Broken by Magic

by Rebecca Danese

  She feels small and frail in my arms, and it takes all my resolve not to join her in a flood of tears myself. Instead, I stare at Dad, the man that has caused me misery for the past few years. At what point did we stop being able to have a conversation without it ending in a fight? I can’t remember, but I do know that, despite our differences, he’s family, and I’d do anything for him, even if he’ll never thank me for it.

  “I could help,” I say quietly.

  “Help? How, love?” Mum pulls her head away from my chest and looks at me sharply through her damp eyelashes.

  “I have... friends. Healers.” I whisper the last word in case Dad picks this exact moment to open his eyes.

  “There’s no way someone could fix his heart, love,” Mum says softly. “Don’t you think if there were people who could, they’d be working in the hospital?”

  “Some of them do,” I say, thinking of David, who spends his days as a doctor in a very private and exclusive clinic, when he isn’t in hiding in the countryside with us at least. “Some are better than others, but I know of two who I’m sure could help.”

  “What makes you so certain?”

  I hesitate. I didn’t tell her anything about Munday or the fact that I would have been paralysed if it weren’t for David and Beryl. But now might be the only chance to convince her that Augurs aren’t as bad as Dad has been making them out to be. Maybe, just maybe, even he would change his mind about them if they were able to save his life.

  “I, er, had a little run in last year with someone,” I say.

  She pulls away from me, holding me at arm’s length as she examines my face.

  “You were there, weren’t you? When Munday went mad,” she says quietly. Not much gets past her.

  “Yeah. I was there. Ella was the one that stopped him. If it weren’t for her, I think the whole city would have gone under by now,” I admit. She digests this for a moment, letting me go and turning to the hospital window. She’s surprised, I suppose. I would be too if I were in her position.

  “And what did you do?” she eventually asks.

  “I distracted him. Just long enough for her to overpower him. But he broke my spine, and a friend of mine and his Mum healed me within a couple of weeks.”

  “He did WHAT? Curtis, why didn’t you tell us? How did I not find out about this?” Mum says, suddenly furious to find out that she’s been kept out of the loop.

  “Mum, shhh, it’s fine. Really, I’m right as rain,” I say, turning this way and that with my arms out as if to demonstrate the fact.

  “But, Curtis, he could have killed you!”

  “I know. But he didn’t, and my friends saved me. If it weren’t for them, I’d be paralysed. They’re amazing, and I think they could help Dad,” I say, hoping that he really can’t hear us. If he can, then he’ll be livid when he comes round.

  “The problem is that your Dad, stupid as it may sound, would probably rather be in a coma than let one of them touch him,” Mum points out.

  I find it odd how she won’t actually say the word ‘Augur’, as if it’s some kind of swearword. I don’t know if that’s general society’s influence or my Dad’s, but it’s annoying.

  “Besides,” she says, “with everything going on with the new laws and that, it’s going to be far too risky to let someone come in here and start using you-know-what.”

  “Well, if it’s the choice between him being a vegetable, dying, or letting someone heal him, then I think you can probably make that call.”

  Mum looks sadly between Dad and me, as if listening to both sides of a silent argument. She shakes her head, more to herself than to me.

  “I couldn’t live without him,” she murmurs. I think she’s trying to convince herself of the idea.

  “I know, Mum,” I say, putting a hand on her shoulder. She puts her hand on top of mine and takes a deep shuddering breath.

  “You really do now, love. I see it in the way you look at Ella. How you hold on to each other like a lifeline. I’m proud of you.”

  “What, for getting myself mixed up in their business and nearly killing myself in the process?” I joke, although I know it isn’t funny.

  “No, silly. For finding someone who loves you just the way you are. And for caring about other people. I admire that you want to do some good in the world, even if you think it’s just for your girl. You’ve got a good heart, Curtis.” She turns and smiles at me sadly.

  “Thanks, Mum. So, will you think about it at least?”

  She nods. “Let’s give it a few days. If he doesn’t wake up before you manage to get your friends here, then let them heal him. He’ll hate us for it, but if we can do it without him ever finding out, it’ll be a miracle,” she says. I feel a small wave of triumph, even though the job isn’t done yet. My next problem is going to be getting David and Beryl to agree, but I don’t think they’ll be hard to convince.

  It’s one thing I’ve noticed with my closest Augur friends; they’ll do anything to help. There’s no ‘eye-for-an-eye’ or bargaining. If they can do something for you, they will because they like you, and if you could, you’d do the same. That, to me, seemed to be the biggest plus point of the people I’ve met from the Society, and I wonder if the rest of its members are as generous as the ones I’ve met.

  “I’ll get Ella, and we can talk options. She knows how it all works better than I do,” I say.

  “They’ll let you and me come and go as we please until he wakes up, but non-family are going to have to stick to visiting hours,” she adds.

  “Good point. You’re okay with me bringing her up now though?”

  Mum nods, and I get up to leave, bumping into a doctor on my way out the door.

  “Ah, Mrs. Mayes, I was wondering if I could discuss something about your husband’s test results,” he says to her, ignoring me. I get the impression I’m not needed for this conversation and mutter that I was leaving anyway. Hopefully it’s good news, but the doctor’s poker face is hard to read.

  I head back down to the lobby and try to spot Ella amongst the crowds of visitors, but she’s not in the cafe as I’d hoped. I weave between the tables, checking every customer before moving on to the next, but she’s definitely not here. A tiny thread of panic threatens to weave its way into my chest. I can’t have lost her already, surely? What kind of boyfriend am I if I can’t find my girlfriend after leaving her alone for fifteen minutes?

  I follow my gut and head for ward 5C, the one that caters to Augur injuries, thinking that maybe she’s gone to investigate as I would have done.

  The long corridor opens out into a waiting area twice the size of the usual one, every chair filled with a person. There must be at least a hundred patients, if not more, with nurses and hospital attendants moving along the rows and handing out paperwork. I watch an attendant nearest me who seems to be doing some kind of test on each of the patients. Then next in line for him is a woman who looks a little dazed but appears otherwise unscathed.

  “Just going to do a thumb prick test, madam,” he says, pulling out a tiny vial with a needle inside. He pushes the top of the vial down, and the needle jabs into the woman’s finger for a split second before retracting, taking a tiny sample of blood with it.

  “It’ll be faster if you just answer the questions on the survey honestly, but the test will confirm if you’re Augur or Normal for us, okay?”

  The woman, mousy brown hair tumbling around her shoulders and pale faced, says nothing. I notice she’s barely even blinking and wonder what could have happened to her.

  “What’s your relation to the patient?” he says to a girl next to her in her early teens.

  “She’s my mum. I don’t know what happened, but I came home, and she was like this. She hasn’t moved for hours, and the people at the front desk told me to bring her here,” says the girl, a worried expression on her face.

  “To your knowledge, is she an Augur?” he says, pulling a sheet of stickers out of his pocket with a big red ‘A’ on them.
/>   “No, no. Definitely not,” the girl replies quickly.

  The attendant nods, putting the stickers away, and hands her the clipboard with the forms before he moves on to his next candidate.

  The woman isn’t the only one who seems to have been inexplicably stupefied. There are at least a dozen others with similarly blank expressions on their faces. What the hell is going on?

  I wander slowly through an aisle of zombie patients and bite back a yelp when a hand grabs my arm. A man in his thirties yanks me towards him with a strength I wouldn’t have expected, and I come face to face with his unblinking eyes. His mouth is moving rapidly but silently, and I try to pull free, but his hand is very firmly clasped around my arm. I look around for someone to help, but the attendants are all too preoccupied to pay attention to us.

  “Sorry, mate, but do you think you could let go of me?” I say quietly to him. More inaudible muttering comes from his mouth, and I can see that the only way I’m getting free is if I do it by force. As I prise his fingers off my arm, which is starting to hurt, I catch a snippet of something he says which makes me stop.

  “What did you say?” I insist, bringing my face up to his and levelling his unfocused eyes with my own.

  “…need to find the power source…” he says rapidly, almost in a whisper, barely bothering to pause for breath.

  “Say that again.”

  “…release us if we find her. We need to find the power source, and they’ll release us if we find her. We need to…”

  “Who will release you?”

  “…the power source…”

  He rambles on and on in a loop, and I realise I’m not going to get anything useful out of him. I extract myself eventually and make a break for the exit, hoping to hell that I’ll be able to get out of here without any further incident.

  I jump when a hand clamps onto my shoulder, and I spin around to face my assailant, who I’m glad to see is Ella.

  “My God, you scared the life out of me,” I say, hugging her.

  “Sorry. I thought you’d be longer up there.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll get to that in a minute. Have you seen what’s going on here? One of these people grabbed me, rambling on about finding the power source.”

  “I know. I heard one of them too. That’s not good at all,” she says, looking worried.

  “I think we should get out of here as quickly as possible. Cassie and Edward have obviously been doing the rounds,” I say as I pull her back towards the reception and the safety of the hospital cafe.

  “Never mind that now. How’s your dad doing?” she asks, changing the subject.

  “Not good,” I say, letting out a sigh. “The doctors don’t know if he’ll wake up from the coma.” It’s actually a struggle to repeat what happened upstairs, and I have a hard time getting the words out.

  “Oh, Curtis,” she says sympathetically, putting her hands up to my face and placing them on my cheeks tenderly.

  “It hurts to see him like that. But there’s more,” I say, taking her hands and pulling her into a corner of the cafe, well out of sight of the main thoroughfare of the hospital. “Mum knows what you are,” I whisper.

  “You told her?” Ella asks incredulously.

  “No, of course not. She practically jumped down my throat as soon as we were alone and said she worked it all out. Nothing gets past her.”

  “What’s she going to do?”

  “Nothing. She just told me to be careful but promised not to tell Dad, if he ever wakes up.”

  “Too late for being careful,” she smirks. I have to agree with her on that one.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I actually suggested that maybe David and Beryl could help Dad.”

  “What? That’s a terrible idea,” she says sharply.

  Now that I’ve said it aloud, I realise that it probably doesn’t sound great. I’m not even sure how I’m going to convince them to help me if Ella isn’t on board.

  “He needs my help, Ella. I abandoned them and have barely stayed in touch these past two months, and I feel terrible about it. I know we’ve never really gotten on, but I can’t just let him die without at least trying to do something. I couldn’t live with myself if I deserted them now.”

  “Are you trying to convince me to get him healed or to stay in London with you until he’s better? Because it kind of sounds like the latter right now,” she asks, her voice quieter than usual. I can’t read her expression at all.

  “Both, I suppose. I want to get out of here with you more than anything, you know that.”

  “You’ve talked about nothing else since we started going out,” she points out.

  “Right, and you know that I would do anything to keep you safe. But this is family.”

  She looks away, back out of the cafe and in the direction of the waiting area. I watch her for several minutes while she mulls things over. She’s not impulsive like I am, and usually I’d find that reassuring, but I hope she’s not talking herself out of it.

  “It’s going to be risky,” she says eventually, and I realise I was holding my breath. In all honesty, I know it’s downright stupid. After what we just experienced in there, it seems that the Magic Circle have upped the ante on trying to get hold of Ella, and the first thing we really should be doing is getting out of town as soon as possible. But I just couldn’t live with myself if we didn’t try.

  “I know. Will you come up and speak to Mum first? Maybe reassure her?”

  “I don’t think I’m the right person to do that, but if you think it’ll help then sure. You’re okay with me being in the same room as your Dad?”

  “Hey, if he has some kind of built in Augur-radar that wakes him up, then it’ll save us the job of getting David over here,” I joke.

  She rolls her eyes. “Afterwards, we need to come back down here though. I have a few questions, and I’m hoping someone here will be able to help me.”

  I agree and lead her to the lift, back up to Dads room. Mum is sitting where I left her by his side, filling out some forms, but she smiles wearily when she sees us.

  “Wondered where you’d gone,” she says as we come in and shut the door behind us.

  “Sorry, we got sidetracked,” I reply, looking over her shoulder at the paperwork she’s filling in. “What’s that for?”

  “They’re probably going to have to move him to a general ward tomorrow as they need the private room for more complicated patients.”

  “Oh,” I reply, thinking how getting an Augur healer into a general ward is going to be far more difficult than I had planned. The chance of someone walking in on David while he’s doing his magic is too high.

  “Will they keep him here tonight?” Ella asks, probably thinking the same thing.

  “Yes, love. Just tonight, and then they’ll move him tomorrow. They found something odd in his tests too, but they’ve only asked if they can take another blood sample, so they’ll do that tonight before he moves. Apparently, the results will affect where he’s moved to or something.”

  “Did they tell you what the odd thing was?” I ask, curious.

  “No, only that it didn’t make any sense to them and they thought his original blood test results were mixed up. An easy mistake, apparently.”

  She shrugs and signs the last page, collapsing back in the uncomfortable hospital chair. “I’m guessing Curtis told you his idea,” she says to Ella, who skirts round me to sit next to her.

  “Yes. I don’t know if it can be done, but with your consent I can certainly get our friends to try, if it’s what you want.”

  Ella is amazingly diplomatic and so un-pushy that Mum seems to be nodding in spite of her misgivings.

  “I think it would be silly not to now. If he can be awake and back at home with me, I’d rather that than this,” she gestures to Dad’s still figure, “even if he’ll hate us for it.”

  “I can’t help that I’m afraid, but I appreciate your trust,” Ella replies, placing her hand on Mum’s arm.

&nb
sp; “You’re very kind, Ella, and considerate. I can see why Curtis chose you,” Mum says, and I look away, embarrassed by her words.

  “I appreciate that, Mar, but I’m pretty sure I chose him.”

  I turn to them both, grinning like a Cheshire Cat.

  “You’re a clever girl, but don’t bolster his ego too much. There’ll be no stopping him,” Mum jokes.

  “When you two have finished talking about me like I’m not here, I think Ella and I need to put things into motion,” I say, taking Ella’s hand and pulling her up from the chair.

  “Of course, love. I’ll be here all day, because you never know. Keep your phone just in case he wakes up so I can call you, alright?”

  “Yes, Mum,” I say sheepishly, turning the volume up on the ringer so I don’t miss her call again.

  In the lift back down, now crowded with people, Ella leans over and whispers in my ear. “I think we need to call David now and get him over here. If we wait too long, they’ll move your Dad, and we’ll have blown it.”

  “I agree,” I whisper back, but I wait until we’re outside in the car park to make the call.

  I have David’s emergency number saved into it, and I hand it over to Ella to do the talking, which I think is probably best. The hospital driveway is a constant hive of activity so we walk around the building so that she can speak more freely.

  “Hi, David, it’s Ella. I have the biggest favour ever to ask you,” she starts.

  I listen as she explains the situation, looking around for any eavesdroppers that might be lurking behind the parked cars or wheelie bins. A cat sits on top of one of the huge skips staring at me from a few feet away. I wander over to stroke him, but he hisses when I come too close, and I take a step back.

  “What’s your problem?” I say to him, not expecting an answer.

  “He doesn’t trust you,” comes a voice out of nowhere. For a moment I think it comes from the cat but then remind myself that that’s ridiculous.

  “Wh-who’s there?” I say, trying not to sound nervous but failing.

  “Doesn’t matter right now. Are you okay?” The voice is soft, barely audible over the hubbub or outdoor noises. I almost wonder if I’m imagining it, because there isn’t anyone around. I peer behind and under the bins thinking that maybe they’re hiding in there, but there’s nothing. I turn to see Ella pacing back and forth, still on the phone and oblivious to my conversation with the mysterious disembodied voice.