“All right there, Simon?” It’s Rhys. He’s coming up along the path from the library in his wheelchair.
I look up. “All right. Hiya.” I’m not all right. My face is flushed, and I think I’m crying. Do my edges look blurred to him? He hurries past me.
I let Rhys get a head start, then follow him back to Mummers House.
I should sleep this off…
I’ll make sure that I power down—that I’m not going to set my bed on fire—then I’ll sleep it off.
And tomorrow, I’ll fix it.
27
SIMON
I’m not sleeping this time when I hear the noises.
I’m just lying in my bed, thinking about Baz.
What did he say to Agatha? What did he promise?
Maybe he didn’t have to say anything. Maybe he just had to be himself. Smarter than I am. Better looking. Wealthier. Fucking horsier—he could go to all her events and wear the right suit and the right shoes. He’d know which necktie went with which month of the year.
If he weren’t a vampire, Baz’d be bloody perfect.
Bloodyperfect. I roll over and press my face into my pillow.
There’s a creaking then, and a cold wind. I try to ignore it. I’ve been taken in by this feeling before.There’s no one here.No one at the window, no one at the door. The cold creeps up under my bedclothes, and I pull up the blankets, rolling onto my back—
And see a woman standing at the end of my bed.
I recognize her. It’s the same person who was standing at the window that night. And I recognize her as a Visitor now; I’ve seen enough of them. She’s come from behind the Veil.
“You’re not him,”she says to me. Her voice is cold—actually cold, like it starts in my bones and icily flushes up through my skin—and woeful.
I want to summon my sword, but I don’t. “Who are you?” I say.
“I keep coming. This ishisplace. This is where I’m called. But there’s only you here…”
She’s tall and wearing formal robes, like a solicitor’s or a professor’s, and her dark hair is pulled up into a thick bun. Even though she’s translucent, I can see that her robes are red, that her skin is dark olive, and her eyes are grey. I recognize her from her portrait outside the Mage’s office—
Natasha Pitch, Watford’s last headmistress.
“Where is he?”she asks.“Where is my son?”
“I don’t know,” I answer.
“Did you hurt him?”
“No.”
“You can’t lie to the dead.”
“I don’t want to.”
She looks over at his empty bed, and her sadness is so potent that in that moment, I’d do anything to get him back for her. (I’d do anything to bring him back.)
“The Veil is closing. It will be twenty years before I can see my son again.”She turns back to me and pushes forward. She’s starting to fade. They all fade; Penelope says they can’t stay long, two minutes tops.
