She’s still biting her lip.
“Agatha…” I say.
“It’s about Christmas,” she says.
She pushes her hair behind her ears. She has perfectly straight hair that parts in the middle and naturally frames her face. (Penny says it’s a spell. Agatha says it isnot.Penny says beauty spells are nothing to beashamedof.)
“My dad wants you to know that of course you’re still welcome at our house for Christmas,” Agatha says.
“Oh,” I say. “Good.”
“But I think we both know how uncomfortable that would be,” she goes on. She looks very uncomfortable, just saying it. “For both of us.”
“Right,” I say. It would be uncomfortable, I guess.
“It would ruin Christmas,” she says.
I stop myself before I can say,“Would it? Would itreally,Agatha? It’s a big house, and I’ll stay in the TV room the whole time.”
“Right,” I say instead.
“So I told him that you were probably going to stay with the Bunces.”
Agatha knows I can’t stay with the Bunces. Penelope’s mum can only take about two or three days of me before she starts treating me like a Great Dane who can’t help knocking things over with its tail.
The Bunces’ house isn’t small, but it’s full of people—and stacks and stacks of stuff. Books, papers, toys, dishes. There’s no way not to be underfoot. You’d have to be incorporeal not to knock anything over.
“Right,” I say to Agatha. “Okay.”
She looks at the floor. “I’m sure my parents will still send gifts.”
“I’ll send them a card.”
“That would be nice,” she says. “Thank you.” She pulls her satchel up over her shoulder and takes a step away from me—then stops and flips her hair out of her face. (It’s just a gesture; her hair is never in her face.) “Simon. It was amazing how you beat that dragon. You saved its life.”
I shrug. “Yeah, well, Baz did it, didn’t he? I would’ve slit its throat if I could have figured out how.”
“My dad says the Humdrum sent it.”
I shrug again.
“Merry Christmas, Simon,” Agatha says. Then she walks past me out the door.
50
SIMON
“You should really just let me stay in your room,” Penelope says. “It would make things easier.”
“No,”Baz and I say at once.
“Where would you sleep,” I ask, “the bathtub?”
The blackboard is still taking up the open area at the end of our beds, and there are stacks of books around it now. Every useful book in the Watford library has made its way to our room, thanks to Baz and Penelope—and not a one of them properly checked out, I’m sure.
We’ve been working here every night, though we don’t have much but a mess to show for it.
“I don’t mind sleeping in the bath,” Penny says. “I could spell it squishy.”
