“All right, I’m right here.”
I lean over the doe, holding her. Her wings beat against my face. I’m in her up to my elbow. Niamh is right beside me.
I can feel the kid. I can feel the legs.
“I’ve got them,” I say.
“One at a time,” Niamh says. “You’re doing well.”
Niamh’s hand is between my shoulders. She’s casting spells over the doe. The doe is crying. I have the legs—I have them. I’m pulling them out one at time. “Push for me, darling,” I say. “I know you’re tired.”
Niamh whispers her spells. The doe pushes. The kid slides out into my hands, still in its sack. Niamh passes me a towel, and I rub the little goat clean.
“It isn’t moving,” I say.
Niamh presses her wand into the kid’s chest.“The beat goes on!”
It doesn’t move.
Its mother cries.
The dryad is sitting on Ebb’s grave, ignoring us.
“I’m sorry,” Niamh says to me. “We were too late.”
74
SIMON
We wait for Baz and Penny and Shepard to disappear inside the Weeping Tower.
Then Pippa looks at me. “You lied to them.”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to st-stop Smith?”
“Yes.”
“The White Chapel,” she whispers. “Hurry!”
AGATHA
“It’s all right,” Niamh says.
It isn’t all right. Nothing is all right. The kid is dead. The mother is crying. And the fucking dryad is acting like none of us are here.
“Why didn’t you do something?” I shout at her. I stand up and walk around Ebb’s headstone. The dryad is twirling her rotten parasol over her knees. “Why didn’t you help it?”
“I’m not the goat’s keeper,” the dryad says, watching her umbrella spin.
“It came here for help!”
Her eyes snap up at me, flashing. “No. It came here to die. That’s what this place is.”
“The goats protect Watford—don’t you know that? If they leave, the school will fall!”
“You care about Watford? Watford doesn’t care about you, fair one! It doesn’t miss you. It won’t protect you.” She runs one hand along the top of the stone. Caressing it. “She loved it, too, and all it gave her in return was a grave.”
