Carry On

“Why would you?”

She turns to the stone wall. “I don’t know, Simon.”

“Are you waiting for him?”

The wind is in her hair, making it lash out behind her. “No,” she says. “Not waiting. I’ve no reason to believe he’s coming.”

“But you want him to.”

She shrugs.

“What’s wrong with you, Agatha?” I’m trying to control my temper now. “He’s a monster. An actual monster.”

“We’re all monsters,” she says.

She means that I am.

I try to tamp down the anger coiling up my legs. “Did you cheat on me? With Baz? Are you with him now?”

“No.”

“Do you want to be?”

She sighs, and leans forward on the rough stones. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t you want to say anything else to me? Like, ‘I’m sorry’? Don’t you want to fix this?”

She looks back at me, over her shoulder. “Fix what, Simon—our relationship?” She turns to face me again. “What is our relationship? Is it just me being there when you need a date to the ball? And crying for joy every time you come back from the dead? Because I’ll still do that for you. I can still do all that. Even if we’re not together.”

Her perfect pink chin is thrust forward and quivering. Her arms are still crossed.

“You’re my girl, Agatha,” I say.

“No. Penelope’s your girl.”

“You’re my—”

Her arms fall. “What Simon, what am I?”

I knot my hands in my hair and gnash my teeth. “You’re my future!”

Agatha’s face is contorted and wet with tears. Still lovely, though. “Am I supposed to want that?” she asks.

“I want it.”

“You just want a happy ending.”

“Merlin, Agatha, don’t you?”

“No! I don’t! I want to be someone’s right now, Simon, not their happily ever after. I don’t want to be the prize at the end. The thing you get if you beat all the bosses.”

“You’re twisting everything. You’re making it ugly.”

She shrugs again. “Maybe.”

“Agatha…” I hold my hand out to her. The one that isn’t holding Baz’s handkerchief. “We can fix this.”

“Probably,” she says. “But I don’t want to.”

I can’t think of what more to say.

Agatha can’t leave me. She can’t leave me for him. Oh, he’d love that—he’d love to have that over me. Damn it all, he isn’t even here to have that over me.

“I love you, Agatha,” I say, believing that might work. Those words are practically magic in themselves. I say them again: “I love you.”

Agatha closes her eyes against the sight of me. She turns her face away. “I love you, too, Simon. I think that’s why I went along with this for so long.”

“You don’t mean that,” I say.

“I do,” she says. “Please don’t fight me.”

“You can’t leave me for him.”

She looks back at me one more time. “I’m not leaving you for Baz, Simon. He’s gone. I just don’t want to be with you anymore. I don’t want to ride off into the sunset with you.… That’s not my happy anything.”

*   *   *

I don’t argue with her.

I don’t stay out on the ramparts.

My cheeks are hot and itchy, and that’s always a bad sign.

I rush past Agatha to the stairs, and run down them so quickly that I miss a few and keep leaping down to the next landing.

And then I’m just sort of floating down the stairs. Falling without actually falling.

I’ve never done that before, and it’s weird.

I make a note to tell Pe

I stand under Pe

I still feel hot.

I try to shake some of the magic off, and a few sparks catch on the dry leaves beneath me. I stamp them out.

I wonder if Agatha is still up on the ramparts—I can’t believe she’d say what she said. For a moment, I wonder if she’s been possessed. But her eyes weren’t all black. (Were her eyes all black? It was too dark to see.)

She can’t leave me like this. She can’t leave me.

We were settled. We were sorted.

We were endgame. (If I get an endgame.) (You have to pretend that you get an endgame. You have to carry on like you will; otherwise, you can’t carry on at all.)

Agatha’s parents like me. They might even love me. Her dad calls me “son.” Not like “I think of you as my son,” but like, “How are you, son?” Like I’m a son. The sort of guy who could be someone’s son.

And her mother says I’m handsome. That’s really all her mum ever says to me. “Don’t you look handsome, Simon.”

What would she say to Baz? “Don’t you look handsome, Basil. Please don’t slaughter my family with your hideous fangs.”

Agatha’s father, Dr. Wellbelove, hates the Pitches. He says they’re cruel and elitist. That they tried to keep his grandfather out of Watford because of a lisp.

Fucking hell, I can’t—I just. I can’t.

I lean back against a tree and put my hands on my thighs, letting my head fall forward and my magic course through me. When I look down at my legs, it’s like I’ve got no boundary. Like I’m blurred at the edges.

I have to fix this. With Agatha.

I’ll say whatever she wants me to say.

I’ll kill Baz, so that he isn’t an option.

I’ll tell her, I’ll change her mind—how can she say that there’s no such thing as happy endings? That’s all I’ve ever been working towards. The happy ending is when things are going to begin for me.

I have to fix this.

“All right there, Simon?” It’s Rhys. He’s coming up along the path from the library in his wheelchair.

I look up. “All right. Hiya.” I’m not all right. My face is flushed, and I think I’m crying. Do my edges look blurred to him? He hurries past me.

I let Rhys get a head start, then follow him back to Mummers House.

I should sleep this off.…

I’ll make sure that I power down—that I’m not going to set my bed on fire—then I’ll sleep it off.

And tomorrow, I’ll fix it.

27

SIMON

I’m not sleeping this time when I hear the noises.

I’m just lying in my bed, thinking about Baz.

What did he say to Agatha? What did he promise?

Maybe he didn’t have to say anything. Maybe he just had to be himself. Smarter than I am. Better looking. Wealthier. Fucking horsier—he could go to all her events and wear the right suit and the right shoes. He’d know which necktie went with which month of the year.

If he weren’t a vampire, Baz’d be bloody perfect.

Bloody perfect. I roll over and press my face into my pillow.

There’s a creaking then, and a cold wind. I try to ignore it. I’ve been taken in by this feeling before. There’s no one here. No one at the window, no one at the door. The cold creeps up under my bedclothes, and I pull up the blankets, rolling onto my back—

And see a woman standing at the end of my bed.

I recognize her. It’s the same person who was standing at the window that night. And I recognize her as a Visitor now; I’ve seen enough of them. She’s come from behind the Veil.

“You’re not him,” she says to me. Her voice is cold—actually cold, like it starts in my bones and icily flushes up through my skin—and woeful.

I want to summon my sword, but I don’t. “Who are you?” I say.

“I keep coming. This is his place. This is where I’m called. But there’s only you here.…”

She’s tall and wearing formal robes, like a solicitor’s or a professor’s, and her dark hair is pulled up into a thick bun. Even though she’s translucent, I can see that her robes are red, that her skin is dark olive, and her eyes are grey. I recognize her from her portrait outside the Mage’s office—

Natasha Pitch, Watford’s last headmistress.