Any Way the Wind Blows

by Rainbow Rowell

  Daphne looks around. There are people watching us, staring at Simon mostly. She pulls me farther out of the crowd. I pull Simon along with us.

  “They need their mother to be strong,” Daphne says. “I’m doing the absolute best thing I can do for them by staying with Smith.”

  “How can you think that?”

  “You don’t understand, Basil; you’ve always been powerful. You’ve always lived up to your parents’ standards—to the world’s standards.”

  “I think you know that’s not true,” I say meaningfully. Daphne knows I’m a vampire, even though she’d never say it out loud. And further, she knows I’m queer as a clockwork orange, and that we’re not allowed to say that out loud either.

  She takes my hand. “I don’t want my children to live half a life. I don’t want to go on living half a life myself.”

  “But you have a great life,” I say, and then immediately wish that I hadn’t, because who I am to say so?

  Daphne smiles sadly at me.

  “You have great kids,” I try again. “And they miss you.”

  “I miss them, too,” she says. “And I’ll be home soon. Or I’ll bring them to stay with me. Smith hasn’t cast the spell on any children yet, but he’s considering it.”

  I don’t even want to think about what that means. Surely, my father won’t let his children move onto a compound.

  “You could call home,” I say. “Even the babies have mobile phones.”

  Daphne shakes her head. “It’s too confusing for them. They just want to know when I’m coming home, and it’s too hard to explain. Better to wait until I have some clear answers.”

  “Mum … they miss you.”

  “Basil.” She puts her hand on my arm. “They’re so young, they won’t even remember that I was gone for a few weeks. They won’t remember missing me. Soon I’ll be home, and I’ll be strong, and that’s what they’ll remember.”

  I can’t think of what else to say.

  Simon clears his throat—to remind us he’s here, I think. “Hello, Mrs. Grimm.”

  Daphne looks at him, and her face cools. (Fair. He did destroy her house.) “Hello, Mr. Snow. Did you enjoy the meeting?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Wow. Does he do this every week?”

  “He tries,” she says, immediately warming again. Apparently one mention of Smith-Richards is all it takes to make Daphne forget her motherless children and her ruined estate. “It’s an enormous spell,” she goes on, “so he can’t always manage it. But he’s helped six of us so far.”

  “And those people can all do magic now?”

  “Well,” she says, “they could always do magic. But, yes, they’re all very powerful now. Not even just middling powerful,” she says to me. “They’re all at the top of the game.”

  “Wow,” Simon says again, looking genuinely impressed. “Can anyone cast that spell?”

  “Crowley, no,” Daphne says. “I mean”—she’s sheepish—“I think we’ve all tried. But it’s Smith’s gift. It’s part of what makes him special.”

  “What else makes him special?” I ask.

  She’s still sheepish. “You’ve seen him. He’s here to lift us all up. To bring equality to the World of Mages.”

  “But that doesn’t make him the Greatest Mage,” I say. “The Greatest Mage is supposed to conquer the greatest threat to magic.”

  Her eyes are wide and shining. “What if the greatest threat to magic is the thing that holds each of us back? What if the threat to magic was inside of us, all along?”

  Well, that’s crap, and it takes every ounce of my self-control not to tell her so.

  “Who’s that Jamie?” Simon asks. “The one they mentioned?”

  Daphne practically beams. “Oh, Jamie Salisbury. He was one of Smith’s first believers—Jamie is his first miracle.”

  “So Jamie can do powerful magic now?” Snow is doing a poor job pretending he doesn’t know who Jamie is. He seems far too happy for him.

  “Yes,” Daphne says, “and he was the least among us. He couldn’t even cast a ‘Light of day.’”

  “That’s so cool,” Simon says. “Is he here?”

  “No,” she says, “Jamie hasn’t come to meetings lately. I think the attention was getting to be too much for him. Plus, people were jealous that Smith chose him first. Politics.” She rolls her eyes. “You can’t get away from it, I suppose.”

  I touch her arm. “Will you at least answer my texts? So that I can reach you in an emergency?”

  Daphne sighs. “I’ll unblock you, Baz. But you can’t tell your father. I can’t let myself get distracted right now.”

  “Distracted from what, Mum? Aren’t you just here waiting your turn?”

  “Your father hasn’t exactly been supportive…”

  “Can you blame him?”

  “Yes, Basil, I do blame him! If there was a way for you to heal yourself, I would support you, even if the means were unorthodox.”

  (Genuinely not sure whether she means the vampire thing or the gay thing.)

  “When you love someone,” she says, “you support them!” She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She’s patting the air with both hands, like she’s trying to gather herself. “Right now I just need to stay focused on Smith and Smith’s message.”

  “What is Smith’s message?” I ask.

  She looks up at me again, like she’s hoping I’m really listening. “That he’s the Greatest Mage, and that if we follow him, he can make us all great.”

  * * *

  “Well, that was bollocks,” I say, as soon as we’re on the street again.

  “Wait till we’re home,” Simon says quietly, glancing back at the door.

  “Are we…” I don’t quite know how to ask what I’m asking. Are we going home together? Whose home? For how long?

  Simon arches his back. Like his wings are bothering him under his coat. “We could get Nando’s and take it to my flat?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Good.”

  “Yeah,” he says, smiling at me. “Good.”

  35

  SMITH

  Simon Snow …

  Here. To see me.

  It’s a sign. Another sign—Evander was thrilled.

  It’s happening this time! It’s right! Everything is lining up for me. Planets. People. I know that if I harvested seven duck hearts and threw them, they’d land right in a row.

  Simon fucking Snow …

  Here.

  To see me.

  The Chosen One.

  36

  PENELOPE

  “Why are you being so quiet?”

  Shepard looks away from the window and smiles at me. “I thought I was supposed to be quiet on the train.”

  “You are,” I say. “But usually you aren’t.”

  He holds his Cornish pasty out to me. “Are you sure you don’t want a bite of this?”

  I shake my head.

  “I can’t believe you can just get these anywhere,” he says.

  “You don’t have pasties in Nebraska?”

  “No. We have so much less pie, in general. It isn’t fair. I guess we have runzas…”

  “What’s a runza?”

  “This”—he smiles again, pointing the pasty at me—“but with cabbage.” He takes another bite, then looks out the window. I’ve never seen Shepard like this before; I think he might be pensive.

  “Are you afraid?” I ask.

  His face jerks back to me. “Afraid? No. What would I be afraid of?”

  “Well, we are going to meet some shady dark creatures in their lair…”

  “Why do you assume every magickal being is dark?”

  “Asks the man who thought he should befriend a demon.”

  Shepard sighs.

  “Is that it?” I ask. “Are you afraid to see the demon again?”

  “No,” he says. “Should I be?” He looks thoughtful. “Maybe I should be … but it’s not like I can get more cursed…” He shakes his head. “Anyway, no, I
’m not afraid. We aren’t even summoning it today.” He looks at me and suddenly seems very afraid indeed. “You weren’t planning on summoning it today, were you?”

  “Morgana, no,” I say. “I’m not cold-calling a demon. Let’s figure out the details of the curse first. Hopefully Kipper’s mother can read your arms—and hopefully they say something useful. What if, after all this, the tattoos are just decorative?”

  I keep saying “hopefully,” but I’m not feeling especially hopeful about this trip. Kipper didn’t give us any reason to be optimistic last night. Once she got over the shock of seeing Shepard’s arms, she basically told him what he already knew: that he’s up the River Styx without a paddle.

  But she clearly liked him. (Everyone likes him.) She invited him, a perfect and obviously cursed stranger, to come to her family home in Croydon this morning, so her mum can take a look. Apparently forging and translation is a family business, and Kipper’s mother is more fluent in Demonic languages than she is.

  I think Kipper just wanted to see Shepard again.

  (Merlin, am I jealous? Because some rando and her mother might help Shepard when my own mother wouldn’t? Or is it because Kipper has cool purple hair and a beautiful delphinium tattoo on her wrist that she probably drew herself…) (I could have purple hair. It’s a simple enough spell.)

  I hope Shepard isn’t planning on adding Kipper’s family to his collection of interesting magickal friends. Not with me involved. I don’t need new friends. Like, ever. But especially not amongst strange magickal creatures who live in Croydon. I don’t want to end this day with more problems than we started with.

  “When we get there…” Shepard says carefully.

  Could we actually be on the same track for once? “We’ll be in information-gathering mode,” I say, “not information-sharing mode.”

  “Right, but—”

  “No ‘but’s, Shepard. No extraneous words at all. The fact that you’re cursed is already too much information. They don’t need to know your life story—or mine.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to be sociable, Penelope.”

  I grab his tattooed forearm. “It literally does.”

  “I just don’t think Kipper’s mother is going to be dangerous…”

  “Do you ever?”

  “All right. Fine.” He’s not smiling. He rubs one eye, under his glasses. “Ten-four, Debbie.”

  “‘Ten four.’ What’s that?”

  “It means—I’ve got it. Copy. Roger that. Message received. No being sociable.”

  * * *

  “‘Impenetrable,’ that’s just what my friend Ken said. Ken’s a giant. There aren’t too many giants in the Midwest. I’ve never met any in Omaha. That’s where I’m from—Nebraska, right in the heart of America.”

  We’re sitting in a kitchen with Old Kipper and her mother, who is indeed named Debbie, and Debbie’s boyfriend, who is literally a fox. (Maybe a fox spirit? Maybe something disguised as a fox? I’m waiting for Shepard to ask an impertinent question that will shed some more light on the subject.)

  At the moment, Shepard’s sitting on a stool with his jacket off and his T-shirt sleeves pushed up, while Debbie and Jeremey (the fox) shake their heads over his tattoos. Debbie has her reading glasses on. She has eight eyes when she wants, but she only wears glasses over one set of them. (Eight eyes. And at least thirty fingers! Shepard didn’t even flinch when she unveiled an extra hand to poke at him.)

  “Bloody impenetrable,” Debbie says again.

  “So it’s not a Demonic language?” Kipper asks, craning her head over her mother’s shoulder.

  “No, it is,” Debbie says. “But it’s legalese. You don’t need a translator—you need a lawyer.”

  “A lawyer?” I’m on Shepard’s other side, at the table. “For a curse?”

  “For a contract,” Debbie says. “It’s as bad as he told Kipper—”

  “Where did you learn Demonic languages, Debbie?” Shepard cuts in. “Did you go to school for it?” He’s sitting there, perfectly at home, drinking a cup of Yorkshire tea. He’s already eaten half a packet of biscuits—it’s no wonder he’s been trapped by so many fairies.

  “Live long enough,” she says, “and you pick up all sorts of things.”

  “She’s being modest,” Jeremey says. With his voice. Because he is a talking fox. A talking fox wearing a tracksuit. “Deb has a real head for languages. And she’s a whiz with song lyrics. She can hear something once on the radio and sing the whole thing.”

  She swats him. “He’s exaggerating.”

  “Maybe you could just give us your best guess,” I suggest, “even if you’re not sure of the precise translation.”

  “I could…” Debbie says, standing up straight again and taking off her glasses. I would have described Debbie as a white woman in her 50s with a brassy blond ponytail—if not for the extra limbs and things. Now I don’t know how to sort her … Is she human? Was she human? Why doesn’t a magickal forger live in a nicer house? I keep thinking about what my mother would say about all this, but I don’t get past, “Get out of there, Penelope! Right now!”

  “The thing is”—Debbie shifts her attention to Shepard’s other arm—“I don’t want to accidentally summon the demon. I wouldn’t read any of this out loud.”

  “Surely, the demon won’t show up without a proper summoning,” I say. “Ashes, blood, et cetera.”

  “I wouldn’t want to risk it.” Debbie pokes Shepard in the shoulder. “What got into your head, lad? There are easier ways to live forever.”

  “It was a misunderstanding,” he says. “I just wanted to talk.”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to talk in hell,” she says, more sympathetically than he deserves.

  “Talk about some trouble and strife.” Jeremey shakes his head.

  “I don’t think it is hell, so to speak,” Shepard says.

  “Well, you’ll be an expert,” Debbie says, “won’t you.”

  Kipper has sat down next to me at the table. She’s leaning on one hand, staring at Shepard. (Staring at his surprisingly fit arms, I suspect.) “I think you should help him, Mum. Translate what you can.”

  Debbie rests two hands on her hips. Another appears holding a Coke Zero. She takes a sip. “How will having his bad end explicitly spelled out for him make it any better?”

  “If we knew the terms of the contract,” I say, “we might find a loophole.”

  “Demons don’t leave loopholes.” Another of Debbie’s arms emerges to point at me. “Sometimes they leave things that look like loopholes that are actually ways to further fuck yourself.”

  “We could do the translation inside a protective circle,” Kipper says. “And we could leave out any words that make you nervous…”

  Her mum snorts. “This whole thing makes me nervous.”

  “I could lend some extra protection,” I offer.

  Debbie narrows all eight of her eyes at me. “Could you now … Debbie.”

  Jeremey gets his car keys out of his pocket. “Well, I’m hooking it. I’m not trying to get engaged to a demon today.” He pats Shepard on the back. “Best of British, mate!”

  Engaged …

  Engaged?

  I look over at Shepard. He’s rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses.

  * * *

  I cast some protection spells. Who knows whether they work.

  Debbie wouldn’t do the translation in her house. (More credit to her.) She took Shepard out to a shed in the back garden and made space for him to stand in the middle of the floor. Then Kipper drew an extremely artful protection circle around them both. The plan was to write the translation out on notebook paper, apparently leaving out the most dangerous words—like the demon’s name and address, I suppose, and “with this tattoo, I thee wed.”

  Shepard tried to talk to me before we left the house. I wouldn’t let him. I wouldn’t even look at him. I followed Debbie out to the shed, waited for Kipper to draw the circle, cast my spells as quickly and quietly a
s possible, then went to sit on Debbie’s front steps. At the moment, I don’t much care if all three of them end up cursed.

  I can’t believe I put myself out like this for a Normal …

  That I cast spells in front of strangers … That I spent the morning with dark creatures and criminals, all because I thought I owed him something. Because I thought, at the very least, that he had been honest with me.

  Why am I even sitting here, waiting for him? I should hook it, too! I’m sure Old Kipper could help Shepard find his way back to my flat. Or back to hers. Or back to Omaha, for all I care.

  “Hey,” he says, coming out the door behind me.

  I stand up and start walking. He can follow me if he wants.

  “Hey. Penelope.”

  I walk a little faster.

  “Penelope, are you angry with me?”

  I walk even faster. I’m not having this conversation with him right now. I might not have it at all.

  “Penelope…”

  I don’t actually have to speak to Shepard again. I shouldn’t have spoken to him in the first place. I should have trusted everything I’ve ever been taught and every bone in my body. Smart mages don’t befriend Normals. Even witless mages don’t tell Normals their secrets.

  “You can’t ignore me all the way back to Camberwell,” he says.

  I laugh out loud, like this—“Ha!” I can ignore him for the rest of my life. I can make everyone ignore him! I can make him forget he exists.

  Just because I haven’t spelled Shepard silly yet doesn’t mean it’s impossible. I just have to put my back into it. I’ll get the job done.

  “Penelope…”

  We turn a corner. I whip around and stick my finger in his face. I’ve got my gem clutched in my fist in case I decide to cast a spell. “When were you going to tell me that you were engaged to a demon?”

  Shepard looks pitiful. Fortunately, I’m pitiless.

  “I can explain,” he says.

  “Apparently you can’t! Because I asked you to explain, multiple times, and you didn’t!”

  “I was going to, Penelope!”

  “Really? When!”