This is so much better than I hoped. There are hundreds of them here. All these weak wands. Perhaps some of them are powerful … That’s all right. I expected that. It isn’t meant to be a clean sweep, just a sweep. Just a winnowing.
I’ll do Daphne first. She’ll cry. She’ll cast a spell. Another giant chocolate bar.
And they’ll all believe it—because it’s true. They’ll believe in me.
And then I’ll make my offer: I was only planning to help six people today, but I could help them all … I could make every one of them more powerful, no matter how powerful they are now. Imagine it …
Who would say no?
I’ll be standing at the altar. Daphne will be beside me in her flowered dress. There’ll be cheers. And more tears. Laughter. I wish that Evander could be here to see it. My big moment. My leap into destiny.
That’s all right.
I’ll tell him the story.
It starts now, and it doesn’t slow down until the world is new.
72
BAZ
There’s no good way to get to Watford fast.
I won’t let Simon fly. And none of us have cars. I probably should have thought of something before Penelope stole this builder’s van—she’s making Shepard drive it, while she casts frantic spells on surrounding traffic.
“I’m going to get arrested,” Shepard says.
“I’ll break you out,” she tells him.
“That’s not as reassuring as you think.”
As soon as Bunce heard her father’s name, she was on her way to Watford, whether the rest of us were coming or not.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me my father was wrapped up in this!”
she shouted at Simon.
“I wasn’t sure!” he said. “Plus it didn’t seem like my business!”
“My business is your business, Simon!”
“I wasn’t sure it was your business either, Penny!”
She cast a “Gentlemen start your engines” on the first van she found, and barely gave us time to climb in the back.
We’re sitting on the floor now—there are no seats in the cargo area— Pippa and I on one side, Simon and Lady Salisbury’s son on the other. The latter is still tearing his hair out, trying to defend Smith Smith-Richards, who may or may not have cast the magic right out of the poor sod.
Snow is still trying to sort everything out. （Smith-Richards is a villain; that’s all I need to know.） He’s sitting close to Salisbury, a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Just tell us what happened, Jamie.”
“This is all a misunderstanding,” Salisbury says for the tenth time. He’s huddled against the wall of the van. He’s a thickset man. Broadly built. Big, open face. Heavy in a nearly-40 way. He scrubs his fingers through his collar-length hair. “Smith would never hurt anyone.”
“So he didn’t hurt you?” Simon asks.
“Of course not!” Salisbury looks anguished. “I don’t think you understand what Smith did for me—what he’s offering everyone.”
“Mundanity,” Pippa rasps. （I wonder if a body can reject its own voice.
Maybe I can find a spell to help it stick…）
“Pippa, you’ve been with Smith as long as I have—you know the cure works.” Salisbury turns to Simon, his face pleading. “Smith made me into a different person. It was like being a superhero. I could cast every spell I knew.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Simon says.
Salisbury huffs. “It was more than that—it was a miracle. You don’t know what I was like before. I was rubbish at magic. I could only ever do really basic spells. Kids’ stuff. But Smith … He made me into a real magician.”
“That must have felt amazing,” Simon says.
“Yeah.” Salisbury nods. His eyebrows are pulled up in the middle. “It did.”
“So what happened next?”
Salisbury looks down again, crestfallen. “Well, I should have known I wasn’t a good candidate for the spell. I was practically Normal.”
“But you said Smith’s spell worked on you…”
“It did. At first. But then…”
“Then?”
Salisbury turns his face up to Simon, like he’s looking for something there.
“Maybe I was meant to be Normal.”
“Jamie,” Pippa whispers, “no. ”
“Magicians don’t have Normal children,” I say.
“Maybe one of my parents was Normal,” Salisbury says to me. “You never really know, do you?” （I hope he’s never suggested this to his mother. ） “Jamie, what happened?” Simon pushes.