Disharmony (31 page)

Then she reviewed the scams. The long cons – requiring days or weeks to set up – obviously wouldn’t work here, but a short con might, playing a hustle to recruit an ally to defend her. She thought through every trick she could remember to make money, to evade detection, and to escape when the latter failed. She filed them away as possible strategies.

She sighed. The biggest problem was that she didn’t know how they’d come for her. If somebody approached her, it could be someone genuine who Sera had asked to help her; or it could be a trap.

Oh God, I need to walk, she thought. She had never sat still for so long in her life. She grabbed her bag, slipped past the man asleep beside her and through the heavy curtain that screened Business Class from the rest of the passengers. She began padding down the aisle of the aircraft, mentally perusing all the good luck, bad luck and curse spells she’d been taught by the gypsies. She discarded each of them fairly quickly. The only good she’d ever seen them do was to open the purses of the Gaje, and they did that because of what she told them, not because the spells actually did anything.

She met other sleepless souls walking the aisle and nodded when they smiled at her. Her appearance was unremarkable in the Economy section. Plenty of people were dressed like her. In that way, she would have felt a lot more comfortable back here than up the front with the posh people, but halfway down the aisle she turned back. There were so many more people in the main cabin and thousands more emitted
emotions – they wafted up from each seat with nowhere to disperse. Frustration, lust, envy and grief blasted endlessly back into the cabin with the recycled air.

She hurried back to her seat, breathless, shoving her bag back beneath it. She pulled her knees up to her chest and chewed a thumbnail. How am I going to be able to get away from them, she worried. Why would Sera just send me out here on my own? Couldn’t this mighty Council have sent someone to guard me if I’m so important to the Telling? And how the hell am I supposed to pay for anything when I get there? I mean, Sera didn’t even give me any money!

For what felt like the hundredth time, Samantha mentally face-palmed over this fact. What kind of nutjob plan was this anyway? In the car and at the airport, she’d been so bewildered by everything that she hadn’t even thought to ask about money. Sera had told her that all she needed was in the wallet.

There
had
to be something else in there. She decided to go through everything she had to look for anything that could possibly help her. She bent forward and dragged her bag out from under the seat. From the only pocket of the bag, sewn into the fabric, she removed the plastic wallet and emptied it out onto her tray. Her boarding passes. And only one other thing: the Carnivale ride pass.

She picked it up and turned it over, studying it from every angle; she even held it to her nose and sniffed. It was just cardboard. Her lips turned up in a small smile. How did it work? All she could see was a crumpled ticket lined with faded green stripes. In large green capitals right through the middle were the words ‘ADMIT ONE Dodgem Cars’. And yet it had got her through every gate and checkpoint so far,
and faster than anyone else had cleared them.

In spite of her anxiety, a thrill of excitement fluted through her stomach. What on earth did all the airport people see when they looked at the ticket? She had supposedly been around magic her whole life, but no one had ever showed her anything like this. She wondered what else Sera could do. Sera didn’t feel like most people. In fact, she didn’t feel like anyone Samantha had ever met before.

Suddenly she dropped the smile. Sera wasn’t here right now and she’d just sent her across the world alone. She gathered the tickets up and put them back into the wallet, then shoved it into the bag. Her fingers hit something hard. And this? What was she thinking, giving me
this
? She pulled the phone out of the bag and turned it over in her hand. It was pretty old-school. She flicked the cover open with a finger. The screen stayed blank. And it would be staying that way for a while, given that it had no battery! So, no money, a dead phone and unknown enemies waiting at Sydney airport for her. Great.

She sighed and threw the phone back into the bag. Her hands found her tarot deck, or maybe her tarot deck found her hands. Through the lacquered box she could feel the cards inside jostling. They whispered to her. She closed her eyes, fingering the gold cord around the box.

‘Is there anything I can get you, Ms White?’

Samantha snapped open her eyes.

One of the serene, supreme, scented stewardesses stood there. Smiling, of course.

‘Um, no,’ said Sam. ‘I’m good.’

‘Okay, then.’ The smile stayed stuck, but Samantha felt the woman’s annoyance as she bent towards her. ‘You’ve
clicked on your attendant’s light,’ she said.

‘Oh, sorry,’ said Samantha. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘That’s no problem,’ said the stewardess. ‘Everyone does it. It’s very sensitive.’

And then something weird happened. As the woman leaned over Samantha to depress the Call button, their hands touched briefly. And this time Samantha
saw
an image. It was the woman in her uniform, standing by a doorway, a black wheelie luggage bag by her side. A young child, a girl, maybe five, was crying piteously, her arms outreached. An older woman held the child back, terribly upset for the woman by the door – her daughter – and for her granddaughter who couldn’t understand what could be so important outside that door that would make her mummy leave her. Again.

The stewardess clicked off the button on Samantha’s console and straightened in the aisle. The image vanished.

Samantha squinted through the gloom at the woman’s name badge.

‘Thank you, Rebecca,’ she said.

‘You’re very welcome, Ms White,’ said the stewardess.

‘My name’s Samantha,’ she said, mentally gathering up some of the love she’d felt by the doorway in the image. She gently pushed the energy particles outwards. ‘What’s your daughter’s name?’ she said.

‘Daisy,’ said Rebecca, blinking slowly.

‘Daisy loves you very much,’ said Samantha. ‘Are you on your way home?’

‘Seventeen hours, thirty-nine minutes,’ said Rebecca, glancing at her watch.

‘She’s a lucky girl,’ said Samantha.

‘I’m a lucky mum.’

Samantha eased up on the emotion-emission.

A register of surprise flashed through Rebecca’s eyes. She straightened her shoulders and smiled, genuinely this time.

‘Are you sure I can’t get you anything?’ she said. ‘I make the absolute
best
hot chocolate, and I have to be awake now, anyway. You’d be doing me a favour.’

‘I’d love a hot chocolate,’ said Samantha. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever had one before.’

The stewardess turned, still smiling, but Samantha saw her shake her head, as though to clear it, as she walked away.

Samantha grabbed her tarot deck. This time, the cards whispered urgently. She figured she had time for a single-card reading before Rebecca returned. The thought gave her comfort. She had other skills she could draw upon besides running from people.

Hungrily, now, she scrabbled to undo the cord, wrapping it around and around her wrist to keep it safe. She opened the black lacquered box and withdrew the cards, immediately raising them to her face and breathing them in. She wasn’t aware that she smiled widely. She lost herself as she shuffled the deck, no longer airborne but in a lake where the cards swam about her, darting playfully. She joyfully tumbled with them, but a nagging worry tugged at her, finally pulling her back into herself. The single-card draw.

She never drew a single card. Why would you? If you posed a question of the cards and drew only one answer there was nowhere to hide. What ambiguity could there possibly be? What hope for better things if one drew an ill-fated card? She always felt it better to draw a suite – to paint a picture of possibility – than to draw a single card. A destiny card.

And yet the cards flew through her hands, butting against them insistently, urgently.

And one card forced its way into her palm.

Wait, I haven’t asked the question, she thought. This was not how to draw the single-card reading. The most important thing was to have the question uppermost in the mind when shuffling the cards. Nevertheless, she clutched the card in her hand.

The others were now silent, still, waiting.

Am I doing the right thing?
That will be my question, she thought.

The cards jostled. Nope, wrong question, scratch that. She knew she was doing the right thing – she had no choice but to leave Romania. Tamas had almost died because of her.

What will happen at the airport?

Um, wrong again. The cards would warn her of danger if that was coming, and she already knew that was coming. Would there be any use in frightening herself even more?

What do I need to get through this?

The card grew warm in her hand. She opened her eyes. She straightened the rest of the cards and put all of them but one back into the box, pushing forcefully to close the lid. The deck knew a member was missing. She heard them hex and spit as she dropped them back into her satchel. She kept the golden cord wrapped around her wrist and the answer card face down under her tray table. The cord itched and the answer card hummed with heat.

‘Samantha?’ Rebecca appeared, beaming, and carefully transferred the contents of her white-linen-draped tray to Samantha’s tray table: a lovely silver teapot, a jug full of milk, and a tiny saucer heaped with pink marshmallows.

‘You’re gonna love it. It’s melted chocolate. From Belgium. We never give it to the passengers.’

Samantha smiled back, tightly. The card called, almost burning now, from beneath the tray table.

What do I need to get through this?
Her single-card question. As soon as Rebecca turned away, she pulled the card from under the tray table and flipped it over.

Huh. She stared at the picture on the card and breathed deeply. A monk, small of stature, robed in deep green and gold, stood calmly, head bowed in thought. Behind him, filling the rest of the card, the monk’s spirit towered over him. His spirit was a giant, his robe thrown backwards, baring a broad chest and huge, powerful arms. The arms were raised high, holding up a cracking, crumbling ceiling.

Samantha gave a small smile and reached for her bag. She found the lacquered box and slipped the card back inside. Then she poured herself a hot chocolate. Rebecca was right. It was absolutely delicious.

She leaned back into the seat and thought about her answer. A spirit card, representing spiritual strength. The cards were telling her that even though she may be frightened and weary, this was no time to rest. A great danger was poised above her, but ultimately she was strong and had everything she needed within her to survive.

But it still seemed that everyone had more faith in her than she did. Because she still had no idea how she was going to get out of Sydney airport without being captured.

And then there was the small matter of searching a country she’d never set foot in, to find a boy she’d never met and wasn’t sure she wanted to – her twin brother, the psychopath.

Samantha followed the other Qantas passengers shuffling towards the immigration gates at Sydney International Airport. With her only luggage slung across her shoulder, she was not in any particular hurry to clear customs and race to the luggage carousel.

She still didn’t have a plan. She felt like she was walking towards her doom.

Let them wait, she thought.

Standing in the custom’s queue, she spotted Rebecca, the stewardess, moving with the other airline personnel through the staff exit. Rebecca caught her eye and waved. I’m an idiot, Samantha told herself. I should have asked her if there was a staff exit I could take. No one would think to look for me there. Too late now. She watched Rebecca’s back clear the doorway. At least Daisy will be happy to have her mum home, she thought. It was sad that she had to be without her mum for days at a time, but at least she had a mother who loved her.

For the first time, Samantha felt anger towards her real mother for leaving her with Lala. She’d always assumed her mother just couldn’t cope, and she was grateful she’d been left with someone who had cared so much for her. But now she knew that her mother had left her in a gypsy camp as a science experiment – or maybe that should be a magic experiment – as though she was part of a recipe that required more ingredients before it could be used.

She wasn’t sure what made her more angry – that her mother had separated her from her twin brother and then abandoned them both, or that she’d had the hide to go and die before she could meet her and tell her off. Sera had clammed up when she’d asked whether the baby her mother had died
giving birth to – the genius – had survived, and Samantha had felt too sad and sore to push it.

She realised she was next in the queue to have her documents checked to clear customs. Clutching her plastic wallet, she stepped forward, certain as she had been going through every other checkpoint, that she was about to be detained and arrested.

Maybe that would be a good thing, she thought. It would be one way out of here. But then she’d still be trapped.

But when she held out her travel documents, she watched the instant change in the dour expression of the middle-aged woman behind the custom’s counter. Holding the Carnivale ticket, she stared at it as though she were checking the paperwork of her favourite movie star.

‘Welcome to Australia, Samantha White!’ she said, loudly and so proudly.

Samantha thought that maybe the woman had a tear in her eye. ‘Um, thanks,’ she muttered.

And then a sort-of idea popped into her head. A not-quite-there-yet idea that needed some more thought, but she had no more time.

All senses alert, she followed the other passengers down the Arrivals ramp, feeling emotions buffeting her as she drew closer to the throng of people waiting for their relatives and friends to disembark. She peered anxiously into the crowd. Everybody smiled and waved, some cried in joy, holding balloons, signs, flowers. She didn’t sense anything sinister, but there were so many people. As she drew closer to the end of the ramp she scanned further out beyond the edge of the crowd.