“You’ve been quiet lately,” I said.
“There’s nothing more to say. Nobody’s listening.”
“I’m listening.”
“I brought my grievances before the Coven,” he said. “They laughed at me.”
“I’m sure they didn’t laugh, Davy—”
“You don’t have to laugh out loud to mock someone. They treated me like a child.”
“Well, you are a child. We both are.”
He looked directly into my eyes. There’s something about Davy’s eyes. They’re half magic. I could never look away.
“No, Lucy. We’re not.”
***
After that meeting with the Coven, Davy was always in the library, or bent over a book in the dining hall, dripping gravy over some four-hundred-year-old text.
Sometimes I’d sit with him, and sometimes he’d talk to me.
“Lucy, did you know that Watford used to have its own oracle? That’s the room at the top of the Chapel with the window that looks out over the school walls. The oracles worked there. They were as important as the headmasters.”
“When did that end?”
“Nineteen fourteen. It was an austerity measure. The idea was that oracles would donate their services as needed after that.”
“I don’t know any oracles,” I said.
“Well, it was the Watford oracle who trained other oracles. It’s a dead profession now. The library still has a whole wing for their prophecies—”
“Since when do you care about crystal balls and tarot cards?”
“I don’t care about children playing with tools they don’t understand, but this…” His eyes glittered. “Did you know that the potato famine was prophesied?”
“I did not.”
“And the Holocaust.”
“Really?When?”
“In 1511. And did you know that there’s only one vision that every oracle has had since the beginning of Watford?”
“I didn’t even know therewereoracles thirty seconds ago.”
“That there’s a great Mage coming.”
“Like the children’s song,” I said. “And one will come to end us, / and one will bring his fall, / let the greatest power of powers reign, / may it save us all.”
“Yes.”
“My grandmother used to talk about the Greatest Mage.”
“There are dozens of prophecies,” Davy said. “All about one mage, the Chosen One.”
“How do you know they’re all about the same person?” I ask. “And how do you know he—or she—hasn’t come and gone already.”
