Beetle sensed a “but.” He was right.

“But . . . well, yesterday Marcellus sent me off to Aunt Zelda’s to get a flask. He didn’t tell me it was so huge that I’d have to bring it back across the Marshes. He must have known it would take days. And he didn’t seem pleased that I was back so soon. It made no sense—until I thought that maybe he didn’t want me around for some reason. You know?”

“Well, well. Fancy that,” said Beetle.

At the Great Arch both Beetle and Septimus stopped and turned around to look up at the Wizard Tower. It was one of those crystal-clear nights when the lights of the Tower were dazzling; they glittered and sparkled in the frosty air, brilliant against the Tower’s silver sheen, turning the gently falling snowflakes a soft purple and blue.

“Wow,” breathed Beetle. “Sometimes I forget how beautiful this place is.”

“Yeah,” said Septimus. After a month underground, he too had forgotten. He felt a pang of homesickness for the Wizard Tower and had a real desire to turn around and go back . . . home. He sighed. He had one more day with Marcellus. That was all. It would soon be over.

Septimus and Beetle walked through the inky shadows of the Great Arch and emerged into Wizard Way. They looked down the snowy Way, quietly busy with people closing up their shops for the night, and at the far end they saw the unmistakable red flash of Jenna’s cloak as she disappeared through the Palace Gate. Septimus was in a reflective mood.

“You never did say anything to Jenna, did you?” he said.

Beetle looked at his friend, surprised. “About what?”

“Beetle, you know what. About liking her.”

Beetle shot Septimus a look as if to say, How did you know? “Well. No,” he said. “She didn’t want me to. I could tell.”

“Could you? How?” Septimus really wanted to know.

“I just could. And then . . . well, I suddenly knew for sure that she didn’t care. Not in that way. But it’s fine now. I’ve got better things to do.”

“So that’s okay, then?” Septimus sounded doubtful.

Beetle smiled. He realized what he had said really was true. “Actually, Sep, it is okay. What I love is being Chief Scribe. Most days I wake up and I still can’t believe that’s what I am. Most days I don’t even think about Jenna.”

“Really?”

“Well . . . maybe that’s not totally true. But it’s okay. And anyway, she’s very young.”

“She’s not that young—she’s nearly fourteen and a half now.”

“Yeah . . . well. Even so.”

“Same age as me.” Septimus grinned.

“You’re six months older, remember—after your time with Marcellus?”

“Oh, yeah.” That was not something Septimus liked to remember much—being stranded in another Time. The more he thought about it the less he wanted to go back to Marcellus’s house in Snake Slipway, which—especially at night—reminded him of that Time. He took a deep breath of the Wizard Way air from his Time and wandered along with Beetle toward the Manuscriptorium.

At the door, Beetle said with a grin, “Want to come in and have a FizzFroot? I’ve got buckets of ’em upstairs now.”

Septimus shook his head. “I should really be getting back to Marcellus. I have to tell him that Marcia won’t let me do another month with him.”

“Oh, come on, Sep. Just one little FizzFroot. You haven’t seen my new place yet.”

Septimus needed no excuse to change his mind. “Okay, Beetle. Just one.”

The new Chief Hermetic Scribe took the ExtraOrdinary Apprentice through the Manuscriptorium with a proudly proprietorial air. The large room with the tall desks was empty. Unlike the previous Chief Hermetic Scribe, Beetle did not believe in keeping scribes at work after dark had fallen. It was brightly lit with fresh candles placed in the ancient candleholders set into the wall and the room no longer had the air of suppressed boredom and gloom that had pervaded it in Jillie Djinn’s time. Beetle and Septimus headed toward the short flight of steps that led up to a battered blue door.

The rooms of a Chief Hermetic Scribe were modest in comparison with the rooms of an ExtraOrdinary Wizard, but Beetle loved them. There was one long, low-ceilinged room with a multitude of beams that spread almost the entire length of the Manuscriptorium. The room had a line of three low dormer windows on either side. One side looked out across the rooftops to the Moat and the dark Forest beyond, and the other looked out on Wizard Way. Off the main room was a small, beamed bedroom, a bathroom and a tiny kitchen where Beetle kept his stash of FizzBom cubes to make up the FizzFroot.