Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman [46]
After Sally goes inside, the door closes with a little hissing sound, then slams as it shuts. Kylie has been alive beneath this sky for thirteen years, and only tonight does she really look at all those stars above her. She slips off her shoes, leaves them on the front stoop, then goes around to the backyard. The lilacs have never before been in flower on her birthday, and she takes it as a sign of luck. The bushes are so lush and overgrown, she has to stoop to get by them. For her whole life she has been measuring herself against her sister, and she’s not going to do that anymore. That is the gift Gillian has given her tonight, and for that she will always be grateful.
Anything can happen. Kylie sees that now. All across the lawn there are fireflies and heat waves. Kylie stretches out one hand and fireflies collect in her palm. As she shakes them off, and they rise into the air, she wonders if she has something other people don’t. Intuition or hope—she wouldn’t know what to call it. Perhaps what she has is the simple ability to know that something has changed and is changing still, under this dark and starry sky.
Kylie has always been able to read people, even those who close themselves up tight. But now that she’s turned thirteen, her meager talent has intensified. All evening she has been seeing colors around people, as though they were illuminated from within, just like fireflies. The green edge of her sister’s jealousy, the black aura of fear when her mother saw that she looked like a woman, not a little girl. These bands of color seem so real to Kylie that she has tried to reach out her hand and touch them, but the colors bleed into the air and disappear. And now, as she stands in her own backyard, she sees that the lilacs, those beautiful things, have an aura all their own, and it’s surprisingly dark. It’s purple, but it seems like a bloodstained relic, and it drifts upward like smoke.
All of a sudden, Kylie doesn’t feel quite so grown-up. She has the desire to be in her own bed, she even finds herself wishing that time could go backward, at least for a bit. But that never happens. Things can’t be undone. It’s ridiculous, but Kylie could swear there was a stranger out here in the yard. She backs up to the door and turns the handle, and just before she goes inside, she looks across the lawn and sees him. Kylie blinks, but sure enough he’s still there, under the arch of the lilacs, and he looks like the sort of man no one in her right mind would want to run into on a night as dark as this. He has a lot of nerve to be on private property, to treat this yard as his own. But, clearly, he doesn’t give a damn about such things as decorum and good behavior. He’s sitting there waiting, and whether Kylie or anyone else approves or disapproves doesn’t much matter. He’s there all right, admiring the night through his gorgeous cold eyes, ready to make somebody pay.
CLAIRVOYANCE
IF a woman is in trouble, she should always wear blue for protection. Blue shoes or a blue dress. A sweater the color of a robin’s egg or a scarf the shade of heaven. A thin satin ribbon, carefully threaded through the white lace hem of a slip. Any of these will do. But if a candle burns blue, that is something else entirely, that’s no luck at all, for it means there’s a spirit in your house. And if the flame should flicker, then grow stronger each time the candle is lit, the spirit is settling in. Its essence is wrapping around the furniture and the floorboards, it’s claiming the cabinets and the closets and will soon be rattling windows and doors.
Sometimes it takes a good while before anyone in a house realizes what has happened. People want to ignore what they can’t understand. They’re looking for logic at any cost. A woman can easily think she’s silly enough to misplace her earrings every single night. She can convince herself that a stray wooden spoon is the reason the dishwasher is constantly jamming, and that the toilet