I’m sitting at Penelope’s counter, spreading pink icing on another gingerbread lady.
“Why do the gingerbread girls have to wear pink?” Penny asks.
“Why should the gingerbread girls feel like they shouldn’t wear pink?” I say. “I like pink.”
“Only because you’ve been conditioned to like it by Barbies and gendered Lego.”
“Lay off, Penny. I’ve never played with Lego.”
Hanging out with Penny is actually going better than I thought. When she cornered me in the courtyard before we left for break, I thought she was going to chew me out for abandoning Simon.
“Hey,” she said, “I heard that Simon isn’t coming over for Christmas.”
“Because we’re not dating anymore, Penelope. Happy?”
“Generally,” she said, “but not because you broke up.”
It’s impossible to end a conversation with Penny. You can be rude, you can ignore her—she’s unshakable.
“Agatha,” she said, “do you honestly think I want to be with Simon?”
I think Penny wants to be the most important person in Simon’s life, so is that a yes or a no? “I don’t know, Penelope. But I know you didn’t want me to be with him.”
“Because you both seemed miserable!”
“That wasn’t any of your business!”
“Of course it was!” she said. “You’re my friends.”
I rolled my eyes at her, very obviously, but she kept going.
“This isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said briskly. “I heard Simon isn’t coming to your house for Christmas. And he can’t come to my house because my mum’s pissed off at the Mage, but I thought maybe you and I could still get together and make biscuits and exchange gifts.”
We always do this, every year, the three of us. “Without Simon?”
“Right, like I said, my mum’s got a bee in her bonnet about Simon.”
“But we never hang out without Simon,” I said.
“Only because he’s always around,” Penny said. “Just because you guys broke up doesn’t mean we’re not still friends, you and me.”
“We’re friends?”
“Nicks and Slick, I hope so,” Penny said. “I only have three friends. If we’re not friends, I’m down to two.”
*
“What’re you girls doing?” Penny’s mum comes into the kitchen, carrying her laptop, like she can’t put it down long enough to make herself a cup of tea. Her hair is pulled up in a messy dark bun, and she’s wearing the same cardigan and joggers she was wearing when I got here yesterday. My mother wouldn’t leave her bedroom looking like that.
Professor Bunce teaches History of the Middle Ages at a Normal university, and she’s a magickal historian. She’s published a whole shelf full of mage books, but she doesn’t make any money doing it. There aren’t enough magicians to support magickal arts and sciences as careers. My father does well as a magickal physician because he’s one of a few with the right training, and everyone needs a doctor. Penny’s dad used to teach linguistics at a local university, but now he works full-time for the Coven, researching the Humdrum. He even has his own staff of investigators who work in the lab with him upstairs. I’ve been here almost two days, and I haven’t seen him yet.
“He only comes out for tea and sandwiches,” Penny said when I asked her about it. She has a few younger siblings, too; I recognize them from Watford. There’s one camped out in the living room right now, watching three months’ worth of Eastenders—and at least one more upstairs attached to the Internet. They’re all frightfully independent. I don’t even think they have mealtimes. They just wander in and out of the kitchen for bowls of cereal and cheese toasties.