Carry On

by Rainbow Rowell

  I sit at one of the tall tables. Dad likes to stand while he works, so all the tables are tall. He’s already got a book open, and he’s copying numbers into a ledger. He uses a computer, too, but he still keeps all his records by hand.

  “I’m working on a project for school,” I say. “And I was looking through some old copies of The Record.…”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “And I was reading about the Watford Tragedy.”

  Dad looks up. “Yes?”

  “Do you remember when it happened?”

  “Of course.” He goes back to his ledger. “Your mother and I were still at uni. You were just a little girl.…”

  Mum and Dad got married just after Watford and started having kids right away, even though they were still in school and Mum wanted a career. Dad says Mum wanted everything, immediately.

  “It must have been terrible,” I say.

  “It was. No one had ever attacked Watford before—and poor Natasha Grimm-Pitch.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “Not personally. She was older than us. Her sister was a few years below me at school—Fiona—but I didn’t know her either. The Pitches always kept to their own sort.”

  “So you didn’t like her? Natasha Grimm-Pitch?”

  “I didn’t like her politics,” he says. “She thought low-powered magicians should give up their wands.”

  Low-powered magicians. Like my dad.

  “Why did the vampires attack Watford?” I ask. “They’d never done it before.”

  “The Humdrum sent them,” Dad says.

  “But it doesn’t say that”—I lean towards him, across the table—“in the initial news stories, right after the attack. It just says it was vampires.”

  He looks up at me again, interested. “That’s right.” He nods. “We didn’t know at first. We just thought the dark creatures were taking advantage of how disorganized we were. It was a different time. Everything was looser. The World of Mages was more like a … club. Or a society. There was no line of defence. There were even werewolf attacks back then—in London proper, can you imagine?”

  “So no one knew the Humdrum was behind the attack on Watford?”

  “Not for a while,” he says. “We didn’t know the Humdrum was an entity at first.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, when the holes started appearing—”

  “In 1998.”

  “Yes,” he says, “that’s when we first recorded them. Seventeen years ago. We thought they might be a natural phenomenon, or maybe even the result of pollution. Like the holes in the ozone layer. It was Dr. Manning who first coined the term, I remember. He visited the hole in Lancashire and described it as ‘an insidious humdrum, a mundanity that creeps into your very soul.’” Dad smiles. He likes a well-turned phrase. “I started my research not long after that.”

  “When did you guys realize that the Humdrum was a ‘he’?”

  “We still don’t know it’s a ‘he.’”

  “You know what I mean—when did you realize it was a thing with intention? That it was attacking us?”

  “There wasn’t one day,” he says. “I mean, everything sort of shifted in 2008. I personally think that the Humdrum got more powerful around that time. We’d been tracking these small holes, like bubbles in the magickal atmosphere—and they suddenly mushroomed, like a cancer metastasizing. Around the same time, the dark world went mad. I suppose it was when the dark creatures started coming for Simon directly that we knew there was malice there—and intelligence—not just natural disaster. And then there was the feeling. The holes, the attacks … there’s a distinct feeling.” His eyes focus on me, and his mouth tightens.

  After the Humdrum kidnapped Simon and me last year, Dad wanted to know every detail. I told him most of it—everything about the Humdrum, even what he looks like. Dad thinks the Humdrum took Simon’s form to mock him.

  I rest my elbows on the counter. “Why do you think the Humdrum hates Simon so much?”

  “Well.” He wrinkles his nose. “The Humdrum seems to hate magic. And Simon does have more of it than anyone—maybe anything—else.”

  “It’s weird that the Humdrum isn’t its real name,” I say. “I mean, that it didn’t come with that name or name itself.…”

  “Do you think a dark creature would choose the name ‘the Insidious Humdrum’?”

  “I’ve never thought about it,” I say. “It’s just always been there.”

  Dad sighs and pushes up his glasses. “That breaks my heart, to think that you can’t remember a world without the Humdrum. I worry that your generation will just acclimate to it. That you won’t see the necessity of fighting back.”

  “I think I’ll see, Dad. The foul thing kidnapped me—and it keeps trying to kill my best friend.”

  He frowns and keeps looking at me. “You know, Penelope … There’s a team of Americans coming in a few weeks. I think I finally got their attention when we visited this summer.”

  Dad met with as many other magickal scientists as he could while we visited Micah. There was a magickal geologist who took a real interest in Dad’s work.

  The American mages are much less organized than we are. They live all over the country and mostly do their own thing. But there’s more money there. Dad’s been trying to convince other international scientists that the Humdrum is a threat to the entire magickal world, not just the British one.

  “I’d love it if you could come along on a few of our surveys,” he says. “You could meet Dr. Schelling; he has his own lab in Cleveland.”

  I see what he’s doing—this is how my dad is going to keep me safe from the Humdrum. By hiding me in Ohio.

  “Maybe,” I say. “If I can get out of lessons.”

  “I’ll write you a note.”

  “Can Simon come, too?”

  He presses his lips together and pushes up his glasses again. “I’m not sure I can write a note for Simon,” he says, picking up his pen. “What did you say your school project is about?”

  “The Watford Tragedy.”

  “Tell me if you turn anything up that sheds light on the Humdrum. I’ve always wondered whether anyone felt his presence there.”

  His head’s back in his work now. So I hop off the chair and start to leave. I stop at the door. “Hey, Dad, one more thing—did you ever know a magician named Nicodemus?”

  He looks up, and his face doesn’t move at all—so I can tell he’s purposely not reacting. “I can’t say that I have,” he says. “Why?”

  It’s not like my dad to lie to me.

  It’s not like me to lie to him. “It’s just a name I saw in The Record, and I didn’t recognize it.”

  “Hmm,” he says. “I don’t—I don’t think he’s anyone important.”

  60

  SIMON

  We wait until after midnight to go looking for the vampires. Baz’s aunt wouldn’t tell him exactly where they hang out, but he thinks he can find them, and he says they should be done hunting by midnight.…

  Which freaks me right out. To think of all those murders happening. While we wait.

  If the vampires are hunting Normals every night, why don’t we do something about it? The Coven must know it’s happening. I mean, if Baz’s aunt knows, the Coven must know.

  I decide Baz isn’t the right person to talk to about this right now.

  We have time to kill after we leave his aunt’s, so we go to a library—the big one—and then to the reading room at the British Museum, where Baz steals at least a half dozen books.

  “You can’t do that,” I argue.

  “It’s research.”

  “It’s treason.”

  “Are you going to tell the Queen?”

  When the museums all close, we walk around a park, then find a place where I can eat a curry while he looks through his stolen books.

  “You should eat something,” I say.

  He raises an eyebrow at me.

  “Oh, piss off.” I wonder if
this is why he’s never had a girlfriend. Because he’d take her on dates to the library, then insist on sitting there creepily while she ate dinner alone.

  I’ve finished my curry and two orders of samosas, and I’m watching him read—I swear he sucks on his fangs when he’s thinking—when he snaps the book shut with one hand and stands up.

  “Come on, Snow. Let’s go find a vampire.”

  “Thanks”—I wipe my mouth on my sleeve—“but I’m already over the limit.”

  Baz is already walking out the door.

  “Hey,” I say, trying to catch up. When he ignores me, I grab his arm.

  He frowns. “You can’t just grab people when you want their attention.”

  “I said ‘Hey.’”

  “Still.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” I say, “if we’re going to do this, you have to start calling me by my name.”

  I don’t know why this seems important. Just—if we’re going to walk into a vampire den together, it seems like we need to get past some of this stuff and actually be allies.

  “Snow is your name,” Baz says. “Possibly. Who named you, anyway?”

  I look away. It was written on my arm—Simon Snow. Whoever left me at the home must have written it. Maybe it was my mother.

  “You have to call me Simon,” I say. “You’ve called me that before.”

  He opens his car door and gets in, as if he didn’t hear me—but I know that he did.

  “Fine,” Baz says. “Get in the car, Simon.”

  I do.

  * * *

  It took us almost two hours to find this place—Baz sniffed it out; it was like walking around Covent Garden with a bloodhound.

  “Is this it?” I ask. “Are they here?”

  He straightens his collar and cuffs. We’re standing outside an old building full of flats, with a row of names next to the doorway and a brass slot for letters. “Stay close,” he whispers, and raps at the door with the back of his fist.

  A large man opens the door. He sees Baz, then opens it a bit wider. Another man, standing behind a long bar in the centre of the room, looks over and nods. The doorman motions with his head for us to come in.

  I follow Baz into a deep, low-ceilinged room with no overhead lights. The bar runs down the middle, and ornate, private booths line the walls on either side, each booth lit by a hanging yellow lamp.

  Everyone sitting along the aisles turns to look at us. A woman near the door drops her glass, and the man next to her catches it.

  They don’t look like vampires.

  Are they all vampires?

  They just look rich. And … grey. But they don’t look beautiful or thin or cheekboney like they do in the films.

  It’s Baz they’re checking out, not me. He’s got to be scared, or at least nervous, but he doesn’t look it. I swear he gets less ruffled the more that he’s threatened. (When I’m the one threatening him, that’s infuriating. But it’s kind of cool now.)

  Every one of them must be so jealous of him. He’s everything they are, plus magic. Plus he looks the part, like he was born to be some sort of dark king.

  Baz stops at the first booth. “Nicodemus,” he says, and he doesn’t even make it a question.

  A man with grey hair and skin, and a shimmering grey suit meets Baz’s eyes and nods towards the back of the room—then looks at me and sneers. I wonder if it’s my cross or my scent that’s getting to him. Or maybe he knows who I am. The Mage’s Heir. (The Mage kills vampires; he doesn’t think it’s murder.) (Why hasn’t the Mage killed these vampires?)

  I follow Baz through the room, wishing I’d worn all the posh gear he tried to push on me before we left Hampshire. I’m wearing my Watford trousers and one of his Scandinavian jumpers—and I only took the jumper because he said my Watford uniform made me look 12.

  Baz is walking so slow, I keep kicking the back of his heels. It’s like he wants everyone here to get their fill of him. (Maybe he’s also trying to hide his limp.) The room gets darker, the deeper we go. I scan the booths for Nicodemus, but I’m not sure I’d recognize him, even if there were enough light. Does he still look like a mean, boy version of Ebb?

  We reach the back wall, and I’m ready to turn around, but Baz continues through a doorway I didn’t even see. I follow him down a free-standing spiral staircase with a loose rail. By the time we get to the bottom, I’m dizzy.

  Then we’re in the basement, I think. It’s like a cavern—much larger than the room above us, with an even lower ceiling, and dim blue lights set into the floor, like at the cinema.

  It’s hard to tell how many of them are down here, because I can’t really see, but I feel like I’m in a room full of people. There’s electronic music playing, but it’s so soft, it sounds like it’s coming from far away.

  Baz stands at the bottom of the stairs with one hand in his trouser pocket, scanning the room like he’s looking for a friend.

  They could just set on us now, if they wanted—the vampires—and tear us to pieces. We’re hopelessly outnumbered, and we wouldn’t have time to cast any good spells. I don’t even have my wand on me, though they don’t know that. (Baz knows. He couldn’t believe I left it at Watford.) (I was in a hurry!)

  I could take on some of them with my sword, but probably not all.

  I could go off. And then, who knows what would happen?

  Baz starts walking. The clothes are less posh down here. Are these the down-on-their-luck vampires? How do vampires get down on their luck? Even though we’re in the basement, everything and everyone is clean. I don’t know what I was expecting. Bloodstains? Blood cocktails? It looks like most people down here are drinking gin. I see bottles of Bombay Sapphire on the tables. Someone makes eye contact with me and holds it, so I let my magic come to my skin—I just think about it overflowing. He looks away.

  We’re so deep into the cavern now, I’ve lost track of where the door is. Baz pulls on someone’s sleeve—a man almost twice his size. “Nicodemus,” Baz says, still not asking questions. The man flicks his head behind him, and Baz lets go.

  We walk on, till we get to a row of pool tables.

  Baz stops. He pulls a pack of fags from inside his jacket, then lights one with his wand. Everyone standing at the table jolts back. Baz takes a deep breath—the end of the cigarette glows red—and blows the smoke out over the table.

  I didn’t know he smoked.

  “Nicodemus,” Baz says, still puffing out smoke.

  Then I see him—Ebb. A rougher, rangier Ebb. With his blond hair slicked back. He’s wearing a suit, too, but it looks cheap, and there are popped stitches on the sleeve.

  He smiles at Baz and eyes him up and down. “Well … look at you. Aren’t you living the dream.”

  Baz inhales again, then languidly meets Nicodemus’s stare. “My name is Tyrannus Basilton Pitch. And I’m here to talk to you about my mother.”

  “Of course you are, Mr. Pitch.” Nicodemus is practically whispering. “Of course you are.”

  Nicodemus grins again, and I see the gaps in his smile; his eyeteeth are missing. His tongue is pushing at one of the holes.

  The other men who were at the table with him have backed away, leaving the three of us alone now in the dark.

  “What do you want from me?” Nicodemus asks.

  “I want to know who killed my mother.”

  “You know who killed her.” His tongue pushes into the gap, worrying his gum. “Everyone knows. And everyone knows what your mother did to them who were there.”

  Baz brings the cigarette up to his mouth, breathes in, then drops his hand, flicking ashes on the floor. “Tell me the rest,” he says. “Tell me who was responsible.”

  Nicodemus laughs. “Or what? Are you going to bite me?” He glances down at the cigarette. “Am I supposed to think you’re your mother’s son? Going to set us all alight? You haven’t killed yourself yet, Mr. Pitch. I don’t think you’ll choose today.”

  Baz looks around the room. Like he’s thinking about
how many vampires he could take with him.

  “Tell him the rest,” I snarl. “Or I’ll kill you.”

  Nicodemus looks over Baz’s shoulder at me, and his grin sours. “You think you’re so invincible,” he says. “With all your power. Like nothing can beat you.”

  “Nothing has yet,” I say.

  He laughs again. It’s nothing like Ebb’s laugh—Nicodemus laughs like nothing matters; Ebb laughs like everything does.

  “Fine,” he says. “I’ll tell you. Some of it.” He lays his cue on the table. “Vampires can’t just walk into Watford. We can’t go anywhere uninvited. Except home. Someone came to me—a few weeks before the raid—wanting me to broker a deal. That’s what I do to get by. Make deals, introduce people. Not a lot of work out there for a vampire who can’t bite nor a magician without a wand.”

  His tongue slides compulsively between his teeth. “The pay was good,” he says. “But I said no. My sister lives at Watford. I’d never send death to her door, not unless she wanted it.” He turns his jack-o’-lantern smile on Baz again. “I wonder if you were part of the plan, Mr. Pitch. Hard to believe the magicians have allowed it.… Why do they keep allowing it? What are they hoping to do with you?”

  “Who was it?” Baz says. I don’t think he’s blinked since we walked in here. “Who came to you? Was it the Humdrum?”

  “The Humdrum? Yeah, it was the bogeyman, Mr. Pitch. It was the monster under your bed.”

  “Was it. The Humdrum,” Baz says again.

  Nicodemus shakes his head, still smiling. “It was one of you,” he says. “But his name isn’t worth my life. Maybe you’ll kill me if I don’t tell—but I’ll die for certain if I do.”

  Baz rests the fag between his lips and slips his wand out his sleeve into his palm. “I could make you tell.”

  “That would be illegal,” Nicodemus says. He’s right. Compulsion spells are forbidden.

  “And dangerous,” he says. Right again.

  “What would the Coven do if you cast a forbidden spell, Tyrannus Basilton?” Nicodemus smirks. “Do you think they would be forgiving of one such as you?”

  “I should kill you right here,” Baz says, his chest pushing forward. “I don’t think anyone would stop me. Or miss you.”