Read The Rules of Magic for Free Online

cover, meticulously secured in plastic wrapping.
    â€œBe careful with that,” the librarian warned. She was clearly afraid of the slim volume, which she herself refused to touch. She offered a pair of white gloves to Franny to slip on to ensure that she wouldn’t damage the delicate paper. There was so much dust in the room Franny had a wicked sneezing fit.
    â€œYou have exactly twenty minutes,” the librarian said. “Otherwise trouble could ensue.”
    â€œTrouble?” Franny was curious.
    â€œYou know what I mean. This is a book of spells Maria Owens wrote while in prison. It should have been set on fire, but the board of the library refused to do so. They thought destroying it would bring bad luck to us, so we’ve kept it all this time, like it or not.”
    Beware of love, Maria Owens had written on the first page of her journal. Know that for our family, love is a curse.
    Franny worried over the mention of a curse. For all the time they’d been away she had been writing letters to Haylin. On Friday afternoons she brought them to the post office and picked up the ones he sent her via general delivery. In New York, Haylin was studying the ecosystem of the Loch, the meandering stream in a wooded area of Central Park called the Ravine. Fireflies that gathered there blinked on and off in sync. It was as if they had a single heartbeat, sending out the same message through the dark. Such incidents had been reported in the Great Smoky Mountains and in Allegheny National Forest, but Haylin seemed the first to have discovered the phenomenon in Manhattan.
    That summer, Franny went to the rare book room every day to read the journal. The librarians grew to know her, becoming accustomed to the tall red-haired girl who came to examine spidery script so tiny she had to use a magnifying glass to makeout the words of the remedies and cures. Franny brightened up the place with her quest for information and history, and a few of the librarians allowed her a full hour with the text, though it was strictly against the rules. They believed all books should be read, for as long as the reader liked.
    When Franny came to the last page of Maria’s journal, she understood that a single broken heart had affected them all. Maria had been cast out by the father of her child, a man she never named. Suffice it to say he should have been my enemy, instead I fell in love with him and I made the mistake of declaring my love. She wanted to protect her daughter, and her granddaughter, and all of the Owens daughters to follow, ensuring that none among them would experience the sorrow she’d known or ruin the lives of those they might love. The curse was simple: Ruination for any man who fell in love with them.
    Reading this, Franny paled.
    It’s not the same here without you, Haylin had written in one of his letters.
    Then, clearly embarrassed that he’d overstepped certain boundaries, he’d crossed out that line and wrote Boring here instead. But Franny had seen through the smear of black ink and knew the truth. It wasn’t the same without him either.
    Do not ask what the spell is, or how it was accomplished. I have been betrayed and abandoned. I do not wish this for any member of my family.
    â€œDon’t you think I look like her?” Jet asked one day when she found Franny sitting pensively on the window seat studying the portrait. One of Maria’s remedies called for the beating heart of a dove to be taken from the bird while it was alive. Anotherincluded collecting the hair and fingernail clippings of a disloyal man and burning them with cedar and sage.
    â€œYou don’t want to look like her,” Franny was quick to respond. “She ended unhappily. Trust me, she was miserable. She was accused of witchery.”
    Jet sat beside her sister. “I wonder if that would have happened to me if I was alive at that time. I can hear what people are thinking.”
    â€œYou