Agatha tries to pull the linen from my hand, but I don’t let go. I snap it away from her.
“What is this?” I ask, holding it up. (We both know what it is.) “Are you—are you waiting for him? Are you meeting him here? Is he coming?”
Her eyes are wide and glossy. “No. Of course not.”
“How can you say ‘of course not’ when you’re up here, obviously thinking about him, holding his handkerchief?”
She folds her arms. “You don’t know what I’m thinking about.”
“You’re right, I don’t, Agatha. I really don’t. Is this where you come every night? When you tell us you’re studying?”
“Simon…”
“Answer me!” It comes out an order. It comes out drenched in magic, which shouldn’t even be possible—because those aren’t magic words, that isn’t a spell. The spell for forcing honesty is The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—but I’ve never used it; it’s an advanced spell, and a restricted one. Still, I see the compulsion in Agatha’s face. “No,” I say, pushing magic into my voice. “You don’t have to!”
Her face falls from compulsion to disgust. She backs away from me.
“I didn’t mean to do that,” I say. “Agatha. I didn’t. But you—” I throw my arms up. “—what are you doing here?”
“What if I am waiting for Baz?” she spits out, like she knows it will shock me stupid. It does.
“Why would you?”
She turns to the stone wall. “I don’t know, Simon.”
“Are you waiting for him?”
The wind is in her hair, making it lash out behind her. “No,” she says. “Not waiting. I’ve no reason to believe he’s coming.”
“But you want him to.”
She shrugs.
“What’s wrong with you, Agatha?” I’m trying to control my temper now. “He’s a monster. An actual monster.”
“We’re all monsters,” she says.
She means that I am.
I try to tamp down the anger coiling up my legs. “Did you cheat on me? With Baz? Are you with him now?”
“No.”
“Do you want to be?”
She sighs, and leans forward on the rough stones. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t you want to say anything else to me? Like, ‘I’m sorry’? Don’t you want to fix this?”
She looks back at me, over her shoulder. “Fix what, Simon—our relationship?” She turns to face me again. “What is our relationship? Is it just me being there when you need a date to the ball? And crying for joy every time you come back from the dead? Because I’ll still do that for you. I can still do all that. Even if we’re not together.”
Her perfect pink chin is thrust forward and quivering. Her arms are still crossed.
“You’re my girl, Agatha,” I say.
“No. Penelope’s your girl.”
“You’re my—”
Her arms fall. “What Simon, what am I?”
I knot my hands in my hair and gnash my teeth. “You’re my future!”
Agatha’s face is contorted and wet with tears. Still lovely, though. “Am I supposed to want that?” she asks.
“I want it.”
“You just want a happy ending.”
“Merlin, Agatha, don’t you?”
“No! I don’t! I want to be someone’s right now, Simon, not their happily ever after. I don’t want to be the prize at the end. The thing you get if you beat all the bosses.”
“You’re twisting everything. You’re making it ugly.”
She shrugs again. “Maybe.”
“Agatha…” I hold my hand out to her. The one that isn’t holding Baz’s handkerchief. “We can fix this.”
“Probably,” she says. “But I don’t want to.”
I can’t think of what more to say.
Agatha can’t leave me. She can’t leave me for him. Oh, he’d love that—he’d love to have that over me. Damn it all, he isn’t even here to have that over me.
“I love you, Agatha,” I say, believing that might work. Those words are practically magic in themselves. I say them again: “I love you.”
Agatha closes her eyes against the sight of me. She turns her face away. “I love you, too, Simon. I think that’s why I went along with this for so long.”
“You don’t mean that,” I say.
“I do,” she says. “Please don’t fight me.”
“You can’t leave me for him.”
She looks back at me one more time. “I’m not leaving you for Baz, Simon. He’s gone. I just don’t want to be with you anymore. I don’t want to ride off into the sunset with you.… That’s not my happy anything.”
* * *
I don’t argue with her.
I don’t stay out on the ramparts.
My cheeks are hot and itchy, and that’s always a bad sign.
I rush past Agatha to the stairs, and run down them so quickly that I miss a few and keep leaping down to the next landing.
And then I’m just sort of floating down the stairs. Falling without actually falling.
I’ve never done that before, and it’s weird.
I make a note to tell Penny, then a note not to tell her, but I run towards the Cloisters anyway because I don’t want to go back to my empty room, and the drawbridge is up, and I don’t know where else to go.