Baz tries to take her shoulder. “Is Simon here?”
Agatha pulls away from him, jogging backwards, then back towards us. “He just got here,” she says. “But the Mage is evil. He’s fighting the goatherd.”
“Ebb?” I say.
“And he tried to hurt me. He was going to do something, take something. He wants Simon.”
“Come on!” Baz yells.
“Come with us,” I say to Agatha. “Come help us.”
“I can’t,” she says, shaking her head. “I can’t.”
And then she runs away.
BAZ
Wellbelove runs in one direction, and Bunce runs in the other.
There’s a noise from the school—like artificial thunder, like a hurricane on a tin roof.
I chase after Penny across the drawbridge. As soon as we make it to the courtyard, it’s immediately clear where Simon is: All the windows have shattered in the White Chapel. There’s smoke pouring out, and the walls themselves seem to be shimmering, like heat on the horizon.
The air is thick with Simon’s magic. That burning green smell.
Bunce stumbles, coughing. I take her arm and lean against her, propping her up. I’d be surprised if she could cast a cliché right now. “All right, Bunce?”
“Simon,” she says.
“I know. Can you take it?”
She nods, pushing away from me and shaking her ponytail resolutely.
The miasma gets worse, the closer we get to the Chapel. Inside the building, it’s unnaturally dark, like something more than light is missing. I think I feel the Humdrum’s presence, the scratch and the suck of him, but my wand stays alive in my hand.
Something rolls through me—like a wave in the air, in the magic—and Bunce pitches forward again. I catch her.
“We don’t have to keep going,” I say.
“Yes,” she says, “we do. I do.”
I nod. I don’t let go of her this time. We walk together towards the worst of it, to what must be the back of the Chapel, through doorways, down halls.
My stomach roils.
There’s no more air, just Simon.
Bunce pushes open another door, and we both throw our arms up in front of our eyes. It’s bright as fire inside.
“Up there!” Bunce shouts.
I try to look where she’s pointing. The light stutters into blackness, then back again. It seems to be coming from an opening in the ceiling—twenty feet above us, at least.
Bunce holds out a hand to cast, but clutches her stomach instead.
I wrap my left arm around her, then point my wand at the trapdoor.“On love’s light wings!”
It’s a hard spell and an old spell, and it works only if you understand the Great Vowel Shift of the Sixteenth Century—and if you’re stupidly in love.
