“Simon isn’t here.”
Mum looks over her shoulder. “Isn’t he? Did you have him surgically detached?”
Shepard laughs.
I frown at him, but Mum finally smiles. “I just assumed, when you said ‘urgent, interesting problem,’ that Simon was involved.”
“It isn’t urgent,” Shepard says, like he doesn’t want anyone to fuss.
I huff. “I respectfully disagree!”
“Out with it,” Mum says, leaning back against the counter. She’s rubbing her forehead, like she’s already heard and been exhausted by our problem. This is how it’s been since Mum took charge of Watford—like she’s always down to her last nerve.
“Well,” I say, “Shepard is cursed.”
“What kind of cursed?”
“He made an unfortunate—”
“Does the curse keep him from speaking for himself?”
Ijuststop myself from answering her. “No,” Shepard says, looking directly in Mum’s eyes and squaring his shoulders. I can see he’d like to make this light, the way he makes everything light. But there’s no light way to say it. He’s smiling, and then he isn’t. “I lost my soul to a demon.”
“Oh, Shepard,” Mum says, already disappointed in him. “You didn’t take their sweets.”
“Ah, no,” he says, smiling again. “Only because I wasn’t offered any.”
“Who summoned a demon? Do people just leave the gates open in America? Have you all found a way to frak the Netherworlds?”
“I . . .” I’ve never seen Shepard at a loss for words. He tips his head down. “Isummoned one.”
She looks appalled. “Why?”
He winces. “To see if I could?”
“Oh,Shepard.Penelope, where do you find these tragic morons?”
“Mum!”
“Honestly!” She waves at Shepard. “Go on, take off your jacket. Let’s see them. I do wish Dad was here. We’ve only everreadabout demon entrapment. There hasn’t been a documented case since the 1800s. An ounce of prevention goes a long way—it’s like cholera.”
Shepard takes off his jacket and looks down at the floor. He’s wearing a T-shirt underneath. The tattoos start at his wrists and wrap around his arms. They’re incredibly intricate, and it’s hard for your eyes to focus on them. Sometimes they look like vines, and sometimes they look like writing—writing in an alphabet that uses all the letters we know and about a dozen we don’t.
“Hell’s spells . . .” Mum says, whistling. “You are well and truly fucked, young man.”
“Mum! You’re being rude, even for you.”
“I’m sorry, Shepard. I don’t mean to be rude. But this is a . . .breathtakinghole you’ve dug for yourself. Do your parents know?”
“No. They don’t.”
“Where’s my phone, we’re going to need photos. And a team of occultists and a demonic Rosetta Stone.Morgana,what a mess.” She’s warming to the problem now, and I can’t help but be relieved. For a moment I thought she was going to let Shepard go to hell just because she was in a bad mood.
“There’s no recent scholarship,” she says, lifting Shepard’s shirtsleeve with her fingertips, “but there is precedence. The last outbreak was at Watford. A secret society . . . Never join a secret society, either of you. How bored do you have to be to do terrible things for the sake of having a secret? Wealthy people can’t even earn their secrets with any integrity.”
Shepard is keeping wisely—and shockingly—quiet.
Mum has her phone out. She’s focusing the camera on his elbow. “Do you remember when it happened? How old were you?”
