Текст книги "Carry On"

Автор книги: Rainbow Rowell

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

40

BAZ

I could watch Bunce swing for this.

(I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to get past the residence hall’s gender barriers. Trust Bunce to find a way. She’s incessantly fiendish.)

But I don’t even care.

I find my way down to the Catacombs and hunt mindlessly.

My mother’s tomb is here. I hate to think that she might be watching me. Can souls see through the Veil? Does she know I’ve become one of them?

I wonder sometimes what would have happened if she’d lived.

I was the only child in the nursery who was Turned that day. The vampires might have taken me with them if my mother hadn’t stopped them.

My father came for me as soon as he heard. And he and Fiona did everything they could to heal me—but they knew I was changed. They knew the blood lust would manifest itself eventually.

And they just …

They went on acting like nothing had happened. Crowley, they’re lucky I didn’t start devouring people as soon as I hit puberty. I don’t think my father ever would have mentioned it, even if he’d caught me draining the maid. “Basil, change into some new things for dinner. You’ll upset your stepmother.”

Though he’d much prefer to catch me disrobing the maid.… (Definitely more disappointed in my queerness than my undeadness.)

My father never acknowledges that I’m a vampire—besides my flammability—and I know he’ll never send me away because of it.

But my mother?

She would have killed me.

She would have faced me, what I am, and done what was right.

My mother never would have let a vampire into Watford. She didn’t.

I end my walk at the door to her tomb. At the stone in the wall that marks it.

She was the youngest person ever to lead Watford—and one of three headmasters in history to die defending it. She’s kept here, in a place of honour, part of the school’s foundation.

My mother came back.

She came back for me.

What does it mean that she couldn’t find me?

Maybe ghosts can’t see through coffins.

Maybe she couldn’t see me because I’m not fully alive. Will I get to see her when Simon finally finishes me?

He will … Finish me.

Snow will do the right thing.

*   *   *

I stay in the Catacombs until I’m done feeding. Until I’m done raging. Until I can’t stand staring at that photograph of myself anymore. (Chubby, lucky bag of blood.)

Until I’m done crying.

You’d think that’s something you’d lose in the change—tears. But I still piss, and I still cry. I still lose water.

(I don’t really know how it all works, being a vampire; my family won’t let me near a magickal doctor—and it’s not like I get colds or need vaccinations.)

The flowers I’ve laid outside my mother’s tomb have wilted. I cast “April showers!” and they bloom again. It takes more magic than I can afford right now—flowers and food take life—and I slump forward against the wall.

When I’m tired lately, I can’t keep my head up. And my left leg isn’t quite right since the numpties; it goes numb. I stomp it into the stone floor, and some feeling shoots up my heel.

If my mother came back through the Veil, that means she hasn’t completely moved on. She isn’t here—she can’t see me—but she isn’t in the next place. Her soul is stuck in the in-between.

How am I supposed to help?

Find this Nicodemus? Is he the one who sent the vampires?

I’ve always been told that the Humdrum sent the vampires. Even Fiona thinks the Humdrum sent the vampires. The Humdrum sends everything else to Watford.…

My leg’s so numb when I get to our tower, I have to lead with my right and drag my left behind me, all the way up the stairs.

Bunce is gone from our room. Snow’s in bed, and the windows are open. He’s showered. Snow uses the soap the school provides—he smells like a hospital when he’s clean.

I don’t bother rinsing my face or changing. Just strip to my undershirt and pants, and climb in my bed. I feel like death. Death not even warmed over.

As soon as I’m settled—eyes closed, willing myself not to cry again—Snow clears his throat. Awake, then. I won’t cry.

“I’ll help you,” he says—so softly, only a vampire could hear him.

“Help me what?”

“I’ll help you find whatever killed your mother.”

“Why?”

He rolls over to face my bed. I can just see him in the dark. He can’t see me.

He shrugs. “Because they attacked Watford.”

I roll away.

“Because she was your mother,” he says. “And they killed her in front of you. And that’s—that’s wrong.”

41

LUCY

The Veil is closing, pulling us all back—but it can’t get its grip on me.

I don’t think there’s enough of me left. Imagine that, not having enough life in you to be properly dead. Not enough to break through and not enough to drag back.

I’d rather stay here.

I’d rather keep speaking to you, even if you can’t hear. Even if I can’t see you. (There was a moment when I thought I could; there was a moment when I thought you heard.)

I stay. And I drift. I slip through floors that won’t hold me. I blow through walls that don’t stop me. The whole world is grey, and full of shadows.

I tell them my story.

BOOK THREE

42

SIMON

Baz is already mostly dressed when I wake up.

He’s standing at the windows—he’s closed them, even though it’s already too hot in here—and he’s tying his tie in the reflection.

He has long hair for a bloke. When he plays football, it falls in his eyes and on his cheeks. But he slicks it straight back after a shower, so he always looks like a gangster first thing in the morning—or a black-and-white movie vampire, with that widow’s peak of his.

I’ve wondered whether Baz gets away with being a vampire by looking so much like one. Like, it would be too much to call him out for it—a little too on the nose. (Baz has a long thin nose. The kind that starts too high on someone’s head and practically gets in the way of their eyebrows. Sometimes when I’m looking at him, I want to reach out and yank it down half an inch. Not that that would work.) (His nose is also a little bent towards the bottom—I did that.)

I don’t know where we stand this morning.

I mean, I promised to help him find out what happened to his mum. Are we supposed to start that right now? Or is it the sort of promise that’s going to come back to haunt me years from now, just when I’ve forgotten about it?

And, no matter what, we’re still enemies, right? He still wants to kill me?

He probably won’t try to kill me until I’ve helped him with his mum—I guess that’s a comforting thought.

Baz gives the knot in his tie one last tug, then turns to me, putting on his jacket. “You’re not getting off.”

I sit up. “What?”

“You’re not going to pretend that last night was a dream or that you didn’t mean what you said. You’re helping me avenge my mother’s death.”

“Nobody said anything about avenging.” I throw back my blankets and stand up, shaking my hair out with both hands. (It gets matted when I sleep.) “I said that I’d help you figure out who murdered her.”

“That’s helping me, Snow. Because as soon as I know, I’m killing them.”

“Well, I’m not helping with that part.”

“You already are,” Baz says, hitching his bag over his shoulder.

“What?”

“Starting now,” he says, pointing at the floor. “We’re starting this now. It’s our first priority.” He heads for the door.

I want to argue. “What—?”

Baz stops, huffs, then turns back to me.

“What about everything else?” I ask.

“What everything else?” he says. “Lessons? We can still go to our lessons.”

“No,” I growl. “You know what everything else.” I think of the last seven years of my life. Of every empty threat he’s made—and every full one. “You want me to work on this with you, but … you also want to push me down the stairs.”

“Fine. I promise not to push you down the stairs until we solve this.”

“I’m serious,” I say. “I can’t help you if you’re setting me up all the time.”

He sneers. “Do you think this is a setup? That I brought my mother back from the dead to fuck with you?”

“No.”

“Truce,” he says.

“Truce?”

“I’m fairly certain you know what ‘truce’ means, Snow. No aggression until we’re through this.”

“No aggression?”

He rolls his eyes. “No acts of aggression.”

I grab my wand off the table that sits between our beds and walk over to him, raising it in my left hand and holding out my right. “Swear it,” I say. “With magic.”

He narrows his eyes at me. I see the tension in his chin.

“Fine,” he says, swatting my wand away. “But I’m not letting you anywhere near me with that.” He slips his own wand out of the pocket inside his jacket and holds it between us. Then he takes my hand in his—he’s cold—and I pull back, out of reflex. He tightens his grip.

“Truce,” Baz says, looking in my eyes.

“Truce,” I say, sounding much less certain.

“Until we know the truth,” he adds.

I nod.

Then he taps our joined hands. “An Englishman’s word is his bond!”

I feel Baz’s magic sink into my hand. Someone else’s magic never feels like your own—like someone else’s spit never tastes like your own. (Though I guess I can only speak for Agatha’s.) Baz’s magic burns. Like heat rub. It hangs in the muscles of my hand.

We’ve just taken an oath. I’ve never taken an oath before. Baz could still break it—he could still turn on me—but his hand would cramp up, and he’d lose his voice for a few weeks. Maybe that’s part of his plan.

We’re both staring at our joined hands. I can still feel his magic.

“We can talk about this after our lessons,” Baz says. “Back here.”

His grip loosens, and I yank my hand back. “Fine.”

*   *   *

I get to breakfast late, and Penelope hasn’t set any kippers or toast aside for me.

She says she doesn’t feel like talking, and I don’t feel like talking either, even though I have so much I need to tell her.

Agatha still isn’t sitting with us. I don’t even see her this morning—I wonder if she’s off somewhere with Baz. I should have added that to the truce: And also you have to leave my girlfriend alone.

Ex-girlfriend, I guess. Anyway. “Have you heard any more from your mum?” I ask Penny.

“No,” she says. “Is Baz going to turn me in?”

“No. Is the Mage back?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

She eats half as much of her breakfast as usual, and I eat twice as much, just to keep my mouth busy. I leave early for my Greek lesson because I feel like I’ve let Penny down—I can’t take her side against the Mage. For what it’s worth, I could never take his side against her, either.

When I get to the classroom, Baz is already there. Ignoring me. He ignores me all morning. I see him in the hallway a few times, whispering with Dev and Niall.

When it’s time to meet back in our room, I tell Penny that I’m skipping tea to study, and run across the courtyard to get back to Mummers House.

I get as far as the stairs before I start wondering whether the meeting is a trap—which is just paranoid. Baz doesn’t have to lure me to our room; I’m there every night.

It’s not like the time he tried to feed me to the chimera. That time, he asked me to meet him in the Wavering Wood. He said he had information for me, about my parents, and that it was too dangerous to risk saying it on school grounds.

I knew he was lying.

I told myself I was going to the Wood just to see what he was up to and beat him into the ground. But part of me still thought that maybe he really did know something about my parents—I mean, someone must know who they are. And even if Baz was just going to use what he knew against me, it would still be something.

It was fucking beautiful when the chimera noticed Baz first, hiding in the trees, and went after him instead of me. I should have let the monster have a go at him. It would have served Baz right.…

Then there was the time when we were sixth years, and he left me a note in Agatha’s handwriting, telling me to wait for her under the yew tree after dark. It was freezing, and of course she didn’t show up, and I was stuck outside all night until the drawbridge was lowered the next morning. My heat spell wouldn’t work, and the snow devils kept throwing chestnuts at my head. I thought about smashing them, but they’re a protected magickal species. (Global warming.) I kept expecting something worse to show up. Why would Baz torture me with snow devils? They’re just half-sentient snowballs with eyebrows and hands. They’re not even dark. But nothing else came, which meant Baz’s evil plan fell apart—or that his evil plan was to freeze me only half to death on the night before a big exam.

Then last year, he told me Miss Possibelf wanted to see me, and when I got to her office, he’d trapped a polecat in there. Miss Possibelf was sure I must be responsible—even though she really likes me.

I retaliated by putting the polecat in his wardrobe, which wasn’t much of a retaliation because we share a room.

I’m at our door now. Still trying to decide whether this is a trap. I decide it doesn’t matter—because even if I knew for sure that it was a trap, I’d still go in.

When I open the door, Baz is wheeling an old-fashioned chalkboard in front of our beds.

“Where did that come from?” I ask.

“A classroom.”

“Yeah, but how did it get up here?”

“It flew.”

“No,” I say, “seriously.”

He rolls his eyes. “I Up, up and away-ed it. It wasn’t much work.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re solving a mystery, Snow. I like to organize my thoughts.”

“Is this how you normally plot my downfall?”

“Yes. With multicoloured pieces of chalk. Stop complaining.” He opens up his book bag and takes out a few apples and things wrapped in wax paper. “Eat,” he says, throwing one at me.

It’s a bacon roll. He’s also got a pot of tea.

“What’s all this?” I say.

“Tea, obviously. I know you can’t function unless you’re stuffing yourself.”

I unwrap the roll and decide to take a bite. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me,” he says. “It sounds wrong.”

“Not as wrong as you bringing me bacon butties.”

“Fine, you’re welcome—when’s Bunce getting here?”

“Why would she?”

“Because you do everything together, don’t you? When you said you’d help, I was counting on you bringing your smarter half.”

“Penelope doesn’t know anything about this,” I say.

“She doesn’t know about the Visiting?”

“No.”

“Why not? I thought you told her everything.”

“It just … seemed like your business.”

“It is my business,” Baz says.

“Right. So I didn’t tell her. Now, where do we start?”

His face falls into a pout. “I was counting on Bunce to tell us where to start.”

“Let’s start with what we know,” I say. That’s where Penelope always starts.

“Right.” Baz actually seems nervous. He’s tapping the chalk against his trouser leg, leaving white smudges. Nicodemus, he writes on the chalkboard in neat slanted script.

“That’s what we don’t know,” I say. “Unless you’ve come up with something.”

He shakes his head. “No. I’ve never heard of him. I did a cursory check in the library during lunch—but I’m not likely to find anything in A Child’s Garden of Verses.”

Most of the magickal books have been removed from the Watford library. The Mage wants us to focus on Normal books so that we stay close to the language.

Before the Mage’s reforms, Watford was so protective of traditional spells that they’d teach those instead of newer spells that worked better. There were even initiatives to make Victorian books and culture more popular with the Normals, just to breathe some new life into old spells.

“Language evolves,” the Mage says. “So must we.”

Baz looks back at the chalkboard again. His hair is dry now and falling in loose locks over his cheeks; he tucks a piece behind his ear, then writes a date on the chalkboard:

12 August 2002.

I start to ask what happened that day, then I realize.

“You were only 5,” I say. “Do you remember anything?”

He looks at me, then back at the board. “Some.”

43

BAZ

Some. I don’t remember how the day started or any of the normal parts.

I remember only a few things about that whole year: A trip to the zoo. The day my father shaved his moustache and I didn’t recognize him.

I remember going to the nursery, in general.

That we got digestives and milk every day. The rabbit mural on the ceiling. A little girl who bit me. I remember that there were trains, and I liked the green one. That there were babies, and sometimes, if one was crying, the miss would let me stand over the cradle and say, “It’s okay, little puff, you’ll be all right.” Because that’s what my mum would say to me when I cried.

I don’t think there were that many of us there. Just the children of faculty. Two rooms. I was still in with the babies.

I don’t specifically remember going there on the twelfth of August. But I do remember when the vampires broke down the door.

Vampires—we—are unusually strong when we’re on the hunt. A heavy oak door carved with bunnies and badgers … that wouldn’t be a barrier for a team of us.

I can’t tell you how many vampires came to the nursery that day. It seemed like dozens, but that can’t be right, because I was the only child who was bitten. I remember that one of them, a man, picked me up like I was a puppy—by the back of my dungarees. The bib came up and choked me for a second.

The way I remember it, my mother was right behind them, there almost immediately. I could hear her shouting spells before I saw her. I saw her blue fire before I saw her face.

My mother could summon fire under her breath. She could burn for hours without tiring.

She shot streams of fire over the children’s heads; the air was alive with it.

I remember people scrambling. I remember watching one of the vampires light up like a Roman candle. I remember the look on my mother’s face when she saw me, a flash of agony before the man holding me sank his teeth into my neck.

And then pain.

And then nothing …

I must have passed out.

When I woke up, I was in my mother’s quarters, and Father and Fiona were casting healing spells over me.

When I woke up, my mother was gone.

44

SIMON

Baz lifts his hand to the board and writes Vampires, and then, On a mission from the Humdrum, and then, one fatality.

I don’t know how he can do this—talk about vampires without acknowledging that he is one. Pretending that I don’t already know. That he doesn’t know I already know.

“Well, not just one fatality,” I say. “There were also the vampires, weren’t there? Did your mother kill them all? How many?”

“It’s impossible to say.” He folds his arms. “There were no remains.” He turns back to the chalkboard. “There are no remains, in that sort of death—just ashes.”

“So the Humdrum sends vampires to Watford—”

“The first breach in school history,” he says.

“And the last,” I add.

“Well, it’s got a lot harder, hasn’t it?” Baz says. “That’s one thing we can give your Mage—this school’s as tight as a drum. He’d hide Watford behind the Veil if he could.”

“Have there been any vampire attacks since then?”

Baz shrugs. “I don’t think vampires normally attack magicians. My father says they’re like bears.”

They.

“How?” I ask.

“Well, they hunt where it’s easiest for them, among the Normals, and they don’t attack magicians unless they’re starving or rabid. It’s too much fuss.”

“What else does your father tell you about vampires?”

Baz’s voice is ice: “The subject rarely comes up.”

“Well, I’m just saying”—I square my shoulders and speak deliberately—“it would help in this specific situation if we knew how vampires worked.”

His lip curls. “Pretty sure they drink blood and turn into bats, Snow.”

“I meant culturally, all right?”

“Right, you’re a fiend for culture.”

“Do you want my help or not?”

He sighs and writes Vampires: Food for thought on the board.

I shove the last bite of roll into my mouth. “Can vampires really turn into bats?”

“Why don’t you ask one. Moving on: What else do we know?”

I get off the bed and wipe my hands on my trousers, then take a bound copy of The Record off my desk. “I looked up the coverage of the attack—” I open the book to the right place and hold it out to him. His mother’s official portrait takes up half the page. There’s also a photo of the nursery, burned and blackened, and the headline:

VAMPIRES IN THE NURSERY

Natasha Grimm-Pitch dies defending Watford from dark creatures.

Are any of our children safe?

“I’ve never seen this,” Baz says, taking the book. He sits in my chair and starts reading the story out loud:

“The attack took place only days before the autumn term began. Imagine the carnage that would have occurred on a typical Watford day.…

“Mistress Mary, the nursery manager, said that one of the beasts attacked Grimm-Pitch from behind, clamping its fangs onto her neck after she neatly decapitated another who was threatening her very own son. ‘She was like Fury herself,’ Mary said. ‘Like something out of a film. The monster bit her, and she choked out a Tyger, tyger, burning bright—then they both went up in flames.…’”

Baz stops reading. He looks rattled. “I didn’t know that,” he says, more to the book than to me. “I didn’t know she’d been bitten.”

“What’s Tiger, tiger—?” I stop. I don’t trust myself to say new spells out loud.

“It’s an immolating spell,” he says. “It was popular with assassins … and spurned lovers.”

“So she killed herself? Intentionally?”

He closes his eyes, and his head hangs forward over the book. I feel like I should do something to comfort him, but there’s no way to be comforted by your worst enemy.

Except … Hell, I’m not his worst enemy, am I? Hell and horrors.

I’m still standing next to him, and I bump my hand against his shoulder—sort of a comforting bump—and reach for the book. I pick up reading out loud where he left off:

“Her son, 5-year-old Tyrannus Basilton, was shaken, but unharmed. His father, Malcolm Grimm, has taken the boy to the family home in Hampshire to recover.

“The Coven is convened in an emergency meeting as of this writing to discuss the attack on Watford; the escalation of the dark creature problem; and the appointment of an interim headmaster.

“There have been calls to close the school until our struggles with the dark creatures are sorted—and even suggestions that we join the Americans and Scandinavians in mainstreaming our children into Normal schools.

“There are more articles about that,” I say, “about what to do with Watford. I’ve read a few months’ worth. Lots of meetings and debates and editorials. Until the Mage took over in February.”

Baz is staring past me into nothing. His hair is in his eyes, his arms are folded, and he’s holding his own elbows. I try the comforting thing again—actually resting my hand on his shoulder this time. “It’s okay,” I say.

He laughs. A dry bark. “That might be the one thing it isn’t. Okay.”

“No. I mean, it’s okay that you’re not okay. Whatever you’re feeling is okay.”

He stands up, shaking off my hand. “Is that what your friends tell you every time you blow up another chunk of school grounds? Because they’re lying to you. It isn’t okay. And it won’t be. So far, it’s only ever been a sign of more bad things to come. You won’t be okay, will you, Snow?”

I feel a wave of red shoot up my back and shoulders, and I clamp down on it, deliberately walking away from him. “This isn’t about me.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” he snarls, “but I’ve been wrong before. It’s always about you around here.”

I drop the book on my desk and make for the door. I should have known this wouldn’t work. He’s such an unforgivable twat, even when he’s being completely pathetic.

*   *   *

“I thought you were studying,” Penelope says.

She’s got her laptop out on a dining table and papers spread around her. There’s a pot of tea, but I’m sure it’s gone cold.

I lay my hand on the teapot and cast, “Some like it hot!” I hear the tea bubbling, and a hairline crack shoots down from the lid. “I was helping Baz with something,” I say, “but now I’m done. For good.”

She wrinkles her nose at the cracked teapot as I pour myself a cup. I can tell what she’s thinking—Now, that shouldn’t happen—then she jerks her head up and wrinkles her nose at me. “You were helping Baz with something?”

“Yes. It was a mistake.” I sit and gulp down some tea. It burns my tongue.

“Why were you helping Baz with something?”

“Long story.”

“I have nothing but time, Simon.”

That’s when we hear the first scream. I stand up, knocking the table over and breaking the teapot more conclusively.

Kids are running into the dining hall from the courtyard. They’re all screaming. I catch a first year running past me, practically lifting her by the arm. “What is it?”

“Dragon!” she cries. “The Humdrum sent a dragon!”

My sword is in my hand, and I’m already running for the door. I know Penny’s right behind me.

The courtyard outside is empty, but there are scorch marks on the fountain and a stripe of blackened earth. And I can feel the Humdrum in the air—the empty sucking feeling, the dry itch of him. Most Watford students recognize that feeling by now; it’s as good as a siren.

I keep running through the first and second gates, and a wave of heat hits me in the archway as I’m about to step onto the drawbridge. A wall of hot breath. I hold my arm in front of my face and feel Penny grab the back of my shirt. She reaches her ring hand over my shoulder. “U can’t touch this!”

“What’s that?” I shout at her.

“Barrier spell. It won’t work unless the dragon knows the song.”

“How would the dragon know that song?”

“I’m doing my best, Simon!”

“I can’t even see it!” I shout. “Can you?”

I can’t see it, but I can hear it, I think. Flapping. A river of fire pours onto the Lawn and I look up—it’s diving towards us. It looks like a red T. rex with yellow cat eyes and big rubbery red wings.

Penny’s still casting spells over my shoulder to try to ground it.

“What’ll we do with it on the ground?” I ask.

“Not get bombed with fire!”

I try to remember the last time I fought a dragon, but I was 11 then, and I’m pretty sure I just blew it up. Come closer, I think at the monster, so I can blow you up.

The dragon twists in the air without firing on us, and I think for a minute that one of Penny’s spells is working. Then I see its target—a group of kids, maybe third years, crouching under the yew tree.

Miss Possibelf is with them, and I see her casting spells at the dragon with her walking stick. I run towards the tree, pulling my wand out of my back pocket and shouting as loud as I can at the dragon. “Your attention, please!”

I throw the weight of my magic into it.

The dragons stops mid-zoom to look at me, hanging in the air for a moment like it’s been paused. Then it rears its head back and thrusts forward in my direction.

“Oh, blast,” Penelope says. She’s a few feet away. She reaches out to the school—not the dragon—and yells, “There’s nothing to see here!”

“What are you doing?” I scream, breaking right to lead the dragon away from the buildings.

“Your attention spell worked on everyone!” Penny says. “They’re all coming out to watch! There’s nothing to see here!” she shouts again at the gates. “As you were!”

I glance back and see kids standing on the drawbridge and running to the edge of the ramparts. The dragon is diving again, and I decide to run at it. A ribbon of fire shoots over my head. I drop at the last moment and roll away—its teeth scrape at the ground beside me.

It pulls up, snorting in what I think is frustration, then lunges towards me, snapping its jaws. I swing my sword at its neck, and the blade catches and sticks. The dragon heaves up again, and I go with it, holding on to my sword and using the momentum to swing onto the beast’s head, my knees tucked behind its jaw.

This is better. Now I can just throttle it.

The dragon’s trying to swing me loose—and I’m trying to get my sword out of its hide, so that I can stab it again—when I hear Baz calling my name. I look up and see him running along the ramparts.

He must have cast some spell on his voice to make it carry. (I wonder if it’s a Hear ye, hear ye—I’ve never managed that.) “Simon,” he’s shouting, “don’t hurt it!”

Don’t hurt it? Sod that. I go back to yanking on my blade.

“Simon!” Baz cries out again. “Wait! They’re not dark creatures!” He gets to the end of the ramparts, but instead of stopping, he leaps up on top of the wall, then out over the moat—just takes a running jump off the building! And doesn’t fall! He floats out over the moat and lands on the other side. It’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.

The dragon must think so, too, because it stops struggling with me and follows Baz with its head.

Its wings are beating less furiously. It almost lolls in the air, dipping in Baz’s direction and snuffling little puffs of fire.

Baz runs towards us, then stands with his legs apart, his wand in the air.

“Baz!” I yell. “No! You’re flammable!”

“So is everything!” he shouts back at me.

“Baz!”

But he’s already pointing at the dragon and casting a spell:

“Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, your house is on fire, and your children are gone.”

The first line is a common spell for pests and mice and things like that. But Baz keeps going. He’s trying to cast the whole nursery rhyme. Like he’s Houdini himself.

“Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, your house is on fire and your children shall burn. All except one, and her name is Nan, and she hid under the porridge pan.”

There’s nothing in our world more powerful than nursery rhymes—the poems that people learn as kids, then get stuck in their brains forever. A powerful mage can turn back an army with “Humpty Dumpty.”

“Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, your house is on fire, and your children shall burn.”

The dragon isn’t flying away home, but it’s fascinated by Baz. It lands in front of him and cocks its head. One breath of fire now, that’s all it would take to obliterate him.

Baz stands his ground:

“All but one, and that’s little John, and he lies under the grindle stone.”

I slide off the beast’s neck, yanking my sword out with my body weight as I fall.

“Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, your house is on fire, and your children shall burn.”

I wonder why no one is helping him—then I look around and see every student and teacher in the school standing in the windows or out on the ramparts. All still paying attention, like I told them to. Even Penny has given in. Or maybe she’s as gobsmacked as I am. Baz keeps going.

“All except one, and her name is Aileen, and she hid under a soup tureen.”

The dragon looks back over its shoulder, and I think maybe it’s thinking about hoofing it. But then it stamps, frustrated, and spreads its wings wide.