Magic Lessons Read online

  I never lied.

  “Use no electricity—not even a battery-operated torch. Use only candlelight.” Esmeralda pulled two candles and matches from her bag. She handed one to Tom and the other to Jay-Tee and then lit them, going from right to left. Widdershins.

  “Why?” I asked. “I’ve seen you do magic around electricity.” I thought of her battling Jason Blake in New York City, below streetlights, above electric cables, outside houses bursting with electricity.

  “You can use magic anywhere,” Tom answered me, “but if there’s electricity close by, it takes more out of you.” It sounded like he was quoting Esmeralda.

  Esmeralda nodded as she unlocked the first door and pulled it open. “I’ve tried to make this house an ideal place for using magic.”

  Jay-Tee and I moved forward to see what we could in the candlelight. I was glad she was there, seeing it all for the first time with me. All four walls were covered floor to ceiling: fifteen bookcases crammed to overflowing with 3,635 books. And that was only the books I could see—there were more on the floor, mostly hidden behind a filing cabinet, two chairs, and a desk. If there were windows, they were hidden by the bookcases.

  “The library,” Esmeralda said. “Every book, paper, article, letter, parking ticket, everything I have ever found that touches on magic—on real magic—I keep in here. The collection was begun by my great-grandmother. I doubt there’s another as complete anywhere in the world.”

  She closed and locked the first door and moved on to the second, where Tom was already waiting. My thoughts remained in that library bursting at the seams with information about magic, real magic, the kind that had made my mother insane and was going to kill me and Jay-Tee in a few short years. Maybe sooner.

  If there was a solution, an answer to the horrible choice between magic and madness, surely I would find it in there, or at the very least something that would lead me to it.

  “And this is where I will teach the three of you everything I know about magic.”

  Everything? Seemed unlikely given how little she’d told me so far. She was hiding something. Why else had she reclaimed those letters of hers? But I’d take whatever she was willing to teach me. I had to know more.

  The second room had three smaller bookshelves and a stack of seven boxes. It was nowhere near as overcrowded as the library but, like the library, if there were any windows, they were hidden from view. On a small round table in the centre were three single candleholders and a large candelabra with thirteen branches. Esmeralda and Tom moved counterclockwise around the table and then sat down.

  Tom was familiar with this house. He knew how it worked. I thought about what that meant. Had he killed animals to work magic? Tom believed in Esmeralda, trusted her. I liked Tom, but he was Esmeralda’s. I had to make sure that I didn’t become hers, too.

  Tom placed his candle in a holder; then he lit the large candelabra in the centre, lighting the candles from right to left. I could see everyone’s face clearly now. Tom was smiling at me and Jay-Tee, waiting for us to join him as if we were about to do nothing scarier than play cards.

  No electricity. I thought of everything Sarafina had said about Esmeralda—that she had sex with every man she met in order to steal their vital energies. Did that include Tom? Was that why he always blushed around her? I hadn’t seen Esmeralda with any men since I’d arrived in Sydney, but that had only been eight days ago.

  And then there were the animals she sacrificed: rats, guinea pigs, cats, dogs, and goats. She used their blood for her magic. Even worse, Sarafina had told me she ate human babies bought from starving mothers.

  I glanced at Esmeralda. She was smiling, encouraging me and Jay-Tee to join her. Her smile was as unguarded as my mother’s. I tried to imagine her killing anything and couldn’t.

  It was possible that Esmeralda hadn’t done any of those despicable things. Sarafina mightn’t have meant to lie to me, but she had lied to herself, told herself that magic wasn’t real. Maybe she’d told me so many terrible stories about Esmeralda that they’d started to grow, become worse than they really were. Or maybe it was her madness confusing her. I’d seen Sarafina turned around before. One time when we were camping in the Errabiddy hills she’d tried to push her way into a solid tree. She was catching the bus to go into town, she said. But we’d been a long way from any buses or towns.

  Even so, I still didn’t trust Esmeralda. There were still the letters she’d taken back before I could read them, the feathers under my pillow. And worst of all, the dried-up body of Sarafina’s cat, Le Roi, buried in the cellar, its head almost hacked off.

  I stole a glance at Jay-Tee, who, like me, stood frozen in the doorway. What was she thinking? She’d been doing magic all her life. She looked tired and almost frail. I wondered how all of this must be affecting her: escaping Jason Blake, finding her brother again, stepping through the door to another continent. And now having my grandfather banging at the door, trying to get to her again.

  “Come,” Esmeralda said, sounding exactly like Sarafina. “Sit down and tell me what happened.”

  Jay-Tee moved first. Took a step into the room and then made her way carefully round the table (widdershins). She sat next to Esmeralda. I followed, easing myself into the last chair. Under the table Jay-Tee’s hand reached out to squeeze mine. I returned the pressure. It helped to know she wasn’t any more comfortable than I was.

  “What happened?” Esmeralda asked again.

  “This weird brown thing,” Jay-Tee began, “shot out from under the back door—”

  “And attacked us,” Tom said, holding out his fingers, though it was hard to see the tiny marks in the half light. “It ate your coat, too. Hang on, Jay-Tee, it was yellow.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” I said. “It was definitely a brownish colour, kind of grey-brown.”

  “No way,” Jay-Tee objected. “It was a red-brown. The same colour as the door.”

  “You all saw it differently?” Esmeralda asked.

  We looked at each other. “I guess so,” Jay-Tee said. “Yellow, huh?”

  Tom nodded. “Bright yellow.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I made a protection—”

  “With matches. I saw. Well done, Jay-Tee. I added a little something. I think it will hold.”

  As we told her everything that had happened, I watched Esmeralda. She looked like someone you’d trust straight away. Like Sarafina. Total strangers were always telling my mother their secrets. They took one look at her and decided that she’d never betray them. (They were right, but mostly because she’d never see them again.) She can make you believe almost anything, Sarafina had told me.

  I wondered how I could get back into that library without Esmeralda knowing. All those covered-up windows. Was there a way to break in from the backyard? I hadn’t glimpsed much light at the end of the hallway. I’d need her keys. I wondered where she kept them when they weren’t in her briefcase.

  “What did it smell like, Reason?” Esmeralda asked. Hearing her say my name startled me. She sounded so like Sarafina.

  I shivered, but it wasn’t a fear shiver—I was cold. The boiling bitumen outside had no impact on this house. But there wasn’t any breeze. The only movement of the air was caused by the four of us. The cold was coming up through my feet from the concrete floor.

  “I smelled vomit and burning tires,” I said, answering her question at last. “Didn’t you?”

  Esmeralda shook her head. “No.”

  “What was it? The thing that attacked us?”

  Esmeralda didn’t answer.

  “Why did Jason Blake send it?” Tom asked.

  “Why does only Reason smell it?” Jay-Tee asked.

  “How did the house feel to you?” Esmeralda asked them. “In the places where the smell was strongest for Reason, did either of you feel or see anything?”

  Tom nodded. “The house felt wrong, like it was made of paper rather than brick.”

  “The energy…” Jay-
Tee paused, looked at her hands and then at me and Tom, her gaze travelling counterclockwise around the table. “It’s kind of hard to explain, but yeah, the house did feel strange. Not like Tom said, but wrong.”

  “It’s because all our magics are different, right?” Tom asked. “I mean except yours and Reason’s, ’cause you both do numbers. But my magic is about materials and shapes. And I guess Reason’s is also, um, smells.”

  “Yes,” Esmeralda said. “Reason’s magic has to do with mathematics and synaesthesia.”

  “Synaesthesia?” I asked.

  “Smelling sounds? Tasting sights?” Tom said.

  I thought about what I saw when I looked beneath Jay-Tee’s and Esmeralda’s skin. I tasted rust, smelled unlit tobacco. Synaesthesia. It sounded like a disease. But then, wasn’t magic a disease? “I guess.”

  “So what’s Jay-Tee’s magic?” Tom asked, turning to look at her.

  “People,” Jay-Tee said.

  “You’re strongest in a crowd, aren’t you?” Esmeralda asked, addressing Jay-Tee.

  She nodded.

  “People aren’t merely separate individuals, are they, Jay-Tee? They’re also the connections between them.”

  Again Jay-Tee nodded. “Like a web. A web full of magic. Well, okay, except for the occasional dead spots.”

  “Dead spots?” I asked.

  “People without the faintest trace of magic,” Esmeralda answered. “They’re rare, but they exist. You can only work magic on magic. Fortunately, almost everyone has at least a smidgin.”

  I remembered the man in that dancing place in New York, the one who’d laughed when Jay-Tee tried to magic him.

  “That thing in the house changed the way the three of us feel together. Made it wrong.” Jay-Tee turned to Esmeralda. “What was that thing? I know it’s from him, but why’d it bite us? And burrow into Reason?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The three of us stared at her. She stared back at us.

  “You don’t know!” I burst out.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “So what do we do, then?” Jay-Tee asked.

  “I’ll teach you about magic. This incursion into my house has given us something to base our lessons around.”

  “You’re not worried about it getting back in?” I asked.

  “Jay-Tee’s protections should hold. And for now, your les-sons will be practical, focused on discovering what it is and how it got through the door.”

  “You couldn’t just ring Jason Blake and ask?”

  Esmeralda smiled. “Even if he took a call from me, I doubt he’d say.”

  “What do you think it is?” I asked. “You must have some idea.”

  She responded with another question: “What’s the best and safest way to work magic?”

  “Through something that’s already magic,” Jay-Tee responded. She touched the leather bracelet around her wrist. “This was my mother’s.”

  Tom pulled a chain from around his neck. I’d never noticed it before. “Mere gave me this. It was in her family for generations.”

  They both looked at me, but I shook my head. “I don’t have anything.” I had never even noticed Jay-Tee’s bracelet or Tom’s chain before.

  Sarafina didn’t like jewellery, said it was pointless, but she had given me the ammonite I had left with Danny (I hoped). I’d had it most of my life, kept in my pocket during the day, under my pillow (if I had one) at night. Many times when I was little I’d woken up holding it in my hand. Every time I lost it I found it again, usually within seconds. It had been in my hand when I killed Josh Davidson.

  A magic object. Something else Sarafina hadn’t told me.

  “The door to my house crackles with magic,” Esmeralda said, “and that’s where the thing entered. I think the thing you saw is some kind of golem doing its master’s bidding.”

  “What’s a golem?” I asked.

  “The creepy guy from Lord of the Rings,” Tom said.

  Esmeralda laughed. “A golem is a made thing. In the olden days they were usually sculpted from clay and then filled with magic. They don’t last. I imagine that’s why it escaped back to New York.”

  “We made it go,” Jay-Tee objected. “It was connected to…to something on the other side. We broke the connection.”

  “Even so, it probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer. It was moving fast, yes?”

  Jay-Tee nodded.

  “It wanted something from us,” I said. “Or it was looking for something inside us.”

  Esmeralda nodded. “Like magic.”

  “But it didn’t take any from me,” I said, remembering when Jason Blake had touched me. “I’m sure of it. I know what that feels like.”

  Jay-Tee made a face. “Yeah, it wasn’t drinking us.”

  “It could be,” Esmeralda said, “that the golem was gathering information—”

  “Doing a recce?” Tom asked. “So it could report back to Jason Blake? Yuck.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “So…” Jay-Tee paused. “We need something better than matches to keep it from getting back in the house. My father always used small bones.”

  “Bones can store a lot of magic,” Esmeralda said.

  I wondered where you were supposed to get bones from. Maybe magic-wielders collected wishbones every time they ate chicken. Or maybe they got them in a much more horrible way. Cats had small bones. I imagined babies did, too.

  “What about feathers?” I asked.

  Esmeralda did not seem disturbed by my question. She nodded. “Feathers are excellent. Darker colours seem best.”

  “What did you put those black and purple ones under my pillow for?”

  “To protect you while you slept.”

  I was hard-pressed not to roll my eyes. Then I realised that neither Jay-Tee nor Tom had said anything or seemed surprised by my question. Maybe feathers really were used for protection.

  Esmeralda stood up, circling the table (widdershins) until she reached the pile of boxes. She rummaged through several before pulling out a wooden box and a battered cardboard one.

  She placed the wooden box next to the candelabra, removing its lid so we could all see that it was filled to the brim with a jumbled collection of stones, bones, bits of wood, and polished glass. Like all the flotsam and jetsam you might collect during a day at the beach, a beach with bones strewn on it.

  “Reach in with your eyes closed and see if anything in the box pulls you towards it. Take one each.”

  Tom pushed the box to me (widdershins, of course). “I already have one.” He pulled a milky green J-shaped stone out of his pocket. “It’s a jade button from China. It belonged to your great-great-great-great-grandmother Esmeralda Milagros Luz Cansino. From her favourite coat.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  I put my hand over the box and closed my eyes. My fingertips tingled, sensing a soft tug. I reached forward; my fingers touched metal. I pulled the object out, stared at it lying heavy in my hand. In the candlelight the metal shone.

  A flat metal brooch engraved with a five-pointed star. In the star’s centre was a rose, each petal larger than the next. I ran my thumb along the points of the pentagram, over each petal. Fibonaccis tumbled through my head and the number phi—1.6180339887—crucial for the construction of a pentagram. I thought of my ammonite, safe with Danny. This was how holding it felt. How many times had I unknowingly used the ammonite to make magic?

  I pushed the box to Jay-Tee. She looked down at it a moment, her eyes squeezed shut, and plunged her hand in, pulling out a long piece of polished wood. Jay-Tee looked at it and giggled.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  She held it out to me. “What does that look like to you?” she whispered. It was longer than it was wide, with a rounded end. We both giggled.

  “It was brought over here by Raul Cansino in 1820,” Esmeralda said. “I suspect it’s much older than that.”

  “But what’s it for?” Tom asked.
r />   Jay-Tee burst out laughing and then put her hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she said in a strangled voice. Tears were rolling down her face, she was laughing so hard. It was contagious; my giggles turned into laughter, too.

  “Do you need to choose a less phallic object?” Esmeralda asked, not answering Tom’s question. “Or do you think you two can stop giggling?”

  “Less phallic.” Jay-Tee cracked up again. She gingerly returned the piece of wood to the box and pulled out a large pointed tooth that looked like it had come from a big cat. In no way did it resemble a penis.

  The sight of it stopped my laughter. At least it wasn’t human. I shivered, remembering the thirty-three teeth that had tumbled out of a hidden compartment in Esmeralda’s hairbrush my first day here. Were they magical objects? Or souvenirs?

  Esmeralda cleared her throat. “The first rule of magic is to use as little as you possibly can.” She was looking directly at me. “This makes it hard to teach. But to avoid madness, you have to use a small amount of magic once a week.”

  “Must be easy for you to remember, Tom,” Jay-Tee said. “You just have to do magic every time you brush your teeth.”

  “Yeah, right,” Tom said. “You should—”

  “How do you know?” I asked, cutting off Tom. “Once a week? What happens if you do it once every two weeks or once every 153 hours?”

  “Once a week worked for my mother, it’s worked for me, and for your grandfather and his parents. It’s the time specified in the texts I’ve found that touch on the issue. Once a week to avoid insanity, using only the smallest of magics in order to live as long as possible.” It sounded like she was quoting.

  “I imagine,” she continued, “it might be more or less for different people, but, frankly, I have not experimented. The stakes are too high.

  “Every time you use magic, you make your life shorter. I use as little as possible. This is especially crucial for you two.” She looked at me and then at Jay-Tee, who looked down. She didn’t have to say why it was crucial for us. We both knew that we’d used up too much already. But then, so had Esmeralda. She was riddled with rust. I wondered how long she had left. Months? Weeks? Was she afraid of dying?