“But you’re probably eighteen now. Maybe nineteen?”
“They put 1997 on my papers.”
Baz nods. “Good—1997, shortly before the holes were discovered. And when did you realize you were a magician?”
Penny’s paying attention now. She and I have never talked about this. I don’t like to talk about this.
“I didn’t realize it,” I say. “The Mage told me.”
Baz is pinning me to the wall with his eyes. “But how did the Mage know? How did he find you?”
I clear my throat. “I went off.” They both know what that means. But I didn’t, not at 11. I woke up in the middle of the night, during a vicious nightmare—I’d gone to bed hungry, and in my dream, my stomach was on fire. I woke up, breathless, and magic was pouring out of me. Blasting out. The children’s home was burnt to the ground, and everyone in it woke up streets away. Unharmed, but still,streets away. (Once I watched a show about tornadoes in America, and they showed furniture that had been picked up and set in a yard miles away without breaking. It was like that.)
“You lit up the magickal atmosphere like a Christmas tree,” Baz says.
“Like a carpet bomb,” Penny chimes in. “My mum actually threw up when it happened.”
“When?”Baz says. “When did it happen?”
“August,” I say. I know he already knows this. “The year we started school.”
“August,” Baz says, “2008.” He walks around the room. “Here,” he says, pointing at a dead spot on the map. “And here.” He points at another.
Penny and I stare at the map.
Then she steps forward. She points at a string circle. “And in Newcastle…” she says softly. “And a bunch of tiny ones on the coast. The holes changed that year. My dad says they metastasized.”
“But—but I wasn’t any of those places!” I sputter. “I’veneverbeen at the site of a new dead spot before last night.”
Baz turns to me. “I don’t think you have to be there. To make it happen.”
“Simon,” Penny asks, “when did you go off on the chimera?”
“Our fifth year,” Baz says. “Autumn 2012.”
“Here,” Penny says, pointing. “And a big one over there.”
“Are you saying I’m the Humdrum?” I step away from them.“Because I’mnotthe Humdrum.”
Baz meets my eyes. “I know. I know you’re not. But Simon, listen. The Humdrumtoldus—he said he doesn’t take the magic, that he’s ‘what’s left when you’re done.’”
“I don’t even know what that means, Baz!” I feel like I might go off right now. My fingertips are buzzing.
“It means, the Humdrum doesn’t take the magic, Simon—you do.”
Penny gasps. “Simon. The first time you went off, you were eleven years old—”
“Exactly,” Baz says. “Probably wearing a shitty T-shirt and cast-off jeans—and bouncing that bloody ball.”
They’re looking at each other now. “Simon went off,” Penny says, “and he sucked up so much magic—”
Baz nods eagerly.
“—he tore a hole in the magickal atmosphere!” Penny says.
“A Simon-shaped hole…” Baz agrees.
I hold my head in both hands, but it still doesn’t make sense. “Are you saying I created an evil twin?”
