Simon Snow is getting up on his knees.
Simon Snow is alive.…
Somewhat.
“Simon!” I scream. “Stay down!”
Of course he doesn’t listen.
SIMON
Baz is fighting twenty-six vampires, and I’m getting up to help.
I’m probably going to get shot again.
Before I get the opportunity, one of those expensive Land Rovers catches on fire. The vampires scramble away from it. One of them has a metal cane. The telescoping kind. I snatch it and drive it through his heart. It’s not a wooden stake, so maybe it won’t do the trick. I’m prepared to keep trying.
Penelope was in that car.I try my wings. They work. Ish.
I spear another vampire.
And Agatha.
I bring the cane down on someone’s back. It feels like hitting a brick wall with a lead pipe.
I’m just warming up to avenging their deaths when Penelope and Agatha themselves walk out of the flames, holding hands, both of their mouths bleeding—looking like their own bloody ghosts.
Penelope raises one hand and screams,“Swords into ploughshares!”
The machine guns fall into the sand. She’s turned them into… ploughshares, I reckon. My cane changes, too. Which seems fair given the circumstances.
“Penelope Bunce,” Baz says, his eyes lit up with wonder.
The vampires seem confused, on both sides.
I look down.…
A ploughshare is basically just a really wide axe head. It takes two hands to swing it.
BAZ
Penelope Bunce is a fierce magician, I’ve never minded saying it.
She’s just escaped from handcuffs and a flaming car. She’s casting spells without her wand in a dead spot. Harry Houdini himself couldn’t top it.
And she’s got Agatha—alive.
“Basil!” Bunce shouts. “There’s magic!”
She’s pointing at something in the distance. A line of trees? No, it’s moving. Are thosepeople?
The vampires have turned on each other again. One of Braden’s friends is charging at me. I whip out my wand and point it at him.“Off with your head!”
Nothing happens.
But I feel it. The magic. I feel it stuttering in my wrist and on my tongue. Like an engine trying to catch in my belly.“Off with your head!”I try again.
That does it. I can’t help but grin.
