Carry On

“Right. It’s a shared burden—hey, are you reading The Magickal Record?”

The Record is the closest thing magicians have to a newspaper. It keeps track of births and deaths, magickal bonds and laws, plus minutes from every Coven meeting. I snuck a few bound volumes from the early 2000s out of the library. “Yep,” I say, “I’ve heard it’s fascinating.”

“You heard that from me,” she says, “and I know you weren’t listening. Why are you reading The Magickal Record?”

I look up from the books. “Have you ever heard of a magician called ‘Nico’ or ‘Nicodemus’?”

“Like, in history?”

“No. I don’t know—maybe. Just anybody. Maybe a politician or someone who was on the Coven? Or a professor?”

She’s leaning against my bed. “Is this for the Mage? Are you on a mission?”

“No.” I shake my head. “No, I haven’t even seen him. I was—it’s about Baz.” Pe

“The Pitches have always had more enemies than friends.”

“Right. Anyway, it’s probably not important.”

Pe

I feel my eyes get big, too. “Do you have a phone?”

“Simon—”

“Penelope, you can’t have a mobile at Watford!”

She folds her arms. “I don’t see why not.”

“Because of the rules. They’re a security risk.”

She frowns and pulls out the phone—a white iPhone, a new one. “My parents feel better if I carry it.”

“How does that even work in here?” I ask. “There’re supposed to be spells.…”

Penelope’s checking her texts. “My mum magicked it. She’s here now, at the gates—” She looks up. “—Please come with us.”

“Your mum would make a terrifying supervillain.”

Pe

I shake my head again. “No, I want to look this stuff over before Baz comes back.”

Finally she gives in, and runs down the tower stairs like she doesn’t give a fig about getting caught. I go to the window to see if I can spot Baz out on the pitch.

36

PENELOPE

My mum insisted on me having a mobile after what happened with the Humdrum.

For a few weeks this summer, she was saying I couldn’t come back to Watford at all, and my dad didn’t even try to talk her down. I think maybe he felt responsible. Like he should have figured the Humdrum out by now.

Dad spent the whole month of June in his lab, not even coming out to eat. Mum made his favourite biryani and left steaming plates of it outside his door.

“That madman!” Mum kept ranting. “Sending children to fight the Humdrum!”

“The Mage didn’t send us,” I tried telling her. “The Humdrum took us.” But that just made her angrier. I thought she’d want to work out how the Humdrum had done it. (It’s impossible to steal someone like that, to port them that far. The magic required … Even Simon doesn’t have enough.) But Mum refused to approach it intellectually.

It made me really glad that she doesn’t know the details of every other scrape Simon and I have got ourselves into—and got ourselves out of, I should add. We deserve some credit for that.

Mum probably would have cooled down sooner, if it weren’t for the nightmares.…

I didn’t scream when it actually happened:

One minute, Simon and I were in the Wavering Wood, gaping at Baz and Agatha—me holding Simon’s arm. And the next minute, we were in a clearing in Lancashire. Simon recognized it—he lived in a home there when he was a kid, near Pendle Hill. There’s this big sound sculpture that looks like a tornado, and I thought at first that the noise was the Humdrum.

I could already feel that we were in one of his dead spots.

Dad studies dead spots, so I’ve been to loads of them. They’re the holes in the magickal atmosphere that started appearing when the Humdrum did. Stepping into a dead spot is like losing a sense. Like opening your mouth and realizing you can’t make any noise. Most magicians can’t handle it. They start to lose their shit immediately. But Dad told me he’s never had as much magic as most magicians, so it isn’t as terrifying for him to think of losing it.

So Simon and I show up in this clearing, and I can feel straight away it’s a dead spot—but it’s more than that. It’s worse. There’s this weird whistling on the wind, and everything’s dry, so dry and hot.

Maybe it’s not a dead spot, I thought, maybe it’s a dying spot.

“Lancashire,” Simon said to himself.

And then—the Humdrum was there.

And I knew it was the Humdrum because he was the source of everything. Like the way you know that the sun is what makes the day bright. All the heat and dryness were coming from him. Or sucking towards him.

And neither of us, Simon or me, cried out or tried to run, because we were too much in shock: There was the Humdrum—and he looked just like Simon. Just like Simon when I first met him. Eleven years old, in grotty jeans and an old T-shirt. The Humdrum was even bouncing that red rubber ball that Simon never put down our first year.

The kid bounced the ball at Simon, and Simon caught it. Then Simon started screaming at the Humdrum, “Stop it! Stop it! Show yourself, you coward—show yourself!”

It was so hot, and so dry, and it felt like the life was getting sucked out of us, sucked right up through our skin.

Both of us had felt it before during the Humdrum’s attacks—that sandy, dry suck. We knew what he felt like, we recognized him. But we’d never seen the Humdrum before. (Now I wonder if that was the first time the Humdrum was able to show himself.)

Simon was sure the Humdrum was wearing his face just to taunt him. He kept howling at it to show its real face.

But the Humdrum just laughed. Like a little kid. The way little kids laugh once they’ve got started, and they can’t stop.

(I can’t really say why I think so or what it means, but I don’t think that the Humdrum appeared that way as a mean joke. I think that’s his true form. That he looks like Simon.)

The suck was too much. I looked down at my arm, and there was yellow fluid and blood starting to seep through my pores.

Simon was shouting. The Humdrum was laughing.

I reached out and took the ball from Simon and threw it down the hill.

The Humdrum stopped laughing then—and immediately darted after the ball. The second he turned away from us, the sucking stopped.

I fell over.

Simon picked me up and threw me over his shoulder (which is pretty amazing, considering I weigh as much as he does). He pushed forward like a Royal Marine, and as soon as he was out of the dead spot, he shifted me around to the front—and big bony wings burst out of his back. Sort-of wings. Misshapen and overly feathered, with too many joints …

There’s no spell for that. There are no words. Simon just said, “I wish I could fly!” and he made the words magic.

(I haven’t told anyone that part. Magicians aren’t genies; we don’t run on wishes. If anyone knew that Simon could do that, they’d have him burnt at the stake.)

We were both hurt, so I tried to cast healing spells. I kept thinking that the Humdrum would haul us back as soon as he found his ball. But maybe that wasn’t the sort of trick he could manage twice in one day.

Simon flew as far as he could with me clinging to him—stuck to him with spells and fading fast. Then I think he realized how mad we looked and landed near a town.

We were going to take a train, but Simon couldn’t get his wings to retract. Because they weren’t wings. They were bones and feathers and magic—and will.

This is what my nightmares are about: