“Are you sure your mom will want to help me?” I ask.
“Of course she’ll want to help you.”
“In my experience, Speakers don’t go around helping Talkers out of traps . . .”
Penelope folds her arms and frowns at me. “Your experience with magicians is extremely limited and doesn’t include my mother. It just barely includes me.”
I return her frown with my warmest smile. (Which is very warm.) “Let’s do it,” I say. “I’m up for anything.”
She frowns more deeply at me. “That is the problem, you know.”
“I do know that. Yes. Indeed.”
4
BAZ
“You here to bust me out, Basil?”
My aunt is sitting on a velvet-upholstered chair in the corner of a stone cell. The Coven summoned a tower to lock her up. The guard outside had to wait till dusk before he could cast the spell to open the door.
“I’m here to bail you out,” I say. “For snake’s sake, Fiona, what were you thinking?”
“Bail? Pitches don’t pay bail. Or ransom.”
“Well, that’s fine,” I say. “My father paid it, and he’s a Grimm.”
She leans back and rests her boots on a writing table. “Come back when you’re ready to break me out properly.”
“This isn’t a joke. They’re only letting you out because Dr. Wellbelove and Headmistress Bunce vouched for you.” I only found out Fiona had been arrested because Penelope decided to call her mother before we left San Diego. When Penny came running down the beach yesterday afternoon, I thought someone had died.
“Wellbelove?” Fiona sneers. “And Bunce? Why on earth or below would they vouch for me?”
“They’re vouching for me. I promised that you wouldn’t do a runner.”
She huffs. “That was foolish of you.”
“Fiona. Can we please go?”
She sighs and takes her time standing up, then kicks over the chair. “Fine.”
Fiona’s wand and car were impounded. I had to sign for those, too. If she fucks up before her trial, they’ll put me in a tower with her. I hold out her wand and keys.
“Back seat,” she says, taking them.
“I’m not sitting in the back seat.”
She opens her door. “I think you are. Because the front seat is for people who haven’t been kidnapped by—”
“Ha ha,” I say.
“Ha ha,” she says, tossing her handbag onto the passenger seat.
I climb into the practically nonexistent back seat of her MG (1967, Grampian Grey—classic), which Fiona treats as carelessly as everything else in her life. (You should see our flat; there are mice living in the sofa, it’s shambolic.) I have to sit sideways to fit. I wrench my knees past the seat in front of me. “Are you going to tell me what you were doing at Watford?”
Fiona starts the car. “I needed to pick something up.”
“In Headmistress Bunce’s rooms?”
She glares at me in the rearview mirror. “Those are your mother’s rooms, Basil.”
“No. Not anymore.”
“Always.”
“Fiona. The Mage is dead. The war is over.”
“That’s what they’d have you think.”
“That’s what I do think.”
“The war isn’t over until we get back what’s ours!”
“What’s ours, Fiona?”
“Our power, Baz! Watford! The Coven!”
“The Coven has already rolled back most of the Mage’s reforms. What more do you want?”
“They were never reforms!” She points at me in the mirror. “They were a campaign against the Old Families!”
“Well, they’re mostly gone now, is my point.”
“It’s too little, too late.”
“Fine then,” I say, “maybe you should run for the Coven and change things.” (This is a terrible idea, I’d never vote for Fiona. And I can vote now—the injunction against my family was dropped. All the Mage’s laws targeting specific families were overturned. We’ve got Bunce’s mother to thank for that.)
“In the old days,” Fiona pouts, “Pitches didn’t have to run. We were guaranteed three spots on the Coven.”
How am I supposed to reply to that? The woman is ridiculous. I roll my eyes and try to change the subject. “What were you trying to find at Watford?” I ask again, more gently this time.
She shakes her head. “Something of your mother’s.”
“Headmistress Bunce said there’s nothing of my mother’s left at Watford. She already gave me all of her books.”
“Then why are they still on the shelves in Bunce’s office?”
“That was my decision. I thought Mum would want them to stay at Watford.”
“How do you know what she’d want?” Fiona scoffs. “You never even knew her.”
I sit back. Away from my aunt.
Her eyes jump up to the mirror. “Fuck. Basil. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m just—I haven’t had a cigarette in three days.”
And she isn’t having one now. Fiona isn’t allowed to smoke in the car with me; I don’t trust her with fire in close quarters. I look out the window, ignoring her.
“Basil. Don’t pout.”
“What were you looking for?” I ask again. Less gently.
“Nothing.” She’s holding the steering wheel too tight. “Something I need. Something I know Natasha would give me.”
“You need to leave it be. If they catch you at Watford again, they’ll lock you up without a trial.”
“I’ll go back to Watford when I please—I’m an alumnus! The observatory is named after me!”
“The observatory is named after your grandfather.”
“So were you, boyo. It’s Pitch blood in both our veins.”
It’s rat blood in my veins. Currently. I ducked into an alley and fuelled up as soon as I got back into town.
“Stay out of trouble, Fiona. You’ll drag me down with you. And that’s the last thing my mother would want—I know enough to know that.”
5
PENELOPE
My mother didn’t seem too upset when I called her from America. She was so happy to hear that I’d broken up with Micah—and so eager to complain to me about Fiona Pitch—that there wasn’t really time to tell her the whole story . . .
All right, I swear I’m going to tell her about the vampires and Las Vegas and definitely the NowNext. I just need to figure out a way to do it that won’t get us all dragged before the Coven.
I can’t overstate how many laws we’ve broken in the last week.
Theft, more theft, counterfeiting. Flagrant misuse of magic. Criminal indiscretion. Manipulating Normals, exploiting Normals, exposing Normals to magickal secrets.
Exposing one particular Normal to all of the above.
Maybe I shouldn’t have brought Shepard to England; he’d be the most valuable witness in a case against us.
But I couldn’t just leave him as he was. He risked his life to help us in America, knowing that he’d go straight to hell if the risk didn’t pay off. I wouldn’t abandon anyone who was trapped by a demon.