I drop my hand in frustration. “The truth. Is he gone? Is he sick? Has the war started?”
“The truth…”
I keep waiting for her to blink. Even magicians blink.
“The truth,” she says, “is that I don’t have answers to any of those questions. His parents have been contacted. They were aware that he wasn’t in school, but they didn’t elaborate. Mr. Pitch is of legal age—like you, technically an adult. If he doesn’t attend this school, I’m not responsible for his welfare.”
“But you can’t just ignore it when a student doesn’t come back to school! What if he’s planning something?”
“Then that’s a concern for the Coven, not for the dean of students.”
“If Baz is off organizing an insurgency,” I press, “that’s all of our concern.”
She watches me. I push my jaw forward and stand my ground. (This is my standard move when I don’t know what else to do.) (Because if there’s one thing I’m good at…)
Miss Possibelf closes her eyes, but still not like she needs to blink—it’s more like she’s giving in. Good.
She looks back up at me. “Simon, I care about you, and I’ve always been honest with you. Listen to me—I don’t know where Basilton is. Maybe he is off planning something awful; I hope not, for his sake and yours. All I do know is that when I talked to his father, he seemed unsurprised and ill at ease; he knew that his son wasn’t here, and he didn’t seem happy. Honestly, Simon? He sounded like a man at the end of his rope.”
I puff a breath out hard through my nose and nod my head.
“That’s all I know,” she says. “I’ll tell you if I learn more, if I’m able.”
I nod again.
“Now, perhaps you should go to lunch.”
“Thank you, Miss Possibelf.”
As I move past her in the doorway, she tries to pat my arm—but I keep walking, and it’s awkward. I hear the heavy oak door close behind us.
I don’t go to lunch. I go for a walk that turns into a run that turns into me hacking away at a tree on the edge of the woods.
I can’t believe that my blade comes when I call for it.
17
SIMON
I stop looking for Baz anywhere where he’s supposed to be.…
But I don’t stop looking for him.
I take walks in the Wavering Wood at night. Penny sees the look on my face and doesn’t try to join me. Agatha’s always off doing schoolwork; she must be buckling down this year—maybe her dad’s promised her a new horse or something.
I used to love the Wood, I used to find it calming.
I realize after a few nights that I’m not just walking aimlessly; I’m covering the Wood like I’m sweeping it. Like we swept it that year that Elspeth disappeared—all of us holding hands, walking side by side, marking off parcels as we moved through them. I’m marking off parcels in my head now, casting for light and waving my blade back and forth to clear branches. I’ll mow the whole fucking forest down if I go on like this.
I don’t find anything. And I frighten the sprites. And a dryad comes out to tell me that I’m basically a one-man walking woodland apocalypse.
“What do you seek?” the nymph asks, hovering over the ground even though I’ve already told her that it gives me the creeps. She’s got hair like moss, and she’s dressed like one of those manga girls with the Victorian boots and the umbrellas.
“Baz,” I say. “My roommate.”
“The dead one? With the pretty eyes?”
“Yes.” Is Baz dead? I’ve never thought of him that way. I mean, he is a vampire, I guess. “Wait, are you saying he’s dead? Like, really dead?”
“All the bloodeaters are dead.”
“Have you actually seen him eat blood?”
She stares at me. My sword is stuck in the ground beside my feet.
“What do you seek, Chosen One?” She sounds irritated now. She lets her green brolly rest on her shoulder.
“My roommate. Baz. The bloodeater.”
“He’s not here,” she says.
“Are you sure?”
“More sure than you.”
I sigh and dig my sword deeper into the ground. “Well, I’m not sure at all.”
“You’re burning up goodwill here, magician.”
“How many times do I have to save the Wood to win you people over?”
“There’s no use saving it if you’re just going to hack it down.”
“I’m looking. For my roommate.”
“Your enemy,” she counters. She has grey-brown skin, ridged and rippled like bark, and her eyes glow like those mushrooms that grow deep in