The Visit
She came in March, two weeks after his fourteenth birthday.
He heard Giovanni first. That theatrical voice in the foyer, warm and practiced, Thomas laughing at something. Then Martha's heels on the marble and Alfred opening the door wider and the sound of a jacket being shrugged off that was too big for the person wearing it.
Zee came around the corner behind her father. The boots were new. Black leather, laced up past the ankle, the kind of deliberate that meant she'd picked them herself. The jacket was denim, two sizes too big, and she wore it like she'd stolen it from someone taller, the sleeves pushed up to her wrists in crumpled folds. Her hair was longer than last time. Past her shoulders now, dark and thick, parted to the side in a way it hadn't been before. She'd changed. The hair was different and the face under it was different too, the bones coming through.
She looked at him and grinned and the gap between her front teeth was still there.
"Height check."
She walked over and stood next to him and put a flat hand from the top of his head to the top of hers, palm level, the same thing she'd done at twelve. Except at twelve she'd been taller and had been pleased about it. Her hand went back and forth twice. Exactly level.
"Even," she said.
"For now."
"For NOW? What, you think you're gonna-" She poked his shoulder. "I've been taller than you for YEARS. Years, Bruce."
"Two years."
"That's years, plural. I'm holding onto this."
He almost said something about growth charts and the fact that male puberty typically overtook female height by fifteen or sixteen. He didn't, because that sentence would have been deeply strange coming out of his mouth, and also because her hand was still on his shoulder from the poke and she hadn't moved it.
She looked at her hand. Moved it.
"Anyway. Even. For today."
"For today."
Behind her, Giovanni stood with Thomas near the coat rack. The cape, the mustache. But the silver at his temples was wider than last year and the lines around his eyes were deeper. He was watching the two of them. His eyes were warm but his jaw was set.
He muttered something in Italian. Under his breath.
Thomas said "hmm?" and Giovanni said "nothing, old friend" and Martha said something about tea and Alfred was already making it.
Across the room, Alfred set out cups. Four. China. Giovanni's ended up nearest the window seat. Alfred's back was to them but his pace hadn't changed, which with Alfred meant he was listening to everything.
Lunch was Mrs. Brennan's response to visitors. Food in quantities that implied the visit might last through the weekend. Tomato basil soup. Crustless sandwiches, Martha's preference, with the crusts in a separate bowl on the counter for Alfred, who would eat them later standing up in the pantry. The boy had discovered this habit at age six and never mentioned it.
Zee always talked. The content was different now. Less papier-mache volcanos, more magical theory, schools she might attend, a performer in Metropolis who did real magic disguised as stage magic and "everyone in the community knows but nobody says anything because honestly his card tricks are really good too."
But she was different.
The pauses were wrong. She'd be mid-sentence, looking at the soup or the window or anywhere, and then she'd look at him and the sentence would change direction. Like she'd been about to say one thing and her brain swapped it when his face was in the way.
"Dad's been teaching me phase work, which is basically- you know how matter is mostly empty space? So theoretically if you align the- anyway, it's hard. It's really hard."
The "anyway" was new. She'd never been a person who said anyway. She was a person who finished every sentence and then kept going into the next one without a breath between them.
She laughed at things that weren't quite jokes. He said something about Alfred's sandwiches being geometrically perfect and she laughed, a real laugh, but it went half a beat too long, and then she picked up her water glass and drank from it.
Giovanni watched. Alfred refilled glasses.
A pigeon landed on the windowsill during lunch, sat there looking personally aggrieved by something, and left.
The garden was cold. March cold, not January cold. The air still had winter in it but the sun was working and the light was longer, the shadows pulling toward evening but not there yet. The garden wall was old brick, chest-high, with moss on the north side and a crack near the gate that had been there since before the boy was born.
Zee stood in the center of the lawn. He sat on the bench near the wall. She shook out her hands like a pitcher warming up.
"Okay. Watch."
A stone lifted off the path.
Steady. It rose to about eye level and hung there, turning slowly. No hand gestures. She was standing with her arms at her sides and the stone floated in front of her like gravity was a suggestion it had politely declined.
"You could do that at twelve," he said.
"I know. Warm-up." She flicked her wrist and the stone shot sideways and embedded itself in the garden wall with a quiet thock. Flush with the brick. Like it had always been there. "That's new."
It was.
She opened her hand and light gathered in her palm. Gold, warm, the same light as the rabbit two years ago. But this time it shaped itself into a cat. Larger than the rabbit had been. More detailed. It sat on her palm and its tail curled around its feet and its ears moved independently, tracking sounds, and its eyes were gold and sharp and it looked at the boy and blinked slowly.
"Cat," he said.
"Upgrade from the bunny."
"I liked the bunny."
"The bunny was kid stuff." The cat stood and stretched on her palm, arching its back, and then stepped off her hand onto the air and walked across nothing toward the boy. Each paw left a faint gold print that faded a second later. It sat on his knee and there was warmth where it sat, just warmth. Like sunlight focused to a point.
"That's good, Zee."
"I know." She closed her fist and the cat dissolved into sparks that scattered and went out. "But that's not why I wanted to come outside."
She turned to the garden wall. Old brick. Moss. Crack near the gate.
"Phase displacement," she said. She put her palm flat against the brick. "Matter is mostly empty space. The atoms are there but they're far apart and if the magic goes between them- Dad calls it threading the needle."
Her hand went into the wall.
Not through. Into. Her fingers pushed past the surface of the brick the way you'd push into water, except it was still brick. The brick around her wrist was solid, unchanged. Her hand was inside the wall up to the knuckles. Then the wrist. Then halfway up her forearm. She was grinning but the grin had effort in it, the corners of her mouth pulling tight.
She yanked her hand free. Her fingers were gray with brick dust and she wiped them on her jeans.
"Three seconds," she said. "I can hold it about three seconds before the wall wins."
"The wall wins?"
"The wall wants to be a wall, Bruce. The magic convinces it to stop for a second. But it pushes back."
She looked at him. The grin was still there but her eyes weren't matching it. Whatever she was looking at him with, it wasn't about the wall.
"Give me your hand."
He stood from the bench. She held out her hand, palm up, fingers open. He put his hand in hers.
Her fingers laced through his. Interlocked. Her fingers between his fingers, her thumb against his thumb, and this close she smelled like static and something sweet he couldn't place. Ozone and warmth. His chest went tight, the same tightness from watching the freckle on her wrist at twelve, and her fingers were between his fingers.
"Trust me?" she said.
"Yeah."
She turned to the wall and pushed their hands in.
Not the right word. The brick stopped being entirely solid where her magic told it to. Their hands went in. His knuckles, her knuckles, then wrist-deep, forearm-deep, and the inside of the wall was cold and strange, halfway between empty and solid. The magic tingled. It started in his fingertips where they pressed against hers and it ran up his forearm in a line of static that made the hair stand up and his teeth itch. Her pulse was fast against his palm, quick and hammering through their laced fingers. His was keeping up.
Three seconds, like she'd said.
One. The cold.
Two. Her pulse.
Three. The static climbing past his elbow.
She pulled their hands free.
His arm was gray to the elbow. Hers the same. Their fingers were still interlocked and neither of them moved for a second. Maybe two.
She let go.
Her fingers loosened and slid from between his and she stepped back half a pace and wiped her palm on her jeans. Same gesture as before. After the solo attempt. Except this time she wiped twice and the second time was just her hand moving because the dust was already gone.
"Cool, right?" Half a register too high. She was looking at the wall.
"Yeah." His hand was at his side. The fingers tingled. "Cool."
He wasn't looking at her. The garden was still. The pigeon was back on the windowsill. Same one or a different one with the same complaint. The shadow of the wall had gotten longer.
"I should-"
"Yeah."
Zee tucked her hair behind her ear. Left side. The side with the part. Her hand was trembling slightly. The freckle on her wrist. Still there. He'd noticed it at twelve. He looked at the garden wall.
"Dad's probably- yeah."
"Yeah."
She went inside. Her boots on the flagstone, then the kitchen door opening and closing. He stayed by the wall for another minute. The spot where their hands had gone through looked the same. Solid brick, moss on the north side, crack near the gate.
His hand still tingled. He put it in his pocket and went inside.
They left before dinner. Giovanni had a show in Metropolis Friday evening and the drive was four hours and he wanted the road before dark. Zee hugged Martha. She hugged Thomas. She didn't hug the boy. She stood in the foyer with her too-big jacket and her new boots and she looked at him and said "see you" and he said "see you" and Giovanni's hand was on her shoulder and they were through the door and the car's taillights turned left at the end of the drive.
Alfred closed the front door.
"Shall I clear the guest room, sir?"
"They didn't stay."
"Indeed they didn't."
That was all Alfred said.
He found the note at nine. On his desk, leaning against the lamp. A piece of paper folded in half with a small gold rabbit drawn on the front. The rabbit moved. Its nose twitched every few seconds, ears perking and flattening, and the gold shimmer of it cast a faint warm light on the desktop like a nightlight made of showing off.
He opened the paper.
See you next year, Bruce.
No signature. She didn't need one. The handwriting was loose and fast, and the dot above the i in his name was a small star.
He opened the desk drawer. Sofia's birthday cards were stacked neatly on the left side. Same careful handwriting, same two sentences, every year since he was eight. He put Zatanna's note on top.
The gold rabbit twitched its nose in the dark of the drawer.
He closed it.
His hand was in his pocket. The left one. The fingers still tingled. Static and her pulse between his knuckles. He stood at the desk and the grandfather clock ticked in the hallway. Two minutes fast. Still two minutes fast.
He turned off the lamp. The drawer glowed, barely, the gold rabbit casting light through the seam in the wood. He watched it until the light faded or the rabbit fell asleep. Then it was dark and the clock ticked.
He lay down and put his hands on his chest and the left one still tingled and he didn't think about it.
He thought about it.