Carry On

by Rainbow Rowell

  “Dead?”

  “You know what I mean,” Penny says. “Missing. Seriously missing.”

  Was Baz dead? Wouldn’t his mother know if he were? Wouldn’t she have seen him behind the Veil? Maybe death is a big place. (It would have to be.) Maybe she’s been looking for Baz here because she hasn’t seen him yet on the other side.

  I jab at my eggs a few times, then drop my fork.

  In all of this, I’ve never seriously considered that Baz might be dead. Hiding, yes—plotting. Maybe even kidnapped or hurting, but … not dead.

  He promised to make my life miserable.

  When the doors to the dining hall fly open, it’s almost like I’m making it happen, like I’ve summoned it. Cold air pours into the room. It’s bright outside, in the courtyard, and at first, all we can see is the outline of a person.

  This has happened so many times since school started that no one is scared now, not even the littluns.

  When the figure steps forward, I recognize him at once.

  Tall. Black hair swept back from his forehead. Lips curled up in a sneer … I know that face as well as my own.

  Baz.

  I stand up too quickly, knocking my chair over. Across the room, a mug falls to the floor and shatters—I glance over and see that Agatha is standing, too.

  Baz steps towards us.

  Baz.

  BOOK TWO

  29

  BAZ

  It’s unnecessarily grandiose to use an Open Sesame on the doors, but I do it anyway because I know everyone will be in the dining hall, and I may as well make an entrance.

  I wanted it this way. I wanted to be the only person who got to break the news that I’m back.

  Snow is the first to react—leaps to his feet, sends furniture flying. It’s work not to roll my eyes. (It’s a bit of work not to stare at him. He’s thin. And drawn. Normally, he’d be back to clobbering weight by now.)

  Dev and Niall, bless them, act like I’ve arrived eight minutes late to breakfast, instead of eight weeks. Dev nudges Niall, and Niall gives me a bored once-over, then moves the teapot away from my spot, which they’ve left empty. Good men.

  I walk over to the serving table and make up a plate. I pretend I’m not ferociously hungry. (I feel like I’ll always be hungry now.)

  Snow is still standing. His meddling sidekick is yanking on his sleeve, trying to get him to sit down. He should listen to her. Wait, what’s this?… Where’s Wellbelove in this pretty tableau?

  I scan the room without turning my head. There she is, sitting on the other side of the room—trouble in paradise?—staring at me. They’re all staring at me. But I can tell Wellbelove expects something extra from me, so I give it to her. A long, cool look. Let her make what she wants of that; she will anyway.

  I settle down at the table, and Dev pours me a cup of tea.

  “Baz,” he says, smirking.

  “Gentlemen,” I say. “What have I missed?”

  30

  BAZ

  Snow stands again when I walk into our Greek classroom. I take my seat without looking his way. “Enough, Snow, I’m not the Queen.”

  He doesn’t reply—he must still be working up to a bluster.

  Snow blusters like no one else. But! I! I mean! Um! It’s just! It’s no wonder he can never spit out a spell.

  The Minotaur folds his arms and snorts when he sees me. “Mr. Pitch,” he says. “I see you’ve decided to join us.”

  “I have, sir.”

  “We’ll have to discuss your plans to catch up.”

  “Of course, sir. Though I think you’ll find I’m still quite ahead of the class; my mother always insisted on summer work in Greek and Latin.” It’s good to mention my mother with the older teachers. They all still remember her—I can see their heads start to dip into a bow.

  The Minotaur worked on the grounds when my mother was headmistress; creatures weren’t allowed on staff then. I dare him to hold that against me.

  I dare them fucking all.

  “We shall see,” he says, narrowing his cow eyes.

  I’m not lying. Greek won’t be a problem for me—and I’ll be fine in Latin, Magic Words and Elocution. Political Science could be a bear, depending on how much they’ve covered. Same for History and Astrology.

  I’m going to have to break my back to get to first again, and I can’t imagine Coach Mac will let me back on the football team.…

  They might all cut me some slack if I told them I’d been kidnapped.

  I am never telling anyone I was kidnapped.

  Kidnapped. And by fucking numpties, no less.

  Numpties are like trolls, but even more hideous. They’re big and stupid, and they’re always cold. They go around wrapped in blankets and dressing gowns if they have them, and if they don’t, they cover themselves in leaves and mud and old newspapers. They usually live under bridges. Because they like to live under bridges. And they’re just smart enough to hit you over the head with a club and drag you back to their hovel, if there’s something in it for them.

  Aunt Fiona was appalled when she found me in the numpty den. She berated me all the way home, and all the way back to Watford. She made me sit in the back seat of her MG. (A ’67. Glorious.) “The front seat is for people who’ve never been kidnapped by bloody numpties. Jesus Christ, Baz.” (Aunt Fiona likes to swear like a Normal. She thinks she’s punk.)

  I could tell she was half disgusted with me, half relieved that I was still alive.

  I’d been stuck under that bridge for six weeks, in a coffin—and I don’t even think the numpties were trying to torture me. I think they thought that was humane treatment for a vampire. So to speak. They even brought me blood. (I decided not to think about where they got it.) They did not bring food. Most people don’t realize that vampires need both. Most people know fuck-all about vampires.…

  I know fuck-all about vampires. It’s not like I got an instruction pamphlet when I was bitten.

  The numpties kept me in the coffin for six weeks, and every day or so, they threw in some blood. (In a thirty-two-ounce plastic cup with a bendy straw.) I can go without food longer than regular people, but I was pretty ruined by the time Fiona got there.

  Fortunately, my aunt is an utter badass. She laid waste to the numpties before she found my coffin; then she bombarded me with healing magic. “Early to bed and early to rise!” she kept whispering. And “Get well soon!”

  (It reminded me of the day I was Turned—Fiona and my father both hitting me with healing magic that mended the bite marks and bruises but didn’t touch the changes already churning inside me.)

  I was still weak when Fiona helped me out of the coffin.

  “All right?” she asked.

  “Hungry. Thirsty.”

  She kicked a dead numpty—they look like giant stones when they die, great heaps of mud and grey matter—“Can you drink one of these?”

  I sneered. “No.” Numpty blood is swampy and brackish, definitely nonpotable. Which is probably why someone sent them after me.

  “I’ll take you to McDonald’s,” she said.

  “Take me to school.”

  Fiona bought me three Big Macs, and I swallowed the first one in two bites—it came right back up. She pulled the car over to let me heave at the side of the road. “You’re a wreck, Basil. I’m taking you home.”

  “It’s September, take me to school.”

  “It’s October, I’m taking you home to rest.”

  “It’s October? Take me to school, Fiona. Now.” I wiped my mouth on my shirt. I was still in my tennis whites—the numpties had nabbed me outside the club; my clothes were stained in every way imaginable and newly vomited on.

  Fiona shook her head. “School doesn’t matter now, boyo. We’re in the middle of a war.”

  “We’re always in the middle of a war. Take me back to Watford—I’ll be damned if Penelope Bunce finishes our last year at the top of the class.”

  “Baz, everything is different now. You’ve been
kidnapped. And held for ransom.”

  I leaned on her car. “Is that why the numpties didn’t kill me? Because you paid the ransom?”

  “Fuck no, Pitches have never paid ransoms, and we’re not starting now.”

  “I’m the only living heir!”

  “That’s just what your father said. He wanted to pay up. I told him I knew my sister had scraped bottom when she married a Grimm, but I wasn’t letting him have any more of our pride. No offence, Basil.” She handed me another Big Mac—“Try again. Slower.”

  I took a bite. “Why’d they kidnap me?” I asked through three layers of bun and two all-beef patties.

  “They said they wanted money. Then they wanted wands.”

  “What would numpties want with wands?”

  “They wouldn’t! The question is who hired them. Or who won them over … I don’t know how you get a numpty to do your bidding; maybe you just bring them hot water bottles. They kept calling us from your mobile, until it died. Your dad thinks they took you, and then tried to figure out later what to do with you. But it all smells like the Mage to me. It’s not enough that he’s laid us low; he wants everything that’s ever made us powerful.”

  “You think the Mage had me kidnapped? The headmaster of my school?”

  “I think the Mage is capable of anything,” she said. “Don’t you?”

  I did think so. But Fiona blames everything on the Mage. So it’s hard to take her seriously, even after she’s just murdered someone to save your life.

  Mostly, at that moment, I was thinking about lying down.

  “Oh,” Fiona said. “Here.” She fished my wand—polished ivory with a leather hilt—out of her giant handbag and stuck it in my shorts pocket. I pulled it out. “So,” she said. “Obviously, you are not going back to that school, right into that bastard’s clutches.”

  “I am so.”

  “Basilton.” Full name, all three syllables.

  “He’s not going to bother me at school,” I argued, “not with everyone watching.”

  “Baz, we have to get serious. He’s attacked our family again, directly.”

  “I am serious. I’m more valuable as a spy than a soldier, anyway—that’s what the Families have always said.”

  “That’s what we said when you were a child. You’re a man now.”

  “I’m a student,” I said. “What do you think my mother would say if she knew you were pulling me out of school?”

  Fiona huffed and shook her head. We were still standing at the side of the road. She opened the car door for me. “Get in, you manipulative cur.”

  “Only if you take me back to Watford.”

  “I’m taking you home first. Your father and Daphne want to see you.”

  “And then to Watford.”

  She pulled me towards the car. “Jesus. Yes. If you still want to go.”

  Of course I still wanted to go to Watford …

  … once I’d seen my father. Once my stepmother had wept over me. Once I’d slept for twelve hours under a new barrage of healing spells.

  I stayed in bed a fortnight.

  They all tried to talk me into staying longer.

  Even Vera, my old nanny was brought in to apply some guilt. (Vera’s a Normal. She rationalizes all our strangeness by pretending we’re in the Mafia. Father spells her innocent whenever it gets to be too much for her.)

  But after two weeks, I got up out of bed, packed my bags, and went and sat in the front seat of Fiona’s car.

  “I’ll steal it if I have to!” I shouted up the drive. “Or I’ll steal a bus!”

  There was no way that I wasn’t going back to school—this is my last year. Last year in the tower. Last year on the pitch. Last year to torment Snow before our antagonism turns into something more permanent and less entertaining.

  My last year at Watford, the last place I saw my mother …

  I was damn well going back.

  Aunt Fiona stomped out in her heavy black Doc Martens boots (clichéd) and opened my door. “Back seat,” she said. “Front seat’s for people who haven’t been kidnapped by fucking numpties.”

  * * *

  I can feel Snow staring at me all through Greek—actually feel it. He’s so worked up, his magic is leaking out all over the place.

  Sometimes when he gets like this, I’m tempted to pull him aside. “Deep breaths now, Snow. Let it go. Some of it. Before you start another fire. Whatever it is you’re worried about, this won’t help.”

  I never do, though. Pull him aside. Or talk him down. Instead I just poke him until he goes off.

  That’s what Snow does best. He doesn’t plan or strike—he just goes off, and when he does, he takes down everything in his path.

  He’s half a fucking numpty himself. The Mage gives him mittens and blankets, and Snow goes off in whatever direction the Mage points him in. I’ve seen it. I’ve probably seen it more than anyone but Bunce.…

  The way Snow starts to blur and shimmer. Like a jet engine. The way sparks pop and flare in his aura. The light reflects in his hair, and his pupils contract until his eyes are thick blue. He’s usually holding his sword, so that’s where the flame starts—whipping around his hands and wrists, licking up the blade. It makes him mental. His brain blinks out, I think, about the time he starts swinging. Eventually the power pours off him in waves. Flattening, blackening waves. It’s more power than the rest of us ever have access to. More power than we can imagine. Spilling out of him like he’s a cup left under a waterfall.

  I’ve seen it happen close up, standing right at his side. If Snow knows you’re there, he shields you. I don’t know how he does it, I don’t even know why. It’s just like him, really, to use what little control he has to protect other people.

  The Minotaur is droning now. Conjugating verbs I’ve known since I was 11.

  I can feel Snow’s eyes on the back of my head. I can smell his magic. Smoky. Sticky. Like green wood in a campfire. The people sitting around us are getting stupid and drunk from it. I watch Bunce try to shake it off—she’s glaring at him. He’s glaring at me.

  I turn my head just enough to let him see my lip curl.

  31

  SIMON

  I go back to our room as soon as lessons are over for the day, but Baz isn’t there. His clothes are in his wardrobe. His bed is made. His bottles and tubes are back on the bathroom counter.

  I open the windows even though it’s freezing out; I’ve been overheating all day. Penelope practically had to hold me down at breakfast. I wanted to rush over to Baz and demand to know where he’d been. I wanted—I think I just wanted to make sure it was really him. I mean … It’s obviously him.

  Baz is back.

  Baz is alive. Or as alive as he gets.

  He looked awful today, even paler than usual. He’s thinner than usual, too, and there’s something off about the way he’s moving—a drag. Like he’s got stones of different weights tied to each limb.

  I just want to run him down and knock him over and figure it all out. What’s wrong with him. Where he’s been …

  I wait in our room until dinner, but Baz doesn’t come back. Then he ignores me in the dining hall.

  He ignores Agatha, too. (She’s staring at him as much as I am—but I don’t think she’s as worried that he might have come back to kill her.) She’s sitting alone at a table, and I can’t decide whether that makes me sad or angry. Whether Agatha herself makes me sad or angry. Or even what I’m supposed to be feeling about her. I can’t think right now.

  “I was thinking we could study in the library tonight,” Penny says at dinner, as if I’m not literally fuming.

  “I’m gonna have to talk to him sometime,” I say.

  “No, you aren’t,” she says. “When do the two of you ever talk, anyway?”

  “I’m gonna have to face him.”

  She leans over her cottage pie. “That’s what I’m worried about, Simon. You need to cool down first.”

  “I’m cool.”

  �
�Simon. You’re never cool.”

  “That hurts, Penny.”

  “It shouldn’t. It’s one of the reasons I love you.”

  “I just—I need to know where he’s been.…”

  “Well, he’s not going to tell you.”

  “Maybe he’ll tell me something without meaning to, in the process of not telling me. What is he even up to? He looks like he’s been in some American terror prison.”

  “Maybe he’s been sick.”

  Curses, I never thought of that either. Every scenario I thought up had Baz hidden away, plotting somewhere. Maybe he was sick and plotting.…

  “No matter what the truth is,” Penny says, “it won’t help to pick a fight with him.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Simon, you do. Every year. As soon as you see him. And I just think that maybe you shouldn’t this time. Something’s happening. Something bigger than Baz. The Mage has practically disappeared, and Premal has been on some secret assignment for weeks—my mum says he’s stopped returning her texts.”

  “Is she worried about him?”

  “She’s always worried about Premal.”

  “Are you worried about him?”

  Penny looks down. “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry—should we try to find him?”

  She looks back up at me sternly. “Mum says no. She says we need to wait and pay attention. I think she and Dad are asking around, covertly, and she doesn’t want us drawing a lot of attention to them. Which is why you need to cool down. Just—keep your eyes open. Observe. Don’t knock over any furniture or kill anything.”

  “You always say that,” I sigh. “But then when it’s us or them, you want me to kill something.”

  “I never want you to kill, Simon.”

  “I never feel like I have a choice.”

  “I know.” She smiles at me. Sadly. “Don’t kill Baz tonight.”

  “I won’t.”

  But I’m probably gonna have to kill him someday, and we both know it.

  * * *

  Penelope lets me go back to my room after dinner, and she doesn’t try to follow—she’s stuck with Trixie and her girlfriend now that Baz is back in town. “Gay people have an unfair advantage!” she complains.