There’s a moat below the moat.
And warrens in the hills.
There are three hidden gates, and I’ve only got one of them to open.
Sometimes it feels like I’ve spent my whole life looking for the map or key that would make Watford—the whole World of Mages—make sense.
But all I ever find are pieces of the puzzle. It’s like I’m in a dark room, and I only ever have enough light to see one corner of it at a time.
I spent most of my fifth year wandering the Catacombs below the White Chapel, searching for Baz. The Chapel’s at the centre of Watford; it’s the oldest building. No one knows whether Watford started as a school or something else. Maybe a magic abbey. Or a mages’ settlement—that’s what I’d like to believe. Imagine it, a walled town with magicians living together, practically out in the open. A magickal community.
The Catacombs sit beneath the Chapel and beyond it. There are probably lots of ways down, but I only know of one.
In our fifth year, I kept seeing Baz slip off towards the Chapel after dinner. I thought it must be some plot—a conspiracy.
I’d follow him to the Chapel, through the high, arched, never-locked front doors … Back behind the altar, behind the sanctuary and the Poets Corner … Through the secret door, and down into the Catacombs.
The Catacombs are properly creepy. Agatha would never go down there with me, and Penelope only went with me at first, when she still believed Baz might be up to something.
She stopped after a few months. She stopped going to Baz’s football matches with me, too. And stopped waiting with me in the hallway outside the balcony where Baz takes violin lessons.
But I couldn’t give it up. Not when all my clues were just starting to come together …
The blood on Baz’s cuffs. The fact that he could see in the dark. (He’d come back to our room at night and dress for bed without ever turning on the light.) Then I found a pile of dead rats in the Chapel basement, all pinched and used, like squeezed-up lemons.
I was alone when I finally confronted him. Deep in the Catacombs, inside the Children’s Tomb. Le Tombeau des Enfants. Baz was sitting in the corner, skulls stacked along the walls around him.
“You found me,” he said.
I already had my blade out. “I knew I would.”
“Now what?” He didn’t even stand. Just brushed some dust off his grey trousers and leaned back against the bones.
“Now you tell me what you’re up to,” I said.
He laughed at that. Baz was always laughing at me that year, but it came out flatter than usual. There were torches staining the grey room orange, but his skin was still chalky and white.
I adjusted my stance, spreading my feet below my hips, squaring my shoulders.
“They died in a plague,” he said.
“Who?”
Baz raised his hand—I flinched back.
He cocked an eyebrow and swept his arm in a flourish at the room around us. “Them,” he said. “Les enfants.” A lock of black hair fell over his forehead.
“Is that why you’re here? To track down a plague?”
Baz stared at me. He was 16, we both were, but he made me feel 5. He’s always made me feel like a child, like I’ll never catch up to him. Like he was born knowing everything about the World of Mages—it’s his world. It’s in his DNA.
“Yes, Snow,” he said. “I’m here to find a plague. I’m going to put it in a steaming beaker and infect all of Metropolis.”
I gripped my blade.
He looked bored.
“What are you doing down here?” I demanded, swinging the sword in the air.
“Sitting,” he said.
“No. None of that. I’ve finally caught you, after all these months—you’re going to tell me what you’re up to.”
“Most of the students died,” he said.
“Stop it. Stop distracting me.”
“They sent the well ones home. My great-great-uncle was the headmaster; he stayed to help nurse the sick and dying. His skull is down here, too. Maybe you could help me look for it—I’m told I share his aristocratic brow.”
“I’m not listening.”
“Magic didn’t help them,” Baz said.
I clenched my jaw.
“They didn’t have a spell for the plague yet,” he went on. “There weren’t any words that had enough power, the right kind of power.”
I stepped forward. “What are you doing here?”
He started singing to himself. “Ring around the rosie / a pocket full of posies…”
“Answer me, Baz.”
“Ashes, ashes…”
I swung my sword into the pile of bones beside him, sending skulls rattling and rolling.
He sneered and sat up, catching the skulls with his wand—“As you were!” They turned in the air and rolled back into place.
“Show some respect, Snow,” he said sharply, then slumped and leaned back again. “What do you want from me?”
“I want to know what you’re up to.”
“This is what I’m up to.”
“Sitting in a fucking tomb with a bunch of bones.”
“They’re not just bones. They’re students. And teachers. Everyone who dies at Watford is entombed down here.”
“So?”
“So?” he repeated.
I growled.
“Look, Snow…” He got to his feet. He was taller than me—he’s always been taller than me. Even after the summer when I grew three inches, I swear that jammy bastard grew four. “You’ve been following me,” he said, “looking for me. And now you’ve found me. It’s not my fault if you still haven’t found what you’re looking for.”