Page 83 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
“Where is he now?” Will asked, turning his gaze on her. “You said you had a map to show you where he was.”
Magda pulled the map from her back pocket and passed it over to Will. “It shows where the Impossible Box is, not him. But he had it.”
Will unfolded the map and studied it for a moment, and then his expression changed, his eyes widening. He looked up at Magda.
“What?” she asked.
He spread the paper on the coffee table.
“Oh no,” Magda cried. Her emotions were stretched and pulled like overtightened violin strings, threatening to snap at any moment.
Because the Impossible Box wasn’t in Alabama anymore...
It was nearby, in London.
Lukas had somehow followed her all the way across the ocean.
“What does it mean?” Will asked, his voice raising an octave and quivering with panic. “What does it mean, Magda?”
Rain and wind thumped against the windows, a roar in the night.
A Kiss Before Departing
Beneath the dark and stormy skies, London was ablaze with light. Streetlights and headlights reflected on the soaked tarmac and shop windows dropped rectangles of light onto dark pavements like drawbridges. The streets were thronged with commuters at the end of the working day, the roads laden and slow-moving with buses and traffic. Hanging above it all, tossed and turned by turbulent air, Magda narrowed her eyes, ignoring the fierce pain of the wind on her already raw cheeks as she scanned for any sign of Lukas. Her map had told her that the Impossible Box was somewhere around Paddington Station, and moving east, so Magda hovered above Edgware Road, trying to pick him out of the crowd.
Where would Lukas go? Bit of shopping? To see a show?
She knew where he would go—where, in fact, he had been heading when she’d last looked at the map—Bell Street Books. Because Lukas had said he could sense magical items, hadn’t he? Somehow, he could feel where artefacts were. And that’s where Frank’s book was. Surely it would be drawing him like a moth to a flame?
A huge gust of wind, swiping out of the dark sky like a hand, knocked Magda backwards and down towards the roofs of the buildings below her, almost as if the gods were trying to put her back in her place on the earth. She muttered to herself, gripping the necklace moretightly in her left hand, keeping her eyes fixed firmly on the ground below. Nobody was looking up at the sky, heads buried in hoods or beneath umbrellas.
Nobody looks at the sky when it’s raining and windy.
Magda couldn’t remember a storm this bad in London, or maybe it was just dread colouring her thoughts. She wanted to check her map again, but knew she couldn’t do it in the air, for fear the wind would snatch it from her hands and carry it away. She dropped down onto a terrace on top of the Hilton Metropole, two floors up from the road, and crouched down out of the worst of the wind to inspect the map. It showed her that the Impossible Box was on the far side of Edgware Road now, moving steadily towards Bell Street Books.
Magda grunted in frustration, regretting that she hadn’t taken the book from Frank and Will. She should have flown away with it, somewhere far out of reach of Lukas.
You flew across an ocean to escape from him and that wasn’t far enough, it seems. Where do youthinkyou could run to that he couldn’t reach?
Magda didn’t know what to do. Should she try to stop Lukas? Or fly back to Frank and Will and encourage them to escape, or at least take the book away?
She folded the map back into her pocket and then lifted herself off the roof and into the tumultuous sky, dipping and turning with the wind like she was on a roller coaster. If she could at leastseeLukas, she could perhaps discern his intentions.
She flew east, squinting into the wind, until she was over a narrow alleyway, a back lane running between townhouses, used for deliveries or shortcuts by taxi drivers who knew the streets. But Lukas wasn’t there, where the map had told her he would be. There were two people, splashing through puddles as they scurried eastwards, and Magda yelled in disbelief and jubilation when she saw who they were.
She dropped rapidly out of the sky, landing in the middle of the street, directly in front of James and Henry. Both of them skidded to a halt and gaped back at Magda, mouths open and eyes wide, hair plastered to their heads with the rain.
“Magda!” Henry yelled.
Before Magda could respond James hurried to her, three quick steps, and pulled her into an embrace, muffling the sound of the storm. Magda immediately felt calmed, cocooned protectively within James’s strong arms, and all of her worries evaporated into the air.
He released her after a moment—too soon—and held her gaze with his dark eyes.
“You’re alive!” he exclaimed.
“You’re alive too!” Magda shouted back, shaking her head in disbelief, happiness washing over her in a great wave of warmth. “I thought you were dead, both of you! God, I’m so relieved! I thought I’d lost you!”
Henry approached and pulled Magda into a quick hug, an arm around her shoulder and cheek to cheek such that James did not need to move away. Magda loved it, loved that her friends were with her again.
