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“No, there’s about an inch gap.”
“Not anymore.”
Isaac did as she had just done, assessing the room. “The walls have moved.”
“I’d just been hoping that the shaking knocked everything against the walls, but I think you’re right. Everything on the floor is a little bit closer together.” Moving over next to Isaac, Kate ran her palm along the crack and gasped. “I feel nothing.”
“The malevolence is gone?”
Laying both palms flat on the crack she closed her eyes. “No, I don’t think so. Well… I’m not sure. I feel like something is missing inside me. I think my magic is gone. I can’t sense anything.”
Pulling her hand off the wall, she held it out, palm up, and tried to conjure a tissue. It was one of the first things all magic children were taught to conjure because it took very little magic. It should work even with her magic sputtering in and out. Her hand remained empty.
“Oh my god! It’s gone!” She looked up at Isaac and when he shook his head, she knew his magic was gone too. She collapsed, dropping to her knees.
Isaac picked her up, and she clung to him as he sat on the bed, his hand cradling her head.
“We’ve known since this morning that we could lose our magic,” he said quietly.
“I know… I guess… I didn’t think I really believed it would happen. Even all day while we were conjuring, I thought it was just one of those things you do, like get fire insurance. But you don’t really expect to have a fire… I… I’ve never been without my magic.”
She rubbed her fingers against her chest, almost expecting to feel a gaping hole—the loss of her magic like a tangible crevice cut into her skin.
Isaac rocked her slowly back and forth, the minutes ticking away.
“Why don’t you use the toilet and get ready for bed?” he asked as he moved her off his lap and stood. “I’m going to turn off two of the lanterns to preserve the battery life because we won’t be able to charge them anymore.”
Another sense of loss hit her as she stared up at him. “We won’t even know what day it is.”
Sitting back down, Isaac took her cheeks in his hands. “It’s okay. We conjured a clock this afternoon, remember? I already set the date. It’s December first, but it doesn’t matter, because whatever day it is, we’re going to be here when someone finds us.”
Kate wanted to believe him. Believe they’d be found. But her hope was draining faster now. They’d been in the room eight days, and they had enough food and water for weeks, but what if that wasn’t long enough? What if no one ever found them or worse? With the crack in the wall and the shifting, there were too many unknowns to know what the future held.
17
Isaac lifted Kate’s hand away from the wall and tucked it under the blanket, snugging her closer while he spooned her body to keep her warm.
Even in her sleep, Kate’s new obsession with touching the walls continued—as if she always hoped to feel something. But there was only the drywall and the cold.
It had been two weeks since they lost their magic. A total of twenty-two days in the room. Counting the days had become his obsession. Somewhere in his mind he figured if he lost track of time—something that would be so easy to do in the room—he would lose track of reality.
Time had never really concerned him before. He had never worn a watch but out of necessity, he had a clock on the wall in his shop, and his phone was usually someplace close. His clients knew when to show up, and if they didn’t, staring at the time wouldn’t change anything.
To make sure he was never late for an appointment he always set a couple of warning alarms on his phone. They did the trick and allowed Isaac to focus on more important things than watching a clock.
Their recent loss of technology had changed the tide for him. Once he knew that the batteries on the chargers would eventually run out, he got the sense that he and Kate were sand in an hourglass. The glass measured time in days or weeks instead of hours, but the feeling was the same.
To add to the sense of doom, every couple of days, new cracks formed in the walls. The walls continued to creep inward… diminishing the room’s size. Their space used to be a ten-by-ten room, but now was just a little over seven-by-seven.
The walls sandwiched the bed from either end. What was left of the full five-gallon jugs of water were now in the middle of the room with the empties piled by the shelves. To get to the toilet, they had to step over the items crowded together on the floor.
A foul stench lingered in the air. The smells from the toilets and food waste worsened a little each day. He and Kate didn’t smell like roses either, but it didn’t bother him as much as it did her. When she had her period, she had tried to keep her distance from him. Not that it was possible in their space, but she said she couldn’t understand how he’d even want to touch her.
He couldn’t help but smile thinking about all the conversations they’d had recently, even the awkward ones.
“I feel totally gross,” Kate whined.
Isaac pulled her closer. “Neither of us are clean and I don’t care. We’re together, that’s all that matters. Just think of this as an adventure and we’re camping.”
