I leave then, before Niamh gets too far ahead of me.
“Do you know where you’re going?” I call out to her.
“No!” she shouts back. “Hurry up, so I can follow you.”
It’s daylight again at the edge of the Wood. When we walk through the trees, the rest of the herd is waiting for us. They jump and bleat when they see the doe in Niamh’s arms. A few of them spread their wings—they’re feathered, just like a pegasus’s.
I kneel and hold the baby out—a little doe—so they can see her.
“Careful,” Niamh says.
“It’s all right,” I say. And it is. The goats nose at the kid and crowd around Niamh’s legs to check on the mother. “You’re very special goats,” I coo, “aren’t you?”
One of the billy goats flaps his wings and lifts off the ground, flying in a circle around us. A few of the others join him. I laugh and look up at Niamh.
She’s already smiling at me.
“Niamh,” I say. “I wonder…”
I stand again, and start walking towards Watford. Niamh walks with me.
The goats leap and bound and flit around us. Across the Great Lawn, over the drawbridge, through the courtyard. There are a few people milling around outside the White Chapel. They stop and stare. I keep walking, back to the barn Ebb shared with the goats. The doors swing open for us, and the goats follow us in, making themselves at home. Niamh casts a spell in one corner, to freshen up the straw, and we set the mother and child down together.
Niamh is beaming. At the goats. At me. When her hands are free, she gets them around me. I hook my arms behind her neck. More of her hair has fallen into her eyes, and it makes my knees weak. Thank magic she’s holding on to me, holding me up. Niamh kisses me again, and I want to draw a line through everything I considered a kiss before. I never knew a kiss could ask this much from me.
80
SIMON
Jamie and I end up in the stolen van. He doesn’t know how to drive, but I think I can manage. （Though my only practice has been on American highways.） He hasn’t eaten all day, so we stop at a KFC and eat our chicken in the car park. Neither of us says a word till we’re finished.
“What’ll we do if we get caught with this van?” Jamie asks, shoving his rubbish into a paper bag. “Neither of us have magic.”
“I guess we’ll have to wait for Baz and your mum to come fix it.”
“Well,” he says glumly, “I’m used to that.”
“Getting arrested?”
“No. Just my mum fixing things…” He glances over at me. “You must think I’m a right plonker. Letting Smith fool me like that. Hiding in his basement, just because he told me to.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think that—I believed him, too.”
“Part of me still believes in him.” Jamie sighs. “I really am a plonker.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, “about your magic.”
“Ah, it’s all right.” He throws a napkin into the bag. “I didn’t have much to lose. Not like you. You must miss it like crazy.”
“I do. But … if I’m being honest, I was never any good at it either. It’s not just about power, you know—you have to have some skill.”
Jamie buckles his safety belt. “My sister was a brilliant magician. She was so good, they sent her to Watford a year early.”
“My friend Penelope started school early, too.” Penny had to wait almost a year to go the pub with the rest of us.
“Mitali’s daughter.”
“That’s right.” I start the van—Penny charmed it to work without a key— and glance over at Jamie. “Were you jealous of her? Your sister?”
“Of Lucy?” He sounds surprised. “No. I mean, I missed her. When she left for school. We thought I’d be joining her someday. She used to tell me how she was going to show me around Watford once I got there, teach me all the tricks…” A wave of exhaustion seems to roll over him. He drops the rubbish onto the floor. “Nah, I wasn’t jealous of Lucy. She was so good to me … I couldn’t begrudge her anything.”
I know what I want to ask him next, but I’m not sure that I should. I wait until we’re driving again, my eyes on the road. “What happened to your sister? I hope that’s not a rude question. Your mum showed us her picture …
and the candle.”
“Lucy ran away,” Jamie says. “When she was about your age.”