“Thanks for giving me a chance to recuperate,” he says. “Our last meeting was pretty intense. More intense for you than anyone, eh, Beth?” He’s smiling at someone in the audience. I can’t see their reaction. “Why don’t you come up here, and share with us?” He holds out his hand.
A woman is standing up and making her way to the stage. She takes the man’s hand and stands beside him for a moment, smiling at him. She’s pretty. Chubby. In her late 20s. The man seems older, 30 maybe. I’m not a good judge.
“How’re you feeling?” he asks her gently.
She laughs, wiping her eyes. “Good,” she says.
He takes the microphone off its stand and hands it to her. “Good,” she says again, into the mic.
“Good,” he says, putting his arm around her. “Why don’t you tell us about the last week.”
She laughs tearfully again. “I don’t know where to start!”
He just motions for her to go on.
“I’m not used to using magic,” she says. “So, at first nothing changed. Then I wrote myself a note, and I stuck it to my desk, and I made myself cast a spell every time I looked at it. It was hard, I kept hearing the Mage. You know how he was—‘Conserve your magic.’”
I nod. A lot of people nod.
“But then I’d think of you.” She smiles at the man, and he smiles back at her.
“Magic is infinite,” they say together.
The woman smiles wider, blushing and looking away.
Wait. Isthatthe Chosen One? That guy in the jumper?Him?I don’t know what I was expecting. Someone more intimidating. Or someone more obviously shamming, maybe even twirling a moustache. Not a hot young guy in jeans.
The woman keeps talking. “But every time,” she says, “my magic came to me when I called for it. There’s been no reaching. No scraping. One morning, I just stood in my kitchen, casting spells. I cast a ‘Full English.’ I cast a ‘Primrose path.’ ” The crowd is murmuring, impressed. “I cast a ‘Bread and roses’!”
The crowd gasps. A few people start clapping.
“I’ve been using magic every day,” the woman says. She wipes her eyes, but she’s crying too much for it to matter. “Even when I don’t have to. I’ve been casting spells just for the pleasure of it. And I keep thinking . . .This is what it’s been like for everyone else, all along.My parents, my boyfriend. It’s always been this easy for them.”
The man—it must be Smith-Richards—pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and actually wipes the woman’s cheeks for her, like she’s a child. She just keeps smiling and blushing. He takes the microphone back.
“This is what you deserve,” he says, still dabbing at her cheeks. “This is what you’ve always deserved. You’re a mage, Beth.”
Merlin, he’s just making her cry more.
He’s crying, too. “You’re a mage!” he says, laughing through his tears. “This was always yours, this was always inside you.”
He stops wiping her face, and they embrace. When they finally pull away from each other, the woman starts talking to him again. He quickly holds the microphone back up to her.
“When Jamie told us how it felt—” Baz and I look at each other. That’s gotta be Jamie Salisbury; has his magic been fixed already? “—it’s not that I didn’t believe him. I did! But I thought . . . Well, I thought he must have something that I don’t. That he was from an older family. Or that he must have more latent magic than I have. But I waswrong.”
Smith-Richards wraps his arm around her, and she leans against him. “You’re a mage,” he says into the microphone. “That’s all that matters, Beth. Magic is your birthright.” He looks around the room. “It’s all of our birthright.”
People at the front of the room are clapping, but everyone in the back seems distracted by something. Baz clears his throat and shifts in his seat.
Bloody hell . . . they’re distracted byme.I slouch down, as much as my folded-up wings will let me.
Smith-Richards is looking out into the audience, trying to figure out what everyone is looking at.
“Snakes alive,” Beth says, still standing close to the microphone, “it’s the Chosen One!”
Smith-Richards looks down at her, confused. But then he looks out into the audience again and makes eye contact with me. His eyes get wide. “Simon Snow,” he says into the mic.
Everyone who wasn’t already staring turns to gawk at me now. I sit up in my chair, smiling uncomfortably. Time to lean in, I suppose. Smith-Richards is walking towards me, down the centre aisle.
