Carry On Read online

  “I am,” Penelope says. “Your mother was a hero. She developed a spell for gnomeatic fever. And she was the youngest headmaster in Watford history.”

  Baz is looking at Penny like they’ve never met.

  “And,” Penny goes on, “she defended your father in three duels before he accepted her proposal.”

  “That sounds barbaric,” I say.

  “It was traditional,” Baz says.

  “It was brilliant,” Penny says. “I’ve read the minutes.”

  “Where?” Baz asks her.

  “We have them in our library at home,” she says. “My dad loves marriage rites. Any sort of family magic, actually. He and my mother are bound together in five dimensions.”

  “That’s lovely,” Baz says, and I’m terrified because I think he means it.

  “I’m going to make time stop when I propose to Micah,” she says.

  “The little American? With the thick glasses?”

  “Not so little anymore.”

  “Interesting.” Baz rubs his chin. “My mother hung the moon.”

  “She was a legend,” Penelope beams.

  “I thought your parents hated the Pitches,” I say.

  They both look at me like I’ve just stuck my hand in the soup bowl.

  “That’s politics,” Penelope says. “We’re talking about magic.”

  “Obviously,” I say. “What was I thinking.”

  “Obviously,” Baz says. “You weren’t.”

  “What’s happening right now?” I say. “What are we even doing?”

  Penelope folds her arms and squints at the chalkboard. “We,” she declares, “are finding out who killed Natasha Grimm-Pitch.”

  “The legend,” Baz says.

  Penelope gives him a soft look, the kind she usually saves for me. “So she can rest in peace.”

  46

  BAZ

  Penelope Bunce is a fierce magician, I don’t mind saying.

  Well, I don’t mind saying, now that she’s standing momentarily on my side of things.

  No wonder Snow follows her around like a congenitally stupid dog on a very short leash. I’m fairly certain we don’t know anything now that we didn’t know before, but Bunce is so sharp and confident that every minute with her in the room feels like progress.

  Also she fixed our window, and now it doesn’t creak.

  I can tell she still finds me both loathsome and distasteful, but Rome wasn’t built on mutual admiration. She’s got a fine mind for magickal history—her house must be teeming with forbidden books—and half her opinions would get her thrown in a dungeon if her name were Pitch instead of Bunce.

  (There must be mundanity in her blood somewhere; Bunce is the least magickal name in the Realm. And you should see her father, Professor Bunce. He’s a book full of footnotes brought to life. He’s a jacket made of elbow patches. He taught a special unit on the Humdrum last term, and I don’t think I ever managed to follow him to the end of a sentence.)

  Snow and Bunce send me down to get dinner—because I’m the one who has an in with Cook Pritchard; she’s a distant cousin—and when I come back, Bunce has a piece of green chalk, and she’s adding notes to my notes in small, cramped handwriting on the blackboard.

  Nicodemus

  —Check library

  —Ask Mum? (Any risk?)

  —Ask the Mage? No.

  —Google? Yes! (Can’t hurt, Simon.)

  Even her notes are addressed to Snow. They’re like Ant and Dec, the pair of them. Joined at the hip. Hmm … I wonder if Wellbelove will be coming aboard, too.

  “Simon’s right about the vampires,” Bunce says without turning away from the chalkboard.

  The dinner tray tilts in my hands. I stoop a bit to correct it. “What?”

  “The vampires,” she says, turning around and putting her hands on her hips. Her skirt is covered with chalk dust.

  Snow puts down a book and comes to take the jug of milk off the tray. He lifts it towards his mouth, and I kick his shin.

  “Anathema!” he says.

  “I’m not trying to hurt you; I’m trying to protect you from your own disgusting manners. The room won’t blame me this time, you oaf. There are glasses right here.”

  He sets the milk down on the table between our beds, then takes the drinking glasses and the handkerchief full of sandwiches. “Cook Pritchard just gave you all this?” He unwraps a stack of brownies.

  “She likes me,” I say.

  “I thought she liked me,” he says. “I saved her from a kitchen skink!”

  “Yes, well she likes me for who I am.”

  “Vampires,” Penelope says. “Are you even listening?”

  I sneer. Out of habit. “Put a sandwich in it, Bunce.”

  “How can we guess who sent the vampires or what the vampires even wanted,” she prattles on, “if we don’t know anything about vampires?”

  “Vampires want blood,” Snow says through a maw full of roast beef.

  “But they can get that anywhere,” she says. “They can get it easily. In Soho. After midnight.” She picks up a sandwich and sits on Snow’s bed, crossing her legs. I could see right up her skirt if I felt like it—and if I tipped my head a bit. “I can’t think of a more difficult place for a vampire to get blood,” she says, “than Watford, in the middle of the day.”

  She’s got a point there.

  “So why even try it?” she asks.

  “Well, the term hadn’t started yet,” I say, picking up an apple, “so no one was on guard.”

  “Yeah, but it’s Watford.” She shakes her long hair. “Even back then, there was a wall of wards against dark creatures.”

  “It doesn’t have to make sense,” Snow says. “The Humdrum sent the vampires. Just like that dragon today. It didn’t want to be here either.”

  I wasn’t sure Snow realized that, or believed me when I told him. I thought he was going to murder that dragon hen in cold blood in front of the whole school.

  Well, not in cold blood—it was attacking us. But slaying a dragon is dark stuff, too dark even for my family. You don’t slay a dragon unless you’re trying to open a doorway to hell.

  “But if Headmistress Grimm-Pitch was talking about the Humdrum,” Bunce says, “why would she throw that on Baz’s shoulders—does she expect him to kill the Humdrum? And what about this Nicodemus?”

  Snow frowns. “We should stop thinking of it as an isolated attack.”

  “It’s the only vampire attack in the history of the school,” I argue.

  “Yeah,” he says, “but all sorts of other stuff was going on back then. The Mage said the dark creatures thought we were getting weak—they were making a serious move on our realm.”

  “When did he say that?” Penny asks.

  “It’s in The Record,” Snow says. “The Mage gave a speech to the Coven—even before the Watford invasion.” He sticks what’s left of his sandwich in his mouth and reaches around Penny for a book. His jacket and jumper are on the floor, and his white shirt tugs out of his trousers on one side.

  He finds the right page soon enough, holding it out to us. I stand above them, not prepared to actually sit on Snow’s bed.

  It’s the front page of The Record. The Mage’s speech is printed in full, and there’s a large chart with dates and bold-faced atrocities—all the attacks on magickind over a fifty-year period. OUR DOMINION IN DANGER? the headline asks.

  “Wait a minute.…” Bunce takes the book from him and hands him her sandwich to hold; he takes a bite. “There’s nothing about the Humdrum.” She flips ahead to the story about my mother’s death, then scans it with her finger. “No Humdrum here either.”

  She closes the book and taps the cover with her ring. “Fine-tooth comb—Humdrum!” The book opens, and the pages start rifling forward. They pick up speed towards the end; then the book slams shut on her lap.

  “No mentions,” Penny says.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I say. “The Humdrum existed then. The fir
st dead spot appeared in the late ’90s. Near Stonehenge. We’ve studied it in Magickal History.”

  “I know,” she says. “My mother was pregnant with me when it happened. She and Dad visited the site.” Bunce takes what’s left of her sandwich back from Snow and takes a bite. She looks up at me, chewing suspiciously. “I wonder how they knew…”

  “Who?” I ask. “What?”

  “I wonder how they figured out that it was the Humdrum behind everything,” Bunce says, “behind the dark creature attacks and the dead spots? How would they know it was him before they knew how he felt? That’s how we identify him now. That feeling.”

  “Did you feel the Humdrum?” Snow asks. “That day in the nursery?”

  “I was a bit distracted,” I say.

  “What did they tell you?” Bunce asks.

  “What did who tell me?”

  “Your family. After your mother died.”

  “They didn’t tell me anything. What was there to say?”

  “Did they tell you it was vampires?”

  “They didn’t have to tell me that. I was there.”

  “Do you remember?” she asks. “Did you see the vampires?”

  “Yes.” I set the apple back on the tray.

  Snow clears his throat. “Baz, when did you first hear that it was the Humdrum who sent the vampires?”

  They’re imagining my father sitting me down in a leather club chair and saying, “Basilton, there’s something I need to tell you.…”

  He’s never said those words.

  Nobody tells anyone anything in my family. You just know. You learn to know.

  No one had to tell me that we talk about Mother, but we don’t talk about Mother’s death.

  No one had to tell me I was a vampire:

  I remembered being bitten, I grew up with the same horror stories everyone else did—then I woke up one day craving blood. And no one had to tell me not to take it from another person.

  “I learned it in school,” I say. “Same as you.” They both look surprised.

  “What happened to the vampires?” Snow asks. “Not the ones your mother killed—the others.”

  “The Mage drove most of them out of England,” I say. “I think it’s the only time my family has co-operated with his raids.”

  “Mum says the war started with the vampire raids,” Bunce says.

  “Which war?” Snow asks.

  “All of them,” she says. She leans over Snow’s lap to reach the brownies.

  I take a sandwich and the apple, and stand up. “I need some air.”

  I wait until I’m down in the Catacombs to tuck in. I don’t really like eating in front of people.

  47

  SIMON

  Penny is back at the chalkboard, making notes.

  Talk to Dad at Xms break. OK to wait that long? Ask him to send notes?

  “Why all of them?” I ask.

  “Hmm?”

  “Why all the wars? Why did they all start with the vampire raids?”

  “The war with the dark things started there,” she says. “That should be obvious. I mean, mages and vampires have never got on—we need Normals alive, and they need them dead. But invading Watford, that was an act of war. And it was the first real attack by the Humdrum, too.”

  “What about the war with the Old Families?”

  “Well, the Mage’s reforms started then,” she says.

  “I wish there were just one war,” I say. “And one enemy that I could get my head around.”

  “Wow,” Penny says, finally turning away from the board, “what are you going to do with yourself now that you don’t have Baz?”

  “I still have Baz.”

  “Not as an enemy.”

  “We’re just having a truce,” I say.

  “A magic-sharing truce.”

  “Penny.” I frown and lie back on my bed. I’m knackered.

  I feel her climbing up next to me. “Try again,” she says, taking my hand.

  “No.”

  “Why did you try with Baz?”

  “I didn’t,” I say. “I just wanted to help him, and I didn’t know how. So I put my hand on him and thought about helping him.”

  “It was pretty extraordinary.”

  “Do you think everyone could tell?”

  “No … Maybe. I don’t know. I couldn’t tell, not for certain—and I was the closest. But I saw him stand straighter when you touched him. And then the spell started working. There’s no way that Baz is powerful enough to chant back a dragon.…” She squeezes my hand. “Try again.”

  I squeeze hers back. “No. I’ll hurt you.”

  “You didn’t hurt Baz.”

  “Maybe I did—he’d never admit it.”

  “Maybe it didn’t hurt him,” she says, “because he’s already dead.”

  “Baz isn’t dead.”

  “Well he’s not alive.”

  “I … I think he is,” I say. “He has magic. That’s life.”

  “Morgan’s tooth—imagine if you could do it again. If you could actually control your power, Simon.”

  “Baz was the one controlling my power.”

  “It was like you were focused for the first time—directed. You were using him like a wand.”

  I close my eyes. “I wasn’t using him.”

  48

  BAZ

  When I come back, Bunce is gone. I can tell she’s been sitting on my bed again—it smells like her. Like blood and chocolate and kitchen herbs. I’ll snap at her about it tomorrow.

  Snow has showered, the room is humid from it, but our papers and dinner things are still scattered on the table and the floor. It’s like having two slovenly roommates.

  The chalkboard is in order, though, completely filled with Bunce’s tight-fisted handwriting and pushed against the wall.

  I take my jacket off and spell it clean, hanging it in my wardrobe. My tie’s tucked in the pocket. I pull it out and loop it around the hanger.

  I ate my sandwich down in the basement, washing it down with a few rats. I need to go hunting in the Wood again; the rats are getting few and far between in the Catacombs, even though I try not to take the females.

  It’s a pain to hunt in the Wood. I have to do it during the day because the Mage brings the drawbridge up at dusk, and I can’t Float like a butterfly over the moat every night like I did today; I don’t have the magic.

  I look over my shoulder at Snow—a long, blanketed lump on his bed.

  He has the magic.

  He could do anything.

  I’m still humming with his magic, and it’s been hours since he pulled his hand away. He’s thrown spells at me before, but this was different. This was like being struck by benevolent lightning. I felt scorched clean. Bottomless …

  No, that’s not right, not bottomless. Centreless. Like I was bigger on the inside. Like I could cast any spell—back up any promise.

  At first it was as if Snow was giving magic to me. Sending it to me. But then the magic was just there. It was mine, in that moment, everything that was his.

  All right. I have to stop thinking about it like this. Like it was a gift. Snow would never have opened himself up to me if there hadn’t been a dragon overhead.…

  I wonder if I could take the magic from him if I tried, but the thought turns my stomach.

  I change in the bathroom and brush my teeth, and when I come out, I see that Snow is sitting up in his bed.

  “Baz?”

  “What.” I sit on my own bed, on top of the covers.

  “I … can you come here?”

  “No.”

  “I can come over there, then.”

  I cross my legs and arms. “You may not.”

  Snow huffs, exasperated. Good, I think.

  “Just. Come here,” he says. “Okay? I have to try something.”

  “Can you even hear how ridiculous you sound?”

  He gets up. It’s dark in our room, but the moon is out, and I can always see him better than he sees me
. He’s wearing grey flannel pyjama bottoms, school-issued, and his gold cross. His skin is as grey as mine in this light, and shining like a pearl.

  “You can’t sit on my bed,” I say as he sits on my bed. “And neither can Bunce. My bed reeks of intensity and brownies.”

  “Here,” he says, holding out his hand.

  “What do you want from me, Snow?”

  “Nothing,” he says. And he means it, the actual bastard. “We have to try again.”

  “Why?”

  “So that we know that it wasn’t a fluke,” he says.

  “It was a fluke. You were fighting a dragon, and I was helping you—it was a fluke squared.”

  “Merlin, Baz, don’t you want to know?”

  “Whether I can tap into you like a generator?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” he says. “I let you do it.”

  “Are you going to let me do it again?”

  “No.”

  “Then it doesn’t matter if it was a fluke!”

  Snow’s still sitting on my bed. “All right,” he says. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe I’d do it again,” he says. “If it were a situation like today—if there were lives at risk, and this might be a solution, an option other than, you know, going off.”

  “What if I turned it against you?”

  “My magic?”

  “Yes,” I say. “What if I took your magic, cast it against you, and settled Baz versus Simon, once and for all.”

  Snow’s mouth is hanging slightly open. His tongue shines black in the dark. “Why are you such a villain?” He sounds disgusted. “Why have you already thought of that?”

  “I thought of it when I was still rhyming at the dragon,” I say. “Didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “This is why I’m going to beat you,” I say.

  “We’re on a truce,” Snow says.

  “I can still think antagonistically. I’m thinking violent thoughts at you constantly.”

  He grabs my hand. I want to pull it away, but I don’t want to look scared—and also I don’t want to pull it away. Bloody Snow. I’m thinking violent thoughts at him right now.

  “I’m going to try now,” he says.

  “Fine.”

  “Should you be casting a spell?”