I’m glad he’s not alone in this.
That he has someone to take his hand when they think old women like me aren’t looking.
Can two boys do what the rest of the World of Mages won’t?
Perhaps. They’ve done it before, haven’t they?
29
SIMON
Baz made us take the Underground to get to Lady Salisbury’s.
I hadn’t been on the Tube for more than a year. Not since I got my wings.
But Baz insisted they’re hardly noticeable now that I’ve got them folded up so tight.
“I look strange,” I said to him on the ride to Mayfair. “People are staring.”
“Yeah, but they don’t think you have wings. ”
“They think I have a hump. ”
“They’ll get over it. Bodies come in different shapes.”
I suppose he was right—no one jumped me or threw holy water on me. So now we’re taking the train back to my flat, standing side by side, holding on to a bar.
It was relatively easy to talk Baz into coming back to mine—I don’t think he wants to deal with his aunt yet—but he’s still whinging about it.
“You don’t have a sofa,” he says.
“We can sit on the floor.”
“You don’t have food. I’ll bet you don’t have cutlery. Or bath towels. You don’t even have a bed.”
“I have a bed. A mattress is a bed.”
He looks away from me. I think he might be blushing. With Baz, that’s more of an expression than a change in colour. I knock my shoulder into his, and he smiles at the floor.
“So, what do you think?” I ask him.
“About what?”
“Lady Salisbury, Smith-Richards—the whole thing.”
Baz glances around us. Nobody’s paying any real attention. There are a few girls checking him out, but there’s never any getting away from that.
“I think Daphne might be caught up in it,” he says. “What do you think?”
“I liked her,” I say. “Lady Salisbury.”
“You like anyone who feeds you.”
“I don’t think she’s barmy…”
“No.” Baz shakes his head. “Me neither. What do you want to do about it?”
“Well, we’re going to have to meet the new Chosen One, aren’t we?”
He looks at me for a moment, then nods. “I suppose we are.”
30
PENELOPE
The sign over the door says THE WHISTLING OGRE.
“Right in plain sight,” I say.
Shepard just grins at me. I swear, he’s excited. I thought it would take days of detective work to find a place like this, but Shepard assured me it wouldn’t take long. “I’ll sniff one out. Just wait until it gets dark. The sort of Maybes we’re looking for don’t truck with daylight.”
“Maybes.” As in magickal beings.
I wasn’t sure what to wear. None of my clothes scream “dark creature pub night.” I don’t even like ordinary pubs. I don’t drink, and I don’t smoke. And I don’t play darts. So going to the pub means watching other people drink and smoke and play darts. Secondhand darts—what an abject waste of time.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I say. “I’m going to stand out like a sore thumb.”
“Trust me,” Shepard says, “everyone in there will be minding their own business.”
“Not you. You never mind your own business.”
“That’s one of my unique charms, Penelope.”
I roll my eyes and let his “unique charms” go without comment. “They’re going to see that we’re not creatures,” I say instead.
Shepard has done nothing to alter his appearance. He’s really walking into a dark creature hangout with a NEVER SASS A SASQUATCH badge on his jacket and smelling like patchouli. “I told you,” he says, standing close to me and talking under his breath, “they’ll assume we’re something else in disguise.”
“All right,” I say, “what am I, then, what’s my backstory?”
He laughs. “Do you need to get into character?”
“Shepard.”
“Okay, okay, um…” He raises his narrow shoulders and bites his lip for a second, like he’s thinking. “You’re a muskrat maiden.”
“What the hell is a muskrat maiden? Did you just make them up?”
“No! Muskrat maidens trick human beings into trapping them, and then they trade skins.”