There’s tea. And milk. And lemonade.
And big pink meringue kisses that look like clouds.
Plus Lady Salisbury made athousandsandwiches . . .
How many have I have eaten, I don’t know—I’ve lost count. Cheese and pickle. Ham and mustard. Cucumber and cream cheese with sprigs of mint.
“The curry chicken are the best,” I say.
“Wrong again, Snow,” Baz says. “It’s the lemon and prawn.”
“I make those with magic.” Lady Ruth smiles.
“You’d have to,” he says.
“Nothing beats Mum’s egg and cress,” Jamie says.
“I can teach you that recipe,” she tells me. “There’s no magic at all.”
We don’t talk about Lucy. Or the Mage.
But we stay at the table till we’re hungry again, and every time I try to hand the sword to Jamie, he shoves it off. “What do I need with a sword?” he says.
What doIneed with a sword, I wonder.
I’ve never seen Baz eat at a table like this. With people. Every time he laughs—Lady Ruth makes him laugh, and I do, too, sometimes—I look for his fangs. I don’t see them.
Could this be real?
Is it something else that will blow up in my face?
Does everything I believe in fall apart?
Jamie boils more water. Baz refills the milk jug. Lady Salisbury shows us this trick, where she makes roses bloom from the end of her wand. She tries to teach Baz, but he can’t match it.
I turn my chair around and sit on it backwards to make room for my wings.
“Have more cake,” Lady Salisbury says, cutting another piece of the chocolate.
“All right,” I say, and I do.
90
PENELOPE
Shepard has a new T-shirt—GOG& MAGOG: WORLDTOUR1993. It’s something to do with giants; my dad gave it to him.
We went back to my house for dinner last night. I was worried about Shepard learning too many magickal secrets—our house is full of magic, my mum keeps her scrying glass in the kitchen—but it was the other way around. My dad spent the whole night asking Shepard questions. About magickal creatures and America. Even a few about the weather. Dad thinks Shepard is marvellous.
(Shepard is a bit marvellous.)
Mum was more cautious. She at least didn’t cast any more spells on him.
“A Normal, Penelope,” she said, when it was just the two of us setting the table. (We ordered takeaway kebabs, with tabouleh and labneh and lentil soup.)
“I don’t want to hear it, Mum.”
“You’ll only be able to marry him in three dimensions.”
