Carry On

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.

And I find it hard to say, honestly.

It’s hard for us … to talk … sometimes. Lately. I don’t blame him. Life hasn’t exactly kept its promises to Simon Snow. Sometimes I think I should pick fights with him, just to restore his equilibrium.

Anyway. I don’t think he’d want to be here.

My mother gave the speech at her leavers day. It’s in the school archives—I found it, and I’m going to read from it today. It’s about magic, the gift of magic. And the responsibility.

And it’s about Watford. Why my mother loved it. She made this list of everything she’d miss. Like, the sour cherry scones and Elocution lessons, and the clover out on the Great Lawn.

I can’t say that I loved Watford like my mother did.

This was always the place that was taken from her. And the place where she was taken from me. It was like going to school in occupied territory.

Still—I knew I was coming back for my last term, even without Penny and Simon. I wasn’t going to be the first Pitch in recorded history to drop out of Watford.

*   *   *

The speeches are in the White Chapel. The stained glass has been repaired.

My aunt Fiona’s sitting in the front row. She whoops when I’m introduced, and I can see my father wince.

Fiona’s as cheerful lately as I’ve ever seen her. She didn’t know what to do with herself after the Mage died. I think she wanted to kill him again. (And again.) Then the Coven made her a vampire hunter, and everything turned around. She’s on some secret task force now and working undercover in Prague half the time. I’m moving into her flat when I leave school. My parents wanted me to go to Oxford with them—they’re living there, in our hunting lodge—but I couldn’t be that far from Simon. My father still isn’t ready to admit I have a boyfriend, and it would be too exhausting, living in a place where I have to pretend I’m not a vampire or hopelessly queer.

By the end of my speech, Fiona’s weeping and honking her nose into a handkerchief. My father isn’t crying, but he’s too choked up to properly speak to me after the ceremony. Just keeps clapping me on the back and saying, “Good man.”

“Come on, Basil,” Fiona says. “I’ll take you back to Chelsea and get you sozzled. Top shelf only.”

“I can’t,” I say. “Leavers ball tonight. I told the headmistress I’d be there.”

“Can’t pass up a chance to see yourself in a suit, can you.”

“I suppose not.”

“Ah, well. I’ll get you sozzled tomorrow, then. I’ll come back for you at teatime. Watch out for numpties.”

That’s Fiona’s standard farewell for me now. I hate it.

*   *   *

There are a few hours before the ball, so I take a quick walk in the hills behind the walls and gather a bouquet of yellow-eyed grass and irises, then head back across the drawbridge and into the now empty Chapel.

I make my way down into the Catacombs without bothering to light a torch. It’s been years since I’ve got lost down here.