“Your mum doesn’t trust me?” I say.
We’re walking down the hall, and Penelope immediately starts shushing me with her hand. “She does trust you,” she says. “She trusts you completely. She knows that you’re honest and forthright, and that if you hear something you shouldn’t, you’ll go right to the Mage with it.”
“I wouldn’t!”
“You might, Simon.”
“Penny!”
“Shhhhh.”
“Penny,” I try again, more quietly, “I’d never do anything to get your mother in trouble with the Mage. And I can’t imagine she’s done anything that would get her in trouble with the Mage.”
“She’s sent his Men away again,” Penny says. “Premal says the Mage himself is coming to the house next time.”
“Then I should be there,” I say. “He’d never hurt her in front of me.”
Penny stops in her tracks. “Simon. Do you really think the Mage would hurt my mother at all?”
I stop, too. “No. Of course he wouldn’t.”
She leans in. “Mum’s filing an appeal with the Coven; she thinks this will work itself out. But you know I need to research the Watford Tragedy while I’m home, and there’s no way Mum will let you into our library with everything that’s happening. She calls you Mini-Mage.”
“Why doesn’t she like me?”
“She likes you,” Penny says, rolling her eyes. “It’s him she doesn’t like.”
“Your mother does not like me, Penny.”
“She just thinks you attract trouble. And you do, Simon. Possibly literally.”
“Yeah, but I can’t help it.”
Penelope starts walking again. “You are preaching to the head of the choir.”
It’s not that I mind being alone at Watford—I don’t mind it much. But nobody’s here on Christmas Day. I’ll have to break in to the kitchen to eat. I guess I could ask Cook Pritchard for the key.…
We get to my next lesson, and I intentionally slam my shoulder into the wall next to the door. (People who tell you that slamming and bashing into things won’t make you feel better haven’t slammed or bashed enough.) “Is that what we’re calling it now?” I ask. “‘The Watford Tragedy’?”
It takes Penny a second to backtrack in our conversation. “It’s what they called it at the time,” she says. “What does it matter what we call it?”
“Nothing. Just. We’re doing this because somebody died. Baz’s mum died. ‘The Watford Tragedy’ makes it sound like it happened to people far away who don’t matter to us.”
“Tell the Mage you’re staying here for Christmas,” she says. “He’ll want to spend it with you.”
That makes me laugh.
“What?” Penny asks.
“Can you imagine?” I say. “Christmas with the Mage?”
“Singing carols,” she giggles.
“Pulling crackers.”
“Watching the Queen’s speech.”
“Think of the gifts,” I say, laughing. “He’d probably wrap up a curse for me just to see if I could break it.”
“Blindfold you, drop you in the Hell of the Wood, and tell you to come home with dinner.”
“Ha!” I grin. “Just like in our third year.”
Penny pokes my arm, and I slide away, along the wall. “Talk to him,” she says. “He’s a mad git, but he cares about you.”
*
Baz is one of the last students to leave for break. He takes his time packing his leather trunk. He’s got most of our notes in there.… He still hasn’t decided whether to talk to his parents about all this, but he’s going to find out what he can. “Someone has to know something about Nicodemus.”
I’m lying on my bed, trying to think about how nice it will be to have the room to myself—and trying not to watch him. I clear my throat. “Be careful, yeah? I mean, we don’t know who this Nicodemus is, and if he’s dangerous, we don’t want him to twig that we’re looking for him.”
“I’ll talk only to people I trust,” Baz says.
“Yeah, but that’s it, isn’t it—we don’t know who to trust.”
“Do you trust Penelope?”
“Yes.”
“Do you trust her mother?”