Wellbelove runs in one direction, and Bunce runs in the other.
There’s a noise from the school—like artificial thunder, like a hurricane on a tin roof.
I chase after Penny across the drawbridge. As soon as we make it to the courtyard, it’s immediately clear where Simon is: All the windows have shattered in the White Chapel. There’s smoke pouring out, and the walls themselves seem to be shimmering, like heat on the horizon.
The air is thick with Simon’s magic. That burning green smell.
Bunce stumbles, coughing. I take her arm and lean against her, propping her up. I’d be surprised if she could cast a cliché right now. “All right, Bunce?”
“Simon,” she says.
“I know. Can you take it?”
She nods, pushing away from me and shaking her ponytail resolutely.
The miasma gets worse, the closer we get to the Chapel. Inside the building, it’s unnaturally dark, like something more than light is missing. I think I feel the Humdrum’s presence, the scratch and the suck of him, but my wand stays alive in my hand.
Something rolls through me—like a wave in the air, in the magic—and Bunce pitches forward again. I catch her.
“We don’t have to keep going,” I say.
“Yes,” she says, “we do. I do.”
I nod. I don’t let go of her this time. We walk together towards the worst of it, to what must be the back of the Chapel, through doorways, down halls.
My stomach roils.
There’s no more air, just Simon.
Bunce pushes open another door, and we both throw our arms up in front of our eyes. It’s bright as fire inside.
“Up there!” Bunce shouts.
I try to look where she’s pointing. The light stutters into blackness, then back again. It seems to be coming from an opening in the ceiling—twenty feet above us, at least.
Bunce holds out a hand to cast, but clutches her stomach instead.
I wrap my left arm around her, then point my wand at the trapdoor. “On love’s light wings!”
It’s a hard spell and an old spell, and it works only if you understand the Great Vowel Shift of the Sixteenth Century—and if you’re stupidly in love.
Bunce and I float to the opening, and I don’t try to shield us, because there’s nothing that could.
We climb into a room too loud and strobing to describe, then kneel in broken glass, trying to hold ourselves together. Bunce throws up.
In the seconds when the light isn’t too bright or gone completely, I see Simon in the middle of the room, holding on to the Humdrum like he’s about to tell him something really important.
Simon has those red wings again, and they’re spread wide.
The Mage is here, too, clawing at Simon uselessly—nothing can move Snow when he looks like that, his shoulders hunched forward, and his jaw pushed out.
Bunce is on all fours, trying to lift her head. “What’s he doing?” she rasps, then heaves again.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Should we try to stop him?”
“Do you think we could?”
The light is getting less intense. So is the dark.
I can hardly see the Humdrum anymore, but Simon still has something in a death grip.
The noise is changing, too—getting higher, like it’s winding up, from a roar to a whine.
When the sound stops, my ears pop, and Simon falls forward to the ground, lit only by moonlight through the broken windows.
He falls, and he doesn’t get up.
PENELOPE
For a moment, the only sound is Baz, howling.
Then the Mage falls on Simon’s limp body.
“What have you done?” He’s shaking Simon, and beating on his wings. “Give it to me!”
Simon lifts an arm to push the Mage off, and that sign of life is all it takes to unleash Baz. He moves so fast, my eyes can’t focus on him until he’s holding the Mage by the chest, his fangs open over the man’s neck.
“No!” Simon whispers, trying to pull himself up by grabbing their legs.