“Not exactly,” she says. “Smith-Richards claims to behealingtheir magic. Helping them realize their true potential.”
“And your son believed this?” I ask.
“He didn’t at first,” she says, “or he acted like he didn’t. But Smith-Richards’s name kept coming up. Jamie started to get very agitated talking about the other Greatest Mage contenders. He’d say they were swindlers, obvious frauds—that only Smith Smith-Richards was saying anything interesting . . .”
She wipes her eyes again. “Jamie started going out more,” she says, “in the evenings. Before all this, he’d spend every night upstairs, on his computer. I tried to tell myself that it was a good thing, him getting out a bit, meeting new people—but it made my blood run cold . . .
“Finally,” she says, “I confronted him. Oh, we had such a row!” She smiles ruefully at us, blinking away tears. “Me asking him if he was getting too involved in all this Chosen One hullabaloo, and him telling me he’s an adult who can do what he likes. Me saying I was worried, and him saying . . .”
Lady Salisbury looks down at her teacup again and slowly shakes her head. “Well. He said I didn’t want him to be a success. That Ilikedhim being a failure because it kept him here with me.
“‘Mum,’he said,‘what if Smith can fix my magic?’“
‘Your magic isn’t broken!’I told him, and I meant it! Jamie isn’tbroken.” She looks at Simon and me, like she’s pleading for someone to believe her. “It’s always been more nuanced than that. Magic didn’t come easily to him, and then he wasn’t trained, and then he built up all of these behavioural ways to cope with it . . . Maybe he just didn’t have much access to magic in the first place! Call it genetics or call it circumstance. It happens. Sometimes it’s a trickle, and sometimes it’s a stream.”
“Sometimes it’s a spark,” I say, “and sometimes it’s a fire.”
“Exactly!” she says fiercely. Then her gaze falls to her lap. “Well, he didn’t want to hear that. He stormed up to his room. A few days later, he left for one of his meetings and didn’t come back.”
“No note?” I ask.
“No note,” Lady Salisbury says. “I’ve tried every spell I can think of to find him. It’s like he’s being hidden behind a curtain. His candle burns, I know he’s out there . . .” She reaches a hand towards us. “But I can’t see him or feel him.” She closes her fist. “It’s like summoning air.”
“Have you talked to Smith-Richards?”
She scoffs. “It was easy enough to find his meetings, but I was turned away. The magician at the door said they’re trying to maintain an ‘atmosphere of support and optimism.’ That’s when I went to the Coven. Now,there’san organization that doesn’t know its arse from its elbow. All of the Mage’s cronies are out, which means no one has five minutes of institutional memory. They’re still plumbing the depths of his corruption; who knows when they’ll hit bottom!”
She looks at us again, like she’s remembering herself. “I apologize. I must sound like an old coot. The Coven thought so. Even my friends think so. They think Jamie was always a lost cause, and that he finally met a bad end. They feel sorry for me, but they don’t take me seriously.”
“We’re taking you seriously,” Simon says.
And it’s true, we are.
Lady Salisbury may be an old coot. But there’s something shady happening here, and I have a feeling my stepmother is caught up in it.
Didn’t Mordelia say Daphne was away working on her magic?
My stepmother is the limpest mage I know. She doesn’t use magic for anything. When she wants to cast a spell, she has to go and get her wand out of a drawer, the same drawer where we keep extra batteries and rubber bands.
When the Humdrum sucked all the magic out of our house in Hampshire, Daphne joked about staying there anyway.
I know she just barely made it through Watford. She told me she only got the grades she did because she was good at written tests and diligent about homework.
She’s even talked about sending Mordelia to Normal school—“because they’re more academically competitive.” I thought she was kidding, but maybe she doesn’t want to put Mordelia through it. Mordelia’s a bright girl. She could be a star at some Normal school. At Watford, she’ll be known for what she can’t do.
I thought Daphne was at peace with herself. That she accepted her place in the world. It could be worse: She’s married to a wealthy farmer who worships the ground she walks on. She has a big house and a bunch of noisy friends. She has healthy kids.
I didn’t think she cared about magic.
Maybe I was wrong.
“We want to help,” I say to Lady Salisbury. “Tell us everything you know about Smith Smith-Richards.”
28
LADY RUTH
I watch them from the window after we say good-bye.
