Tuesday's Child

Chapter 1

Extraordinary Girl

Ten Years Later

The school bus was making its way down an unsealed road, its tyres sending up clouds of gravel dust. Its driver's job was nearly done - he only had to drop off one last passenger, and he would be able to hang up his keys for the summer.

This last passenger was a twelve-year-old girl who had just finished her last day of torment at the hands of her fellow Year 6 students. School was finally over with for the summer, and come the end of January she would be beginning high school. The girl, who went by the name of Antonia Tucker, was an entirely unremarkable looking child - or at least she would have been were it not for her flaming red hair, a colour she shared with most of her extended family. The Tucker clan called Haven Commune home, and it was home that Antonia was headed to.

The bus driver glanced at his last remaining passenger in the rear-view mirror. "Looking forward to your summer holidays?" he asked.

Antonia shrugged, her tightly-plaited pigtails bouncing on her shoulders. "I s'pose so."

"Any plans?"

Another shrug. "Help my aunts and uncles out in the orchard and the vegie garden, muck out the chicken coops...nothing special, really."

Figuring that he wouldn't get much more out of her, the bus driver shut his mouth and focused all of his attention on the road.

Haven Commune was located at the end of that unsealed road, approximately ten kilometres outside the town of Nimbin. It was a ten-hectare property containing an imposing three-story brick homestead with a corrugated iron roof and a wraparound porch, a small orchard, a vegetable garden, a chicken coop and a swimming hole. To Antonia, the oldest of twenty-one grandchildren, it was a small piece of heaven on earth.

Antonia's aunt Colleen was scrubbing potatoes in the kitchen sink when Antonia walked into the kitchen through the back door, her head down and dragging her schoolbag on the dark grey slate floor. "Hi Auntie Colleen," she said listlessly. She slung her bag under the kitchen bench and hopped up on one of the stools.

Colleen looked over at her niece and smiled. "Hello Nia. How was your last day?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Antonia mumbled.

Colleen dropped the potato she was scrubbing and the scrubbing brush into the sink, and hurried around the bench to where her niece sat. "I think you do want to talk about it," she said. "Come on, just between you and me."

"You swear you won't tell Grandpa? 'Cause he's not gonna like what I did."

"I pinky-swear it," Colleen said seriously. She held out a hand, extending her pinky finger. Antonia hooked one of her own pinkies around her aunt's finger, and they both quickly drew their hands downwards. "All right, now tell me what happened."

"I think I made a blackout happen."

Colleen blinked. "How did you do that?"

"I don't know," Antonia sighed. "Some of the other kids were teasing me because I was the only one whose parents didn't come to graduation, because I don't have them anyway, an' I got all angry an' all the lights started buzzing an' then they went out." This all came out in a rush, as if Antonia had been holding it in all day. "The fans went off too. An' then I yelled at 'em all, but it wasn't in English."

"Are you sure it wasn't in English?" Colleen asked, her tone slightly sceptical.

"You don't believe me?"

"Of course I believe you," Colleen assured her niece. "But you've never taken a lesson in another language in your life - they don't usually start that until high school. Maybe you thought it wasn't English?"

"No, it definitely wasn't," Antonia said determinedly. "None of 'em knew what I was yelling at 'em."

"Mind repeating what you said?"

"I don't know if I can remember it, but..." She frowned hard, before proceeding to reel off a long string of words that, sure enough, weren't in the English language.

"I think that was Norwegian you just spoke," Colleen said after some thought. "Looks like you're bilingual, kiddo."

"I don't want you to tell Grandpa," Antonia said. "All he'll do is get mad at me."

"I very much doubt he would, but all right. I won't tell him. I do want you to understand that I'm not going to be able to lie to him if he asks me. He is my father, after all." Colleen gave her niece a smile. "How about you get out of those clothes and put on something you don't mind getting dirty? I want you to go and raid the vegie garden for carrots and peas."

"Okay," Antonia agreed, now sounding much happier. She hopped down off her stool and wandered out of the kitchen. Colleen watched her go, waiting for the sound of Antonia's footsteps to disappear upstairs before allowing herself a grin. It seemed there was hope for her niece after all.

After all the potatoes had been scrubbed and set aside for her sister Catherine to chop up for potato salad, Colleen headed upstairs to the office. As she climbed the stairs to the second story she looked out of one of the windows toward the vegetable garden. Antonia had changed out of her cargo pants, singlet top and sneakers into jeans, a T-shirt and her boots, had jammed a hat on top of her head, and was on her hands and knees in the garden, a large plastic colander sitting on the ground nearby.

"Seems there was a blackout down at the school today," Colleen said idly as she entered the office.

"It wasn't just the school," Gregory said without looking up from his typing. "It was the entire village. They still haven't pinpointed what caused it." He took off his glasses and looked up at Colleen. "The only reason we weren't affected is because we're not on the main grid."

"I can tell you right now who caused it." Checking herself, Colleen amended, "Well, I could if I had pinky-swore not to."

"It was Antonia, wasn't it?" Colleen's silence was all the answer Craig needed, and he smiled. "Well, it's about time she manifested. I was getting worried. I don't think she could have lasted another year at her school - I've been quite prepared to send her to boarding school in Sydney."

"Norfolk Island, then?"

"I shouldn't think why not. No reason why they wouldn't accept her - there's already a family precedent. If they don't come banging down our door I'll be very surprised."

"There's something else you should know," Colleen said. "She may be a Speaker. She yelled at some of the other students in her class in Norwegian. I know for a fact that she hasn't taken any sort of language class, so unless we have Norwegian ancestors it's the only explanation."

"What did she say exactly?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know? I don't understand Norwegian. I only recognised it because I watched a Norwegian movie on SBS once."

"There's no need for that, Colleen," Gregory said. "I was only asking."

Colleen flushed crimson. "Sorry, Dad," she said, abashed.

Gregory nodded and turned back to the computer. "So here's what we know at the moment," he said as he resumed typing. "She was born at the beginning of May, which would make her an earth elemental in the event that she does possess the necessary abilities. I see no reason for her not to be. There's also a probability that she's a Speaker. What else is she hiding from us?"

"And furthermore," Colleen said, picking up her father's train of thought, "why didn't she manifest when she turned six?" She had seated herself on the two-seater lounge that sat in a corner of the office while she had been speaking. "Her cousins over that age, they all began showing their abilities very shortly after their sixth birthdays. I was beginning to worry that Antonia would end up turning out as a mundane or a Squib. Isn't that the reason why we've kept her separate from our world?"

"Partly, yes. But also because I didn't want comparisons to be made between her and her parents."

"Nobody would ever have compared Antonia to Craig and Leanne," Colleen said, in an attempt to reassure her father. "And I doubt they will when she gets to Norfolk. Antonia is her own person, whether everyone else likes it or not. Granted, she's a bit of an oddball, but you should be proud of the way she's growing up. She's had all of us to play mother and father to her, and it definitely shows. She's intelligent and knows exactly how to use it, she doesn't take shit from anyone, her taste in music is absolutely impeccable, and she's turning into quite the little feminist. The latter is Meredith's doing, I believe."

"Auntie Colleen?"

Gregory and Colleen looked over at the doorway. Standing there in the hallway, the knees of her jeans and her hands blackened and caked in soil, and holding a colander full of vegetables, was Antonia. A triumphant grin split her face nearly in two.

"I got the vegies you wanted," she said. She raised the colander aloft. "Is this going to be enough?"

"It'll be more than enough, Nia," Gregory told her. "You did good, kiddo. Go wash your hands and start peeling the carrots, all right?"

"Okay Grandpa." Antonia gave her grandfather and aunt an even wider grin and skipped off out of view.

"Well, she seems to be a lot happier," Colleen remarked. "She was quite out of sorts this afternoon, though. Seemed to think you'd be angry at her all because she made a blackout happen and yelled at the other kids in Norwegian."

"I see." Gregory frowned and rose from his chair. "I'm going to sit her down for a long talk after dinner. It's plain to me that we made a mistake in keeping things from her. I can't have my own granddaughter afraid of her own abilities."

Five-thirty saw the kitchen packed with the women of the family. The family matriarch, Abigail, headed up the evening's operation. Kelly and Catherine had been put to work making potato salad. Colleen, Fiona and Danielle were steaming up the beans and carrots that Antonia had harvested from the vegetable garden, along with the green beans that had been sitting in the crisper since the morning before. Rebecca and Meredith were making enough pasta salad to feed a small army. Abigail herself was supervising Antonia, who was now deemed old enough to help out in the kitchen, in making that evening's dessert of fruit salad. The men of the family were setting the table in the dining room, in a reversal of the usual roles played within the family.

Daniel, the second-oldest of the Tucker grandchildren, wandered into the kitchen with his sister in tow. "Mum, when's dinner going to be ready?" he asked Catherine.

"Dinner will be ready when the smoke alarm goes off," Catherine informed her son without looking up from stirring mayonnaise into a bowl of cooked and diced potatoes. Laughter erupted at her answer to Daniel's question, one that was often asked whenever it was nearing dinnertime.

"It'll be ready around half-past six, Dan," Kelly told her nephew, earning herself a smack with the wooden spoon that Catherine was using - a spoon that was coated liberally in homemade Dijon mustard mayonnaise. "Cath!" she shrieked. "Do you mind?"

"Not really, no," Catherine replied. "You needed a shower anyway."

"Oh that's lovely," Fiona said sarcastically. "Like you can talk, Miss I-Work-In-The-Orchard-All-Day."

"You all need showers before dinner," Abigail pronounced. "I'm not having any of you sitting at my table in the state you're all in." She tapped Antonia on the shoulder. "Go and round up your cousins, and you can all have first showers. You especially are filthy. What have you been doing, rolling around in the vegetable garden all afternoon?"

"No, but I did get all the carrots and peas," Antonia replied. She looked up at her grandmother, displaying a mouth full of straight white teeth. "So can I go?"

"Yes, yes, off you go. Just don't use up all the hot water!"

"I won't!" Antonia dropped her knife on the cutting board and dashed from the kitchen.

"I hope you realise that putting seven children in a bathroom together is a recipe for disaster," Danielle commented as she lifted the saucepan of peas off the stove. "Antonia especially is not the angel everyone thinks she is. That kid is a little hellraiser when she wants to be."

"Best not say that around Dad," Rebecca remarked.

True to Kelly's word, the evening meal was on the table at precisely six-thirty. To open the meal, Abigail stood up in her place. "I call upon Fiona to ask thanks of the gods and the goddesses for this meal which we are about to receive," she said, before resuming her seat.

Fiona then stood up, placing her hands flat on the tabletop on either side of her plate, and bowed her head. "Lord and Lady, watch over us, and bless us as we eat," she said, her voice pitched to carry as she recited the family's traditional blessing. "Bless this food, this bounty of Earth for which we give thanks. So mote it be."

"So mote it be," the adults and older children echoed, and the meal began in earnest.

"So how was everyone's last day of school?" Warren asked to open the evening's discussion.

Right on cue, six different voices piped up and began to speak all at once. Warren listened to his nieces and his nephews talking over one another before raising a hand for silence, nodding to Daniel when the jumble of voices had quietened.

Throughout the meal, Antonia remained quiet. She had no desire to discuss her last day of primary school. She knew she was the reason the power had gone off at school. She knew exactly what she had yelled at Tim Childs, and it was not polite. Her grandparents, not to mention her aunts and uncles, would be so angry when they found out what she had done. None of her aunts and uncles, or her cousins, had ever had this happen to them, and she was very sure it hadn't happened to her grandparents. She didn't understand what was happening to her, so why would anyone else?

"Nia, are you okay?" Gregory asked as he caught sight of his granddaughter pushing peas around her plate with the tines of her fork. "You're very quiet tonight."

"May I please be excused?" Antonia asked quietly. "I'm not hungry."

Glances passed between the adults at the table. "All right kids, put your plates in the kitchen and go upstairs," Catherine instructed the cousins. "Daniel, you may put the television on, but nothing except for Muggle cartoons. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Mum," Daniel replied.

"Good. I'll put you over my knee if I find out you've been watching anything else."

The cousins gathered up their plates and silverware, and left the dining room in a chattering crowd, with the older children releasing the youngest from their highchairs. As Antonia made to leave the table, Catherine stopped her with an almost imperceptible shake of her head.

"Am I in trouble?" Antonia asked as her cousins escaped upstairs.

"No, of course not!" Gregory assured her. "What would you be in trouble for?"

"Because of what I did at school today." This was said in a very small, very quiet voice.

"Nia, believe me when I say that you did absolutely nothing wrong," Colleen reassured her niece. "In fact, we're all very proud of you." She looked around at the other adults. "I think we should adjourn to the lounge room. We'll be more comfortable there."

Once everyone was settled in the lounge room, Antonia was the first to speak.

"Why are you all proud of me?" she asked. "I thought you'd all be mad at me. I made a blackout happen an' I yelled at Tim Childs in another language. If I'd said it in English I would've been in loads of trouble."

"We'll be the judges of that," Meredith said. "What did you say exactly?" As Antonia went to open her mouth, Meredith raised a hand. "In English, please."

Antonia let out a sigh. "I said, 'If you can't fucking behave properly then I'll stuff your head up your arse, so you can sit there alone in the darkness and talk shit to yourself'."

A stunned silence descended on the lounge room. "Where exactly did you pick up that sort of language?" Gregory asked sternly.

Antonia shrugged. "Dunno. I just did."

"And why did you say it?"

"Tim was messing around with the lights and the fans, when Miss Saunders said not to." Her next words were spoken very quietly. "And then I got so angry, 'cause everyone was teasing me, that all the lights went out and the fans turned off."

Glances passed between the adults. "You did more than make a blackout happen at school, Nia," Gregory said. "You made a blackout happen through the whole village."

"I...I did?" Antonia asked. "B-but how did I do that?"

"There's a very good reason for it," Warren told his niece. "Fiona and Drew, would you please demonstrate?"

In response, Fiona reached over to the coffee table and picked up something that looked for all the world to Antonia like a very long, straight and smooth stick. "Dad, do you have something you want set on fire?"

"I wouldn't mind you setting our last phone bill alight," Gregory replied.

"Be sensible, Gregory," Abigail admonished. "Just a simple levitation should be enough, Fi."

In response, Fiona aimed the stick at a pile of magazines on the coffee table. "Wingardium Leviosa," she incanted, and the magazines rose slowly upward. Drew in his turn pointed a stick of his own at the magazines, and without so much as a whisper leaving his mouth turned the magazines into a stack of encyclopedias.

"Your grandmother and aunts are all witches," Fiona explained as Drew reversed his transfiguration. "In turn, your grandfather and uncles are all wizards. Your parents were a witch and a wizard - and just like your mum, you are a witch." She cancelled the charm on the magazines and eased them back down onto the coffee table, before holding her stick out to Antonia. "This is a wand, and we use them to harness our magic so that we can cast spells. We also have staffs, but those are used only to cast ritual or during duels."

"Magic is real?"Antonia asked.

"It is very real, Nia," Abigail replied. "Some witches and wizards also have some special abilities that are based on magic, and they are called elementals. These people are able to speak all kinds of languages, control electricity, start fires without needing to use matches or a wand, almost anything you can think of." She gestured to everyone in the room. "And just like we all have magic, all of us are elementals."

"Am I an elemental too?"

"It certainly seems that way," Catherine replied. "And I can assure you that it is completely normal, and nothing to be scared of. It happened to all of us when we were little. Nobody is going to be angry at you because you caused a blackout - that kind of thing happens to all young witches and wizards before they learn to use their magic."

"Why didn't you tell me what I am?" Antonia asked, now more curious than afraid.

"We didn't know that you were one," Fiona explained. "You should have started showing your abilities either on your sixth birthday or very soon afterward, like the rest of us did, but you didn't show yours until today. The same goes for magic. There are a few things that will often stop magic and abilities from developing until someone is long past the usual age, and losing one or both parents is known to be one of them. When your parents died, it's very likely that something inside of you was blocked that otherwise would have kickstarted things long ago."

Antonia was about to ask another question when the doorbell rang. Glances passed between the adults - what would possess someone to go around ringing doorbells at nearly seven-thirty in the evening? "Nia, why don't you go and see who's at the door?" Warren suggested. Somewhat puzzled, Antonia shrugged and got up from her seat.

As she neared the front foyer, something very strange happened. It was if a switch had been flicked in her head - one moment her thoughts were alone without any others for company, and the next she could hear someone swearing revenge on her family if the front door wasn't opened quick smart. That someone sounded as if they were quite serious about making good on their threat, so Antonia picked up the pace.

Antonia opened the front door, keeping the screen door closed and locked, to find a red-haired woman dressed in dark blue jeans, a red T-shirt with a large white hibiscus printed on the front, sneakers, and what looked like the same cloak her Auntie Fiona had worn on Halloween standing on the front verandah. Only her aunt's cloak was black, and the cloak this woman wore looked to be a very dark blue. Currently she was muttering to herself and worrying at the hem of her cloak with her fingers. It took a very loud rap on the doorjamb, courtesy of Antonia's knuckles, to catch her attention.

"Oh!" the woman said. "Sorry, didn't see you there..." The woman began fumbling around inside her cloak. "Are you Antonia Tucker?"

Antonia nodded, and the woman sighed in obvious relief.

"Oh, thank the heavens. Would your parents be available? It's important that I speak with them. Of course I need to speak to you as well...oh dear, where are my manners?" She extended a hand. "I'm Iona Ruytenberg. I teach Lower Secondary Arithmancy at Aurora Australis Academy."

Antonia unlocked and opened the front door before shaking the offered hand very hesitantly. She then stepped back and yelled out. "Grandma! Grandpa! Someone from Aurora Australis Academy wants to talk to you!"

It was a fair walk from the lounge room to the front door, so Antonia was rather surprised when her grandfather came walking up less than a minute after she'd yelled out. "I'm Gregory Tucker," he said by way of an introduction. "Antonia here said you're from Aurora Australis Academy?"

"That's right," Iona confirmed. "I'm Iona Ruytenberg, one of the Academy's Arithmancy professors."

"I see," Gregory said. "I'm sorry if I seem a little suspicious, but we assumed that Antonia would be attending Norfolk Island Institute. Family precedent, you see."

"Well, yes, normally that would be the case, but the Institute gives us first choice with the new enrolments. Specifically, with the elemental students. And I do apologise for the lateness of my visit, but I had a devil of a time finding your house."

"It's no trouble," Gregory said as he ushered Iona inside. "Comes with the territory, I suppose. Let's go through into the dining room and talk - Nia, why don't you tell your grandma and everyone where we are?"

Antonia did as asked, before meeting her grandfather and the teacher in the dining room. She slipped in through the door just as Iona was divesting herself of her cloak, draping it over the back of Abigail's usual chair. Iona then proceeded to pull all manner of things out of the small cloth pouch she had hanging from her belt.

"This won't take but a minute," she said as she set a thick notebook, a quill, a small carved wooden box, a tape recorder and a metal object that looked like a thermometer on the table before the chair upon which she had hung her cloak. "Antonia, could you please sit at my right?" she requested as she seated herself. "Mr. Tucker, feel free to sit wherever you please."

Once Antonia was seated, Iona opened her notebook to an empty page and clicked on the tape recorder. "For the official record, please state your full name."

"Antonia Rose Tucker," Antonia replied, before letting out a squeak of surprise when the quill jumped up onto the page and scribbled out her name. It balanced on its point, patiently waiting for Antonia to speak again.

Iona smiled knowingly at Antonia's reaction before continuing. "Birthday?"

"May third, 1994."

"An earth elemental, then. Interesting." This was duly noted down by the notebook. "What date did you first manifest? That means showing your magic and abilities," Iona explained upon spotting Antonia's look of puzzlement.

"Oh. I manifested today. December twenty-first, 2006."

Iona raised an eyebrow. "I see. Was there any event that could have caused a later manifestation?"

"Her parents - my son and his wife - were murdered in the Port Arthur massacre," Gregory explained.

"Ah. Yes, that would about do it." This too was recorded.

Iona then picked up the thermometer-like object and handed it to Antonia. "Can you hold this in your writing hand for me? I don't normally do this, as most of the new Academy students manifested years ago and have already developed all of their inborn elemental abilities. Because you only manifested very recently, I need to check for what abilities have already developed, and what abilities are in the process of developing. You'll probably feel a small shock or five." Iona gave Antonia a smile. "Test for telepathy."

A small buzz, somewhat akin to an electric shock, coursed through Antonia's fingers, and she jumped. "What was that?"

"That means that you're a telepath." Iona smiled again. "You'll feel that whenever one of your abilities is identified." The word 'Telepathy' inscribed itself under the heading 'Manifested', itself inscribed beneath all of Antonia's personal details. "Test for telekinesis."

The test was completed in less than five minutes. Iona took the tester back, pressed a small button in the top, and packed it away. "From the looks of things, your manifested abilities are telepathy, electricity control and speech, and you're still yet to develop empathy and telekinesis," she said as she clicked off the tape recorder and closed the notebook. "This is where I get formal." Iona drew in a breath. "Anotnia Rose Tucker, I formally invite you to become a student of Aurora Australis Academy." She then slid the wooden box she had taken out not long after arriving over to Antonia. "Which means that this is yours."

"Can I open it?"

"Sure you can."

With a small smile, Antonia popped open the catch on the box and lifted the lid. The first thing that she saw was a cream-coloured envelope that had Antonia Tucker, Haven Commune via Nimbin, NSW written on the front in dark blue ink. Beneath the envelope were four small ragdolls, each of which had red yarn for hair and were dressed in a sort of uniform.

She decided to open the envelope before examining the dolls. Inside the envelope were several folded sheets of paper. As she unfolded the sheets of paper, she saw that the top sheet was a letter.

AURORA AUSTRALIS ACADEMY

Nullum magnum inganeum sine muxtura dimentia fuit

Est. 2001

Principal: Professor Helen Urquhart, Dip El.Ed, Dip Mag.Ed.

Dear Miss Tucker,

It is with great pleasure that we at Aurora Australis Academy welcome you to our school community. You have been enrolled as a Year 7 student, and are requested to purchase your uniforms and other supplies in accordance with the accompanying list.

All new Lower Secondary students are requested to report to Holroyd Estate on January 28 2007 for Induction. Directions to Wentworth Heights and Holroyd Estate accompany this letter. Classes will officially commence on January 29.

We look forward to officially welcoming you to the Academy on January 28.

Yours sincerely,

Kiera Rivers

Enrolment Officer, Aurora Australis Academy

"I don't ever have to go to school in Nimbin again?" Antonia asked her grandfather. She was still staring at the letter as she spoke.

"Never again," Gregory confirmed.

Antonia nodded, and put the letter down before studying the ragdolls. She picked up one of them and held it up. It wore a cream-coloured blouse, dark grey skirt, blue tie and navy blue robes. "And this is what I get to wear every day?"

"Every day," Iona said. "You only have to accept the invitation."

Iona considered this briefly. "Do you want me to go?" she asked Gregory. "If you want me to go to Norfolk Island instead I will, but...I-I really want to go to Aurora Australis." She said the last few words softly, as if she believed she would be belted if she voiced her feelings aloud.

"It's not about what your grandfather wants for you, Antonia," Iona said. "This has to be your decision, and yours alone. We don't admit students whose decisions have parental influence behind what they choose to do. You don't have to come to the Academy - if you honestly want to, you can follow in your parents' footsteps and go to Norfolk Island for school. They have facilities there for elemental students, just as we do, but their campus is not geared toward nurturing their specific abilities. It's more suited to teaching mundane students to safely use their magic." She gently took the doll from Antonia's hands and covered them with her own. "But I will tell you this much - if you come to the Academy, you'll learn more than you thought possible, you will be taught to use your magic and your abilities safely and properly, and after six years there you won't recognise yourself. Many of our graduated students have told us that the years they spent at the Academy were the best years of their lives."

Quiet descended on the dining room as Antonia thought things over. At last, she looked over at Iona. "I'd like to come," she said with a smile. "I accept."

"Wonderful! I'll see you at the Academy in January, then." Iona then looked at Gregory. "Mr. Tucker, as Antonia's guardians there are some forms that you and your wife need to fill out and sign before I leave in order for Antonia's enrolment to become official, otherwise we can't accept her as a student."

As soon as Gregory and Abigail had filled in and signed what seemed like innumerable forms, Iona took her leave. The moment she had cleared the front gate she pulled a small mirror from one of her pockets and tapped a corner with a thumbnail. The face of the Year 7 Potions professor slowly swam into view - framed by loose black curls, and set with a pair of smoky grey eyes, it was owned by Eden Nightingale.

"Iona?" Eden asked.

"That's my name, don't wear it out," Iona replied as she walked down the road, skirting the odd pothole and muddy puddle along the way. Her cloak swirled around her ankles with each step. "I just made contact with the last student on our list. Antonia Tucker will be joining us at the Academy in January."

"So we're done, then?"

"We're done. I'll be back in a minute, tops." Without even another word she tapped the mirror again, severing the connection before slipping the mirror back into her pocket. And with a hop, a skip and a jump she vanished, with only a small cloud of gravel dust able to give testament that she had even been there in the first place.