Carry On Read online

  “You won’t change anything,” he said. “Nothing will change.”

  “I know you think so,” she said. “I’ve read your papers.”

  “Have you?” That perked him up. He leaned forward in his chair, dangling his wineglass between his knees. “Then you know that the only answer is revolution.”

  “I know that things will only get better if good people fight for what’s important.”

  “And you think the Coven cares about ‘good people’ and ‘what’s important’? You think Natasha Grimm-Pitch cares about your idealism?”

  “No,” Mitali said. “But if I’m on the Coven, I’ll have as many votes as she does.”

  Davy laughed. “The names on the Coven haven’t changed in two hundred years. Only the faces. They might as well carve ‘Pitch’ onto the headmaster’s chair at Watford. All they care about, all any of them care about, is protecting their own power.”

  Mitali wasn’t cowed. In her wide-legged jeans and her wine-coloured velvet jacket, her hair falling to her shoulder blades in messy dark curls, she’s the one who looked like a radical. “They’re protecting all our power,” she said. “The whole World of Mages.”

  “Are they?” Davy said. “Ask Natasha Grimm-Pitch about suicide rates among low-magicians. Ask your Coven what they’re doing to fight pixie sticks and every other magickal disease that doesn’t affect their own sons and daughters.”

  “How is a revolution going to help the pixies?” Mitali huffed. “How is throwing aside centuries of tradition and institutional knowledge going to help any of us?”

  “We’ll build better traditions!” Davy shouted. I don’t think he realized he was shouting.

  “We’ll write new rules in blood?”

  “If need be! Yes! Yes, Mitali—does that frighten you?”

  We left shortly after that. I said I had a headache.

  Davy was still flushed from the wine, but he wouldn’t let me drive. He didn’t notice me casting Stay the course on him from the passenger seat.

  * * *

  We never went back to London after that.

  We rarely left the cottage. We didn’t have a phone, or a television. I bought chickens from the farmer down the road and spelled them not to wander away. I wrote long letters to my mother. All fiction. Davy stayed inside most days with his books.

  I called them his books, but they were all stolen from Watford. He’d go back and take more whenever he needed them. He was so powerful, he could make himself nearly invisible.

  Sometimes Davy would go away for a few days to meet with other magickal activists. But he always came back more dispirited than when he’d left.

  He gave up on a revolution. No one read his papers.

  He gave up on everything except the Greatest Mage. I think Davy must have been the greatest Greatest Mage scholar in the history of magic. He knew every prophecy by heart. He wrote them on the stone walls of our cottage, and diagrammed their sentences.

  When I brought him his meals, he might ask for my opinion. What did I think this metaphor meant? Had I ever considered that interpretation?

  I remember a morning when I interrupted him to bring him eggs and oatmeal. Crowley, we ate so much oatmeal—which I was also feeding to the chickens.

  You can extend food with magic, you can make food out of pillows and candles. You can call birds down from the sky and deer in from the fields. But sometimes, there’s nothing.

  Sometimes, there was just nothing.

  “Lucy,” he said. His eyes were lit from inside. He’d been up all night.

  “Good morning, Davy. Eat something.”

  “Lucy, I think I cracked it.” He wrapped his arm around my hips and pulled me closer to his chair—and I loved him then.

  “What if the oracles kept having the same visions because they weren’t prophecies at all? What if they were instructions? Lucy—what if they’re meant to guide us to change, not foretell it? Here we are, just waiting to be saved, but the prophecies tell us how to save ourselves!”

  “How?”

  “With the Greatest Mage.”

  * * *

  He left again. He came back with more books.

  He came back with pots of oil and blood that wasn’t red. I’m not sure when he slept—not with me.

  I went for long walks in the fields. I thought about writing letters to Mitali, but I knew she’d fly here on a broom if I told her the truth, and I wasn’t ready to go.

  I never wanted to leave Davy.

  So much of this is his fault—I want you to be angry with him. But I never asked to leave. I never asked him to let me go.

  I thought … I thought that whatever was coming would be better if I was there with him. I thought it helped him to be tied to me. Like a kite with a string. I thought that as long as I was there, he’d never get carried away completely.

  * * *

  He killed both my chickens.

  * * *

  He crawled into our bed one night, smelling of mud and burnt plastic, and lifted my hair to kiss the back of my neck. “Lucy.”

  I rolled over to see him. He was smiling. He looked young, like someone had wiped the bitterness from his face with a warm cloth.

  “I’ve got it,” he said, kissing my cheeks, then my forehead. “The Great Mage, Lucy. We can bring him.”

  I laughed—I was so happy just to see him happy. I was so happy to have his attention. “How, Davy?”

  “Just like this.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t understand.

  He pushed me onto my back, kissing along my neck. “The two of us. We’ll make him.”

  He kept kissing my neck down into my nightshirt.

  “Are you talking about a baby, Davy?”

  He pulled his head up and grinned. “Who better than us?” he said. “To raise our saviour?”

  BOOK FOUR

  70

  NICODEMUS

  She won’t talk to me. Hasn’t since. Because it’s against the rules.

  She wasn’t so concerned with the rules when we were kids. Made our own rules, didn’t we. We was so brute, who was gonna stop us?

  I’ll never forget the time Ebeneza spelled the drawbridge down so the three of us could go into town and get pissed. The look on the headmistress’s face when she caught her own sister sneaking back in legless! (Fiona never could hold her cider.) Mistress Pitch was steaming—standing on the Lawn in her dressing gown and nine months up the duff.

  Ebb lost her wand—her staff—for a week because she was the one who snuck us out. Then the next night, Ebb spelled the bridge down with my wand. (We could always use each other’s pieces.) Gutty as fuck, she was.

  Course we got caught again.

  Getting away with it wasn’t the point.

  The point was that we were young and free and full of magic. What was Mistress Pitch going to do? Toss out her own sister and the two strongest magicians at Watford?

  They weren’t going to toss out Ebeneza; they were too worried she’d go rogue on them. Too worried she’d realize she could do more with all that magic than stick the desks to the ceilings—or call every shaggy dog in the county to Watford, like she was the Pied Piper.

  I realized. What Ebb could do. What I could do.

  * * *

  I get to our street and cut down the alley, then let myself into the back garden. The gate creaks. I’m a few minutes early—Ebb’ll be inside still. I make my way over to the willow tree and sit down on Mum’s bench.

  Wish I could have a fag.

  Gave ’em up when I crossed over—almost twenty years ago. But that Pitch brat blew smoke in my face, and now I’ve got a taste for it again.

  Fi and I used to roll our own, on menthol papers.

  Ebeneza wouldn’t have any of it. Said tobacco gunked up her magic.

  “Your sister’s trynta stay pure,” Fiona would tease. “Like an athlete. Like Princess Di.”

  We used to give Ebb hell over being a virgin. Hell, she’s probably still a virgin. (Does feel
ing up other girls even count?)

  The back door opens, and I look up. But it ain’t Ebb. Just somebody—no one I recognize—stepping out for a smoke. I close my eyes and inhale. This vampire nose is good for something.

  Ebb’ll come out soon, and she’ll walk out into the garden and lean against the gate. And she won’t talk to me. That’s the agreement. That’s the rule.

  She’ll just talk.

  She’ll tell the wind how she’s doing. She’ll catch the Christmas moon up on all the family goings-on. Sometimes she might do magic—not for me. Just for the sake of it. Anything alive comes out to say hello to Ebb, even in the dead of winter. Last year, a deer pranced up the alley, caszh as anything, and rested its head in Ebeneza’s hands. I knifed and drained it as soon as Ebb went back in. I think she knew that I would—maybe it was a gift. Maybe she was trying to keep me pure for a day.

  Anyway, I had to haul the deer’s body a mile before I found a bin big enough for it.

  Ebb’ll come out soon. And she’ll talk. And I’ll listen. I don’t talk at all—don’t think Ebb would want that. It would be too much like a conversation. Too close to breaking the rules.

  Plus, what would I say? I’ve got nothing to report that she wants to hear. No news that won’t turn her stomach. All Ebeneza really wants to know is that I’m still here. Such as I am.

  Mostly my sister talks about the school. The grounds. The goats. The kids. That dryad she’s been mooning over since sixth year. She doesn’t talk about the Mage. Ebb’s never been one for politics. I expect she stays out of his way—though she told me once that they got into a royal dust-up when one of his merwolves ate one of her goats.

  I’ve never seen the merwolves, only heard about them from Ebb. It’s the only animal I’ve ever known her not to like. She says they try to throw themselves up on the drawbridge. That the bridge shakes while the children and goats are crossing it. One of the wolves actually made it out once—dragged itself around the Lawn, snarling, until Ebb came and cast it back into the water. “I spell them to sleep now when the bridge is down,” she told me. “They sink to the bottom of the moat.”

  Whoever it was who came out for a fag finishes it and goes back in, slamming the screen door shut.

  * * *

  I was early. But now Ebeneza’s late. Real late.

  The noise has stopped inside the house. The kids’ll be in bed. Ebb says all our brothers and our little sister have kittens these days. I never thought about having any of my own before I crossed over. I think about it now. Me and Fi. Coupla sprogs. Her family woulda had a fit if she settled down with me. Guess she was never gonna settle down with no one.… I know where Fi is now. Our paths would cross if I let them. Don’t fancy she wants to hear anything I have to say either.

  Ebb’s late.

  Maybe she forgot.

  Not like her to forget. Never has, in all these years.

  Can’t call her. Don’t even know if she has a mobile these days.

  I stand, and pace a bit under the tree. Normally, Ebb casts a spell so that no one sees me.

  I’m antsy. I creep up closer to the house. If anyone’s up, I should be able to hear them. The house is dark. One of the kitchen windows is cracked, but I can’t smell dinner. Ebb says she helps Mum with the cooking now. Roasted gammon, it’ll be. And bread and butter pudding. Ebb usually brings me out a plate.

  I go up the back steps and peek inside the window in the door. The kitchen is empty. I can’t hear anything.

  I twist the knob, not expecting it to turn, but it does, and the door gives. I step forward gingerly, not sure whether I’ll be allowed—but the house accepts me, and I stand there for a moment feeling right sorry for myself in my mum’s kitchen.

  I smell the child before I see her.…

  She’s hiding behind the doorway, peeking out at me. “Is that you, Aunty?”

  “Aunty?” I say. “Do I look like somebody’s aunty?”

  “I thought you were my Aunt Ebb. You look like her.”

  She’s a little blond one in a red plaid nightgown. Must be my sister Lavinia’s. Vinnie wasn’t much older than this herself last time I saw her.

  “I’m family,” I say. “I come to talk to Ebb—why don’t you go get her for me? She won’t be mad.” Not at the girl, anyway.

  “Aunty Ebb’s gone,” the chick says. “She left with the Mage. Grandmum’s still crying. We can’t even have Christmas.”

  “The Mage?” I say.

  “Himself,” the girl says. “I heard everybody say it. Mum says Aunty Ebb was arrested.”

  “Arrested! For what?”

  “I don’t know. I guess she broke a rule.”

  I stare at the child. She stares back. Then I turn for the door.

  “Where are you going?” she calls after me.

  “To find your aunty.”

  71

  SIMON

  I wake up feeling hungry.

  And not until I’m awake do I realize that it’s not me who’s hungry.

  The air is dry. And itching. Pulling at my skin—pulling with needles, pricking at me.

  I sit up and shake my head. The feeling doesn’t go away. I take a deep breath and then it’s inside my lungs, too. Like sand. Like ground glass.

  The Humdrum.

  I look over at Baz’s bed—the sheets and blankets are cast aside. He’s not there. I stumble to my feet and out of the room, standing in the blood-dark hallway. “Baz,” I whisper.

  No one answers.

  I follow the bad feeling down the hallway, down the stairs, to the front door of the manor—the night sky and the snow are so bright, there’s light streaming into the foyer. I open the door and run out into the snow.

  The feeling is stronger out here. Worse. Almost like I’m standing inside one of the Humdrum’s dead spots. But when I reach for my magic, it’s still there: It rises to the surface of my skin and hums in my fingertips. It pools in my mouth.

  I try to force it down again.

  I follow the itchy feeling forward. (I should go back inside. I should put on shoes.) I find myself running towards the private forest that sweeps along the side of the Pitches’ house like a curtain.

  I’m wearing Baz’s red-and-gold-striped pyjamas, and they’re wet to my thighs. The hungry feeling gets stronger with every step. It sucks at me. I feel my magic slipping out, sliding around my skin. A tree branch drags against me and catches fire.

  I keep pushing forward.

  I don’t know where I’m going—I’ve never been in this forest before. Plus there’s no space between the trees. I’m not on a path, there isn’t a clearing.

  When I hear him laughing, I stop so abruptly that my magic sloshes forward, spilling up over the sides of me.

  He’s right there, leaning against one of trees.

  Him. The Insidious Humdrum.

  Me.

  “Hello,” he says, tossing his ball in the air. He catches it, frowns at me for a second, then tucks the ball into the pocket of his jeans.

  “You can talk,” I say.

  “I can now. I can do all sorts of things now.” He looks up into the tree and reaches for one of the slimmest branches; his hand passes through it. He grimaces and tries again. This time his hand closes around the twig, and he snaps it off. Then he looks back up at me and grins, like I should be proud of him.

  “Why do you look like me?” I ask. This still feels like the most important question.

  “This is just what I look like.” He laughs. “Why wouldn’t I look like you?”

  “But you’re not me.”

  “No.” The Humdrum frowns. “Look at you. You’re different every time I see you. But I always look just like this.” The twig is still in his hands. He breaks it in two, then drops it and steps towards me. “You can do all sorts of things I can’t do.”

  I step back. Into a tangle of branches. “Why are you here—what do you want from me?”

  “Nothing,” he says. “Nothing, nothing, nothing. But what does he want
from you? That’s the real question.”

  I hear someone groan. There’s something moving in the trees.… I wish I could see better, and as soon as I wish it, my magic gets brighter—I’m glowing. The Humdrum laughs again.

  “Simon?” someone calls. I think it’s Baz, but he sounds wrong. Like he’s out of breath or in pain.

  “Baz? Are you okay?”

  “No, no … Simon!”

  Then I see Baz ahead of me, twenty feet or so, leaning against a tree. The Humdrum is above us now, sitting on a low branch, watching. Baz’s head hangs low.

  I rush forward. “Baz!”

  He lifts his face, and it’s wrong, too. Twisted. His eyes are dilated and black, and his mouth is full of white knives—his lips have retracted to make room for them.

  I should back away, but instead I squeeze between the trees to try to get to him. It’s Baz who backs away from me. “Something’s wrong,” he says. “I’m hungry.”

  “Baz, you’re always hungry.”

  “No. It’s different.” He shakes his head and shoulders like an animal. “I saw you in the forest,” he says. “Just now. But you were young—you looked like you did the very first time I saw you.” His words are slurred. Like he’s shoving them through his teeth. “I thought for a minute that you were dead. I thought it was a Visiting.”

  “It wasn’t me.” I take a step towards him. “You saw the Humdrum.”

  “You touched me,” he says. “I leaned down and you put your hand on my face.”

  “It isn’t me,” I say.

  “And then you pushed it into me.” He stumbles backwards, staying a step away from me. “Like you do, Simon. But it wasn’t magic this time. It was a void. You pushed a void into me, and everything else left to make room.”

  “Baz, stop. Let me help you.”

  He keeps shaking his head. He reminds me for a moment of the red dragon, swinging her head back and forth.

  “It’s easy with creatures,” the Humdrum says. He’s standing behind Baz now. He reaches out and presses a hand onto Baz’s hunched spine. “I just take what I got and give it to them.”