Carry On (49 page)

Simon has those red wings again, and they're spread wide.

The Mage is here, too, clawing at Simon uselessly—nothing can move Snow when he looks like that, his shoulders hunched forward, and his jaw pushed out.

Bunce is on all fours, trying to lift her head. “What's he doing?” she rasps, then heaves again.

“I don't know,” I say.

“Should we try to stop him?”

“Do you think we could?”

The light is getting less intense. So is the dark.

I can hardly see the Humdrum anymore, but Simon still has something in a death grip.

The noise is changing, too—getting higher, like it's winding up, from a roar to a whine.

When the sound stops, my ears pop, and Simon falls forward to the ground, lit only by moonlight through the broken windows.

He falls, and he doesn't get up.

PENELOPE

For a moment, the only sound is Baz, howling.

Then the Mage falls on Simon's limp body.

“What have you done?” He's shaking Simon, and beating on his wings. “Give it to me!”

Simon lifts an arm to push the Mage off, and that sign of life is all it takes to unleash Baz. He moves so fast, my eyes can't focus on him until he's holding the Mage by the chest, his fangs open over the man's neck.

“No!” Simon whispers, trying to pull himself up by grabbing their legs.

The Mage points his silver-tipped wand at Baz, but Simon grabs it and holds it against his own heart. “No,” he says to Baz—or maybe to the Mage. “Stop!”

The three of them twist and stumble. The Mage is covered in blood, and Baz's mouth is full of teeth.

“Give it to me!” the Mage shouts at Simon. Does he mean his wand?

“It's gone!” Simon cries, using the wand to hold himself up. “It's all gone!”

The Mage pushes his wand into Simon's chest. “Give it to me!”

Baz yanks at the Mage's hair, pulling him back.

“Stop!” Simon cries. “It's gone! It's over!”

No one is listening to him.

I hold out my ring hand and speak as loudly and clearly as I ever have, letting my magic rise up from the empty pit of my stomach—
“Simon says!”

Simon's next words ring out, dense with magic—
“
Stop it, stop hurting me!
”

The Mage jerks away from him, then sags in Baz's arms.

Baz steps back, confused, and lets the Mage drop to the floor. Then Baz reaches for Simon, but Simon is kneeling over the Mage, grasping at his chest.

“I … I think he's dead. Penny! I think I killed him. Oh God,” Simon sobs. “Oh Merlin. Penny!”

I'm still shaking, but I crawl across the room towards them. “It's okay, Simon.”

“It's not okay—the Mage is dead. Why is he dead?”

I don't know why he's dead.

I don't know what's happening.

“Maybe that's the only way he could stop hurting you,” I say.

“But I didn't mean to kill him!” Simon cries, holding the Mage up, his arms around his back.

“Technically, it was Bunce who killed him,” Baz says, but he says it gently, and there are tears in his eyes.

“He's dead,” Simon says. “The Mage is dead.”

 

84

LUCY

I didn't know that something was wrong; I'd never been pregnant before. And no one had ever been pregnant with you, Simon.

The books say that you'll feel butterfly wings and twitches. A quickening. I felt so much more.

I felt you humming inside me. Busy and bright. I felt flushed from my belly to my fingertips.

Davy never left my side. He cooked for me. He cast blessings over us both.

And maybe you'll think that kindness was just for the ritual's sake. But I think he cared for me. I think he cared for you.…

I think he wanted us both standing beside him in the bright future he was building. A new World of Mages.

*   *   *

Pregnant women are always tired.

They can't hold down their meals. They feel peaked and light-headed.

One day I went out to feed our new chickens, and I realized I couldn't get back to the house. I didn't have enough energy to take another step.

I dropped to my knees, then leaned slowly forward, trying to protect you. Then I felt my lights blinking out.

Davy was inside, taking a nap. When he woke up, he found me there, red and thirsty. He carried me into the house, ranting about what could have happened and why I hadn't cast for help. But my magic had gone thin—it'd been weeks since I cast a spell. When I'd tried lately, it felt like I was knocking on a hollow box. Everything that was there before just
wasn't
anymore.

Everyone's magic goes a bit wonky when they're pregnant.

I felt better the next morning.

And worse the next.

The pulling in my stomach had gotten stronger, like a crank that kept tightening. I felt like I couldn't stay in the cottage, but I couldn't make it to the door.

“He needs air,” I told Davy, and he didn't argue.

He took me out to the empty garden and lay with me in the grass. I needed to feel the ground beneath me, and the air, and the sun.

“Better,” I told Davy, still feeling the crank turn.

*   *   *

When I was alone, I talked to you.

I told you about your family. About your grandparents. The cottage. About Watford, where your father and I met.

I named you.

“Simon,” I said to Davy. We knew you were a boy then.

“All right,” he said. “Why?”

“It's a good name, it's a wise name.”

“Is it a saviour's name?”

“If he's the Great Mage, won't his name automatically be a saviour's name, whatever we choose?”

“Good point,” he said. “Simon.”

“Simon Snow.”

“What's that?”

“His middle name. Simon
Snow.
”

“Why on earth?”

“Because I like it. And because everyone should have a silly middle name.”

“What's yours?”

“Winifred.”

We laughed until it was too much for me.

*   *   *

Everyone feels tired when they're pregnant. Everyone feels sick. And strange.

“How do you feel?” Davy would ask.

“Good,” I'd say.

“How's our boy?”

“Hungry.”

I never told Davy the truth—what could he have done to help me? What would he have done if I'd said:

“I feel like an empty hallway, Davy. Like a wind tunnel. Like there's something inside of me, and it isn't just eating me, it's eating everything. But not ‘eating,' that's not the right word. Consuming, sucking, devouring. How long does it take for a star to collapse? How many trillions of years?”

*   *   *

Maybe I shouldn't tell you all this. It wasn't what I came back to tell you.

I don't want you to think that it was your fault.

You're the child we would have had anyway, Simon. You were ours, in every way. And none of it is your fault. We made you this powerful—like starting a fire in the middle of the forest. We made you this hungry.

*   *   *

In the end, I just wanted to see you.

And I thought maybe—maybe when you were born, I'd get some of myself back.

I should have asked Davy to get help when my labour came on. But we couldn't risk someone finding out what we'd done.

You came on the solstice. And you came so easily, I swear you didn't want to cause me any more pain.

Your father held you up to me and covered both our faces with kisses. He was the most powerful magician in the world before you, and he cast every safeguard he knew over our heads.

I saw you.

I held you.

I wanted you.

That's what I came back to tell you. I loved you before I met you, and I loved you more the moment I held you. And I never meant to leave you so soon.

I never would have left you.

Simon, Simon.

My rosebud boy.

 

85

PENELOPE

We sit there, together, I'm not sure how long. All of us past the point of sorrow and exhaustion and relief.

Then Simon takes off his suit jacket—it tears around the wings—and spreads it over the Mage's torso. He starts crying again, and Baz pulls him into his arms. Simon lets him.

“It's okay,” Baz says. “It's all okay now.” One arm is tight around Simon's back, and the other is smoothing his hair out of his face. “You did it, didn't you?” Baz whispers. “You defeated the Humdrum. You saved the day, you courageous fuck. You absolute nightmare.”

“I gave him my magic, Baz. It's all gone.”

“Who needs magic,” Baz says. “I'm going to turn you into a vampire and make you live with me forever.”

Simon's shoulders are heaving.

Baz keeps talking. “Think about it, Simon. Super strength. X-ray vision.”

Simon lifts his head. “You don't have X-ray vision.”

Baz raises an eyebrow. His hair is in his face, and his hands are bleeding.

“I killed him,” Simon says.

“It's going to be okay.” Baz wraps both arms around him. “It's all right, love.”

Everything is starting to make sense.

EPILOGUE

 

 

PENELOPE

I sent a little bird to my mum. There were a bunch of them around—they'd come in through the broken windows and were fluttering around the Mage's body.

We were all pretty wrecked, Simon, Baz, and me. I fell asleep right there. Between two corpses, that's how exhausted I was.

Simon tried to help Ebb, but she was cold. Gone. He didn't cast any spells on her—not even to cover her up—and I thought he must just be as exhausted as Baz and I were, out of magic for once in his life. I didn't understand until much later that his magic was gone for good.

Baz was exhausted
and
thirsty. All the blood everywhere—Ebb's, I think—was making him mental. Finally he started feeding on the birds. Which was disturbing, but like, not half as disturbing as everything else that had happened, and neither Simon nor I tried to stop him.

Mum showed up after a while—with Premal, of all people; he'd been helping her look for me. We were asleep by then, so Mum and Premal thought we were
all
dead. When I sat up, Mum was pale as a Visitor. I think it was like she'd walked into her greatest fear for me.

Premal wept when he saw the Mage.

Mum took one look at the Mage, cast a spell to preserve his body for the investigation, then never looked at him again.

She called Dad and Dr. Wellbelove, and a few others from the Coven, then took Simon and Baz and me to their room in the tower. (Mum's the reason I can get in; she broke the ward when Dad lived in Mummers House, and now all the female Bunces can enter.) Premal brought us tea and Hobnobs, and the three of us fell asleep again.

When I woke up, I told Mum about Agatha. I thought she might still be out there in the snow.

When Baz woke up, he called his parents.

When Simon woke up, he wouldn't talk. Just drank all the tea we gave him and clung to Baz's arm.

*   *   *

I'm not sure what history will say about us. Will they say that Simon killed the Mage? That I did?

I hope that Baz gets credit for ending the war.

The Old Families were still raring to go when Baz went home, even though the Mage was already dead and Simon was powerless—and nobody knew it yet, but the Humdrum was gone, too.

Mum thought the Grimms and Pitches might take the opportunity to seize control of everything.

But Baz went home, the Coven reconvened, there were new elections, and the war just never happened.

Mum's the headmistress now. Officially. The Coven appointed her.

She tried to talk me into going back to Watford, to finish my diploma. And if Simon had wanted to go back, maybe I would have made the effort. But there were just too many bad memories there. Every time I try to cross the drawbridge, I get sick to my stomach. I don't know how Baz manages it.

Agatha says she's never going back. “Over my dead body,” she says. “Which is how I would have ended up if I'd stayed there.”

 

 

BAZ

Today's my leaving ceremony. I'm top of our class—there was no competition after Bunce dropped out—so I have to give a speech.

I told Simon not to come. It's a bit bleak, being surrounded by magicians all the time, when you can't even feel magic.

I didn't want him to come to Watford and think about all the things he isn't anymore. Not the Mage's Heir. Not a mage at all.

He's still everything else he's always been—brave, honest, inflammably handsome (even with that fucking tail)—but I don't think he wants to hear all that.