“Maybe I’m not supposed to have a wand. Maybe I’m supposed to have a ring like you. Or a … a wrist thingy like mangy old Elspeth.”
“Oh, Simon.” Penelope frowned. “You shouldn’t call her that. She can’t help her fur—her father was the Witch King of Canus.”
“No, I know, I just…”
“It’s easier for the rest of us,” she said, soothing. “Magicians’ instruments stay in families. They’re passed from generation to generation.”
“Right,” he said, “just like magic. It doesn’t make sense, Penelope—my parents must have been magicians.”
He’d tried to talk to her about this before, and that time it had made her look just as sad.
“Simon … they couldn’t have been. Magicians would never abandon their own child. Never. Magic is too precious.”
Simon looked away from her and flicked his wand again. It felt like something dead in his hands.
“I think Elspeth’s fur is pretty,” Penelope said. “She looks soft.”
He shoved the wand into his pocket and stood up. “You just want a puppy.”
—from chapter 21, Simon Snow and the Third Gate, copyright ? 2004 by Gemma T. Leslie
FOURTEEN
Their dad came to pick them up the day before Thanksgiving. When he pulled up in front of Pound Hall, Wren and Courtney were already sitting in the back of the Honda.
Wren and Cath usually sat in the backseat together. Their dad would complain that he felt like a cabdriver, and they’d say, “No, limo driver. Home, James.”
“Wow, look at this…,” he said when Cath sat in the front seat next to him. “Company.” She tried to smile.
Courtney and Wren were talking in the backseat—but with the radio up, Cath couldn’t hear them. Once they were on the interstate, she leaned over to her dad. “How’s Gravioli?” she asked.
“What?” He turned down the radio.
“Dad,” Wren said, “that’s our jam.”
“Sorry,” he said, shifting the volume to the backseat. “What’s that?” he asked Cath.
“Gravioli,” she said.
“Oh.” He made a face. “To hell with Gravioli. Did you know that it’s actually canned ravioli soaked in slimy brown gravy?”
“That sounds disgusting,” Cath said.
“It’s revolting,” he said. “It’s like dog food for people. Maybe that’s what we should have pitched.… ‘Do you secretly want to eat dog food? Does the smell of it make your mouth water?’”
Cath joined in, in her best announcer’s voice: “Is the only thing keeping you from eating dog food the fear that your neighbors will notice all the cans—and realize that you don’t have a dog?”
“Graaavioli,” her dad said, rounding out every vowel sound. “It’s dog food. For people.”
“You didn’t get the business,” Cath said. “I’m sorry.”
He shook his head for a little too long. “We did get it. Sometimes getting it is infinitely worse than not getting it. It was a shoot-out—six agencies. They picked us, then they rejected every good idea we had. And then, out of desperation, Kelly says in a client meeting. ‘Maybe there’s a bear who comes out of hibernation really hungry, and all it can say is Grrr. And then the bear gets a big bowl of delicious Grrravioli, and it turns into a human being.… ‘And the client just loved the idea, just fucking flipped, started shouting, ‘That’s it!’”
Cath glanced back to see if Courtney was listening. Their dad only cursed when he was talking about work. (And sometimes when he was manic.) He said that ad agencies were worse than submarines, all cussing and claustrophobia.
“So now we’re doing cartoon bears and Grrravioli,” he said.
“That sounds terrible.”
“It’s torture. We’re doing four TV spots. Four different bears turn into four different people—four, so we can cover our races. And then fucking Kelly asks if we should make the Asian guy a panda bear. And he was serious. Not only is that racist, panda bears don’t hibernate.”
Cath giggled.
“That’s what I have to say to my boss—‘It’s an interesting idea, Kelly, but panda bears don’t hibernate.’ And do you know what he says?”
Cath laughed. “Uh-uh. Tell me.”
“Don’t be so literal, Arthur.”
“No!”
“Yes!” Her dad laughed, shaking his head again, too fast, too long. “Working on this client is like making my brain dig its own grave.”
“Its own grrrave-ioli,” Cath said.
He laughed again. “It’s all right,” he said, tapping the steering wheel. “It’s money. Just money.”