stone, from the birds that sang in its hedges, from the bare branches of its trees. He’d lost the person who knew him best, who loved him most. What else was there to cling to?
And then one day he realized the house had gone silent, that he’d heard his parents’ car
rumble down the drive but never heard them return. He opened his door and crept down
the stairs to find Black Elm completely empty. It hadn’t occurred to him that his parents
might simply leave. Had he secretly been holding them hostage, forcing them to stay in New Haven, to pay attention to him for the first time in his life?
At first he was elated. He turned on all of the lights, the television in his bedroom and
the one in the den downstairs. He ate leftover food from the fridge and fed the white cat
that sometimes prowled the grounds at dusk.
The next day, he did what he always did: He got up and went to the Peabody. He came
home, ate beef jerky, went to bed. He did it again and again. When the school year started,
he went to school. He answered all of the mail that came to Black Elm. He lived off Gatorade and chicken rolls from 7-Eleven. He was ashamed that sometimes he missed Bernadette more than he missed his grandfather.
One day he came home and flipped the switch in the kitchen, only to discover the electricity had been turned off. He pulled all of the blankets and his grandfather’s old fur
coat down from the attic and slept buried beneath them. He watched his breath plume in
the quiet of the house. For six long weeks he lived in the cold and dark, doing his homework by candlelight, sleeping in the old ski clothes he discovered in a trunk.
When Christmas came, his parents appeared at the front door of Black Elm, rosy-
cheeked and smiling, laden with presents and bags from Dean & DeLuca, Jaguar idling in
the drive. Danny bolted the doors and refused to let them in. They’d made the mistake of
teaching him he could survive.
Danny worked at the luncheonette. He got a job laying out manure and seed at
Edgerton Park. He took tickets at Lyric Hall. He sold off clothes and pieces of furniture from the attic. It was enough to keep him fed and keep the lights on. His few friends were
never invited over. He didn’t want inquiries about his parents or about what a teenage boy
was doing alone in a big, empty house. The answer he couldn’t give was simple: He was
caring for it. He was keeping Black Elm alive. If he left, the house would die.
A year passed, another. Danny got by. But he didn’t know how long he could keep just
making do. He wasn’t sure what came next. He wasn’t even sure if he could afford to apply to college with his friends. He would take a year off. He would work, wait for the
money from his trust. And then? He didn’t know. He didn’t know and he was scared, because he was seventeen and already weary. He’d never thought of life as long, but now
it seemed impossibly so.
Later, looking back on what happened, Danny could never be sure what he’d intended
that night in early July. He’d been in and out of the Beinecke and the Peabody for weeks,
researching elixirs. He’d spent long nights gathering ingredients and sending away for what he couldn’t scavenge or steal. Then he’d begun the brew. For thirty-six hours straight
he’d worked in the kitchen, dozing when he could, setting his alarm to wake him for the
next stage in the recipe. When at last he’d looked down at the thick, tarlike syrup at the bottom of Bernadette’s ruined Le Creuset, he’d hesitated. He knew what he was
attempting was dangerous. But he’d run out of things to believe in. Magic was all he had
left. He was a boy on an adventure, not a boy swallowing poison.
The UPS man had found him lying on the steps the next morning, blood streaming
from his eyes and mouth. He’d made it out of the kitchen door before he’d collapsed.
Danny woke in a hospital bed. A man in a tweed jacket and a striped scarf sat beside
his bed.
“My name is Elliot Sandow,” he said. “I have an offer for you.” Magic had almost killed him, but in the end it had saved him. Just like in stories.