M Is for Magic

“No such luck,” said Liza.

On the floor beside the men was a brooch of glittering silver; a crimson-orange-banded stone, held in place with claws and with snake heads, and the expression on the snake heads was one of triumph and avarice and satisfaction.

Bod dropped the brooch into his pocket, where it sat beside the heavy glass paperweight, the paintbrush, and the little pot of paint.

“Take this too,” said Liza.

Bod looked at the black-edged card with the word Jack handwritten on one side. It disturbed him. There was something familiar about it, something that stirred old memories, something dangerous. “I don’t want it.”

“You can’t leave it here with them,” said Liza. “They were going to use it to hurt you.”

“I don’t want it,” said Bod. “It’s bad. Burn it.”

“No!” Liza gasped. “Don’t do that. You mustn’t do that.”

“Then I’ll give it to Silas,” said Bod. And he put the little card into an envelope, so he had to touch it as little as possible, and put the envelope into the inside pocket of his old gardening jacket beside his heart.

Two hundred miles away, the man Jack woke from his sleep, and sniffed the air. He walked downstairs.

“What is it?” asked his grandmother, stirring the contents of a big iron pot on the stove. “What’s got into you now?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Something’s happening. Something…interesting.” And then he licked his lips. “Smells tasty,” he said. “Very tasty.”

Lightning illuminated the cobbled street.

Bod hurried through the rain through the Old Town, always heading up the hill toward the graveyard. The gray day had become an early night while he was inside the storeroom, and it came as no surprise to him when a familiar shadow swirled beneath the streetlamps. Bod hesitated, and a flutter of night-black velvet resolved itself into man-shape.

Silas stood in front of him, arms folded. He strode forward impatiently.

“Well?” he said.

Bod said, “I’m sorry, Silas.”

“I’m disappointed in you, Bod,” Silas said, and he shook his head. “I’ve been looking for you since I woke. You have the smell of trouble all around you. And you know you’re not allowed to go out here, into the living world.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” There was rain on the boy’s face, running down like tears.

“First of all, we need to get you back to safety.” Silas reached down and enfolded the living child inside his cloak, and Bod felt the ground fall away beneath him.

“Silas,” he said.

Silas did not answer.

“I was a bit scared,” he said. “But I knew you’d come and get me if it got too bad. And Liza was there. She helped a lot.”

“Liza?” Silas’s voice was sharp.

“The witch. From the potter’s field.”

“And you say she helped you?”

“Yes. She especially helped me with my Fading. I think I can do it now.”

Silas grunted. “You can tell me all about it when we’re home.” And Bod was quiet until they landed beside the church. They went inside, into the empty hall, as the rain redoubled, splashing up from the puddles that covered the ground.

Bod produced the envelope containing the black-edged card. “Um,” he said. “I thought you should have this. Well, Liza did, really.”

Silas looked at it. Then he opened it, removed the card, stared at it, turned it over, and read Abanazer Bolger’s penciled note to himself, in tiny handwriting, explaining the precise manner of use of the card.

“Tell me everything,” he said.

Bod told him everything he could remember about the day. And at the end, Silas shook his head slowly, thoughtfully.

“Am I in trouble?” asked Bod.

“Nobody Owens,” said Silas. “You are indeed in trouble. However, I believe I shall leave it to your foster parents to administer whatever discipline and reproach they believe to be needed. In the meantime, I need to deal with this.”

The black-edged card vanished inside the velvet cloak, and then, in the manner of his kind, Silas was gone.

Bod pulled the jacket up over his head, and clambered up the slippery paths to the top of the hill, to the Frobisher vault, and then he went down, and down, and still farther down.

He dropped the brooch beside the goblet and the knife.

“Here you go,” he said. “All polished up. Looking pretty.”

IT COMES BACK, whispered the Sleer, with satisfaction in its smoke-tendril voice. IT ALWAYS COMES BACK.

The night had been long, but it was almost dawn.

Bod was walking, sleepily and a little gingerly, past the small tomb of the wonderfully named Miss Liberty Roach (What she spent is lost, what she gave away remains with her always. Reader, be charitable), past the final resting place of Harrison Westwood, Baker of this Parish, and his wives, Marion and Joan, to the potter’s field. Mr. and Mrs. Owens had died several hundred years before it had been decided that beating children was wrong, and Mr. Owens had, regretfully, that night, done what he saw as his duty, and Bod’s bottom stung like anything. Still, the look of worry on Mrs. Owens’s face had hurt Bod worse than any beating could have done.