Magic Lessons (12 page)

Jay-Tee walked into the kitchen. Esmeralda didn’t look up, kept her eyes fixed on the door. She nursed the old-fashioned, very heavy, very corded phone on her knees. Jay-Tee couldn’t decide whether she was waiting for Reason to call again or was planning to use it to bludgeon to death whoever (or whatever) came through the door.

The door was moving, but in total slow motion. As if someone was hitting the pause button over and over to shift it frame by frame. Too weird. The door made Jay-Tee’s skin crawl. It was like a wild animal, toying with them, waiting for them to relax before it leapt out and tore them into pieces as small as the feathers that lined the bottom of the door. Jay-Tee had a sudden, very clear image of feathers soaked in blood and guts. Very ewww.

“Where’s Tom?” Esmeralda asked, still not looking at Jay-Tee. “He went home to sleep.”
“But it’s so early.”
“He couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. We didn’t get

much sleep last night.” Jay-Tee wondered if Esmeralda wasn’t looking at her because she knew what Jay-Tee had done. She had never done to Tom what Jay-Tee had. He’d said so himself. Before Tom and Reason had come to New York, they’d never even heard of drinking.
She must hate me
, Jay-Tee thought.
I hate me
.

Esmeralda nodded and made a note on the pad.
“So what was the excitement?”
“Reason rang. We were able to establish that when the

“Huh,” Jay-Tee said instead of saying,
Duh
. She’d thought that was pretty obvious. Though you’d think that anyone with enough magic to make the door so weird for so long would’ve died when Moses was a baby.

“He’s very powerful,” Esmeralda continued, as if she were talking about something unimportant—the weather, or what she’d bought at the local store. “He was able to stop Reason from moving or speaking while he held Danny off. Easily.”

“Is Danny okay?”
“Yes. He’s fine.” Still she didn’t look at Jay-Tee.
“You sure?”
“Yes. I spoke to him.”
“And
he
hasn’t shown up?”
“You mean Reason’s grandfather?”
Jay-Tee nodded and sat down on a stool, instantly feeling

the soreness in her butt. She’d sat on one of these kitchen stools staring at the stupid door for way too long.
“No. Not yet.”
Jay-Tee slipped off Reason’s sandals and folded her feet up

under her. She looked at her watch and tried to calculate what time it was in New York. What had Reason said to do? Add six and swap
AM
for
PM
? Or was it add eight? It was after ten here so that made it—Jay-Tee counted it off on her fingers—6
PM
there. Or eight. Either way, it’d be dark already, and cold. Not brighter than a movie star’s teeth, and not deliciously hot.

“I don’t know what to do,” Esmeralda said.
“Huh?”
“I don’t know what to do.” She hugged the phone closer;

Jay-Tee turned away, staring out the window at the enormous prehistoric-looking tree. Fronds hung down from it, as if it was meant to be in a dark, dripping jungle somewhere, not in someone’s backyard in the middle of a city. If Esmeralda asked, Tom would probably give his beloved Mere some magic, too. But how long could he keep doing that? What would be left for Tom? Eventually they would have to die. Nothing to be done about it. Not unless they wanted to drink Tom dry.

This time Esmeralda turned to look at her. She nodded. “I feel like I’m wearing thin, floating away from the world.”
“Fading.”
“Yes.” Esmeralda sounded sad and defeated.
“Me, too.”
“I know. I saw it in you.”
Jay-Tee wondered what it was she could see. The absence of magic? The damage magic had done to her? Why couldn’t JayTee see it? Did Reason see it, too? “I . . .” Jay-Tee stopped. She wasn’t sure she could tell Esmeralda what she had done. “I think I understand
him
now. Drinking my magic like that.”
Esmeralda bowed her head. “Yes.”
“But it only delays the inevitable.”
Esmeralda looked at her, smiled briefly. “I would give any- thing for a few more weeks, a few days. . . .”
“Anything?”
She nodded. “If I could, I’d take it. . . .”
“But we don’t have enough left to take it with, do we? We can only ask and hope.”
Esmeralda sat up, staring at Jay-Tee. “You did, didn’t you?” Her eyes went soft, unfocussed for a moment. “You did.” It wasn’t a question.
“I explained it to him. . . .”
“As Alexander did with you.”
“Alexander?”
“Reason’s grandfather. Jason Blake.”
Jay-Tee felt sick. She wasn’t like him. “Is that his real name?” She’d thought she’d heard all his different names, but she’d never heard that one. She wished Esmeralda hadn’t said it out loud.
“I don’t know. It’s what he called himself when I first met him.”
How could Esmeralda say Jay-Tee was like that man? She wasn’t. “Tom gave me his magic because we’re friends. It wasn’t like with
him
at all.”
Esmeralda laughed. “I’m not accusing. I’m hardly in a position to be casting stones.”
“Have you done it? Drunk from someone?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
For a long while Esmeralda said nothing. The door had shifted to lengthwise ripples. It would be pretty if it wasn’t so weird and if Jay-Tee didn’t half expect it to bulge forward and suck them through any minute now. She wondered if that would be a bad thing.
“Mostly from my daughter.”
“Reason’s mom?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“Indeed. I didn’t ask her; I took it.”
“You . . .”
“Yes. She wouldn’t use her magic. She refused to learn. She refused to believe it was real. So . . .”
“So you just took it from her. Wow, no wonder she hates your ass.”
Esmeralda laughed, but she looked like she was going to start crying. “Sarafina has reasons beyond counting for hating me. I wasn’t a very good mother.”
Jay-Tee cracked up. “You weren’t a very good mother! That’s hilarious. Man, you must’ve been Cruella De Vil!”
“I didn’t mean . . . It wasn’t supposed to be like that.” A tear rolled down Mere’s cheek. “I didn’t want her to go crazy. I thought if I just took it . . .”
“And it didn’t hurt that it also meant you were going to live longer.”
“No, it didn’t. Oh! I never meant any of it to turn out like this. If I could change it all, I would. If I could go back in time . . .”
Jay-Tee snorted. “If I could go back, I’d snag the basketball genes, not the skanky evil magic genes. In a heartbeat.”
“Oh, yes,” Mere said with so much longing Jay-Tee could almost taste it. “Get rid of the curse. Nothing is worth this. Nothing.”
The door wasn’t moving. Jay-Tee wasn’t sure how long it had been still. They’d stopped taking notes. “Hey, didn’t you say that when the door isn’t moving he’s not on the other side?”
Esmeralda wiped her eyes. “Yes.”
Jay-Tee stood up, walked toward it. “Come on, then. Let’s check it out. We’re going to die, anyway, right?”

“Your grandmother said you should keep trying to find out where he came from.”
“I
am
trying to find out where he came from.”
“Won’t it make you sick again? Shouldn’t we rest for a bit?”
“I’m fine.” I kept following the trail.
“Why are we going north? Are you smelling him?”
I shook my head. “I don’t have to; I can see him now.”
Danny stopped dead, turned around, his hands curled into fists. “Where is he?”
“Sorry, not
him
him. I can see where the old man’s been. His, um, residue? The stuff I was smelling before, I can see it now. It’s like a misty trail.”
“His
residue?
” The part of Danny’s face that was visible between his scarf and his hat screwed up like he’d eaten something truly disgusting. “What do you mean
residue?
”
“When he moves he leaks stuff—like dead skin cells.”
“Eww. Magic dead skin?”
“I guess.”
“We’re following a trail of magic dead skin cells. You know that’s weird, right?” Danny was grinning at me. He reached out and touched my nose. Though it was nearly numb with cold and he was wearing gloves, I felt his touch tingle throughout my body. “No wonder it made you barf.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty foul.” And then I realised that it
wasn’t
, not anymore. I could smell the old man, but it wasn’t making me want to chunder. He didn’t smell bad to me anymore. Why? I could feel it, the stuff he had put inside me, crawling around me—it ached, made me feel uncomfortable in my own body. Like it wasn’t my own anymore. He’d changed me so that he smelled good now, not foul. How else had he changed me?
“Lead on,” Danny said.
After seven blocks the trail disappeared into the footpath. I pulled up and a woman ran into me. “Sorry,” I said, trying to step out of her way and running into a man carrying a small child in his arms. “Sorry,” I said again. The man didn’t say anything to me, just scowled briefly and kept walking.
“What?” asked Danny. “Why have we stopped?” He pulled me out of the pedestrian traffic to the front of a run-down shop selling shoes. The shop next door was just as run-down and seemed to specialise in tat: old baby dolls in faded dresses, plates with different people’s faces on them—including Elvis Presley and a blonde woman in a white dress—and large plastic crosses that lit up in red and blue. Even pressed up against the shop window, people passed by so close their winter coats brushed against us. I was never going to get used to such massive mobs of people. What were they doing out at night in the cold?
I stared at where the old man’s trail disappeared. Through the passing crowds I saw no grate, no vent, no cracks in the concrete. He must’ve sunk down into the ground here. I wondered why. I wondered, too, if he could reappear here. The thought made my stomach contract. If he could disappear into the ground anywhere he chose, then he could reappear anywhere, couldn’t he? With that piece of him sunk into my bones, could he find me whenever he wanted to? I glanced behind me. People everywhere I looked, but none of them a centuries-old relative of mine.
“It disappeared,” I told Danny.
“Your magic trail disappeared?”
“Yes.”
“Shouldn’t your grandmother know about this?” He started to get out his mobile phone.
“Not yet, not until I have something to tell her.”
I looked around, searching for old man Cansino’s trail. We were standing on the footpath of a big street; the footpath was wide, but the street was even wider, with four lanes of traffic— six if you counted the cars parked bumper bar to bumper bar, with barely a centimetre between them. I had no idea how you could get a car out that was parked in that tight. Maybe they had special forklift trucks for that, or maybe they pulled them out with helicopters.
Even at night with pretty coloured lights, the shops on the other side of the street were as run-down looking as the shoe and the tat shop, all of them jammed up against each other. I hadn’t yet seen a single building that stood on its own. Most of the shops looked more or less the same, just like all the houses. It was hard to note landmarks when there was no visible landscape. No hills or mountains or rock formations and what few trees there were had no leaves, making them look almost as identical as the buildings. If Danny decided to rack off, I would have no way of finding my way back to his place. “Where are we exactly?”
“Fourteenth Street. Between First Avenue and Avenue A.”
“Okay, I have to find the trail again. I’m going to start searching that way.” I looked up at the strange night sky that lacked stars and blackness. “What direction is that?”
“East.”
“If I can’t find the trail again, you can get me back to this spot, right?”
“No problem.”

“Do you see it yet?” Danny asked. We’d walked half a block east. I stopped to peer up and down Avenue A, seeing no hint of Mr Cansino’s trail, half-wondering why all the streets here had such boring names. Numbers are wonderful and letters are fine, but streets should have
actual
names.

I shook my head. “Nah. Don’t smell anything, either.” “What does it look like?” Danny asked. He was looking in the same direction as me, his eyes narrowed as if he was trying to see with my eyes.
“It’s like thick mist, but kind of concentrated. I can’t see through it. It’s the colour of a mouse’s fur—halfway between grey and brown.”
“So not like floating dead skin cells?”
“Nah.”
“Where next?”
“How about we keep heading east?”
“Sure.”
It didn’t feel like east. Without any stars or the moon, I had to take Danny’s word for it. We kept walking until we hit the river. I didn’t catch the old man’s scent once.
“So, your place must be near here,” I said.
“This is the East River, not the Hudson.” He pointed back the way we’d come. “My apartment’s way over there, on the other side of Manhattan.”
“Huh. So is this an island?”
Danny looked at me with the exact same expression Jay-Tee always used when she thought I’d said something der-brained. “Yeah, Manhattan is an island.”
“But I thought this was New York City?”
“Wow, Reason—you really don’t know anything, do you?”
“Not about New York City I don’t. I bet I know heaps of stuff you don’t know. Like how to make a fire out of—”
Danny laughed. “I bet you do, too.” He pointed to the other side of the river. “Over there? That’s Brooklyn. Further up that way—that’s Queens. We’re standing on the island of Manhattan. They’re all boroughs of New York City.”
“Boroughs?”
“Parts? Districts? Districts. That’s probably a better word for it. They’re all districts of New York City. There are five of them: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Julieta and me grew up in the Bronx, which is way up north.” He pointed along the black river. I wondered what it would look like during the day.
“But the East Village isn’t a borough?”
“Nope. It’s a neighbourhood. Boroughs are much bigger: they’re made up of lots of little neighbourhoods, like the East Village.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling overwhelmed. The East Village seemed so big just on its own. “So this river here is the East River that the East Village is west of ?”
Danny grinned and nodded.
“And the river near your place is the West River?”
“Nope, the Hudson, but it
is
west of here.”
“I like this river better. More trees. Must look nice in summer.”
“Yeah, it does.”
I hadn’t seen any trees from his flat, just a lot of concrete. Here, we were in parkland. If you could call it that when nothing was green. The trees were tall, with lots of branches but not a single leaf.
The old man had not been here. We headed back west on Tenth Street. There were fewer people than on Fourteenth Street. It was much narrower. I still felt hemmed in. I didn’t like not being able to see the horizon in any direction. Too many buildings.
When we hit Avenue A I thought I saw something up ahead, but when we got there it turned out to be a grey ribbon tied to a pole. I was cold and hungry and tired, and I didn’t know what the old man had done to me. We kept trudging along Avenue A. The next street sign I saw was for Ninth Street. “Hah!” I said.
“You found it!”
“Nope. I just figured out how this city works. Wow, I’m slow.”
“And, er, how does New York work, then, Reason?”
“The street numbers go down as you go further south. Tenth Street is south of Eleventh Street.”
“Uh-huh.” Danny didn’t sound very impressed by my revelation.
“But the avenues run from the east to the west, so First Avenue’s closer to the east side then the west.”
“Well done.”
“So if you lived on the corner of 190th Street and Fourteenth Avenue, you’d be very far north and west.”
“Yup. Except that there is no Fourteenth Avenue—you’d be in the Hudson River or, worse, New Jersey, and there are streets above 190th. Manhattan goes all the way to 218th Street.”
“Huh. What’s your address, then?”
“I’m on West Street, which is basically the West Side Highway. That’s the farthest one west.”
“What number street is closest to you?”
“Ah, actually, it’s kind of different in the west village. The streets are called things like Horatio and Jane. They’re not numbered.”
“That’s annoying,” I said. Now that I knew what the numbers were for, I approved of them as street names. “So why is this Avenue A?”
“It used to be a park.”
I looked across at the east side of the street where there was a park, if you could call it that with snow instead of grass and leafless, dried-up trees. “Like that?”
“All of this land used to be park, not just that bit. There didn’t used to be any avenues here. So when they added more avenues, the numbers had been used up running west; they used the alphabet instead. The next avenue east is Avenue B.”
“Then C, D, E, and F?”
Danny laughed. “Just C and D and then the highway and then the river.”
We reached Seventh Street. I peered west along the street, and there it was, a fat rope of mist emerging from a grate in the middle of the footpath. “Eureka.”
“You see it?”
“Uh-huh. Right there.” I walked up to the grate; mist coiled out of it, the same grey-brown as the thing he had sent spinning into my hands. The smell intensified as I got closer. But it wasn’t the same smell. Or rather it
was
, the stuff inside me had softened it—the burntness had become something freshly toasted, the bile was now like lemons. It didn’t make me feel sick. It smelt good. And yet it was the same smell. It hadn’t changed: I had. The old man had put something in me so that he now smelled like lemons and cinnamon toast. I shuddered. Somehow it was worse than when he had smelled like chunder and burnt rubber.
I could still feel that lurking strangeness, the pieces of the old man floating in my marrow. I peered down into the grate. The trail disappeared into darkness. I tried not to think about the old man bubbling up out of there, grabbing me. Or him bubbling out of me.
“Which way is it heading?”
“That way, west,” I said, following the trail along the street, being very careful not to touch it. I didn’t want to find out what happened if I did. At the corner of First Avenue I had a clear view of the trail winding a long way down the avenue. “It’s moved out into the middle of the road. It goes south for blocks.”