Magic or Madness (23 page)

“How you want the eggs?” the waitress asked, looking at her pad, not at Tom.

“Fried, please.”

“How you want them fried?”

“Er,” Tom said, trying to think what she meant. “In butter?”

Wrong answer. The waitress slid her eyes from the pad to regard him mournfully, as if his stupidity only further proved that the world was worth nothing.

“Over easy? Sunny-side up?”

“Sunny-side up,” Tom said, because it sounded warm and cheerful.

“What toast you want? Challah, brown, rye, white, seven grain, pumpernickel, whole wheat?” she asked. The words all ran together. She had asked this question many times before.

“Challah,” Tom said, never having heard of it, but she’d said it first.

“You want hash browns, home fries, or kasha?”

“Hash browns,” Tom said, sticking to the principle of ordering whatever was said first.

“You want something to drink?”

“Orange juice,” Tom said before she could start another list.

“Small, medium, or large?”

Tom sighed, realising there were no requests he could make that wouldn’t generate further choices. “Large, please.”

The waitress took the Reason-saturated menu from his hands before he could think to ask if he could hang on to it and walked away. Tom’s palms were sweating. He took a sip of the water, then peeled his jumper off, relieved to have gotten through the ordeal of ordering relatively unscathed. If Americans could make bacon and eggs that difficult, it boggled his mind thinking what it must be like trying to order in a fancy restaurant.

“Too many choices?” the woman on the other side of him asked, though she didn’t look at him and didn’t seem to expect an answer. She had a big notebook open that she had momentarily paused from scribbling in. Her clothes were all the same uniform black. An intense black, as if she had dyed them all in the same vat just that morning. Their light-eating blackness made it impossible to see where jacket ended and trousers started. “They’re trying to distract us with all the choices so we don’t realise that when it comes to the
important
things, there are no choices. None at all. Hmmm.” She picked up her pen and resumed writing at an even more frantic rate.

Okay,
thought Tom.
Whatever you say.
He glanced at the man on his other side and wondered if it would be okay to ask him who designed the suit and tie. Apparently, like at home, it was okay for strangers to talk to each other. But what if it was only okay for the lunatic ones?

He put his hands back on the table, wishing Mere would hurry up and get here. Ree, faint and fading. He had an image of her at the top of Filomena, gazing at the view of Sydney, exclaiming about the smell of flying foxes. His eyes prickled with tears. Tom blinked them away. He
was
going to see her again. Soon.

Maybe he should get started on her cargo pants ahead of time? That way he could give them to her as a welcome-home present. He was sure Ree wouldn’t mind if he picked the fabric for her. A sturdy cotton. Brown or olive green’d be best, definitely not black. Tom had a vision of the pants, bulky with all their pockets, lying on her bed waiting for her.

If only the waitress hadn’t taken the menu away. What were the odds of the same menu she’d touched being given to him, sitting here at her table? He wondered how to tell how long it was since Reason had been here. He hoped Mere would know.

A different waitress put his orange juice down on the table. She didn’t smile either. He looked around. Not a smile anywhere. Well, not on the faces of the waitresses. Each one was the saddest woman in the world. Tom imagined a snarling, vicious ogre of a boss.

Mere came in, looking glamorous and perfectly coiffed as usual. The jersey fabric of her charcoal-grey-with-black-piping suit moved with her, blending its shape to hers, so that both Mere and the fabric looked their best.

Tom had made that suit. He’d slept on top of the jersey and the piping for a week before cutting it. The longer he was in contact with fabric, the more imbued with him it became. When he made clothes for people like Jessica Chan, the magic gradually dropped away. But Mere’s magic reinforced his. He doubted that suit would ever fit badly, no matter how Mere’s body changed.

But the suit was unable to hide the fatigue on her face. She was more tired than he had ever seen her. Tom wondered if the shadows under his own eyes were that dark. Probably. Both wrecked by the jet lag.
Door
lag.

She kissed his cheek and sat down opposite just as his eggs arrived. The smell filled his nostrils. Tom was starving.

The man at the next table stood seconds after Mere sat, folding his newspaper and pulling on his overcoat: ankle length, camel mohair. Quite gorgeous. He nodded to Tom, who nodded back and wished he had the nerve to ask about his clothes. The overcoat was incredible. Perfect lines.

Mere peeled off her gloves and touched the table. “Yes,” she said, smiling, looking relieved. Maybe she hadn’t quite believed her own pronouncements about Ree either. “You’re absolutely right.” She reached across to squeeze his hand. “Well done, Tom. This is the first trace I’ve felt since we came through the door.”

Tom couldn’t help feeling proud, absorbing her praise as if it were sunshine.

“It feels recent too. Probably today. What do you think? Does it feel that way to you?”

“I’m not sure,” Tom said, enjoying Mere consulting him as if he knew as much about these things as she did. “The menu felt stronger.” He shook his head. “I can’t tell.”

“Not to worry. We’ll find her. I’m sure of it. Now eat your eggs before they congeal.”

Tom dug in. They were every bit as good as they smelled. Challah turned out to be a weird sweet bread that melted in your mouth, and hash browns were potatoes cut in strips, pressed together, and fried. Sunny-side up, as far as he could tell, meant that they were normal fried eggs. He gobbled it all, grateful not to have made any wrong choices.

Mere ordered coffee, which came almost instantly. She took a sip and grimaced. “Oh, well. How’re your eggs?”

Tom made a thumbs up gesture.

The woman at the next table spoke, once again not looking up. “Eggs are produced by emaciated, diseased prisoners. They eat their own feces, their own young. All of
that
is in eggs. Better to . . . Yes.” She seized her pen, returned to scribbling her latest profound thoughts.

Tom and Mere exchanged a look. Mere pulled a face, grinning. The expression only emphasised her fatigue. “How are you settling in at your sister’s?” she asked.

Tom half expected a diatribe from the mad lady about how sisters were poisoning society, but she was too busy scribbling. He nodded at Mere, still eating. He’d love to tell Cath what was really going on, but both his dad and Mere had insisted that was not a good idea.

“There’s a way,” Mere said, glancing at the mad lady and keeping her voice low, “something I haven’t shown you yet. It might help us learn more, get an idea of where she went.”

Tom’s eyes widened. He swallowed rapidly. “There is? Can we do it here? What would we use? Will it be okay? I’ve already done magic this week.”

“Yes. It will be fine. We can do it right now. There are a few small magics that we can do without objects. It’s more advanced.”

“Really?” Tom asked. Up until now Mere’d taught him the only safe magics were ones worked through something inanimate, preferably an already charged object. Like the door or the silver chain she’d given him. There was still so much he had to learn about magic.

“Put your hand on the table.”

“Which one?”

“Either hand. It doesn’t matter.”

Tom looked around nervously. The restaurant wasn’t completely full, but it was busy. Waitresses moving back and forth and a few guys in white whose sole job seemed to be clearing the tables and topping up people’s water glasses. It seemed too public a place for magic.

“It’s fine, Tom. No one will see. There’s nothing
to
see.”

“Okay.” He put his right hand on the table.

“Do you feel her?”

He nodded. The trace was stronger with Mere here.

Mere looked directly into Tom’s eyes, holding his gaze. “I’m going to put my hand on yours. Is that okay?”

“Yes,” Tom said. “Of course.”

Mere nodded. “Will you share your magic with me?”

“Yes.” Tom knew that two magic-wielders could work together but that they rarely did. Working magic with someone required lots of trust. He shivered. He hadn’t realised Mere trusted him
that
much.

Mere touched him. Tom felt a faint burning sensation. His stomach contracted, and for a moment he thought he might chunder. He concentrated on seeing the true shapes of the room and of the people around him. His vision floated with triangles, circles, squares, but none of them were quite true. He felt heat radiating up his arm, across his shoulders. It felt wrong somehow. The little magics he’d done before now had never felt wrong. He looked at Mere for reassurance—her eyes seemed brighter, but far away. Spots started to appear in front of his eyes.

She took her hand from his. He had no idea how long it had been. He was dizzy, suddenly knackered, wishing he could sleep there and then. Great, the magic had set off his jet lag again.

“Eat,” Mere told him. She leaned further back in her chair, her expression still distant. Worse hit than him. He hadn’t realised sharing magic would be so awful.

Tom took a mouthful of toast. It hadn’t gone cold. He chewed and the dots from his eyes receded. He kept eating until there wasn’t a speck of food on the plate. He was still intensely hungry. He signalled to a waitress. “Same thing again, please. And a muffin. Blueberry,” he said quickly before she could offer him any choices.

“Toasted?”

“Yes.”

“Butter?”

“Yes,” he said, utterly defeated.

She nodded, taking his dirty plate away.

The muffin came quickly and Tom bolted it down so fast he barely tasted it. Mere seemed to be returning from wherever she had gone. He imagined the magic-working had been a lot harder for her than for him. “Did it work?”

Mere nodded. “You did good, Tom.”

He felt himself blush.

“Reason was here today. Definitely. We’re close. She hasn’t left the East Village.” Mere smiled, her eyes lit up, and for a moment there was no trace of fatigue on her face.

Tom returned the smile, though it made him tired.

“We’ll find her.” She nodded at him as if to say it was a promise. “How do you feel?” Mere asked, her voice soft with concern.

If it were up to
Jay-Tee, we’d keep dancing until they calculated pi to the last digit. My legs were shaking, I was dripping with sweat, my water bottle was empty, and if I didn’t sit down, I was going to die.

Jay-Tee was lost inside the dancing. In an ecstatic trance, like the dervishes Sarafina once told me about. Her eyes focused on something no one but she could see, body moving so fast she almost seemed to blur. Too fast for me.

I tried to signal to her that I was going to sit down, but she was too far gone. I made my way out through the crowd. When Jay-Tee had pulled me along, it had been like sliding through silk. Without her it was a sea of elbows and feet and mumbled mutual apologies no one could hear. It was a relief to get into the bathroom and refill my bottle.

I climbed the sweat-slick metal ladder to the tables on the balcony overlooking the dance floor, sat down at the only empty one with my water bottle, and took in gulps of hot, humid, sticky air.

I’d never danced that crazy for that long. I was knackered yet buzzing, surges of energy running through me faster and stronger than the blood in my veins. When I closed my eyes, I saw tangles of Fibs and the spirals they created. They pulsed and disintegrated in time with the thudding beat. If I’d lain down in my bed, sleep would’ve been impossible.

I leaned my forearms on the railing, but they slid off. The railing was dripping with sweat too. I wiped it dry with my T-shirt, then leaned forward again, looking at my right hand where he’d touched me. I was surprised to see no sign of it. There should have been something. It still tingled with a foul kind of pins and needles. I was glad I’d never said yes to Esmeralda, never let
her
touch me like that. I never would, and I was going to do everything I could to make sure that Jason Blake never touched me again either.

I sipped my water and watched the crowd, more than 780 of them (783 at this precise moment, but in less than a second the number changed, people arriving, leaving, buying drinks, coming and going from the bathroom), seething and undulating like a snake. Like lots of snakes. I traced the patterns, changing and shifting as fast as windblown sand. What was the connection between numbers and people and magic?

I could see Jay-Tee in the heart of it, a faint glow around her. A group of dancing admirers surrounded her, trying to mirror her movements, but she was too fast, too agile, too far into the dance for them. I wondered if she even knew they were there. Was it Jay-Tee’s magic that had given me energy and strength out there? Or was it mine?

What could I do with my magic? Easy for Jay-Tee to say that I’d find out; she already knew all about hers. We were the same age, but I knew nothing.

Almost nothing,
I thought, remembering. What could I do besides kill people?

I hadn’t meant to kill him, but my intentions didn’t make any difference, did they? He was still dead. A nasty, creepy boy who might have grown up to be a nasty, creepy man but might not have. And he was dead because I was magic but hadn’t known it and had lost my temper.
Never
lose your temper, Sarafina had always said. I wished she had told me why.

I shook my head, trying to push those thoughts away. Magic didn’t only kill. Jay-Tee used it to make money. Could I do that? Why did Jason Blake not want to expend any of his? Why was he intent on sucking up other people’s? If magic was infinite, then that made no sense. Why—