"Will you turn mine off too?" Sarafina asked. "Will you turn it off for the baby in your belly?"
"She doesn't have to," Jason Blake snapped.
"What?" Esmeralda asked.
"Haven't you guessed? Hers is
the
Cansino magic. Like ours, only stronger— "
"If she turns it off, she turns off ours as well?" Esmeralda blanched. "Reason, no. You can't do that to me. I need it. I need this magic." She grabbed Reason's wrist, a horrible expression unlike any Tom had ever seen on her face. Reason just shook her off.
Jason Blake reached out towards her, and Danny punched him in the stomach, sending him to the floor. Maybe Danny wasn't
so
bad.
"Tom, I'm asking you," Reason said. "I don't have very long. Do you want me to save you from becoming like them?" She pointed a golden arm at their hungry faces, their grasping hands.
Tom didn't want to turn into a Jason Blake. Or Esmeralda, the way she looked now. But he couldn't imagine his world without clothes and patterns and magic pulsing through the jade button in his pocket. The shapes cascading through his head and the surge of it through him, the electrical jolt of it.
But how would it feel to be magic and Jay-Tee and Reason not. And to go mad, to die. He looked at Jay-Tee….
"Tom," she pleaded.
"I can't wait," Ree said. "I have to change myself now. Or I…"
Tom squeezed his eyes shut against all their faces. Inside his eyelids, the world was made of beautiful shapes, all
his
.
"No, don't take it. I need my magic."
34
Cansino Magic
Cansino's world of quiet and
beauty and light was calling to me so strongly, it was hard to focus on Esmeralda's kitchen, on all their questions that crashed around me in waves. Their arguments, yelling across one another. When they grabbed me, I pushed them away. They weren't anything to me anymore.
I could feel glimmers of how it had been. Of friendship. Of how Tom and Jay-Tee and me had been learning to look out for each other. Looking at Sarafina, I could almost remember the love between us, what it felt like to be held tight in her arms. Sarafina had made this possible. By trying to steal my magic, she'd made me see again, made me remember being human, made me understand what magic really was.
But those glimpses were small and empty. In the corners of my eyes, magic danced, pulling at me. I longed to zoom across space again. Closing my eyes, going back there, would make me magic's child forever. And my own child would be magic's too.
To prevent that, I had to remember everything my mother had taught me. How to run, how to escape, the importance of reason.
It didn't matter how calm it was, how beautiful. Magic had consumed my family, generation after generation. I had to stop it.
I was human. Or, at least, I wanted to be again.
And yet to win my freedom I had to close my eyes one more time, and if I did that, I didn't know if I could resist Cansino's world.
I slowly brought my eyelids down, seeing their faces through my eyelashes just briefly, lit in the colours of the setting sun. Their voices shut off, as did the smell of flying fox, of the fig tree, of jasmine. I clung to the memory of those senses. No sunset-lit faces, no squeak and flap, no sticky smells, no wood underneath my fingertips.
Here they all seemed so unnecessary, threadbare. Cansino's world was vast, beautiful. Space opening up onto space. A giant ocean of magic stars. It called to me. I wanted to follow all the patterns, the twisting spirals of Fibonaccis, perfect numbers, primes.
I forced myself to narrow my gaze, to turn away from the spreading universe of lights and into myself. My own magic. The numbers within.
I could see my Fibonaccis; I could see the Cansino magic inside me threaded through each one. I could see how to destroy it.
So I did.
Piece by piece, I turned it off. I saw lights wink out one after another. I watched Cansino space recede. First galaxies gone, then stars, then darkness, just the backs of my own eyelids.
I opened them and fell. Hard.
Sarafina and Esmeralda were already on their knees. Something shattered in the next room. A rank smell filled my nostrils, and little explosions went off all over the house.
"What?" Esmeralda asked.
"It's going," Sarafina said. "Gone."
"Centuries…wasted," Jason Blake said. He moaned, as if Danny had hit him again. But Danny was just standing there, confused.
My magic was gone and now theirs too. I hadn't just turned off mine; I'd switched off all the Cansino magic. I'd freed my mother, my grandmother, my grandfather, and the hundreds of magic objects throughout the house.
I had become magic, after all, been the Cansino pattern itself. And now that pattern— unlike primes, or Fibs, or perfect numbers— had reached the end.
"Huh," I said.
In front of me Jay-Tee and Tom were holding each other so close there was no space between them. I had a sudden horrible thought. They weren't together, were they?
Ewwww.
The doorbell rang.
I stood up, feeling shaky and incredibly hungry. Hungry! And not for power or magic or knowledge. Just for
food
. I looked at the fruit bowl, but I'd already eaten all the rambutans. Didn't matter. I was pretty sure that everything would taste good now.
"I'll get it," Jay-Tee said, but she didn't let go of Tom.
"No," I said. Somewhere in my mind— my newly restored
human
mind— I had the feeling it was important.
I walked to the door as steadily as I could, feeling the wooden floor beneath my feet, noticing that it was hot. I hadn't been aware of the temperature since Raul Cansino had changed me. Summer felt wonderful. My skin started to glisten with sweat. Esmeralda and Sarafina followed.
I blinked and saw only the backs of my eyelids, and shivered. This was what it felt like to be free of Cansino's magic. I slipped my hand into my pocket and felt for my ammonite. It felt like a smooth stone. Nothing uncoiled from it. Numbers did not cascade through me.
I didn't need any of that. I didn't
need
magic. My chest felt hollow.
The bell rang again.
Esmeralda put her hand gently on my shoulder, stepping ahead of me to open the door. A woman was standing there. She looked at me, and I recognized the sadness in her smile. "All ready for your test, Reason? I said I'd come to pick you up."
"Um," Esmeralda started. "I don't think I— "
"Jennifer Ishii," the social worker said, holding her hand out to Esmeralda. "And you are?"
35
God's Children
After Reason left to take
her test— with an entourage of mother, grandmother, and social worker— Jay-Tee decided it was time for her and Tom to talk.
She walked back to the kitchen, readying herself for what she had to say.
Tom was watching as Danny raided the freezer. "What are you doing with all that ice?"
Danny winced. "Little-known fact: you punch someone, it wrecks your hand."
"Oh," Tom said. "So that's why boxers wear those big gloves? I always thought it was to make sure they didn't mess up each other's faces too much."
Danny wrapped the ice in a towel and then around his hand, and gave Tom a look that would have made Jay-Tee laugh if she wasn't so upset.
"Is it weird that I'm really hungry?" Tom asked.
"You're always hungry," Jay-Tee said. "It's not weird at all. Tom, I really think— "
"So, Danny," Tom said. "How long you think you'll be staying?"
So Tom
knew
he was in trouble and was trying to avoid talking about his decision.
"Man," Danny said. "I have no idea. Right now I need to find a bed before I keel over. Jet lag is a bitch."
"You can sleep in my room," Jay-Tee said. "Top of the stairs. Turn around and it's the first door on your left."
Danny hugged his sister and kissed the top of her head. "You take care. It's been a very long day."
After Danny left, Jay-Tee didn't know what to say first. She felt wobbly. Not body wobbly, brain wobbly. "Let's go outside, sit on the porch."
"Okay," Tom said nervously.
As she opened the door, Tom let out a gasp.
"What?"
"It's not…There's not…New York City's gone."
He stuck his head out. "Wow. It's just the backyard. Reason really did wipe out all the Cansino magic." He shivered.
Jay-Tee knew exactly how he felt. "Welcome to my world," she said, "where a door is just a door."
"Right," Tom said. They sat down together on the third-to-last porch step, with their feet just above the soggy backyard. He picked up a dried old leaf from amongst the smatterings of leaves and twigs on the porch behind them and tore it into tiny little pieces.
Jay-Tee tried to speak, but her throat was clogged. How could Tom have chosen magic? Maybe life without it wasn't as good as life with, but being alive was
much
better than being dead.
Tom picked up another leaf and set about destroying it. And then another. If he didn't say something about his crazy choice soon, she was going to scream.
"My brain is going to explode," she said at last.
Tom turned to her and smiled. He had a really cute smile: it was kind of uneven, and always made his left eyebrow go up slightly.
"You and me both," he said.
"I can't believe…" She trailed off. She really didn't want to fight with him. "Wanna make out?" she asked instead, though for the first time since they'd started kissing, she didn't feel like it. But at least it would give her something else to think about.
"Nah."
"Me neither."
"It's too big." Tom held his arms out, and a rain of little broken leaves fell on the yard. "Everything is too big. I keep trying to understand, but I can't."
"Yeah," Jay-Tee said. "And thinking hurts."
"Yup."
Jay-Tee wondered if they'd ever want to kiss again. Maybe they'd already broken up but just didn't know it yet. How long would Tom want to be her boyfriend now that he was permanently-and-forever magic and she was permanently-and-forever not? He'd start thinking she was lame 'cause she couldn't do anything special anymore. She
felt
lame. She felt angry too.
"I'll probably have to go back to New York, you know."
"That's what your brother wants, isn't it? Crap! Now the door's buggered, how'll I come visit you?"
"I believe they're called aer-o-planes."
"Very funny. How am I going to afford to be on a plane once a week?"
"You won't want to come once a week."
"How else am I going to see you as often as I want?"
"Doof." Jay-Tee punched him lightly. "You don't have to worry about the money, though. I'll pay. Danny says my dad made us rich. Or Mere. She's got piles of money."
"Can you wait to go back until it's warmer there? The weather's horrible right now."
"Sure," she said, though she had no idea how she was getting back. Could she get a passport so far from home? Could she pretend that she'd lost one? Would they know that she'd never had one? If they did know, she'd get into trouble, wouldn't she? Maybe she could stow away on a boat and get home that way. She hoped Mere would be able to figure something out.
Tom was ripping yet another leaf apart.
"Don't get mad at me, Tom, but why? Why did you tell Reason no?"
"I'm not, Jay-Tee," he said, brushing her cheek with his hand. "But I had to keep my magic. I
love
my magic."
"I loved it too. Yours and mine. I miss mine. It's like I'm suddenly color-blind. Like…But I'm not afraid anymore. Not of Jason Blake or my father— "
"I've never been afraid of my parents. Not like that anyway," Tom said. "They're not magic, remember? My mum's like you now."
"But there are other magic-wielders out there who are just like Jason Blake. If you'd given up your magic, you wouldn't have to worry all the time about— "
"You've said all that," Tom said. "I made my decision, okay?"
"No, it's not okay."
"I'm sorry, but it's done. I wasn't
saaaved
." He dragged the last word out and then paused like he was about to say something. Then he shook his head.
"What?" Jay-Tee asked.
"Nothing."