Magic Lessons Read Online Free PDF Page A

The thing had made her feverish; her body trying to fight the invader every way it could. Jay-Tee could see the wood-brown lines knitting together and reaching from Reason’s body back into the house, down the stairs—to the door, she was sure, back to New York, back to him . Why wouldn’t he leave her alone?
    She reached for the fine brown line, held it in her hands, feeling for where it was weakest.
“I see it,” Tom said. “Just there. Its shape isn’t true.” He sent his magic rushing at the weak point, drawing Reason’s and Jay-Tee’s with him.
The line snapped.
Reason screamed.
The Play-Doh thing exploded from her arm through the balcony and across Esmeralda’s room. Jay-Tee scrambled up, running down the stairs after it. She reached the kitchen in time to watch it disappear under the door, back to New York, back to him .
The noise and the shaking began again, like rusty metal fingernails dragged along echoing metal pipes. The wood rippled, looking exactly like the thing—same color, same texture, same everything.
Jay-Tee looked around desperately. She had to keep it from coming back. She snatched up a box of matches and emptied it into her hands, pushing a little of her magic into them, then she skidded across the spilled Coke to the door, spreading the matches out along the threshold, careful not to touch the wood.
She hoped the protection would hold.
8
“Are you okay?”
    Reason walked normally, not as if her body had been invaded by some creature. Her nose was screwed up and she was wearing her something-nasty-just-crawled-up-my-nostrils face, but other than that she looked okay.
    Jay-Tee, on the other hand, was so exhausted, she’d had to sit on the sticky, Coke-covered floor and lean back against the kitchen cupboards.
    “I’m fine,” Reason answered.
Jay-Tee looked at Tom, who shrugged.
“It only hurt while it was inside me.”
Jay-Tee couldn’t believe it. Her shin was still throbbing in
the spot where the thing had bitten her. “You’re really fine?” Reason answered with a retching noise and followed it up by spewing on the kitchen floor. “I have to go outside.”
8
    Jay-Tee and Tom cleaned up after Reason, and then they tackled the sticky Coke mess.
“What do you think Jason Blake wants?” Tom asked, wiping down one of the cupboard doors.
Jay-Tee wished Tom would stop saying his name. She’d learned fast never to use his name—not any of them. Though it didn’t make any sense to her, Jay-Tee knew that saying his name gave him more power. No matter how far away he was—if you said one of his names, if you even thought it—he’d know and show up to laugh at you and take more of your magic.
“What do you think he wants, Tom?”
“Our magic?”
“You got it.”
“Do you think those matches will hold?” He gestured at the bottom of the door.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s been quiet, though, hasn’t it? When did Esmeralda say she’d be home?”
“Soon.”
Jay-Tee dumped their glasses in the sink. “I’m going upstairs to change. These’ve got Coke all over them.”
She went into Reason’s room and picked out a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. They were pretty ugly—Reason was clueless about clothes—but they’d do. Esmeralda had promised to take her shopping for stuff of her own when there was time.
A week ago Jay-Tee hadn’t even known her father was dead and would never beat her again. It had been weird telling her brother, Danny, why she’d run away. It had been such a big secret for so long. She hadn’t even told Reason. And Danny had believed her, hadn’t doubted for a second. It had been such a relief.
She’d felt guilty, like somehow it was her fault that her dad had gone crazy one day and started beating her. She still had no idea why. He never said anything, just laid into her, silent and furious. Now he was dead, so she’d never know what she’d done wrong. And no sooner had she run away from her dad than she’d wound up trapped by him . From