I close my eyes now and take in as much air as I can:
Feathers. Dust. Lavender.
Water, from the moat.
Plus that slightly acrid smell that Baz says is the merwolves. (Don’t get Baz started on the merwolves; sometimes he leans out our window and spits into the moat, just to spite them.)
If he were here already, I’d hardly smell anything over his posh soap.… I take a deep breath now, trying to catch a hint of cedar.
There’s a rattle at the door, and I jump to my feet, holding my hand over my hip and calling again for the Sword of Mages. That’s three times already today; maybe I should just leave it out. The incantation is the only spell I always get right, perhaps because it’s not like other spells. It’s more of a pledge: “In justice. In courage. In defence of the weak. In the face of the mighty. Through magic and wisdom and good.”
It doesn’t have to appear.
The Sword of Mages is mine, but it belongs to no one. It doesn’t come unless it trusts you.
The hilt materializes in my grip, and I swing the sword up to my shoulder just as Penelope pushes the door open.
I let the sword drop. “You shouldn’t be able to do that,” I say.
She shrugs and falls onto Baz’s bed.
I can feel myself smiling. “You shouldn’t even be able to get past the front door.”
Penelope shrugs again and pushes Baz’s pillow up under her head.
“If Baz finds out you touched his bed,” I say. “He’s going to kill you.”
“Let him try.”
I twist my wrist just so, and the sword disappears.
“You look a fright,” she says.
“Ran into a goblin on the way in.”
“Can’t they just vote on their next king?” Her voice is light, but I can tell she’s sizing me up. The last time she saw me, I was a bundle of spells and rags. The last time I saw Penny, everything was falling apart.…
We’d just escaped the Humdrum, fled back to Watford, and burst into the White Chapel in the middle of the end-of-year ceremony—poor Elspeth was accepting an award for eight years of perfect attendance. I was still bleeding (from my pores, no one knew why). Penny was crying. Her family was there—because everybody’s families were there—and her mum started screaming at the Mage. “Look at them—this is your fault!” And then Premal got between them and started screaming back. People thought the Humdrum must be right behind Penny and me, and were running from the Chapel with their wands out. It was my typical end-of-year chaos times a hundred, and it felt worse than just chaotic. It felt like the end.
Then Penelope’s mum spelled their whole family away, even Premal. (Probably just to their car, but it was still really dramatic.)
I haven’t talked to Penny since.
Part of me wants to grab her right now and pat her down head to toe, just to make sure she’s whole—but Penny hates scenes as much as her mum loves them. “Don’t say hello, Simon,” she’s told me. “Because then we’ll have to say good-bye, and I can’t stand good-byes.”
My uniform is laid out at the end of my bed, and I start putting it away, piece by piece. New grey trousers. New green-and-purple striped tie …
Penelope sighs loudly behind me. I walk back to my bed and flop down, facing her, trying not to smile from ear to ear.
Her face is twisted into a pout.
“What can possibly have got under your skin already?” I ask.
“Trixie,” she huffs. Trixie’s her roommate. Penny says she’d trade Trixie for a dozen evil, plotting vampires. In a heartbeat.
“What’s she done?”
“Come back.”
“You were expecting otherwise?”
Penny adjusts Baz’s pillow. “Every year, she comes back more manic than she was the year before. First she turned her hair into a dandelion puff, then she cried when the wind blew it away.”
I giggle. “In Trixie’s defence,” I say, “she is half pixie. And most pixies are a little manic.”
“Oh, and doesn’t she know it. I swear she uses it as an excuse. I can’t survive another year with her. I can’t be trusted not to spell her head into a dandelion and blow.”
I swallow another laugh and try hard not to beam at her. Great snakes, it’s good to see her. “It’s your last year,” I say. “You’ll make it.”
Penny’s eyes get serious. “It’s our last year,” she says. “Guess what you’ll be doing next summer.…”
“What?”
“Hanging out with me.”
I let my grin free. “Hunting the Humdrum?”
“Fuck the Humdrum,” she says.
We both laugh, and I kind of grimace, because the Humdrum looks just like me—an 11-year-old version of me. (If Penny hadn’t seen him, too, I’d think I’d hallucinated the whole thing.)
I shudder.
Penny sees it. “You’re too thin,” she says.
“It’s the tracksuit.”
“Change, then.” She already has. She’s wearing her grey pleated uniform skirt and a red jumper. “Go on,” she says, “it’s almost teatime.”
I smile again and jump up off the bed, grabbing a pair of jeans and a purple sweatshirt that says WATFORD LACROSSE. (Agatha plays.)
Penny grabs my arm when I walk past Baz’s bed on the way to the bathroom. “It’s good to see you,” she whispers.