There was a twitch beneath them, followed by a seismic shift with a groan to match as Caleb began to move.
With an inhaled ‘Jesus!’, Skeebs scrambled to get away, pushing himself to his knees.
A sharp snap cracked in the air, accompanied by a blinding flash. Skeebs cried out in fright, the blade dropping from his hand as he covered his eyes.
Amanda shoved the boy off her, lifting off Caleb as the sleeping bag sat up. Hands poked at the material from within, like something in a chrysalis trying to get out.
Amanda could hardly believe it, hardly dared believe it.
‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’ Skeebs screamed, rolling backwards, forearm over his eyes.
Steph scurried forward and snatched up the knife, darting away again out of reach, blade held protectively to her chest.
The boy was no danger, kicking back until he collided with the nearest chair. He was blinking, staring sightlessly as he tried to clear his vision.
What had happened to him?
The zip inside Caleb’s sleeping bag began to part. Blood made the material cling to Caleb’s skin as he peeled it away.
His face was a bloody horror, red still seeping from a deep gash above his left eyebrow. It glued his eyes shut, crusted his lips as he tried to speak. His large hands went to his face, trying to wipe himself clean.
‘Caleb?’ Amanda tried. ‘That you, mate?’ She wondered what kind of answer she’d believe.
‘Someone hit me.’
Amanda grabbed a bottle of water out of the rolling detritus. ‘Here.’ She threw it so it landed in Caleb’s lap.
The big man worked it open by touch and did his best to clear his eyes.
‘What is it?’ asked Skeebs, desperate. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Just stay where you are. It’s fine.’
‘Fuck, man, my eyes. I can’t fucking see!’
‘It wears off,’ said Steph. ‘I didn’t know it would be that strong. I barely tried.’
‘You did that?’ Amanda demanded.
‘You fucking bitch!’ Skeebs cried.
‘He was trying to kill you. What else was I to do?’
‘What’s going on?’ Caleb had managed to open his eyes, his face a mask of red, the whites of his eyes bright in contrast.
‘You’re injured. Stay still. Skeebs, you too. Steph, get Caleb the medical kit.’
Steph looked like she was going to argue but saw the look on Amanda’s face and thought better of it. Whatever camaraderie they’d had evaporating under the heat of Amanda’s anger. Fucking magic.
Caleb cleaned himself up as Amanda explained, interrupted by Skeebs’ accusations more than once.
There was some burn cream in the kit too. The adrenalin had taken some of the sensation out of her aches and pains which were starting to claim their debts a hundredfold. She applied the balm liberally to her blistered wrist.
She couldn’t believe her luck that Caleb had survived, the growing terror and guilt washed away by relief and not a little apprehension at what Reeves might do next.
Steph remained in her corner and Amanda made it clear with a look that their discussion wasn’t over.
Caleb lifted the compress away from his head to inspect the blood on it. ‘Going to need stitches.’ He winced. ‘And some aspirin.’
‘We’ll see to that,’ said Amanda, quickly.
‘What about my fucking eyes?’ asked Skeebs.
‘She says it wears off.’
‘I think it does,’ said Steph.
‘You mean you don’t know?’ said Skeebs.
‘I’ve never done it before,’ said the girl. ‘Someone taught me it. In case…’
‘Here,’ Caleb lumbered unsteadily to his feet, knees popping audibly. He filled the room as he reached his full height, a swinging lamp narrowly missing his head and casting more shadows as he went to crouch by Skeebs.
‘Let’s have a look.’
‘It’s like spots in front of my eyes, man. Like a camera flash. Bitch, I swear, I hope the magic gave you fucking cancer.’
‘I might have made it a bit too bright,’ said Steph. ‘I was only trying to help. You were trying to kill each other.’
‘And who asked you to do that? Eh?’ said Amanda. ‘You fucking blinded him.’
‘It was just a bit of—’
‘I don’t give a shit what you think it was.’
‘He was trying to kill you.’
‘And I was taking care of it. Shoving you aside wasn’t clear enough for you? Every fucking Abra, the same. Just because you can do something ain’t the same as you should.’
‘But magic’s why I’m here.’
‘It’s why your mother was here, cleaning up her own mess. If I’d known she’d been teaching a little girl…’ Amanda stopped herself. ‘Makes me fucking sick. Give me that.’
The girl flinched from Amanda’s hand. She moved as if to keep the knife out of reach but thought better of it. Eyes beginning to moisten, she proffered it. Amanda snatched it.
‘How is he?’ Amanda asked Caleb. She ignored the sound of the girl hurrying past in tears. Steph pulled the curtain around the makeshift toilet as far as it could go, right up to the quad bike.
‘He’ll live,’ Caleb patted Skeebs on the shoulder. ‘Wearing off already. Just dazzled him, is all.’
‘It’s happening a lot earlier than we hoped,’ said Amanda. ‘Bridget underestimated how long we had before he found a way through.’
Caleb looked out the side of his eye at the prisoner. He lowered his voice, low as his fractured trachea would allow.
‘Not much we can do. But you’re going to apologise to that little girl.’
Amanda kept her face poker straight, keeping the disgust from her features. ‘She already helped enough. I was taking care of it. Instead she went straight for the magic. Could have blinded Skeebs. Or me. Better to nip this in the bud now. If she gets it in her head she doesn’t want to do what she’s told…’
‘Then convince her. You got reasons, but bullying a little girl isn’t going to get you, or any of us, what you want. She isn’t one of us. And when you act like this people get hurt. Get your head out of your arse and apologise. Don’t know if you noticed but she reminds me of Emily. Always chewing her pen.’
People get hurt. He was talking about Michael again, that rift between them widening. ‘Go see to the prisoner.’
Caleb followed her with a stony stare that Amanda could only ward off by turning her back.
It was the right decision. The idea of a girl her age knowing magic made her insides boil. Magic: she’d burn it all to the ground if she could.
‘I’m with you, man,’ said Skeebs. ‘I had my way, she’d be in chains too.’
Amanda sighed. Shit.
Part Two
Chapter 14
Steph
The present – eighty-five hours to destination
Steph squirmed in impotent rage, teeth grinding, squeezing herself so tight it made her muscles hurt. Headache beginning to bite, she pressed herself deep into the corner made by the wall and quad bike, glaring at the rubber and chrome, wishing she could shut herself away from the rest of the room.
There was a pen in her top pocket, the end already well chewed. It was gross, her mother kept telling her, but it helped her think; a small act of rebellion. Not that it mattered any more.
She replayed her exchange with Amanda over and over in her head – saying all the things she hadn’t the courage to say, imagining the woman retreat before her anger and logic.
They’d been working together. She’d been proving herself. She’d saved Amanda’s life. True, the ember hex had been a bit more powerful than she’d been aiming for. She’d only wanted to startle Skeebs to give Amanda the opening she needed but wasn’t that a good thing? She was more powerful than she’d given herself credit for. She’d tried a spell for a particular purpose and it had worked! Much more effective than if she’d tried to intervene physically.
But Amanda ha
d looked at her like she’d never seen anything more disgusting in her life. For a second, Steph had been sure that she was going to hit her. There was still time for that, she realised with a shiver of fear.
And the woman had taken her mother’s knife from her again. Snatched it from her like she was a child caught running with scissors. It was her mother’s knife. That made it her knife. Wasn’t the magic stuff her responsibility? Amanda acted like magic was a last resort.
Well… well fuck her. The thought gave her a little delight. It felt heavy and grown up. She’d done magic! Anyone else could be bigger or stronger or faster or fitter than her but just a snap of her fingers and she could have them groping around at her feet. That’s what was so good about magic, it made smart people strong and that seemed like a much better way to run things. She wondered if her mother had felt the same…
The thought of her mother stung. She couldn’t get used to the idea that she was gone, had only managed to make herself cry over it in a couple of short bursts. When they got out of this… if they got out of this, then maybe the truth of it would hit home. But until then, when she was so far outside her regular life, then it was just another strange element to this whole thing.
Thinking of her mother…
Steph touched at her midriff, feeling the modest sheaf of her mother’s notes concealed under her top. It was obvious now that she was sitting, the papers bending and tenting out. She’d only had a small opportunity, the bag lying open, inviting. She’d plucked them out when the pair had been struggling on the floor, a split-second decision, no time for finesse. Part of the reason she’d used the flash to help Amanda to be honest. She’d felt guilty that she’d helped herself first.
She pulled them out, in awe at the sheer amount her mother was able to fit on a page in her tiny, concise handwriting, the delicacy of the annotated symbols.
She’d never known how her mother had planned to banish Reeves. The last time they’d been in the same room, she wasn’t sure her mother had known either. Banishing a demon was meant to be just as impossible as controlling one, but if her mother had managed the impossible once, why not twice? She’d captured Reeves already and given these people the means to hold him this far, that was already revolutionary.
Imagine if Karina saw any of this, the foundation for safe, reliable demon summoning, all that power to be tapped. It could change everything.
If someone could just develop it, build on these theories, someone who had seen it first-hand. Steph’s mentor had been right, she realised now, Mum had never been the right person to present these findings to the world. She was too confrontational. But Karina, with Steph at her side, that could move the world.
She wished Karina was here now, someone she could count on to be on her side.
She hadn’t seen her for three months, not even texted her since AK’s thugs had taken her phone. Their last meeting felt like the last time she’d been happy.
Three months earlier
Steph scribbled furiously in her notepad, berating her brain for not working harder. The solution to the problem posed at the top of the page was right there, she knew it, if she could just look at it the right way.
The jangle of the bell over the café door told her that her time was up. Rather than a burst of disappointment, it was a flash of excitement she felt in her breast as Karina swished between the tables to plonk herself in the seat opposite. Steph quickly cleared away her pens and closed her notepad.
Today her mentor was in a long coat, overlarge jeans held closed with a tight belt and a T-shirt that read ‘About time’. Her nails were a gorgeous aquamarine.
‘You all right?’ the woman asked with a warm smile. ‘How’s it going?’ She looked around for table service.
Steph found herself slouching back, trying to mimic her tutor. ‘Yeah, it’s going all right. I did the work you sent me.’ She pushed the notebook over, pretending like her heart wasn’t beating a mile a minute.
She tried to mask her anxiety by taking a sip of her mocha, trying not to spill the ludicrously big mug. She didn’t really like coffee but had felt too self-conscious to get herself a hot chocolate. She wasn’t sure she liked mocha either, but had managed to drink half of it.
Karina slipped the notebook over and flicked it open to the final pages crammed with Steph’s neat little notes, the diagrams drawn with rulers and protractors.
Steph watched the woman’s eyes travel across the text. She tried not to look around in case anyone was watching but the few people in the café were each absorbed in their own thing.
‘This is excellent,’ said Karina, flicking to the next page. Her eyes, bright and hungry, devoured each paragraph. ‘Seriously,’ she ran a hand over her forehead, disbelieving, ‘you are picking this up faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. Your grasp of theory is just… well, you’ve got it. Amazing.’
‘Yeah?’ Steph leaned forward to look at the page itself, trying to see it through Karina’s eyes.
‘And how about the practical? The flash?’
‘I’m finding that a bit more difficult,’ Steph admitted. ‘I was better at holding the spark. But this is holding then controlling the burst. Last time I just lost control and it produced the right effect but…’
‘But you never want to lose control,’ Karina nodded. ‘That’s right. But you’ll manage it. You have the dexterity, I’ve seen you. Well, maybe after you finish your coffee we’ll go and practice. In a bit,’ she held out her hand to stop Steph lunging to finish her drink. ‘In a bit. No rush.’
Steph wiped away the foam that clung to her lips, swallowed and nodded. She sat back in her seat trying not to look crushed, contenting herself in the sophistication of sitting with a powerful Abra and shooting the shit. She was finally at the grown-up’s table.
They chatted for a while, Karina asking her questions, her opinions on government policy and what they meant for the future of magic. It all made Steph feel important. Here was a woman who actually listened to her, who talked about her own visions for legalisation and dumbed nothing down – talking to an equal. It was so nice to have someone to talk to. Her mum was barely in these days, sometimes away for days at a time and she was still too new at her school to have anyone she would call a friend. It was partly why she was doing so well at the tasks Karina had been setting her. She had a lot of time on her hands and her mother wasn’t as good at hiding the key to her study as she thought.
The study was the biggest room in the house and with Mum gone for so long, Steph had spent hours there. She loved sitting among the books, the self-printeds and the genuine leather-bounds. Anything she wanted to know at her fingertips, her mother’s theories included. So long as she put everything back exactly as she found it.
Sometimes she flicked through them just to find things to bring up to Karina, always thinking of their next meet-up.
Steph could have talked to this woman forever.
‘How’s your mum?’ asked Karina.
‘She’s fine,’ Steph shrugged, not liking the change in subject. ‘She has some big project on.’
‘Any idea what it might be?’
‘Not really. She doesn’t really say.’
‘And the people she’s working with? Hear about them? What are they like?’
‘No. They sound cool though. She seems happier. Or grumpy but in a better way, you know?’
‘Well, if you hear anything…’
‘Sure.’ Steph stared down into her mocha dregs.
This was always the bit she hated.
She suspected that Karina already knew who her mother was working for. Karina would occasionally drop hints, or made sure that the papers or the blog open on her phone was visible to Steph when she put it down. They were always articles on the rise of magic use in crime or reports on arrests made. Seeing them put eels in Steph’s stomach. But maybe that was coincidence. Karina read a lot of different things around magic and crime was an issue in the public eye as the legalisation debate heated up.
Regardless, Steph was not ready to come clean to her mentor about what her mother had done. It was illegal and definitely dangerous but what choice had Mum had? She’d tried legal and proper and all they’d done was shout her down.
And it was working. Her mother’s theories had proved correct. The demon had come to heel. The implications were immeasurable. This could be cancer cured. Or world hunger solved. Or explorers on Mars. Given more time to study and test the thing, her mother could become the greatest Abra who ever lived and, despite everything, Steph couldn’t help but quietly bask in the pride of her mother’s reflected glory.
It had taken every ounce of strength to not tell Karina the day of the summoning three months ago and even more when Mum had returned flushed with triumph.
But the truth was that she didn’t know how Karina would react. Would she understand? Or tell the police?
No, better to give her mother more time to gather data so she could come forward with her discovery when the implications were too momentous to refuse. They would include Karina in forging the future when they were ready, Steph had decided. Maybe Steph could even pave the way, show Karina some of her mother’s notes…
But that was another time. Steph was worried about her mother, of course she was, but until then it was nice to have something, someone, in her life that was just hers.
‘You know you can talk to me, right?’ said Karina. ‘I worry about you home on your own so often.’
Karina leaned over and rubbed the back of her hand, which Steph had left resting next to her coffee mug for exactly that reason. ‘I’ve got to look out for my protégé, right?’
Blood heated her cheeks. ‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘Right?’
‘Yes.’ Steph smiled. She couldn’t help it.
‘There you go.’ Karina grinned, throwing herself back into her seat. ‘I told you. Stuff you do,’ she gestured toward the notebook. ‘It’s exceptional. People don’t believe me when I tell them how good you are. You keep on doing what you’re doing, you won’t match me, Stephanie, you’ll surpass me. You’re the next generation. You lot are going to change people’s minds. Find new ways to do magic, make it mainstream. You will make this world a better place.’
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