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You get warnings when you’re young: For the first two years, if you try to hit or hurt your roommate, your hands go stiff and cold. I threw a book at Baz once in our first year, and it took three days for my hand to thaw out.
Baz has never violated the Anathema. Not even when we were kids.
“Who knows what he’s capable of in his sleep,” I say.
“You do,” Pe
“I live with a dark creature—I’m right to be paranoid!”
“I’d trade my pixie for your vampire any day of the week. There’s no anathema to keep someone from being lethally irritating.”
Pe
It feels like a party. Just the two of us, nothing to do. No one to hide from or fight. Penelope says it’ll be like this someday when we get a flat together.… But that’s not going to happen. She’s going to go to America as soon as the war is over. Maybe even before that.
And I’ll get a place with Agatha.
Agatha and I will work through whatever this is; we always do. We make sense together. We’ll probably get married after school—that’s when Agatha’s parents got married. I know she wants a place in the country.… I can’t afford anything like that, but she has money, and she’ll find a job that makes her happy. And her dad’ll help me find work if I ask him.
It’s nice to think about that: living long enough to have to figure out what to do with myself.
As soon as Penelope’s done with her di
I groan. “Not yet.”
“What do you mean, ‘not yet’?”
“I mean, not yet with the strategizing. We just got here. I’m still settling in.”
She looks around the room. “What’s to settle, Simon? You already unpacked your two pairs of trackie bottoms.”
“I’m enjoying the peace and quiet.” I reach for her plate and start to finish off her sausages.
“There’s no peace,” she says. “Just quiet. It makes me nervous. We need a plan.”
“There is peace. Baz isn’t here yet, and look”—I wave her fork around—“there’s nothing attacking us.”
“Says the man who just thrashed a goblin. Simon,” she says, “just because we’ve been checked out for two months doesn’t mean the war took a break.”
I groan again. “You sound like the Mage,” I say with my mouth full.
“I still can’t believe he ignored you all summer.”
“He’s probably too busy with ‘the war.’”
Pe
I’m going to make her wait.
The war.
There’s no point talking about the war. It’ll get here soon enough. It isn’t even one war: It’s two or three of them—the civil war that’s brewing, the hostilities with the dark creatures that have always been there, the whatever it is with the Humdrum—and it will all find its way to my door eventually.…
“Right,” Pe
I clean her plate, and Pe
She falls asleep in the middle of telling me about a song she’s heard, a song she thinks will be a spell someday, though I can’t think of any use for “Call me maybe.”
“Penelope?” She doesn’t answer. I lean off my bed and swing my pillow at her legs—that’s how close the beds are; Baz wouldn’t even have to get out of his to kill me. Or vice versa, I guess. “Pe
“What?” she says into Baz’s pillow.
“You have to go back to your room.”
“Don’t want to.”
“You have to. The Mage’ll suspend you if you get caught in here.”
“Let him. I could use the free time.”
I get out of bed and stand over her. Her dark hair is spread out over the pillowcase, and her glasses are smashed into her cheek. Her skirt has hiked up, and her bare thigh looks plump and smooth.
I pinch her. She jumps up.
“Come on,” I say, “I’ll walk you.”
Pe
“Because that’s not something you’d want to share with your best friend?”
“Because it’s fun watching you try to figure it out.”
I open my door and peek down the staircase. I don’t see or hear anyone. “Fine,” I say, holding the door open. “Good-night.”
Pe
I grin. I can’t help it—it’s so good to be back. “See you tomorrow.”
As soon as I’m alone, I change into my school pyjamas—Baz brings his from home, but I like the school ones. I don’t sleep in pyjamas when I’m at the juvenile centres, I never have. It makes me feel, I don’t know—vulnerable. I change and crawl into bed, sighing.
These nights at Watford, before Baz gets here, are the only nights in my life when I actually sleep.
* * *
I don’t know what time it is when I wake up. The room is dark, and there’s a shaft of moonlight slicing across my bed.
I think I see a woman standing by the window, and at first I think it’s Pe
Then I decide I’m dreaming and fall back into sleep.
6
LUCY
I have so much I want to tell you.
But time is short.
And my voice doesn’t carry.
7
SIMON
The sun is just rising when I hear my door creak open. I pull the blankets up over my head. “Go away,” I say, expecting Pe
Someone clears his throat.
I open my eyes and see the Mage standing just inside the door, looking amused—at least on the surface. There’s something darker underneath.
“Sir.” I sit up. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, Simon. You must not have heard me knock.”
“No … Let me just, I’ll just, um … get dressed.”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” he says, walking to the window, giving Baz’s bed a wide berth—even the Mage is afraid of vampires. Though he wouldn’t use the word “afraid.” He’d say something like “cautious” or “prudent.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here to welcome you back yesterday,” he says. “How was your journey?”
I push the covers off and sit at the edge of my bed. I’m still in my pyjamas, but at least I’m sitting up. “Fine,” I say. “I mean, I suppose … not exactly fine. My taxi driver was a goblin.”
“Another goblin?” He turns from the window to me, hands clasped behind his back. “Persistent, aren’t they. Was it alone?”
“Yes, sir. Tried to scarper off with me.”
He shakes his head. “They never think to come in pairs. What spell did you use?”
“Used my blade, sir.” I bite at my lip.
“Fine,” he says.
“And Into thin air to clean it up.”
The Mage raises his eyebrow. “Excellent, Simon.” He looks down at my pyjamas and bare feet, then seems to study my face. “What about this summer? Anything to report? Anything unusual?”
“I would have contacted you, sir.” (I can contact him, if I need to. I have his mobile number. Also, I could send a bird.)
The Mage nods. “Good.” He looks at me for a few more seconds, then turns back to the window, like he’s observed everything about me that he needs to. The sunlight catches in his thick brown hair, and for a minute, he looks even more like a swashbuckler than usual.
He’s in uniform: dark green canvas leggings, tall leather boots, a green tunic with straps and small pockets—with a sword hanging in a woven scabbard from his tooled belt. Unlike mine, his blade is fully visible.