And this is the part where I always scream for help.
* * *
My mother’s on the phone when I slip out. I take the Volvo.
78
BAZ
It took me a good bit to figure out that Bunce was just possessing the dog—that she wasn’t trapped inside its body. I’ve never even heard of such a thing. I’m certain it isn’t legal.
The real Bunce, terrifying mage that she is, is hiding behind a hedge in Hounslow, waiting for me.
I’m on my way to get her.
“I wouldn’t have had to do this if you weren’t so cagey about your mobile number!” she yaps from the back seat.
PENELOPE
I’m hiding in our neighbour’s garden. I can’t go home because I know if Mum’s there, she won’t let me leave. And I have to leave—I can’t let Simon face the Mage alone. He might already be at Watford. He probably just thought about teleporting and arrived there.
I really blew it with Simon.
He was going to let me go with him, I think, after Baz stormed off. But then I tried to talk him down—I tried to reason with him.
“Maybe Baz is right,” I said.
Simon was pacing around my bedroom, swinging his blade, and he stopped to shoot me a scornful look. “Seriously, Penny? Numpties?”
“No, not about the numpties—but, Simon, think it through, what’s going to happen when people find out about you?”
“I don’t care about people!” he growled.
I shushed him. My little brothers and sisters were still downstairs. “You care about the Mage,” I said. “What’s going to happen when he finds out you’re stealing magic?”
“I’m not stealing it!” he whispered.
“Whatever you’re doing!” I whispered back. “What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know! The Mage will decide.”
That’s when I probably should have given up. But instead I stood in front of him and reached for his hand. He let me take it.
“Simon,” I said, “maybe we should just go.”
He looked confused. He clenched his sword in his other hand. “Penny. That’s what I’m saying. We have to go.”
“No.” I stepped closer to him, squeezing his hand. “I think this might be our only chance to … to leave.”
He looked at me like I was mental.
I kept at it: “Everyone has already connected you to the Humdrum. When they figure out what’s actually happening, even the people who care about you—you’re a threat to everyone, Simon. To our whole world. Once they find out … Maybe this is our last chance to leave. We could just … go.”
He shook his head. “Go where, Penny?”
“Wherever we have to,” I said. “Away.”
SIMON
Away. There is no away.
There’s only here and Normal. Did Penelope think that would be an escape for me—to run away from magic?
I don’t even think it’s possible. I am magic. And whatever I’m doing, running away won’t stop it.
“I have to fix this,” I said. “It’s my job to fix it.”
“I don’t think you can,” she said.
I let go of her hand. “I have to. It’s why I’m here.”
But maybe that’s not why I’m here. Maybe I’m just here to fuck everything up.…
It doesn’t change what I have to do next.
PENELOPE
“I’m going to talk to the Mage,” he said.
“Simon,” I begged, “please don’t.”
But he’d already stopped listening to me. Dark red wings were unfolding from his shoulders, and that arrowlike tail wound its way down his thigh.
He looked at me with his jaw set. And then he took off.
That’s when I called Baz.
He pulls up now in a burgundy sports car. I climb out from the bushes, and Baz has already leaned over to open the car door.
There’s a little cross-eyed dog in the back seat. I break my possession spell, and it yelps.
79
LUCY
We snuck back into Watford on the autumn equinox.
“He’ll be born at solstice,” Davy said, pulling me up the hole in the floor into the old Oracle’s room, at the top of the White Chapel.
“Or she,” I said.
He laughed. “I suppose that’s right.”
I climbed onto the wood floor. “How did the Oracles get up here?”
“There used to be a ladder,” he said.
The room was round, with curved stained glass windows and an intricately painted domed ceiling—a mural of men and women holding hands in a ring, looking up at a field of foiled stars and ornate black script. I could only make out some of it—In time’s womb. Shakespeare. “How did you find this place?”
Davy shrugged. “Exploring.”
He knew Watford like no one else. While the rest of us had flirted and studied, he’d roamed every inch.
I watched him draw a pattern on the floor with salt and oil and dark blue blood. (Not a pentagram—something else.) And I pulled my shawl around my shoulders and legs. We hadn’t brought anything with us. Blankets or pillows. Or mats.
Davy had a stack of notes, and he kept going back to them.
“You’re sure of everything?” I asked for the twentieth time this week. He’d been more indulgent with me since I agreed to this.
I did agree to it.