I usually don’t mention him. My father and I are still firmly pretending that I’m going to make an honest woman out of someone someday. When I went home for my stepmother’s birthday, they’d invited some poor magickal girl from the next town over to sit next to me at dinner. She’d been a couple years ahead of me at Watford, and apparently hadn’t heard the news that Simon Snow showed up at my Leavers’ Ball and snogged me stupid.

I wish he’d show up and snog me stupid right now …

Un-bloody-likely. It’s only been twenty-four hours since Snow tried to talk me into dumping him so I could take up with a 300-year-old vampire. (Imagine bringing Lamb the Vampire King home for dinner…) I’m hoping we don’t have to talk about that again—that coming back to London has brought Simon back to his senses. Or at least back to himself.

“I’ll be home tomorrow,” I text him.

He doesn’t reply.

As soon as I open the front door, I can hear the television, and my first thought is that I’m in the wrong house. Then I hear my father shouting, and I’m certain I’m in the wrong house—I’ve never heard him raise his voice.

“I won’t ask you again, Sophronia! Put that down this minute! Sophronia!”

One of the twins runs past me, holding a doll over her head. I snatch it.

“Basil!” she shouts, grabbing my waist. Sophie and Petra are 5. This is Sophie, I think, but I’ll be honest, it’s hard for me to tell the twins apart unless they’re smiling.

I pick her up. “Goodness, you’re all grown up. It’s like holding a baby rhinoceros.”

“Basil,” she grins, “hide me.” Definitely Sophie.

“You are well over the line, Sophronia!” Father yells. (Actually yells.)

I carry Sophie into the family room, where Petra’s sobbing on the sofa. I hand her the doll. I always thought that twins were supposed to be best friends, but these two fight like rats. The baby’s crying, too. My father—or possibly his unhinged doppelgänger?—is pacing with him. He stops when he sees me. “Basilton?”

“Father?”

Malcolm Grimm has two looks: gentleman farmer and gentleman’s gentleman. This is decidedly neither. His white hair is sticking up, his shirt is untucked. He looks like he’s just been roughed up in an alley—no, I’ve seen my father get roughed up in an alley, and he stayed much more pulled together than this.

“Is everything all right?” I ask.

“Tip-top,” he says, automatically. “Basil, would you be so kind?” He hands me the baby and takes Sophie. He scoops up Petra, too. “You pair are going to bed. And if you don’t stay there, I’ll—well, I’ll be very disappointed.”