"I'm a dead spot."
Tom's mouth opened, but no words came out. How could…He couldn't imagine not having magic. It would be like losing an arm— no, much worse than that. It would be like losing the special, talented, cool part of yourself. Being all three-dimensional and colourful and then waking up one morning 2-D and grey.
"I told you she would save me."
She didn't sound very happy about it. "You're sure?" he asked.
"Stop saying that, Tom! I'm sure! Okay? You're sure too. You just saw it. And stop looking at me like that!" Jay-Tee wiped her eyes. "I can't think about it right now, okay?"
Tom nodded, took a deep breath. "So, Reason and Esmeralda?"
"They're in New York City, waiting for Jason Blake to get there. He kidnapped Sarafina."
"He kidnapped Sarafina? From Kalder Park?"
"Yes."
"But my mum is there. Is she okay?"
"I think so," Jay-Tee said. "He only wanted his daughter. He didn't care about anyone else."
"So he just casually strolled into Kalder and took his daughter away? How come they allowed that?"
"We don't know. It has to have been Cansino magic. You should see what Reason's like now, Tom. She glows. And she moves like she's some kind of…I don't know, alien or something. I think she's becoming just like her ancestor dude. It's freaky."
"And Jason Blake is like that too?" Tom tried to imagine Jason Blake being even scarier than he already was.
"No. Well, we don't know, but Mere says Raul Cansino chose Reason, so she's the only one he made like him."
"Well, that's a relief."
"I guess. It's too weird, though. It's like she's not Reason anymore. But if she weren't like that, I guess I'd be dead."
Tom didn't want to think about Jay-Tee being dead. "What have the Kalder Park people said? Why would Reason's mum go with Jason Blake?"
"They haven't said anything so far, I don't think. They haven't called here, but maybe they've called Mere's cell phone." Jay-Tee shrugged.
"Great. Nice to know their security's so ace. Hey, wait a minute. How did Blake get here? Did he come through the door?"
"Nope. We think he took a plane."
"A
plane
?"
"Yeah, Tom, you know, big metal thing? Fly through the sky?"
Tom ignored her sarcasm. "But why? Why come all this way to steal Sarafina? Why would he do that?"
"Well, if I hadn't told him to go to hell, we might know."
"Point," Tom said. "We have to call them."
"Yes!" Jay-Tee said, then stopped. "Call who? Kalder Park?"
"No. Reason and Esmeralda."
"Right," Jay-Tee said.
"I'll get my phone." Tom picked up his backpack where he'd let it drop when he first came through the door and fished out his mobile. He turned it on and it beeped excitedly at him. "Huh. Lots of messages."
"You had your phone with you the whole time? You had it turned off!"
"Well, yeah. I forgot. Mere only just gave it to me so hardly anyone knows the number."
"But we called you like half a million times!"
"You called me?"
"We were worried, Tom," Jay-Tee said. "You were gone for ages and you said you'd come back right away. You know, after your sister called."
"Yeah," Tom said. "I meant to. But…" he waved a hand. "Stuff happened. Nothing bad."
"Here's the number." She slid a piece of paper at Tom.
"You want me to call?" Tom asked, marvelling at how sober he'd become. "You're the one who talked to Jason Blake. Not me."
"But I'm drunk." She hiccupped to prove it. It sounded forced to Tom.
"No, you're not." Jay-Tee's magic being gone was plenty sobering. "You're not even wobbling anymore," he said, though she was a little bit.
"Yes, I am. See!" She demonstrated the worst drunken wobble Tom had ever seen.
"Why do you want
me
to call?" he asked. "'Cause you're embarrassed that you stuffed it up?"
"Pretty much," Jay-Tee agreed. "I don't want Esmeralda mad at me. Not that she can do anything. Magical, I mean. Though, come to think of it, she can do plenty. Throw me out onto the street. I mean, it's not like she can teach me magic, is it? What use am I now?" Her eyes went wet again. She grabbed another tissue to blow her nose.
"She wouldn't do that." Maybe Esmeralda wasn't as wonderful as he used to think, but he still couldn't imagine she'd throw Jay-Tee out. Then another thought occurred to him. "So you want her cranky with
me
?"
"But she won't be mad at you, because you're just telling her what happened— you're not the one who did it. None of it's your fault. It'd just be nice if you could, you know, make it seem a little less like it was my fault. Oh, and tell her that the line he was on was all echoey and hard to hear. That could mean he was calling from a plane, right? I mean, we already knew that, but even so."
Tom sighed and flipped open the mobile. "You really don't have any more magic? How does that feel?" The thought of losing his magic was so horrible he couldn't go there. He'd rather die.
* * *
Esmeralda didn't get angry. She accepted Tom's explanation that Jay-Tee had been too freaked out to talk to Blake. She asked lots of questions about Jay-Tee's non-magic status. That's what she called it, "non-magic status." As if Jay-Tee had been a spy for some government magic department and now had to be reclassified. Tom wondered if it was actuary talk. The kind of thing that filled up the memos and reports at Esmeralda's work. Magic actuary talk.
"Can you stay there? Answer the phone next time?"
Tom said that he would.
"How is Jay-Tee doing?"
"She's fine," Tom said, though she was sitting beside him looking decidedly less than fine. "How's Reason? Jay-Tee says she's been really weird."
"She's fine too," Esmeralda said. "We'll call if anything happens. You do the same." And that was that. Tom put the phone down. Outside, the sun was setting, orange-pink light making its way through the dense foliage of Filomena.
He thought about his own mother in Kalder Park, barking mad like she'd been his entire life. If Esmeralda hadn't found him he'd've gone that way too. His mum had never known about magic, never known how to stay sane.
"Whatcha thinking?"
"About my mum. I mean, at least now you're never going to go mad like she is."
"Oh," Jay-Tee said. "Oh! Your mom! Of course! Oh, Tom, that's a genius idea! If Reason can turn my magic off, then she could turn your mom's off too! Your mom would be sane again!"
Tom felt like he'd been punched. He heard what Jay-Tee said, heard each individual word, but he couldn't believe them. "My mum," he said.
"Yeah," Jay-Tee said. "Wouldn't that be amazing?"
"Yes," he said, but he was too afraid to believe it. He had no memories of his mum ever being normal. Not one.
14
Skin
The 610 tiny smudges of
light smeared across space, swirling into a spiral that opened out into infinity. I tumbled into it, falling round and round, then sliding into space even more crowded with lights than Sydney had been.
New York.
This was what a door was truly like: a swirling bridge between two points in magic space. So much more fun than simply opening a door and stepping through. The real world was so clunky, so constrained.
I surveyed the magical landscape, looking for other doors. I saw groups of lights threaded together as the door to Sydney was— seventeen of them. A prime number. All around me there were many prime configurations. I wondered if primes were one of magic's building blocks. Or maybe it was the other way around?
Some of the doors seemed near, others less so. But I wasn't sure what that meant here.
The door swirled again, and Esmeralda's bright lights appeared. And something began pressing in on me; noises leaked in from the other world.
"Rea-son. Rea-son. Rea-son."
I pushed up against it to where this world thickened into the other world. "Esmeralda," I said.
She told me something else. But the words muddled as they floated by.
"All right," I said. Maybe she had news of Sarafina.
I made myself leave pure magic and mathematics behind.
This time I stumbled on re-entry, slipping down the steps and landing heavily on the footpath. I felt like I was being crushed by normal gravity. I looked up at Esmeralda standing in front of the door to Sydney, rugged up against the cold. She came down and grabbed my arm to steady me.
"Are you okay?" she asked. Above the door I saw the face carved in stone with the crudely painted eyes and moustache. He seemed amused this time, not sad.
"I'm fine," I said, even though I felt horrible. I couldn't stop thinking about Sarafina. Was she still alive? I'd stopped wobbling, but my heart beat faster than it should. When I was in Cansino's world, I couldn't feel my heart.
"How can you be fine? You must be freezing! You have no hair and no hat. You're not even wearing a coat!"
"The air's heavier here."
"Here? What?" Esmeralda asked, putting her hands in her coat pockets. Her breath turned into puffs of condensation.
"In the real world." My breath didn't.
"What do you mean?"
"I've found some doors," I told her, because I didn't want to explain about the other world.
"How many?" she asked, shifting back and forth.
I shrugged. "Seventeen. But there might be more. There are other things there that could be doors. I'm not sure."
"Are they close by?"
"Maybe. I can lead us to them. I just don't know how long it will take."
"But you can see them from here?"
"Yes."
"Can you see when someone opens one?" Esmeralda said.
"Yes. I saw you."
My grandmother laughed. "The door's right there. How could you
not
see me?"
"I saw you in the other world, not here."
Esmeralda shivered. "If we go to my flat here, will you still be able to see the doors?"
"Is it near here?"
"Yes."
"Then I think so. But we could just walk to them. Find out what's on the other side. See if we can find Sarafina."
"But, Reason, you said there were seventeen of them. You don't know how close they are. Maybe some of them aren't even in Manhattan. It could take us all day just to look at two or three. And even though you suddenly seem to be immune to the cold, I'm not.
"If we go to my flat, we can wait, and as soon as Alexander or Sarafina shows up, we can go to them. Doesn't that make more sense?"
"I could examine the doors by myself. It probably wouldn't take me very long," I said.
"And if Alexander showed up? He's devious. He'll try to trick you, Reason. You'd be better off with my help. I'm not as strong as you, but I'm strong."
"Okay," I said. I wasn't convinced, but if there was a chance of real-world news of Sarafina, I didn't want to miss it.
Esmeralda stuck her hand out to make a taxi stop. "Too cold to walk," she said.
A taxi stopped almost immediately. That was easier here. In New York there were more taxis than normal cars.
I slid in. Esmeralda leaned forward to give the address. Thirteenth Street. Good. A prime number. Almost as good as those divisible by nine.
I thought about Jay-Tee again. Would she really stay alive without magic?
I hoped we'd find Sarafina quickly. And that I wouldn't see Danny again.
* * *
Esmeralda's New York flat wasn't as big as Danny's, but it had more furniture, pictures on the walls. It seemed more lived-in. How often did she come here?
The flat had a long, narrow corridor with a kitchen, study, bathroom, and two bedrooms off it.
"You can sleep in there," she said, showing me the smaller bedroom. "If we end up having to stay a night."
A large Escher print hung on the wall, lizards entwined and crawling off the edges of the drawing. Sarafina had used Escher to teach me about tessellation and tiling. We'd spent hours designing our own mosaics, laying triangles and polygons edge-to-edge on paper, graduating to more complicated shapes, mixing them together. None of ours were as fine as Escher's, but it had been fun.
The next room was the bathroom. I peeked inside and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.