Any Way the Wind Blows (Simon Snow, #3)(77)

The door opens. The girl I recognized at Smith-Richards’s meeting is standing there. Chomsky, how do I know her? She’s got to be around our age … Fair skin. Short, brown hair. I know she wasn’t at Watford. Are we related somehow, is that how I know her? Her eyes get big when she sees Simon.

“Hi,” he says.

The girl’s already rushing away from us, down the hall. Talk about starstruck. She’s left the front door open. Simon steps in and looks around.

I fold my arms, waiting.

He turns back to me and grins.

“This is a good game,” I say flatly. “Can we play this for the rest of our lives?”

Snow reaches out and grabs my elbow, pulling me across the threshold and against him. He’s laughing silently and kissing my cheek. (For someone who is afraid of looking gay in public, he sure gets off on public displays of affection.) (That’s probably connected.)

“Simon!” We both turn towards the voice. It’s Smith-Richards himself.

Dressed like a very wealthy folksinger. “I was hoping I’d see you again,” he says, clapping a hand on Simon’s back.

Simon doesn’t know how to respond to that. He looks a bit dazed. (Snow is very easily impressed by Smith-Richards.) (Or maybe he’s just worried that Smith-Richards can feel his wings.)

I hold out my hand. “Hello,” I say. “Basilton Pitch.”

Smith-Richards looks at me for the first time, his hand still on Simon’s shoulder. “Pitch…” His eyes light up. “Daphne’s son!” He reaches out with his free hand. “It’s so nice to meet you. Did you come to visit her?”

I shake his hand. “Actually—”

“We came to see you,” Simon says.

Smith-Richards drops my hand, turning back to Simon and smiling softly.

“Did you? I hoped you would.” He wraps his arm around Simon’s shoulders

—surely he can feel the wings now—and starts walking away with him.

“Come on in, both of you. I’m so glad you’re here.”

Smith-Richards’s office isn’t an office. It’s a tiny sitting room filled with a flat’s worth of expensive modern furniture, all of it deceptively simple. He’s got a bookshelf that looks like a shipping crate—I’ll bet it cost a thousand pounds. He invites Simon and me to sit on a leather sofa, and he sits just across from us in a wooden folding chair that probably cost another thousand pounds. His chair is so close to us, our knees are practically knocking.

“Sorry it’s so cramped in here,” he says. “We needed all the bigger spaces for bedrooms. We just moved into this building a few weeks ago, and we’ve already outgrown it. I’m not sure what we’ll do if more magicians show up.”

His face falls. “Did you guys come to stay? Because we can make room for you—we’ll find a way.”

“No,” I say, worried that Snow will blunder us into joining this commune.

“We just came to talk.”

Smith-Richards looks relieved. “Ah, good. Wonderful. Let’s talk. What can I tell you?”

We’ve already planned this part of the conversation. How to bring up Jamie. Simon is supposed to start talking about Smith’s miracle spell, and how he’d like to meet someone who’s been cured …

Instead, Snow swallows and says in an overawed voice, “Have you always known you were the Chosen One?”

Smith-Richards’s whole posture softens. He smiles directly into Simon’s eyes. “No,” he says. “Did you?”

Simon wrinkles his nose and presses his lips together, shaking his head.

“The Mage told me. When I was eleven. I never felt like anything special before that—or after, really.”

“But your magic was special,” Smith-Richards says. “Your magic was legendary.”

“Nah, I was a shit magician. Talk to anyone who went to school with me.”

“Did you go to Watford?” I ask Smith-Richards. “You must have left just as we were showing up.” If he’s in his 30s, he would have known my mother and possibly my aunt.

Smith-Richards looks like he’d already forgotten I was there. “Oh … no —we travelled too much for that. I went to Normal schools. In Germany, Kenya, Budapest … And my godfather tutored me in magic. I wish I’d gone to Watford. What an incredible history. And I’d have more friends in the mage community here. More connections.”

“But you didn’t know you were the Chosen One all along?” Simon asks.

“When did you figure it out?”

Smith-Richards turns to Simon again, looking a bit dazed and overawed himself. (Fair. Simon is incredibly attractive. Especially when he’s being all dogged and earnest like this. With his cheeks pink and his eyebrows drawn low and his throat bobbing every time he fortifies himself to ask a question.) “I…” Smith-Richards says. “Did you want something to drink? I didn’t offer. There’s cake, too. There might even be dinner.”

“No,” Simon says, “we’re fine. Thanks.”

Smith-Richards leans forward. It’s like he’s giving in. He rests an elbow on one knee and ruffles the back of his golden hair. He wears it long enough to curl, to cover his ears but not his collar. “To be honest,” he says, “I didn’t think that I might be the Greatest Mage until I heard that you had been…”