Free Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier Page B

five—ha!—look at this: Gone before her time. What about the rest of them? Were they all on time? Next one, nineteen, then twenty, twenty-five.” She glanced at each set of dates for a split second before announcing the age. As fast as Esmeralda would’ve done it. She had to be magic too.
    “Wow, Ree,” Tom said. “You’re really good at maths!”
    Reason looked at him as if he was a bit slow. “That’s not maths, that’s just arithmetic.”
    “Whatever. I’ve never seen anyone add so fast. You definitely are Mere’s granddaughter.”
    “Actually, it’s mostly subtraction.” She moved to the next side. “Twelve, sixteen, twenty-seven, twenty again. Tom, look, they all died young.”
    “Not all.” He pointed to John Matthew Douglas O’Shaughnessy. “Sixty-five,” he said, after way more than a split second.
    “He’s a man,” Reason said. “You look, all the men live a decent amount. Except for the first, Raul.” She pointed. “Him you can’t tell. See? Died in 1823.”
    Tom looked. Raul Cansino’s year of birth was a question mark. “But all the women.” Mere had said it ran strong in her family.
    “Not all,” Reason said. She’d come to the last name, Esmeralda’s mother. “Here’s one: Milagros Luz Cansino, forty-eight. She was practically an old lady.” Reason was staring at the plainly etched name. “But neither of her sisters made it past twenty. This tomb is so well kept,” she said, turning to look at Tom. “Most of the other ones are overgrown and broken, hard to read. I haven’t seen any others so recent either. I thought the cemetery wasn’t being used anymore.”
    “It isn’t. Except for your family.” Tom looked at Milagros Cansino’s dates.
    “Is that my great-grandmother?”
    Tom nodded. He was feeling stupid for not having figured out Esmeralda’s age based on her mother’s dates. Though Mere could have been a late baby.
    “So she lived to be forty-eight. Esmeralda is forty-five. Sarafina thirty. That’s three who’ve made it to thirty. What happened to the others? Do you know, Tom?”
    Tom shook his head, trying to look innocent. He knew, though he could hardly say so after Mere’s request. It had to do with magic. He wasn’t from a long line like Reason. As far as he knew, his mother was the first, and she didn’t understand what she was. It scared her. Tom had only been rescued by Esmeralda a year ago—there was still a lot he didn’t know. But he did know that magic was dangerous, that it could, and usually did, kill you. Those with magic almost never lived long lives. If Reason was magic and didn’t know that, Mere should tell her as soon as she could.
    There was loud crack of thunder. They both jumped. Fat raindrops started to fall; within seconds they were both drenched.

10
    In the Asylum
    My mother, Sarafina, was mad and my grandmother, Esmeralda, was evil. I wondered what that made me. Mad evil? Evil mad? Was that why the women in my family rarely made it past thirty?
    I didn’t feel evil or mad; I wanted to have a long, normal life.

    The next morning, as soon as I was sure Esmeralda was gone, I went to see Sarafina. There’d been another letter under the door when I woke up. I couldn’t bring myself to do more than glance at my name in her handwriting. I added it to the first two.
    The walk to where they were keeping her, Kalder Park, took less than half as long as Tom had said. He probably didn’t walk very often or very far. City folk.
    It would’ve been even quicker if there hadn’t been so many cars and trucks. Some of the roads were impossible to cross anywhere but at a pedestrian crossing, and the lights took forever to change.
    When I was close, I stopped at a café and bought breakfast. Eggs and bacon and chips. Twelve dollars, it cost. I wondered if the eggs were made of gold or something. They didn’t taste any different to normal eggs.
    Across the road a sign had KALDER PARK written on it in big letters. I’d expected