“One”—I counted on my fingers—“you fixed the entire magickal firmament. Two, how do we know that Alan person was actually changed? It could have been a trick. Or a delusion. Maybe there’s some sort of placebo effect.”
Simon stuck out his chin.“Your stepmum believes it.”
“Shewantsto believe it.”
Simon just shrugged again.
We kept arguing about it for an hour, even after we climbed into his bed. (It isn’t a bed; it’s a mattress. I had to magic him up some sheets and pillows.)
“On the other hand?” Simon says now, still looking hopefully at Lady Salisbury.
“On the other hand . . .” She taps her empty fork on her plate. “Things that seem too good to be true usually are.”
“In my experience,” Simon says, “things that seem too good to be true are usually magic.”
Lady Salisbury smiles at him. She hasn’t stopped crying; she’s smiling through tears. She picks up the cake knife and cuts Simon a second piece.
I thought we’d brief Lady Salisbury, then head back to Simon’s flat to plan our next move. (And maybe to kiss. There was more arguing than kissing last night.) (Though it was all in the realm ofgoodarguing: lying side by side, Simon almost lazily pushing my hair out of my face while he disagreed with me.) But Simon doesn’t seem to pick up on any of my hints about leaving.
We stay at Lady Salisbury’s table for hours, eating cake and re-examining the whole scenario. I miss Bunce’s blackboard. Lady Salisbury—she says we should call her “Ruth,” but I don’t think I can—isn’t an orderly thinker. She jumps from thought to thought and back again. But at least she stays mostly on my side. Even after hearing the whole story twice, she still frowns every time we mention Smith-Richards.
“I think you’d trust him more if you saw him,” Simon says to her.
I snort. It would have been a scoff, but I was drinking tea. “He just means he’s handsome.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” Simon argues.
“We need to talk to Jamie,” Lady Salisbury says. “We need to see him.”
“Agreed,” I agree.
Simon nods. “Why hasn’t he called you, do you think? I mean, you could hardly talk him out of following Smith-Richards now.”
“Why doesn’t anyone call their mothers,” she says with a sigh.
Simon looks like the orphan he is for a moment, and I must look like a similarly kicked puppy, because Lady Salisbury’s face falls. “Oh, boys,” she says, “I’m so sorry! I’ve spent my whole life with my foot in my mouth. What I meant is . . . If Jamie suddenly has magic, I’m sure ‘calling his mother’ is fairly low on his list of priorities. He probably doesn’t want me to rain on his parade, if he’s feeling good about things.”
“He could always call to say, ‘I told you so,’ ” Simon says.
She frowns again, shaking her head. “Smith-Richards doesn’t like his followers to engage with doubters. Jamie used to call all my questions ‘counterproductive to the cause.’ ”
“Daphne mentioned something like that, too,” I say.
Lady Salisbury leans forward, thumping the table. “That’swhy I don’t trust this Smith-Richards. Anything worth believing in should stand up to some interrogation!” She hits the table again. “Truth doesn’t burn in the sunlight!”
Simon glances at me, apologetic. (Perhaps because I burn in the sunlight?)
“I completely agree,” I tell Lady Salisbury.
Simon looks thoughtful. “Then I suppose Baz and I will have to go to Smith-Richards’s clubhouse and see if we can find Jamie there.”
“Agreed,” I say again.
Lady Salisbury looks between us, like she isn’t quite sure.
We don’t end up leaving until after lunch. Lady Salisbury stops us at the door, making us promise to be careful and to watch out for each other. I feel like she’s saying this more to me than to Simon; she’s only known him for a day, and she can already sense his gobsmacking lack of self-preservation.
He and I walk to the Tube station together, lost in our own thoughts, then stop at the stairs. Are we still going the same way?
