Page 84 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
“You clever girl,” Henrietta said. “I knew you must have got away. Never doubted it for a moment!”
“But how are you here?” Magda asked, glancing back and forth at them. “How did you get away?”
“Henry rescued me from beneath the ground,” James explained, his words coming fast, events tumbling out of him. “Ghosted us out. Then we drove like hell straight across the country back to the airport. Like, in a straight line. I drove and Henry ghosted the car and we just drove through any obstacles; it was incredible!”
“But you have the Impossible Box?” Magda checked. “That map said it is here.”
Henry reached inside her coat and removed the box from beneath her arm, showing it to Magda. Raindrops bounced off the box, tapping a rhythm. “I took it off that man,” Henry said. “Once we got out of the ground, he was distracted, playing with something he’d taken from the box. So I ghosted back down underground and grabbed it from below. Don’t think he even noticed at first.”
“No,” James agreed, grinning at Magda. “She was like a real burglar.”
“Iama real burglar,” Henry said. “Theburglar.”
“Fine, Henry,” Magda muttered, trying to get her friend back on track. “So then?”
“Then we skedaddled back to the car and got out of there,” Henry continued. “Straight back to the airport for the overnight flight.”
Magda computed this for a moment. “So Lukas isn’t even here, then?” she asked. “He’s still in Alabama?”
“He was the last time we saw him,” Henry confirmed.
“I thought he was here,” Magda said. She giggled, almost delirious with relief, and the grip of tension started to release her. “Oh god, I thought he had come all this way.”
“Nope, just us,” Henry said. “And it is fabulous to see you, Magda. Although you are not looking your best.” Henry’s eyes were crawling over Magda’s face, seeing the windburn.
“What was the item?” James asked, turning towards Henry, as if a thought had just struck him.
“Hmm?” Henry asked him.
A pair of lights turned into the alleyway behind Henry and James, blinding Magda briefly, and then a polite beep of the horn sounded as a vehicle approached. They stepped to the side to let a white transit van roll past, a man in a high-visibility vest waving his thanks at them.
“Come on,” Magda said. “Let’s get back to the bookshop, walk and talk.”
She led them on, following the red taillights of the van, James on her right and Henry on her left.
“You said he was distracted by something he took from the box,” James said, picking up the thread of his earlier question. “You didn’t tell me that before. What did he take?”
“Oh,” Henry said. “It was a knife. I saw it when I grabbed the box. One of those switchblade knives, you know, with the blade that folds into the handle. He was flicking it out and pushing it back in, like it was a toy.”
They emerged from the alleyway onto Seymour Place, elegant redbrick townhouses on either side of the street, trees waving frantically in the breeze, and rain slashing diagonally down to the ground, sharp drops pelting Magda’s face and making her wince. The transit van that had just passed was stopped in front of them, engine idling, raindrops bouncing off the top and side of the vehicle.
“The knife,” James murmured. Then his pace slowed, and Magda was aware of him falling back, his eyes narrowing as he looked upwards, facing the rain and the wind.
“What?” she asked. “What is it?”
“I read about the knife, in the book,” James said, his eyes searching the skies. “Don’t you remember?”
Magda shook her head, straining to hear him over the roar of the storm. “What?” she asked again.
“The knife... it controls the wind.”
That fact was a heavy stone dropped in a still pond, disrupting Magda’s settled emotions. She craned her neck, peering into the sky. “It’s been windy all afternoon,” she said, her body tensing in alarm.
“This is London, darling,” Henry said. “This sort of light breeze is pretty much par for the course, if you ask me.”
But now Magda couldn’t shake that this wasn’t normal, crazy London weather. “What if he’s already here?”
Ahead of them the driver of the van opened the door and jumped out to stand on the road, staring straight ahead into Seymore Place, one hand over his eyes to shield them from the weather.
