The Death of Jane Lawrence(50)

“This is all semantics,” Jane said. The nascent headache from earlier that evening had turned to pounding. She could still hear Elodie’s screams if she was not careful to keep her focus. Semantics could not stop that. Semantics could not save her. She could not accept semantics as a new truth. “It’s impossible.”

“And that is why you and I cannot work magic. Because we know it is impossible.”

Jane’s head jerked up. “Because it is.”

“The premise of the working of magic,” Dr. Nizamiev said, “is first and foremost that the practitioner believes—that she knows—that it is possible.”

“But it isn’t!”

“If the practitioner knows that magic is possible, then the practitioner can change the rules by which the world functions. But that knowing extends beyond belief, extends beyond mere acceptance. Magic must be a part of the practitioner’s every waking moment. It is an altered state of being.”

There was an odd light in Dr. Nizamiev’s eyes, a hunger, an alteration of her predatory gaze. She was not just watching Jane now, she was watching for something. Some response. Some slip.

“It’s madness,” Jane said.

But Jane’s mind was working, turning over the problem, faster and faster. The properties of the number zero were, in and of themselves, impossible. To divide by zero produced irrationality. But if her text was to be believed, that irrationality then produced real, true answers. The area under a curve, the volume of an irregular object, all real things. Her treatise even contained a proof that if division by zero was allowed, one number could be proven to equal another—just what Dr. Nizamiev was now describing.

Except the properties of zero could be tested by reality. Magic could not.

“It’s madness,” she repeated again, quietly, to herself.

Dr. Nizamiev arched her brow. “Madness,” she mused, sitting back. “Yes. It is.”

Jane shivered. “You lock the mad up.” This was it. The trap that Dr. Nizamiev had laid. Jane, mad, removed from this house and her husband’s life—

But Augustine had shown no signs of wanting her gone, and Dr. Nizamiev had no reason to claim her as a patient. And Dr. Nizamiev had made her promise to believe so as not to waste her time; hardly the behavior of a doctor set to commit her.

“I study madness,” Dr. Nizamiev said, lips faintly curved. “And I study the practice of magic. As I said, magic is my personal curiosity. Madness is my professional one.” She paused in thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Have you ever had the experience of somebody telling you a new fact, and it changes how you perceive the world?”

“Of course.” She searched Dr. Nizamiev’s face for a flicker of a joke. There was none. She thought of the proof that had demonstrated to her, as a young girl, that the area of any triangle, of any arrangement, could be found using the measure of its component parts. The unmeasurable calculated from the measurable.

And she thought of Elodie.

“For the moment, let us grant that changing the rules of the universe is impossible.”

“Granted.”

“Then a magician—one with proven ability to do things beyond what their fellow humans can—is somebody who has a particularly focused kind of madness. Does that sit better with you? Their belief in an impossible thing is so strong that if they turn their will on a question, they can change the answer for other people without ever telling those other people what they did. It changes how those around them perceive the world, even if the underlying fabric of the world remains the same.”

“The ghosts I’ve seen,” Jane said, hand tightening on her glass. “You contend that Augustine’s force of will did that.”

“Yes.”

“But the logic is circular. Because the ghosts exist, you’ve proven Augustine can work magic. Because he can work magic, he is the reason for the ghosts. What if it’s something else?”

What else is there? Augustine’s hands in Elodie’s chest—

“Simplified concepts for the introduction of ideas aren’t ever accurate,” Dr. Nizamiev said. “The ghosts exist. That is our constant point in this puzzle. The rest is supposition. Likely supposition, but supposition all the same.”

The throbbing in Jane’s head was so insistent now that she wondered if she’d cracked it open on the library floor, and she rubbed at her temple with her free hand. “If it’s a matter of simply believing in the impossible, why couldn’t he have brought her back from the dead? Why isn’t she here, right now, at his side?”

Because he did something worse than what he confessed to Dr. Nizamiev, her mind proffered. Because what you saw was not the action of a man desperate to save his dying wife.

But her throat closed up and she could not voice the thought aloud. If willing something could make it true, voicing her suspicions could surely do the same.

“Magic,” Dr. Nizamiev said, her accented vowels focusing Jane’s attention, “is, at its basest nature, knowing the reality of something to be different from what it is. But it is not a matter of wishing for an end result, or we would all be capable of it. The magician must understand every element that must change in order to produce the desired result. Every equation must balance and proceed from one to the next. The changes to the world that would be necessary to truly bring somebody back from death would require knowledge too complex for the mind of man to comprehend.”