Magic or Madness (25 page)

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Authors: Justine Larbalestier

BOOK: Magic or Madness
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“Damn,” Jay-Tee said. Her hunger was starting to return. She ate a mouthful of cold, slimy-with-egg bacon. “What else did he say?”
“Not much. That he reckoned you were going to show up at Inferno sooner or later ’cause it was your kind of place. That he’s been looking for you everywhere. He seems like a really nice guy.”
“He’s cool. It’s just that he was away when things got bad. He had no idea.”
“Away?”
“Boarding school. Got a scholarship on account of the basketball genes.”
“Why didn’t you tell him?”
How could she have told him? Why would he have believed her? Their dad had always been so gentle. Jay-Tee shook her head. “Did Danny say
anything
about Dad?”
“Just that he thought that’s why you ran away.” Reason smiled at her again. Jay-Tee guessed that was supposed to be reassuring. “He seemed to be on
your
side. Not your dad’s. You should call him.”
Jay-Tee glared at her, had to fight down an urge to storm out of the restaurant. “Right. And have him lead that bastard straight to me. I don’t think so.”
“Danny wouldn’t do that. He said things have changed.”
“Yeah, well, I doubt they’ll be changed enough.”
“If you call him,” Reason said, “you’ll find out, won’t you? It can’t be that bad.”
“What would you know?” Jay-Tee demanded, her anger returned and aimed full blast at Reason. “You don’t know anything about my family.”
“Nope, I don’t,” she replied. “Though you seem to know heaps about mine.”
Jay-Tee closed her mouth, feeling like total scum. None of this was Reason’s fault.
Reason waved at a waitress, ordered mashed potatoes and gravy as well as macaroni and cheese. “You want something else?”
Jay-Tee nodded. “Same as her,” she told the waitress. “Sorry,” she said when the waitress was gone.
“‘S’okay. You’re right, I don’t know anything about your situation.”
“Not that. I mean sorry for everything. For helping him, you know? I just wanted him to stop doing it to me.” She looked at a point below Reason’s chin.
“Don’t worry. I’d’ve done the same thing if I was you.”
Jay-Tee doubted that.
“We just have to get out of this,” Reason continued. “Get away from Blake and away from your dad and from my grandmother too.”
Jay-Tee looked at her. “Yeah, right. Easy as pie.”
“Pi’s not easy, but there’s two of us. And we’re
both
magic. There’s got to be something we can do. Let’s start by calling your brother.”
Jay-Tee opened her mouth to speak. Reason didn’t understand: she
couldn’t
call her brother.
Reason put her hand up. “You know why you and Blake were able to get me so easy? Because I didn’t know
anything.
Because I was an innocent kid who’d just walked in out of the bush.”
Jay-Tee felt even more ashamed. Reason was right. She could have told her what was happening, but what had she done instead? Told her the East Village was east of the West Village.
“We have to find out everything we can. Find out what’s changed with your family. Maybe your brother will tell us something that can help us. Maybe he’ll know somewhere we can go. It’s just a phone call. He’s not magic, right? So how can a phone call hurt?”
Jay-Tee looked up. “I’m so sorry.” What a stupid word
sorry
was. It didn’t come close to describing what it was like to be as full of shame and guilt as she was. She could’ve helped Reason, warned her. But instead . . .
“I know you are. You’ll call him?”
She nodded slowly. “But we’ll call from a public phone, okay? One far from here.”
“Sure,” Reason said. The rest of the food arrived and they plowed in.
As they ate, Jay-Tee watched Reason. She’d never seen her look like this before. Not confused, not bewildered; certain, determined. As if she really could do something to get them out of the mess they were in, get them away from him, from Reason’s grandmother, from her dad. At that moment, Jay-Tee believed it too.
They took a cab all the way uptown into Washington Heights until Jay-Tee found a cluster of phones that felt far enough away. She’d been thinking Australia, but 188th Street would have to do.
She passed her hand over the cabdriver’s, letting the magic flow through her mother’s leather bracelet, watching the money appear. They jumped out, huddling in the inadequate shelter around the phone. Even colder up here; Jay-Tee would’ve sworn the wind was a thousand times stronger.
She picked up the receiver and wiped the mouthpiece on her coat.
“That doesn’t make any difference,” Reason said. “Any bacteria’s still going to be there.” Jay-Tee just bet that was something her mom had said.
“Yeah, but their wet icky saliva’s gone.”
“Onto your sleeve.”
“Better than on my mouth. So what’s the number?” It was freezing. Jay-Tee just wanted to do this and be gone. God only knew how they were going to find another cab up here. There wasn’t exactly the normal sea of yellow. Compared to downtown, there were hardly any cars at all. She should have thought of that. Maybe Tribeca would’ve been far enough away.
“It’s 917—”
“Huh,” Jay-Tee said, “sounds like a cell phone. Why didn’t you say so?” A cell phone meant it was Danny’s number, less chance of her dad answering.
“’Cause I didn’t
know
it was a mobile.” Reason rolled her eyes.
“Mobile,” Jay-Tee muttered. She had forgotten in the midst of Reason’s current take-charge mood that she didn’t know jack about shit. She’d sure gotten a lot more feisty since Jason had laid it all on her tonight, or rather,
last
night.
How long was it since they’d slept? Jay-Tee could definitely use some sleep soon. A lot. “Okay, give me the rest.”
She reeled off the number. “See? Fib (33).”
“What? You’re keeping count?”
Reason looked puzzled. “I always keep count.”
Jay-Tee dialed, then held the receiver between them. They both listened as it rang. She hoped it would just keep ringing, or go to voice mail, or something. A deep male voice answered, sounding just like her dad. She slammed the phone down.
“What are you doing?” Reason asked. “What did you do that for? That was Danny.”
“Really? He sounded just like Dad. He’s only seventeen. Eighteen.” She corrected herself, realizing he’d just had his birthday. “When did he start sounding like Dad?”
“Call him back. It’s freezing,” Reason said, bouncing back and forth on her feet. “I swear my nose is going to fall off. The sooner you do this, the sooner it’ll be done.”
“You sound like a grandma.”
“Just call him,
Julieta.
”
Jay-Tee glared at Reason, then decided it was too cold to call her out for using her given name and fed more coins in, entering the digits as Reason recited them.
“Hello,” said Danny. Jay-Tee froze again at the sound of his voice, but she didn’t hang up again. “Hello?” he said again.
“Hi, Danny,” Reason said, butting in. Jay-Tee would’ve loved to slap her. “It’s Reason and Jay-Tee.”
“Yeah, it’s me,” Jay-Tee said. She imagined she sounded as hesitant as she felt.
“Julieta? Reason?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Reason’s just listening.”
“I’m so glad.” His voice sounded choked, like he might cry. Jay-Tee felt her throat constricting too. She forced herself to breathe. “It’s really you?”
“Yeah.”
“Will you meet me? I have to see you. Things have changed—”
“How?” she said, her voice scraping in her throat. “How have they changed?”
“I wanted to tell you in—”
“Tell me. Now. I won’t meet you unless you tell me. I can’t see Dad again. You understand? I just can’t.”
“You don’t have to see Dad.”
“How can you promise that? What if he follows you?”
There was a silence at the other end of the line, then she heard her brother taking a deep breath. “He can’t follow me, Julieta. He’s dead.”
Jay-Tee hung up the phone. She felt sick. She could feel the mess in her stomach moving. “We have to go,” she said, amazed that the words came out. “It’s cold. I have to sleep.”
Reason looked like she was going to say something, but Jay-Tee’s glare shut her up.
Jay-Tee stepped out onto the road, hardly able to see. She felt hot and cold and her nerve endings stung as if her skin had been reduced to a single layer. There was nothing to protect her. A black gypsy cab appeared at once. Now,
that
was magic.
Jay-Tee called her brother again from the apartment, doing as much as she could through her fatigue to shield the conversation from
him
but wasn’t too confident of her success. His snares lay all over the apartment.
They arranged to meet at 1 PM for lunch just around the corner. Reason had insisted they meet somewhere close. It was nine-thirty in the morning and Jay-Tee could see that Reason was as close to keeling over from lack of sleep as she was. She hoped four hours would be enough to keep them going.
When Jay-Tee’s head hit the pillow, she closed her eyes and slipped into oblivion, not thinking of her dead father, dreaming of nothing.
26
Snot
“Twenty-four hours?” Tom couldn’t
keep the astonishment out of his voice. “What time is it?”
“More like twenty-six,” said Cath’s male flatmate, the one who worried about his bathroom products. Based on that, Tom had been expecting interesting clothes, but he was wearing a yellow T-shirt with crooked seams and badly cut jeans. Seemed odd to Tom to care about your skin, but not what you put over it.
“You know,” daggy jeans continued, “this chair sucks for watching TV. What you’ve been sleeping on for
twenty-six
hours—it’s a
couch,
not a bed.”
“You know,” Cath said, imitating her flatmate’s tone, “my brother’s been sick. He really needed to sleep.”
“Yeah, well, you and all your friends and boyfriends and relatives aren’t the only ones who live here.” The guy’s eyes were bugging out and one of the veins on his neck had suddenly become visible. “Is your brother going to pay rent? Put in for the utilities?”
“ ’Ken hell, Andrew! Give him a break. He just woke up. Let’s talk about this later.”
The flatmate stood up, shot a poisonous glance at Cath, didn’t bother to look at Tom, and stomped out, slamming the door of his bedroom, which made more of a squeak than a bang. Tom imagined the lack of a satisfyingly loud slam would make him even more ropeable.
“What time
is
it?”
Cath looked at her watch. “Eight at night.”
“Bugger. Twenty-six hours! Sorry,” Tom said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “I didn’t mean to sleep that long.”
“Not your fault. You needed it. You looked bloody awful when you got in. I’m just glad you woke up. Mere said I wasn’t to worry, but honest, you looked
dead.
” She shuddered.
“Sorry.”
“Stop saying that! Anyway, this is just a reminder that I’ve got to find somewhere else to live. Andrew’s such a dropkick.” She sighed. “You look heaps better. How do you feel?”
“Not too foul. Good, even, I think. Definitely hungry.”
“I’ll get you a couple of muffins and then after you wash, we can go out and get something more substantial. If you’re up to it?”
Tom nodded vigorously to indicate that he was more than up to it.
Cath went into the kitchen and returned with two terrifyingly healthy-looking muffins. Whole grain, he imagined, shuddering inside. He picked one up. It weighed more than a cricket ball. Oh, well, he told himself, at least it was food.

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