Magic Lessons (18 page)

“This is foul,” Tom said, putting down Mere’s phone for what seemed like the hundredth time. Danny and Reason still weren’t answering. “She shouldn’t be doing this.”

“But we have to save Reason,” Jay-Tee said, even though she sort of agreed with Tom. Esmeralda
was
messing around with magic—something Jay-Tee’s father had told her never to do. Hell, something
Mere
had told them not to do. (And which, naturally, Jay-Tee had done over and over again, with the fabulous result of almost dying at fifteen years of age.) But Mere was forty-five. She’d said she was all about caution, but after one dose of the old man’s magic, here she was experimenting like crazy, almost wiping out Jay-Tee and now possibly killing herself. “Anyways, she’s doing it, isn’t she?” Jay-Tee continued. “Nothing we can do now. Let it go, Tom.”

“Easy for you to say.”
“Huh?” The door let out a shudder and then an even louder high-pitched metal scream. Neither of them jumped, they were used to it now. Besides, Jay-Tee was drained beyond jumping.
“You go along with whatever Esmeralda says.”
She stared at Tom. “Excuse me? Ah, little flashback, you know, to before you knew Esmeralda had drunk from you and you thought she was God’s gift to the universe.”
Tom’s pale skin went even whiter, making the freckles stand out. His lips got really thin. Then he let out a big breath that turned into a sigh. “I just wish there was something we could do. How long has it been now?”
“Four minutes later than when you last asked me.”
“So, fifteen minutes?”
Jay-Tee nodded. She reached over and patted Tom’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay,” she told him, though she wasn’t at all sure that it would be. “Nobody’s perfect. Not Esmeralda or Reason or anyone. You just have to—”
Esmeralda had begun to move, her hand reaching to turn the doorknob. Suddenly her whole body shook. Her head and arm and back snapped back violently, looking like they would break at any moment. But her right hand grasped the doorknob and started to turn it.
Tom stood and moved towards her. Jay-Tee tried to stand up, wobbled, had to steady herself on the table. “We should do something,” she said, even though that was obvious.
Tom took several steps forward and grabbed Mere’s shoulders. She shook even more violently, and Tom lost his grip. He tried again, and this time she moved so suddenly she knocked Tom to the ground. The back of his head struck the kitchen floor with a crack, and he lay there, still.
“Tom!” Jay-Tee shouted.
He didn’t answer.

was, I reckoned, at least half right. If magic existed, who was to say devils didn’t? And Jason Blake was as good a candidate as anyone I’d met in my life.

I watched Blake lose ground before the cab turned a corner and I lost sight of him.
Every corner the cab took I was thrown against Danny or he against me. “Sorry,” I said the first time it happened, though I wasn’t sorry. The feel of him against me turned my fear and the soreness inside me into something wonderful.
“No problem,” Danny said as the driver ran a red light and a cacophony of horns erupted. He squeezed my hand and I remembered the feel of his mouth against mine. I wanted to kiss him again. “Here’s hoping we don’t die!” he said, grinning.
I twisted again to look out the back of the cab. My eyes were dazzled briefly by the headlights of the cars behind us, but I caught a glimpse of Jason Blake behind us, running in easy, loping strides that looked natural and yet moved him along much faster than they should. I stayed twisted around, staring out the back window, even as the violent cornering of the cab made the seatbelt dig into me painfully.
Two blocks behind, a tall, running figure turned the corner, weaving through the winter-bundled people on the footpath as if they had become so overburdened by the weight of their clothes that they were hardly moving. Blake was fast as light; they were as slow as the earth.
“What?” Danny said, before turning back to the driver. “Yeah, this is it, left side. Thanks, here’s great.”
The cab came to a stop.
“He’s only a block behind, Danny.”
“Thanks, man,” Danny said to the driver, handing him more money.
I jumped out, momentarily shocked by the cold after the overheated cab. “Hurry, Danny,” I said, running towards Esmeralda’s door, glancing over my shoulder at Blake running towards us. Funny how I could see him clearly through the crowds. Not funny, I realised: he was more vivid than anything else, absorbing all the electric lights around him. As he ran he shone.
I belted up the steps, through the dozens of misty trails, to the door. The old man was nowhere in sight. I glanced back. Jason Blake was getting closer. Danny bounded up the stairs, stood beside me. I heard a popping sound and looked down. At my feet the old man began to bubble up out of the steps.
“Where is he?”
“He’ll be here soon,” I said, wondering that Danny couldn’t see the old man emerging in front of him. “Jason Blake, too.” I pointed at my grandfather weaving through the crowd towards us. “You have to stop him from touching me.”
Danny dropped down a step. He nodded. “I see him.”
I smelt the old man as he came together. The old vomit smell transformed into lime; the burnt rubber, toasting bread. Good smells that made my stomach rumble, reminded me of how hungry I was, and also of Danny and me last night.
The same smell, I realised. Limes and baking bread. Last night . . . Danny and I . . . that smell had filled the room. The old man’s smell, but appetising and comforting.
“Damn,” Danny said, staring at the old man, no longer a pile of bubbly goo. He was all I could smell, every breath full of limes and baked bread. He placed his hand on my stomach. I gasped, expecting to go blind or be paralysed. Danny moved towards me.
“I’m fine,” I told him.
Instead of pain I felt warmth radiating from him, spreading across my stomach. We stood facing each other—the gnarled old man and me. Suddenly I could see inside him without blurring my eyes. I could see his magic, the same shape as the magic in Jason Blake, but bigger, even more pervasive.
The old man drew back his hand, and I was on the steps, back at the surface of things. He was smiling at me, nodding as if I pleased him. I half expected him to say,
Well done.
“Are you Raul Cansino?” I asked.
He continued to smile; the warmth from his hand grew hot. I gasped.
“Reason?” Danny said, catching my eye, raising an eyebrow as if to say,
Are you okay?
I forced a smile. “His name. It’s very Hispanic. Want me to ask him in Spanish? ¿Cómo se llama, señor? ¿Raul?”
The old man clapped his hands, gave what could have been a nod.
“What do you want?” I asked. “Ask him, Danny.”
“¿Que quiere, señor?”
Raul cocked his head as if he was trying to understand.
“¿Que quiere, señor?”
The old man’s eyes widened. He reached his hand to the door, touched the keyhole, almost pawed at it.
“Well, that we knew,” Danny said. “He wants to get into your grandmother’s house. But why? ¿Porque, señor?”
The old man smiled more broadly, brushed his knuckles past my stomach again, leaned back against the door. What had he wanted in that cemetery, searching through every grave? Why had he filled me and Esmeralda and Blake with his magic but almost killed Jay-Tee?
Because we’re all Cansinos
, I realised,
and Jay-Tee isn’t.
“Danny!” I screamed.
Jason Blake was running up the stairs. Danny turned, met his charge with raised fists. Blake tried to shove him aside, tried to reach past him to me. My knees buckled. The old man picked me up, carrying me as Danny had on the way to the green seaweed restaurant.
My eyes blurred, looking at the old man’s face. He was dense with magic, inhuman, but not animal, either. There was no blood in him, no waste.
“I have to talk to you, Reason,” Jason Blake yelled. My eyes cleared, took in Blake, stumbling down the steps.
He
had blood. It was on his face, dripped down his chin.
“We’re talking, aren’t we?”
“Not really. It’s a little difficult with your magic-deficient gorilla in between us.”
Danny took a step towards him, and Blake moved closer to the curb.
“Mongrel,” I told him. “You shit me worse than anyone I’ve ever met. I don’t care if you
are
my grandfather.”
Blake started to do something. I felt the air begin to be displaced, but then it was gone. “Interesting,” he said, his eyes unfocused. “Oh,” he said in surprise. “You have been naughty.”
“What?”
He smiled at me, smug as a cat that hasn’t had its throat slit open. “Well, now I know why he chose you.” He let out a short laugh. “My being your grandfather does mean something. You have magic flowing into you from more than one source—not only the Cansino women, but from me, too, and now Raul. He’s chosen you. It makes you more powerful.”
“Or dead faster.”
Chosen me?
“Does Raul look dead to you?”
“He doesn’t look like any kind of alive I’d like to be.” Raul Cansino didn’t feel dead, holding me in his arms. He radiated warmth, comfort, soothing smells that made me want to stay there. Jason Blake couldn’t do a thing to me if Raul Cansino didn’t want him to.
Jason Blake shrugged dismissively. “That’s now, but, remember, he’s survived for centuries.”
Danny turned to me. “Do you want me to—” He stopped, staring at the door. It had started to open. Before any of us could register it, Raul Emilio Jesús Cansino had slipped through to Sydney faster than thought, me held close to his dry yeast-and-lime chest.

strangest creature Jay-Tee had ever seen came sliding through. He was all-over red-brown, the same color as his little golem, with eyes the same size and shape as almonds. He was not much taller than she was. Reason’s scary old man was an elf; a pixie; a spry, lean hobbit. He carried Reason as if she weighed no more than the few bedraggled feathers protecting the door.

The elf man pushed past Mere, ran through the house as if he were floating, leaving a strong scent of something sweet and soothing that Jay-Tee couldn’t quite identify. A smell that made her smile. How had the smell of him made Reason hurl?

“Hah!” Jay-Tee exclaimed. She jumped up, though it killed her to do so and she really needed to pee. But Tom was still unconscious, and anyway, neither he nor Mere could run as fast as she could. It was up to her to save Reason.

Jay-Tee ran after him, ignoring the commotion behind her, leaping over Tom. The pixie wasn’t hard to follow—he left a trail of red-brown dust behind him.

Jay-Tee couldn’t help giggling as she sprinted after him, even though this could be life or death. She could feel the hollowness in herself growing bigger with every step, but the elf man looked so ethereal, so unthreatening. She wondered if he was stealing Reason to take her down into his elf kingdom to be his queen. Reason would look funny with a golden crown on her head.

Jay-Tee chased him down the street but couldn’t get close to catching him. She was running as fast as she could, sweating, panting, feeling the pain of every bruised muscle working, whereas he skipped past the ground as if it didn’t concern him. She half expected him to laugh,
ha, ha, ha
, at his escape from gravity.

Jay-Tee was relieved it wasn’t as hot as it had been the last time she’d run like this. When had that been? Yesterday morning. She sprinted past gnarly trees growing up out of the sidewalk, sprouting branches in all directions so that there was barely room for a small child to get past.

Yesterday had been torturously hot; the distances had shimmered like crazy mirrors. Today the air felt almost cool rushing past her. Everything was as bright as ever—gleaming, cut-glass bright. She wished she had sunglasses. She wished she had a hat. She fixed her eyes on the elf—somehow he was soothing to look at, made her eyes sting less.

She sprinted past an old woman struggling to pull her wobbly shopping cart over the uneven, broken-up sidewalk, and wondered what the old lady thought of the elf with the girl in his arms zipping past. Or had she seen something else? Reason clearly didn’t see the pixie the way she did. How could she describe him as an old man? He didn’t look that much older than Reason.

She ran past a bar with tiled walls and large-screen TVs. The people inside were all watching a strange sport where everyone wore white and stood around on a large green field. Up ahead the elf man had reached the slightly busy road and floated across it to the sloping park Tom had shown her on her first day in Sydney, when Reason had been sleeping and sleeping and sleeping.

Jay-Tee ran to catch him, narrowly avoiding being hit by a kid on a skateboard who had no sense of balance and no clue what you were supposed to do with a board with wheels on it. “Watch it!” the kid yelled. “Bloody drongo!”

Jay-Tee giggled and sprinted across to the park. The elf stuck to the concrete pathway, whereas Jay-Tee ran on the springy grass. He reached the other side of the park and turned right on the narrow street. Jay-Tee accelerated as he disappeared from view. When she reached the corner she couldn’t see him, but she could see his browny-red dust floating in the air, catching the sun high above. He’d turned at a churchyard. S
T
. S
TEPHEN
’
S
, said the sign. It wasn’t a Catholic church.

Jay-Tee slowed down because her legs were screaming at her. She leaned briefly on the low, rusting iron gate, caught her breath as best she could, staring at a scary-looking prehistoric tree almost as big as the one in Mere’s backyard, though this one’s roots came high out of the ground, sinewy and sprawling, like giant lizards dozing in the sun. Not at all how trees were supposed to look. She half expected one of the roots to rip free from the ground and wrap itself around her like an octopus tentacle.

She went through the gate, walking because she could no longer run. Her breaths were hot and sharp and painful. She staggered along the path past the church, her legs and lungs aching, past a slew of broken and worn gravestones. It was a cemetery.

She followed the fairy trail past stone monuments with rusting iron fences around them. There were trees everywhere, even some palm trees, as if this were a beach instead of a graveyard. Everything was green and overgrown, and all the graves were old and broken.