I shake his hand. “Actually—”
“We came to see you,” Simon says.
Smith-Richards drops my hand, turning back to Simon and smiling softly.
“Did you? I hoped you would.” He wraps his arm around Simon’s shoulders
—surely he can feel the wings now—and starts walking away with him.
“Come on in, both of you. I’m so glad you’re here.”
Smith-Richards’s office isn’t an office. It’s a tiny sitting room filled with a flat’s worth of expensive modern furniture, all of it deceptively simple. He’s got a bookshelf that looks like a shipping crate—I’ll bet it cost a thousand pounds. He invites Simon and me to sit on a leather sofa, and he sits just across from us in a wooden folding chair that probably cost another thousand pounds. His chair is so close to us, our knees are practically knocking.
“Sorry it’s so cramped in here,” he says. “We needed all the bigger spaces for bedrooms. We just moved into this building a few weeks ago, and we’ve already outgrown it. I’m not sure what we’ll do if more magicians show up.”
His face falls. “Did you guys come to stay? Because we can make room for you—we’ll find a way.”
“No,” I say, worried that Snow will blunder us into joining this commune.
“We just came to talk.”
Smith-Richards looks relieved. “Ah, good. Wonderful. Let’s talk. What can I tell you?”
We’ve already planned this part of the conversation. How to bring up Jamie. Simon is supposed to start talking about Smith’s miracle spell, and how he’d like to meet someone who’s been cured …
Instead, Snow swallows and says in an overawed voice, “Have you always known you were the Chosen One?”
Smith-Richards’s whole posture softens. He smiles directly into Simon’s eyes. “No,” he says. “Did you?”
Simon wrinkles his nose and presses his lips together, shaking his head.
“The Mage told me. When I was eleven. I never felt like anything special before that—or after, really.”
“But your magic was special,” Smith-Richards says. “Your magic was legendary.”
“Nah, I was a shit magician. Talk to anyone who went to school with me.”
“Did you go to Watford?” I ask Smith-Richards. “You must have left just as we were showing up.” If he’s in his 30s, he would have known my mother and possibly my aunt.
Smith-Richards looks like he’d already forgotten I was there. “Oh … no —we travelled too much for that. I went to Normal schools. In Germany, Kenya, Budapest … And my godfather tutored me in magic. I wish I’d gone to Watford. What an incredible history. And I’d have more friends in the mage community here. More connections.”
“But you didn’t know you were the Chosen One all along?” Simon asks.
“When did you figure it out?”
Smith-Richards turns to Simon again, looking a bit dazed and overawed himself. （Fair. Simon is incredibly attractive. Especially when he’s being all dogged and earnest like this. With his cheeks pink and his eyebrows drawn low and his throat bobbing every time he fortifies himself to ask a question.） “I…” Smith-Richards says. “Did you want something to drink? I didn’t offer. There’s cake, too. There might even be dinner.”
“No,” Simon says, “we’re fine. Thanks.”
Smith-Richards leans forward. It’s like he’s giving in. He rests an elbow on one knee and ruffles the back of his golden hair. He wears it long enough to curl, to cover his ears but not his collar. “To be honest,” he says, “I didn’t think that I might be the Greatest Mage until I heard that you had been…”
“Exposed?” Simon says.
Smith-Richards shrugs, like he doesn’t want to hurt Simon’s feelings.
“Explained.”
“And then?” Simon pushes.
Smith-Richards is at the back of his hair again. “And then I started thinking about a lot of things…”
Simon swallows, waiting.
“About signs.”
“Signs,” Simon repeats, leaning forward.
Smith-Richard nods. “My mother had a dream about me, before she even knew she was pregnant. Then I was born during an eclipse. And after my parents died—”
“Your parents died?”
“When I was very young.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. After they died, my godfather raised me, and he always told me I was special.”