Magic or Madness (20 page)

There were hundreds of fast-moving people outside on the footpaths, crossing the roads as if they, not cars, ruled. Too many of them. Too crowded together to count. I’d never imagined there
could
be this many people in one place. How did they manage to walk in such a huge mob? It made my skin feel even tighter. I was glad to be safe behind the glass of the car window. What if someone tripped and fell? Would they be trampled? At least their many layers of winter clothing would give them some protection.

Up above, the buildings glittered with electricity, colours, words, and faces, the biggest billboards I’d ever seen. An electronic fairyland. Across one building a ribbon of red words scrolled by. I caught a stream of numbers, but I couldn’t see a pattern, then names I didn’t recognise, something about troops somewhere. Everywhere I looked lights flashed off and on, broke up, fell in cascades down the sides of buildings, were reflected in all the glass that towered over the roads.

“Your mouth’s hanging open, Reason!” Jay-Tee laughed.

I closed my mouth.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” Jason said.

I nodded. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Jay-Tee laughed louder. She was already on her second or third glass of champagne. I’d forgotten to drink mine. “She says that a lot. Everything’s a first for Reason.”

“Lucky Reason,” Jason said, smiling at me. I could’ve sworn his teeth were glinting. I was grateful for all the space between us. If he leaned any closer, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from flinching. He was not a nice man. I glanced at Jay-Tee. I was positive she didn’t think so either.

Every table had a crisp white cloth and was set with shining silver cutlery and plates so white they gleamed brighter than Jason Blake’s teeth. Waiters in white and black darted between the tables, ferrying jugs of water and platters of food. The room was vast and the tables set far apart. At every one we passed sat men in suits and women in dresses, their necks and ears sparkling with jewels. Jay-Tee had been right: in jeans and a T-shirt I’d’ve stuck out like a fir tree in the desert.

Including the three of us, there were fifty-five diners. Fib (10). A good omen, I told myself.

In the room’s centre was a large black-and-silver sculpture of a naked man and woman embracing. At their feet was a stream of water that trickled over black and white rocks. One wall of the restaurant was a giant window, looking out over the brilliantly coloured electric city.

A woman led us to our table, her long red dress swishing around her ankles, and a waiter appeared to hold out our chairs as we sat down. He shook out the cloth napkins and placed them on our laps as if he were our mother. I was relieved that he didn’t tuck them in like a bib.

Our table was by the giant window, all the colours and lights I’d glimpsed from the car laid out in front of me like a carpet. We were on the forty-seventh floor, the street and the people so far below they weren’t even ants, they were invisible.

The light fall of snowflakes blurred the colours, making them even more dazzling. I shivered, though not from cold. The restaurant was so perfectly warm I was able to sit in my sleeveless dress and not wish for a cardie.

“Would you care to have something to drink, miss?”

“Champagne, please,” I said, and Jay-Tee giggled. Jason ordered a bottle for all of us. The name sounded something like “Crude.” It sounded wrong. Champagne should have a name that sparkled or tinkled. A name with bubbles in it.

I stared out the window, trying to read the brilliant signs through the snow. Everything was too blurry, like fresh paint with water spilled over it. Colours bled into one another. Primaries became secondaries, became tertiaries. Suddenly there were purples, pinks, and browns. Some of the lights were circled by tiny rainbows. The snow was falling a little harder, blurring everything even more. Freezing out there, but perfect in here. I wondered why the window wasn’t all steamed up.

“If the snow keeps up any longer,” said Blake, following my gaze out the window, “it’ll shut the city down.”

The waiter returned with the bottle of champagne and a silver bucket filled with ice. He displayed the bottle for Jason, who peered at the label and nodded. This time the champagne tasted like cream, and the bubbles were smaller than the head of a pin, flying up through the liquid in streams, bursting through to float in the air above the glass and into my nose. The strange sensation of breathing in tiny bubbles was almost better than the creaminess of it coating my tongue.

Ever since I’d come through the door, I’d felt as though I was living in a bubble. A thick layer of transparent material between me and the world. I’d felt gummed up, slowed down behind my bubble while every one around me powered along. Drinking this glittering drink sent the bubbles pouring inside me, somehow destroying the one that held me trapped. They made me feel part of the world again. They made the world beautiful.

“Another toast,” Jason said. The champagne had softened him, making him seem less predatory. Now he seemed just like Esmeralda: softness and smiles on the outside, sharp shiny teeth on the inside. “To helping one another.”

I raised my glass but did not repeat his words and made sure it only touched Jay-Tee’s glass, not his. Jason looked directly at me, half smiling. I turned back to the snow and the lights.

The waiter returned with three tiny glasses on tiny plates with tiny spoons. They were filled with a frothy, creamy substance topped with tiny orange bubbles. I wondered if everything we ate and drank tonight was going to be tiny and made of bubbles.

“Salmon reduction with roe,” the waiter said. “Enjoy.”

“But we didn’t order anything,” I said once the waiter was gone. I knew enough to not embarrass myself in front of
everyone.

Jay-Tee grinned and I wished I’d kept my mouth shut, but I just wanted to know.

“You don’t order here,” Jason explained. “It’s called a tasting menu. They’ll bring us a small amount of everything that’s good. That way you get ten courses instead of only three.”

“Ten?” It sounded like a lot, but then I looked down at my minuscule glass. Ten servings of that wouldn’t go far. I decided not to volunteer the information that I’d never been to a restaurant that served
three
courses before. I wasn’t exactly sure what a course was, but I figured it meant a helping. I’d only ever been to cafés, fish-and-chip shops, and, rarely, Chinese restaurants.

Sarafina wasn’t interested in food. She didn’t even call it food; most of the time she called it “fuel.” If it was up to her, we’d just eat fruit and nuts all the time. Me, I was
very
interested in food. “But what if you don’t like something they bring you?” I asked.

“Tell them,” Jason said. “They’ll bring you something else.”

I wondered if he was kidding or not. He and Jay-Tee picked up their little spoons and dipped them in. I did the same. It was fish soup. I spooned some of the orange bubbles into my mouth. They popped between my teeth, exploding with an intense fishiness. Very strange, like nothing I’d tasted before. I thought I liked them, but I wasn’t sure.

Jason picked up the glass and drank down the last bit of soup. Jay-Tee and I did the same. There were two last orange bubbles. I popped them between my tongue and my teeth. Salty fishiness. They were good, I decided.

“Do you like it?” Jason asked.

I didn’t say yes, just in case. “It’s delicious.”

“Yeah,” Jay-Tee said, “the roe tastes like fishy Pop Rocks.”

He laughed. “Barbarian.”

Jay-Tee shrugged. “It’s what it tastes like.”

Jason refilled our glasses and, when the waiter came to clear the plates, ordered another bottle. I’d already lost count of how many glasses I’d had. I could feel the little bubbles moving along my veins. I sparkled.

“What kind of food is this?” I asked after the waiter had placed a plate of something that was composed of layers of white, then brown, then red, then green, sitting in a pool of creamy sauce with red and green swirls in it. I’d been watching the snowstorm and missed the waiter’s description, not that it would’ve helped much. I wasn’t used to food that looked like art.

“Modern American,” Jason said. “Although the chef trained in France and Italy, so they’re a big influence.”

“Huh,” I said, because his answer hadn’t explained a thing. “Modern American” wasn’t a glamorous enough name for this fairytale food. Of course, I’d never eaten food from France or Italy either. It had never occurred to me that every country in the world had different food.

“I meant what I said, Reason, about helping one another,” Jason said, after he’d tried the layered thing and made an
mmmm
sound. “I’ve been helping Jay-Tee a lot and I’d like to do the same for you.”

He glanced at Jay-Tee and she nodded. She kept her head down, wouldn’t let me catch her eye. Was that true? And if it was,
how
did he help her?

“It seems to me,” he continued, “that there’s a lot you don’t know.” He gave the words
a lot
extra emphasis. I couldn’t disagree. “I can help you with that. Explain things to you, as I suspect neither your mother nor your grandmother ever has.”

That was one of his
tricks, of course: when it’s least expected, tell the truth. Reason’s mouth fell open, showing the whole world her tonsils. Again.
She’s lucky it isn’t summer and we aren’t outdoors, or she’d have a mouth full of flies,
Jay-Tee thought.

Ever since Reason came here, she’d been confused. She wasn’t prepared for anything that had happened to her. She didn’t know how to tell when someone was lying to her. Reason didn’t have any idea that Jay-Tee’d taken her to the wrong street that morning. Kept staring at every house, every door on Thirteenth Street between Avenues A and B, hoping it was the one. Unsurprisingly, given that Esmeralda’s door was on Seventh Street between B and C, she hadn’t found it.

And now Reason was drop-jawed and staring even more, this time because he’d told the truth. She’d paused in her rapid food and champagne consumption and stared at him, mouth
still
open. She looked almost sick.

“I can tell you what you want to know, Reason. But I want something from you in return. It has to be reciprocal. You do for me, and I’ll tell you about yourself. Your grandmother, she would take everything and give you nothing.”

Not unlike him, really,
thought Jay-Tee.
What a choice.

Reason gulped down the rest of her glass. He poured her more. She gulped at that too. The waiter whipped away their dirty plates, and within seconds they were replaced with wobbly towers of rice and greens and who knew what else. None of them was listening as the waiter explained.

“You stepped through a door in Sydney,” he said once the waiter was out of earshot. “And you found yourself in New York City. You didn’t expect that to happen, did you?”

Reason shook her head, finally closing her mouth. “No.”

“But you know
why.
You know it’s magic. You’ve been kept in the dark all your life and yet you’ve figured out that much.”

Reason’s gaze had finally dropped to her plate. “Magic is real,” she said, half under her breath. Jay-Tee wondered if she was going to start crying. Her face had that pinched look of someone trying to hold back tears.

“It is. But you don’t know much more than that, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” she said, her voice still faint.

“I can tell you.” He leaned closer, directing all his energy at her. “I can tell you who you are. I can tell you what magic is. What you can do with it. I can teach you and help you. The same way I have Jay-Tee.”

Lucky me,
thought Jay-Tee, taking a sip from her glass. Reason didn’t look at her.

“You need a teacher. Without my help you could hurt yourself or worse.” He was managing to look sympathetic, concerned. She imagined that he was. Reason dead was no good to him.

Reason blanched. “How do you know?” she asked, finding her normal voice at last. “How do you know who I am? Who my mother is? My grandmother?”

“I am your grandfather.”

Jay-Tee felt her own jaw drop. They were both staring at him now. He’d never told her
that
little snippet before. He and the witch Esmeralda had done the nasty? Or was he lying?

Jay-Tee looked at him closely, trying to feel whether it was true or not. He raised an eyebrow and she pulled back. She should have known better than to try. Reason looked like she was just about ready to keel over. Talk about information overload.

“My . . .” She dribbled to a halt. Jay-Tee couldn’t imagine how
she’d
feel if it turned out he was
her
granddad. Ugh.

“Your grandfather,” he said, staring back at Reason. “Father of your mother.”

“And you’re magic too?” Reason asked, her voice small. “Like Esmeralda?”