Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier

Author:Justine Larbalestier [Larbalestier, Justine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-03-04T08:00:00+00:00

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.

Reason was running away from Mere.

Why? Tom had asked Esmeralda, because it made no sense to him. Reason seemed smart; why hadn’t she realised Mere would look out for her? She’d been looking out for Tom and his mother for well over a year and they weren’t even related. Ree definitely wasn’t better off lost here in the cold.

Mere had explained that she and her daughter, Sarafina, had been estranged for years. Sarafina had been so freaked out by the magic thing she’d done a runner when she was twelve (Tom tried to imagine himself running away at twelve: there was no way—he’d had braces on his teeth and had been barely able to cross the street on his own). She’d convinced herself magic didn’t exist and raised Reason to believe it was crap and Esmeralda was the devil incarnate.

Esmeralda hadn’t told Tom about them because she was ashamed of how badly she’d handled things with her daughter. The mess between them was one of the reasons she’d done so much to help Tom and his family. Which left Tom in the odd position of being grateful things had been so bad for Esmeralda way back when.

New York City was not at its best on a freezing, grey, January afternoon.

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