The Rules of Magic

Back in New York City, on Halloween, Jet suggests they test their magical powers by aiming to make a wish come true. When Frances wishes for a bird, a crow approaches her, and she hears a voice saying, “I will never leave unless you send me away” (76). Meanwhile, Vincent, who is not yet ready to face up to who he is, drinks to forget and aims to cast the forgetting spell he has read about in The Magus.

Jet has wished for her true love and finds Levi Willard standing on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum. The next morning, she has gone missing, and Susanna intuits that the sign of melting butter in a dish means that someone is in love. Jet reappears, gushing with love for Levi, and Susanna responds by slapping her in the face. Susanna explains that she has escaped the family curse by not being in love with their father, even though she loves him. She forbids Jet from ever seeing Levi again.

April pays a surprise visit to her New York cousins. Susanna, alarmed to see her niece, threatens to send her away the next day. April retorts that the two of them are “two peas in a pod” (86), as both escaped Boston and were sent to two different boarding schools. She confesses to her cousins that Susanna was madly in love with a Frenchman in Paris, who then died of a terrible accident. April is depressed, as her parents have killed her ferret, Henry. April guesses that Jet is in love and asks for her lover’s identity. She is alarmed to hear it is Levi, as the Willards and the Owenses are locked in a family feud. April gifts them candles that will reveal the identity of their true loves, but as they are ungrateful, she disappears in the morning. When Frances burns her candle, Haylin appears as her true love. She is alarmed and hopes the feelings pass for Haylin’s sake.

Levi comes again to New York to see Jet, but his father, the reverend, is on his trail. He punishes Levi by cutting off the telephone line and sending the book Jet gave him back with a dozen nails, a reference to the old witch-hunter belief that witches could be caught by nailing their steps to the ground to prevent them from running. Jet promises Frances that she will refrain from seeing Levi, but she secretly enlists Vincent’s help. Vincent tracks Levi down at his job at the pharmacy and gives him Jet’s letter. Vincent visits Aunt Isabelle, who spots a nail at the bottom of his boot—evidence that Reverend Willard knows their whereabouts. Isabelle is vague about the rivalry between the families, and Vincent feels a chill, especially when he takes off his boot and sees the nail has drawn blood.

As December approaches, Frances is firmly in love with Haylin, though she denies it, and Vincent’s clairvoyant visions grow stronger. He envisions the image of a girl with gray eyes followed by a cemetery. In springtime, when Frances gets into the all-female college Radcliffe, Harvard’s equivalent, Jet makes the impulsive wish that her sister will not be able to leave New York so that she can cover for her when she sees Levi. Although she instantly regrets her wish and tries to retract it, it will prove binding.

Frances is thrilled about going to Radcliffe and, overcome with her feelings for Haylin, who will study at Harvard, kisses him. Vincent, however, has a feeling that death is approaching and pays attention to the omens of a spontaneously breaking glass, ashes dropping from the sky, bees swarming at the house windows, and finally the deathwatch beetle.

On her 17th birthday, Jet has plans to spend the night with Levi at the Plaza Hotel. When her parents follow to apprehend them, Jet urges Levi to run. However, in the escape attempt he is hit by her parents’ taxi and dies with her name on his lips. Her parents also die, leaving Jet the only survivor, with injuries and a prominent facial scar that turns blue with extreme emotion. Meanwhile, Frances is off with Haylin, who nearly drowns in a freak accident in the local pond. She and Vincent rush to find Jet in the hospital. Jet has lost her psychic sight and blames herself.

Aunt Isabelle arrives in New York for the funeral, and they head to Massachusetts together for the burial in the cemetery where all the Owens are interred. April attends the funeral with her new baby daughter, Regina. Allegedly, the baby’s father was drowned in a flash flood. As Levi’s funeral procession goes by, Isabelle tells Frances that the death could have been avoided if Reverend Willard had not been filled with so much hatred.

Later, at the cemetery, Aunt Isabelle tells the reverend that forgiving each other will begin to break the curse because their families are linked. At home, she explains to the children that they are descendants of a witch and a witch-hunter, the result of the affair between Maria Owens and John Hathorne, who sent innocent women to their deaths. The Willards are related through one of Hathorne’s granddaughters. Aunt Isabelle remarks that the curse begins from a refusal of one’s true self.

The next day, the children go back to Manhattan. Frances feels that she will never go to Cambridge to take up her place at Radcliffe. Haylin comes by the house, and they make love. Then Frances affirmatively declares that their involvement must end to spare Haylin from a fate like Levi’s. Frances becomes her brother and sister’s guardian; however, as they lapse respectively into drink and depression, she finds that she cannot leave Haylin alone. When they must sell the house, Frances finds themselves somewhere cheaper to live in Greenwich Village, where they plan to make a living with plant cures. After, she refuses to see Haylin, although she takes the letters he wrote to her while she was away. She urges her crow to take care of Haylin, and as she watches them leave, she feels that both her heart and soul are gone.