If I asked the Mage what I should wear after Watford, he’d probably kit me out like a superhero.…

I’m not asking anybody what I should wear when I leave. I’m 18. I’ll dress myself.

Or Penny will help.

No. 5—My room

I should say “our room,” but I don’t miss the sharing-with-Baz part of it.

You get your room and your roommate assignment at Watford as a first year, and then you never move. You never have to pack up your things or take down your posters.

Sharing a room with someone who wants to kill me, who’s wanted to kill me since we were 11, has been … Well, it’s been rubbish, hasn’t it?

But maybe the Crucible felt bad about casting Baz and me together (not literally; I don’t think the Crucible’s sentient) because we’ve got the best room at Watford.

We live in Mummers House, on the edge of school grounds. It’s a four-and-a-half-storey building, stone, and our room is at the very top, in a sort of turret that looks out over the moat. The turret’s too small for more than one room, but it’s bigger than the other student rooms. And it used to be staff accommodation, so we have our own en suite.

Baz is actually a fairly decent person to share a bathroom with. He’s in there all morning, but he’s clean; and he doesn’t like me to touch his stuff, so he keeps it all out of the way. Penelope says our bathroom smells like cedar and bergamot, and that’s got to be Baz because it definitely isn’t me.

I’d tell you how Penny manages to get into our room—girls are banned from the boys’ houses and vice versa—but I still don’t know. I think it might be her ring. I saw her use it once to unseal a cave, so anything’s possible.

No. 6—The Mage

I put the Mage on this list when I was 11, too. And there’ve been plenty of times when I thought I should take him off.

Like in our sixth year, when he practically ignored me. Every time I tried to talk to him, he told me he was in the middle of something important.

He still tells me that sometimes. I get it. He’s the headmaster. And he’s more than that—he’s the head of the Coven, so technically, he’s in charge of the whole World of Mages. And it’s not like he’s my dad. He’s not my anything.…

But he’s the closest thing I’ve got to anything.

The Mage is the one who first came to me in the Normal world and explained to me (or tried to explain to me) who I am. He still looks out for me, sometimes when I don’t even realize it. And when he does have time for me, to really talk to me, that’s when I feel the most grounded. I fight better when he’s around. I think better. It’s like, when he’s there, I almost buy into what he’s always told me—that I’m the most powerful magician the World of Mages has ever known.

And that all that power is a good thing, or at least that it will be someday. That I’ll get my shit together eventually and solve more problems than I cause.

The Mage is also the only one who’s allowed to contact me over the summer.

And he always remembers my birthday in June.

No. 7—Magic

Not my magic, necessarily. That’s always with me and, honestly, not something I can take much comfort in.

What I miss, when I’m away from Watford, is just being around magic. Casual, ambient magic. People casting spells in the hallway and during lessons. Somebody sending a plate of sausages down the dinner table like it’s bouncing on wires.

The World of Mages isn’t actually a world. We don’t have cities. Or even neighbourhoods. Magicians have always lived among mundanity. It’s safer that way, according to Penelope’s mum; it keeps us from drifting too far from the rest of the world.

The fairies did that, she says. Got tired of dealing with everybody else, wandered into the woods for a few centuries, then couldn’t find their way back.

The only place magicians live together, unless they’re related, is at Watford. There are a few magickal social clubs and parties, annual gatherings—that sort of thing. But Watford is the only place where we’re together all the time. Which is why everyone’s been pairing off like crazy in the last couple years. If you don’t meet your spouse at Watford, Penny says, you could end up alone—or going on singles tours of Magickal Britain when you’re 32.

I don’t know what Penny’s even worried about; she’s had a boyfriend in America since our fourth year. (He was an exchange student at Watford.) Micah plays baseball, and he has a face so symmetrical, you could summon a demon on it. They video-chat when she’s home, and when she’s at school, he writes to her almost every day.

“Yes,” she tells me, “but he’s American. They don’t think about marriage the way we do. He might dump me for some pretty Normal he meets at Yale. Mum says that’s where our magic is going—bleeding out through ill-considered American marriages.”

Penny quotes her mum as much as I quote Penny.

They’re both being paranoid. Micah’s a solid bloke. He’ll marry Penelope—and then he’ll want to take her home with him. That’s what we should all be worried about.

Anyway …

Magic. I miss magic when I’m away.

When I’m by myself, magic is something personal. My burden, my secret.

But at Watford, magic is just the air that we breathe. It’s what makes me a part of something bigger, not the thing that sets me apart.

No. 8—Ebb and the goats

I started helping out Ebb the goatherd during my second year at Watford. And for a while, hanging out with the goats was pretty much my favourite thing. (Which Baz had a field day with.) Ebb’s the nicest person at Watford. Younger than the teachers. And surprisingly powerful for somebody who decided to spend her life taking care of goats.

“What does being powerful have to do with anything?” Ebb’ll say. “People who’re tall aren’t forced to pay thrashcanball.”

“You mean basketball?” (Living at Watford means Ebb’s a bit out of touch.)

“Same difference. I’m no soldier. Don’t see why I should have to fight for a living just because I can throw a punch.”

The Mage says we’re all soldiers, every one of us with an ounce of magic. That’s what’s dangerous about the old ways, he says—magicians just went about their merry way, doing whatever they felt like doing, treating magic like a toy or an entitlement, not something they had to protect.