She rolls her eyes. “We need to track down the Mage and make him tell us what’s been going on all summer. What he’s found out about the Humdrum.”
“He hasn’t found out anything. I already talked to him.”
She stops mid-bite. “When?”
“He came to my room this morning.”
“And when were you going to tell me this?”
I shrug again, licking butter off my thumb. “When you gave me a chance.”
Penny rolls her eyes again. (Penny rolls her eyes a lot.) “He didn’t have anything to say?”
“Not about the Humdrum. He—” I look down at my plate, then quickly around us. “—he says the Old Families are causing trouble.”
She nods. “My mum says they’re trying to organize a vote of no confidence against him.”
“Can they do that?”
“They’re trying. And there’ve been duels all summer. Premal’s friend Sam got into it with one of the Grimm cousins after a wedding, and now he’s on trial.”
“Who is?”
“The Grimm.”
“For what?”
“Forbidden spells,” she says. “Banned words.”
“The Mage thinks I should go,” I say.
“What? Go where?”
“He thinks I should leave Watford.”
Penny’s eyes are big. “To fight the Humdrum?”
“No.” I shake my head. “To just… go. He thinks I’d be safer somewhere else. He thinks everyone here would be safer if I left.”
Her eyes keep getting bigger. “Where would you go, Simon?”
“He didn’t say. Some secret place.”
“Like a hideout?” she asks.
“I guess.”
“But what about school?”
“He doesn’t think that’s important right now.”
Penny snorts. She thinks the Mage undervalues education at the best of times. Especially the classics. When he dropped the linguistics programme, she wrote a stern letter to the faculty board. “So he wants you to do what?”
“Go away. Stay safe. Train.”
She folds her arms. “On a mountain. With ninjas. Like Batman.”
I laugh, but she doesn’t laugh with me. She leans forward. “You can’t just leave, Simon. He can’t stash you in a hole your whole life.”
