How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic Read online

  Praise for The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic

  “If Hermione Granger had been an American who never received an invitation to Hogwarts, this might have been her story.”

  —People magazine

  “A marvelous plot, clever dialogue, and complex characters. . . . Fun, seductive, and utterly engrossing.”

  —Deborah Harkness, author of the All Souls trilogy

  “To read The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic is to enter a lush, fantastical dream filled with beauty and strangeness, love and cruelty, playfulness and gravitas.”

  —Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants and At the Water’s Edge

  “A clever and scrumptious debut fantasy, the kind you happily disappear into for days.”

  —Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners and Get in Trouble

  “Emily Croy Barker has written a sophisticated fairy tale that has one foot through the looking glass and the other squarely planted in the real world. . . . An imaginative synthesis of the stories that delighted us as children and the novels that inspired us as adults.”

  —Ivy Pochoda, author of The Art of Disappearing and Visitation Street

  “A wonderfully imaginative world of illusion and real magic that reveals the importance of a curious and open mind, learning, and love.”

  —Karen Engelmann, author of The Stockholm Octavo

  Also by Emily Croy Barker

  The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic

  Copyright © Emily Croy Barker, 2021

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned,

  or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials

  in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ISBN (paperback) 978-1-7364071-0-3

  ISBN (eBook) 978-1-7364071-1-0

  Published by Semrland Books

  P.O. Box 207

  Southport, Maine 04576

  United States of America

  emilycroybarker.com

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Book design by Iram Allam

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

  either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously,

  and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses,

  companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For my mother,

  who first taught me the magic of writing

  Chapter 1

  Letting the heavy doors swing shut behind her, Nora stood on the steps of the neo-Georgian box that housed the English department and let out a deep breath. The campus bell tower had just finished striking: three o’clock on a balmy spring afternoon. The dogwoods in the quad blazed with white glory, but Nora barely noticed them as she walked slowly down the steps.

  She discovered that she was still holding the manila folder that Naomi had given her, clutching it so tightly that her fingers had already left smudges on its creamy surface. She opened the folder, just enough for another glimpse of the letter on the department’s good stationery, the dean’s signature in blue ink at the bottom. I am pleased to inform you that in recognition of outstanding scholarship—

  The breeze making the dogwood blossoms dance suddenly ruffled the papers in the folder and tugged them free from Nora’s grasp. She snapped the folder shut, but a half-dozen sheets were already spinning away from her and fluttering across the grass. “Gods!” Nora swore under her breath, snatching back one of the papers, then running after the others, which seemed ready to take flight with the next gust of wind. One by one she trapped them.

  “Thanks,” she said to the pink-haired boy who came loping over with a sheet that had blown across his path. The undergraduates now looked even younger, more dewy-faced, than she recalled. Automatically she thought, I need to hurry up and finish my thesis. This was the first time in a year she’d felt that particular stab of anxiety, and it hadn’t lost any sharpness. But she had the Blum-Forsythe now. She would go to England and write a brilliant thesis that would make her thesis adviser swoon and regret ever having expressed any doubts about Nora’s abilities. Well, actually, Naomi would never swoon about anything, but she might narrow her eyes in appreciation and give a wolfish, approving smile, just as she had ten minutes ago when she told Nora about the fellowship.

  All the stuff that had blown out of the folder was probably online, Nora reflected, but it would be nice to keep the original of the dean’s letter. It wasn’t in the sheaf of papers she had recovered, however. She circled in place to see if she could spot the letter anywhere on the lawn.

  Someone held out a piece of paper to her, and she began to say an automatic thank-you. “Nora?” he said.

  It took her a second to realize that the man, who had wire-rimmed glasses and a puckish look, was Adam. Her first feeling was annoyance, as though he had deliberately tried to take her by surprise.

  “I thought that was you,” he said. “I heard you had resurfaced.”

  Nora took the paper from him. Yes, the dean’s letter. She wondered if Adam had read any of it in the ten seconds it had been in his hand, and hoped that he had. “Why are you here? Aren’t you still living in Chicago?”

  “Oh, I’m just here for the weekend. Ted Drumm’s bachelor party.” He gave a wry, deprecating grin—Nora knew it well—that hinted at how amusingly banal bachelor parties were. Even if he had come all the way from Chicago to attend this one. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was just talking to Naomi,” Nora said, closing the folder and sliding it into her bag. She studied Adam’s neat features, his vigilant brown eyes, the small smirk that lingered in the corner of his mouth, and she could not resist adding, “I got a fellowship for next fall. I’ll be in England. Cambridge.”

  “The Blum-Forsythe? I heard! That’s really great.”

  Of course Adam knew about it already, she thought. Two years since he’d finished his thesis and taken his doctorate, but he still had allies and admirers throughout the English department. He probably knew they were giving her the fellowship before the dean did.

  “Congratulations,” he was saying, “it’ll be huge for you, it’s about time you got some recognition.” He did sound genuinely excited.

  “I wasn’t expecting it,” Nora said. “I mean, last year, I had a conversation with Naomi, and she was not, um, very encouraging—but anyway they liked the paper I wrote on Dickinson, her strategies of absence—”

  “Yeah, I remember, you showed it to me. It’s a good paper. That’s what saved your fellowship. They wanted to yank it at one point, you know.” Adam gave her a shrewd glance. “Did Naomi tell you about that?”

  “She said they had to be resourceful—that was her word—and read the rules a certain way, to keep the award for me. Because they couldn’t reach me. I wasn’t around.”

  Adam nodded. “That’s right, basically. It was a little more complicated. I heard Brett Vance raised hell, saying his candidate should get the fellowship because you were nowhere to be found. But Naomi shut him down. She got Nina Blum, the donor, to read the proposals from all three finalists, and Nina hated Brett’s guy, and she loved you.”

  “Oh. Brett Vance. I see.” Any hint of his involvement would be enough to propel Naomi into action. Vance was her archenemy, guarding the fiefdom of Southern l
iterature—once the glory of the department—from the encroachments of the feminists and the critical race theorists. He had a small but devout following of students, who—Naomi had once observed—were all white men with incipient drinking problems and half-finished novels overgrown with kudzu.

  “I see. It wasn’t necessarily my brilliant paper that landed me this fellowship,” Nora said. “It was politics.”

  “Well, it always is,” Adam said. “But you wouldn’t have the fellowship without the brilliant paper, either. Anyway, where the hell were you?” he added. There was perhaps a hint of grievance in his tone. “You just disappeared off the face of the earth. It’s been, what, a year since that weekend?”

  “Not quite,” Nora said.

  “There were all these wild stories going around—that you were murdered or you got mixed up with a drug gang or joined Antifa.” She could feel his eyes lingering on her scarred cheek. “And the sheriff’s deputies and then this Asheville detective kept asking when I saw you last and what was I doing between seven and noon on May 11. I thought I was going to have to get a lawyer. They always suspect the ex.”

  The notion of Adam being a suspect in her disappearance had not occurred to Nora. Once she would have taken a vengeful pleasure in the thought of Adam trapped in an interrogation room, trying to meet a cop’s dead-eyed stare. Now the picture only seemed rather funny. “Did you tell them it was more likely I’d murder you?”

  “They were not kidding around,” he said resentfully. “I just told the truth, that everything—our breakup—was very amicable.”

  “That’s the worst thing you could have told them. No wonder they were suspicious.”

  “I actually wondered if this whole thing was a setup, if you ran off to make me look bad.”

  Nora gave an incredulous snort. “Adam. Please. Not everything is about you.”

  “Well, I didn’t know what to think. I knew you were kind of—upset.”

  An amicable breakup, he’d said. Nora shrugged. “Not upset enough to frame you.”

  “Thanks for that.” He smiled. “Anyway, so what did happen to you?”

  Nora slung her bag over her shoulder. “Oh, nothing as interesting as being in a drug gang,” she said. “I had a stupid accident in the mountains, I broke my leg, some people found me, and then I was kind of stuck for a while.” She began to walk along the brick path that crossed the quad. Adam kept pace with her.

  “Well, fortunately, enough people saw me drinking mimosas at the brunch that day to give me an alibi.” He shook his head, bemused. “An alibi. I actually had to have an alibi.”

  “Well, anyway,” Nora said. “So how are things with you? How’s married life?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Adam said. “I’m not married.”

  She frowned at him, uncertain as to how to take this revelation. He’d been quite clear about his intentions when he was breaking up with her. “You were planning to get married in the fall. Last fall.”

  “It didn’t happen.”

  “Oh. Is it going to happen?”

  “Not with Celeste, that’s for damn sure.” He spoke with feeling.

  Nora registered a fleeting sense of vindication. “Better luck next time.” By now they had crossed the quad and were approaching the old library. Several possible escape routes lay ahead. “Well. I need to get my car.”

  “It’s great to see you. We should talk more,” Adam said, with an air of sudden decision. “How about dinner tonight?”

  Nora already had an excuse: “I’m having dinner with Maggie. I’m staying with her.”

  “Oh, how is Maggie?” Without waiting to hear Nora’s response, he said: “How about a drink beforehand, then? Five thirty, six?”

  Nora tried again. “What about the bachelor party?”

  He waved away her objections. “It won’t get started until late. What’s your cell? Is it the same number?”

  As though he remembered the old one. But she gave him her new number, then turned down the walk that led past the old library, toward the parking lot.

  The Blum-Forsythe fellowship. She resisted the temptation to pull out the dean’s letter again. So—she was not a failure after all. She’d been judged and for once was not found wanting. Perhaps she had finally mastered the knack of impressing the stubborn, guarded, supercilious ranks of the departmental priesthood—even Naomi, who last year had made it clear that Nora wasn’t going to cut it much longer in grad school. But Nora was a credit to Naomi now, a trophy from her successful tussle with Brett Vance. A pawn that had turned into a queen.

  But still Naomi’s pawn. Nora’s mood darkened a shade. Still, this was an amazing chance. One thing she’d learned was that after a certain point in grad school, there were only winners, because all the losers had been eliminated. Maybe it was that way in other professions, too, but certainly the cozy inclusiveness of the university was a myth, and for a long time she’d feared that she had already taken her place on the losing side. Now she had a real opportunity to scramble up into the ranks of the winners. She could have her old life back, after this lost year, except better.

  Nora looked around the quadrangle as though seeing it for the first time. In the shade of arching oak branches, students hurried past, chattering to each other or staring at their phones. The trim, antiquated facades of the classroom buildings looked down at her with stately patience. Everything in view was civilized and orderly, full of grace and purpose. The air felt luminous with promise. She had a place here after all.

  Why, then, was her heart squeezed tight and her breath locked inside her chest?

  At ten to six, Adam was already waiting for her—that was new—at the zinc-topped bar of the Italian restaurant near the bookstore. He had always liked the place because of its wine list; Nora because of the name, Petrarch. In fact, the selection of wines by the glass was rather limited, but by the time Nora got there, Adam had already persuaded the bartender to pour him a glass of Gavi from the bottle-only menu.

  By the time she finished her drink, Nora had heard more about Adam’s complicated relationship with Celeste and its demise than she really cared to. But Adam was smart enough not to make a play for her sympathy, not overtly. Instead, he treated the whole episode as an absurdist comedy of manners. Despite her intention to remain cool, collected, and fundamentally unsympathetic, Nora found herself snickering, not sure whether she was laughing at him or with him.

  “—so obviously I was upset to find my fiancée boinking another man, and not even the man she claimed to be boinking—”

  Who said “boinking,” anyway? Adam had always been overfond of Briticisms—an occupational hazard of the study of English literature—but Nora wondered how often even the Brits said “boinking.” Well, she would find out soon enough. She was thinking of the Blum-Forsythe with a touch of complacency, mixed with anxiety—moving to England for a year, so much to do—when she became aware that Adam had stopped speaking.

  “Well, it doesn’t always work out,” she said, a tiny hidden dagger in her smile. “Does it.”

  “Thank God, it’s so much better this way. But listen—” Adam leaned toward her. “I want to hear more about what’s been going on with you.”

  He gestured to the bartender to refill Nora’s empty wineglass, although she was shaking her head no, no more for me.

  “I want to hear about how you got married,” he said.

  “I didn’t get—”

  “What about the ring? That’s a wedding ring.”

  So he’d noticed, although she’d been careful to let her left hand dangle behind the barstool where she thought he couldn’t see it.

  “Oh, the ring. It’s not exactly what it seems.” That was certainly true. “And it won’t come off.” Also true.

  Adam arched his eyebrows in theatrical disbelief, as though daring her to try to evade telling him all. Nora sighed and nodded to
the bartender, hovering with the bottle.

  “Yes, I did get involved with someone,” she said, keeping her eyes on the wine flowing into her glass. She took a sip. “It wasn’t a legal marriage. And then it was over.” She shrugged her shoulders lightly.

  “That’s not good enough, Nora. I told you all the sordid details of my misadventure.”

  As though I wanted to hear them, Nora thought. She began the same story that she had told Naomi, her family, and everyone else. Getting lost in the woods, breaking her leg. A long recovery in an isolated household, off the grid.

  “They were basically Sixties refugees,” Nora told him. “Maybe ex-Weathermen or something, although they never said anything about that.” The ring? A memento of the dreamy man who turned out to be an abusive liar. There was a subtext there—see what you let me in for when you dumped me, Adam!—but she tried not to overdo it. Finally, her return to civilization.

  Adam nodded as he listened, but something hard and attentive in his eyes made Nora know that he didn’t believe a word of what she was saying. She felt a sharp, unexpected thrill: he still knew her inside and out. It was strangely flattering.

  “You were a prisoner, is that what you’re saying?”

  “No, nothing like that.” She had to be careful here, or he’d want to know why the police or the FBI weren’t investigating. In fact, Nora had been surprised and slightly chagrined at how quickly the police had closed her missing persons case once she was no longer missing. “I wasn’t locked up. It was just so isolated.”

  “Sure, but these are the mountains of North Carolina we’re talking about, not the Himalayas. You couldn’t have been that far from civilization.”

  “It was far enough.” She took another sip of wine. “In winter it was hard to get around.”

  “OK, then spring comes, and this creep lets you go?”

  “There was another man who helped me.” Nora made her tone casual, but there was a new gleam of interest in Adam’s eye.

  “Oh, who was that?”