“Penny?” her father said.
Her mother looked at Shepard and put her hand on her forehead. “Penelope Bunce,pleasetell me you didn’t bring aNormalto Watford.”
“Daddy!” Penelope ran to her father. “You didn’t do it, did you?”
“Smith-Richards!” I said. “Where is he?”
“They’re all in the White Chapel . . .” Professor Bunce said, hugging Penelope and still looking confused.
I turned to his wife. “We have to stop him! That spell of his shuts off people’s magic.”
No one will believe me later when I tell them that Headmistress Bunce jumped from a window at the top of the Weeping Tower, but I saw it with my own eyes. She used the same spell I used once on the ramparts—“Float like a butterfly.”
The rest of us could never manage that spell from such a height. We took the (damnably slow) lift.
When we finally got to the Chapel, Headmistress Bunce was standing in the doorway threatening to nullify anyone who cast a spell or tried to leave. Daphne was at the altar, with Pippa and Jamie.
Simon and Smith-Richards were gone.
75
SMITH
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
I knew there would be challenges—antagonists, red herrings,meaningful struggle—but nothing like this. Not chaos and disgrace. They made afoolof me. How am I supposed toredeemmyself?
And now him.
Hauling me around like a rag doll.
My Simon Snow chapter was over.
I’m clinging to him. He knocks my wand from my hand. (More disgrace.) (I’mthe Chosen One.How do I bounce back from this? What is destinydoing?)
He drops me onto the flat roof of a nearby building. I hate to think about how good he looks doing it. Against the green hills, the castle walls. Those fucking red wings.
“Are you hurt?” he asks.
I refuse to answer.
He touches my shoulder, and I roll away. I’m not hurt. I’m just at a loss. I hide my head in my arms. “That was adebacle.”
“I don’t know what you expected to happen,” Simon Snow says. “People were going to figure out that your spell doesn’t work.”
I sit up to face him. He’s standing over me with the sun at his back. One of his wings is pulled in; the injured one is hanging. It’s asymmetrical. It works for him, damn it. “The spelldoeswork,” I snarl. “You’ve seen it with your own eyes, Simon!”
“Yeah, but you didn’t tell me—or anyone else—that it wears off.”
“That doesn’t matter!” (It doesn’t! It’s practically irrelevant!)
“It matters to the people who lost their magic!”
“Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” I shout at him, “they hardly had any magic to lose!”
He puts his hands on his hips. He’s wearing jeans. And an artfully torn T-shirt. “Did you steal it?” he demands. “Is that what this is?”
“Did I steal it?” I laugh, I sound hysterical—I suppose I am. Simon Snow is interrogating me. He looks like he just rolled out of bed.I’mthe Chosen One.Iam. “No,” I say. “Igaveit to them.”
