time when we were sixth years, and he left me a note in Agatha’s handwriting, telling me to wait for her under the yew tree after dark. It was freezing, and of course she didn’t show up, and I was stuck outside all night until the drawbridge was lowered the next morning. My heat spell wouldn’t work, and the snow devils kept throwing chestnuts at my head. I thought about smashing them, but they’re a protected magickal species. (Global warming.) I kept expecting something worse to show up. Why would Baz torture me with snow devils? They’re just half-sentient snowballs with eyebrows and hands. They’re not even dark. But nothing else came, which meant Baz’s evil plan fell apart—or that his evil plan was to freeze me only half to death on the night before a big exam.
Then last year, he told me Miss Possibelf wanted to see me, and when I got to her office, he’d trapped a polecat in there. Miss Possibelf was sure I must be responsible—even though she really likes me.
I retaliated by putting the polecat in his wardrobe, which wasn’t much of a retaliation because we share a room.
I’m at our door now. Still trying to decide whether this is a trap. I decide it doesn’t matter—because even if I knew for sure that it was a trap, I’d still go in.
When I open the door, Baz is wheeling an old-fashioned chalkboard in front of our beds.
“Where did that come from?” I ask.
“A classroom.”
“Yeah, but how did it get up here?”
“It flew.”
“No,” I say, “seriously.”
He rolls his eyes. “I Up, up and away-ed it. It wasn’t much work.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re solving a mystery, Snow. I like to organize my thoughts.”
“Is this how you normally plot my downfall?”
“Yes. With multicoloured pieces of chalk. Stop complaining.” He opens up his book bag and takes out a few apples and things wrapped in wax paper. “Eat,” he says, throwing one at me.
It’s a bacon roll. He’s also got a pot of tea.
“What’s all this?” I say.
“Tea, obviously. I know you can’t function unless you’re stuffing yourself.”
I unwrap the roll and decide to take a bite. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me,” he says. “It sounds wrong.”
“Not as wrong as you bringing me bacon butties.”
“Fine, you’re welcome—when’s Bunce getting here?”
“Why would she?”
“Because you do everything together, don’t you? When you said you’d help, I was counting on you bringing your smarter half.”
“Penelope doesn’t know anything about this,” I say.
“She doesn’t know about the Visiting?”
“No.”
“Why not? I thought you told her everything.”
“It just … seemed like your business.”
“It is my business,” Baz says.
“Right. So I didn’t tell her. Now, where do we start?”
His face falls into a pout. “I was counting on Bunce to tell us where to start.”
“Let’s start with what we know,” I say. That’s where Penelope always starts.
“Right.” Baz actually seems nervous. He’s tapping the chalk against his trouser leg, leaving white smudges. Nicodemus, he writes on the chalkboard in neat slanted script.
“That’s what we don’t know,” I say. “Unless you’ve come up with something.”
He shakes his head. “No. I’ve never heard of him. I did a cursory check in the library during lunch—but I’m not likely to find anything in A Child’s Garden of Verses.”
Most of the magickal books have been removed from the Watford library. The Mage wants us to focus on Normal books so that we stay close to the language.
Before the Mage’s reforms, Watford was so protective of traditional spells that they’d teach those instead of newer spells that worked better. There were even initiatives to make Victorian books and culture more popular with the Normals, just to breathe some new life into old spells.
“Language evolves,” the Mage says. “So must we.”
Baz looks back at the chalkboard again. His hair is dry now and falling in loose locks over his cheeks; he tucks a piece behind his ear, then writes a date on the chalkboard:
12 August 2002.
I start to ask what happened that day, then I realize.
“You were only 5,” I say. “Do you remember anything?”
He looks at me, then back at the board. “Some.”
43
BAZ
Some. I don’t remember how the day started or any of the normal parts.
I remember only a few things about that whole year: A trip to the zoo. The day my father shaved his moustache and I didn’t recognize him.
I remember going to the nursery, in general.
That we got digestives and milk every day. The rabbit mural on the ceiling. A little girl who bit me. I remember that there were trains, and