“No, they wouldn’t be interested. They take after you—they don’t need Smith’s help.”
“And you do, Martin?”
“Mitali…” He sounded hurt, that I would make him say this out loud. “Of course I’d like to be more powerful. Do you think I don’t wonder, what it’s like for you?”
We argued.
I hung up.
And now here he is, in my office, wearing the suit he only gets out for weddings and funerals. I hope he doesn’t want my blessing in all this.
“Your meeting has already started,” I say.
“I know. I thought—”
“I hope you don’t want me to accompany you.”
“No.”
Martin is a small man. His hair was beige-blond when we were young.
Now it’s beige-grey. He has a squishy, nondescript face. A soft voice.
It’s his eyes that I fell in love with. Not their beauty. But the way they see everything. And feel everything. Martin takes the whole world in. That’s a tremendous thing—to be able to hold the world inside of yourself, and still feel compassion for it.
“Is it over, then?” I try to sound gentle. I don’t have it in me. “Did he spell you?”
“Mitali, I—”
He doesn’t finish. The door to my office flies open, and Penelope and Baz — and that Normal—rush in.
AGATHA
“Agatha!” Niamh calls to me from the other side of the stone. “The doe!
She’s still going!”
I turn away from the dryad and rush back to Niamh’s side. The goat is moving again. She’s flapping her wings and arching her back. Her cries have grown more urgent.
“Here,” Niamh says, making space for me on the ground next to her.
I crouch behind the doe.
“Let her work,” Niamh says. “She may not need us.”
I stroke the doe’s flank. “You’re all right, darling. We’re here.”
SIMON
I should have known it would end like this.
Two hundred wands pointed at me. Children crying. Parents running for the door.
These people don’t know me …
The Mage never took me to their parties, never paraded me around or made a spectacle of me. All they know about me is that I was a lie.
I was a trick the Mage played on them. A trained dog that turned on him in the end. They all know what happened the last time I was in this Chapel …
Smith is pointing his wand at me like he’s Gandalf and I’m the Balrog. “I won’t let you stand between these magicians and their destiny!” he calls out to me.
“Smith!” I fly to the altar. “Please listen to me!”
Someone in the crowd shouts a spell, and it connects with the window above me—a skylight that used to have a beautiful stained-glass design. I bow my head and spread my wings, but the glass still falls on Daphne and the others. A chunk of it gets stuck in my wing.
“This is a sacred space for mages,” Smith shouts, “and I won’t let you defile it any further! Leave now!”
“Smith, I can’t let you—”
“Abandon hope, all ye who enter!”
His spell probably hits me. I can’t feel it.
“Stone the crows!”
I don’t even flinch.
“My spells aren’t touching him…” Smith says. “What are you, Simon Snow? Are you the Insidious Humdrum after all?!”
“What? No!”
Other people start casting spells at me. From the audience. I can’t feel them. I fly higher.
“You won’t stop us!” Smith yells. He turns away from me and points his wand at the mages onstage with him. “Let it all—”
“What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”
AGATHA
The doe is straining. I cast a spell to give her strength.
There’s a loud noise in the distance. An explosion? Niamh and I both look up. We can’t see over the treetops. There’s another loud bang. Is that Watford?
Niamh says nothing. She looks back down at the doe.
So do I.
SIMON
Smith erupts into goopy webbing. It’s like it’s coming out of his pores. His whole body looks a like a haunted house.
Everyone in the room turns to see who cast the spell.
Philippa Stainton is standing in the aisle, pointing Baz’s wand. Jamie Salisbury is standing next to her, looking mortified.
“Pippa…” Smith says, his wand still hanging in the air. “Jamie?”
None of Smith’s followers know how to react. On the one hand, Pippa just cast a nasty spell on Smith. On the other, she just cast a spell.