“You don’t mean that,” I say.
“I do,” she says. “Please don’t fight me.”
“You can’t leave me forhim.”
She looks back at me one more time. “I’m not leaving you for Baz, Simon. He’s gone. I just don’t want to be with you anymore. I don’t want to ride off into the sunset with you… That’s not my happy anything.”
***
I don’t argue with her.
I don’t stay out on the ramparts.
My cheeks are hot and itchy, and that’s always a bad sign.
I rush past Agatha to the stairs, and run down them so quickly that I miss a few and keep leaping down to the next landing.
And then I’m just sort of floating down the stairs. Falling without actually falling.
I’ve never done that before, and it’s weird.
I make a note to tell Penny, then a note not to tell her, but I run towards the Cloisters anyway because I don’t want to go back to my empty room, and the drawbridge is up, and I don’t know where else to go.
I stand under Penny’s window and think about how I could just call her if the Mage hadn’t banned mobile phones at Watford two years ago.
I still feel hot.
I try to shake some of the magic off, and a few sparks catch on the dry leaves beneath me. I stamp them out.
I wonder if Agatha is still up on the ramparts—I can’t believe she’d say what she said. For a moment, I wonder if she’s been possessed. But her eyes weren’t all black. (Were her eyes all black? It was too dark to see.)
She can’t leave me like this. She can’tleaveme.
We were settled. We were sorted.
We were endgame. (If I get an endgame.) (Youhaveto pretend that you get an endgame. You have to carry on like you will; otherwise, you can’t carry on at all.)
Agatha’s parents like me. They might even love me. Her dad calls me “son.” Not like“I think of you as my son,” but like,“How are you, son?”Like I’mason. The sort of guy who could be someone’s son.
And her mother says I’m handsome. That’s really all her mum ever says to me.“Don’t you look handsome, Simon.”
What would she say to Baz?“Don’t you look handsome, Basil. Please don’t slaughter my family with your hideous fangs.”
Agatha’s father, Dr. Wellbelove, hates the Pitches. He says they’re cruel and elitist. That they tried to keep his grandfather out of Watford because of a lisp.
Fucking hell, I can’t—I just. I can’t.
I lean back against a tree and put my hands on my thighs, letting my head fall forward and my magic course through me. When I look down at my legs, it’s like I’ve got no boundary. Like I’m blurred at the edges.
I have to fix this. With Agatha.
I’ll say whatever she wants me to say.
I’ll kill Baz, so that he isn’t an option.
I’ll tell her, I’ll change her mind—how can she say that there’s no such thing as happy endings?That’s all I’ve ever been working towards. The happy ending is when things are going to begin for me.
Ihaveto fix this.
