I headed for the surface, hoping that he couldn’t turn into a bat and fly after me. (Penny said that was a myth. But still.)

I could hear him singing, even after I’d been walking for ten minutes. “Ashes, ashes—we all fall down.”

*   *   *

I haven’t been back to the Catacombs since that night.…

I wait until I’m fairly sure everyone is in bed, hopefully asleep—then I sneak down to the White Chapel.

Two busts guard the secret door in the Poets Corner—the most famous of the modern mage poets, Carroll and Seuss. I’ve got some nylon rope, and I tie one end around Theodor’s neck.

The door itself, a panel in the wall, is always locked, and there isn’t any key. But all you have to do to open it is possess a genuine desire to enter. Most people simply don’t.

The door swings open for me. And closed behind me. The air is immediately colder. I light a wall torch and choose my first path.

Down in the winding tunnels of the Catacombs, I use every revealing spell I know, and every finding spell. (“Come out, come out, wherever you are! It’s show time! Scooby-Dooby-Doo, where are you!”) I call for Baz by his full name—that makes a spell harder to resist.

Magic words are tricky. Sometimes to reveal something hidden, you have to use the language of the time it was stashed away. And sometimes an old phrase stops working when the rest of the world is sick of saying it.

I’ve never been good with words.

That’s partly why I’m such a useless magician.

“Words are very powerful,” Miss Possibelf said during our first Magic Words lesson. No one else was paying attention; she wasn’t saying anything they didn’t already know. But I was trying to commit it all to memory.

“And they become more powerful,” she went on, “the more that they’re said and read and written, in specific, consistent combinations.

“The key to casting a spell is tapping into that power. Not just saying the words, but summoning their meaning.”

Which means you have to have a good vocabulary to do magic. And you have to be able to think on your feet. And be brave enough to speak up. And have an ear for a solid turn of phrase.

And you have to actually understand what you’re saying—how the words translate into magic.

You can’t just wave your wand and repeat whatever you’ve heard somebody saying down on the street corner; that’s a good way to accidentally separate someone from their bollocks.

None of it comes naturally to me. Words. Language. Speaking.

I don’t remember when I learned to talk, but I know they tried to send me to specialists. Apparently, that can happen to kids in care, or kids with parents who never talk to them—they just don’t learn how.

I used to see a counsellor and a speech therapist. “Use your words, Simon.” I got so bloody sick of hearing that. It was so much easier to just take what I wanted instead of asking for it. Or thump whoever was hurting me, even if they thumped me right back.

I barely spoke the first month I was at Watford. It was easy not to; no one else around here shuts up.

Miss Possibelf and a few of the other teachers noticed and started giving me private lessons. Talking-out-loud lessons. Sometimes the Mage would sit in on these, rubbing his beard and staring out the window. “Use your words!”—I imagined myself shouting at him. And then I imagined him telling me that it was a mistake to bring me here.

Anyway, I’m still not good with words, and I’m shit with my wand, so I get by with memorization. And sincerity—that helps, believe it or not. When in doubt, I just do whatever Penny tells me to.

I work my way carefully through the Catacombs, doing my level best with the spells I can make work for me.

I find hidden doorways inside hidden doorways. I find a treasure chest that’s snoring deeply. I find a painting of a girl with blond hair and tears pouring down her cheeks, actually pouring, like a GIF carved into the wall. A younger me would have stayed to figure out her story. A younger me would have turned this into an adventure.

I keep looking for Baz.

Or a clue.

Every night I turn back when I get to the end of my rope.

18

LUCY

Do you know these walls are a thousand years old?

There are spirits moving through them who speak languages no one is left to understand. But it doesn’t matter, I guess. Nobody hears them.

The walls are the same as when I walked them. The Chapel. The Tower. The drawbridge.

The wolves are new. The fish-beasts. Where did Davy find them, I wonder? What spell did he cast to bring them here? And what does he think they’ll prevent?

“Paranoid,” Mit always said. “He thinks everyone’s out to get him.”

“I think a few people might actually be out to get him,” I argued.

“Only because he’s such a spiteful git,” she said.

“He cares too much.”

“About himself? Agreed.”

“About everything,” I said. “He can’t let any of it go.”

“You’ve been listening to him for too long, Lucy.”

“I feel sorry for him.… And if you’d listen to him, you’d realize that he’s making sense. Why can’t pixies and centaurs with mage heritage come to Watford? And why did my brother have to stay home? Just because he isn’t powerful?”

“Your brother’s an idiot,” she said. “All he cares about is Def Leppard.”

“You know how much it hurt my mother when he was rejected. He has a wand, and he doesn’t even know how to use it. My parents almost got a divorce over it.”

“I know.” Mitali softened. “I’m sorry. But the school’s only so big. It can’t take everyone.”

“We could make it bigger, Davy says so. Or we could build a new school. Imagine that—schools all over the country for anyone with magic.”

She frowned. “But the point of Watford is that it’s the best. The best education for the best magicians.”

“Is that the point of Watford? Then Davy’s right. It is elitist.”

Mit sighed.

“Davy says we’re getting weaker,” I said. “As a society. That the wild, dark things will wipe us from the earth and let it reclaim our magic.”

“Does he tell you that they live under your bed?”