Carry On

I do.

68

AGATHA

It’s a three-hour drive back to London. Penelope casts, “Time flies!”—but neither of us are having any fun, so it doesn’t work.

I’ve half a mind to drive straight to Watford to tell the Mage everything, but my parents were expecting me ages ago—and, honestly, I don’t relish the thought of talking to the Mage by myself. He’s not exactly approachable. He’s always dressed like Peter Pan, and he carries a sword. Like, all the time. Once he showed up at our door in the middle of the night with his ear in his hand. Dad had to sew it back on.

I’ve known the Mage since before I was in school; he and Dad have been on the Coven together forever. But I’m not sure the Mage even knows my name. I’ve never heard him say it. He never really speaks to me.

Pe

Maybe that’s why Lucy broke it off with him.

Or maybe he’s such a prat because she broke up with him, and he never got over it.

I still have that photo in my handbag. I hope Pe

I went through a shoplifting phase when I was 14 and got grounded for an entire summer when my parents found my stash of unopened eyeliners and nail varnish.

“We wouldbuyyou cosmetics,” my father said.

“You didn’t use magic?” my mother asked. “You just took it?” And then she said, “Oh, Agatha, purple varnish. How common.”

Pe

“You didn’t,” I say.

“I did! I could tell you missed Simon. I could tell you were sad. Are you really saying you’d rather we just left you out and ignored you for the rest of the year?”

“No!”

“Then what, Agatha? What do you want?”

“I want to be friends,” I say, “but I don’t want to be, like, comrades-in-arms. I don’t want to have secret meetings! I just want to hang out! Like, make biscuits and watch telly. Do normal friend stuff!”

“We’re supposed to watch telly while Simon fights the Humdrum? And Baz gets kidnapped by numpties?”

“No!” I lean forward, squeezing the steering wheel. “In the scenario I’m describing, none of that would be happening!”

“But it is happening.”

“Well, then, yeah, I think I would rather just stay home. Because I can’t actually do anything to help. When have we ever been any help, Penelope? Like, real help. We’re just … witnesses. And hostages. And, like, future collateral damage. If we were in a movie, one of us would have to die while Simon watched. That’s all we’re good for.”

“Speak for yourself!” she shouts.

“I will!” I shout back.

But neither of us speaks for the rest of the trip.

*   *   *

I drop Pe

They do a travelling party every Christmas Eve. It starts at one house, then moves on to the next house, then the next … until everyone’s so trolleyed, they have to spell the cars to drive them home.

Simon and I are always expected to say hello when the guests get here; then we hide in the lounge and watch telly and eat hors d’oeuvres until we fall asleep by the fire.

Except for once, four years ago, when we snuck out on Christmas Eve to track werewolves through Soho. They’d stolen some key—or maybe a gem, I can’t bloody remember. I’ve never been colder in my life! We nearly died outside Liberty, and then, after it was finally over, Pe

(Should I tell Mum now? What I know? What Simon is up to?) (No. Simon will be fine. Simon is always fine. And Pe

“I think you can come along with us tonight,” my mother says. She and Helen, our housekeeper, are getting things set up. Our house is first on the party circuit this year. “Since you don’t have Simon to entertain.”

“Mum.”

“Don’t whine, Agatha,” my father says, plucking a crab claw from a platter. He’s on the phone with a patient. “No, no, I’m listening, Balthazar, but it all sounds quite normal. No, I don’t mean Normal—I mean normal.”

I sigh and follow my mother into the kitchen. “But I’m not dressed for a party.”

“Then get dressed.”

“Mum, I’m knackered.”

She’s leaning into the refrigerator. “You’ll get your second wind. Is Simon coming round tomorrow, then?”

I frown and fidget with a tray of prawn cocktails. “I don’t think so.…”

I already told her that Simon was spending Christmas at Watford, but somehow Mum got it in her head that he would still stop by here on Christmas Day. It’s tradition, I suppose.

Maybe I should feel guilty for disinviting him, but I don’t—I tried to take it back tonight.

Mum stands up, holding a sparkling tiered jelly. “I think it’s good that he’s spending the holidays with the Mage,” she says. “As far as I can tell, the Mage usually spends Christmas alone at Watford. He told me once that the holidays were too auspicious to waste on festivities.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“Oh, who knows,” she says, handing the jelly off to Helen. “I hope Simon doesn’t end up fasting by moonlight. We’ll have to stuff him with sweetmeats tomorrow.”

“Auspicious…,” I say. “Why is the Mage such a weirdo?”

“Hush, Agatha. Don’t be treasonous.”

“I’m not, I’m just saying—was he always like this?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she says. “We certainly never travelled in the same circles. I can’t even remember him from school.”

I reach for a prawn, but Helen takes the tray away. “Do you remember Professor Bunce?” I ask Mum. “From school?”

“Which one?”

“Either.”

“Martin and Mitali were a few years behind me,” Mum says. She’s getting out another pudding—a huge stacked trifle. “But don’t they have a son even older than you? They started popping them out awfully early—that’s the Bunce influence, I think. I went to Watford with a litter of Bunces, not a one of them powerful enough to be there. That happens, you know, in big families: The magic gets watered down.”

My mother is obsessed with power—who’s got it, who doesn’t. She doesn’t. At least not much. She blames her own mother for marrying down. “My father couldn’t light a match in a rainstorm.”

I’m adequate, magickally speaking. I’m no Simon. Or Baz. Or Penelope. But I get through my lessons just fine.

I know that’s why my parents never had more kids after me; they didn’t want my magic to be diluted—even though Dad says it’s an old wives’ tale that siblings split magic.

I also know my parents are hoping I’ll marry someone more powerful than I am, to get the family back on course.

Before I started dating Simon, I had a secret Normal boyfriend—Sacha. If my mother had known, she would have locked me in a tower. (She probably would have taken away my horse.) I wonder what Sacha is doing these days.…

“So, you wouldn’t have known their friends?” I ask. “Professor Bunce mentioned someone named Lucy, she showed us a photo—”

“Lucy Day?”

“I’m not sure.…”