I end up eating the sandwiches on the way to Watford.
Baz frowns at me the whole time.
“Sorry,” I say, “am I getting crumbs in the car?” It’s his aunt’s ancient sports car—we took it from her parking space—and it was already full of crumbs and cigarette butts.
“I don’t care about the car,” he says.
“I care about my shirt.” I look down at the shirt he let me borrow—that hemademe borrow. (Baz is forcing his clothes on me again; he says none of mine are fit for polite company.) Today’s shirt is baby blue knit, with short sleeves and a diamond pattern. I look like the most laddish member of a boy band. I think Baz is only lending me clothes that he’d never wear himself.
He reaches over and brushes some crumbs off my chest. “Should I have you spell my wings away?” I ask. They’re origamied tight on my back at the moment.
“I thought I wasn’t allowed to spell your wings.”
“Yeah, but . . . people can still see them under this shirt, and I don’t really want to put on a raincoat.”
“Who’ll even be at Watford to see them?” he asks. “The students are on break. And Headmistress Bunce has already seen your wings.”
“Yeah . . .”
We tried to get Penelope to come to Watford with us, but she still isn’t answering my texts. Baz says I need to apologize to her properly. In person. I’m sure he’s right—I just don’t know where to start. I’ve never really apologized to Penny before. I’ve never had to.
Baz parks in the grass outside the front gates, next to the Bunces’ hatchback.
“Wonder why the headmistress is parked out here,” I say. “The Mage always parked inside the walls.”
“The Mage was a heathen.” Baz opens the gate and holds it open for me.
I follow him onto the Great Lawn and take his hand. Baz came back here for school, after everything with the Mage. He finished the term, lived alone in our old room at the top of the tower . . .
I couldn’t come back.
And not just because I wasn’t a magician anymore and had no use for a school of magic.
I couldn’t live with the memories. Every day I’d been at Watford was a lie. Every lesson I learned, every battle. All the magic I had, I stole from the World of Mages. I was draining them dry. And the worst part is . . .
I was happy here.
I washappyas a fraud and a magickal incinerator.
“All right?” Baz asks, when we’re halfway up the Lawn.
“Yeah, all right.”
He holds my hand firmly. “The drawbridge is already down,” he says. “That’s convenient.”
“Ugh, I forgot about the merwolves.”
“How could you forget about the merwolves?”
“I tried not to think of them, even when we were here.”
“I had a plan to drink them all . . .” Baz looks wistful. “But it took me all night to catch one—and then it tasted like motor oil. Gamy motor oil.”
“What’d you do with the body?”
“Threw it back in!”
“Gross.”
