Talia
I peek through the open door into Daniel’s office, watching Kitty swing her leg over the side of the armchair as she sips her tea. She’s reading a thick book, and hysterical giggles bubble in my chest as I wonder what Daniel might have given her, if she’s reading the Tanakh or some of Paul Celan’s poems.
She glances up, and I duck away, my back to the wall like a Disney princess, my heart beating fast. I’m still falling; my wings have yet to catch. For the first time, I think maybe I’ll be okay with them never catching the wind.
Daniel comes out of the hallway and startles to see me hiding from the girl I think I might love. He simply raises an eyebrow, a slow smile creeping across his face, and I flush bright red and scurry into the office.
“I have been doing work,” I say by way of apology when he follows and leans against the desk.
“I don’t doubt that,” he says. I can’t bear to meet his amused, knowing gaze. “Talia.” His voice is deep and serious when he speaks again. “Are you happy?”
I look up. I want to hide from it still. I want to close off my heart, hide it back safe in the cage of my ribs, not leave it beating free for everyone to see. I nod.
“Then I’m happy for you,” he says.
I can’t help it. I smile, the joy bringing tears to my eyes, making it hard to focus on the computer as I input the data from the receipts he’s collected. I think my heart’s caught the wind, flying, as exhilarating as falling, and as endless.
Then we hear Kitty’s voice. “Matt!”
I frown and leap to my feet, rushing into Daniel’s office. Kitty’s standing face-to-face with Matt. “He’s got them, Kit. He’s taken them, and I couldn’t stop him, I couldn’t. I tried to stop him, but he walked through me. He took them.”
“What?” I say, fear making me angry. “What’s going on, who’s taken who?”
“Anderson,” says Matt, turning to me. His eyes are wild, and his form seems to vibrate, flickering in and out of view. “When Kitty disappeared, he was swearing, and then he got in his car. I got in because what the hell else was I going to do? I didn’t know where you’d gone.” He pushes his fingers through his hair, tugging. “He went straight to your place, Kitty, and he magicked the freaking door open and walked in. My dad was there, and he just…he waved his hand, and my dad followed him like a fucking zombie. Has he turned my dad into a fucking zombie?”
“Sam,” Kitty says, her voice hoarse with horror. “Matt, what about—”
“Anderson threw him over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and I tried—” He sobs or screams, both at once. “I was hitting him and shaking my dad, and he walked right through me. I didn’t know what to do.”
“It’s okay, Matt, you’re okay. How did you get here?”
“I ran,” he says, and my jaw drops. “I don’t get tired, so I ran and kept running, and then there was a bus. I got onto that because it was faster. Fuck, Kitty, what are we going to do? What’s he going to do with them?”
She pales. “This is my fault. It’s me he wants.”
“You’re right, Miss Wilson, it is you I want.”
Daniel swears and steps backward, clutching at his chest. The rest of us spin around to the window, mirrored by the darkness outside.
“You took some finding,” says the man in the glass. Our own reflections seem to ripple around his image as he paces back and forth. “Even now, I cannot reach you.”
“What do you want?” Matt says in a snarl.
Anderson, this different, younger Anderson, ignores him, still blind to him. “What do you want?” I translate for him, my fists bunched around nothing.
“I want Kitty. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
She shakes her head. “I’m not yours,” she says. “I’ll always be your daughter, but that don’t mean you own me.”
He snorts. “Don’t be dramatic. I’m talking about family loyalty here.”
“I can’t let you hurt people. You can’t expect me to join you on some crime spree just because I’m your daughter.” He looks at her, inspects her, and I can see her hoping, believing in the inherent goodness of people. Particularly her people. “Let them go, please,” she begs. “Please, Dad.”
“And then you’ll join me?” He asks like it’s an interesting option, and I want to scream, ready to leap in front of her if he tries anything.
“I won’t do anything immoral,” she says. “But I’ll still be your daughter.”
He rolls his eyes. “I don’t actually give a shit about your morals, you naive little bitch. Just your power.”
I bare my teeth at him.
“Why?” Kitty demands, and I’m so proud of her, that little wobble in her voice holding solid. “What do you want it for?”
“Does it matter?” he asks. “Will it change your decision when you already have to choose between giving me what I want and letting me take my frustrations out on your chosen family?” He makes a sweeping gesture with his hand, and behind him, Sam and Peter come into view, silent and bound, their hands behind their backs, unmoving. Daniel looks behind himself, an instinctive move, as if the image in the mirror is only reflecting people in our room. Kitty cries out and clamps her hand over her mouth.
“Let them go,” Matt shouts. “How fucking…let them go!” He runs at Anderson. I put my arm out, and he goes straight through it. He’ll surely go straight through the window into the street outside, but he doesn’t. He’s still there, still in the reflection, but he can’t be, and it’s only a second. Anderson frowns, a flash of confusion as the image shudders and fades, and it’s just us, just our reflections.
“Matt,” Kitty cries. She rushes for the window, and this time, I grab her. I grab her by the shoulders, hold her tight.
“Don’t go,” I say, desperate, the cage around my heart cracked open and plain for everyone to see.
“I have to,” she says, her eyes haunted and already far away.
“No, no you don’t have to. You don’t have to do anything. Run, run with me. We can get into my car, we can, we can leave the country. Don’t do this.”
“But Sam, Peter…Matt.”
“You can’t,” I start, and it’s a battle to hold my tongue, close my cage. You can’t. It’s hopeless. He’s too strong. They’re already dead, and you will be too if you go after them.
Her eyes meet mine, and she looks into me, into my soul. “I can,” she says, and she’s gone.
I gasp, my arms wrapping around the air where she once stood, my breathing rough and strangled to my own ears. She’s gone, and I couldn’t hold her, I couldn’t keep her.
I wasn’t enough.
There are rough hands on my biceps, someone’s shaking me, and I look up at Daniel.
“Talia!”
“She’s gone,” I say. My voice is hoarse.
“Where?” he demands. “Talia, where has she gone?”
I feel a flare of bitter anger. “Probably into a mirror.” I gesture sharply toward the window.
“But do you have any idea where that man is, where he would have taken her family? Or has he gone into, I don’t know, some alternate world?”
I stare at him a moment. “The Society building.”
“You know where that is?”
I nod. “In Leithfield. Out near the motorway junction, there’s this big industrial building. No windows or anything, it’s…” I shudder. I didn’t like to think of her being there all alone before, but now…
“Come on,” he says.
“Daniel, what?”
“I’m coming with you. You can’t think I’d leave you children to go into danger alone.”
“And you’re not going to talk me out of it? Or tell me to call the police?”
“Will the police believe me? Would I be able to talk you out of it?”
I snort. “No.”
“There you go, then. Come on, quickly. Did you drive here?”
“No, took the bus. My car’s parked in the college lot.”
He nods. “My car’s around back. Rabbi privileges. Let’s go.”
I feel a flare of fierce joy from knowing what to do and having someone along to say yes, what you want is right. But just as fast, it turns back to fear because we have no magic. We haven’t a clue what we’re doing or what we’re going to be facing when we get there. Not only have I been left behind, but I may be dragging someone into danger.
“Are you sure about this?” I ask Daniel as he pulls out of the parking spot in his Volvo. A glance in the back shows he’s probably got kids, and the guilt intensifies.
He shrugs. “I’m not sure I’m not having a wild dream, honestly.” He takes a deep breath. “But this feels like the right thing to do.”
“B’ezrat HaShem,” I say softly. With God’s help.
He meets my eye. “B’ezrat HaShem,” he says, with a small smile. “You know, when I say that, I always imagine Him sitting at my shoulder, along for the ride.”
I laugh and can’t help glancing behind us. “I hope so,” I say and like that the humour disappears. I close my eyes and bend all my soul to Him. “Please,” I say in my mind. “Please help us save her, save all of them. I can’t do this alone. Please help us.”
I wish I’d memorised a prayer or a psalm beyond the Shema. Something to calm my mind and focus on, stop me biting the skin around my nails. Usually I read them, keeping my hand, eyes, and voice completely focused on the same thing, but all I can do now is repeat the Shema again and again under my breath.
Daniel glances over at me and begins to speak. Psalms, passages from the Talmud; he’s skipping around, following only his heart, all to make me feel safer. And he doesn’t comment when I cry. I let the words carry me through the storm of my fear and grief, a safety line around me leading me to clarity.
I think of her. I want to keep her safe, give her support. Give her all of myself. I think of following her into whatever grey place she’s gone, stand at her back, and reinforce her magic any way I can, with my fists or my words. I don’t think of how impotent I am. I don’t think of how I might be a burden to her, one more magic-less person for her to protect.
My chest tightens, and I put my hand up, clutching at…at a red rope that seems to lead away from me and through the car. “What the hell?” Daniel says, pulling over to the side of the road, his hazard lights clicking. “Talia, what…”
I hold the rope around my heart. A thought rises in my mind, remembering what Kitty’s told me about magic and how it works. Willpower. Willpower and mirrors.
“Talia,” Daniel says, his voice a forced calm. “You’ve got a rope sticking out of your chest.”
I clench my jaw and concentrate on breathing, once, twice, then pull down the visor, my hands shaking and fumbling. I angle the mirror so I can see my eyes and try not to really think about what I’m doing. “Kitty?” I say. My voice sounds weak to my own ears. “Kitty?” I clutch at the rope through my chest, and I know she’s on the other side of it, I can feel it. I close my eyes, the hope almost painful. I pray.
“Kitty?”
“Talia McGregor, what are you doing back here?”
I gasp as I open my eyes. “Fuck,” I say because I’m standing ankle-deep in fog in the grey place. I was dead last time I was here, and for a moment, panic overwhelms me. What the hell am I doing? What was I thinking? I can’t do this. I’m a physicist.
“Talia, what’re you doing here?” Shivam’s voice seems to ground me, and I wrest control of my breathing.
There’s a familiar woman standing in front of me, her head on one side. “Madeline?”
“Well remembered.”
I turn to Shivam. “You’re dead,” I say.
He rolls his eyes and turns away. I follow at a distance, peering around him as he drops to his knees, drawing with his fingertip in the mist. It seems to stay where he wants it to, leaving a swirling mandala on the floor.
“How did you get here?” Kitty’s mum asks. She’s peering at me with clinical fascination, and I resist the urge to hunch away and snarl.
“I looked into a mirror and followed the red rope,” I say and feel like a bloody idiot because what does that even mean?
She looks at my chest. “That’s my magic. Or it was until…Kitty must have changed it somehow. May I?”
I shrug and turn to face her properly. She casts some sort of magic around me, signs that appear and disappear in the air around the rope. It sticks out of my chest, parallel to the ground but seems to fade into thin air within a foot of me. Madeline shakes her head. “Incredible.”
“What is?”
“My daughter.” She smiles up at me, and her eyes crinkle like Kitty’s do. “She’s a genius. Isn’t she, Shivam?”
Shivam pointedly ignores her.
“Where is she?” I ask.
“That’s what we were trying to find out when you started to appear. Now.” She points down to the rope. “I think we can follow that.”
“It’ll take me to her?”
“I believe so,” she says. “I made it in the first place when Matthew came back with you. I am sorry for that, by the way.” She frowns and reaches for it, an aborted motion, to my relief. “Kitty diverted it, though. Or you did. I’m not sure.”
“I can’t have done it. I’m not magic.”
She smirks. “And yet, here you are.”
“That’s…I just followed the rope.”
Shivam sighs and stands. “Most people never realise they’ve got it unless they’re born into a magical family.”
“But I don’t know how I did it. I don’t know all these sigils and spells you guys use.”
Kitty’s mum waves her hand. “They’re just aids to focus your mind.”
Shivam nods. “I used to think it was all rigid too, but after Kitty…All the people who found us at the Society and wanted their family back,” he says. “They called us with their grief and their willpower. I was just the one listening.”
“Yes,” Kitty’s mum says, her voice ice. “And then you scammed them out of their savings and let Anderson manipulate my daughter into helping.”
“I’m helping now, aren’t I?” he says, uncowed. He turns to me. “If you want to find Kitty, you will.”
“How?”
He shrugs. “What feels right to you?”
I look at the rope. It seems to disappear into nothing, but why? It should give me a direction, show me the way to go.
Kitty’s mum nods as if she knows what I’m thinking. “Concentrate,” she urges. “Think about her and how you want to find her.”
I close my eyes and breathe steadily. How I want to find her! I want to find her as we were this morning, sleepy and warm, cuddled up in my bed. I think of her face inches from mine, her sweet smile, the way she leaned over and touched our noses together, then laughed because my nose was so cold. The way her kisses felt on my lips, the way her heart beat under the palm of my hand. I want her so much. I want her safe and in my arms.
Kitty’s mum breathes in sharply, and I open my eyes. The rope leads off into the mist, beyond our sight, and I laugh once, disbelieving. And then I run toward her.