“When you took Raul Cansino’s magic from me it almost killed me.”
“I knew Cansino would give you more.”
I doubted that. “What about Jay-Tee? There was no Raul Cansino to save her.”
“It’s true. I cared more about living longer, having more magic.” He was still staring at me. “We can’t afford to care too much about other magic-wielders. It’s dangerous. My own mother tried to trick me out of my magic, as she had my father. In the end I tricked her out of hers. That’s how it is. How it always has been. We eat one another.”
Esmeralda opened her mouth to speak, then closed it.
“Is that why you don’t use your real name?” I asked.
“My real name?”
“The name you were born with.”
“I was born Alexander Tannen.”
“You told Esmeralda your real name?”
“I was young.”
“And in love?”
He laughed. So did Esmeralda.
“I didn’t woo Esmeralda out of desire for anything but her magic. And if there was a child—and I saw there would be—that magic too. Like my mother tried to do to me. Like every magic person I have ever known. Esmeralda too, of course.”
“But you didn’t get mine,” Esmeralda said.
“Nor did you get mine. Stalemated each other, didn’t we?”
“I was just glad to be free of you.”
It was one of the first things Esmeralda had said that I believed a hundred per cent.
“None of that matters, Reason. Raul Cansino’s magic sets us free.” He laughed. “We don’t have to turn on one another anymore. What he gave you—it changes everything.”
“What about what he gave you and Esmeralda?” I asked. “You made a door. If you can do that, why do you need me?”
“I don’t. I don’t need you. But I want to be like you. I want to have all of Cansino’s magic. He showed me what I would become if he chose me. He showed me real space. How I could change what I was. Change anything I wanted—”
“You want me to give you more magic?” I asked. Was he mad? “I’d much rather turn your magic off.”
Jason Blake blanched. It lasted only a moment, but I saw it. He was frightened of me. Esmeralda saw it too.
“What did you mean when you said this new magic doesn’t last?” she asked him. “How long do we have?”
“I don’t know. A month. A year. The rest of a human life span. But not the centuries she has.”
“But I feel so strong,” she said. “And I’ve done things I never dreamt of.”
“He left us powerful,” Jason Blake agreed. “Not as powerful as you, Reason, but powerful. He left me human. Do you know what you look like now? You vibrate with power.”
“But I’m changing. I’m losing—”
“Your humanity? Why care? I don’t. I don’t care about people. I never have. I don’t want to feel greed. Or guilt. Or love.” Esmeralda laughed, but my grandfather ignored her. “Or lust. I want the life he had. Your life. I want to be stripped down to curiosity. I don’t want anything else. I want to explore, to have the universe unfurl for me. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. Not love, not money, not fame. I’ve never wanted human things.”
“But Raul wanted them,” I protested. “He wanted to make sure there were more Cansinos. He wanted to die and be with the rest of his family.”
Jason Blake laughed. “Every living thing wants to pass on its genes. And, eventually, every living thing dies. Not many get to explore for centuries before it happens.”
I could see it. The shimmering lights, shifting in the margins of my sight. No discord there. All I had to do was close my eyes completely to be there…to stay there forever.
“He’s wrong, Reason,” Esmeralda said. “Raul Cansino didn’t want to live forever. It wasn’t enough for him. In the end he chose to die.”
“Rubbish,” my grandfather said. “No one has ever been as content as he was. Or as you’ll be once you accept your gift. You can do anything you want. Go anywhere. Raul Emilio Jesús Cansino showed me what he was.”
I looked at Esmeralda, but she was looking at Jason Blake.
“She can’t go through doors that don’t want her,” Esmeralda said.
He laughed. “Neither of you understand, do you? Reason, you don’t need doors. Those lights you see? The magic? Concentrate on any one you recognise and you’ll fly through space until you’re there.”
Esmeralda turned to look at me. “Really? She can do that?” The greed had returned to her eyes.
“You can go to Sarafina anytime you want. If you can see her magic, you can go there. Your magic is inextricably linked to hers.”
“Then why didn’t Raul fly to me? Why did he need the door?”
“He didn’t know you. He had to know you first. Then, wherever you were, he could go there. He was in the room when you and your Danny boy went at it, making sure you conceived. He pushed you at him.” His smile turned feral. “That’s why he chose you, after all. For the baby.”
As soon as he said it I knew it was true. I had wanted Danny—he was so beautiful—but I never would have kissed him, not without Raul Cansino pushing me. He’d even made Danny smell of limes, of lightly toasted bread, of cinnamon. I’d seen Danny since then, and all I’d smelt was soap. Those other smells—they’d been from Raul Cansino.
He really had been in the same room with us. I shuddered. Jason Blake smiled.
“You are repulsive,” Esmeralda said, glaring at him.
“But,” I began, pushing thoughts of that night away, “why did you steal my mother?”
Jason Blake laughed. “Why don’t you ask her yourself? Go on. Concentrate. Find her.”
“Reason, be careful!” Esmeralda said. “You can’t trust him.”
I looked from him to her and back again, not sure what to do. I had to get to Sarafina. I had to save her. I closed my eyes.
“No,” my grandfather said. “Don’t shut your eyes.”
I opened them. He was still staring at me.
“Can you see her?” he asked.
I couldn’t. “She’s not here.”
“Careful, Reason,” Esmeralda said.
“Search further. Push yourself. Concentrate on her. You’ve seen her magic; now find it!”
I was already searching, pushing further than I ever had before. I heard them yelling at each other, but not what their words were. My peripheral vision was growing, eating into everything I saw.
I found her.
So far away. She was even fainter than when I’d last seen her, almost as faint as Jay-Tee before I’d saved her. “What have you done to her? She has almost no magic left.”
“Go to her, then,” my grandfather told me. “Ask her yourself.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t show me how. I just saw him do it.”
“Don’t,” Esmeralda said. “It might not be safe.”
I retreated into the lights floating in my eyes. Sarafina’s was so faint. I concentrated on it, until it spread out and was almost all I could see. My vision stretched out. My skin prickled. I moved forward. I panicked, stutter-stepped, tripped.
A huge semi trailer zoomed past; wind pushed my hair and clothes wildly around my face and body. I was on the edge of the highway. I took a step back.
Behind me Esmeralda called out, “I’ll find you!”
I didn’t turn. I’d moved. My grandfather was right: I could be my own door. But I had to concentrate or—another semi trailer rushed past—or I would be squished flat as a bug.
I turned my attention to Sarafina, let her fill my vision, until the highway in front of me drifted into my peripheral vision. My skin contracted, then expanded, shifting across my flesh. And my vision stretched again. Streets unfurled beneath my feet, countryside, ocean, ocean, ocean, but her light always there.
I could feel the panic rising. The rushing ocean began to take up more of my vision. For a brief moment I thought I could fe
el spray, smell salt. I pushed my thoughts back to Sarafina. Sarafina, not ocean—Sarafina. Ocean changed to land; green, blue, brown flashed by.
Then my mother’s light grew sharper and sharper, until I was standing in front of her.
25
Without Tears
Tom was banging on the door and calling out to her to let him in, that he was sorry, and that she should stop being such a bloody pain. Jay-Tee lay in bed and listened, which was easier than it had been, because the rain had finally started to ease off.
She wasn’t crying anymore. That hadn’t lasted very long. She wondered if she was about to get her period or something. This wasn’t her. Having tantrums, slamming doors, crying over nothing. Well, not nothing—her whole life gone splat was not nothing—but she hadn’t cried when her dad started beating her. She hadn’t cried when she ran away from home and thought she’d never see her brother again. She hadn’t cried over Jason Blake stealing her magic. Or over her dad dying. Or when she thought she was going to die. Except for the last few days, Jay-Tee honestly couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried. Now all she seemed to do was blub.
She got up and opened the door. Tom stood there, mouth open, still red in the face from yelling. He closed his mouth, then opened it again, then closed it. She could see all the different thoughts flickering across his face: being mad at her, worried about her, wanting to make it up, wanting to kiss her, back to mad again. “You okay?” he said at last.
“Yeah.” No. Jay-Tee wasn’t magic anymore. And Tom was. She was jealous of him. She was sorry for him. She didn’t know what she was.
“I’m really sorry.”
“You should be.” She leaned forward and kissed him. A demure little mouth-closed kiss.
“That’s better,” he said, reaching forward and taking one of her curls in his fingers. He stretched it out and then let go so that it bounced, which normally would’ve made her totally lose it. But she didn’t mind Tom doing it.
“I’ll be careful,” he said. “I really, really will. Until you and Reason showed up I always had been. Careful, I mean.”
“I’m the bad influence, then?”
“Reckon. Before you came I hadn’t hardly done anything. Catholic girls!”
She smacked him lightly. “Least I’m going to heaven.”
“You’ll be lonely there without me.”
She crossed herself and smacked him again.
“Reckon there’ll be any kissing in heaven?” Tom asked.
“Nope. Angels are beyond earthly things like kissing.”
“So we should get as much in now as we can, eh? Before it’s too late?”
Jay-Tee laughed and opened the door wide for Tom to come in.
“Sorry ’bout the tantrum.”
“’S’okay. I was being a dropkick.” He kissed both her cheeks and then her chin, her nose, her mouth. She opened her lips a little, kissing him back. “But I’m not sorry I made it. You look gorgeous.”
She ran a finger down his cheek. “Plus how am I going to get the damn thing off without you around? It’s lovely, but I want to change back into normal clothes.”
She turned her back to him and Tom started to unbutton her.
“Mere called a few times.”
“What’d she say?”
Tom undid the last button and she shrugged the gorgeous top off and put on another one of Mere’s T-shirts. “She was just checking on me. Wanted to know if I was okay. Blah, blah, blah.”
“Did you speak to Reason too?”
Jay-Tee shook her head. “No, she didn’t mention Reason. I wonder if she’s still…”
“Still what?”
“Human.”
“What do you mean?” Tom asked. “Of course Reason’s still human.”
Jay-Tee didn’t know what to say. Reason had looked so strange. All glowing and gold. At least she had until she’d turned Jay-Tee’s magic off.
“What did Esmeralda say about Reason’s mum?”
“She didn’t mention her either. Or Jason Blake. And she would have, right? If they’d found him, I mean.”
“I guess.” Tom looked down. “Hope they’re okay.”
“Sure they are,” Jay-Tee said. “I mean, Reason’s like a superhero now, right?”
“You keep saying so.”
“’Cause it’s true. Anyway, I’m glad you’re here to wait with me.”
“Um,” Tom told his feet.
“What?”
“Well, that’s the thing. I kind of rushed through brekkie with Da. You know? So I could make your top. And he wants me to come home and then stay for dinner and stay tonight as well. He said he missed me. And it’s true I haven’t seen him properly since Reason got here.”
“But.” Jay-Tee really hated the idea of spending the night alone.
“I’ll call you. I’ll go to bed early and I’ll call you straight away, okay?”
Jay-Tee didn’t say anything, but she was really hating Tom’s dad.
“We can talk until we fall asleep and then I’ll race around first thing in the morning. Just call me if Esmeralda and Reason show up or if they call or anything, okay?”
“Sure,” Jay-Tee said. “But what’s your number?”
Tom went out into the hall and returned with the notebook from beside the phone. “This first one’s my house and the second one is the mobile.”
He tore the paper off and handed it to her. There were two love hearts under the numbers. Jay-Tee grinned and mock-punched him.
“It’s going to be okay,” Tom said.
“I hope so,” Jay-Tee said.
She walked downstairs with him hand in hand. He climbed out the window to the back porch and she went through the door. They kissed for a while, neither of them wanting to stop, until finally Tom pulled away. “I’ve really got to go.”
“I know,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”
“Talk to you tonight.” He jumped off the porch steps and landed with a soft squelch. The rain had slowed some, but he was still pretty wet before he was over the fence.
“See ya!” she called.
“Later!”
She realized that she wasn’t worried about Reason. Reason was so powerful now, she could take Jason Blake. She could take anyone. She could turn magic off. She could probably do anything she wanted to do.
Jay-Tee had been right all along: Reason was going to save them. It was just that being saved was not so wonderful as she had imagined.
She missed her magic.
26
Sarafina Cansino
I staggered, tripping over a tiny rock wall into greenery. Ferns, I thought, as I closed my eyes and slipped into Cansino’s space, so comfortingly free of sound and sensation. I took in the patterns of light around me: A door close by: 539 lights, divisible by 7, by 11, lots of pretty patterns there. And Sarafina. Her magic frail and tiny, her Fibonacci pattern starting to fray.
Sarafina was calling to me. Her words floated by. I pushed out of Cansino’s world to where she was. I felt cool soil between my fingers, leaves against my face, rocks digging into my legs, but somehow muted, as if the real world were coated with the other world. Behind me she laughed.
“Hey, Reason,” Sarafina said. “Get up!”
I rolled over, shifted onto a path made up of lots of tiny pebbles. Sarafina held out her hands to help me up.
“I’m here,” I said.
“Yes, you are,” she answered. “But it’s not very comfy there. Come over here; it’s much better,” she said, pointing to a long wooden seat with shiny red cushions on it.
“I’m here to save you!”
She grinned and pulled me up, folding me into her arms. “Of course you are! Hey, darlingest daughter. Glorious child. So grand to see you! Though you’re so slow—I thought you’d never get here.” She squeezed me and then held me out at arm’s length. “You have no hair! You weren’t even that bald when you were a baby! But it looks wonderful. I love the bronze look. Very you. Have you grown? No, you
can’t have. It’s only been a couple of weeks, hasn’t it? But still, it looks like you have. It could be the baby inside you. Like mother, like daughter. What shall we call her? Glory? Brilliance? Beauty? Fibonacci?”
She looked and sounded just like the old Sarafina. She was rocking from heel to toe, her feet moving as fast as her mouth, giving me no time to respond to any of her questions. Full of energy, the way she always had been. Her eyes were bright. They looked into mine. “Extraordinary. Alexander said your eyes would change. But I had no idea. They’re beautiful.”
“They’re—”
“And your skin.” She touched my arm. “It’s like you have no pores.”
“Not like. They’re gone. I’m poreless.”
“The hair on your arms is gone too. Not just your head.” She ran her finger over my scalp and then my forearm. “Not a single one. How odd. But it suits you. Come, sit down,” she said, dragging me to the seat and chattering at me all the while. She folded her legs up underneath herself, wrapping the fabric of her skirt around her feet.
“Let me give you more mag—”
“No rush, darling. Isn’t this lovely?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Just look at it, Reason. See those fountains?”
We were sitting in a walled garden, with two fountains and a stream circling from one to the other. Plants everywhere. Many ferns, and vines I didn’t recognise climbing the stone wall. The air shimmered, so it had to be warm. Little brown lizards skittered across the tiny pebbles that made up the garden paths and darted into the greenery.
There were butterflies, but they looked nothing like the butterflies I’d seen on the other side of the lift. I could hear traffic noise, honking, wheels on bitumen, but I couldn’t see any of it.
“Are you listening, darling?”
I hadn’t been. “I’m sorry. You don’t have much time left. I need to—”
Someone gasped. I looked up at an Asian woman wearing a long, tight skirt in bright colours, and a white blouse, and carrying a tray. She was staring at me.
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