Baz is alive. Or as alive as he gets.
He looked awful today, even paler than usual. He’s thinner than usual, too, and there’s something off about the way he’s moving—a drag. Like he’s got stones of different weights tied to each limb.
I just want to run him down and knock him over and figure it all out. What’s wrong with him. Where he’s been …
I wait in our room until dinner, but Baz doesn’t come back. Then he ignores me in the dining hall.
He ignores Agatha, too. (She’s staring at him as much as I am—but I don’t think she’s as worried that he might have come back to kill her.) She’s sitting alone at a table, and I can’t decide whether that makes me sad or angry. Whether Agatha herself makes me sad or angry. Or even what I’m supposed to be feeling about her. I can’t think right now.
“I was thinking we could study in the library tonight,” Penny says at dinner, as if I’m not literally fuming.
“I’m gonna have to talk to him sometime,” I say.
“No, you aren’t,” she says. “When do the two of you ever talk, anyway?”
“I’m gonna have to face him.”
She leans over her cottage pie. “That’s what I’m worried about, Simon. You need to cool down first.”
“I’m cool.”
“Simon. You’re never cool.”
“That hurts, Penny.”
“It shouldn’t. It’s one of the reasons I love you.”
“I just—I need to know where he’s been.…”
“Well, he’s not going to tell you.”
“Maybe he’ll tell me something without meaning to, in the process of not telling me. What is he even up to? He looks like he’s been in some American terror prison.”
“Maybe he’s been sick.”
Curses, I never thought of that either. Every scenario I thought up had Baz hidden away, plotting somewhere. Maybe he was sick and plotting.…
“No matter what the truth is,” Penny says, “it won’t help to pick a fight with him.”
“I won’t.”
“Simon, you do. Every year. As soon as you see him. And I just think that maybe you shouldn’t this time. Something’s happening. Something bigger than Baz. The Mage has practically disappeared, and Premal has been on some secret assignment for weeks—my mum says he’s stopped returning her texts.”
“Is she worried about him?”
“She’s always worried about Premal.”
“Are you worried about him?”
Penny looks down. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry—should we try to find him?”
She looks back up at me sternly. “Mum says no. She says we need to wait and pay attention. I think she and Dad are asking around, covertly, and she doesn’t want us drawing a lot of attention to them. Which is why you need to cool down. Just—keep your eyes open. Observe. Don’t knock over any furniture or kill anything.”
“You always say that,” I sigh. “But then when it’s us or them, you want me to kill something.”
“I never want you to kill, Simon.”
“I never feel like I have a choice.”
“I know.” She smiles at me. Sadly. “Don’t kill Baz tonight.”
“I won’t.”
But I’m probably gonna have to kill him someday, and we both know it.
*
Penelope lets me go back to my room after dinner, and she doesn’t try to follow—she’s stuck with Trixie and her girlfriend now that Baz is back in town. “Gay people have an unfair advantage!” she complains.
“Only when it comes to visiting their roommates,” I say.
She’s decent enough not to argue.
I’m nervous when I get to the top of the stairs. I still don’t know what I’m going to say to him. “Nothing,” I hear Penny say in my head. “Do your schoolwork, go to bed.”
As if it’s ever that easy.