But what does it even matter if my intentions are never good? My road to hell isn’t paved with good intentions—or bad—it’s just my road.
Go ahead, Snow. Forgive your girlfriend. I’m not standing in your way. Go stand on bloody hilltops together and watch the sun set in each other’s hair—I’m done being a nuisance. I’m done. Truce.
I didn’t expect to mend any fences with all this … co-operating. I didn’t expect to convince or convert Snow. But I thought we were making progress. Like, maybe when this was all over, he and I would still be standing on either side of the trench, but we wouldn’t be spitting at each other. We wouldn’t be spoiling for the fight.
I know Simon and I will always be enemies.…
But I thought maybe we’d get to a point where we didn’t want to be.
52
SIMON
With Penny (and Baz) gone, I spend a lot of time walking around the school grounds. I decide to look for the nursery.…
Baz thinks the Weeping Tower swallowed it after his mum died. Penny says that can happen sometimes when a magician is tied to a building, especially if they’ve cast blood magic there. When their blood is spilled, it hurts the building, too. The place forms sort of a cyst around it.
I think about what might happen if I died in Mummers House—after all the times I’ve spilled my blood to let our room recognize me.
This is one reason Penny doesn’t like blood oaths and spells. “If you’re as good as your word, words should be good enough.”
I’m quoting her again. I’ve been having conversations with her in my head all day. Sometimes Baz joins the imaginary conversation, too—usually to tell me I’m a twat … though he never uses that word, even in my head. Too vulgar.
I’m rattling around the Weeping Tower that way, talking to myself and poking my nose in corners when something out the window catches my eye. I see a line of goats moving through the snow across the drawbridge. A figure that must be Ebb trails behind them.
Ebb. Ebb …
Ebb’s been at Watford since she was 11—and she’s at least 30 or 40 now. She must have been here when Headmistress Pitch died. Ebb never left.
The goats are back in their barn by the time I get out there. I knock at the door—I don’t want to give Ebb a shock; she lives out here with the goats.
I know that’s strange, but honestly, it’s hard to imagine Ebb living around other people. Other staff members. She can do as she likes in the barn. The goats don’t mind.
“Hiya, Ebb!” I say, knocking some more. “It’s me, Simon.”
The door opens and one of the goats peeks its muzzle out before Ebb herself appears. “Simon!” she says, holding the door wide and waving me in. “What’re you doing here? I thought everybody had gone home.”
“I just came by to say Happy Christmas,” I say, following her into the barn. It’s warmer inside, but not by much. No wonder Ebb’s dressed like she is—her ratty Watford jumper layered over another jumper, with a long striped school scarf and a mess of a knit hat. “Snakes alive, Ebb, it’s cold as a witch’s wit in here.”
“It’s not so bad,” she says. “Come on, I’ll build up the fire.”
We walk through the goats to the back of the barn, which serves as Ebb’s sitting room. She’s got a little table and a rug back here—and a TV set, the only one at Watford, as far as I know. Everything’s set up around a potbelly stove that isn’t connected to any wall or chimney.
That’s the best part of visiting Ebb—she doesn’t care at all about wasting magic. Half the things that come out of her mouth are spells, but I’ve never seen her magic-thin or exhausted.
The stove is magicked, I’m sure. And she probably uses magic to watch football matches.
“Why doesn’t she put in a magickal shower?” Agatha asked, the last time she visited Ebb with me—which must have been years ago. I don’t know where Ebb washes up. Maybe she just Clean as a whistles every morning.
(I had the same idea when I was 13, but Penny gave me a lecture about whistles not being very clean, actually, and Clean as a whistle only taking care of the dirt you can see.)
Ebb feeds some branches into the stove and pokes at the fire. “Well, Happy Christmas yourself,” she says. “You caught me just in time. Going home tomorrow.”
“To see your family?” I ask.
Ebb’s from East London. She nods.
“Do you need someone to watch over the goats?”
“Nah, I’ll let them wander the grounds. What about you? Off to Agatha’s?”
“No,” I say. “I thought I’d stay here. My last year and all, trying to soak up as much Watford as I can.”
“You can always come back, Simon—I did. You want some coffee? ’Fraid all I’ve got out here is coffee. No, wait, I’ve got some Rich Tea biscuits. Let’s eat ’em before they go soft.”
I turn over a bucket and sit close to the fire. Ebb fusses at the cupboards she’s nailed to the back of the barn. She’s got shelves hanging there, too, crammed with dusty ceramic animals.
When I was a second year, I gave Ebb a little breakable goat for Christmas; I’d found it over the summer at a car boot sale. She fussed over it so much that I brought her bric-a-brac every Christmas for a few years. Goats and sheep and donkeys.
I’m feeling shamefully empty-handed when Ebb hands me a chipped mug of coffee and a stack of biscuits.