Carry On (15 page)

Her perfect pink chin is thrust forward and quivering. Her arms are still crossed.

“You're my girl, Agatha,” I say.

“No. Penelope's your girl.”

“You're my—”

Her arms fall. “What Simon, what am I?”

I knot my hands in my hair and gnash my teeth. “You're my future!”

Agatha's face is contorted and wet with tears. Still lovely, though. “Am I supposed to want that?” she asks.

“
I
want it.”

“You just want a happy ending.”

“Merlin, Agatha, don't you?”

“No! I don't! I want to be someone's
right now,
Simon, not their happily ever after. I don't want to be the prize at the end. The thing you get if you beat all the bosses.”

“You're twisting everything. You're making it ugly.”

She shrugs again. “Maybe.”

“Agatha…” I hold my hand out to her. The one that isn't holding Baz's handkerchief. “We can fix this.”

“Probably,” she says. “But I don't want to.”

I can't think of what more to say.

Agatha can't leave me. She can't leave me
for him.
Oh, he'd love that—he'd love to have that over me. Damn it all, he isn't even here to have that over me.

“I love you, Agatha,” I say, believing that might work. Those words are practically magic in themselves. I say them again: “I
love
you.”

Agatha closes her eyes against the sight of me. She turns her face away. “I love you, too, Simon. I think that's why I went along with this for so long.”

“You don't mean that,” I say.

“I do,” she says. “Please don't fight me.”

“You can't leave me for
him.
”

She looks back at me one more time. “I'm not leaving you for Baz, Simon. He's gone. I just don't want to be with you anymore. I don't want to ride off into the sunset with you.… That's not my happy anything.”

*   *   *

I don't argue with her.

I don't stay out on the ramparts.

My cheeks are hot and itchy, and that's always a bad sign.

I rush past Agatha to the stairs, and run down them so quickly that I miss a few and keep leaping down to the next landing.

And then I'm just sort of floating down the stairs. Falling without actually falling.

I've never done that before, and it's weird.

I make a note to tell Penny, then a note not to tell her, but I run towards the Cloisters anyway because I don't want to go back to my empty room, and the drawbridge is up, and I don't know where else to go.

I stand under Penny's window and think about how I could just call her if the Mage hadn't banned mobile phones at Watford two years ago.

I still feel hot.

I try to shake some of the magic off, and a few sparks catch on the dry leaves beneath me. I stamp them out.

I wonder if Agatha is still up on the ramparts—I can't believe she'd say what she said. For a moment, I wonder if she's been possessed. But her eyes weren't all black. (Were her eyes all black? It was too dark to see.)

She can't leave me like this. She can't
leave
me.

We were settled. We were sorted.

We were endgame. (If I get an endgame.) (You
have
to pretend that you get an endgame. You have to carry on like you will; otherwise, you can't carry on at all.)

Agatha's parents like me. They might even love me. Her dad calls me “son.” Not like
“I think of you as my son,
” but like,
“How are you, son?”
Like I'm
a
son. The sort of guy who could be someone's son.

And her mother says I'm handsome. That's really all her mum ever says to me.
“Don't you look handsome, Simon.”

What would she say to Baz?
“Don't you look handsome, Basil. Please don't slaughter my family with your hideous fangs.”

Agatha's father, Dr. Wellbelove, hates the Pitches. He says they're cruel and elitist. That they tried to keep his grandfather out of Watford because of a lisp.

Fucking hell, I can't—I just. I can't.

I lean back against a tree and put my hands on my thighs, letting my head fall forward and my magic course through me. When I look down at my legs, it's like I've got no boundary. Like I'm blurred at the edges.

I have to fix this. With Agatha.

I'll say whatever she wants me to say.

I'll kill Baz, so that he isn't an option.

I'll tell her, I'll change her mind—
how can she say that there's no such thing as happy endings?
That's all I've ever been working towards. The happy ending is when things are going to begin for me.

I
have
to fix this.

“All right there, Simon?” It's Rhys. He's coming up along the path from the library in his wheelchair.

I look up. “All right. Hiya.” I'm not all right. My face is flushed, and I think I'm crying. Do my edges look blurred to him? He hurries past me.

I let Rhys get a head start, then follow him back to Mummers House.

I should sleep this off.…

I'll make sure that I power down—that I'm not going to set my bed on fire—then I'll sleep it off.

And tomorrow, I'll fix it.

 

27

SIMON

I'm not sleeping this time when I hear the noises.

I'm just lying in my bed, thinking about Baz.

What did he say to Agatha? What did he promise?

Maybe he didn't have to say anything. Maybe he just had to be himself. Smarter than I am. Better looking. Wealthier. Fucking horsier—he could go to all her events and wear the right suit and the right shoes. He'd know which necktie went with which month of the year.

If he weren't a vampire, Baz'd be bloody perfect.

Bloody
perfect. I roll over and press my face into my pillow.

There's a creaking then, and a cold wind. I try to ignore it. I've been taken in by this feeling before.
There's no one here.
No one at the window, no one at the door. The cold creeps up under my bedclothes, and I pull up the blankets, rolling onto my back—

And see a woman standing at the end of my bed.

I recognize her. It's the same person who was standing at the window that night. And I recognize her as a Visitor now; I've seen enough of them. She's come from behind the Veil.

“You're not him,”
she says to me. Her voice is cold—actually cold, like it starts in my bones and icily flushes up through my skin—and woeful.

I want to summon my sword, but I don't. “Who are you?” I say.

“I keep coming. This is
his
place. This is where I'm called. But there's only you here.…”

She's tall and wearing formal robes, like a solicitor's or a professor's, and her dark hair is pulled up into a thick bun. Even though she's translucent, I can see that her robes are red, that her skin is dark olive, and her eyes are grey. I recognize her from her portrait outside the Mage's office—

Natasha Pitch, Watford's last headmistress.

“Where is he?”
she asks.
“Where is my son?”

“I don't know,” I answer.

“Did you hurt him?”

“No.”

“You can't lie to the dead.”

“I don't want to.”

She looks over at his empty bed, and her sadness is so potent that in that moment, I'd do anything to get him back for her. (I'd do anything to bring him back.)

“The Veil is closing. It will be twenty years before I can see my son again.”
She turns back to me and pushes forward. She's starting to fade. They all fade; Penelope says they can't stay long, two minutes tops.

“You'll have to do.”

“Do what?” She's so cold, I can't stand having her this close to me.

She reaches out and takes my shoulders—her hands like ice, her breath a painful chill on my face.

“Tell my son,”
she says fiercely.
“Tell him that my killer walks—Nicodemus knows. Tell Basilton to find Nico and bring me peace. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I say. “Find Nico.…”

“Nicodemus. Tell him.”

“I will,” I say. “I'll tell him.”

Her face falls.
“My son,”
she says, cold tears gathering in her eyes.
“Give him this.”
She leans forward and presses a kiss into my temple. No one has ever kissed me there. No one has ever kissed me anywhere but on my mouth.

“My son,”
she says, and it sounds like a whisper, but I think it's a shout—I think she's just fading now.

I lie in bed, trembling, after she's gone. The room is so cold. I should build a fire, but I don't want to open my eyes.

*   *   *

I must fall sleep, because the cold wakes me again, a fresh wave of it, deep in the night. It hangs like a cloud of chill over my bed, then seeps into me, touching me, cradling me.

“My son, my son,”
I hear.

There's no figure this time, just this everywhere cold. And the voice is higher and thinner, a wail on the wind.

“My son, my son. My rosebud boy. I never would have left you. He told me we were stars.”

“I'll tell him,” I say. I shout it—“I'll tell him!”

I just want her to go away.

“Simon, Simon … my rosebud boy.”

I close my eyes and pull up my blankets. But the cold is on me, it's in me. “I'll tell him!”

If Baz ever comes back, I will.

 

28

SIMON

I can't wait to get out of my room in the morning. I run out the door with my tie hanging around my neck and my jumper thrown over my shoulder.

I have no plans to come back. Ever. There's no room for me in there with all the ghosts. Let Baz's mum hang out with his empty bed; I'm tired of staring at it.

I have to tell Penny what happened. She'll be disappointed that I didn't drill the ghost with questions.
“Sorry about your missing son, Mrs. Pitch, but since Baz isn't here, we may as well use this time to advance magickal science.…”

Penny's already got tea and toast at our table when I get there. I grab a plate of kippers with scrambled eggs.

“We need to talk,” I say, dropping into a chair across from her.

“Good,” she says. “I thought you were going to make me beat it out of you.”

“You know already? How do you know?”

“Well, I know
something
happened. Agatha's sitting alone, and she won't even look at me.”

“Agatha?” I look up. Agatha's sitting by herself on the other side of the dining hall, reading a book while she eats her cereal.

“So?” Penny asks. “Is this about me sleeping in your room? Because I can talk to her about that.”

“No,” I say. “No … we broke up.”

Penny's about to take a bite of toast, but she pulls it back. “You broke up? Why?”

“I don't know. I think she's in love with Baz.” That reminds me. I'm wearing the same trousers as yesterday. I reach into the pocket and feel his handkerchief.

“Oh,” Penelope says. “I guess I can see that. I mean—”

I push my face forward. “You can
see
that? How can you see that? My girlfriend falling in love with my sworn enemy? My girlfriend, who's good, falling in love with my enemy, who's completely evil?”

“Well, your relationship has had better … years, Simon. You and Agatha both seemed like you were just going through the motions.”

“And ‘the motions' include cheating on me with Baz?”

“
Did
she cheat on you?”

“I don't know.”

Penny sighs. Like she feels sorry for me. She's unbearably patronizing sometimes. “Agatha's not really in love with Baz. She's just looking for something that sticks. It's romantic to be in love with a dead vampire.”

“Dead?”

“You know what I mean,” Penny says. “Missing. Seriously missing.”

Was Baz dead? Wouldn't his mother know if he were? Wouldn't she have seen him behind the Veil? Maybe death is a big place. (It would have to be.) Maybe she's been looking for Baz here because she hasn't seen him yet on the other side.

I jab at my eggs a few times, then drop my fork.

In all of this, I've never seriously considered that Baz might be dead. Hiding, yes—plotting. Maybe even kidnapped or hurting, but … not dead.

He promised to make my life miserable.

When the doors to the dining hall fly open, it's almost like I'm making it happen, like I've summoned it. Cold air pours into the room. It's bright outside, in the courtyard, and at first, all we can see is the outline of a person.

This has happened so many times since school started that no one is scared now, not even the littluns.

When the figure steps forward, I recognize him at once.

Tall. Black hair swept back from his forehead. Lips curled up in a sneer … I know that face as well as my own.

Baz.

I stand up too quickly, knocking my chair over. Across the room, a mug falls to the floor and shatters—I glance over and see that Agatha is standing, too.

Baz steps towards us.

Baz.