“I don’t mind,” I say. “Thank you.”
“The headmistress says you’re to keep waiting here for her.”
I nod.
Miss Christy looks around the office. “Strange to think he’s gone, isn’t it?”
She means the Mage, but I’m afraid to acknowledge it. Is she angry with me? Were they close? Miss Christy was at Watford when I started, and she’s at least as old as the Mage. How long did they work together?
I nod, carefully.
She pats my hand. “I was sorry for your loss, son.”
Oh . . .
I’m still afraid to speak. I nod again. And watch her leave.
The sun shifts, and the room falls into shade.
Penny’s mum hasn’t changedeverythingin here . . . There’s still a painted Watford coat of arms hanging by the door. (I suppose thosecouldbe goats.) And a sturdy iron rack where the Mage used to hang his green woollen cape. An honest-to-Merlin cape.
I wonder where the Mage’s capes went . . . And his knee-high boots with the big leather cuffs. Probably to his cousins in Wales. He had a belt I always coveted. Brown leather with a silver buckle that looked like a yew tree.
Siegfried and Roy, I’m losing my mind.
I eat the scones—sour cherry, you’ll never find anything like them anywhere else—then pick up all the crumbs from the floor. I wonder what they’ve done with Smith. Am I under arrest, too? Can Normals be convicted of magickal crimes?
I take down a book about dragons and flip through it, looking for one with wings like mine. I’d call Baz—or Penny—but my phone is dead. (I need a new battery.)
When the door finally opens again, it’s Headmistress Bunce and Jamie Salisbury.
“Wait out here a for a minute, would you, Jamie?” She pulls a chair outside for him, then closes the door. “Sorry that took so long, Simon.”
She walks over to her desk and leans back against it, studying me through her thick glasses.
“The Coven may call for you to testify at Smith’s and his godfather’s trials, but I think I got the gist of what happened from Penelope and Baz.”
I nod. “Can I go, then?”
“Not yet. I want to spend a little more time with the question of your magic . . .”
“There’s no question left, Headmistress. I don’t have any.”
She moves behind her desk, taking a wand from a drawer and holding it out to me. It’s bone with a wooden handle.
I take it. “This is my wand.”
“You left it in your room in Mummers House.”
“I didn’t need it anymore.”
She pulls her own wand from her waistband and comes back around to me. “Simon, it’s one thing not to be able to cast spells. That’s Normal. But it’s quite another to be resistant to magic. I want to make sure there’s nothing getting between you and the magickal atmosphere.”
“Like what?” I ask.
She shrugs. “A curse, a dead spot . . .”
“You think I’m a walking dead spot?”
