Priya heard the knocking and thought that it was Father Christmas himself. We don’t have a fireplace; she must have thought he had to come through the front door.
When she opened the door, Simon fell in, and she shrieked.
I don’t blame her. He looked like Satan incarnate. Massive red-and-black wings. A red tail with a black spade at the end. He’d cast some sort of spell on himself that made him glow yellow and orange, and he was covered in snow and debris, and wearing the filthiest, fanciest pyjama bottoms.
Mum and Dad heard Priya scream and came thumping down the stairs. Mum screamed, too. And then Dad shouted, and then apparently he had to keep Mum from throwing curses—she thought Simon was possessed or enchanted or that he’d gone full Lucifer.
The rest of us came running down the stairs then (except for Premal, who didn’t come home, even for Christmas)—and I saw Simon and ran to him. It didn’t occur to me to be scared of him.
That snapped Mum and Dad back to normal.
Mum started casting warming spells, and Dad got a bowl of hot water and a cloth to clean Simon up. We ended up putting him in the shower. He was so exhausted, he could hardly stand. He couldn’t even tell us where he’d been. I assumed he’d made it back to Baz’s house, but I didn’t want my parents to know that we’d left Simon on the road in the middle of the countryside on Christmas Eve.
I helped my mum and dad give him a shower, and nobody cared that I was seeing him naked. Then we put him in some of Mum’s trackies, and she tried to tuck his tail down one leg.
I kept casting, “Nonsense!” until Mum told me to shut up.
“It’s not working, Penny.”
“But it worked last time.”
“Maybe it’s not a spell,” Dad said. “Maybe he transformed.”
“Maybe he evolved,” Priya said from the bathroom doorway, “like a Pokémon.”
“Go to bed, Priya,” Dad said.
“I’m waiting for Father Christmas!”
“Go to bed!” Mum shouted.
Mum was casting spells, too. “As you were!” and “Back to start!”
“Careful, Mitali,” Dad said. “You’ll turn him into a baby.”
But none of Mum’s spells touched Simon. She tried casting spells in Hindi, too. (She doesn’t speak Hindi, but my great-grandmother did.) Nothing worked.
They put Simon in my bed, and Dad thought they should call the Mage, but Mum said they should wait to see what Simon wanted them to do.
(Simon seemed conscious, but he wasn’t saying anything. And he wouldn’t make eye contact.)
My parents were still arguing about it after they left my room and shut the door. “Go to bed, Priya!” my father shouted.
I climbed onto the bed next to Simon and laid my ring hand over his red wings.
“Nonsense!” I whispered.
“Nonsense!”
74
SIMON
I wake up on Christmas morning in Penelope’s bed.
She’s sitting next to me, staring at me.
“What?” I say.
“Thank magic! I was worried you’d never speak again.”
“Why?”
“Because you weren’t talking at all last night. For heaven’s snakes, Simon, what happened to you?”
“I…” I’m lying on my stomach. I try to roll onto my back, but can’t—the wings must still be there. Just thinking about them makes them spread out again, and they knock Penny over.
“Simon!”
“Sorry!” I say, trying to pull them back. “Sorry.”
Penny takes the edge of one wing and rubs it between her thumb and forefinger. “Are these permanent?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Not intentionally.”
“We coated you in spells yesterday, and none of them did anything.”
“Who’s we?”
“Me, my parents. Do you even remember coming here?”
“Sort of … I remember flying. I didn’t recognize London. From above. So I had to go to the Eye, then sort of half-fly down the streets to find your house. I’ve only ever come here before on the Tube.”
“I wonder if anyone saw you.”
“I don’t know. I tried to think about being invisible—”
“You what?”
I close my eyes now and think about the wings. I think about how I don’t need them anymore. I feel the magic welling up in me. (The magic is always welling up in me lately. Always coming up the back of my throat.) I think about how I don’t want to fly, then I think about pulling the wings back into my back.
When I open my eyes again, Penny is staring at me, her hand empty where the wing had been. She looks spooked. “What did you just do?”
“Got rid of the wings.”
“What about the tail?”
I reach down and feel a ropy, leathery tail. “Jesus.” I think hard about getting rid of it, and it zips through my hand, scratching my palm on its way back into my body.
“Why did you even have a tail?” Penny asks.
“I don’t know,” I answer, sitting up. “I must have been thinking about that dragon.”
“Simon…” She’s shaking her head. “What happened last night?”
“The Humdrum,” I say. “He attacked me at Baz’s house. He tried to use Baz against me.”
“He created the biggest hole in Great Britain!”