“Maybe,” she suggests now, “his family has decided to stop pretending that we’re all at peace. Eighth year is optional anyway. In the old days, lots of people left after seventh. Maybe the Pitches have decided to get serious.”

“Go to the mattresses,” I say.

“Exactly.”

“Against the Mage and me? Or the Humdrum?”

“I don’t know,” Penny says. “I always thought the Pitches would just sit back and watch both sides destroy each other.”

“Thanks.”

“You know what I mean, Simon—the Old Families don’t want the Humdrum to win. But they don’t mind him beating the Mage down. They’ll wait to attack when they think the Mage is weak.”

“When they think I’m weak.”

“Same difference.”

Agatha is staring over at the table where Baz usually sits. Niall and Dev, another of Baz’s friends—his cousin or something—are sitting next to each other, talking with their heads close.

“I don’t think Baz dropped out,” she says.

Penny, sitting across from us, leans into Agatha’s line of sight. “Do you know something? What did Baz tell you?”

Agatha looks down at her plate. “He didn’t tell me anything.”

“He must have told you something,” Penny says. “You talked to him last.”

I clench my teeth. “Penelope,” I say without unclenching them.

“I don’t care if you two have agreed to move on.” She waves her hand at Agatha and me. “This is important. Agatha, you know Baz better than any of us. What did he tell you?”

“She doesn’t know him better than I do,” I argue. “I live with him.”

“Fine, Simon, what did he tell you?”

“Nothing to make me think he’d drop out of school and miss a whole year of making me miserable!”

“He doesn’t even have to be here to do that,” Agatha mutters.

This pisses me off, even though I was thinking the same thing myself, just yesterday.

“I’m done,” I say. “I’m going up to my room. To enjoy the solitude.”

Penny sighs. “Calm down, Simon. Don’t punish us just because you’re feeling confused. We haven’t done anything.” She glances over at Agatha and tilts her head. “Well, I haven’t.…”

Agatha stands up, too. “I’ve got homework.”

We walk together to the door, then she turns off for the Cloisters.

“Agatha!” I call out.

But I don’t say it until she’s too far away to hear.

*   *   *

I have the room to myself, and I can’t even enjoy it, because Baz’s empty bed just seems sinister now.

I summon the Sword of Mages and practise my form on his side of the room. He hates that.

16

SIMON

Baz isn’t at breakfast the next morning. Or the next.

He isn’t in class.

The football team starts practising, and someone else takes his place.

After a week, the teachers stop saying his name when they take attendance.

I trail Niall and Dev for a few days, but they don’t seem to have Baz hidden away in a barn.…

I know I should be happy about Baz being gone—it’s what I’ve always said I wanted, to be free of him—but it seems so … wrong. People don’t just disappear like this.

Baz wouldn’t.

Baz is … indelible. He’s a human grease stain. (Mostly human.)

Three weeks into the term, I still find myself walking by the pitch, expecting to see him at football practice, and when I don’t, I take a hard turn out into the hills behind the school.

I hear Ebb shout at me before I see her. “Hiya, Simon—ahoy!”

She’s sitting above me a ways in the grass, with a goat curled up in her lap.

Ebb spends most of her time out in the hills when the weather is good. Sometimes she lets the goats roam the school grounds—she says they take care of weeds and predatory plants. The predatory plants at Watford will actually take you down if they get a chance; they’re magic. The goats aren’t, though. I asked Ebb once if the magic hurts the goats when they eat it. “They’re goats, Simon,” she said. “They can eat anything.”

When I get closer, I see that Ebb’s eyes are red. She wipes them with the sleeve of her jumper. It’s an old Watford school jumper, faded from red to pink and stained brown around the neck and wrists.

If it were anybody else, I’d worry. But Ebb is kind of a weeper. She’s like Eeyore if Eeyore hung out with goats all the time instead of letting Pooh and Piglet cheer him up.

It gets on Penelope’s nerves, all the crying, but I don’t mind. The thing about Ebb is, she never tells anybody else to keep their chin up or look on the bright side. It’s very comforting.

I flop down next to her in the grass and run my hand down the goat’s back.

“What’re you doing up here?” Ebb asks. “Shouldn’t you be at football practice?”

“I’m not on the team.”

She scratches the goat behind its ears. “Since when do ya let that stop you?”

“I…”

Ebb sniffs.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“Ach. Sure.” She shakes her head, and her hair flies out around her ears. It’s dirty and blond and always cut in a sharp line above her jaw and across her forehead. “Just the time of year,” she says.

“Autumn?”

“Back to school. Reminds me of my own school days. You can’t go back, Simon, you can never go back.…” She rubs her nose on her cuff again, then rubs her cuff into the goat’s fur.

I don’t point out that Ebb’s never really left Watford. I don’t want to make fun of her—it seems like a pretty sweet deal to me. Spending your whole life here.

“Not everyone came back,” I say.

Her face falls. “Did we lose someone?”

Ebb’s brother died when they were young. It’s one of the reasons she’s so melancholy; she never got over it. I don’t want to set her off again.…

“No,” I say. “I mean—Baz. Basil didn’t come back.”

“Ah,” she says. “Young Master Pitch. Surely he’ll be back. His mother did so value education.”

“That’s what I said!”

“Well, you know him best,” she says.

“That’s what I said, too!”

Ebb nods and pets the goat. “To think you used to be at each other’s throats.”

“We’re still at each other’s throats.”

She looks up at me doubtfully. She has narrow blue eyes, bright blue—brighter somehow because her face is so dirty.

“Ebb,” I insist, “he tried to kill me.”

“Not successfully.” She shrugs. “Not recently.”

“He’s tried to kill me three times! That I know of! It doesn’t actually matter whether it worked.”

“It matters a bit,” she says. “’Sides, how old was he the first time, eleven? Twelve? That hardly counts.”

“It counts with me,” I say.

“Does it.”

I huff. “Yes. Ebb. It does. He hated me before he even met me.”

“Exactly,” she says.

“Exactly!”

“I’m just saying—been a long time since I had to spell you two apart.”

“Well, there’s no point in throwing down all the time,” I say. “Doesn’t get us anywhere. And it hurts. I suspect we’re saving up.”

“For what?” she asks.

“The end.”

“The end of school?”

“The end of the end,” I say. “The big fight.”

“So you were saving it, and then he didn’t come back for it?”

“Exactly!”

“Well, I wouldn’t lose hope,” Ebb says. “I think he’ll be back. His mother always valued a good education. I miss her this time a’year.…”

She wipes her eyes on her sleeve. I sigh. Sometimes, with Ebb, you’re better off just enjoying the silence. And the goats.

*   *   *

Three weeks pass. Four, five, six.

I stop looking for Baz anywhere where he’s supposed to be.

Whenever I hear someone on the stairs outside our room now, I know it’s Penny. I even let her spend the night sometimes and sleep in his bed; there doesn’t seem to be any immediate danger of Baz bursting in and lighting her on fire for it. (The Roommate’s Anathema doesn’t prevent you from hurting anyone else in your room.)

I hassle Niall a few more times, but he doesn’t even hint that he knows where Baz is. If anything, it seems like Niall’s hoping that I’ll turn up some answers.