“I suppose that’s true,” she mutters, starting the car. “You were extremely helpful for someone who doesn’t care at all about anything outside of herself.”

My head whips back to her. “Hey. You don’t even know me.”

Niamh scoffs, backing the car out onto the road. “Everyone knows you, Agatha. You’re Simon Snow’s girlfriend. You’re the Chosen One’s chosen one. You so much as break a nail, and he burns down the Wavering Wood.”

“I feel like you’re once again referring to a time when I was kidnapped…”

She looks over at me, actually angry now. “Maybe it doesn’t matter to you whether Watford falls—but it’s the heart of who we are, as magicians. It’s our only institution, the only thing we’ve ever managed to get done and make work.”

“Niamh. I went to Watford, too. I’m not anti-Watford.” I’m leaning over the gear shift to make my point.

She’s trying to watch the road and argue with me at the same time. “Then I’d think you’d be concerned about the goats!”

I shrug my shoulders with my palms in the air. “I mean, I’m more concerned than I was yesterday. I’ve bonded with a few of them now.”

“The goats of Watford are wandering away,” she says, hunching over the steering wheel, “and no one cares! Not you, not even the headmistress—she has too many other problems. The whole World of Mages has too many other problems! Or too many other distractions. Most of them care more about who’s going to replace your boyfriend than—”

I cut her off. “If you call him my boyfriend one more time, I’ll scream.”

“Why? Are you engaged now? Are you Simon Snow’s fiancée?”

“No! We broke up ages ago! Everyone knows this!”

“What?” Niamh sits back in her seat, chastened. “I didn’t know that.”

“You must live under a rock.” I fold my arms and look out my window. “It’s all anyone talked about for months.”

“I don’t really pay attention to gossip…” she says.

“Well, we broke up our last year at Watford, and now he’s with Baz Pitch. It was like boy–Romeo and Juliet.”

“Romeo was already a boy.”

“You know what I meant.”

“Simon Snow dumped you for a Pitch?” Niamh sounds thoughtful. “Which one, again?”

“He didn’t dump me, actually, but—you know, Baz. He was at school with us.”

“What did he look like?”

I turn back to her. Is she kidding? “Basilton Grimm-Pitch? The headmistress’s son?”

“Oh, right…” She still looks uncertain. “Pale? Crooked nose?”

“I mean, yes. But I’ve never heard him described that way.”

Niamh shrugs. “Like I said, I didn’t really follow your whole soap opera.”