I pick up a heavy fountain pen. There’re a few sheets of paper on his desk, lists of dates, and I turn one over and write:
Sir, I’d like to talk to you when you have a moment. About everything. About my roommate.
And then I add:
(T. Basilton Grimm-Pitch.)
And then I wish I hadn’t, because of course the Mage knows who my roommate is, and now it sort of looks like I’ve signed it. So then Idosign it:
Simon
“Simon,” someone says, and I startle, dropping the pen.
Miss Possibelf is standing in the doorway, but doesn’t step inside the office.
Miss Possibelf is our Magic Words teacher, and the dean of students. She’s my favourite teacher. She’s not exactly friendly, but I think she genuinely cares, and she seems more human sometimes than the Mage. (Even though she’s not exactly human, I don’t think…) She’s much more likely to notice if you’re feeling sick or miserable, or if your thumb is hanging on by a thread.
“Miss Possibelf,” I say. “The Mage isn’t in.”
“I see that—do you have business here?”
“I thought he might be here. There were a few things I was going to talk to him about.”
“He was here this morning, but he’s left again.” Miss Possibelf is tall and broad, with a thick silver plait hanging down her back. She’s impossibly graceful, and impossibly eloquent, and if she’s talking to you directly, her voice kind of tickles your ears. “You could talk to me,” she says.
She still doesn’t come in—she must not have permission to cross the wards.
“Well,” I say. “It’s partly about Baz. Basil. He hasn’t come back to school.”
“I’ve noticed,” she says.
“Do you know if he’s coming back?”
She looks down at her wand, a walking stick, and moves the handle in a circle. “I’m not sure.”
“Have you talked to his parents?” I ask.
She looks up at me. “That’s confidential.”
I nod and kick the side of the Mage’s desk—then realize what I’m doing and take a step away from it, tangling my fingers into the front of my hair.
Miss Possibelf clears her throat prettily; even across the room, it sends a buzz up the back of my neck.
“Icantell you,” she says, “that it’s school policy to contact a student’s parents when a child doesn’t return for the term…”
“So you have talked to the Pitches?”
She narrows her dark brown eyes. “What do you hope to learn, Simon?”
I drop my hand in frustration. “The truth. Is he gone? Is he sick? Has the war started?”
“The truth…”
I keep waiting for her to blink. Even magicians blink.
“The truth,” she says, “is that I don’t have answers to any of those questions. His parents have been contacted. They were aware that he wasn’t in school, but they didn’t elaborate. Mr. Pitch is of legal age—like you, technically an adult. If he doesn’t attend this school, I’m not responsible for his welfare.”
“But you can’t just ignore it when a student doesn’t come back to school! What if he’s planning something?”
