“You were dying?” But I wasn’t anywhere near finding a way to keep her alive. Jay-Tee couldn’t die so soon.
“Uh-huh. I felt thin, like a piece of saran wrap.”
“Like what?” Jay-Tee had almost died? She couldn’t die. Not yet.
“Like a piece of glass. As if you could see right through me and I was about to float away. It was…it was horrible.”
“It sounds horrible.” How did I feel? Was I lighter than I had been? Hollow? I wished I could turn my gaze on myself, see my own rust.
“Yeah, but I’m okay now. For the moment…”
“But…how did you get bruised?” I was bruised, too, but my bruises felt almost good. I looked at the closed door, heard the sound of Danny showering, wondered if he was thinking about washing me off his skin. I hoped not. I blushed again.
“The magic Mere put inside me—it made me convulse. It kept pushing deeper and deeper into me, and my body tried to fight it. It didn’t do that to you. We think you’re more powerful now, like Mere.” Jay-Tee’s voice sounded far away, suddenly exhausted.
The phone was muffled, then Tom came on. “Hi, Ree. Jay-Tee has to lie down. That stuff, whatever Esmeralda did to her, it really hurt her,” he whispered. Then he asked a question in such a soft voice that the only way I could tell it was a question was by his rising tone at the end.
“What?”
“Hang on a mo.” I heard his hand going over the receiver and sounds in the background that I couldn’t figure out. “Okay, I’m in your room now. When the golem got inside you? We think it gave you magic. Like what happened to Esmeralda.”
“Magic? No, I don’t think so…” I trailed off. I could feel it inside me. Not as sharp as it had been, but prickling at me, deep inside, moving inside the marrow of my bones. “I don’t think he made me powerful.”
“But remember? It bit Jay-Tee and me, but it burrowed into you. And when we were having that lesson—your light was so intense, so out-of-control bright.”
“But it came back out again. It didn’t stay. It went back under the door. Remember?”
“That’s because we chucked it out. Me and Jay-Tee and you.”
“No.” It didn’t make sense. A different kind of magic? Wasn’t that like saying there were different kinds of gravity?
“Esmeralda can do bigger magic now. What if you can, too?”
“It didn’t stay in me.” Except that it was inside me now.
“Are you sure, Reason? Esmeralda might not die now. This might change everything. So maybe you won’t have to die, either. Maybe me, too. Jay-Tee almost died.”
“She really almost died?”
“Yes. Her magic ran out. Esmeralda reckons the old man’s doesn’t run out.”
“It has to have limits. Everything has limits.”
The shower shut off. I slid out of Danny’s bed, took a few steps to the door, and was shocked to discover that walking was ouchie. I glanced back at the crumpled bed. What would Sarafina say? I’d had sex for the first time at the same way-too-young age she had, and just as stupidly I hadn’t used any protection. Everything she’d told me about sex dis-eases—AIDS and gonorrhoea and syphilis and chlamydia (which somehow also affected koalas—I didn’t want to think about that)—and none of it had crossed my mind even once.
“Esmeralda doesn’t think this magic has any limits.”
“But it does. It didn’t work for Jay-Tee.”
“Ree, Esmeralda says using this magic makes her stronger.”
“But how does it work? Where’s the energy coming from? If it doesn’t take energy from her body, where does it come from?” Danny came out of the shower, a towel tied around his waist. He looked at me, half smiled. I smiled back and my cheeks got hot. I nodded and walked out of his room, shutting the door behind me and leaning on it. What was Danny thinking? Was he regretting what had happened?
“Ree? You still there? Why wouldn’t it work?”
“Sorry, Tom. I need to think about all of this.” The living room looked as dark as it had when I’d left my (Jay-Tee’s) room last night, looking for something to eat. Eighteen hours ago. I wondered when time would stop running circles around me, always going either too fast or too slow for me to get a grip on it.
“Esmeralda really is much more powerful. She healed her broken fingers. Right in front of me.”
“She had broken fingers?”
“Yeah, long story. Her healing herself was heaps more impressive than making light, let me tell you. It took seconds.”
“I bet.”
“You don’t think you’re supermagic, too?”
“I don’t think so.” I moved away from Danny’s door and into the kitchen, ignoring the soreness of every step. I yawned. “I’m hungry.”
“The light you made during the magic lesson in the cottage. It was so big, Reason. And remember? You said you didn’t feel at all drained.”
I opened the fridge door: there was still no food in it. I wished Danny had as much food in his fridge as beer. If there was magic coursing through me like Tom thought, why didn’t food appear out of thin air? That would be useful.
“Do you feel different?”
I did feel different. But not just from what Cansino had done to me.
There was a loud buzzing sound and Danny walked over to the lift, pressed a button there, and spoke to it.
“Does Esmeralda look any different?”
Danny pressed a button to make the lift go. I hoped he’d ordered some food or something. Like Esmeralda phoning up and then, magically, thirty minutes later—pizza at the front door.
“No, not really.”
“So your only evidence for this new kind of magic is Esmeralda healing her fingers?”
Tom started to answer, but I didn’t hear what he said. The lift doors had opened and Jason Blake was stepping into Danny’s apartment.
“Oh, no,” I said, cutting across Tom.
“What? What?”
“My grandfather is here. Jason—” The phone flew out of my hands and halfway across Danny’s flat.
24
Strong Magic
“Reason? Reason?” The phone had gone dead. Tom redialled and got a strange beeping sound. He tried Danny’s land-line. It rang and rang until Danny’s smooth movie-star voice announced, “You missed me. If you’re feeling it, leave a message. If you’re not, well, that’s cool. Catch you later.” Wanker, thought Tom, before putting the phone back in his pocket and running downstairs.
“Esmeralda! Esmeralda!” She wasn’t in the kitchen. “Esmeralda!”
Where could she be? What should he do? Jay-Tee was dead to the world upstairs. He fished his phone out and dialled Danny’s mobile again. This time it went through to voicemail with an equally annoying message. “Hi,” Tom said, “it’s me, Tom. Could you call back?” He gave the mobile number just in case. “I’m worried. Are you okay, Ree? Let us know.” He tried the landline again with the same result, but this time he left a message.
Esmeralda came out of the toilet. Good, he thought, she’ll have some clue what to do. Then he remembered he didn’t trust her anymore.
“What’s wrong, Tom?”
“Jason Blake’s got Reason. We were on the phone talking, you know, and then she said that Blake’d shown up, and then the phone clicked off, and I’ve rung and rung but there’s no answer.”
Esmeralda said nothing, but the expression on her face was not happy. Tom found that he was biting his bottom lip. He stopped.
“What would he want with her?” Tom asked, though of course he could think of many things Blake’d want from Reason.
Esmeralda raised an eyebrow. “More magic. A longer life.”
“We have to do something.”
“We do. We will. First, though, we’ll need winter clothes.”
“We’re going through the door?” Tom asked, feeling stupid as soon as the words left his mouth. How else were they going to rescue her?
Esmeralda nodded. “Is Jay-Tee awake?”<
br />
“She was, but then she got tired again. Do you want me to check on her?”
“No, I’ll do it. Run next door and get clothes, enough for a couple of days, toothbrush, whatever else you’ll need. Tell your father you’re going, that you’re not sure when you’ll be back.”
8
Tom returned with a chock-a-block backpack dangling from his left shoulder, carrying a big winter coat with pockets stuffed with other winter gear, and his ears full of his dad’s messages to Cathy, which Tom wasn’t at all sure he’d have a chance to deliver.
Jay-Tee was sitting at the kitchen table eating porridge, looking terrible. The bruise on her cheekbone was red, purple, and blue. There was a bandage on her hand.
“You’re not coming,” he said, dumping his stuff at the other end of the table.
Jay-Tee pulled a face. “Can if I want.”
“Sure, but you can’t if your body won’t let you.”
Jay-Tee began what looked like a shrug and then stopped, wincing.
Tom raised his eyebrows and said, “See?” because his eyebrows were not renowned for their visibility. Then he remembered Jay-Tee claiming she could see them.
“I’m not coming,” she admitted, “but I couldn’t stay in bed. Not with Reason…” She blinked, and Tom realised how upset she was. He felt stupid. Of course she was upset. Jason Blake scared her so much she wouldn’t even say his name, and now he had Reason.
“There you are, Tom,” Esmeralda said as she entered the kitchen carrying her briefcase and a black leather winter coat lined with sheepskin. Even folded over her arm Tom could see how elegant its lines were.
“Lucky you have a spare coat,” he said. “What with the other one getting eaten by the door and…”
Jay-Tee grimaced. Tom wondered if it was meant to be a smirk or a smile. “Second spare,” she said. “She’s lost two now.”
“When did that—”
“How are you feeling, Jay-Tee?” Esmeralda asked, ignoring the discussion of her coats.
“Sore, achey. But I’ll live. For a while, anyway.”
“Has Reason rung?” Tom asked.
“No,” Esmeralda said, turning back to Jay-Tee. “Do you think you’re going to be up for this?”
“Probably not, but I’d rather be here than lying in bed upstairs imagining what was happening.”
“Up for what?” Tom asked.
“I’m going to try a spell on my own, to get the door open and to make me strong enough to deal with the old man on the other side.”
“Oh,” Tom said. “Is that all?”
“Very droll,” Esmeralda said, moving closer to the door. Tom noticed there were even more feathers lining the bottom now. Mostly green ones that were longer and curvier than the first lot they’d magicked.
“That sounds like a big spell. Won’t it be kind of risky?”
She nodded. “I’ll need you and Jay-Tee to keep an eye on me. If it starts to look dangerous or too strange, I’m depending on you both to pull me out of it.”
“How, exactly? You’re a lot more powerful than we are now. Are we supposed to slap you or something?”
“If you need to,” Esmeralda said. “But I don’t think it should come to that. A gentle shake should be enough.”
She closed her eyes and reached out towards the door. Tom grabbed her hand. “Esmeralda. You don’t know anything about the old man’s magic. It might not be safe. You haven’t used it for a spell this big—”
“I’d say healing broken bones was rather large.”
“But how do you know what you’re doing?”
“Reason is in danger. I have to rescue her.”
“I know that.” Tom was close to shouting. “But how’s it going to help her if you wind up dead?” He looked at her right hand. Her fingers moved as they always had, as if he’d never lost his temper. Tom thought about all the things Esmeralda could do with a magic that didn’t eat up your life. She would never steal from him again. If this magic was everything she thought it was, it would mean he could trust her again.
“That won’t happen.”
“How do you know? What if this magic lulls you into thinking everything’s right as rain and then burns you up? Look at Jay-Tee! Look what the old man’s magic has done to her.”
“Hey! I don’t look that bad.”
“Yes, you do,” Esmeralda said. “Tom, everything you say is reasonable. But sometimes you have to take risks. Think of the old man. Old man, Tom. He’s been using this magic for a very, very long time without ill effect—”
“Without ill effect! Reason says he’s some kind of monster!”
“Without his magic, Tom, I’d be dead already. Every second I live from now on is a bonus. I want to rescue my granddaughter.”
“But it nearly killed Jay-Tee. What if it’s turning toxic inside you as we’re talking?”
“It’s not turning toxic, Tom. It feels right inside me. It feels like it belongs.”
“Doesn’t mean you can trust your feelings.”
“Tom, this argument is over. I’m doing this.”
Esmeralda closed her eyes and put her hand palm first on the door. The wood began to ripple outwards from her fingers. A metal-against-metal sound started small and grew. Tom and Jay-Tee put their hands over their ears and looked at each other.
25
Jason Blake
Danny’s phone landed on the other side of the television with a sharp crack. Pieces of it skidded across the floor, one stopping in front of Jay-Tee’s bedroom, another near the far windows.
Danny glanced at his broken phone and then turned to Jason Blake. “You’re the jerk who was messing with my sister.”
Jason Blake nodded, agreeing that he was.
“Get out,” Danny said, stabbing the lift button. The doors opened immediately.
“I don’t think so. I need to speak with my granddaughter.”
He was looking at me, not Danny, his stare eerily like old man Cansino’s. I stared back at him as if I was unafraid.
“She doesn’t want to speak to you.”
“I think she does.”
“Not really,” I said, speaking for myself. “I’d like you to leave.”
Blake flicked his hand, and something arced through the air at me. I caught it. Grey-brown, almost like putty. A piece of the old man. It even smelled like him, fresh-baked bread. It began to sink into my hands, sharp and biting. “No,” I said, concentrating on the golden spiral, letting it uncurl within me, growing wider and wider, expelling the old man’s stuff so that it bubbled up into my hand. I shaped it into a perfect ball, tossed it back at him.
Blake caught the ball, held it lightly in his left hand, not bothering to watch as it sank back into him. “Well done. I see you’ve already met Señor Raul Emilio Jesús Cansino? I thought as much.”
“Who?” I said, but then I remembered that name. I’d seen it etched on marble in the cemetery on the other side of the door. The cemetery in Sydney. The one Tom had shown me, where the remains of my family were kept. “Died 1823.”
“Except he didn’t,” Jason Blake said, “did he?” He took a step towards me.
“All right, that’s enough,” Danny said, moving closer. Blake was tall, but Danny was taller. He loomed over him. “Get back in the elevator.”
The smell of baking bread became more intense. One of the kitchen stools flew past me. I called out. Danny turned just in time for it to hit him full in the face and knock him over.
My grandfather dashed across the room. I stepped back, running into the kitchen table. He reached out and grabbed my shoulders. His hands were hot, burning my skin. I screamed. Something inside me began tearing itself loose, racing through my body towards Blake’s hands, into his body. He was seizing my magic.
“No!” I yelled. “No!”
“I don’t have to ask anymore.”
I closed my eyes, reached for my ammonite in a pocket that wasn’t there. I tried to clear my mind without it—I thought of the nig
ht sky out bush, filled with tens of thousands of stars, too many to count at a glance. I coaxed my Fibonaccis, prodded them to unfurl inside me, radiate out, but they curled tight, into an Archimedean spiral, not golden, the distance between each coil the same, like a roll of paper, not like my ammonite. And then the spiral wasn’t even that. It unravelled, raced burning through my veins, through my skin, into Jason Blake.
He was not the Jason Blake he had been, cautiously using only enough to keep from going insane. Taking other people’s magic in only the most economic of ways—asking, never taking. Taking used too much magic.
But he was stripping me bare. Through blurred eyes I saw the magic growing in him—the old man’s magic floated in every part of my grandfather’s body. And something else, too: Jason Blake was related to old man Cansino. He was a Cansino, too.
“Asshole,” I heard Danny say from somewhere far away.
Jason Blake grunted; the burning pressure of his hands lifted. The flood of magic stopped. Shockingly sudden. I fell back, landed hard on my arse.
“Get up,” Danny said, grabbing my hand. “You have to get dressed. We have to go.”
Jason Blake was unconscious on the floor. A broken stool lay beside him.
I stood up and wobbled. Danny steadied me. I looked up at his face. His cheek was bleeding. A trickle of blood ran down his jaw onto his neck.
“We have to go now. Before he wakes up and starts throwing furniture again.” Danny hauled me over to Jay-Tee’s room. I got dressed as quick as I could, stuffed my ammonite into my pocket. I’ve had a lot of practise getting dressed on the run, grabbing everything, exiting out the nearest door or window. Even with the awkward winter clothes and in my shaky state I was fast.
Danny dragged me to the lift. As we stepped around Jason Blake he groaned, his eyelids fluttering before closing again. Danny punched the button and the doors sprang open. We lurched inside, stabbing the button for the ground floor.
Magic Lessons Page 17