Carry On

Mum’s the headmistress now. Officially. The Coven appointed her.

She tried to talk me into going back to Watford, to finish my diploma. And if Simon had wanted to go back, maybe I would have made the effort. But there were just too many bad memories there. Every time I try to cross the drawbridge, I get sick to my stomach. I don’t know how Baz manages it.

Agatha says she’s never going back. “Over my dead body,” she says. “Which is how I would have ended up if I’d stayed there.”

BAZ

Today’s my leaving ceremony. I’m top of our class—there was no competition after Bunce dropped out—so I have to give a speech.

I told Simon not to come. It’s a bit bleak, being surrounded by magicians all the time, when you can’t even feel magic.

I didn’t want him to come to Watford and think about all the things he isn’t anymore. Not the Mage’s Heir. Not a mage at all.

He’s still everything else he’s always been—brave, honest, inflammably handsome (even with that fucking tail)—but I don’t think he wants to hear all that.

And I find it hard to say, honestly.

It’s hard for us … to talk … sometimes. Lately. I don’t blame him. Life hasn’t exactly kept its promises to Simon Snow. Sometimes I think I should pick fights with him, just to restore his equilibrium.

Anyway. I don’t think he’d want to be here.

My mother gave the speech at her leavers day. It’s in the school archives—I found it, and I’m going to read from it today. It’s about magic, the gift of magic. And the responsibility.

And it’s about Watford. Why my mother loved it. She made this list of everything she’d miss. Like, the sour cherry scones and Elocution lessons, and the clover out on the Great Lawn.

I can’t say that I loved Watford like my mother did.

This was always the place that was taken from her. And the place where she was taken from me. It was like going to school in occupied territory.

Still—I knew I was coming back for my last term, even without Pe

*   *   *

The speeches are in the White Chapel. The stained glass has been repaired.

My aunt Fiona’s sitting in the front row. She whoops when I’m introduced, and I can see my father wince.

Fiona’s as cheerful lately as I’ve ever seen her. She didn’t know what to do with herself after the Mage died. I think she wanted to kill him again. (And again.) Then the Coven made her a vampire hunter, and everything turned around. She’s on some secret task force now and working undercover in Prague half the time. I’m moving into her flat when I leave school. My parents wanted me to go to Oxford with them—they’re living there, in our hunting lodge—but I couldn’t be that far from Simon. My father still isn’t ready to admit I have a boyfriend, and it would be too exhausting, living in a place where I have to pretend I’m not a vampire or hopelessly queer.

By the end of my speech, Fiona’s weeping and honking her nose into a handkerchief. My father isn’t crying, but he’s too choked up to properly speak to me after the ceremony. Just keeps clapping me on the back and saying, “Good man.”

“Come on, Basil,” Fiona says. “I’ll take you back to Chelsea and get you sozzled. Top shelf only.”

“I can’t,” I say. “Leavers ball tonight. I told the headmistress I’d be there.”

“Can’t pass up a chance to see yourself in a suit, can you.”

“I suppose not.”

“Ah, well. I’ll get you sozzled tomorrow, then. I’ll come back for you at teatime. Watch out for numpties.”

That’s Fiona’s standard farewell for me now. I hate it.

*   *   *

There are a few hours before the ball, so I take a quick walk in the hills behind the walls and gather a bouquet of yellow-eyed grass and irises, then head back across the drawbridge and into the now empty Chapel.

I make my way down into the Catacombs without bothering to light a torch. It’s been years since I’ve got lost down here.

I’m not in a hurry, so I stop to drain every rat I find on the way. This school is going to be infested when I leave.

My mother’s tomb is inside Le Tombeau des Enfants. It’s a stone doorway in a tu

I would have been buried here with her, if I’d died that day. I mean, died properly.

I sit by the door—there’s no handle or lock, it’s a piece of stone wedged into the wall—and set down the flowers.

“Some of this will be familiar to you,” I say, getting out my speech. “But I’ve added a few flourishes of my own.”

A rat watches me from the corner. I decide to ignore it.

When I get to the end of the speech, my head falls back against the stone. “I know you can’t hear me,” I say after a minute or two. “I know you’re not here.…

“You came back, and I missed you. And then I did the thing you wanted me to do, so you probably won’t ever come back again.”

I close my eyes.

“But—I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to carry on. As I am.

“No matter how much I think about it, I don’t think there’s any scenario where you’d want me—where you’d allow me—to go on like this.

“But I think it’s what you would do in my circumstances. It seems like you never gave up. Ever.”

I exhale roughly and stand up.

Then I turn towards the door and bow my head. I speak softly, so that none of the other bones can hear:

“I know I usually come down here to tell you I’m sorry. But I think today I want to tell you that I’m going to be all right.

“Don’t let me be one of the things that keeps you from peace, Mother. I’m all right.”

I wait for a few moments, just … just in case. Then climb out of the Catacombs, brushing the dust from my trousers.

*   *   *

It’s an especially grim leavers ball. The few friends I have left at Watford are here with dates—or avoiding me. Dev and Niall haven’t quite forgiven me for befriending Simon. Dev said I wasted their entire childhood plotting against him.

“Oh, what else were you going to do with your childhood?” I asked.

Dev didn’t bother answering.

I end up standing next to the punchbowl, talking to Headmistress Bunce about Latin prefixes. It’s a fascinating subject, but I don’t feel like I needed to put on a black tie for it.

I think Professor Bunce is sad that Penelope’s not here. I consider consoling her with the fact that Penelope probably would’ve skipped the ball even if she’d stayed in school, but the headmistress is already wandering off to the other side of the courtyard to check her e-mail.

“I was hoping there’d be sandwiches,” someone mumbles.

I ignore him because I’m not at Watford to make friends or small talk, especially on my way out.

“Or at least cake.”

I turn around and see Simon Snow standing on the other side of the punch table. Wearing a suit and tie, with his hair properly parted and slicked to one side.

He shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on me like that, but he smells different these days—like something sweet and brown. No more green fire and brimstone.

“How’s the party?” he asks.

“Funereal,” I say. “How’d you get here?”

“Flew.”

My jaw drops, and he laughs.

“No,” he says. “Pe

“Where’re your wings?”

“Still there. Just invisible. Someone’s already tripped over my tail.”

“I’ve told you to tuck it in.”

“It makes my trousers fit fu

I laugh.

“Don’t laugh at me,” he says.

“When will I ever laugh, then?”

Snow rolls his eyes, then cuts them nervously to the side. Towards the White Chapel.

“You don’t have to be here,” I say.

“No,” he says quickly. “I do.” He clears his throat. “I don’t want you to leave without me.”

*   *   *