Wayward Son (Simon Snow, #2)(24)

She gives him another thumbs-up.



* * *



We follow the signs to the Renaissance Festival and eventually pull into a long gravel field filled with hundreds of cars. The Mustang kicks up a load of dust (which then settles on us). Snow finds a parking spot, then looks very pleased with himself for managing it. “I think I’m going to get a car when we get home,” he says.

“Where will you park it?”

“In the magickal parking spot you’ll manage for me.”

He doesn’t usually talk like that—about magic. About us. About the future. I can’t help but smile at him. I hate everything about this road trip, but if it’s going to keep drawing Simon out of his shell, I’d gladly drive to Hawaii.

Bunce climbs out of the car; it’s like she’s forgotten how to use doors. I untie my scarf and shake my hair out, pulling the rearview mirror towards me to check it. The scarf’s worked like a charm.

When I look away, Simon is standing next to the car watch ing me, his head tipped slightly to the side. I can just see his tongue in the corner of his lips.

My eyebrows drop, in suspicion, then I slowly raise the left one. Maybe Nebraska is the good life.…

He lifts his chin—“Come on. Festival!”—and starts to walk backwards.

I hurry out of the car to follow him. “Oh, wait—Bunce!”

Penny turns back to me.

“You’ll have to spell an umbrella over the car, in case it rains. My wand’s gone wonky.”

She comes back. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ve been casting spells all day, and nothing’s happening.”

“Are you sure it’s the wand?” She holds out her hand. “Let’s see.”

I give it to her. “Are you suggesting that I’ve gone wonky?”

“Anything’s possible.” She sniffs at the wand. “May I?”

I shrug. Your own wand will work for someone else, just usually not as well. Bunce slides off her own magickal instrument, a gaudy purple ring, and hands it to me. Then she points my wand at the ground and murmurs, “Light of day!” Light shines out of it, weakly, but definitely there.

“Damn it,” I say, taking the wand back. I look around. There are a few Normals walking by, inexplicably dressed like fairies. (Not like real fairies; they’re not wearing cobwebs. They’re dressed like fairies from Normal fantasies. With costume-shop wings and glitter on their faces.) I wait for them to pass, then point at an empty water bottle. “A glass and a half!” The bottle should fill with milk, it’s a child’s spell, but—nothing!

Bunce starts giggling. She still looks ghastly from no sleep and all the crying, so the overall effect is ghoulish.

“What?” I demand. Very tired of these two laughing at me on foreign soil.

“What were the other spells you cast, Basil?”

“I don’t know—‘Bristol fashion,’ ‘Keep schtum,’ ‘Exceedingly good cakes.’”

She laughs harder. Snow is frowning at her, like he doesn’t get it either.

“Baz,” she says. “Those are all spells from back home. They’re British idiom—useless here.”

Oh. Crowley. She’s right.

“Wait,” Simon says, “why?”

“Because there aren’t enough Normal people here using those phrases,” I say. “It’s the Normals who give words magic—”

Simon rolls his eyes and starts quoting Miss Possibelf. “‘The more that they’re said and read and written, in specific, consistent combinations’—right, I know. So your magic’s fine?”

“Yes,” I say, tucking my wand away, feeling like a pillock. “It’s my syntax that’s buggered. Come on.”

As we get to the festival entrance, a man dressed like a mediaeval peasant steps up, ringing a bell. Without any warning, Simon’s wings explode from his back and spread out completely, in all their red-leather glory.

Simon freezes. Bunce holds out her ring hand. But the people in the queue don’t seem fazed—some of them even start clapping.

“Excellent cos,” a teenage girl says, stepping up to inspect the wings. “Did you build these yourself?”

“Yes?” Simon says.

“So cool—do they move?”

He tentatively folds his wings back.

“Wow!” she says. “I can’t even hear the motor. Are they on strings?”

“A magician never reveals his secrets,” I say (which is also a spell, though Crowley knows whether it works here).

Penny takes Simon’s elbow and muscles him to the end of the queue.

“What is this place?” I murmur. The person in front of us is dressed as a Viking. There’s also a genie, a pirate, and three women dressed like Disney princesses. “Is it fancy dress?”

“Five dollars off for cosplay,” the ticket seller says to Simon. “You, too,” she says to me.

I look down at myself. “This is a very expensive shirt.”

“Come on,” Simon says, taking my hand. He’s laughing. He turns towards me and pulls me into the festival—and for a moment, everything feels almost magickal. Simon with his wings spread wide, a row of hanging lanterns behind him. There’s smoked meat on the air. And somewhere, someone is playing a dulcimer. (My aunt plays the dulcimer; all the women in my family learn.)