Any Way the Wind Blows

by Rainbow Rowell

  “When it was relevant!”

  “Shepard, we were investigating your curse, which was apparently a marriage contract, which you apparently already knew. It was relevant the whole time!”

  “I was going to tell you, I swear.” His tone is very sincere. “I tried.”

  “No. Close. Rhymes with ‘tried’…”

  “Penelope.”

  “You lied to me, Shepard!”

  “I didn’t! I just hadn’t explained yet!”

  “We have literally been making lists of things that we know and things that we don’t, and not once did you say, ‘Here’s something I know: I have a fiancé in hell.’”

  “She’s not my fiancée!”

  “Wait, is it a ‘she’ or a ‘he’?”

  “I really don’t know whether demons have gender.”

  “But you said ‘he’ before. Is this another lie?”

  “No! I mean—maybe. I just … I didn’t want you to think…”

  “Think what?”

  “That I’d been seduced by some she-devil!”

  “Well, now I can assume that’s exactly what happened!”

  “No, it wasn’t like that!”

  “I don’t know what it was like, do I, Shepard? Because you didn’t tell me! Apparently you told Kipper the truth as soon as you met her, but to me? You lied.”

  “Penelope, when I first told you, I didn’t know that I was going to see you again, that we were going to be friends. ‘Cursed’ covers a lot of bases.”

  “It doesn’t cover ‘engaged’!”

  “This isn’t a real engagement!”

  “It’s legally binding!”

  Shepard rolls his eyes at me, which he has no right to do, now or ever.

  I start walking away from him. Then I realize I’m headed away from the train station and spin around and march past him.

  “Penelope!” he shouts after me.

  I keep walking.

  He keeps shouting. “I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t want you to think I was in a relationship!”

  37

  BAZ

  We’re eating at the kitchen table this time. Lady Salisbury has made another cake and given us each a far-too-generous slice.

  She’s got a fork raised halfway to her face, and her mouth’s gone slack with shock. “Jamie…” she says eventually, “has been healed?”

  “That’s what Daphne—Baz’s stepmum—said. She said he was Smith-Richards’s first miracle.”

  “His first … miracle?” Lady Salisbury glances at her fork and seems to remember she’s holding it. She sets it down on her plate, then immediately picks it up again, and takes the bite. Then she starts to cry. Curling over the table, her shoulders hitching.

  Simon looks at me, his mouth full and his eyes something like panicked. I scoot my chair closer to her and touch her shoulder. “Lady Salisbury…”

  “Healed,” she says after a moment. She wipes her mouth with a cloth napkin and then wipes her eyes. She takes another bite of cake, then sobs again, covering her mouth. “Healed,” she says, coughing on crumbs.

  I rub her back, fairly uselessly. She smells like buttercream icing and lavender.

  “We don’t know what it means,” I say. “But Daphne says all the magicians Smith-Richards has … affected can do powerful magic now.”

  “It’s just so hard to fathom.” She wipes her eyes again, smearing chocolate on her cheek.

  I point at my own cheek, and she wipes most of the chocolate away, smiling to thank me.

  “My Jamie…” she says, still looking shocked, “doing magic.”

  Simon has pulled his chair closer, too. “It’s good news,” he says carefully. “Isn’t it?”

  Lady Salisbury laughs, more tears streaming down her chocolate-smudged cheeks. “I genuinely don’t know, Simon.” She takes another bite of her cake. Simon takes a bite of his, too. “On the one hand,” she says, “it is a miracle. It’s what Jamie’s always wanted. It’s what we expected for him, once a upon a time.”

  Simon smiles at her, hopefully. He wants this to be good news. I think he wants to believe that walking cologne ad is offering something real.

  “As far as we know,” Simon kept saying last night, “Smith-Richards is the Chosen One.”

  “By what logic?” I scoffed. We were sitting on his living room floor, eating peri-peri chicken.

  “Well, we don’t know that he isn’t,” Simon said.

  “We don’t know that anyone isn’t.”

  “We know it isn’t me.”

  “All right, Snow, so everyone who isn’t you could be the Chosen One?”

  He shrugged. “We watched Smith-Richards fix that guy’s magic. I never fixed anyone’s magic.”

  “One”—I counted on my fingers—“you fixed the entire magickal firmament. Two, how do we know that Alan person was actually changed? It could have been a trick. Or a delusion. Maybe there’s some sort of placebo effect.”

  Simon stuck out his chin. “Your stepmum believes it.”

  “She wants to believe it.”

  Simon just shrugged again.

  We kept arguing about it for an hour, even after we climbed into his bed. (It isn’t a bed; it’s a mattress. I had to magic him up some sheets and pillows.)

  “On the other hand?” Simon says now, still looking hopefully at Lady Salisbury.

  “On the other hand…” She taps her empty fork on her plate. “Things that seem too good to be true usually are.”

  “In my experience,” Simon says, “things that seem too good to be true are usually magic.”

  Lady Salisbury smiles at him. She hasn’t stopped crying; she’s smiling through tears. She picks up the cake knife and cuts Simon a second piece.

  * * *

  I thought we’d brief Lady Salisbury, then head back to Simon’s flat to plan our next move. (And maybe to kiss. There was more arguing than kissing last night.) (Though it was all in the realm of good arguing: lying side by side, Simon almost lazily pushing my hair out of my face while he disagreed with me.) But Simon doesn’t seem to pick up on any of my hints about leaving.

  We stay at Lady Salisbury’s table for hours, eating cake and re-examining the whole scenario. I miss Bunce’s blackboard. Lady Salisbury—she says we should call her “Ruth,” but I don’t think I can—isn’t an orderly thinker. She jumps from thought to thought and back again. But at least she stays mostly on my side. Even after hearing the whole story twice, she still frowns every time we mention Smith-Richards.

  “I think you’d trust him more if you saw him,” Simon says to her.

  I snort. It would have been a scoff, but I was drinking tea. “He just means he’s handsome.”

  “That isn’t what I meant,” Simon argues.

  “We need to talk to Jamie,” Lady Salisbury says. “We need to see him.”

  “Agreed,” I agree.

  Simon nods. “Why hasn’t he called you, do you think? I mean, you could hardly talk him out of following Smith-Richards now.”

  “Why doesn’t anyone call their mothers,” she says with a sigh.

  Simon looks like the orphan he is for a moment, and I must look like a similarly kicked puppy, because Lady Salisbury’s face falls. “Oh, boys,” she says, “I’m so sorry! I’ve spent my whole life with my foot in my mouth. What I meant is … If Jamie suddenly has magic, I’m sure ‘calling his mother’ is fairly low on his list of priorities. He probably doesn’t want me to rain on his parade, if he’s feeling good about things.”

  “He could always call to say, ‘I told you so,’” Simon says.

  She frowns again, shaking her head. “Smith-Richards doesn’t like his followers to engage with doubters. Jamie used to call all my questions ‘counterproductive to the cause.’”

  “Daphne mentioned something like that, too,” I say.

  Lady Salisbury leans forward, thumping the table. “That’s why I don’t trust this Smith-Richards. Anything worth believing in should stand up to some interrogation!�
� She hits the table again. “Truth doesn’t burn in the sunlight!”

  Simon glances at me, apologetic. (Perhaps because I burn in the sunlight?)

  “I completely agree,” I tell Lady Salisbury.

  Simon looks thoughtful. “Then I suppose Baz and I will have to go to Smith-Richards’s clubhouse and see if we can find Jamie there.”

  “Agreed,” I say again.

  Lady Salisbury looks between us, like she isn’t quite sure.

  * * *

  We don’t end up leaving until after lunch. Lady Salisbury stops us at the door, making us promise to be careful and to watch out for each other. I feel like she’s saying this more to me than to Simon; she’s only known him for a day, and she can already sense his gobsmacking lack of self-preservation.

  He and I walk to the Tube station together, lost in our own thoughts, then stop at the stairs. Are we still going the same way?

  “I should probably go home and change,” I say. I’m still wearing my suit from yesterday. (Camel, wool, unlined. Lady Salisbury pretended not to notice.)

  “Oh,” Simon says, looking first at my suit and then at the ground, and scratching the back of his head. “Right.”

  “I can check in with you later?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Or maybe…”

  “Maybe?”

  He looks up at me. “Maybe we both go to your flat, and instead of changing, you pick up some clothes?”

  “And then I…” I’m afraid to say it even though he’s the one saying it. “… stay with you?”

  He nods quickly, licking his bottom lip. “Yeah.”

  “Like, for a few days, or…” I have my hands pressed so deep into my jacket pockets that my collar is pulling on my neck. “For a while?”

  Simon’s whole body shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know.” I nod.

  He tilts his head forward and pulls at the top of his hair. “Do I have to know?” His eyebrows are up. His forehead is wrinkled. He’s squinting at me like he’s about to place a bet.

  “No,” I say. “You don’t have to know.”

  Simon lurches forward and grabs me by the elbow. “I don’t know how people do this,” he says, his voice low and urgent. “I’m much better at pushing you away than pulling you close. Are we allowed to be together all the time? Or is that too much? Just tell me if it’s too much.”

  That’ll be the day.

  I put my hand on his forearm. “Come back to Fiona’s with me,” I say. “I’ll pick up some clothes.”

  His eyes are scrabbling on mine. I try to give him whatever it is he’s digging for.

  “Yeah?” he says.

  “It isn’t too much, Snow.”

  He licks his lip and nods.

  I pull him towards the stairs.

  38

  SIMON

  In the early days after the Mage was gone, when I was still having video calls with that American therapist, she used to tell me to break life into bites you can swallow.

  Like, don’t think about the fact that you don’t have magic and you killed your mentor and you have a fucking tail now … (I’m the “you,” obviously.) Just think about the next few hours. Are you going to have lunch? Are you going to see your friends? Will you take a walk?

  There were days when even that was too much for me to swallow.

  There were days that I broke up into minutes. And days that I could only live one second at a time. Now I’m going to sit up. Now I’m going to piss. Now I’m going to plug in my phone.

  I’m doing it again now.

  Not because the future is too terrible to reckon with—because it’s too terrifying. Too uncertain. There are parts of it that are too bright.

  Is this what people do when they’re in love? Do they just keep touching and talking? And then what? Like what is it all leading to? I don’t mean sex, I mean …

  If I knew what I meant, it wouldn’t be so frightening.

  I’m living second by second. All of this with Baz is petrifying. All of this without Baz is intolerable. I’m just making whatever decision I have to make in the moment to keep him in the picture, even though I can’t look at the whole picture without shitting myself.

  I just told him to come home with me.

  A few days ago, I broke up with him.

  I just told him to come home with me, and he said yes. We’re on the Tube to his flat, and he’s sitting next to me. I’ve got my arm slung around his shoulder. There’s at least one guy giving us a dirty look, and I kinda hope he speaks up, because I would dearly love to punch something right now. That’s a decision I could wrap my brain around.

  Second by second.

  Now I’m holding on to Baz.

  Now I’m standing up.

  Now I’m going to follow him.

  39

  BAZ

  “Is your aunt home?” Snow asks, hiding behind me while I unlock the door.

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “I don’t hear Joe Strummer, so probably not.”

  “Is that her boyfriend?”

  “She wishes.” I step into the flat—there’s a blur of movement and a noise like a door slamming.

  Fiona is home. She’s standing in front of her bedroom door. Awkwardly. Her legs planted too far apart. “Basil!” she says. “You weren’t here.”

  “I was not,” I say slowly. “Now I am.”

  “Okay, fine,” she says. She leans against the wall. I’ve never seen her stand in that spot before. She puts her hands in her trouser pockets.

  “Fiona … Did you just hide a man from me?”

  “No,” she says.

  “You did.”

  “Big talk from someone hiding a man at this very moment.”

  I glance over my shoulder. “Stop cowering, Snow.”

  “I’m not cowering,” he mutters, stepping out from behind my back. I have my hand on my wand, just in case Fiona tries something.

  “Hello, Simon Snow,” she says, trying to look dangerous.

  “Hi,” he replies, barely audible.

  Fiona puts something into her mouth. It looks like a whistle. Or a recorder.

  “Fuck me,” I say. “Are you vaping?”

  She immediately pulls it away and hides it behind her back—then realizes she’s hiding it and lets her hand hang at her side. “It’s better for your lungs than smoking.”

  “Is it?”

  She curls her lip at me. “I thought you objected to the open flame.”

  “I also object to you looking like a yob.”

  “Don’t be classist, Basil.”

  I look at her bedroom door. “Is that it?” I whisper. “Are you hiding a Normal in there? I already know you date Normals, Fiona.”

  “Oh, and you don’t?”

  “I’ll just—” Simon is backing out the front door.

  I snatch his wrist and drag him towards my room. Fiona watches us, smiling like she’s won. I shut the door behind us.

  “Maybe I should wait outside?” Snow is still cowering.

  “You’re safer where I can see you,” I say, walking over to a clothes rack.

  “She wouldn’t really do anything to hurt me … All that’s over … Right?”

  “My aunt is a lunatic.” I flip through my shirts. I’m not sure what to bring to Simon’s flat. Enough for a few days? For a week? I wish there was a spell that would shrink my whole wardrobe down, so that it would fit in my pocket. (There is a spell like that, but the reversal is a bitch.) (Reversals are always a bitch. Bunce could make herself famous if that Missy Elliott song sticks.) I have a garment bag somewhere—would that make this arrangement too formal? Too real? Would Simon feel better if I just threw a few things into a duffel and called it good?

  Whatever. I pull my garment bag out from under my bed.

  Simon has wandered over to my violin case. “Do you need this?”

  I lay the bag on my bed. “‘Need’ is a strong word. Would you like me to bring it?”

  “I didn’t know if
you still played.”

  “I still play.”

  He looks uncomfortable. Embarrassed, maybe.

  “Grab it,” I say. “Perhaps we’ll encounter a violin emergency.”

  “Have you encountered one of those before?”

  “Any and all emergencies are possible with you around.” Fuck it, I’m bringing a dozen shirts, a few jackets. Another summer-weight suit. I’ll need two bags. And I’ll keep both of them by Simon’s front door, just in case he throws me out.

  “Can I help?” he asks.

  “I’ve got it. Just sit down, Snow.”

  He sits on my bed. Holding the violin in his lap. He looks like an 8-year-old waiting for the bus.

  It would be easier if I were bringing everything. Then I could just open my suitcase and have the bags pack themselves, Mary Poppins–style.

  I lay my shirts and jackets out on the bed, then find my duffel bag and take it to my chest of drawers. I open the top drawer. (Am I really doing this? Taking pants to Simon Snow’s flat?) I rest my hand on a stack of boxer briefs and clear my throat. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Are you?” Simon asks.

  I turn around. “I asked you first.”

  He’s looking at the floor. His tongue is in his cheek. Like he’s frustrated. Or angry.

  I turn back to my pants. Right. Simon isn’t sure. Of any of this. I’m putting all of my eggs in his basket, and it’s a ramshackle basket—he already warned me.

  I close my eyes for a second. Right.

  I open my eyes and scoop up the entire stack of boxers, then dump them in the duffel. I empty the whole drawer. I grab most of my T-shirts, as well, and half a dozen pairs of jeans and trousers. I’m going to need another bag for shoes.

  Simon watches me pack. He’s still hugging my violin.

  I zip up the duffel and look at him. “I’m sure,” I say.

  * * *

  When we come out, Fiona is still guarding her bedroom door. Still puffing on her nicotine whistle like a second-rate Instagram influencer. She looks at my bags. “Going somewhere?”

  “I’m going to stay with Simon for a few days.”