Magic for Liars

by Sarah Gailey

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Alexandria said that—she said, ‘If you don’t do it, I’ll tell everyone what I saw, and then you’ll get fired anyway.’ And then Miss Capley was quiet for a while, and I was going to maybe knock and pretend like I hadn’t heard anything? But then I heard her say, um.” She opened her eyes, and she looked exhausted. I wondered how heavy this had all been for her to carry. “I heard Miss Capley say ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ and Alexandria said, ‘You’d better, or you’ll be sorry,’ and then I left.”

  She let out a huge breath and slumped in her chair. Miranda leaned over and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

  “Hey,” I said, “you did the right thing by telling me about this. I’m sure you’re right and it’s no big deal”—a blatant lie, but one that she needed to hear—“but I really appreciate you letting me know.” I gave her a small, warm smile, and she returned an even smaller one.

  “I couldn’t keep it a secret anymore,” she said. “Ms. Capley was, I don’t know, I just.” Brea huffed out an almost-angry sigh. “She was one of the good teachers, you know? She didn’t talk to us like we’re stupid. She listened. None of them ever listen—” She stopped midsentence and looked up like a deer at the sound of a twig snapping. Footsteps echoed in the hall outside.

  “Shit,” she said, then looked at me. “Sorry. For swearing. I just—I have to—”

  I waved my hands at her. “Go, go! I won’t tell anyone you were here. Go on.”

  She blew into her hands like they were cold, then waved them in front of her face like a mime trying to find the latch on his box. Miranda threw me a final glance, mouthed the words “thank you,” then did the same motion with her hands. One second, I was looking at them; the next, I couldn’t seem to fix my eyes on the place where I knew they’d been. The door to the library opened and closed, and I couldn’t put my finger on when I’d started being alone in there.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  “SO, YOU WENT TO SCHOOL up in Portland, right?” Rahul asked as he dropped his credit card on top of mine. The waiter swept by and picked up the check without looking at us.

  “Yeah,” I said. It didn’t feel like a lie. It just felt like a story we were sharing. That’s all. Under the table, his foot bumped against mine. “Same school as Tabitha.” I didn’t feel even a little guilty.

  “Wow,” he said, his eyes widening. “Headley is really intense. Was it weird to be competing against each other for ranking and stuff?”

  I laughed and shook my head. “Honestly, you’ve met Tabitha. It was never a competition. I’ve never been on her level. Not academically, anyway.”

  It wasn’t a lie. Tabitha was more brilliant than I’d ever be. The world had given her magic and brains and she had pressed her advantage to the fullest extent of her ability. So it wasn’t a lie when I told Rahul that I’d never felt like I was competing with Tabitha’s intellect. I wasn’t lying much at all—just the bare minimum, just the smallest details to support his belief about who I was. And those were just little lies, just propping up the story.

  The date was easily one of the best I’d ever been on. There had been almost no initial awkwardness to get through. Rahul asked all the right kinds of questions about my work. I coaxed a few funny Osthorne stories out of him, without the conversation turning to Sylvia or the investigation. I made him laugh so hard that he almost choked on a basil leaf. In retaliation, he turned one of my jalapeños into a ghost pepper.

  It was easy. It was fun. And, somehow, I hadn’t once had to stop being the version of Ivy who could flirt with a physical magic teacher without flinching. I hadn’t once been irritated by the little magic things he did. I wasn’t trying to pretend that he was normal. I was just … being with him, like he was anyone, like I was anyone, like there was no barrier between us. I’d cracked a window into another world, and I was sticking my head through it, breathing the sweet air on the other side.

  “Anyway, me and Tabitha, we went really different routes. In the end I guess going to Headley mattered more to her than it does to me, you know?” I continued. Rahul’s calf nudged mine under the table. A flock of starlings fluttered inside my chest. The waiter dropped our cards back off, and we both signed, peeking at each other’s tips.

  “I don’t know that he really earned that much,” Rahul said with his eyebrows raised.

  “I know,” I muttered, “but the pho was really good and I want to come back here sometime.”

  “Oh, right,” Rahul said, quickly scratching a larger number over the one he’d already written. We pushed our chairs back from the table with a loud scrape; before we’d finished standing up, the table was being cleared and wiped down.

  “So,” I said as we made for the door. Rahul held it open for me, and we stood outside on the sidewalk, uncertain and hopeful under the pinking sky.

  “So,” he said back. “Walk you home?” He held out his arm.

  “You certainly may,” I said, threading my fingers through his as we started walking together down the two-lane road. When we passed the Osthorne sign, Rahul’s grip on my hand tightened a little. “So,” he said again. “This is going to sound like a line.”

  “I’ll gird my loins,” I said.

  “I had a really good time tonight—”

  “That’s not a line,” I interrupted.

  He glared at me. “Let me finish and then tell me it’s not a line,” he said. I rolled my hand in a go-on-let’s-hear-it circle, and he cleared his throat. “I had a really good time tonight and I don’t want the night to be over.”

  “I have a bottle of wine at my place,” I said, bold as brass.

  He flushed. “I swear it wasn’t a line. What if we grab that bottle of wine and take it somewhere? I know a cute spot on campus. Not that I don’t want to—”

  “That sounds perfect,” I said, remembering the state of the apartment. He smiled like I’d rescued him.

  “Tell you what,” he said, “why don’t I go grab a blanket for us to sit on, and you grab the wine, and we’ll meet back here?”

  When we met up again, he was holding a big tartan throw. I had a bottle of screw-top cabernet under my arm. The sky was turning from pink to gray, and I was completely giddy. I told myself that it was the giddiness that comes with a crush. I told myself that it didn’t feel the same way shoplifting had when I was a kid, told myself the adrenaline was different.

  It was different.

  Rahul led me through the clutch of apartments and townhouses that constituted staff housing. For a moment I was concerned that maybe he wanted to sit in a little courtyard we passed through, which featured a velvety expanse of lawn and a few battered chairs, and which was visible from at least six different townhouses. But he kept going, ducking down a space between a townhouse and a utility shed. I followed him around the utility shed, and there, between the shed and the beginning of an overgrown hedge, was a half-broken porch swing.

  “Here we are,” Rahul said, beaming at me. I looked at his smile, which clearly communicated that I should be excited about the pile of splintery wood in front of me.

  “Um,” I said, trying to smile back.

  “Hang on,” he said, holding out the blanket to me. “Trust me.” He looked so excited, I had to find out what was next. I took the blanket and tucked it under my arm. He grabbed my free hand, and I felt warmth rush up my arm. I couldn’t tell if he was casting a spell or if it was just the feeling of his rough palm against my skin, his strong fingers between mine.

  Rahul reached out his other hand and touched the porch swing with his fingertips, running them lovingly across the top crossbar of the frame. As he slid them from one end of the frame to the other, the dust vanished; the wood of the swing smoothed and glowed in the dying sun. It went from looking like a death trap to looking brand-new. I like things to be more of what they are, he’d said.

  Rahul turned to me with a boyish grin. Two deep dimples creased his cheeks. My head swam. “Ready?” he asked
.

  “What? Yes,” I said, not knowing—or caring—what he meant. He grabbed the blanket from me and spread it over the slatted bench. He patted the seat next to him, and I sat down, leaving the wine bottle on the ground at our feet. He scooted toward me until our thighs were touching, then gave a theatric yawn, stretching his arms over his head. His arm draped across my shoulder, and I covered my face with both hands as I collapsed into the kinds of giggles that apparently overtook the person I was pretending to be.

  I felt his fingers brush closed around my wrists. “Hey, open up,” he laughed as he gently pulled my hands away from my face. When I uncovered my eyes, he was still smiling at me with those impossible dimples. I shook my head.

  “What do you call that?” I asked.

  “What do I call what?”

  “Whatever spell it is you use to make your smile so…” I ran out of words, and he raised his eyebrows, still grinning. I shook my head as a blush climbed up behind my ears. “Forget it,” I said, realizing how close I’d come to asking the wrong kind of question.

  “No, no, Ivy Gamble,” he said, laughter laced behind his low murmur. “To make my smile so what? Tell me about my smile.” His fingers were lightly closed around my wrists, and his thumbs traced circles on the backs of my hands. I shook my head again. His eyes flicked to where I was biting my lip.

  “You really shouldn’t do that, you know,” he said.

  “Shouldn’t what?” I replied, suddenly very aware of how close we were on the bench.

  “Shouldn’t bite your lip.” He lifted one thumb and brushed my lower lip, pulling it free of my teeth.

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” I murmured. Then I leaned forward, closing the two inches between us, and kissed him.

  The kiss was light, tentative, close-lipped—but it was as if he’d been waiting for me to make the first move. The instant I broke off the kiss, his hand was cupping my jaw, pulling me back to him. My fingers found their way into his hair; his other hand moved to my waist, tugging me closer. He kissed my chin, my jaw—I gasped as I felt his teeth tugging on my earlobe. He paused, one hand on my hip and the other in my hair.

  “Is this okay?” he whispered, his lips brushing the place where my jaw met my throat. I closed my fingers around the hair at the nape of his neck and gave the smallest of tugs; his head tilted back, and our eyes met.

  “Yes,” I whispered back, as vehemently as possible.

  Twenty minutes of “yes” later, my back was pressed against the outside of my front door. We’d abandoned the blanket and the wine and I’d forgotten all about the state of my little apartment because the only thing in my head was still yes. I gripped the belt loops on the side of Rahul’s pants with one hand, yanking him toward me so I could feel exactly how badly he wanted me to get that door open. With the other hand, I fumbled for the doorknob. He had successfully unbuttoned the top third of my blouse and was nudging my collar aside with his nose by the time I finally succeeded in opening the door. We fell inside, stumbling, our legs tangling together. He caught me by the back of the waist and buried his hands in my hair, murmuring my name against my lips as I slid my hands up under his untucked shirt—

  He froze. I opened my eyes. “What’s wrong?” He looked like he’d seen a ghost. In a feat of superhuman willpower, I slowly pulled my hands out from underneath his shirt. He cleared his throat. I realized that he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking over my shoulder. The state of the apartment came rushing back to me—the duvet on the couch, the half-empty takeout cartons, the empty bottles lined up on the kitchen counter.

  But before that could sink in, a coherent thought—which had been totally unable to form when Rahul’s hands had been gripping my ass—zipped to the front of my mind: Why was the front door unlocked?

  I turned, slowly, waiting for the worst. Expecting to see that the place had been trashed, or robbed, or that someone was standing there waiting for me with a gun.

  What I saw was worse.

  “Tabitha?” I said. My voice came out huskier than I cared for. I cleared my throat and said her name again, but she didn’t seem to hear me. She was sitting on my couch with her face in her hands, curled in on herself. She was sobbing so hard that she was choking. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t heard her from outside.

  Rahul was staring down at me with a solemn, uncertain expression. I shrugged and made an I-have-no-idea face. I looked back at Tabitha and walked slowly over to where she sat. I laid a hand on her shoulder. She startled, hiccupped. When she looked up, I could tell that she had been crying for a long time.

  “Hey, Tabby,” I said softly.

  “Hey,” she said, then choked on a sob. I straightened and ran my hands through my hair, then walked back over to Rahul.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I think I have to—”

  “It’s okay,” he interrupted, “I totally understand. You have to … yeah.”

  I sighed and started buttoning the three shirt buttons he’d gotten to before we noticed Tabitha, mentally apologizing to each button for undoing his good work.

  “Hey.” Rahul’s fingers were light on my arm, but I jumped as if he’d grabbed me. His face was totally calm as he whispered, quiet enough that Tabitha wouldn’t be able to hear him over the sound of her own weeping. “Are you going to be okay? Do you want me to stay?”

  God, yes. I wanted him to stay in so many ways—but he was Tabitha’s coworker, and she was my sister, and I have never been one for the rules of dating, but the conversation Tabitha and I were about to have? Even I knew that it was definitely not something you should invite a guy to watch on the first date.

  “No,” I said, with a sigh. “No, that’s okay—we’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. I think we just need to talk about some stuff.”

  His fingertips lingered on my arm for a moment, warm and steady and so, so temporary. I ached at the injustice of the fact that he would be leaving while Tabitha got to stay here. I gave him a reassuring smile, the kind that new-Ivy apparently knew how to give.

  “Okay,” he said after studying my face for a few seconds. He leaned forward, and I thought at first that he was going to whisper in my ear—but then his lips were pressed against my cheek, lingering and not at all chaste. “I’ll see you,” he murmured. Then, before I could answer, he had slipped out of my front door and was gone.

  It took a good twenty minutes to calm Tabitha down. I didn’t have any tissues, so I brought her a roll of toilet paper from the bathroom to wipe her face and blow her nose. She went through about a third of it as I sat beside her on the sagging couch, the duvet crumpled on the floor. I rubbed her back in little circles. I made her drink a glass of water, mostly because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. She continued hiccupping for a long time after she finally stopped crying.

  “Tabby,” I said in as gentle a voice as I could muster, “what are you doing here?”

  Her eyes welled up again, and she answered in a very small voice that didn’t sound like her at all. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Why would she come here, of all places? I realized that I was staring at her and looked down at my hands.

  “I just. It’s been a really hard few months, you know?” She sniffled next to me. “And I haven’t really had anyone to talk to…” She trailed off.

  “Since Sylvia died,” I whispered. I could feel her go still, even without looking at her.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “Since Sylvia died.” She stroked the arm of the couch with her fingertips and stared at the pattern woven into the upholstery.

  The silence between us was thick, awkward. I was wondering how to start trying to talk to her about this huge thing, this secret she’d been sitting on for months. She was probably wondering how I knew, who else knew. Who told. How far her secret had traveled.

  To her credit, she didn’t ask any of those things. Instead, she asked the question that I hadn’t even been willing to ask myself.

  “Do
you think I killed her?”

  The question slammed me right in the gut, knocking the air from my lungs. I hadn’t been willing to think it, not really. Not all the way through. Every time the thought had entered my mind, I’d shoved it away hard. Did I think Tabitha was the killer?

  I looked up at my sister. She’d let her eyes get puffy and red. She hadn’t done any magic to make them look pretty. They were bright with tears. I bit my cheek, took a deep breath, and decided to be honest with her—because if I couldn’t be honest with her in that moment, when could I?

  “I don’t know.”

  She pressed the backs of her fingers to her flushed cheeks, then let out a short, sharp laugh. “Holy shit,” she said, then covered her mouth and laughed again. “Holy shit,” she repeated, the curse muffled by her fingers. “You think I did it? You think I could really do that to someone? To someone I loved?”

  I felt my stomach tighten around a fist of anger that had been slowly clenching there since the day before. If I was honest with myself, that fist had been clenching since Tabitha came home from school for my mother’s funeral.

  “How would I know what it looks like when you love someone?” I spat.

  “Come on, Ivy. That can’t be what you think of me…?”

  “Are you seriously fucking asking me that?” I said it in a choked whisper. The room suddenly felt pudding-thick, too quiet. I could see the faint pulse of my heartbeat, blurring my vision twice every second. Tabitha looked at me, confused. “Are you seriously asking me that fucking question after what you let happen to Mom?”

  Tabitha’s brow knit, and I realized I was shaking. I stood up and walked into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water, wishing it was whiskey. Just to give my hands something to do. Just so I wouldn’t hit her.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  I poured the water down the drain without drinking any of it. I couldn’t have swallowed around the knot in my throat anyway. I walked back out into the living room and yanked the neck of my shirt to one side, exposing the unblemished skin of my shoulder.