Chapter Eleven #2
“Hang on,” Arthur said and disappeared into his bedroom. He returned a moment later with the mask in hand, holding it carefully to prevent damaging the delicate drying blooms.
Rory looked at Arthur like he didn’t recognize him. “You kept it? That must have been some kiss,” he said, incredulous. “Oh, you’re screwed, Artie.”
“Thank you, but I already knew that.”
Rory took the mask from Arthur, holding it as gently as his brother had, and turned it over until he found the complicated rune.
Working out a spell’s intention backward from its rune was tricky, but not impossible.
It was much easier and more accurate if you knew the Diadhan incantation that powered the rune, but even without it, there was plenty you could glean from the line work.
Arthur shuffled through Barry’s belongings for some paper.
He copied the lines of the rune, an approximation of the spell at a larger size.
“This’ll be the time line,” Arthur said, annotating the part of the rune that dated the spell for Beltane night.
“But this…” Arthur pointed to where the lines of the rune twisted around each other. “Do you recognize any of this?”
Rory shook his head but then pointed out another spot he did recognize.
“These are the memory lines. I’ve seen the same ones on runes at work, but those are meant to keep something in your memory, to make it easier to remember important trail markers.
” Rory, like their dad, was a park ranger.
Though he had never been as interested in the science of magic as Arthur was, he used his fair share in the field.
“That doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know about the spell,” Arthur grumbled. He remembered the woman who had handed them their masks with a wink and a not-so-subtle glance at Rory that his brother had ignored. Was she the one who created the spell? “It must be in the incantation.”
“What else do we know? What happened the exact moment you remembered?”
Arthur closed his eyes, remembering how the pad of his finger had barely grazed the skin at her wrist. Just like it had when he’d turned her wrist over in his hand to look at the burn the ghoul had left.
Just like it had when he’d saved Maggie from falling down the stairs…
and neither of those times had cleared the static.
Neither of those moments had been enough to break the spell.
“I think I got it wrong,” he said, thinking out loud.
“I’ve touched her wrist before, shaken her hand before, but it was never enough to unlock my memories. ”
“If that wasn’t it, what was? What was different this time?”
As he had danced with Maggie beneath the stars, Arthur had stroked the small divot where her palm met her wrist, but that wasn’t the first time they’d touched.
The first time was when she’d reached her hand out to help him off the sand.
It was when she’d asked him in that bold voice to get her a drink, with that fire in her eyes, reflecting the living flame of the bonfires all around them.
Then, in their office, to seal their agreement, there had been that same expression.
Oh. Both times, Maggie had invited him into her life with a single gesture, with a little bit of trust and a little bit of a dare.
A challenge. Both times, he had engulfed her smaller hand in his, marveling at the way it fit, at the way he wanted to live up to whatever challenge she saw before her.
It wasn’t the touch at all. It was what it meant.
After Arthur explained this revelation to Rory, his brother clapped his hands together. “Then that’s your answer,” Rory said, as if it were obvious what Arthur should do.
“What is?”
“You just need to figure out what that same moment was for Maggie and help her remember.”
Arthur looked at his brother incredulously. “You can’t be serious.”
“If you both remember…”
“I’m not going to lie to her.”
“Who said anything about lying! Just try. For a week. If you can get her to remember in a few days, you can say you were working up the courage to tell her. Which is true, by the way.”
He had no idea if there was anything about that night that would have stood out to Maggie.
Was it when they pressed their bodies together and swayed to the music?
Or something simpler? When his hand cradled her chin before their kiss?
What if it was when he made her laugh? Arthur could never try to be funny.
Everything would definitely come crashing down.
“This is a terrible plan.” What was he supposed to do?
Pretend to trip and crash into her lips?
Maybe he could persuade her to go over their notes at a bar instead of Bean There, Done That so he could buy her a drink.
It was an absurd plan. And Arthur certainly wasn’t going to kiss her without telling her the truth first. Gods below, he was going to have to figure out how to tell a damn joke.
“What kind of deal did you make with her, anyway? Did she draw a line down the middle of your office and make you promise you won’t cross it?”
Arthur had walked himself into this corner.
How could he talk about their bargain without explaining the monster of a pall?
Arthur was a terrible liar, he knew that, so he told Rory an approximation of the truth.
“There’s a pall on campus and we’re having trouble getting rid of it.
We made a deal so Maggie can help with its removal.
” And then he couldn’t quite stop himself from talking about it more.
He didn’t deserve to feel relief, but between Maggie’s help and the concern etched in Rory’s forehead, he felt it all the same.
“I’ve never seen a pall like this one, Ror.
Our dissipation spells just aren’t working. ”
His first attempt at a dissipation had fizzled to nothing in front of his eyes, the lines of his rune glowing with promising power until they burned out with a pop, sending up a cloud of the gold dust that infused his chalk until the air shimmered.
His second attempt had been no better, and when, on the third attempt, a piercing crack had shaken the floor, Arthur had braced himself for the pall to grow larger and consume more of Ilex Hall.
Fortunately, it had just grown soupier, but he was fully traumatized by the event.
Magic had never confounded him like this.
He’d learned early on that if he just kept working on a spell, eventually he’d understand it.
Persistence was better than any genius, especially in an alchemy lab.
Even when magic took time, took trial and error, there was always measurable progress and eventually success.
Magic was supposed to be the easy thing.
People were hard. Relationships impossible.
But magic? That he understood. He was on the verge of falling into another spiral about the pall, when Rory hummed in thought, oblivious to the way Arthur’s mind was spinning nearly out of control.
“I don’t know much about getting rid of a pall, but you know that magic can get strange so close to the Wilds. Maybe your answer is there?”
Arthur considered the possibility, then his phone buzzed. The way his brother’s eyes lit up was his only warning as he lunged for it. Rory just managed to grab the phone before Arthur did, flipping open the screen and holding it just out of Arthur’s reach.
“You’re thirty-three years old, Rory,” Arthur grumbled. “Give me my phone back.”
Rory sighed. “It’s just Pop. Look at this gigantic fish Simon caught.
” Rory flipped the phone around and showed Arthur the photo of a beaming Simon holding a huge flounder, the sky rosy pink with dawn behind him.
Underneath the photo was a message Arthur was sure his father had typed while he tried to wrangle another piece of bait on Simon’s line: Send this to Ror.
“Why does he do that?”
“You know he always just texts whoever messaged him last instead of typing in our name.”
Arthur rolled his eyes, getting up to finally find something to eat.
As he rummaged through the fridge for some jam, Rory groaned and muttered a curse under his breath. “Oops,” he said, a little louder. Arthur closed the fridge door slowly and turned to see Rory frantically typing on the phone screen.
“ ‘Oops’? Oops what?”
“I think I accidentally sent it to Maggie?” Arthur closed his eyes slowly. “I didn’t know you were texting her! You conveniently left that out of your story earlier!”
Arthur tried not to panic. “It is six thirty in the morning. You did not just send her a photo of a fish at six thirty in the morning.” The grimace on Rory’s face was comically large, but that did not make Arthur feel better.
“Well, I mean, it’s a picture of Simon with a fish, so…”
“Does that make it better?” Arthur asked, exasperated.
“Objectively, yes, it would be so much weirder if you just sent her a picture of a fish.”
Arthur wanted to throw something at his brother. He marveled at the calm he felt just moments ago at having Rory helping him. All gone. Brothers. “I’m going back to bed.”