But I do a lot of things in my life warily, so this time wasn’t particularly novel. I let her summon us a taxi and off we went to the airport. She radiated exasperation when I needed help turning a small notebook from Paperchase into a passport, but she also did it for me, and then had a strongly worded conversation with the ticket machine that persuaded it to meekly hand over two first-class tickets, and once we’d been ushered through security and into the concourse, she dragged me past a bunch of perfume shops that together smelled like an unfortunate alchemy lab section and found a small phone store—tucked in a nook between one shop selling handbags for five hundred pounds and another one selling iPads, because after all, what if you just desperately needed an iPad on the spur of the moment whilst passing through—where she got me a proper phone on contract.
I didn’t resist the phone. The instant Liesel handed it over, I called Aadhya. Liu had written me an annoying little jingly song with her and Aadhya’s numbers in it, concluding with the line And El is going to go and get a phoooone! so I hadn’t any trouble remembering it, now that I actually had one in my hands. “It’s me,” I said, when she answered.
Aadhya shrieked, “Oh my God, I’m going to kill you! A week! We started calling random communes! Liu called Liesel!” At the sound of her voice, her voice caring about me, I had to go blindly stumbling off to the side of the corridor, nearly running into people going by in both directions, and turn myself to face the wall so I wouldn’t just go into a fit of blubbing.
Aadhya managed to conference Liu in while I got myself under control. Hearing both their voices prolonged the struggle, though. If I shut my eyes, I could be back in one of our dorm rooms, sitting together eating a mishmosh of snack bar horrors several steps down from the worst fast-food options in the airport around me, and I couldn’t want to be back inside the Scholomance, but I did want to be with them again; I wanted the circle of their arms around me, so desperately.
I couldn’t even tell them exactly what had happened: it would have been a bad idea to start talking about maleficaria and enclaves and maw-mouths, or even just Orion dying, there in the corridor with mundanes going past two feet away and a pair of police constables already eyeing me with some skepticism after I’d gone careening wildly across the flow of traffic. But I told them I was going to New York. “And I—have to go back to the school,” I said.
“Can you?” Aadhya said. “Isn’t it—gone?”
“There’s a way,” I said. “I just need…”
“Mana,” Liu finished for me. Of course, it’s what you always need, to do anything impossible.
“Yeah,” I said.
Aadhya blew out a breath and said, “Okay. I’ll call Chloe and see if she can get us in to see Orion’s mom and dad,” without my having to say anything more, already understanding. “Text me your flight info, I’ll come meet you at the airport.”
“Thanks,” I said, and added, “Liesel’s coming with me.”
“What? Why? What’s she getting out of it?” Aadhya instantly demanded, in flat suspicion. It was very comforting to have someone else sharing my feelings.
“I don’t know,” I said, grimly. “But she’s got us the tickets and everything.”
Aadhya didn’t like it, but she told me she’d be there to pick us both up and not to do anything stupid—anything else was strongly implied in her tone—until she’d got hold of me. “Liu, how long will it be before you can come?”
Liu was silent for a moment, and then she said, softly, miserably, “You haven’t heard yet.”
“Heard what?” I said, my chest clenching.
“Beijing was hit,” she said. “This morning, our time; a few hours ago.”
“Well, shit,” Aadhya said.
Liesel had followed me over to the wall and was watching me talk on the phone. “Another enclave?” she demanded, just looking at my face. I nodded. “How bad?”
“It hasn’t gone all the way down, yet, but it’s too badly hit to stay up for long,” Liu said, when I passed along the question. “And they’ve asked my family for help. My mother told me they think there might be a way for us to save their enclave and build ours, at the same time. My uncle and the rest of our council members are already there; the rest of us might be leaving any minute. I’m so sorry, El,” she finished, low. “I can’t come to New York.”