“They won’t kill you—you’ll be a guest. I’ll even cast the spell if you want. ‘Be our guest.’”
“I can’t stay in your house. Are you kidding me?”
“Snow, we’ve lived in the same room for seven years. How can you have a problem with this?”
“You’re mad!” I say, closing the door.
Completely off his nut.
***
“Your mum doesn’ttrustme?” I say.
We’re walking down the hall, and Penelope immediately starts shushing me with her hand. “Shedoestrust you,” she says. “She trusts you completely. She knows that you’re honest and forthright, and that if you hear something you shouldn’t, you’ll go right to the Mage with it.”
“I wouldn’t!”
“You might, Simon.”
“Penny!”
“Shhhhh.”
“Penny,”I try again, more quietly, “I’d never do anything to get your mother in trouble with the Mage. And I can’t imagine she’s done anything thatwouldget her in trouble with the Mage.”
“She’s sent his Men away again,” Penny says. “Premal says the Mage himself is coming to the house next time.”
“Then I should be there,” I say. “He’d never hurt her in front of me.”
Penny stops in her tracks. “Simon. Do you really think the Mage would hurt my mother at all?”
I stop, too. “No. Of course he wouldn’t.”
She leans in. “Mum’s filing an appeal with the Coven; she thinks this will work itself out. But youknowI need to research the Watford Tragedy while I’m home, and there’s no way Mum will let you into our library with everything that’s happening. She calls you Mini-Mage.”
“Why doesn’t she like me?”
“She likes you,” Penny says, rolling her eyes. “It’s him she doesn’t like.”
“Your mother does not like me, Penny.”
“She just thinks you attract trouble. And you do, Simon. Possibly literally.”
“Yeah, but I can’t help it.”
Penelope starts walking again. “You are preaching to the head of the choir.”
It’s not that I mind being alone at Watford—I don’t mind itmuch. But nobody’s here on Christmas Day. I’ll have to break in to the kitchen to eat. I guess I could ask Cook Pritchard for the key…
We get to my next lesson, and I intentionally slam my shoulder into the wall next to the door. (People who tell you that slamming and bashing into things won’t make you feel better haven’t slammed or bashed enough.) “Is that what we’re calling it now?” I ask. “‘The Watford Tragedy’?”
It takes Penny a second to backtrack in our conversation. “It’s what they called it at the time,” she says. “What does it matter what we call it?”
“Nothing. Just. We’re doing this because somebody died. Baz’s mum died. ‘The Watford Tragedy’ makes it sound like it happened to people far away who don’t matter to us.”
“Tell the Mage you’re staying here for Christmas,” she says. “He’ll want to spend it with you.”
That makes me laugh.
