Magic or Madness Read Online Free PDF Page B

the letter out. It was thick. My name was on the front in big, slanting, even handwriting. I placed it on the desk unopened.
    Then I washed my hands.

    As soon as I was sure she wouldn’t hear, I crept out to the top of the stairs, listening to the sounds coming from the kitchen. The back door opened and closed, creaking loudly on its hinges. The whole house shook again. What on earth?
    I tiptoed down the hall, picked my way carefully across Esmeralda’s messy floor and out onto her balcony. Peeking down through the lacework railing, I couldn’t see her anywhere. The fig tree blocked a lot, but not the path she’d take from back door to garage door. She couldn’t have gotten to the garage that quickly. Besides, it was a roller door—I’d’ve heard it. Maybe she hadn’t gone out back at all? I crept to the top of the stairs and listened intently. Nothing. The house was quiet.
    I checked every room: library, lounge and dining rooms, even the laundry and downstairs bathroom, ready to run back upstairs at the slightest noise. They were all, including the cellar, empty. Esmeralda wasn’t anywhere.
    Was there a hidden passage? Could she be watching me right now? Sarafina had warned me that the house was strange, that her mother had a habit of appearing from nowhere. Esmeralda has many ways, Sarafina had said, of convincing you that magic is real. You have to remember that it’s just tricks. Mirrors and light. Nothing supernatural .
    I wondered, as I had many times before, if it was possible that Esmeralda simply used the word magic for all those things that science hadn’t yet explained. Even for some that had been explained. Lots of things my mother’d taught me didn’t entirely make sense. She explained them in terms of patterns and numbers, but I could imagine someone with less knowledge of mathematics would think them magical. It isn’t magic that on so many flowers—from buttercups to orchids to passionflowers—the number of petals is a Fib, just science.
    To make sure the house was empty, I did one of Sarafina’s tricks, one of the ones that didn’t entirely make sense to me: I stood still, closed my eyes, just as she’d taught me. Squeezed the ammonite in my pocket and thought of the stars at night. Hundreds and hundreds of stars as far as I could see, too many to count at a glance. I let my fear and anxiety slip away. When I was relaxed, or as close as I’d managed since Sarafina had gone to the hospital, my head was filled with Fibs and a spiral grew inside me, radiating out, making me its centre as it moved through the house. It touched no living thing bigger than a skink.
    I opened my eyes again. There wasn’t anyone in the house but me.
    Sarafina called this process meditation. When you meditate, your brain chemistry changes. You become more sensitive to the patterns of other people, of animals. Not just their brain, but the energy they expel just by living. In a meditative state you can feel entropy, the process of decay, and know whether anything living is nearby. Rocks, bricks, wood don’t have brains, so they expel energy at a much slower rate. Their patterns are more static. Not magic, science.
    It never failed.
    A house empty of people. I could feel it. The only buzz came from the electrical appliances, the plants, cockroaches, spiders, ants, lizards, and skinks. Nothing human but me.
    With Esmeralda gone, I could check out the downstairs escape route, through the backyard. I walked into the kitchen. Seeing the reality was a lot different from looking at the plan. It was bigger than a kitchen had any right to be, and it was all escape routes: a back door and lots of large open windows.
    And a note from Esmeralda stuck to the fridge:
    Gone to work (speed dial 1). Might be able to duck back for afternoon tea. Otherwise I won’t be home till late. Rita will be by at 11 AM to clean. She’s a love. She can tell you anything you need to know about the house. She’ll make you lunch and dinner,