Penelope
"Bunce this may be the worst idea you've ever had," Baz says as he turns off the motorway.
"I thought our road trip across America was my worst idea?" I challenge.
He thinks about this for a moment. "Ok, well this is definitely a close second."
I laugh, but it comes out a little higher pitched than normal. Baz's eyes shift over to me warily before returning his gaze to the road.
I tuck Lucy's letter to my mum inside the Mage's last journal and then take it out again and tuck it into a different page. No amount of fidgeting seems to be calming my nerves. Baz notices.
"Why don't we talk through the plan again?" he offers.
"Right," I start. "Fiona is bringing your parents over to my house while Agatha drives over to pick up hers. We'll sit them all down and tell them the truth about everything."
"Hopefully not everything," Baz interrupts. He looks like he's sucking on his fangs again.
"Everything about Simon then. His parents. How Lucy died. Simon's connection to the dead spots- which my parents already know," I continue. We came clean about that one after the trial to help dad with his research. Luckily my parents didn't blame Simon for them, and my dad's still convinced the magic will return someday.
"Also that the Mage is alive and planning on taking Simon away from all of us so he can rewrite history in his favor," Baz adds.
"Yeah," I say nervously. "That, too."
Baz and I ride in silence for a few minutes before he speaks again. "Are you sure about this? We could still try to rescue Simon ourselves. Fiona and Nicodemus would help."
I close my eyes and shake my head. "We're only going to have one chance at this Baz. If Simon-," I can't bring myself to finish my sentence so I start again. "If the spell works, we won't be able to rescue Simon because we won't even know he exists. We barely made it out of America alive and that was with Simon on our side."
Baz's expression looks pained. I reach out and put my hand over his on the gearshift.
"We're going to save him," I say. He nods and curls his thumb up slightly around the edge of my fingers. I give his hand an encouraging squeeze before returning it to my lap to fidget with Lucy's letter again.
"On the bright side," Baz says flatly, "if we actually succeed in getting all our parents to help and work together, going up against the Mage should be easy in comparison."
My laugh comes out more naturally this time.
I pull out my mobile and text Shepard: Everything ok?
While I'm (fairly) confident in my plan to talk to our parents, I'm less sure about agreeing to leave Shepard with Nicodemus for the day.
Baz looks over my shoulder at the mobile screen. "He'll be fine Bunce. I made sure to describe in detail how fast biting Shepard killed the last vampire who tried it."
Shepard texts back a thumbs up emoji as Baz parks outside my family's home. I shove the mobile in my bag as I step out of the car. I lead the way to the door and Baz takes left flank as if we are about to go into battle instead of sit down for tea.
I suppose it's not that different.
Shepard
As the heavy door clicks shut behind me, I become painfully aware of how stupid it was to agree to come up to the roof alone with a vampire.
I clench Simon's sword in my right hand. Not that I know how to use it. I've always been a 'Flight over Fight' kind of guy.
Once Baz figured out Simon was in the nursery where his mother died, he was ready to storm the gates at Watford. Penelope had reasoned with him and insisted they needed more help. That's when she suggested talking with their parents. I'm not sure who was more opposed to the idea- Agatha or Baz. But once Fiona sided with Penelope, Baz agreed to try and Agatha finally gave in.
I told them I wanted to help, too, and they all just kind of stared at me for a moment until Nicodemus spoke up.
"Do you know how to use that sword you're holding?" he asked.
I had been absentmindedly running my fingers across the blade and switching the hilt from hand to hand while the rest of them were debating what to do next.
"Not really," I had answered and put it back down on the coffee table.
Nicodemus walked over and picked it up. Baz shifted so that he was partially blocking me, but Nicodemus just rolled his eyes and sighed. "I can train him," he said.
"You can train him to use a sword in a day?" Fiona laughed. "You're good but you're not that good."
"Fi- do you remember how Ebb and I used to study for exams?" He raised his eyebrows at her pointedly.
She narrowed her eyes back at him as if he had struck a nerve, but her face started to soften seconds later. "That…might work actually," she conceded. She turned to the others. "We better get this show on the road," she said as she walked out.
Penelope asked if I was ok staying behind and I had nodded confidently and said I would be "totally fine." She and Baz still seemed unsure, but were anxious to get going.
On their way out, Baz grabbed Nicodemus' arm and whispered something I couldn't quite hear. I assume it was about Vampire Josh's fate after biting me because I think I heard him utter the phrase "drop dead with a single taste." Nicodemus had glanced doubtfully at me, but Baz said "Trust me," a little louder and then followed Penelope out.
So I'm trying not to completely panic when Nicodemus pulls out a twig from his jacket pocket, calls out "Grow up!" and watches it lengthen in his hand until it is the size of a walking stick.
"Is that, uh, is that your sister's staff?" I ask as I shift backward a few steps and tighten my grip on the sword. I remember Penelope talking about it on the ride to the airport.
He looks at it for a moment and I see his face fall for a second before he nods and turns back to me. "It came to me. The day she-," he pauses. "It just showed up at my feet where I was standing. It must have been one of the last spells she cast before she died."
I give him a sympathetic look and relax my shoulders. "I'm sorry," is all I manage to say.
He reaches out his free hand. "Give me the sword."
Instead of handing it over, I tighten my grip on it. He drops his arm and lets out an exasperated sigh.
"Listen kid, if you can trust anything, it's that I want my sister's murderer to pay. If that means training you to fight off the Mage's minions so I can get a clear shot, then so be it," he finishes and then reaches out for the sword again.
"What are you going to do?" I ask as I finally hand it over.
"It's a spell my sister and I used to use. We hated doing schoolwork. We were already the most talented students on campus and writing essays about the importance of syntax seemed like such a waste of time. So we'd make sure to enroll in the same classes and split up who would study for each subject. Then we'd cast this spell on our pens so the other would have the information they needed when sitting for exams." He gives me a mischievous grin. I realize now why Fiona looked ticked off earlier when he brought it up.
"So you cheated." I say.
He waves a hand dismissively. "Doing all the studying myself wouldn't have stopped me from choosing to become a vampire and getting stricken from the record."
"Is that why they took your fangs? As a punishment for crossing over?" I ask. He clenches his jaw and glares at me.
"Yes," he snaps.
I know I should probably stop asking questions, but as usual, my curiosity is getting the better of me. "Why didn't they just kill you?"
"The Coven felt death would be too kind. They wanted me to face an eternity of purgatory. I was no longer human, no longer a mage, and they made sure I would never fully be a vampire either," he sneers. "I didn't find out until recently that the Mage was the one who actually gave them that suggestion in the first place."
He looks like he may take his rage out on me as he his body tenses up in anger. I'm wishing I had held onto the sword a bit longer.
But he doesn't attack. Instead, he rolls his shoulders back and stands up straight as if shaking off the bad memory. Then he points the staff towards the sword and calls out "Anything you can do, I can do better!"
The sword shakes for a second, and then goes still. He reaches out to hand it back to me. Once I grasp it, he tells me that to complete the spell I need to finish the line.
"What line?" I ask.
"The next line of the song," he says, as if it's obvious.
When I shrug at him, he lets out a long sigh. "It's from the musical- Annie Get Your Gun. The next line is 'I can do anything better than you.'"
"Didn't pin you for a musical theater fan," I say, trying to suppress a smile.
"Watford had a drama society," he says, only a little defensively. "C'mon. Let's get on with it."
I hold the sword up. "I can do anything better than you!" I say loud and clear like Penelope does when she's doing spells.
The sword feels like it's vibrating in my hand. I immediately change my grip on it so that it is easier to wield in a fight. I don't know how I know this all the sudden.
Without any warning, Nicodemus spins the staff around and aims to smash my head. I swing my sword up and expertly block the attack.
"Woah," I say as I take a few steps back.
Nicodemus has a smug expression on his face. "Still got it."
He conjures up a sword for himself and we spend the next hour sparring on the rooftop.
"The magic won't hold forever," Nicodemus explains when we finally take a break. "It should last a few hours, but I can cast it again for you if the fight goes on long enough."
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Penelope is asking if I'm ok. I know she really means "Are you alive?" I'm about to send her a selfie as proof of life after texting a thumbs up, but Nicodemus nudges me with his sword.
"Again," he demands. "You may have the skills, but we still need to build up your stamina."
I push myself up off the ground and return the phone to my pocket. I pick up the sword and settle into a slight crouch as Nicodemus swings his blade up to meet mine again.