“Not much. He blamed my parents for Lucy leaving him. My dad wanted to challenge him to a duel. My mum was beside herself.”
“You don’t think . . .” I rearrange my hands on the steering wheel. “I mean, you don’t think he . . .”
Jamie looks at his lap. “My mum believes Lucy’s alive. You’ve seen the candle.”
“Right,” I say. “Cor. No wonder Lady Ruth hates the Mage.”
“She practically threw a party when you killed him. I think she would have sent you roses if she knew how to get them to you.”
We’re both quiet.
“I suppose I have to tell my mum that I lost my magic,” Jamie says after a while.
“I think she’s just gonna be so relieved to see you.”
“I still can’t believe she sentSimon Snowafter me . . .”
“It’s kind of a long story—the Coven thought you’d been murdered by vampires.”
“Vampires?” He laughs. “Imagine.”
When we get to Lady Ruth’s house, Jamie tries to get me to come up to the house with him—but it doesn’t feel right. I stay in the van. (I’m going to abandon it a few blocks from here.) I watch him walk up to the big front door. I can see the candles burning in the upper window.
Jamie knocks. And after a few minutes, Lady Ruth comes to the door. She looks shocked to see him. He hugs her. I think she might be crying.
They go inside, and the door closes.
81
BAZ
It’s an hour-long drive to Oxford. My stepmother cries intermittently for the first half hour, then goes pale and wrings her hands for the second. I think she would have turned back if she were the one driving.
When we get to the hunting lodge, I pull the car right up to the house and turn off the engine. She shows no sign of getting out, so neither do I. I tap the steering wheel and look up at the door.
Daphne and I don’t talk about things. Not usually. Notreally.
She’ll ask me how university is going, and I’ll tell her, and then she’ll say,“Good show, Basilton. You make your father so proud.”She used to ask for my help with the girls—but never in a badgering way. She used to take me shopping for summer clothes and sports gear.
I never rebelled against my father’s remarriage. I just went to Watford and got over it. I got used to Daphne. Things got better after she moved in. (Even though she’s the reason my aunt moved out.)
My father got very hard when my mother died—perhaps he was always hard, I don’t know—but Daphne softens him. She’s the reason I got a mobile phone when I turned 15. And the reason I got to go on school trips. And probably the reason my father didn’t murder Simon after our ancestral home lost its magic.
She’s a good person. A good stepmother.
“They’re going to be happy to see you,” I say softly.
She laughs, joylessly. Some of the tears come back. “How am I going to explain this . . .”
“You might not have to,” I say. “My father is usually relieved when I don’t explain things.”
Daphne laughs again, less joylessly, and cries a little more. “Your mother never would have been such a fool,” she says in a small voice.
My mother might have killed me,I think.
And then,My mother isn’t here.
And then,Howdidmy mother feel about gay people, has Father ever mentioned it, maybe when George Michael came out?
