Watford Tales

Chalkboard

Simon

I watch him walk away. Tall and thin, his head held high, his cloak whipping around him. At the entrance to the catacombs he turns and I see his profile for a moment, the high forehead, the long nose, the widow's peak, and then he's gone into the shadows. His words are ringing in my ears. "I love you. I want you. I'd do anything to have you." My mouth feels soft and raw from kissing him. The January cold is starting to seep into my duffle coat. As I look across the snowy yard, I see Penny, leaving her dorm and heading towards me. The pom pom in her hat is bobbling in the wind, her red and white striped scarf blowing out behind her. Her glasses catch a glint of light off the snow, just for a second.

"Where's Baz?" she asks when she sees me standing there.

"Hunting," I say. She just nods and we head up to my room. The chalkboard from before break is still there, covered with Penny and Baz's notes. She reads it over critically than waves her ring at it and it's clean. A clean slate. By the time Baz arrives, with apples and cookies and a flask of tea, Penny has it sectioned into columns and is writing furiously.

"Hello, Bunce," he says, and hands me the plate with the food. I watch him take a cookie and although he turns his head away as he eats it, I can tell he's hungry. He looks up at what Penny has written. Under What We Know she has listed: The Mage tried to kill Ebb, The Mage tried to kill Agatha, The Mage let the vampires into Watford, Nicodemus helped him, The holes get bigger when Simon goes off.

"We don't know that," I object, pointing to the last item, but Penny just gives me a withering look and says, "We're pretty sure, Simon." Baz does nothing to back me up. Prat.

Under Things We Don't Know  Penny has written Where is the Mage? And What does the Mage want? And Where is Premal?

"We know this one," says Baz, going over to the board and tapping on What does the Mage want? with a long finger. "He wants power." He looks good. His cheeks are pink, his lips red. He must have fed well. He picks up a piece of chalk and starts writing. "And we know the answer to this one as well." Next to Where is Premal ? he writes, With the Mage. Penny winces but doesn't argue.

I'm starting to feel bad. I know the Mage is evil. I get it now. Baz won that argument. I saw the Mage go after Ebb. The blood. She's still in hospital. I have no doubt he would have killed Penny and Baz if he could have. I'm not so sure about me, but that's only because I think he still wants me for something. He wants to use my power. He always has. My whole life, all that special interest, that fatherly kindness, he was just preparing me for whatever twisted grab for power he was plotting. That's obvious now isn't it? The Mage wants Simon's power. I should write that in the column marked Things We Know. Except I can't bear to see it written up there like that, can't bear to say it out loud. All those years, I thought I had an ally, a mentor, someone looking out for me. Almost like family. Turns out he was just using me, after all. Well, I should have known, probably, except I was just a kid. Just a little lonely kid, with a snotty nose and crappy jeans that didn't fit right, my favorite possession in the whole world that stupid red ball. Maybe I could have forgotten all that, except my recent run ins with the Humdrum have been great at reminding me how pathetic I really was.

How pathetic I still am.

Penny is rounding on Baz. "What happened at the Coven meeting?" she demands. Her family was banned, an event that caused a lot of consternation in the Bunce household. I know, I was staying with them. Her parents were really upset.

Baz sits down on his bed with a grimace. "A lot of yelling," he says. "You really didn't miss much. I told them what happened in the tower, how the Mage got away. There's a search party heading north to look for him. There's an old hunting lodge he's used as a retreat before. They think he might be hiding there, but nobody knows exactly where it is. Fiona's going. Father's giving a bunch of money." He pauses for breath, then goes on. "Then there's the vampires. They know there's chaos in our world right now, that we have no leader. They feared the Mage, and respected him. They're amassing in the south, no one's sure what they want yet. A play for more power, maybe, or all out war, it's hard to say." He turns to Penny. "Your family is under suspicion, because of Premal mostly, and you've always been known to be strong supporters of the Mage. They're also considering your Mum for the headmaster post, so it's a bit confused. She's probably the best qualified person in Britain, in spite of her questionable politics, so they don't know what to do. They don't know what to do with Simon, either. There was talk of making him leave school, snapping his wand, but Dr. Wellbelove vouched for him, so he's all right for now."