A Hero at the End of the World (20 page)

There was already a crowd of dissenters waiting for news in the castle’s lush gardens, surrounded by night-blooming flowers and creeping vines. It was night out, and light shone down on them from the castle windows, illuminating their hopeful faces.

It was beginning to dawn on Ewan just what this meant. These people, young and old, rich and poor, had risked everything for him. They’d been labeled terrorists, their homes spied on, their names put on no-fly lists, their families questioned. Many of their allies had been awaiting trial at His Majesty’s Prison at Mount Unpleasant long before the final battle had begun. And he hadn’t even learned their names.

“Um,” he began, “so about that prophecy...”

He was interrupted by Headmaster Seabrooke. “You did it, son,” he wheezed, gripping Ewan’s shoulder with a wizened hand. “You defeated Duff Slan and saved the world!”

A cheer went up.

Ewan looked down at his shoes. It had stopped chucking down rain by then, but the ground was still black with mud, and he felt as though he were slowly sinking into it. “Oliver did it,” he mumbled.

Seabrooke blinked rapidly. “Pardon?”

“Oliver did it,” Ewan repeated, louder this time. “He killed Duff Slan.”

Everyone’s heads whipped around to stare at Oliver.

“Hello,” Oliver said.

“But... it was foretold...” the Headmaster said, his wrinkled face creasing even further in confusion. “You were the one...”

“I didn’t know if Ewan was coming,” Oliver replied, lifting his chin. He’d glanced at the others, and in that moment Ewan could
see
that something had changed about him. “I was only doing what had to be done.”

The crowd swarmed around him, their new hero. All Ewan saw was the back of his head as they led him away through the garden.

“I suppose I’d better find a new, less mad Augury teacher,” Seabrooke said, almost to himself. He turned to Ewan. “I hope you remember that exams are next week.”

Ewan, who found himself in the odd position of having survived a battle in which he had expected to die, protested, “I didn’t think I’d make it long enough to see exams, sir.”

Seabrooke waggled a finger at him. “Now, now, young man, that’s no excuse for not revising.”

In the distance someone shouted, “Three cheers for Oliver Abrams, the slayer of Duff Slan,” and Ewan went cold all over.

The next few weeks were a confusing blur. First, Ewan, the now-former slayer of Duff Slan and the one who had been meant to save everyone, failed every single one of his exams. It wasn’t that much of a surprise, considering how much he’d been struggling with the work to begin with. Deep down, he had always known that the only reason he had gotten decent enough marks to progress was because of who he was. Then, because he had missed so many

lessons while training for both magical and physical combat, he was put on a Do Not Enroll list for the following year.

But by far the worst moment had been when Ewan went to speak to Seabrooke about it, the man who had been his mentor since he was twelve years old, and his personal assistant told him that the headmaster had gone with Oliver to sort out things post-Slan, partly because murder in Britain was technically illegal, and partially because Duff Slan had named himself Supreme Leader six years earlier and had installed a puppet Government, and they were all a tad miffed.

Downtrodden and utterly without a clue what to do next, Ewan promptly moved back into his parents’ place in Walthamstow in North East London.

“Oh, Ewe-ewe,” his mum said from the doorway as he began unpacking his meager belongings, “you’re still our little hero. We still love you.”

“Just a little less than before,” his dad added.

Chapter 21

O
liver was shoved into a dark room.

“Oi,” he yelled as the door was sealed behind him.

He rushed forward, but when he reached out with his hands, all he touched was air, like the door had disappeared. Wherever he was, it was pitch black and silent; he couldn’t see anything, and he couldn’t hear anything beyond the sound of his own heavy breathing. Rolling his shoulders back, he shifted into a defensive stance as his power bubbled up inside of him, ready for whatever was coming next.

Whatever they were going to do to him, he could take it.

Pale blue light flared around him like a ring of cold fire. Oliver squinted into the darkness, but he was still unable to make out anything beyond the circle; it was obviously only meant for others to see him, not for him for see out.

“Hello?” he called.

“Agent Abrams,” a man’s voice bellowed from somewhere beyond the light, “you’ve been called before the Disciplinary Panel.”

A chill went down his spine.

“What for?” he demanded. “This can’t be because of what happened on the Tube.”

“What happened on the Tube?” asked a different voice.

“Nothing important,” Oliver said hastily.

He could hear muttering in the background—his ears picked up the words
unconscious
and
passengers
among the low voices.

Finally, the first voice was back: “We
do
know what happened on the Tube, Agent. When we were informed of this incident, something else came to light. Namely, your rather...” The person behind the voice seemed to be struggling for the right wording. “
Botched
investigation of the Zaubernegativum cult.”

Oliver thought back to the paperwork he had debated filling out, the papers that he had known would’ve taken the case away from him. He couldn’t remember whether or not he had left them out on his desk. Had someone, maybe Agent Rice, seen them and handed them in? Or had the Agency been keeping watch on him the entire time?

But more importantly, Oliver thought of how he wanted to be the one to personally put Louise Gardener Hobbes in handcuffs (and to strangle Ewan, if he ever found him), and how he couldn’t let something like procedure get in the way. While he was being interrogated by his own people, both Louise and Ewan could have left the country—or worse, Louise could be carrying out the final steps of her plan. He had to stop her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied. “I have amnesia, remember?”

There was a heavy silence.

“Is that so?”

Something squeaked in the darkness. It came closer and closer, louder and louder; with a growing apprehension, Oliver took a few steps back, but his elbow went beyond the circle, and a stinging sensation shot down his arm. He hissed in pain, holding his elbow with his other hand.

Suddenly, the squeaking was right in front of him. He sucked in a deep, fearful breath through his nose.

A metal stand wheeled itself into Oliver’s ring of light. It had a television on top of it.

“Oh,” he said. “That was anticlimactic.”

The television flickered to life. On the screen, a smaller version of himself was sitting at a table in a cold, sterile room. On his right sat a group of people dressed in black from head to toe; on his left, a second group wearing the green and purple boilersuits of dangerous criminals. It was a scene from the interviews he had conducted just after the Sazzies’ attempted sacrifice.

“So when Grand Master Buffalo—” Oliver’s image begun.

“All hail Master Buffalo.”

“Right, well, when he tried to open this portal,” he continued, shaking his head, “do any of you know if he ever sought help from this Ralph the Ravager?”

“Ralph the Ravager.”

Oliver tried again. “Right, did Buffalo and Ravager ever discuss how—”

“All hail Master Buffalo.”

“Ralph the Ravager.”

The screen faded to black.

The real Oliver grimaced. “Right,” he said, “
that
potential cult. For the record, I think I should receive a commendation for not killing anyone during that interview.”

“Not only did you fail to disclose valuable information on a potentially dangerous cult,” said a second voice, this time a woman’s, “you also continued to investigate it without informing the rest of your department, including both your partner and your supervising agent.”

Oliver laughed incredulously. “I’m the slayer of Duff Slan,” he said. “I don’t need to report to any chain of command.”

“
You’re an employee of the Government and an agent of this institution
,” the first voice snapped with such anger that Oliver took a step back.

“You’re suspended without pay as we commence with an internal investigation into whether or not you can be trusted to follow procedure,” the second voice said, more calmly than the first. “Leave your ID with the warden at the door, and you will be escorted out.”

Oliver felt queasy. “But—”

“Your work on the Society for the Advancement of Zaubernegativum will be passed along to the Department of Unsolvables.”

The light around him flared again, and this time the circle opened. Not far from where he was standing, a door appeared, illuminated by flickering, blue blaze.

“Don’t I get a chance to defend myself?” Oliver yelled.

He waited, but nothing happened—there were no voices calling out of the darkness, or sounds of movement as the members of Disciplinary Panel departed, only the faint clicks from the flickering light above the door. With a heavy heart, he stepped out of the room—

And walked right into an extremely angry-looking Sophie. She had the venomous look of a cat that had been dunked in water.

“Thank Woden,” Oliver said, relieved, “you have to find Ewan and—”

“Ewan’s gone,” she interrupted icily. “Sentries haven’t been able to find him. A location spell was sent out, but he’s nowhere in the South East of England.”

The sad fact was that even the more complex location spells, including those known only to the Government, could only search roughly fifty miles in every direction. Any more than that would mean expending too much energy, and it was official policy that those in the higher ranks of the SMCA should preserve their power for defensive spells. Once a suspect had gone beyond fifty miles, it was the job of the agent in charge to contact the local authorities and have one of them send out a second conjuration.

It was a bad sign that they had stopped after the first spell.

“What about the CCH?” He asked, feeling a little desperate. “Has anyone tried that?”

“The only people who think that Ewan’s worth what counts as a day’s use of magic for normal people are you and I.”

His heart sank. “And Louise Gardener Hobbes, has she been arrested?” He asked.

Sophie pressed her lips into a thin line. “She’s fled as well. It’s almost as if she had advance warning that someone was after her,” she added sarcastically.

“You don’t know what happened,” Oliver said, beginning to feel angry.

“No, I don’t,” she retorted, “because you kept me out of it. The last time, you didn’t tell me that you had arranged a secret meeting with Ewan—and you ended up killing one of our suspects. Now you’ve done it again, and our other suspects are gone. Not only has the case been taken away from us, we’ve also allowed someone evil to slip through our fingers.”

She sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a long, angry hiss. “I can’t
believe
what you’ve done.”

Gobsmacked, he countered, “What
I’ve
done? I seem to remember letting Ewan lead me into a trap, not once, but twice, so he would reveal everything to me. And it worked. If I hadn’t done what I did, we wouldn’t even have known to suspect him. What would
you
have done?”

“I would’ve done a
proper investigation
,” she exclaimed. “You made a snap judgment based on your gut feeling, not on evidence. You decided that Lady Gardener Hobbes was evil and had to be taken care of, and obviously you felt the same way about Ewan. And then you thought that you were the only person in the world who could do it.”

“Of course I was the only person who could do it,” he shouted. “I’m the hero!”

“I can’t even talk to you,” she said in disgust.

She spun on her heel and stormed away, her ponytail bobbing with every forceful step and her hands clenched into tight fists.

“Sophie,” he yelled at her disappearing back, stricken, but she kept walking.

The warden standing next to the door gave him a pitying look.

“What are you looking at?” Oliver snapped.

¤

Oliver swung gently to and fro. The ground beneath him felt unstable. When he glanced down, he was standing on a wooden beam of a long suspension bridge, which stretched between two barren cliffs. Dense fog drifted up between the planks, obscuring his vision.

Fear gripped him. Hastily, he grabbed onto the ropes on either side of him, which caused the bridge to wobble. His stomach plummeted; he had always hated heights.

He screwed his eyes shut and counted to ten. When he opened them, he felt a bit calmer—

Until he noticed Ewan on the other end of the bridge, waving at him.

“Ewan,” Oliver called, walking toward him.

The beams began crumbling beneath his feet, dropping down into the darkness below. Heart pounding, Oliver began running across the now-swinging bridge, jumping over the gaps between the planks, feeling the wood disappear under him as soon as his feet touched them. He didn’t dare turn around, knowing that all he would see behind him was rope.