I try to steer us back, but I don’t actually know how to drive. I jerk the wheel to the left, and the side of the taxi slams into a wooden fence. The airbag goes off in my face, and I go flying backwards, the car still smashing into something, probably more fence. I never thought I’d die like this.…

The taxi comes to a stop before I come up with a way to save myself.

I’m half on the floor, and I’ve hit my head on the window, then the seat. When I eventually tell Penny about all this, I’m skipping the part where I took off my safety belt.

I stretch my arm up over my head and pull the door handle. The door opens, and I fall out of the taxi onto my back in the grass. It looks like we’ve gone though the fence and spun out into a field. The engine is still running. I climb to my feet, groaning, then reach into the driver’s window and turn it off.

It’s a spectacle in there. Blood all over the airbag. And the body. And me.

I go through the goblin’s jacket, but don’t find anything besides a packet of gum and a carpet knife. This doesn’t feel like the Humdrum’s work—there’s no itchy sign of him in the air. I take a deep breath to make sure.

Probably just another revenge run, then. The goblins have been after me ever since I helped the Coven drive them out of Essex. (They were gobbling up drunk people in club bathrooms, and the Mage was worried about losing regional slang.) I think the goblin who successfully offs me gets to be king.

This one won’t be getting a crown. My blade’s stuck in the seat next to him, so I yank it out and let it disappear back into my hip. Then I remember my bag and grab that, too, wiping blood on my grey trackie bottoms before I open the bag to fish out my wand. I can’t just leave this mess here, and I don’t think it’s worth saving anything for evidence.

I hold my wand over the taxi and feel my magic scramble up to my skin. “Work with me here,” I whisper. “Out, out, damned spot!”

I’ve seen Penelope use that spell to get rid of unspeakable things. But all it does for me is clean some blood off my trousers. I guess that’s something.

The magic is building up in my arm—so thick, my fingers are shaking. “Come on,” I say, pointing. “Take it away!”

Sparks fly out of my wand and fingertips.

“Fuck me, come on…” I shake out my wrist and point again. I notice the goblin’s head lying in the grass near my feet, back to its true green again. Goblins are handsome devils. (But most devils are fairly fit.) “I suppose you ate the cabbie,” I say, kicking the head back towards the car. My arm feels like it’s burning.

“Into thin air!” I shout.

I feel a hot rush from the ground to my fingertips, and the taxi disappears. And the head disappears. And the fence disappears. And the road …

*   *   *

An hour later, sweaty and still covered in dried goblin blood and that dust that comes out of airbags, I finally see the school buildings up ahead of me. (It was only a patch of that dirt road that disappeared, and it wasn’t much of a road to start with. I just had to make my way back to the main road, then follow it here.)

All the Normals think Watford is an ultraexclusive boarding school. Which I guess it is. The grounds are coated in glamours. Ebb told me once that we keep casting new spells on the school as we develop them. So there’s layer upon layer of protection. If you’re a Normal, all the magic burns your eyes.

I walk up to the tall iron gate—THE WATFORD SCHOOL is spelled out on the top—and rest my hand on the bars to let them feel my magic.

That used to be all it took. The gates would swing open for anyone who was a magician. There’s even an inscription about it on the crossbar—MAGIC SEPARATES US FROM THE WORLD; LET NOTHING SEPARATE US FROM EACH OTHER.

“It’s a nice thought,” the Mage said when he appealed to the Coven for stiffer defences, “but let’s not take security orders from a six-hundred-year-old gate. I don’t expect people who come to my house to obey whatever’s cross-stitched on the throw pillows.”

I was at that Coven meeting, with Penelope and Agatha. (The Mage had wanted us there to show what was at stake. “The children! The future of our world!”) I didn’t listen to the whole debate. My mind wandered off, thinking about where the Mage really lived and whether I’d ever be invited there. It was hard to picture him with a house, let alone throw pillows. He has rooms at Watford, but he’s gone for weeks at a time. When I was younger, I thought the Mage lived in the woods when he was away, eating nuts and berries and sleeping in badger dens.

Security at the Watford gate and along the outer wall has got stiffer every year.

One of the Mage’s Men—Penelope’s brother, Premal—is stationed just inside today. He’s probably pissed off about the assignment. The rest of the Mage’s team’ll be up in his office, planning the next offensive, and Premal’s down here, checking in first years. He steps in front of me.

“All right, Prem?”

“Looks like I should be asking you that question.…”

I look down at my bloody T-shirt. “Goblin,” I say.

Premal nods and points his wand at me, murmuring a cleaning spell. He’s just as powerful as Penny. He can practically cast spells under his breath.

I hate it when people cast cleaning spells on me; it makes me feel like a child. “Thanks,” I say anyway, and start to walk past him.

Premal stops me with his arm. “Just a minute there,” he says, raising his wand up to my forehead. “Special measures today. The Mage says the Humdrum’s walking around with your face.”

I flinch, but try not to pull away from his wand. “I thought that was supposed to be a secret.”

“Right,” he said. “A secret that people like me need to know if we’re going to protect you.”

“If I were the Humdrum,” I say, “I could’ve already eaten you by now.”

“Maybe that’s what the Mage has in mind,” Premal says. “At least then we’d know for sure it was him.” He drops his wand. “You’re clear. Go ahead.”

“Is Penelope here?”

He shrugs. “I’m not my sister’s keeper.”

For a second, I think he’s saying it with emphasis, with magic, casting a spell—but he turns away from me and leans against the gate.

*   *   *

There’s no one out on the Great Lawn. I must be one of the first students back. I start to run, just because I can, upsetting a huddle of swallows hidden in the grass. They blow up around me, twittering, and I keep running. Over the Lawn, over the drawbridge, past another wall, through the second and third set of gates.

Watford has been here since the 1500s. It’s set up like a walled city—fields and woods outside the walls, buildings and courtyards inside. At night, the drawbridge comes up, and nothing gets past the moat and the inner gates.

I don’t stop running till I’m up at the top of Mummers House, falling against my door. I pull out the Sword of Mages and use it to nick the pad of my thumb, pressing it into the stone. There’s a spell for this, to reintroduce myself to the room after so many months away—but blood is quicker and surer, and Baz isn’t around to smell it. I stick my thumb in my mouth and push the door open, grinning.

My room. It’ll be our room again in a few days, but for now it’s mine. I walk over to the windows and crank one open. The fresh air smells even sweeter now that I’m inside. I open the other window, still sucking on my thumb, and watch the dust motes swirl in the breeze and the sunlight, then fall back on my bed.

The mattress is old—stuffed with feathers and preserved with spells—and I sink in. Merlin. Merlin and Morgan and Methuselah, it’s good to be back. It’s always so good to be back.

The first time I came back to Watford, my second year, I climbed right into my bed and cried like a baby. I was still crying when Baz came in. “Why are you already weeping?” he snarled. “You’re ruining my plans to push you to tears.”