“Hey,” he says, coming out the door behind me.
I stand up and start walking. He can follow me if he wants.
“Hey. Penelope.”
I walk a little faster.
“Penelope, are you angry with me?”
I walk even faster. I’m not having this conversation with him right now. I might not have it at all.
“Penelope…”
I don’t actually have to speak to Shepard again. I shouldn’t have spoken to him in the first place. I should have trusted everything I’ve ever been taught and every bone in my body. Smart mages don’t befriend Normals. Even witless mages don’t tell Normals their secrets.
“You can’t ignore me all the way back to Camberwell,” he says.
I laugh out loud, like this—“Ha!” I can ignore him for the rest of my life. I can make everyone ignore him! I can make him forget he exists.
Just because I haven’t spelled Shepard silly yet doesn’t mean it’s impossible. I just have to put my back into it. I’ll get the job done.
“Penelope…”
We turn a corner. I whip around and stick my finger in his face. I’ve got my gem clutched in my fist in case I decide to cast a spell. “When were you going to tell me that you were engaged to a demon?”
Shepard looks pitiful. Fortunately, I’m pitiless.
“I can explain,” he says.
“Apparently you can’t! Because I asked you to explain, multiple times, and you didn’t!”
“I was going to, Penelope!”
“Really? When!”
“When it was relevant!”
“Shepard, we were investigating your curse, which was apparently a marriage contract, which you apparently already knew. It was relevant the whole time!”
“I was going to tell you, I swear.” His tone is very sincere. “I tried.”
“No. Close. Rhymes with ‘tried’…”
“Penelope.”
“You lied to me, Shepard!”
“I didn’t! I just hadn’t explained yet!”
“We have literally been making lists of things that we know and things that we don’t, and not once did you say, ‘Here’s something I know: I have a fiancé in hell.’”
“She’s not my fiancée!”
“Wait, is it a ‘she’ or a ‘he’？”
“I really don’t know whether demons have gender.”
“But you said ‘he’ before. Is this another lie?”
“No! I mean—maybe. I just … I didn’t want you to think…”
“Think what?”
“That I’d been seduced by some she-devil!”
“Well, now I can assume that’s exactly what happened!”
“No, it wasn’t like that!”
“I don’t know what it was like, do I, Shepard? Because you didn’t tell me!
Apparently you told Kipper the truth as soon as you met her, but to me? You lied. ”
“Penelope, when I first told you, I didn’t know that I was going to see you again, that we were going to be friends. ‘Cursed’ covers a lot of bases.”
“It doesn’t cover ‘engaged’！”
“This isn’t a real engagement!”
“It’s legally binding!”
Shepard rolls his eyes at me, which he has no right to do, now or ever.
I start walking away from him. Then I realize I’m headed away from the train station and spin around and march past him.
“Penelope!” he shouts after me.
I keep walking.
He keeps shouting. “I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t want you to think I was in a relationship!”
37
BAZ
We’re eating at the kitchen table this time. Lady Salisbury has made another cake and given us each a far-too-generous slice.
She’s got a fork raised halfway to her face, and her mouth’s gone slack with shock. “Jamie…” she says eventually, “has been healed?”
“That’s what Daphne—Baz’s stepmum—said. She said he was Smith-Richards’s first miracle.”
“His first … miracle?” Lady Salisbury glances at her fork and seems to remember she’s holding it. She sets it down on her plate, then immediately picks it up again, and takes the bite. Then she starts to cry. Curling over the table, her shoulders hitching.
Simon looks at me, his mouth full and his eyes something like panicked. I scoot my chair closer to her and touch her shoulder. “Lady Salisbury…”