Any Way the Wind Blows (Simon Snow, #3)(140)

“Or we could convert one of the barns! So you could come home for holidays. And bring a friend.”

“I…” I look over at her. Is she joking? My father would set me on fire if I brought Simon home. (Any boy, really. He’d set me on fire twice if it was Simon.) “That doesn’t seem likely.”

Daphne has just finished shaking a pillow into its case. She looks very sincere. And very cautious. Like someone who is very, very carefully stepping onto thin ice. “It’s possible, I think. Basilton.”

I nod. And take the pillow from her.

She touches my shoulder, just for a second. “Good night, darling.”

“Good night, Mum.”

I wait for her to leave, and then lie down, under the blanket. My phone is on the floor. I pick it up and open my text messages. I click on “SNOW.”

All of my unanswered messages from last week are still there. I shouldn’t reread them, it will just make me melancholy—I do read them, of course— and I definitely shouldn’t text Simon right now. Simon hates texting, even when he isn’t trying to ghost me.

“I’m staying in Oxford tonight. Did you make it home in one piece?” I send the text, then immediately set the phone on my chest, rolling my eyes at myself.

It buzzes, and I jump, knocking it to the floor.

I pick it up.

“3 pieces actually, do you know how to sew?”

I smile. And roll my eyes at myself some more. It takes nothing to please me. “Did you deliver Jamie Salisbury safely home?”

“yeah, you won’t believe what he told me—his sister dated the mage!”

Aleister Crowley. The Mage? “The actual Mage?” I text.

“THE MAGE,” Simon sends back.

“No wonder she fled the country.”

“no wonder her mum hates him!! lady ruth already called to thank us, for jamie and everything—she’s making us lunch tomorrow to celebrate, will you be back?”

“Yes,” I send.

He sends me back a thumbs-up.

I stare at the screen for a second, not sure what to say next. Simon and I don’t have text conversations. Not usually. Not really.

Simon starts typing—there’s a “…” on the screen—then stops. Then starts again.

“you still angry with me?” he finally sends.

I think about it for a second. “Yes.”

“can it wait until you come back?”

“What do you mean?”

“be angry with me tomorrow, when you’re here, not now”

“You want me to set it aside?”

“y”

I think again. “All right.”

“are you angry?”

“No,” I type. Honestly. It’s easy to set my anger aside; I don’t want to be angry with Simon. If anything, I want to apologize for being angry with him.

Which isn’t fair. He’s the one who lied.

He doesn’t reply right away. Then— “you were right about smith.”

Well, obviously. “Yes.”

“i’m worried that I’m just going to keep falling for this bullshit”

“What bullshit?”

“first the mage, now smith”

I frown at the phone. “You didn’t fall for the Mage’s shit. You were a child.”

“fell for smith’s tho”

“Only for a minute. Then you brought him to justice. That’s the important part of the pattern, I think—the bringing to justice.”

“maybe”

Simon starts typing more, then stops. Then starts. Then stops.

I wait.

Finally he sends: “i wish smith had been the real thing”

For fuck’s sake. “Why?”

“because then i could stop feeling bad about letting everyone down, they’d have a greatest mage to do all their great mage stuff”

I scowl at the phone and tap his name to call him.

He picks up after a few seconds. “Baz?”

“You have never in your life let anyone down.”

Simon doesn’t say anything at first. (I can hear the three dots.) “That’s not true,” he says. “I let you down all the time.”

“It isn’t ‘letting someone down’ to be depressed.”

“You’re literally still angry at me from earlier today.”

“Because you lied to me, Snow!”

“Doesn’t that count?”

“Fine,” I whisper harshly, “you let me down all the time—I think that’s just being in a relationship—but you’ve never let the World of Mages down.

You don’t owe the magickal community anything. You never did. But you’ve served it with unflagging honour.”

“I liked it!” he says. I’m speaking softly, but Simon isn’t—he’s practically shouting now. “I liked every part of it! I know you think it was wrong that the Mage used me and made me fight, but I liked it. I miss it. I liked having a job, and I liked that specific job, and I liked knowing who I was. In a larger sense. I didn’t know who my parents were, but I knew who I was. Who I was supposed to be. Who the fuck am I now, Baz?”

“You’re the same person!”