Fuck. No.
He steps away from me. “Simon,” he says. His wand is out. “Stay cool!”
I fumble for my own wand and start running through spells. “Keep it together! Suck it up! Steady on! Hold fast!” But spells take magic, and drawing on my magic right now just draws it to the surface—the red between us thickens. I close my eyes and try to disappear. To think of nothing at all. I fall back on the bed, and my wand bounces onto the floor.
When I can focus again, the Mage is leaning over me, his hand on my forehead. Something is smoking—I think it’s my sheets. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” he says, but he still looks scared. He pushes my hair up off my forehead with one hand, then brushes his knuckles down my cheek.
“Please don’t make me leave,” I beg.
The Mage looks in my eyes, and through them. I can see him deliberating—then relenting. “I’ll talk to the Coven,” he says. “Perhaps we still have time.…” He purses his lips together. He has a pencil-thin moustache, just above his lips; Baz and Agatha both like to make fun of it. “But it isn’t just your safety we’re concerned with, Simon.…”
He’s still leaning over me. I feel like there’s nothing to breathe between us but smoke.
“I’ll talk to the Coven,” he says. He squeezes my shoulder and stands. “Do you need the nurse?”
“No, sir.”
“You’ll call for me if something changes. Or if you see anything strange—any signs of the Humdrum, or anything … out of the ordinary.”
I nod.
The Mage strides out of the room, his palm resting on the hilt of his sword—that means he’s thinking—and closes the door firmly behind him.
I roll around and make sure that my bed isn’t actually burning, then collapse back into sleep.
8
LUCY
And the fog is so thick.
9
SIMON
Penny’s sitting at my desk when I wake up again. She’s reading a book as thick as her arm. “It’s past noon,” she says. “You’ve become an absolute sluggard in foster care; I’m writing a letter to The Telegraph.”
“You can’t just let yourself into my room without knocking,” I say, sitting up and rubbing my eyes. “Even if you do have a magickal key.”
“It’s not a key, and I did knock. You sleep like a corpse.”
I walk past her to the bathroom, and she sniffs, then closes her book. “Simon. Did you go off?”
“Sort of. It’s a long story.”
“Were you attacked?”
“No,” I shut the door to the bathroom and raise my voice: “I’ll tell you later.” Penny’s going to flip her shit when I tell her the Mage wants to send me away.
I look in the mirror and try to decide whether to shower. My hair’s matted to my head on one side and standing up on top—I always break into a sweat when I lose control like that. I feel grimy all over. I examine my chin in the mirror, hoping I need a shave, but I don’t; I never really do. I’d grow a moustache just like the Mage’s if I could, and I wouldn’t care at all if Baz took the piss.
I strip off my shirt and give the gold cross around my neck a rub. I’m not religious—it’s a talisman. Been passed down in Agatha’s family for years, a ward against vampires. It was black and tarnished when Dr. Wellbelove gave it to me, but I’ve rubbed it gold. Sometimes I chew on it. (Which is probably a bad thing to do to a mediaeval relic.) I don’t really need to wear it all summer, but once you get used to wearing an anti-vampire necklace, it seems stupid to take it off.
All the other kids in care always think I’m religious. (And they think I smoke a pack a day, because I always sort of smell like smoke.)
I look at the mirror again. Penny’s right. I’m too thin. My ribs stick out. You can see the muscles in my stomach, and not because I’m ripped—because I haven’t really eaten for three months. Also I’ve got moles all over my body, which make me look poxed even when I’m not suffering from malnutrition.
“I’m taking a shower!” I shout.
“Hurry—we’ll miss lunch!” I hear Penny moving around the room while I climb into the shower; then she’s talking to me again from just outside the door: “Agatha’s back.”
I turn on the water.
“Simon, did you hear me? Agatha’s back!”
I heard her.
* * *
What’s the etiquette for talking to your girlfriend after three months, when the last time you saw her, she was holding hands with your nemesis? (Both hands. Facing each other. Like they were about to break into song.)
Things had got dodgy with Agatha last year even before I saw her with Baz in the Wood. She’d been distant and quiet, and when I was injured in March (someone tampered with my wand), she just rolled her eyes. Like I’d brought it on myself.
Agatha’s the only girl I’ve ever dated. We’ve been together for three years now, since we were 15. But I wanted her long before that. I’ve wanted her since the first time I saw her—walking across the Great Lawn, her long pale hair rippling in the wind. I remember seeing her and thinking that I’d never seen anything so beautiful. And that if you were that beautiful, that graceful, nothing could ever really touch you. It would be like being a lion or a unicorn. Nobody could really touch you, because you wouldn’t even be on the same plane as everyone else.
Even sitting next to Agatha makes you feel sort of untouchable. Exalted. It’s like sitting in the sun.
So imagine how it feels to date her—like you’re carrying that light around with you all the time.
There’s a picture of us together from the last winter solstice. She’s in a long white dress, and her mother plaited mistletoe into her milky gold hair. I’m wearing white, too. I felt naff, but in the photo—well, I look fine. Standing next to Agatha, wearing a suit her father lent me … I actually look like I’m who I’m supposed to be.
* * *
The dining hall is half full today. The term starts tomorrow. People are sitting on tables and standing in loose circles, catching up.
Lunch is ham and cheese rolls. Penelope grabs a plate of butter for me, and I smile. I’d eat butter with a spoon if it were acceptable. (I did it anyway, my first year, whenever I was the first one down to breakfast.)
I scan the room for Agatha but don’t see her. She must not be at lunch. I can’t believe she’d be in the dining hall and not sit at our table, even considering everything.
Rhys and Gareth, the boys who live in the room under mine, are sitting at our table already, at the far end.
“All right, Simon?” Rhys says. Gareth is shouting at someone across the hall.
“All right, fellas?” I answer.
Rhys nods at Penny. Penelope has never had time for most of our classmates, so they don’t really have time for her. It would bother me if everyone ignored me like that, but she seems to appreciate the lack of distractions.
Sometimes when I’m walking through the dining hall, just saying hello to people, she’ll drag me by my sleeve to hurry me up.
“You have too many friends,” she’ll say.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not possible. And, anyway, I wouldn’t call them all ‘friends.’”
“There are only so many hours in the day, Simon. Two, three people—that’s all any of us have time for.”
“There are more people than that in your immediate family, Penny.”
“I know. It’s a struggle.”
Once, I started listing off all the people that I truly cared about. When I got to number seven, Penelope told me I either needed to whittle down my list or stop making friends immediately. “My mother says you should never have more people in your life than you could defend from a hungry rakshasa.”
“I don’t know what that is,” I told her, “but I’m not worried; I’m good in a fight.”
I like having people. Close ones like Penny and Agatha and the Mage and Ebb the goatherd and Miss Possibelf and Dr. Wellbelove. A
nd just friendly ones like Rhys and Gareth. If I followed Penny’s rules, I’d never find enough people for a football match.
She waves halfheartedly at the boys, then sits between me and them, turning towards me to close off our conversation. “I saw Agatha with her parents,” she says, “earlier, in the Cloisters.”
The Cloisters is the oldest and largest girls’ house, a long low building at the other side of the grounds. It only has one door, and all the windows are made up of tiny panes of glass. (The school must have been mega-paranoid when it started letting girls in back in the 1600s.)
“You saw who?” I ask.
“Agatha.”
“Oh.”
“I can go get her if you want,” she offers.
“Since when do you pass notes for me?”
“I thought you might not want to talk to her for the first time in front of everyone,” she says. “After what happened.”
I shrug. “It’ll be fine. Agatha and I are fine.”
Penny looks surprised, then dubious; then she shakes her head, giving up. “Anyway,” she says, tearing off a piece of her sandwich, “we should track down the Mage after lunch.”
“Why?”
“‘Why?’ Are you playing dumb today because you think I’ll find it cute?”
“Yes?”
She rolls her eyes. “We need to track down the Mage and make him tell us what’s been going on all summer. What he’s found out about the Humdrum.”
“He hasn’t found out anything. I already talked to him.”
She stops mid-bite. “When?”
“He came to my room this morning.”
“And when were you going to tell me this?”
I shrug again, licking butter off my thumb. “When you gave me a chance.”
Penny rolls her eyes again. (Penny rolls her eyes a lot.) “He didn’t have anything to say?”
“Not about the Humdrum. He—” I look down at my plate, then quickly around us. “—he says the Old Families are causing trouble.”
She nods. “My mum says they’re trying to organize a vote of no confidence against him.”
“Can they do that?”
“They’re trying. And there’ve been duels all summer. Premal’s friend Sam got into it with one of the Grimm cousins after a wedding, and now he’s on trial.”
“Who is?”
“The Grimm.”
“For what?”
“Forbidden spells,” she says. “Banned words.”
“The Mage thinks I should go,” I say.
“What? Go where?”
“He thinks I should leave Watford.”
Penny’s eyes are big. “To fight the Humdrum?”
“No.” I shake my head. “To just … go. He thinks I’d be safer somewhere else. He thinks everyone here would be safer if I left.”
Her eyes keep getting bigger. “Where would you go, Simon?”
“He didn’t say. Some secret place.”
“Like a hideout?” she asks.
“I guess.”
“But what about school?”
“He doesn’t think that’s important right now.”
Penny snorts. She thinks the Mage undervalues education at the best of times. Especially the classics. When he dropped the linguistics programme, she wrote a stern letter to the faculty board. “So he wants you to do what?”
“Go away. Stay safe. Train.”
She folds her arms. “On a mountain. With ninjas. Like Batman.”
I laugh, but she doesn’t laugh with me. She leans forward. “You can’t just leave, Simon. He can’t stash you in a hole your whole life.”
“I’m not going,” I say. “I told him no.”
She pulls her chin back. “You told him no?”
“I … well, I can’t just leave Watford. It’s our last year, isn’t it.”
“I agree—you told him no?”
“I told him I didn’t want to! I don’t want to hide and wait for the Humdrum to find me. That doesn’t feel like a plan.”
“And what did the Mage say?”
“Not much. I got upset and started to—”
“I knew it. Your room smelled like a campfire. Oh my word! You went off on the Mage?”
“No. I pulled back.”
“Really?” She looks impressed. “Well done, Simon.”
“I think I scared him, though.”
“It’d scare me, too.”
“Penny, I…”
“What?”
“Do you think he’s right?”
“I just said I didn’t.”
“No. About … me being a danger to Watford. A danger to—” I look over at the first year tables. They’ve all skipped sandwiches and are eating big bowls of jam roly-poly. “—everyone.”
Penny starts tearing at her sandwich again. “Of course not.”
“Penelope.”
She sighs. “You pulled back, didn’t you? This morning? When have you ever hurt anyone but yourself?”
“Smoke and mirrors, Penny—should I make a list? I’ll start with the decapitations. I’ll start with yesterday.”
“Those were battles, and they don’t count.”
“I think they count.”
She folds her arms again. “They count differently.”
“It’s not even just that,” I say. “It’s … I’m a target, aren’t I? The Humdrum only attacks me when I’m at Watford, and he only attacks Watford when I’m here.”
“That’s not your fault.”
“So?”
“Well, you can’t help that.”
“I can,” I say. “I could go away.”
“No.”
“Compelling argument, Pen.” I spread butter on my third ham and cheese roll. My hands are shaking.
“No. Simon. You can’t just go away. You shouldn’t. Look, if you’re a target, then I’m the most at risk. I spend the most time with you.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean, look at me—I’m fine.”
I look at her.
“I’m fine, Simon. Even Baz is fine, and he’s constantly stuck with you.”
“I feel like you’re glossing over all the times you’ve nearly died just because you were with me. The Humdrum kidnapped me a few months ago, and you got dragged along.”
“Thank Morgana I did.”
She’s looking in my eyes, so I try not look away. Sometimes I’m glad Penny wears glasses; her eye contact is so fierce, it’s good to have a buffer.
“I told the Mage no,” I repeat.
“Good.” she says. “Keep telling him.”
“Nan!” A little girl’s shout tears through our conversation, and I’m already whispering the incantation to summon my blade. Across the hall, the girl—a second or third year—is running towards a shimmery figure at the door.
“Oh…,” Penelope says, awed.
The figure fades in and out, like Princess Leia’s hologram. When the girl reaches it—it looks like an older woman in a white trouser suit—it kneels down and catches her. They huddle together in the archway. Then the figure fades out completely. The girl stands, shaking, and a few of her friends run to her, jumping up and down.
“So cool,” Penelope says. She turns to me and sees my blade. “Great snakes, Simon, put that away.”
I keep it up. “What was that?”
“You don’t know?”
“Penelope.”
“She got a Visiting. Lucky kid.”
“What?” I sheathe the blade. “What kind of visiting?”
“Simon, the Veil is lifting. I know you know about this. We studied it in Magickal History.”
I make a face and sit down again, trying to decide whether I’m done with my lunch.
“‘And on the Twentieth Turn,’” Penny says, “‘when the year wanes, and night and day sit in peace across the table—the Veil will lift. And any who have light to cast may cross it, though they may not tarry. Greet them with joy and with trust, for their mouths, though dead, speak truth.
’”
She’s using her quoting voice, so I know it’s from some ancient text or another.
“You’re not helping,” I say.
“The Veil is lifting,” she says again. “Every twenty years, dead people can talk to the living if they have something that really needs to be said.”
“Oh…,” I say, “I guess maybe I have heard of that—I thought it was a myth.”
“One would think, after seven years, you’d stop saying that out loud.”
“Well, how am I supposed to know? There isn’t a book, is there? All the Magickal Things that Are Actually True and All the Ones that Are Bollocks, Just Like You Thought.”
“You’re the only magician who wasn’t raised with magic. You’re the only one who would read a book like that.”
“Father Christmas isn’t real,” I say, “but the Tooth Fairy is. There’s no rhyme or reason to this stuff.”
“Well, the Veil is totally real,” Penny says. “It’s what keeps souls from walking.”
“But it’s lifting now?” I feel like getting my sword out again.
“The autumnal equinox is coming,” she says, “when day and night are the same length. The Veil thins, then lifts—sort of like fog. And people come back to tell us things.”
“All of us?”
“I wish. People only come back if they have something important to say. Something true. It’s like they come back to testify.”
“That sounds … dramatic.”
“My mother says her aunt came back twenty years ago to tell them about a hidden treasure. Mum’s kind of hoping she’ll come back again this time to tell us more.”
“What kind of treasure?”
“Books.”
“Of course.” I decide to finish my sandwich. And Penny’s boiled egg.
“But sometimes,” she says, “it’s scandalous. People come back to reveal affairs. Murders. The theory is, you have a better shot of crossing over if your message serves justice.”
“How can anyone know that?”
“It’s just a theory,” Penny says. “But if Aunt Beryl comes to me, I’m going to ask her as much as I can before she fades out again.”
I look back across the hall. “I wonder what that girl’s granny told her.”