Carry On

There’s nothing remarkable about Snow’s eyes. They’re a standard size and shape. A little pouchy. And his eyelashes are stubby and dark brown. His eyes aren’t even a remarkable colour. Just blue. Not cornflower. Not navy. Not shot with hazel or violet.

He blinks them at me. Stammering. I feel myself blushing. (Crowley, that’s how much blood I drank last night—I’m capable of blushing.)

“No,” I say, and pick up my books. “I just couldn’t.”

I’m out the door. Down the steps.

I hear Snow snarling behind me.

When he comes down to breakfast, his tie is still hanging. Bunce frowns and yanks on one end. He drops his scone and wipes his hand on his trousers before tying it. He looks up at me then, but I’m already looking away.

35

SIMON

Penelope wants to eat lunch out on the Lawn. It’s a warm day, she says, and the ground is dry, and we might not have another chance to picnic like this until spring.

I think she just wants to keep me away from Baz and Agatha—they’ve been playing games with each other all week. Taking turns staring across the dining hall, then quickly looking away. Baz always looks at me, too, to make sure I’m watching.

Everyone’s still gossiping about where he’s been. The most popular rumours are “dark coming-of-age ceremony that left him too marked up to be in public” and “Ibiza.”

“My mother’s coming to take me into town tonight,” Pe

“That’s okay, thanks.”

“We could go to that ramen place you like. My mum’s buying.”

I shake my head. “Feels like I need to keep tabs on Baz,” I say. “I still don’t have a clue where he’s been.”

Pe

I laugh.

“You know what I mean,” she says. “Aunt Beryl came back to my mum, and I missed it.”

“What’d she say?”

“The same thing she said last time! ‘Stop looking for my books. There’s nothing in there for the likes of you.’”

“Wait, she came back to tell you not to find her books?”

“She was a scholar like Mum and Dad. She doesn’t think anyone’s smart enough to touch her research.”

“I can’t believe your relative came back just to insult you.”

“Mum says she always knew Aunt Beryl would take her bad attitude to hell with her.”

“Do the ghosts ever show up at the wrong place?”

“I think of them more as souls—”

“Souls, then. Do they ever get lost?”

“I’m not sure.” Pe

“So the Visitors can get mixed-up.…”

“Yeah, they just show up where they think someone is supposed to be. Like a real person would. Madam Bellamy said she’d seen her husband lurking at the back of her classroom a few times before he actually came through the Veil.”

Just like I saw Baz’s mum at the window.…

I should tell Pe

“Come on,” she says, standing and brushing dead grass off the backs of her thighs. “We’ll be late to class.”

She holds her hand over the napkins and plastic wrap, and spins her wrist. “A place for everything, and everything in its place!” They disappear.

“Waste of magic,” I say out of habit, picking up our satchels.

Pe

“So it’s there if we need it.”

“I know the official answer, Simon—thanks. In America, they think that you become more powerful the more magic you use.”

“Just like fossil fuels.”

Pe

“Don’t look so surprised,” I say. “I know about fossil fuels.”

*   *   *

Baz is in half my lessons. There are only fifty kids in our year; there have been terms in the past when he and I’ve had every lesson together, all day long.

We usually sit as far apart as possible, but today in Elocution, Madam Bellamy has us push all the desks out of the way and work in pairs. Baz ends up right behind me.

Madam Bellamy hasn’t been the same since her Visiting; it’s like—well, like she’s just seen a ghost. She keeps making us do practical work while she wanders around the room, looking lost.

At this point, eighth year, we’re past all the basic Elocution stuff—speaking out, hitting consonants, projection. It’s all nuance now. How to give spells more power by saying them with fire and intent. How pausing just before a key word can focus a spell.

Gareth’s my partner today. And most days. He’s terrible at Elocution. He still drones his spells out like he’s reading from a cue card. They work, but they land like lead balloons. If Gareth levitates something, it jerks; if he transforms something, it looks like it’s happening in cheap stop-motion animation.

Penelope says Gareth’s painful to watch—and not just because of his ridiculous magic belt buckle.

Baz says Gareth wouldn’t have even got into Watford in the old days.

Baz’s elocution is flawless. In four languages. (Though I suppose I’m just taking his word on that when it comes to French and Greek and Latin.) I can hear him behind me, rattling off cooling spells and warming spells one after another. I feel the change in the air on the back of my neck.

“Slow down, Mr. Pitch,” Madam Bellamy says. “No need to waste magic.”

I hear the irritation in Baz’s voice as he starts shooting the spells out even faster.

Sometimes it’s disturbing how much Baz and Penelope have in common. I’ve mentioned it to her before—“And,” I said, “your families both hate the Mage.”

“My family is nothing like the Pitches!” she argued. “They’re speciesist and racist. Baz probably doesn’t even think I should be at Watford.”

“Is he racist?” I ask. “Isn’t he a race? His mum looks sort of Spanish or Arabic in her painting.”

“Arabic is a language, Simon. And everyone is a race. And Baz is the whitest person I’ve ever seen.”

“Only because he’s a vampire,” I said.

Damn it all, I have to tell Baz about his mum. Or I have to tell Pe

I can’t keep a secret this big. I don’t have room for it.

*   *   *

Pe

“Baz will turn you in if he catches you in our tower,” I say. “And you will get suspended.”

She waves her hand, dismissively. “He’s out by the pitch, watching the team practise. Pitch on the pitch.”

She shoves at the door, and I stop her. “Someone else will turn you in, then.”

“Nah. All the boys in our year are scared of me. They think I’ll turn them into frogs.”

“Is there a spell for that?”

“Yes, but it’s enormously draining, and I’d have to kiss them to turn them back.”

I sigh and let go of the door, peeking down the stairs while Penelope slips past me into my room.

“I’m just here to talk you into coming with me,” she says.

“Not go

“Come on, Simon. My mum won’t lecture me so much if you’re around.”

“She’ll lecture me instead.” I sit down on my bed. I’ve got a few books spread out there. And some old documents from the library.