the night, during a vicious nightmare—I’d gone to bed hungry, and in my dream, my stomach was on fire. I woke up, breathless, and magic was pouring out of me. Blasting out. The children’s home was burnt to the ground, and everyone in it woke up streets away. Unharmed, but still, streets away. (Once I watched a show about tornadoes in America, and they showed furniture that had been picked up and set in a yard miles away without breaking. It was like that.)
“You lit up the magickal atmosphere like a Christmas tree,” Baz says.
“Like a carpet bomb,” Penny chimes in. “My mum actually threw up when it happened.”
“When?” Baz says. “When did it happen?”
“August,” I say. I know he already knows this. “The year we started school.”
“August,” Baz says, “2008.” He walks around the room. “Here,” he says, pointing at a dead spot on the map. “And here.” He points at another.
Penny and I stare at the map.
Then she steps forward. She points at a string circle. “And in Newcastle…,” she says softly. “And a bunch of tiny ones on the coast. The holes changed that year. My dad says they metastasized.”
“But—but I wasn’t any of those places!” I sputter. “I’ve never been at the site of a new dead spot before last night.”
Baz turns to me. “I don’t think you have to be there. To make it happen.”
“Simon,” Penny asks, “when did you go off on the chimera?”
“Our fifth year,” Baz says. “Spring 2013.”
“Here,” Penny says, pointing. “And a big one over there.”
“Are you saying I’m the Humdrum?” I step away from them. “Because I’m not the Humdrum.”
Baz meets my eyes. “I know. I know you’re not. But Simon, listen. The Humdrum told us—he said he doesn’t take the magic, that he’s ‘what’s left when you’re done.’”
“I don’t even know what that means, Baz!” I feel like I might go off right now. My fingertips are buzzing.
“It means, the Humdrum doesn’t take the magic, Simon—you do.”
Penny gasps. “Simon. The first time you went off, you were eleven years old—”
“Exactly,” Baz says. “Probably wearing a shitty T-shirt and cast-off jeans—and bouncing that bloody ball.”
They’re looking at each other now. “Simon went off,” Penny says, “and he sucked up so much magic—”
Baz nods eagerly.
“—he tore a hole in the magickal atmosphere!” Penny says.
“A Simon-shaped hole…,” Baz agrees.
I hold my head in both hands, but it still doesn’t make sense. “Are you saying I created an evil twin?”
“More of an impression,” Baz says.
“Or an echo,” Penny says, still awestruck.
Baz tries to explain it again: “It’s like you tore so much magic out at once, you left fingerprints.… Whole-being prints.”
“But—,” I say.
“But…” Penny shakes her head. “Why didn’t the magickal atmosphere just accommodate Simon the way it accommodates every powerful magician? It’s a balanced system.”
“So is the earth,” Baz says, “but if you clear-cut a forest, the ecosystem doesn’t just bounce back.”
“This doesn’t make sense!” I say. “Even if I did tear a me-shaped hole, how did it come alive? And why is it a monster?”
“Is it alive?” Penny asks.
“And is it a monster?” Baz wonders.
“We’re talking about the Insidious Humdrum!” I shout.
“We’re talking about a hole,” Baz says calmly. “Think about it. What do holes want?”
“To be filled?” I guess. I know I’m not keeping up.
“Crowley, no,” he says. “To grow. Everything wants to grow. If you were a hole, all you’d want is to get bigger.”
“That’s it, Baz!” Penny throws her arms around him. “You’re a genius!”
He shoves her off after a second. “Careful. I’m also a vampire.”
I slump against one of the walls; a few pins fall to the floor. “I still don’t get it.”
“Simon,” Penny says, “you’re too powerful. You use too much magic at once. The magickal atmosphere can’t take it—it just collapses when you go off.”
“Theoretically,” Baz says.
“Theoretically,” she agrees.
“But…,” I say. There must be more “but’s.” “Why does the Humdrum keep trying to kill me? Why send every dark creature in the UK after me?”
“He isn’t trying to kill you,” Baz says. “He’s trying to get you to go off.”
“And use more magic,” Penny says.
Baz holds his hand up to the maps behind him. “To make a bigger hole.”
I stare at them.
They stare at me.
They still seem so proud of themselves—and excited—as if they’re not staring at the greatest threat the magickal world has ever known.
“We have to tell the Mage,” I say.
Baz’s face falls. “Over my dead body.”
75
BAZ
“If this is true,” Snow says, “if even a little bit of it is true—we can’t keep