“I’m not sure what I’d do around here,” I say. “I don’t think Watford needs two goatherds.” One of the smaller goats has wandered over and is nuzzling at my knee. I hold out a biscuit in my palm, and it takes it.
Ebb smiles and settles into her easy chair. “We’d find something for you. It’s not like there was an opening when Mistress Pitch brought me on.”
“Baz’s mum,” I say, scratching the goat’s ears. Getting Ebb to talk about all this might be easier than I thought.
“The same,” she says. “Now, there was a powerful magician.”
“Did you know her well?”
Ebb takes a bite of biscuit. “Well, she taught Magic Words when I was in school,” she says, puffing crumbs out onto her dirty scarf. “And she was the headmistress. So I guess I knew her that way. We certainly didn’t move in the same circles, you understand—but after my brother Nicky passed, my family didn’t move in any circles at all.”
Ebb’s brother died when she was in school. She talks about him a lot, even though it gets her all worked up and morose every time. This is one reason Penny never took to Ebb. “She’s so melancholy. Even the goats seem bummed out.”
The goats seem fine to me. A few are poking around Ebb’s chair, and the little beggar has settled down at my feet.
“I was afraid to leave Watford,” Ebb goes on, “and Mistress Pitch told me I didn’t have to. Looking back, she was probably worried I’d get up to my own brand of trouble. I always had more power than sense. I was a powder keg—Nicky and I both were. Mistress Pitch did a service to magic when she took me in and told me not to worry about what was next. Power doesn’t have to be a burden, she said. If it’s too heavy ’round your neck, keep it somewhere else. In a drawer. Under your bed. ‘Let it go, Ebeneza,’ she said. ‘You were born with it, but it doesn’t have to be your destiny.’ Which is never what my da told me … I wonder if Mistress Pitch would have been so forgiving if I was one of her own.”
I’m giggling and trying not to spit out wet biscuit.
“What?” she says. “This is supposed to be an inspirational story.”
“Your name is Ebeneza?”
“It’s a perfectly good name! Very traditional.” She laughs, too, and shoves an entire biscuit into her mouth, washing it down with coffee.
“She sounds good,” I say. “Baz’s mum.”
“Well, yeah. I mean, she was fierce as a lion. And darker than most people were comfortable with—all the Pitches are—and she fought the reforms with her own teeth and nails. But she loved Watford. She loved magic.”
“Ebb … how did your brother die?” I’ve never asked her that before. I’ve never wanted to upset Ebb any more than she already was.
She immediately shifts forward in her chair and looks away from me. “Well, that’s not something we talk about. I’m not to talk about him at all—they buried his name when we couldn’t bury his body, even struck him from the Book—but he was my twin brother. Doesn’t feel right to pretend he never was.”
“I didn’t know he was your twin.”
“Yeah. Partner in crime.”
“You must miss him.”
“I do miss him.” She sniffs. “I haven’t talked to him since the day he crossed over—no matter what people say.”
“Of course not,” I say. “He’s dead.”
“I know what they say.”
“Honestly, Ebb. I’ve never heard anyone talk about your brother but you.”
She stares at me for a second, her back stiff; then she seems to remember herself and turns to the fire, slouching again. “Sorry, Simon. I just … I think people thought I was going to go with him. That I wouldn’t be able to live without him. Nicky wanted me to go.”
“He wanted you to kill yourself, too?”
“He wanted me to go with him to…” She looks around, anxiously, and her voice drops to a whisper. “To the vampires. Nicky said he’d be waiting for me—that he’d always be waiting for me.”
The biscuit I’m holding snaps. “To the vampires?”
“Does no one really talk about him? About me?”
“No, Ebb.” To the vampires? Ebb’s brother went to the vampires?
She looks lost. “They never mention him, even after all he done … I guess that’s what happens when they strike you from the Book. I was there for it. Mistress Pitch let me keep the words.”
She holds up her staff—and even though it’s just Ebb, I’m spooked enough that I startle. The goat resting at my feet jumps and scutters away. Ebb doesn’t notice. She’s as melancholy as I’ve ever seen her. There are tears running in clean streaks down her filthy cheeks.
She waves the staff over the fire, and the words spill out into the flames, but don’t burn:
Nicodemus Petty.
I’m so shocked, I almost reach out and grab them. Nicodemus! Nicodemus who went to the vampires!
“Nicky,” Ebb whispers. “The only magician ever to choose death with the vampires.” She wipes her eyes with her sleeve. “Sorry, Simon. I shouldn’t speak of him—but I can’t help but think of him this time of year. The holidays. Out there on his own.”
“He’s still alive?”
That was the wrong question, or maybe I’m being too intense: Ebb wipes away a new fall of tears.