Magic or Madness (16 page)

“Lots of pizza. Whenever you want.”

He’d been in here. Jay-Tee could feel it. She wondered if Reason knew enough to take precautions. If she was even smart enough to check under the pillow. Jay-Tee doubted it. Especially not as crazy tired as the kid was now.

If Jay-Tee hadn’t been sure he’d know, she might have cleared the room. It seemed unfair to be plucking Reason this way, her knowing absolutely nothing. Like taking candy from a baby. But if Jay-Tee made the room safer, even if he never knew she had, how would helping Reason help Jay-Tee? Not one little bit. She had to remember that. She was doing this for herself, not for him, Reason, or anyone else.

“It’s fuzzy in here,” Reason said in the same distant voice. She sounded like she was drunk. She’d gotten her jeans off and her pajama bottoms on, but the pajama top was on over her T-shirt, buttoned crooked. She was half in the bed, half out, looking all of ten years old.

Reason was such a goner.

“It’s fuzzy in your
head.
” Jay-Tee pushed Reason’s leg into the bed, picked up the comforter from the floor, and covered her with it.

Reason nodded. “But fuzzy outside my head too.” She sat up slowly, lifted the pillow, and blew a waterfall of feathers to the floor. “That’s better,” she murmured, putting her head on the pillow and falling fast asleep.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Jay-Tee stared at the pile of black and purple feathers. “He’s not going to like that.”

Tom hadn’t been in New
York City in two months. In the autumn,
their
autumn. He loved all the leaves changing colours: reds, browns, yellows, and oranges. So pretty that he hadn’t minded how cold it was.

The first time Esmeralda had taken him through had been a year ago, when he’d first moved from the Shire to Newtown. She’d taken him through to see a snowstorm and he’d almost died. The snow was pretty, but not even
close
to pretty enough to make up for that cold. He’d felt it all the way down to his bones. It had actually hurt his teeth when he breathed.

He’d told Esmeralda he never wanted to go through in winter ever again. She’d laughed. Told him you could get used to it. Tom shook his head, knowing that there was no way he would ever get used to that and nothing that would convince him to step through the door into that bitter horror ever again.

Nothing
didn’t include Reason going missing in the snow and the cold. For her Tom had stepped through the door, even though he had absolutely no idea how he was going to find Ree in this lot. Howling winds that blew the snow around even when it wasn’t actually snowing, everyone completely anonymous (including him) in many layers: hats, gloves, scarves, coats, jumpers. Sensing Reason through all of that, when there were millions of people around, well, it was close to impossible.

Mere had just told him to trust his senses, that he’d be able to feel for her. Under his breath he’d muttered, “Trust the Force, Luke.” He was pretty sure she hadn’t heard.

He trusted Mere’s senses, though. She said Ree was still alive, was definitely here in Manhattan. Tom tried hard to believe her, but knowing that Reason had left the key in the lock, that she had no way back to Sydney, didn’t fill him with hope.

He imagined Reason scratching at the door, trying to get back in, succumbing to the cold and freezing to death on the steps before they had even known she was missing.

He blinked the vision away. They hadn’t found her frozen body when they’d come through and Mere said she was alive. He had to believe that and, impossible or not, he would do whatever he could to find her.

Cath had
not
been pleased to see him. Well, she had at first, for all of twenty seconds. Enough time for an embarrassing hug and kiss in front of her weird-looking boyfriend. She hadn’t mentioned
him
in her e-mails. What on earth was that thing on his head? Kind of a dead-echidna, black-felt concoction. Tom couldn’t see the stitching.
Probably glued,
he thought scornfully. Was that mascara he was wearing? They both stared at each other and Tom could tell the boyfriend didn’t like him either. Good.

After that first twenty seconds Cath had realised she was going to have to put Tom up, and that meant him sleeping on the couch, when her last guest had only left two days ago. Her two flatmates were starting to get well annoyed at the steady stream of Australian visitors.

Cath told Tom exactly how things stood. “They’re not happy about Dillon being here all the time either, ’ken hell, there’s only one loo. Hey,” she said suddenly. “I haven’t introduced you two! Tom, this is my boyfriend, Dillon. Dillon, my brother. You two should get on like a house on fire. Dillon makes his own clothes too.”

Dillon,
thought Tom,
what a stupid name.
He resisted the temptation to ask about the hat and nodded. Dillon returned the nod, every bit as unconvinced of the house-on-fireness of any possible friendship between them.

“I brought Tim Tams,” Tom told her. Cath was a Tim Tam addict. “If it’s such a pain, I could always stay with Mere in her flat. She offered.” Which would be heaps more comfortable than this pile of dung. He was sitting on the couch in question and something hard was sticking into his bum.

The couch had no redeeming qualities. Uglier than sin, it was possible the thing had once been orange. Now it was yellowy grey, possibly the world’s least attractive colour. The cushions were worn through in several places and the smell wafting from it was indescribable, though to be fair, Tom couldn’t be sure the smell was coming from the couch. Could be from any of the other pieces of hideous furniture (who could have thought covering a chair in brown corduroy was ever a good idea?) or the walls or floor (both apparently
never
cleaned). Even the ceiling looked dodgy.

Tom had to admit, looking around, that the couch fitted
perfectly
with the rest of the flat’s decor, even matching the walls in the kitchen. Ugh. If Dad knew Cath was living in a dump like this, he would not be happy. Tom thought about taking photos.

Cath looked scandalised. “Mere’s already done so much for us. No way am I going to let you cramp her style. You know, Tom, you really could’ve given me some warning. I can’t believe Dad didn’t call to tell me.”

Tom put on his most innocent expression. “It happened really fast. Mere had an extra ticket and before I knew it, I was in New York City.” At least the last half wasn’t a lie. He wished for the millionth time that he could tell Cath the truth. But he knew what Mere would say:
That’s just part of being magic: Sometimes you have to lie.

Tom looked around the flat with what he hoped looked like enthusiasm. “I’ve always wanted to see New York. And now I’m here. Cool, eh?”

“Okay, you can stay. But only for a week. When is Mere taking you back home?”

“Dunno.”

“Hmmm,” Cath said, with the put-out expression Tom knew well. “And you have to make yourself scarce as much as poss.” She looked at him doubtfully. “What are you going to do with yourself? It’s freezing outside. You can’t go following me and my mates around. I’ve got classes.”

“As if!” Tom rolled his eyes. Her friends were probably as poxy as the boyfriend. He’d never thought much of her Sydney mates. All they ever talked about were movies and books as pretentiously as possible. “What do you reckon I’m going to do? Find fabrics. Check out all the clothes. Issey Miyake, Comme des Garçons, Vivienne Westwood—”

“Closed,” Cath’s weirdo boyfriend said. He had the strangest accent Tom had ever heard, sounded like he was swallowing the words as he spoke. “Recession. It’s gone.”

“How do you know?” Cath asked. “Thought you were dead against name designers.”

“Deb used to work there.”

Cath nodded as if that explained things. Tom wanted to know who Deb was. Had she met Westwood? The old dame was known for making appearances at her stores. Did this Deb keep any of the old season catalogues or sample books? He wondered if she’d part with them, forgetting for a moment that he would probably never meet this Deb person.

Then he reminded himself that he was here to find Ree. Suddenly he felt exhausted, wanting nothing more than to sleep, even on the smelly, ugly couch.

That was the crappiest thing about coming through the door: jet lag was even worse without the jet. It didn’t seem right. But Mere said your body was even more confused about the time and the season when it took just seconds to go from middle of the day to middle of the night, from summer to winter. You had to expect a freak-out. More than one.

In New York City right now it was 2 PM on Tuesday afternoon, but when he’d stepped through the door with Esmeralda four hours earlier, it had been
Wednesday.
Right now in Sydney it was six in the morning. It did his head in when he tried to think about it. His body too.

Tom forced himself to push past the fatigue, listened to Cath telling him which things in the fridge he could touch and which he couldn’t (nothing but Cath’s horrible vegan healthfood stuff), which towels he could use (only the ones from her room), and which bathroom products. “Don’t touch anything with the word
Kiehl’s
on it. Those are Andrew’s and he ’ken spews if anyone else uses them.”

“Don’t touch the Kiehl’s. Check.”

A phone rang. Cath and the boyfriend looked around, patting their pockets, searching through their bags before Tom realised it was the mobile Mere had given him and fished it out of his coat, an apologetic look on his face.

Unsurprisingly, it was Mere. He turned to Cath. “Mere. She wants to know if you’ll have dinner with me and her tonight.”

Cath shook her head. “Got a class till ten. Maybe tomorrow?”

Tom arranged it with Mere and then hung up.

Cath handed Tom a set of keys, showed him how to lock up. Twice. Making him do it in front of her to make sure he followed, which Tom did not enjoy, especially with the smirking boyfriend looking on, and then, mercifully, Cath and her sad wannabe-from-the-eighties boyfriend pointed Tom in the direction of the Issey Miyake store and went off to do whatever it was poseur film students did. Tom wondered how many years it would take off his life if he turned Cath’s boyfriend into a frog.

So here Tom was, rugged up to the point of strangulation, looking for Reason. He walked north up Second Avenue, disappointed by the lack of clothing stores and by the lack of cool in the overcoats people wore. Lots of doona coats, which looked superwarm but were about as stylish as Cath’s boyfriend’s stupid hat. Tom swore he could see the feathers leaking out of them.

To check out interesting clothes, Tom would’ve headed southwest, in the direction of the Issey Miyake store—he wondered if he’d find any clothes by the new Belgian, Dutch, and Moroccan designers he’d been reading so much about—but Mere had said to stay in the East Village for the first week. Her theory was that the bitter cold meant Reason wouldn’t have strayed far from the door.

Where on earth
would
Ree go? What would she do? If she was alive—and Mere had promised she was—someone
must
have found her. She couldn’t survive long in a T-shirt, shorts, and no shoes, with no money or food. What if the person who found her was hurting her? Or something worse? Mere had already rung heaps of hospitals. Nothing.

Or maybe Reason had finally figured out how her magic worked. Tom shuddered, thinking of the years you could burn through just keeping yourself warm. They
had
to find her.

She’d been planning to run away; they knew that. Her backpack was jammed full of running-away necessities: food, money, water, extra clothes, and his dad’s street directory.

When Mere had told him, Tom’s cheeks had burned; he’d felt acid in his stomach. He was hurt. He knew it was dumb feeling that way. Reason wasn’t running away from
him,
but if she’d liked him even half as much as he liked her, she’d still be in Sydney.