Page 23 of The Bane Witch
23
Ed
Something isn’t right. I feel it like a tickle beneath my breastbone, a hum of anxiety that can’t be explained or brushed aside, my heart alerted to a change that hasn’t shown itself yet. The sun has rolled beneath the mountains, leaving the sky the color of compost, black with possibility. I lean against the seat back and feel the ground moving below me, a blur of territory in my wake. Beside me, Regis is quiet, everything that passed between us on the trail percolating in his mind, a simmer of data about our shared target both horrific and impossible. When we pull up in front of the café, the lights are still on. Myrtle’s sitting just inside by the windows. She looks up, her face rounder than I remember, more vulnerable.
“What’s she doing still open?” he asks. “Shouldn’t she be at the cabin by now?”
“I don’t know.” I slide out of the vehicle and get to my feet just as she’s pushing through the door toward us. The concern is printed like a birthmark across her face. Wrongly, I think it is for me. I spin around and bend down, ducking back into the car. “Just go,” I tell Regis. “I’ll deal with this.”
“You sure?”
“Go,” I tell him, straightening and heading toward her, fearful that I’ve committed some cardinal sin of the venery I don’t know about.
She approaches as he backs away, the headlights washing out her face. The nearer she gets, the more I realize I am not the thing to blame for her worry. Her face stays painfully drawn with angst.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, reaching for her elbow.
“It’s Ed,” she tells me, eyes plated with tears, reflective. “He hasn’t returned for dinner, and he’s not in his cabin.” She scans the trees rearing behind us, monuments to Mother Nature, as if she’ll suddenly spot him there at the edge, overalls hanging by one shoulder, an empty bottle in his hand. “He’s not answering his phone.”
“Could he be in town? At the Drunken Moose with Terry and Amos?”
She shakes her head so vigorously I want to hold on to her neck to stabilize her. “I have a bad feeling,” she whispers. “You don’t think the Strangler…”
The impossibility of it is swift, dumping over me like ice melt. “No. He only hunts women.”
Myrtle nods, but the tears drop from her eyes, landing on her cheeks like pearls.
“We’ll find him,” I tell her. “He’s around here somewhere.”
The crush of leaves and breaking sticks scampers toward us in the dark, the approach of an unknown entity. I go rigid, every muscle preparing to fight, my mind bracing itself for whatever horror emerges from the trees. Beside me, Myrtle crouches, a bobcat ready to pounce. She has fed, at least. It is the last thought I have before the brush parts.
Something barrels in our direction, coat slick with night, the flap of ears audible, the beat of paws.
It’s Bart. And he’s alone.
I T’S UNUSUAL LY COLD tonight, well into the thirties but not yet freezing. A howl of wind beats through the tree limbs, causing me to hug my arms to my chest. Ahead of us, Bart keeps tearing off into the hobblebush, littering the ground with scarlet berries, and Myrtle has to call after him. I strain in the dark to see, worried we’ll overlook Ed somehow, despite the moonlight. If we don’t find him soon, hypothermia could set in. I watched him leave the café this morning in nothing but his shirtsleeves.
“Ed!” I call out, fingers freezing as I cup them around my mouth. The ensuing silence hangs like a curse.
“Damn dog,” I hear Myrtle grumble as she tries to keep up with Bart, who is leading us—we hope—down the most direct, if not the clearest, path to his owner.
“What’s he doing way out here?” I ask her, stumbling over a tree root but catching myself.
“Who knows,” she bellows. “Foolish old man. Can’t tell the difference between a bullfrog and a rattlesnake.”
“He said something about clearing tree limbs around the property.” I fist my hands together in front of my mouth, blowing on them.
“Must have been gathering them for firewood,” she says, trudging forward. “No other need to worry about deadwood this far in. Half of it’s too wet anyway. I’ve told him that a million times.”
Bart picks up speed, darting to the left, refusing to loop back when Myrtle calls him. “Ed! Can you hear me?” she shouts this time, her voice pitching lower than my own. “We must be close.”
A soft moan sounds nearby, like the earth is sighing beneath our weight, and Myrtle thrashes toward it, knocking branches out of her way until suddenly Bart is there, nose down, tail wagging, a pathetic whine filtering from his snout.
Beneath him, Ed lies prone in a spread of fallen leaves and pine needles, his face barely clear of the ground, one eye swollen shut. Myrtle is on her knees in an instant, hands fluttering above his back, his skull, his arm. The ground is wet, seeping through my jeans as I kneel beside her. I think the darkness across her palms is dirt until I realize the damp around Ed is blood.
“Ed! What’s happened to ya? It’s Myrtle. Talk to me. How long have you been out here?” She presses her face low by his so she can hear his replies. He responds with great effort, struggling to form even a word.
“Moose,” she barks, sitting up. “He says a cow trampled him. Never even knew she was there. Must have had a calf nearby.”
I think I should feel relief, that a flood of oxytocin should cascade through my body at the word moose, which to my mind must be better than bear or mountain lion. So, I can’t understand when my jaw clenches and my nostrils flare, fingers curling into fists I want to beat on the ground. “Will he be okay?”
“We need to turn him over.” She grips his shoulder, only touching the cloth. “We’re gonna turn you over now, Ed!” she shouts at him.
His words are thick, pouring from his mouth like molasses, barely audible. She leans down to hear. When she sits up, tears slip conspicuously down her cheeks. She swats my hand away. “Can’t do it,” she explains, wiping at her nose with the back of her hand. “Says his back is broken. Again. ”
An owl calls with a hooting purr, invisible in the canopy, like a warning from God.
“We need an ambulance. The paramedics can secure him,” I tell her. “I’ll call nine-one-one and wait at the café for EMS to arrive. You stay with him.” I straggle to my feet, but she clasps my hand. Her eyes squeeze together, ringing out tears, and her head shakes from side to side. When she opens them to look at me, they are huge like the moon.
“There isn’t time. His lung is punctured—that’s why he looks so gray—and he’s lost too much blood. We’ll lose him before they can get him to a hospital.”
My jaw drops, mouth gaping with uncertainty. “I don’t understand. What are we supposed to do?”
Her grip is so strong on my hand that my thumb feels like it might separate at the joint. “There isn’t time,” she repeats. “We can’t save him. You understand?”
“No.” I would slap her if I thought it might make a difference. The weight of what she’s considering drops like an anvil in my lap. “Not that.”
Beside us, Ed moans again, and it is not soft but rigid with pain. It is only then I register that he is hurting. His injuries blaze across my understanding at once, like scattered embers. The punctured lung. The gash across the back of his head. The crack in his skull. The arm bent wrong. The back shattered once again. Contusions pepper his insides like mold. He’s had two teeth knocked out, and his right leg is broken in two places. He’s been out here a long time—too long—Bart afraid to leave him. He’s dehydrated. His core body temperature is dropping. And he’s lost a lot of blood.
She’s right. In the time it will take me to find my way back to the motel, where there’s cell service, call an ambulance, wait for them to arrive from the nearest town with a hospital, and then pick my way back here with the paramedics, he will have succumbed to oxygen deprivation, hypothermia, or simply bled out.
I find her eyes in the dark. They are childlike, pleading, wretched. “Your mark,” I whisper.
She nods slowly. This is what her cycle was preparing her for. Not an incestophile—a mercy killing. Not a stranger—a friend. Not a murder—a release from misery. She bends low and listens as he mumbles to her, nodding, whispering back, shushing him. Her fingers hover over his cheek and hair, the hand she’d like to take in hers. When she rises, she says, “He’s begging us to shoot him.”
My brows lower, refusing to hear it. “You can end this,” I tell her. “But not like that.”
“He is suffering.” The words are pressed between her teeth, bitter and hated. “I did not feed to end a life quickly. If I poison him, he will waste out here, his suffering increasing until he finally gives out. I can’t do that to him, not after he’s been out here so long. If we’d found him sooner…”
The dark is obscuring her words and time has stopped. I cannot seem to comprehend what’s happening, what’s being asked of me. Bart nuzzles the side of my face, his nose slick and clammy as a fish.
“You have to do it,” she says to me. “Please, Piers.”
“No!” I scrabble back on my hands and feet. I can’t do what she’s asking. Not him, not this way. I know Ed. I love Ed. This is not what I am here for.
She takes my hands in hers, nails digging into the fleshy mounds beneath my thumbs. “He’s in agony,” she implores me. “You can end this. Please.”
“How?” I haven’t fed. I’m not prepared. This isn’t what my cycle responds to.
She swallows a sob, tries to steady her voice. “The deadly cort. It’s in the kitchen at the cabin. In the canister marked TEA .”
I jerk away from her, stumble to my feet, bracing my hands against my knees. I cannot save Ed, not his life, but I can rescue him from his pain. I can send him to the wife he misses. I can spare Myrtle the agony of watching him die slowly and miserably. I can make it quick. It is not the kind of superhero a girl dreams of becoming, but it is something. It is all I have to offer. And it’s time I stop withholding it from the world. I can do some good with this magic of mine. I can deal death where death is due. It doesn’t make me evil; it makes me powerful.
I suddenly understand men like Henry and the Saranac Strangler so much better. They’re seeking power because deep down they feel power less. But power is not their issue. The best they can manage when they kill is control. That’s why they keep killing. Because they’re chasing a moving target—it’s always a step ahead, just out of reach. They are a poor reflection, a mirage, a copy of a copy. But the venery, the magic flowing through me, that is the truth.
I sniff and rise to my full height. She must see the surrender in my face because something in hers lifts. “There’s just the one.”
“It will be enough,” she tells me. “For you.”
I nod, glancing over my shoulder.
She points east. “That way,” she says. “Almost a straight shot. I have my phone. I’ll keep the light on to guide you back. Go!”
The trees seem to shrink away as I dash through them, as if the forest is on our side. Bart is on my heels. He must believe Ed is okay with Myrtle there. I do my best to keep a continual line eastward. When the doubts arise—the voices that tell me I could get lost out here and never be found, that the Strangler may find me before anyone else—I push them aside. Because Ed is waiting. Ed is hurting. And I can stop it.
That’s all I know.
The cabin emerges from the black shrubbery like a beacon, windows pouring light into the woods around it. I stamp up the steps into the kitchen and snatch at canisters, ripping off lids until I find it where Myrtle said I would, a bit shriveled but otherwise recognizable. It goes down easy like pudding. In a bite or two it’s gone. I swallow the yellow wart, too, for good measure. When I turn to leave, Bart stands in the open doorway watching me. I think he knows what I intend to do. His eyes are unreadable, but he doesn’t growl or lower his head. He just stares before bounding down the stairs. I follow him into the night. He is fast but not frantic. Myrtle’s phone begins to shine before us like a fairy light. I wish that it were.
When I reach them, Ed is breathing faintly, his pulse a whisper. Myrtle scoots to one side so I can get close to him. She has been careful not to touch him, not to risk a tear splashing across his skin. Her cries are soundless. She tells him it will not be long; his wife is waiting. He tries to open his injured eye, to look at her one last time.
I kneel over him, my hair hanging to one side. He taps my knee with a finger, one arm still mobile. I turn my ear and lower it so that it nearly touches his lips. “Thank you,” he whispers.
My eyes well. I lift up and look down on him. “Goodbye, Ed,” I tell him. “Sleep well.” And then I lick my lips and place them on a gash at his temple.
T HE WAL K BACK to our cabin is a disheartening slog through pitch-dark wilderness. Even the cheerful glow of lamplight as the cabin looms into view doesn’t stir our spirits, though it will feel good to get warm. I reach down and squeeze Myrtle’s hand; it hangs there limply.
“In the morning, I’ll report him missing,” she says, weary, voice thinner than sheet metal with the same brisk edge. “They’ll find him within a few hours.”
I follow her up the stairs. At the door, she waits, holding it open. “Come on,” she says to the dog. “You sleep here now.”
Bart emerges from the shadows. He lifts his head sadly and peers past us into the house before tucking his tail and scooting slowly inside.
The little house is a welcome refuge after our trauma in the woods. I make hot tea and slice lemon wedges, fingers still numb from cold and dissociation. Myrtle runs a bath, washing off the blood and soil, the dank, midnight stink of the wild, the crushing grief. She comes to sit beside the fire I’ve kindled in the stone hearth, hair wet and eyes lowered, her robe tucked tightly, holding her together. Bart curls up in front of her chair, claiming his new owner.
“With any luck, they’ll assume he died of his injuries and forgo an autopsy.” Her eyes are mossy in the firelight, a green that goes on for miles, mirroring the country around her. They reach into me. “What you did for me tonight, Piers… Thank you. I only hope I can repay you someday.”
“You already have,” I tell her. “I came here with nothing, and you took me in. Despite the risks, my questionable past. Besides, I really did it for Ed, so he wouldn’t… linger. Will you tell the venery?”
She rubs Bart with a foot, thinking. “Do you want me to? It might be better if it stays between us.”
“Doesn’t it count? Wouldn’t it mean I passed their test?” I’m not necessarily proud of what I did, but I’m not ashamed either. It feels mysteriously humbling to take a life with intention this time. And the grief is swift and immediate, like blood flow after a cut, the sense of waste. More so because he was a friend. But thinking I did it to help someone makes it easier. I want it to matter, to get me off the hook with the other bane witches. Maybe because that will make it all feel less pointless. Maybe because I don’t want to kill again for a long while.
Myrtle shakes her head. “I don’t know. They want to see you move through a complete cycle. This was rushed, not really an examination of your own instincts. Besides, your mark is still out there. Your hunt is on. Soon, the hunger will set in. Would you really leave that man in the world to take more innocent lives?”
I’m ashamed to admit how much I want to walk away from the Saranac Strangler, from being a bane witch, and live a life that’s uneventful. I killed myself to get here. I killed one man to keep from being raped and another to spare his wife, one for reasons so blurry and lost to time I can scarcely remember them if I ever knew at all. And now I’ve killed someone I cared about so his pain would end. I shouldn’t have to kill anymore. But after what I saw, what I learned on that trailhead today, I know I can’t walk away from this fight. If I don’t take the Saranac Strangler down, who will? If I don’t fulfill my cycle, I’m risking Regis’s life along with so many innocent women. They all deserve better than what the Strangler will give them. The world deserves better.
“I want you to tell them,” I admit, knowing that it means I’m admitting the shame is alive in me, a stowaway in my heart. “But only so they stop breathing down my neck. I will kill the Saranac Strangler regardless. I know now that’s what I’m here to do.”
She leans her head back. “Your courage is as plain as the color of your hair.”
I wish I could smile. The praise is a bit of salve on my weary heart. But Ed’s loss hangs over us like a heavy cloud, and smiling will feel wrong for a while.
When I don’t respond, she continues. “There probably isn’t a one of us who wouldn’t want to walk away if given the chance, to be with sons and lovers long since lost to us. Except maybe Verna—she’s ruthless. That tampon trick… But there’s a mighty cost for our freedom, and we’d be asking others to pay it.” She sighs. “I suppose they can’t really argue that you’ve fulfilled your obligation. And perhaps it will look good that you came to my rescue.”
Relief washes over me, leaving my limbs with a shapeless, stretched-out sensation, the way I feel after yoga or too much weed. The future wipes itself clean, a smooth and gleaming shingle of potential outcomes, blank but fertile, waiting for me and no one else.
I sip my tea, watching the flames leap over one another and listening to Bart snore beside me. When I look up, Myrtle is fast asleep, hands slack in her lap. I get up carefully and go to the bathroom, undress, and wash the stain of guilt off my skin. Unfortunately, the soap won’t penetrate deeper. I crawl into the bed in only my underwear, covers pulled practically over my head, as if even the weight of my pajamas is more than I can bear tonight, a feather too many on the scales. I decide to dream of flower crowns, will-o’-the-wisps, and fairy processions, the spun-sugar fantasies of my little-girl self, what populates the woods beside predators, impenetrable shadows, and deadly plant matter.
But when I close my eyes, all I can see is the split of Ed’s bulging eyelid, lashes matting against gray skin, and the motionless slab of his back, gummy with blood that has stopped flowing. The trauma won’t let me sleep, and after many long, painful minutes, I finally get up, tug on my jeans and a flannel shirt, and tiptoe back through the kitchen, pulling Myrtle’s car keys from the jacket pocket I found them in before. Bart lifts his head as I open the front door. I press a finger to my lips, and he lowers it again, content to stay by Myrtle’s side.
I’d like to say it’s somewhere on the road that I decide where I’m going, but the truth is, I’ve known all along. The hands of men have not been kind to me. I should distrust them, like wildlife, unpredictable and misleading. Don’t feed the animals. But Regis’s hands are nothing like Henry’s—those long spaghetti fingers and scrubbed nail beds shining in the light, pale as filtered beeswax, mean as hornets. In the early days, when we were still dating, I remember how he would touch me, deliberate or not at all. The way he always held my hand a little too tight, his weight in every pat and stroke. A hardness behind the smallest of gestures. At the time, I saw it as a sign of strength. Henry was implacable, solid like steel, incorruptible, I thought. I didn’t know the putrescence was already inside him, shielded by that impregnable manner while it festered.
Regis’s hands are slow, methodical even, not calculating but ponderous. They choose their course with care and a sense of wonder, every touch receptive. I can’t imagine him making a fist, though I’m sure he has. He holds me lightly with no desire for constraint, as if it is enough to simply pass over my skin and be left wanting. As if I am liquid and pour through him.
It is Regis’s hands I need.
When I pull up and get out, I make my way to his door. The night is aging like fine wine, rich and layered, impenetrable, steady. There is only one way I can scrub my mind clean tonight. This is my forgetting. And Myrtle insists I’m no longer a danger. She made a point to remind me how early I needed to be up to food prep in the café, that I would have to feed again—and soon—for the Strangler.
My knock is urgent, ringing out with need. He answers it with sleepy eyes, a question in his expression. “Acacia? Your eyes… Is everything okay?”
My irises must be the color of poison apples by now, green as peridots. I have no explanation. I don’t give either of us time to speak. If I open my mouth, it will all come spilling out, the ugly truth of who I am and what I’ve done. Sobs I cannot cry for Ed will pour over, and he will know. Regis will know it was me.
Instead, I press myself against him, my lips finding his in the dark, my body speaking for me—asking, begging. He pulls me in, shutting out the world around us, drawing me deeper into him, tangling. The hush in his living room is like a buffer from the brutal reality of our respective worlds. We move inside it like butterflies, lighting on each other in a hundred places, breathing the same air, the same need, drinking each other in sips and swallows, little nips of gratification. He is more confident this time and less rushed. He moves with leisure, a man with eternity in his pocket. He takes my breasts in his mouth like candied apples—something to be savored for long hours before the heart is breached, the pulp extracted. I melt beneath him, unable to hold my tongue, my composure, a thought or form. Climax ripples over me in waves, the undulating expression of things undone, like water or sound.
We lie on the carpet after, loose as old boot strings, shameless as dogs.
He says, “You’re not like any woman I’ve ever known.”
Some women might be troubled by that, the implied comparison, the undertone of quantity. Perhaps I should be. Perhaps I am too languid to care. Even Beth Ann feels light-years away. He has no idea how true his statement is. “No. I don’t imagine I am.”
He presses up on his elbows, smiles down on me. Appreciation kindles in his eyes. I like my body when he looks at it. There is nothing out of place. “Why is that?”
This is why we don’t speak. Because talking inevitably leads to the things I cannot say, the secrets I can’t tell. With my thighs, with my lips and neck and the palms of my hands, the swell of my hips, I can speak unhindered, enunciate every feeling I wish to communicate. My body is articulate in a way my mouth can never be. An ache catches in my throat behind the larynx. “You tell me.”
He sighs, brushing the hair away from my shoulder with his fingertips. “You’re a mystery to me, but you’re more present than anyone I know.”
“That’s because I don’t have a past. I can only exist in this moment.” Out of uniform, Regis has become boyish, simple, a teasing edge behind his smile, his hair too short to be messy but still rumpled. “I’m not the only mystery around here.”
He grins as if this pleases him.
I reach up and tug at a strand of his hair, not curly, but defi nitely not straight. “You’re nothing like they think you are, are you? Does anyone truly know you?”
He blushes. “I’m just me,” he says. “No mystery here.”
My hand drops. This is categorically untrue. “What about her?” I point to the picture of the girl, the one I saw the first night I stayed here.
Surprise pulls him back.
“She’s important to you.”
“Tanya,” he whispers. “That was her name.”
“What happened to her?”
His eyes pinch together, unbearably sad. “We don’t know.”
I sit up on an elbow, stare at him.
“She disappeared many years ago. We were on a family camping trip. She wanted to walk over to the lake one morning before our parents were up, but I wanted to sleep longer. So, she got dressed and went alone. We never saw her again.”
My lips part, disbelieving. “But the police—”
“Came and went. Did their level best. And closed the case once it had gone cold. There was no trace of her left. Nothing for them to go on. No one saw what happened, who took her. They dragged the lake, but it was clear. For years my mother swore Tanya was still alive. It’s the only thing that kept her breathing. But Dad and I knew after the first few months that she was probably gone.”
I rise and walk over to her picture, skate my fingers along the frame. Little flutters wing through my mind—rubber soles on a dirt road, the sun like yellow gossamer in the air, the blue truck rumbling up behind with the dented fender. They turn dark, sour, like ash as they drift away. Regis is right. She didn’t live long. When I turn to him, he is watching me with big, tender eyes, unsure what I will tell him, if he wants to hear it. “She loved you very much,” I say, choking back a tear. “And she never blamed you for it, so you should stop blaming yourself.”
His face crumples, and he ducks away from me until he can school his features. I watch him, thinking this is why my family does what it does. For girls like Tanya. To stop the countless men in blue trucks with dented fenders shadowing little girls. To save someone as pure as Regis from such unbearable pain.
“I’ve never told anyone about her before,” he says once I’ve returned to sit next to him on the floor. “Not about giving up on her after those first few months, somehow knowing she was gone, we were already too late.”
“Not even Beth Ann?” I ask.
“No.” He glances toward me. “I didn’t take you for the jealous type.”
I hug my knees to my chest. “You misunderstand. I’m curious. Not about her—about you. About why you hold back, even when it’s unnecessary.”
He rolls onto his back, stares at the ceiling. “Are you sure you weren’t a shrink instead of a designer?”
I give him a playful shove.
His smile is nimble, a flash of teeth, but genuine. His hand wanders across his chest. “Beth Ann was nice. She was really nice.”
“But?” I know one is coming.
He shrugs. “That’s the problem. I don’t know what was missing exactly. I never do. But I can feel everyone’s expectations flung over me like a net. That I should marry, settle down. That someone like Beth Ann should be enough for me. What more could I possibly want? Especially up here. What do I expect?”
“What more do you want?” I question. His openness is startling. I’m not sure I’ve earned it.
He laughs. “I wish I knew. I just keep thinking I’ll know it when I find it.” His eyes meet mine, and for a second, they are so frank it’s unsettling. He sits up and kisses me tenderly, then pulls away and says, “Why don’t you want more? From me? Than me?”
I swallow. The ice is thinning, every step precarious. “I had more,” I tell him finally, voice soft as a rabbit’s foot. “It didn’t agree with me.”
He cocks his head, appraising, runs a knuckle under my chin. “Whoever he is, I don’t like him.”
It might be charming to someone else, but I don’t need to enlist one man in my fight against another. I’m not looking for a hero. Regis knows that. I think he does. “Neither do I.”
“But you must have,” he suggests. “Once.”
I clear my throat, sticky with emotion. How to explain the Henry I first met, to reconcile him with the Henry I left? The first is a man of culture. The second, not a man at all. “He was impressive in the beginning—brilliant, refined, successful. The complete opposite of the men I’d known growing up.” I cringe as Gerald comes to mind—that collared velour shirt he always wore with the cigarette burns pocking the sleeves, cans of flat beer covering the coffee table. “I felt flattered by his attention. More than flattered. Chosen. It made me feel special to be on his arm.”
“And later?” Regis asks.
I hug my knees closer, shrug once. “I found out he was just another bully.”
He is compassionate, but not pitying. He doesn’t scoop me up or wrap me in platitudes. He doesn’t rush to make it right or alter my feelings. He just sits beside me, leaning back on his hands, a borderless land.
“I should get home,” I tell him, rising to find my scattered clothes. Dawn will come, and Myrtle must find me in bed.
He pushes himself up and pulls on his underwear and pants, his T-shirt. I can’t help but feel we look like mollusks redonning our shells, the pieces we have adapted to suit the world.
At the door, he stops me. “My sister… Did you really get that from touching her picture? That message?”
That and more, but the rest shouldn’t live inside him, so I will carry it instead, beside the danger, the cruelty I have been forced to witness, felt firsthand, even delivered. “Yes.”
“How?” he asks.
It is another question I can’t answer. His sister’s victimhood is my line to her, her abductor’s memories like leaves scattered on the breeze—but to explain would be to go into secrets that aren’t mine alone to share. Instead, I lay a hand over his on my arm and give him the truest, simplest answer I can. “Magic.”