that had been her favorite, written by the poet she most admired.

  Unable are the Loved to die

  For Love is Immortality.

  Unbeknownst to Jet, Franny had added another line beneath her sister’s name.

  Beloved by all.

  It was easy to praise Jet, and many in the gathering came forward to do so on this sorrowful day. The crowd was far larger than anyone in the family had expected. The Owens cousins from Maine were in attendance, along with family members from Boston, and a few distant cousins from New York, who were sulky and standoffish, the men known to be rakish heartbreakers, the women doctors and nurses. The town doctor, who had taken over Dr. Haylin Walker’s practice, and was himself now poised to retire, recalled the packets of tea Jet left on his doorstep each New Year’s Day, a blend that gave him courage. The postman stood up to confide that Miss Owens always tipped him a hundred dollars on Midsummer’s Eve, reciting an incantation that she vowed would ensure he would be safe in every storm. Even the children who gathered around Jet during the library’s story hour were in attendance; boys and girls held books in their hands and had tears running down their solemn faces, and several carried collections of fairy tales to set beside the gravesite, favoring Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book.

  Jet had passed away on March 21, the date some people believe to be the unluckiest day of the year, Franny’s birthday, a day that had always proved inauspicious for her, now more than ever. Still, March had been Jet’s favorite month, and another Emily Dickinson poem had been read at the graveside, the verses shared by Antonia and Kylie, who spoke in hushed voices.

  Dear March—Come in—

  How glad I am—

  I hoped for you before—

  Put down your Hat—

  You must have walked—

  How out of Breath you are—

  Dear March, how are you, and the Rest—

  Did you leave Nature well—

  Oh March, Come right upstairs with me—

  I have so much to tell—

  At the edge of the crowd, Rafael Correa stood alone without introducing himself. He had never encountered anyone in the Owens family, though he had been involved with Jet for more than sixty years. Rafael didn’t mind that she was laid to rest beside Levi, who’d been little more than a boy when he’d met his sad fate. On a night of too much champagne, Jet had slipped, allowing that Rafael was her true love, then in a panic that she might have activated the curse, she had mixed up a concoction of vinegar and lemon juice, which she drank down in gulps to cleanse her confession. Rafael had listened in disbelief when she first told him that her family had been cursed; all the same, he’d agreed to do his best to trick the hex, a lifetime of love kept secret.

  Rafael wept during the service, and came to help shovel the crumbling earth over the simple pine box. Everyone noticed him when he returned to his place at the rear of the gathering. Gillian gazed behind her to study the stranger who stood beside a stone angel that honored local boys who had fought in the Civil War. “Who do you think he is?” she asked her aunt Franny.

  Franny looked over her shoulder. She knew about Rafael, of course. Jet had been quite good at keeping secrets, but once, long ago, Franny followed her sister to the Plaza Hotel, although she’d never seen Rafael before. He was handsome, even at his age, and he was grieving as a husband would. “A man in love with Jet,” she told Gillian.

  Sally shushed the two of them. “Must you?” she said.

  Reverend Willard had been driven over from the retirement home so that he could officiate the service. There were so many of their shared relations in the town cemetery no one had ever counted them all. The Reverend was crying, even as he spoke. Jet had made it a point to stop by to visit him every day. She brought him oat biscuits on a regular basis, and, occasionally, a slice of her Chocolate Tipsy Cake that he wasn’t allowed to eat. Far too sweet, the doctors said, but life was short and getting shorter, and sometimes a person needed to simply enjoy himself. Jet covered the cake with a handkerchief when she smuggled it in, and brought along a fork and a napkin. She and the Reverend always laughed to think they’d pulled one over on the nurses, who, of course, knew about the deviation in the old man’s dietary regime all along, but who weren’t about to argue with Jet Owens, for as lovely as she was, the family had a reputation, and considering that the Reverend was over a hundred, it was best to let him do as he pleased.

  The service after the burial was brief, due to Reverend Willard’s inability to stand for more than a few minutes at a time, and of course there was the appearance of the raindrops, the soft green shower Jet always called Daffodil Rain. And then it happened. The very last speaker, a plain-spoken second cousin from Maine who thought of herself as the family historian, read a letter composed by Faith Owens.