“Yeah.”
“That one’s joined the other side, eh? Well, I’m shaking in my boots.”
“The Mage thinks the Families are getting ready for some big strike.”
“What does he want us to do about it?”
“He doesn’t,” Simon says.
I slip the chess pieces in my pocket. “What do you mean?”
“Well, he still wants me to leave—”
I must frown, because Simon raises his eyebrows and says, “I know, Penny—I’m not going anywhere. But if I stay here, then he wants me to lie low. He wants us to lie low. He says his Men are working on it, and it’s delicate.”
“Hmm.” I sit next to Simon on the tree stump. I have to admit, I sort of love the idea of lying low—of letting the Mage get up to his mad business without us for once. But I don’t like to be told to lie low. Neither does Simon. “Do you think Baz is with these other boys?” I ask.
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
I don’t say anything. I really, really hate to talk to Simon about Baz. It’s like talking to the Mad Hatter about tea. I hate to encourage him.
He knocks some bark off the stump with the back of his heel.
I lean into him, because I’m cold and he’s always warm. And because I like to remind him that I’m not afraid of him.
“It makes sense,” he says.
21
THE MAGE
Books. Artefacts. Enchanted jewellery. Enchanted furniture. Monkeys’ paws, rabbits’ legs, gnomes’ gnoses …
We take it all. Even if I know it’s useless to me.
This exercise has more than one aim. It’s good to remind the Old Families that I’m still running this show.
This school.
This realm.
And there’s not one of them who could do better.
They call me a failure because the Humdrum still drums on, stealing our magic, scrubbing our land clear—but who among them could pose a threat?
Maybe Natasha Grimm-Pitch could have put the Humdrum in his place—but she’s long gone, and none of her friends and relatives have even a fraction of her talent.
I send my Men to take my enemies’ treasures, to raid their libraries. I show them that even a red-faced child in my uniform has more power than they do in this new world. I show them what their names are worth—nothing.
But still …
I don’t find what I need. I don’t find any real answers—I still can’t fix him.
The Greatest Mage is our only hope now.
But our greatest mage is fundamentally flawed. Cracked. Broken.
Simon Snow is that mage; I know it.
Nothing like him has ever walked our earth.
But Simon Snow—my Simon—still can’t bear his power. He still can’t control it. He’s the only vessel big enough to hold it, but he is cracked. He is compromised. He is …
Just a boy.
There must be a way—a spell, a charm, a token—that can help him. We are mages! The only magickal creatures who can wield and shape power. Somewhere in our world, there is an answer for Simon. (A ritual. A recipe. A rhyme.) This isn’t how prophecies work.…
This isn’t how stories unfold.…
Incompletely.
If there’s a crack in Simon, then there’s a way to mend him.
And I will find it.
22
SIMON
I’m failing Greek, I think. And I’m lost in Political Science.
Agatha and I get into a fight about going to her house for half-term break: I don’t want to leave Watford, and I don’t think she actually wants me to go home with her. But she wants me to want to. Or something.
I stop wearing my cross and put it in a box under my bed.…
My neck feels lighter, but my head feels full of stones. It would help if I could sleep, but I can’t, and I don’t really have to—I can just sort of get by, on catnaps and magic.
I keep having to kick Penny out of my room, so she doesn’t catch on to how I’m spending my nights.
“But nobody’s using Baz’s bed,” she argues.
“Nobody’s using your bed,” I say.
“Trixie and Keris push the beds together when I’m not there—there’s probably pixie dust everywhere.”