A Spell for Disappearing

Do not attempt this magic lightly. You must be willing to risk everything to succeed, even your health, even your safety. Witches have died performing this rite.

You are stacking shelves when it happens. Rain patters against the windows as you wheel a cart loaded with books between the aisles. You head for the nonfiction section, your long skirt swirling around your ankles, your bracelets jangling faintly. You have worked at the library for more than a decade, and it is your favorite place, especially in the rain. There is a mystical quality to the silence today, a kind of otherworldly hush.

As you round the corner, something slams into you from behind. Your midriff collides with the cart, knocking the wind out of you. Books thud against the carpet.

“Herregud, jag är ledsen. Är du okej?” a deep voice asks. A large hand closes around your elbow, steadying you.

“I’m fine,” you say, correctly interpreting his question.

The man bends down and picks up the fallen books, handing each one to you with a brush of fingers. He is beautiful—there’s no other word for it—strong jaw, eyes like gemstones.

To your surprise, he’s staring at you the same way you’re staring at him, with dawning admiration. No one has ever looked at you this way before.

“My name is Ulf,” he says, his words tinged with a slight accent. “You must let me buy you a coffee as an apology. Yes? I will not take no for an answer.”

Gather your strength before attempting the Spell for Disappearing. This magic requires focus and stamina. The rite will unfold over a period of days, sometimes weeks, and you will not be able to rest until it is finished.

You wake to Ulf’s mouth on your nape. It is not yet dawn. His hands fumble hungrily down your waist, gripping your hips. You feel the sharp rim of his teeth and moan as he pulls you against his body. Your sleepiness makes one sensation of the warmth of his skin and the honeyed glow of the predawn air.

He pins you facedown to the bed, his palms crushing your wrists into the mattress. You spread your legs invitingly, obediently, though you are still sore and damp from last night’s lovemaking. Ulf does not hesitate. He is a talker during sex. During your whirlwind courtship, you have grown to enjoy it. His accent makes his words delicious. In a mix of English and Swedish, he whispers to you, telling you he craves you, telling you how amazing your fitta is, telling you he would die without you. “I need you, I need you,” he murmurs. “Du är så skön, just like that, so tight, gillar du det här?” He reaches his orgasm, biting your shoulder hard enough to bruise.

“And a good morning to you,” you mumble into the pillow. “Let’s sleep a little more, okay?”

But Ulf takes hold of your hips and turns you on your back. He strokes your breasts, teasing your nipples, then kisses determinedly down your stomach, toward your tangle of pubic hair.

“And now it’s your turn,” he says. “Mitt hjärta, min skatt, mitt liv.”

The sun is rising, throwing shards of light against the wall. You close your eyes, torn between fatigue and anticipation.

Ulf has been in your life for five weeks. You have not had a solid night’s sleep for five weeks. He grins wickedly up at you from beneath his mop of flaxen curls.

“I will be a student of your body,” he says.

Your alarm clock sounds. You fling out a hand and whack it blindly off the table. This is how all your mornings begin nowadays.

The Spell for Disappearing has been handed down through generations of witches. Through trial and error, it has been refined to its purest and most potent form.

Your mother was a junkie, your father a blank space on your birth certificate. And so you were raised by your grandmother, who taught you to pick mushrooms and bind the wings of injured birds. Together you nursed an abandoned litter of raccoons until they were old enough to be released into the alley, their natural habitat. Together you made poultices and teas from garden plants: feverfew for headaches, chamomile for wounds, goldenseal for stomach ailments, and valerian for sleep.

Together you weathered your mother’s occasional appearances. It was always the same—she would show up in the middle of the night, sweaty and disheveled, banging on the door and screaming that her only daughter was being kept from her. Your grandmother would usher you back to bed, where you would lie awake, listening to your mother’s unfamiliar voice rising and falling, dipping into sobs, and eventually petering out into whimpers. She was usually gone by morning, along with a substantial portion of the cash your grandmother kept in the cookie jar beside the kitchen sink.

You did not have many friends as a child, since the neighborhood kids believed your grandmother was a witch. They weren’t wrong. Raised in Reading, Massachusetts, a few miles from Salem, your grandmother came from a long line of herbalists and healers. She gave you your love of books. She taught you that your ancestors were persecuted as witches only because people did not value or understand botany and biology. She taught you what she knew about plants, about the body, about life on this planet, great and small. She taught you that men were afraid of women with knowledge and that women should seek knowledge in all its forms.

“It’s all butterflies,” your grandmother used to say, meaning that even the most remarkable things had logical explanations. You spent your summers collecting caterpillars, watching as they consumed the carrot leaves you picked for them until, driven by some internal wellspring of instinct, they climbed and held still, melting into jelly, thickening into a papery chrysalis, paralyzed for a somnolent week, and finally emerging as an entirely new creature, an explosion of color and wings.

Not a miracle, but evolution. Not witches, but wise women.

“It’s all butterflies,” your grandmother said, meaning that only fools believed in magic.

This spell requires a cursed object, ideally metal or stone. For best results, use a ring that has been marked by deceit or murder.

June brings rain to your small midwestern town. You and Ulf are strolling arm in arm, soaked in a gleaming drizzle, stopping every few feet to kiss. You could devour this man; you could live only on this wild love, forgoing food, water, and shelter. Your Viking, over six feet tall, with a craggy brow and golden curls. He has dual citizenship, he told you: his mother American, his father Nordic. He grew up in Uppsala, Sweden, and his English is accented but clear. The occasional malapropism serves only to endear him to you further. “It’s a piece of pie,” he will sometimes announce cheerfully, combining easy as pie and piece of cake. You never correct him.

You are thirty-eight years old, and you have never been in love before. You understand that now. Ulf is a revelation. Previous boyfriends might as well have been holograms, lacking flesh, breath, and pheromones. Even Zach, your partner for nearly five years, could not make you shimmy inside the way Ulf does with a single glance. You and Zach were polite lovers, doing crossword puzzles together and jogging side by side on the weekends. Your friends sometimes asked when you and Zach would marry, or even move in together, but neither of you had the inclination. The relationship stagnated, and eventually you parted, mostly due to boredom.

Before Ulf, you had come to believe that you would remain a solitary creature. You always wanted children, but it didn’t seem to be in the cards, so you boxed that desire up and hid it away. You expected to settle into middle age like your grandmother, resigned to her widowhood, surrounded by wildflowers and stray cats.

Now, beneath a lamppost, Ulf kneels, looking up at you, his skin milky in the light, his eyes white-blue, the irises frosted with ice crystals.

“I cannot wait even one more second,” he says, pulling a small velvet box from his pocket. “Join your life to mine. We must be together always.”

The ring is too small for your finger, and you do not like diamonds, certainly not boxy ones like this. You would have preferred something simple, but that does not matter now; nothing matters except this tidal wave of joy. You slide the ring onto your pinkie, and Ulf promises to have it resized “but immediately.”

“My darling,” he murmurs, kissing your eyelids, your throat, your palms. “My only love.”

Names have power. In all things, give out your own name judiciously and infrequently, even among other witches.

You are striding out through the front doors of the library, late to meet Ulf, when a woman emerges from behind a tree, startling you. It is a hazy summer evening, the breeze slow and laden with humidity. You attempt to sidestep the stranger and keep walking, but the woman forestalls you, holding up a hand.

“I have to talk to you,” she says.

“I’m off duty,” you say kindly. “If you go in through the double doors, the librarian at the front desk can point you in the right direction.”

“I’m Ruth Morgan.” The woman offers her name like a question, as though hoping to see an answering flash of recognition. She appears to be in her thirties, dressed in a denim vest and a skirt that swirls in the wind. Her skin is an earthy red-brown, her hair cut short and touched at the temples with gray.

“Do I know you?” you say. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember. I’m usually pretty good with faces.”

“No,” Ruth says. “We’ve never met.”

“Oh. Okay.” You are beginning to feel unsettled. There is something in the woman’s manner that you don’t understand. “Listen, I’m late to meet my fiancé,” you say.

You start walking again, wondering what Ulf has decided to cook tonight. He promised you a marvelous feast of Nordic recipes. It still feels odd to call him your fiancé. The resized ring is heavy on your finger, and it seems to have its own will, sometimes snagging on the stray strands of your scarf, sometimes glinting as though attempting to catch your attention.

A hand grabs your arm. You grunt in shock as the strange woman pulls you backward, her fingers cold, her grip painfully tight.

“Let go of me,” you cry out. “What the hell do you want?”

“Your fiancé,” Ruth says. “I need to talk to you.”

“Who are you?”

She gives you an appraising look that scrolls from your toes to your ponytail. You bristle at the intimacy and arrogance of her gaze.

“Believe it or not, I’m here to help you,” she says.

“Oh, really? How’s that?”

“He isn’t who he says he is.”

There is a moment of silence. The breeze dances down the hill, tugging Ruth’s skirt into billowing folds. You have one just like it at home, in a slightly darker shade. Her bracelets, too, remind you of your own, a row of silver bangles. There on the sidewalk, you experience the uncanny sensation of doubling. Like you, this woman has discreet tattoos peeking out beneath the edges of her clothing. She might be your distorted reflection in a funhouse mirror.

“You know Ulf?” you ask.

“Not by that name, but I know him.” Her voice is weary. “God, I know him.”

You have the sudden urge to put your fingers in your ears. You don’t want this to be happening.

“I can tell you love him,” she says. “I recognize the look.”

For the first time, there is compassion in her face, or maybe pity. You find this more alarming than anything else she has done so far.

“Everything he says is a lie. You’re in serious danger,” Ruth says.

“No,” you say. “Why are you doing this?”

“I know you don’t believe me. You’re not the first woman I’ve tracked down. They never believe me at first.”

“What are you talking about?”

She reaches in her pocket and pulls out a card. “Take this. It has all my information. He’s a pathological liar. He’s violent. You’ll start to see the signs now, if you just open your eyes. Call me when you’re ready to talk, okay?”

You don’t take the card, keeping your arms folded tight across your chest.

She snorts impatiently and rummages in her bag. After a moment, she extracts a photograph, shoving it under your nose.

“Look,” she says. “I’m not making this up. I’ve known him since we were kids.”

The picture is soft and creased around the edges, old and well-worn. A pair of teenagers lean against each other, a candid shot, neither of them smiling. There, unmistakable, is a younger Ruth, a smattering of pimples on her chin, hair in pigtails, midriff bared beneath a crop top. Beside her is a young man who vaguely resembles Ulf, but an American version, greasy-haired, dressed in a basketball jersey, his arms looped around Ruth’s waist, pulling her close to him. His pupils are crimson pinpoints in the flash.

“That could be anybody,” you say.

Ruth shudders, an odd convulsion. “It’s always the same,” she murmurs, as though to herself. She tucks the photograph back into her bag and closes her eyes. Then she begins to unbutton her vest. You watch in alarm as her fingers dance determinedly downward, revealing the freckled brown skin of her sternum.

“Don’t worry, I’m not about to flash you,” she says. Tugging her collar to the side, she shows you a mark above her heart, a wide scar, filmy and pink.

“He did this to me,” she says, without looking at you. “He did this when I left him. I had my suitcase packed. He grabbed me on my way out the door.”

The shape is unmistakable: an iron pressed against her flesh. For a moment you can hear the sizzle of scalding metal. The wide bottom seared the middle of her breastbone, while the point nestled in the hollow beneath her clavicle. The burn appears to be several years old, healed but still shiny, forever swollen at the edges.

Ruth buttons up her vest. You open your mouth and close it. There is no script for this.

“Ulf,” she says. “He went by another name when I knew him. Ulf means wolf, you know, in those Scandinavian languages. Mr. Subtlety at his finest.”

Without warning, her fingers dart forward, striking like a snake. She pinches your palm.

“What the hell?” you shout.

Ruth yanks off your engagement ring, holding it up to the light.

“God, he’s nothing if not consistent,” she says. “You’d think he’d buy a new ring, but he seems attached to this one. The thing must be cursed by now. He had it resized again, right? I’m guessing it was too small for you. The last woman had little squirrel paws.”

You snatch the ring back with shaking hands. “You’re crazy. You must be crazy.”

“I cannot wait even one more second,” Ruth says softly. “Join your life to mine. We must be together always.”

Then she leans forward and tucks her card into your purse.

Before performing the rite, you will need these elements: eggshell for awakening, seeds for rebirth, earth for permanence, bone for strength, water for change, and blood for life.

Your mother died when you were eight. An overdose, as expected. You attended the funeral at the side of your stone-faced grandmother, feeling as though you ought to cry, since she seemed unable to.

A week later, you rode your bike to the little occult shop on Main Street—the one your grandmother so often sneered at—and purchased a crystal ball with your own pocket money. You propped it up on the desk in your bedroom, which had belonged to your mother in her youth and was still decorated to her taste rather than yours. You stared into the depths of the orb for hours, hoping for a glimpse of the future or an image of the past, but there was only murky gray. You turned the glass ball this way and that, moving it from sunlight to shadow, discovering lighter and darker gradations of gray, now ash, now charcoal, until your eyes burned with tears.

In retrospect, you are not sure what was driving you. Perhaps it was an unwillingness to face the truth of what you had suffered. Perhaps it was a rebellion against your grandmother’s levelheaded practicality. Perhaps it was a desire to connect with the long line of witches who came before you. Perhaps it was a childish way of honoring your mother.

Even now, you know very little about her, beyond the addiction she could not overcome. But what is heroin if not synthetic magic, an escape from reality, a manufactured dream-state? You have seen pictures of your mother before she began using: long dark curls, a shy smile. You inherited her hair, her eyes, and something else, something stranger, something that kept you up late at night reading books about witchcraft that you checked out from the library without your grandmother’s knowledge.

The crystal ball was only the beginning. You sketched sigils and incantations in your journal, which you privately thought of as your own book of shadows. You read about circle-casting, smudging, and pentagrams, which were not satanic symbols as you had been taught but five-pointed stars representing the four elements and the human spirit. You learned that real witches did not use the terms black and white magic, which had racist overtones, speaking instead of “baneful” magic, intended to cause harm. You spent so many days alone, reading in your mother’s old bedroom with its frilly pink lampshades and flower-printed wallpaper. You would listen to your grandmother humming downstairs and the children at the neighborhood park screaming with laughter. You would turn the page, learning about sacred altars and the astral plane.

There had to be more to life than life. While other kids rode their bikes to the park or experimented with shoplifting, you kept track of the solstice and the equinox, Lammas and Beltane. When you were bullied or ignored at school, you imagined your astral body flying up through the ceiling and far away, leaving your mortal flesh behind. You wrote a list of intentions and burned it at the new moon. You pricked your finger and watched the blood collect in a bowl, drop by drop.

To this day, you have told no one about that time—it is too intimate, too precious. More than anything, you wished for a coven: a collective of witches, bonded by faith and sorcery, closer than family. More than anything, you wished for love—real love, the kind in songs and storybooks. After all, what could be more magical than two souls adrift in a heedless universe, happening to collide, and not just collide but open to each other, turning toward each other in a mutual dance?

The Spell for Disappearing may alter your perceptions. You may find that you can see through time. You may find that the true names of objects and people enter your mind unbidden. While working the ritual, you will be more powerful and astute, entering a heightened state.

You almost tear Ruth’s card to pieces. You almost stuff it down the garbage disposal. You almost hand it to Ulf, telling him everything, letting him take the reins and relieving yourself of this bizarre, dreadful burden.

It is Ruth’s scar that stops you—the precise outline of an iron, glowing neon in your memory.

Over dinner that night, you are quiet. Ulf whips up a sensuous repast, complete with a carafe of wine and acoustic guitar on the stereo. He raises a glass and toasts your good health. Over and over he calls you min fästmö, the Swedish word for fiancée. In response, you smile vaguely, pushing the food around on your plate. You have never treated him this way before, as though he is not the most interesting thing in the universe. Your obvious distraction sends him into a tizzy of praise—“my darling, so beautiful, so unique, min skatt, mitt liv.” For the first time, you sense a false note somewhere. Ulf tells you that the engagement ring is perfect on your finger, that you are alight with love, as though he is willing these things to be true.

“Listen, min fästmö,” he says. “How would it be if we went to Canada for our honeymoon? It is not so romantic as other places, perhaps, but I have a cabin there. It has been in my family forever, and it is my favorite place, yes, my very favorite place in all the world. Shall we go there together, as man and wife?”

“Perfect,” you say absently.

There is no sex that night.

“I’m too tired,” you tell him.

“Then let me fill you with energy, min fästmö,” he says, nuzzling your neck and breathing in your ear.

“My head hurts,” you say, harsher this time.

He pulls away like you slapped him. For a moment he stares, his eyes cold and narrow. Then he recovers himself, flashing a seductive smile.

“Poor thing,” he coos. “Let me tuck you in. I’ll massage your temples. Back home in Uppsala, min farmor taught me just how to heal a headache. That is Swedish for my grandmother. She would have loved you!”

You pretend to fall sleep. When Ulf slips out of the room, switching off the light, you take Ruth’s card from your pocket and turn it over in the darkness, warming it between your palms.

A coven is needed for this magic to reach maximum efficacy. Alone, you will not be able to manage the rite. Ideally there will be a full cohort of twelve. But if you do not have the time or opportunity to gather so many witches, even two, working together closely, can achieve strong results.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” you say for the third time.

You are seated as far away from Ruth as possible while sharing the same park bench. A man pushes a stroller along the path. A lawn mower starts up in the distance. Ruth tips her head back, drinking in the sunshine with her eyes closed.

“Ask me anything,” she says.

“I should go,” you say, but you do not get to your feet.

“Want to know his real name?” Her eyes are still closed, her chin lifted.

You don’t answer.

“Jeff Watkins,” she says. “We grew up together.”

“You grew up in Sweden?” you ask helplessly.

Ruth turns to you, her forehead crumpled. “No,” she says. “No. I grew up in Dayton. And so did Jeff.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He changes his identity,” Ruth says. “He likes to be different people. I think it’s almost . . . I don’t know, I can’t diagnose him, I’m not a medical professional, and he’s . . . well, he’s beyond the pale. Changing his whole persona seems like something he has to do, like a compulsion. He’s pretended to be a California surfer. He’s pretended to be a good old boy from the Deep South. Once he was an upper-class Brit. He remakes himself each time.”

“But he speaks Swedish,” you say.

“Nah. He’s never even been to Europe. He probably just memorized some catchphrases, got a translation app on his phone. You don’t speak Swedish, do you? How would you know the difference?”

“Look,” you say. “I’m not saying I believe you. But if I did—I mean—why? Why would he do this? Why would anyone?”

Ruth sighs. Her hair is a rumpled pixie cut, and she keeps smoothing it, a nervous habit.

“I should be better at this,” she says at last. “God knows I’ve done it enough times. Here’s the deal. You have money, right?”

The question hits like a gut punch.

Yes, you have money, but no one knows this. You have never told another living soul.

You lost your grandmother when you were twenty-two, in graduate school, getting your degree in library science. It was sudden, a car accident. A major trucking company was at fault, and there was a substantial settlement. All your grandmother’s property went to you. Her house was worth over a million, to your surprise. Despite its dilapidated roof and rambling garden, the surrounding neighborhood was up-and-coming and the acreage was precious.

You added the totality of your grandmother’s estate to the settlement from the trucking company. You have not touched that money, which has been sitting in the bank, accumulating interest at an astonishing rate, for over a decade.

You do not speak of it. Your friends, your coworkers—whenever someone asks about your family, you wave your hand noncommittally and change the subject. You have worked your entire adult life, put away money of your own, and saved carefully. You cannot bring yourself to spend one penny of the sum you were given as recompense for your immeasurable loss. Even magic cannot restore the dead. You cannot wish your grandmother back, but you will not grant the premise that cash could ever replace her raucous laugh, her perfect posture, her soft hands.

“How did you know?” you gasp.

“They’ve all got money,” Ruth says. “Jeff is good with computers; he finds these things out. It’s blood in the water. He can sniff it out a mile away. You’re loaded, aren’t you?”

She glances at you, finding confirmation in your face.

“You ran into him someplace random, I bet,” she continues. “He bumped into you, spilled your drink or something, and your eyes met. Love at first sight.”

“Kismet,” you say. It was Ulf’s word, and you had to look it up.

“Whirlwind courtship,” Ruth says. “Quick marriage. He’s already picked a date, right?”

“Next month,” you whisper. “He said he always wanted a July wedding. ‘Why wait?’ he said.”

“Right. And no prenup. You see?”

“But he pays for everything. He told me that his salary is amazing—he always picks up the check—he insists . . .” You cannot breathe. A wheezy whistling escapes you, and Ruth scoots closer, rubbing your back like a mother soothing a colicky child.

“It’s difficult to hear, I know,” she murmurs, but her tone is mechanical. How often has she said these exact words before?

“Go on,” you say, steadying yourself. “Tell me what I need to know.”

Ruth stares at you as though assessing your mettle. Then she nods.

“Jeff and I both grew up dirt-poor,” she says. “But you’re right, he does have money now. This is his job.” She points to the diamond ring on your finger. “He can afford to pay for everything at the start of each relationship. It’s his investment. It reaps huge benefits.”

“And after? Once he’s—married?”

“Well.” She shakes her head. “He’s got a temper. He can only be sugar and spice for so long. He keeps up the performance until the papers are signed. Then the true colors come out.”

“True colors?” you echo on a high note.

She pauses, biting her lip. “Slaps and punches. Black eyes, broken nose.”

“Jesus.”

“He threw one woman through a glass door. Put her in the hospital.”

You wrap your arms tightly around your middle.

“So you get divorced,” Ruth says. “And he gets half. Sometimes more. One of them—one of his brides—her family had this beautiful cabin in Canada, on a lake. They’d owned it for generations. It was her favorite place in the world, she told me. I found her too late. After they were already married. His lawyer nabbed the cabin in the divorce.”

A young couple strolls down the path in front of you, holding hands in companionable silence. You resist the urge to separate them by force.

“It’s a lot to take in,” Ruth says sympathetically. “Sleep on it. Think about it. And when you’re ready to leave him, call me.”

When—not if.

The sun breaks through the clouds, dappling your skin. There is a question hovering in the air. Finally you find the courage to ask it.

“Did he do this to you? Take your money? Lie to you?”

Ruth bows her head.

“I was the one he loved,” she says after a moment, her voice expressionless. Her hand lifts to her chest, rubbing the scar beneath her T-shirt. “He pursued me since elementary school; he told everybody he was going to marry me. He would show up at my house with flowers, throw pebbles at my window. My friends thought it was the most romantic thing in the world. But I always said no. He scared me somehow. That anger. And—” She breaks off. “I felt like there was nothing behind his eyes, you know?”

You watch her, waiting. Her gaze has slipped inward.

“I finally gave in,” she says. “He wore me down. Or maybe he got better at hiding who he really was. We dated for a few years in high school, then got engaged after graduation. I didn’t have money. Not a red cent. There was nothing for him to gain. So I think he loved me, as much as he’s capable of that emotion.”

You realize you are holding your breath.

“He gave me that.” She points to your ring again. “Then he gave me this.” She points to the brand left by the iron.

Be conscious of what you eat and drink before performing the rite. Vegetables are best, as they will strengthen your flesh and nourish your spirit. It is wise to avoid heavy foods and sweets.

Haggard, you stumble through work like a zombie, making mistakes, earning concerned looks and a few reprimands. The world around you is unreal, flattened, like the set dressing on a stage, a facsimile of an actual place. The backdrop of the library might as well be made out of cardboard. Your coworkers are actors reading lines: “Hey, did you forget to check the inventory?” “You’re looking a little green, are you okay?”

You are not okay. You are engaged to a villain. You have no doubts anymore. Your conversation on the park bench with Ruth was only yesterday, but that is long enough for the truth to sink in, all the way down to your bones.

You will break up with him. When, not if. You will choose a public place to do it. You will get your locks changed first. You will be brave, like Ruth. Maybe you will install a new security system. Maybe you will get a guard dog.

It felt too good to be true because it was too good to be true. You will survive this, you tell yourself. It will not be difficult to untangle your life from Ulf’s. The man has been in your orbit for only two months now.

At lunchtime, he texts you: I will pick you up at 4. We must go to the bakery and try wedding cakes. I prefer chocolate, but I will defer to you.

A wave of nausea crests beneath your breastbone. You barely make it to the toilet in time, expelling everything you have eaten that day, vomiting until the sides of your stomach clang together and there is nothing left to come up.

Be prepared for strange and unpredictable bodily changes. The Spell for Disappearing has a way of altering and warping the flesh. Before, during, and after vanishing, your anatomy will undergo extreme stress and may swell, ache, or scar. You will emerge transformed.

Sitting on the toilet, you clutch the pregnancy test in both hands. It will take five minutes to give you results—enough time to make a cup of tea to soothe your stomach, peppermint, as your grandmother taught you—but you can’t seem to move. You are trapped like a fly in amber, pants around your ankles, legs going numb, gaze fixed on the window of the pregnancy test, an oval the size of a grain of rice.

This is the most reliable brand on the market. One blue line means business as usual. Two blue lines means that the world, already sideways, has turned all the way upside down.

You run through your list of symptoms again. Fatigue, which you assumed was due to your all-night marathons in bed with Ulf. Hot flashes, possibly attributable to Ulf’s good looks. A vague feeling of nausea when smelling grilled meat over the past couple of weeks. A few moments of eerie light-headedness that you assumed were lovesickness, back when you were still in love. And one intense bout of vomiting earlier today. Nothing conclusive. Your period is a few weeks late, but that’s not unusual. Your cycle has always been irregular, easily thrown out of its rhythm by stress.

The past few days have been extremely stressful. Since Ruth stepped out from behind that tree, you have inhabited a waking nightmare.

You left work early, telling your coworkers you were sick. You texted Ulf the same, hoping that he would give you space—a moment to breathe, to think, to find your footing. Instead, he bombarded you with messages, asking how you were feeling and offering to come over with medicine. You made excuses: I don’t want you to catch whatever this is, I don’t want you to see me like this, it’s gross. He was undeterred, volunteering to lay a cool cloth on your brow, calling you his fitta, his skatt, his liv, words he learned from a translation app and was probably misusing.

I’m going to nap, I’ll text you when I’m up, you wrote finally, then turned off your phone, relishing the silence.

Now your gaze is locked on the tiny window like a laser. You spin your engagement ring, a nervous tic, digging a shiny groove into the flesh of your third finger.

A sound from downstairs startles you—a key turning in the lock. Ulf calls out, “Mitt allt? Are you awake now? I have a surprise for you.”

You glance back at the pregnancy test and muffle a cry in your palm. Two blue lines. Sperm and egg. Blood and bone.

Ulf’s footsteps climb the stairs, quick and eager. You splash water on your face, ashen in the mirror. Then you realize you are still holding the pregnancy test. You lunge toward the trash can, intending to stuff it down beneath the soiled tissues and used cotton balls. But what if Ulf searches the garbage? You have no idea what he’s capable of. The damn thing is too bulky to flush.

“Mitt allt?” Ulf repeats playfully, just outside the door. “I know you are in there. I can hear you breathing.”

The window. You always leave it slightly ajar, even in cold weather, to reduce steam and odors. You lean across the sink and hurl the pregnancy test into the alley behind your house.

The knob rattles. Ulf pounds on the door with his fist, making you jump. “Are you all right? I am growing worried. Open, please.”

You obey. He fills the bathroom with his bulk, holding out a bouquet of flowers, and you bare your teeth in what you hope is a smile.

The moon is a potent force in the lives of witches. You must learn how your own magic responds to each phase. Most practitioners find their abilities to be strongest during the full moon and weaker during waxing and waning. The new moon offers its own dark power, erratic and mysterious.

In the dead of night, you call Ruth, who answers after one ring, as though she was waiting. She sounds fully alert, not a hint of sleepy slurring.

“Are you alone?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Good. Where is he?”

“Asleep upstairs. I told him I wasn’t feeling well and I wanted to be on my own tonight. He wouldn’t go. He said he couldn’t stand the idea of abandoning me when I’m under the weather.” You pause, a chill tracking down your nape. “It’s like he knows I’m on to him. He won’t leave me alone for a second.”

A low chuckle. “How can you tell when he’s lying?” Ruth asks. “His lips are moving.”

You settle on the couch. The moon hangs in the window, a delicate crescent. You are not yet ready to tell Ruth about your pregnancy. Speaking the words aloud will make the situation real.

“How many women has he done this to?” you ask instead.

“Twenty-three, including you.” Her answer is immediate, no need to tally it up in her head. She knows the count; she carries it with her.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah, he’s prolific. And I haven’t always been able to stop him. He gets around; he’s clever. He’s gotten married eight times.”

“Eight? Seriously? Isn’t that illegal?”

“Oh, no. He gets divorced each time. No bigamy. Right side of the law.”

The house is absolutely silent. For once, you are grateful for the loose floorboard outside your bedroom door that squeals like a banshee whenever you step on it. You’ve been meaning to have it fixed for years, but now it will be your lo-fi alarm. You are sure Ulf is sleeping; you waited to leave the bed until he was snoring, his mouth pooling open, fingers twitching. The board will tell you if he wakes.

“I broke up thirteen of his conquests,” Ruth says. Her voice is a rich alto, filled with pride. “Saved thirteen women.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah,” she says.

You count quickly on your fingers. “So eight of them married him. You stopped thirteen. That’s only twenty-one. What happened to the other two?”

Ruth sighs. “One lady figured his deal out on her own. By the time I found her, she’d already broken up with him. The other one . . .” She trails off.

You dig your fingernails into your palm. “What happened to her?”

“That’s the one he threw through a glass door. She was in the hospital for days. And she still didn’t want to leave him. Kept forgiving him. Even after I found her and told her everything, she kept trying to make it work. She told me to get lost. Told me she could change him. He left her, in the end. Once he had all her money.” There is a silence. Then, softly, Ruth says, “She committed suicide. A few months after he took off.”

The moon is tangled in the branches of a tree like a Christmas ornament. The crescent is so fine it seems that the twigs might scrape it, break it.

“Why do you do this?” you ask.

“Do what?”

“Help people. Save women. Don’t you have a job? How do you manage it?”

Ruth laughs. “I do have a job. I’m a coder, so I can work from anywhere. Thanks for asking.” You can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic or genuine. “And I didn’t always do this. After I left him, I didn’t think about him for years. I had my own shit to be dealing with. Then I heard he was married. And married again. And I heard that he broke a woman’s jaw. And got married again. Four women, five women. I realized what was happening. I went sleuthing and I saw that all the women . . .” Her voice dips into a murmur. “You’re all a little like me. Did you notice that?”

“Yes,” you say.

“It’s like he was looking for me over and over, then hurting me over and over. Dark hair, boho, intellectual, lonely—he’d find another one, swoop in, and take everything. I saw the pictures of these women on my laptop. All different but the same. Dozens of us laid out in a row like sisters or something. I couldn’t sleep at night. The scar on my chest—” She breaks off, breathing hard. “I couldn’t sleep.”

You nod, then remember that she can’t see you.

“I do this because I have to,” Ruth says. “And now I sleep fine.”

“Does he know?” you ask. “Does he know what you’re doing?”

“Oh, no,” she says in a rush. “No, I keep off his radar. I hope he just thinks he’s losing his touch, that his plans keep coming apart, all these crazy women changing their minds on him. If he knew I was involved, he’d kill me.”

She says this matter-of-factly. It’s not hyperbole; it’s the reality of her situation.

A creak from upstairs. You tremble involuntarily, staring at the ceiling.

“He’s waking up,” you whisper.

“Be careful,” Ruth says, and the line goes dead.

The floorboard gives an inhuman shriek. You hear Ulf padding down the hall, calling your name.

You must speak the words of the Spell for Disappearing exactly. Any mispronunciation can be catastrophic, even fatal. While performing the rite, witches have been known to lose a hand, an eye, an entire limb, or their lives, because of a simple slip of the tongue.

For a week—the most difficult week of your life—you pretend to have the flu. You use the oldest trick in the book, holding the thermometer near a light bulb to fake a fever for Ulf’s benefit. Your nausea, at least, is real enough. Morning sickness, however, seems to be a misnomer. The afternoons are the hardest, and you take to skipping lunch, since you won’t be able to retain it anyway.

“Poor child,” Ulf says. “Never have I seen someone so ill.”

He won’t leave your side for a moment. He hovers around you like a wolf circling an injured caribou. You can’t call Ruth; he’s always listening. You can’t even text her, since Ulf has a habit of playfully grabbing your phone to “see what interests you so.” In every interaction with him, you exercise rigid control over your body, imitating the same behaviors you used to do naturally: stroking his cheek, smoothing his hair. It is an eerie, mutual performance, a pas de deux, both of you miming love, both of you lying. He kisses your brow, thinking all the while about your bank account, or so you assume. You blink up at him, feigning fondness, wishing he would be run over by a bus or killed by a falling tree branch, something swift and accidental and not your fault. You are not friends or lovers but enemies locked in a bizarre pantomime. His goal is to hurt you; your goal is to escape him. Your hope is to survive him.

More and more, you catch glimpses behind his facade. His flirtatious winks, once so alluring, now contain a gleam of desperation. His exaggerated gestures, which used to seem intriguingly foreign, now strike you as hammy and implausible. How did you not notice these things before? Were you so flattered by his attentions that you could not perceive the instability of his accent, drifting occasionally into Russian or cockney? What has changed, the quality of his deception or your level of perceptiveness? You prefer to believe that Ulf is slipping—that he fooled you before not because you are a gullible stooge but because he was at the top of his game, a shrewd, practiced con man deploying his entire arsenal of charm. Now, however, he must sense that something is amiss in your reactions, and as a result he has begun to overdo his performance like a comedian onstage who stops getting laughs.

When he enters your bedroom, you close your eyes, pretending to sleep. You shudder away from his touch and blame the fever. You call in sick at work. Your boss is furious, but you don’t care. They can fire you if they want to. What does it matter?

You are thirty-eight years old. You have always wanted children. This is your last chance to be a mother.

The fact of the baby burns like a bonfire in your mind, throwing everything else into shadow. All your life you have been searching for magic, and here, in your belly, a spark, a seedling, a cell dividing and dividing, a new creature spun into being, reworking your hormonal system, taking what it needs from your flesh, a miracle, nothing short of a miracle. You were not trying to get pregnant. You were falling in love, still using condoms, too sex-drunk to consider your ovulation cycle. Without your attention, without your conscious will, life has taken root inside you.

“It’s all butterflies,” your grandmother would say, but you know better.

And so you lie in bed, pretending to be sick, touching your belly, laughing and weeping in silence, making up your mind.

It is unwise to dabble in baneful magic. Jinxes and hexes offer power, but there is a cost. Remember the Rule of Three, which governs all practitioners of magic: any energy or intention that you send out into the world will one day return to you, threefold stronger.

After a week of fake flu, Ulf comes into your bedroom with a long face and sits on the edge of the bed.

“My love, I have terrible news,” he says mournfully.

You feign disorientation, as though you’ve just woken up. “What? What is it?”

“I must leave town. I shall be gone all weekend. An eternity, when I am apart from you!”

“Oh no,” you say. It doesn’t come out right—too flat.

He flicks his gaze at you, a gleam of blue.

“I’ll miss you,” you add quickly.

“My work—it is overwhelming sometimes,” he says. “But the salary—ah! How could I turn it down? And they rely on me so much.”

You know better than to push for details. God knows what he’ll really be doing out there.

As a child, you read about the negative side of magic, turning the pages of your library books with caution, as though even looking at the names of these dangerous spells could infect you with their essence. It frightened you to think that there were witches out there making hex bags, launching psychic attacks, or dabbling in necromancy.

But in your wildest imaginings, you never pictured someone like Ulf. A shapeshifter, a trickster, a sorcerer in his own right. He divined the secret presence of your wealth, something you have successfully hidden for almost two decades. He wove a love spell over you, captivating you, sweetening the air you breathed and electrifying all the colors. He remade you into a kind of living voodoo doll, a replica of the woman he once adored, the woman he really wanted to hurt. You imagine the long string of bodies in Ulf’s wake, rag dolls cast aside, limbs broken, bank accounts empty, black eyes, hospital stays, medical bills, PTSD, panic attacks, scars.

“When do you leave?” you ask.

“The day after tomorrow,” Ulf says, shaking his head in sorrow. “But do not worry! I shall be by your side every moment until then.”

“Gone all weekend,” you repeat. A door is opening inside your mind.

Timing is critical in the Spell for Disappearing. You must be swift and decisive. Perform the rite without hesitation or pause. Any delay at the crucial moment can be lethal.

“Holy shit,” Ruth says.

You are sitting in the back booth of a diner, screened from the door by a massive plastic fern. The restaurant is bustling, your voices hidden in the clatter of dishes from the kitchen and the warble of music from the jukebox.

“I told him I was going back to work today,” you say. “I went to my ob-gyn instead. I’m eight weeks pregnant. It must have happened right away. Like the first or second time we had sex.”

“Damn.” Ruth lifts her coffee mug in both hands, brings it to her nose, inhales without drinking, and sets it down again. “I’m assuming he doesn’t know.”

“Of course not. You’re the first person I’ve told.”

The absurdity of this almost makes you laugh. Almost. Under normal circumstances, there is a pattern to this kind of disclosure: first the father of the baby, then family and friends. But your grandmother died over a decade ago, you don’t dare to involve any of your work friends or book club members, and the father of your baby is a psychopath and a sorcerer.

And what is Ruth? As new as an acquaintance, as close as a blood relative, impossible to define.

“What are you going to do?” she asks. Without waiting for an answer, she says quickly, “I’d abort. Seriously. If you keep it, you’ll be chained to him forever. He’ll have rights over the kid. Do you want him involved in the life of your baby? What if he decides that the kid could be a new, fun way to hurt you? He’ll get violent with you, and probably the kid too, it’s just a matter of time. He’ll take all your money and just keep taking. You’ll never be free of him. What kind of life would that be?”

The waitress appears, setting down a plate of bacon and hash browns for Ruth and dry white toast for you. The smell of the meat turns your stomach.

“I’ve thought about all of that,” you say, once the waitress is out of earshot. “I’m keeping the baby.”

Ruth opens her mouth to argue, but you cut her off.

“He’s leaving for a few days,” you say. “He told me this morning.”

She nods. “I was expecting that. There were legal complications with the last divorce, back in Michigan. He has to show up in person to make his case.”

“I won’t be here when he gets back,” you say. “Will you help me?”

Ruth’s bracelets flash in the light as she leans forward, gathering up your hands in hers.

You must divest yourself of all your worldly possessions. A spell of this potency requires a spiritual lightness. If you are weighed down by material objects, your magic will be diminished, and as a result, your disappearance may be painful, partial, or incomplete.

Barefoot, you stand on the front porch. A moving truck fills the street, casting its massive shadow across the lawn. Burly men stream in and out of your house, toting your furniture. They are as busy and indistinguishable as ants: black T-shirts, crew cuts, bulging biceps, unsmiling faces, a pervasive cloud of body odor. Feeling useless, you try to stay out of their way. Occasionally one of them barks a question: “Does this need to be bubble-wrapped?” or “Are you seriously giving this away?”

Yes, you’re giving it away, all of it. Once the truck is loaded, the moving men will drive your belongings to Goodwill, and anything that remains unclaimed will end the day at the dump.

You wipe the sweat from your brow. The morning is coming to a boil, the heat climbing with each tick of the clock. Grunting, the men carry off your wrought iron bed frame, your oak bookshelves, even your books. You scheduled the moving company to come as early in the day as possible, hoping for an unobtrusive getaway, the work finished before dawn, your neighbors none the wiser. You underestimated the time it takes to empty an entire house. Dozens of joggers and dog-walkers have already passed by—wide-eyed witnesses. An elderly couple has even stopped to watch, murmuring to each other and pointing as though they’re at a show.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket, and a jolt of panic runs down your spine. Of course, the text is from Ulf. It’s always from Ulf. He has been away for only twelve hours, but he has sent nearly fifty messages and shows no sign of slowing.

I miss you, my darling. Tomorrow I will be in your arms again.

You send back a string of emojis: hearts, flowers, smiley faces. Hopefully this will appease him.

The sun climbs the sky. The air shimmers with plumes of heat. As though in a dream, you watch your possessions leaving you. A trio of men work together to balance your wide oval dining table. Another emerges from the house with your fridge-sized bureau strapped to his back. The truck is a hungry mouth, consuming your bicycle, your flower-printed couch, and the loom your grandmother left you.

Your phone buzzes again, and again you feel a thrill of fear.

Send me a selfie, Ulf writes. Send it now, right now. I must see your face. I drown without you.

You do not want to give him this, peeling off a layer of yourself and projecting it through the ether. You want him to have nothing of yours, not even your image. But you have no choice.

Careful framing is required, making sure that nothing suspicious is visible behind you, no glimpse of the truck or the men, just the big tree out front. In the photo, your smile is false, but you cannot summon a true one. You apply a filter that bleaches out the dark circles under your eyes and the taut lines of anxiety around your mouth.

That is beauty, Ulf texts back. You breathe again.

The process of disappearing will be arduous both physically and mentally. Remember that resilience is as much a matter of mind as it is bodily strength. You must be brave, even when the ritual becomes painful, even if the discomfort seems unbearable.

At the bus stop, you hover in the shadows. It is evening, the clouds underlined in fading gold. You do not want to be seen here; you wear a baseball cap and sunglasses and stay away from the bright lights of the depot. You don’t think there’s a security camera, but you aren’t taking chances. Earlier today, you cut your hair in the mirror, chopping off your long dark curls without hesitation. You look even more like Ruth now, identical pixie cuts revealing shell-like ears.

At your feet lies a duffel containing the remainder of your worldly possessions: a change of clothes, the turquoise bracelet your grandmother used to wear, and the crystal ball you purchased in your childhood, which turned up at the back of a cabinet as you prepared for the moving men. You have winnowed yourself down to the bare essentials. It is remarkable how little one actually needs.

Your phone rings in your pocket—a clunky flip phone with an old-fashioned electronic chime. No GPS function. Paid for in cash. Only one person has this number. You threw away your smartphone this morning.

“Are you okay?” Ruth asks.

“The bus should be here any minute.” You check your ticket again. “We depart at seven thirty-five.”

“Good.”

“I’m so scared,” you murmur.

“I know. But he won’t find you. He’ll never know what happened.”

“His plane lands at eight. What if the bus is late? What if—”

“You’ll be okay. We thought of everything.”

“You promise?” you ask, hearing the childish note in your own voice.

To your surprise, Ruth laughs, the first genuine, full-throated laugh you have ever heard from her.

“This is exciting,” she says. “I’ve helped so many women, you know? Getting an alarm system installed for them, driving them across town to move in with friends—I thought I’d seen it all. I even went with one to buy a gun.” Her breath crackles eagerly down the line. “It’s always the same pattern. I stick around until they’re safe. And then Jeff disappears. Once he has the money, or when he realizes he’s never going to get that money—poof. Gone in a puff of smoke.”

“Right,” you say slowly, considering this.

“I’ve spent so much time tracking that dude down,” she says. “The women stay, and he goes. He runs, and I chase him. But this time—” Ruth gives another belly laugh, a deep burble of untamed mirth. “The tables are gonna turn. God, I’d give anything to see his face when he gets back. You’re about to vanish into thin air.”

You hang up, promising to call her from the road.

Fidgeting, you run through the checklist in your mind. Tomorrow the library will receive your letter of resignation. The change-of-name forms are loaded in your backpack. Your house is on the market. Ruth went with you to meet with the realtor, explaining the uniqueness of your circumstances. She accompanied you to the bank and helped you move your money into an untraceable account, safe even from Ulf’s baneful powers of divination. You withdrew a healthy roll of cash, which will sustain you for the present, keeping you off the grid.

This is what the money is for. This is what it was for all along.

Eight weeks pregnant. You stroke your stomach, grateful that your baby is not yet developed enough to share any part of your anxiety. Near the end of a pregnancy, a fetus in the womb can absorb and echo some of its mother’s emotions; her blood is its blood too, after all. But a two-month-old embryo is less than an inch long, with only the most nascent glimmer of a brain. It does not have bones or sensory organs, much less the neural architecture necessary to experience pain or fear.

Your child will grow up safe. Your child will never know a thing about her father. A blank space on the birth certificate.

You check your watch again: 7:32. Still no sign of the bus. Somewhere behind you, a teenager is playing a video game at top volume, filling the air with erratic, staccato chiming. The wind picks up, carrying the smell from the garbage bins beside the depot. Your stomach twists with nausea.

After a moment, you kneel, unzipping the duffel and groping for the crystal ball. You want its comforting weight in your hands just now. Beneath the streetlight, you see your own face reflected in the curve of glass. The combination of ambient darkness and overhead illumination brings your image into stark relief. You lean forward, and your reflection elongates. There are your grandmother’s hooded eyes, her thin nose. You have never seen the likeness so clearly before, though people used to comment on it when you were a girl. Your features will age into your grandmother’s, you can see now. The underlying bone structure has always been the same.

The streetlamp flickers, and your reflection changes. Now there are many faces inside the orb, some shadowy and ethereal, some crisp and solid. A few have pixie cuts like yours, but others blur into black, giving the impression of long dark curls. There are dozens of them, dancing in and out of view, shifting like light on the surface of water. Perhaps they represent the other women Ulf has harmed—Ruth and all your sisters, the coven you never knew you had. You lift a hand to wave to them, and the image alters again, your reflection warping and contracting before your eyes.

There, looking back at you, is a child’s face. Plush cheeks, a rosebud mouth, a serene expression. You gasp aloud. Is this, at long last, a true glimpse of the future? You lean close, trying to see clearly in the murky depths, but the child remains stubbornly out of focus, a gauzy waif with blurred features. It is impossible to determine age or gender, though the face seems plump and healthy, maybe even smiling.

And then the bus thunders around the corner, huge and shuddering, cutting a proud swath through the gloaming. Its headlights strike the crystal ball in your hands, erasing your image and setting the orb aglow. For a moment there is only light, a miniature sun cupped in your palms, shining with infinite possibilities.

Few witches have ever succeeded in performing the Spell for Disappearing. No one has ever managed to work the spell a second time, as it requires too much of the body and mind. This rite is one of the most potent and risky forms of magic known. If you are strong, if you are resolute, you will be able to vanish once in your lifetime—and only once. Choose wisely.