He shoves a casserole dish into my arms, then grabs some forks. “Milk?” he asks. “Coke?”
“Milk,” I say. I’m grinning, I can’t stop grinning. He puts the carton on top of the casserole, grabs some cloth napkins from the drawer, then heads back up to his room. It’s a struggle to keep up.
I wish I knew what he was thinking.…
BAZ
I don’t know what I’m thinking.
SIMON
When we get up to his room, Baz turns on a lamp—the shade is dark red, so it doesn’t give out much light—and sits on the floor at the end of his bed, even though the room is full of comfortable things to sit on.
I sit down next to him, and he takes the casserole dish from me and casts a quick, “You’re getting warmer!”—then opens the lid. It’s shepherd’s pie.
“Do you need to eat?” I ask. “Or do you just like it?”
“I need it,” he says, scooping up a bite, avoiding my eyes, “just not as much as other people do.”
“How do you know that you’re not immortal?”
He hands me a fork. “No more questions.”
We finish the shepherd’s pie, eating out of the bowl on Baz’s lap. He chews with his hand over his mouth. I try to remember whether I’ve ever seen him eat before.… I finish the milk. He doesn’t want any.
When we’re done, he sets the dishes outside his door, then starts a fire in the fireplace with his wand.
I crawl over to sit next to him. “You’re a pyro,” I say.
He shrugs, staring into the fire.
“You’re not thinking about burning the house down, are you?”
“No, Snow. I don’t have a death wish. I wish I did—it would make everything easier.”
“Please stop talking like that.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment. And then he turns to me, abruptly. “Is that why you kissed me? To keep me from killing myself?”
I shake my head. “Not exactly. I mean, I did want to keep you from killing yourself.”
“Why, then?” he asks.
“Why did I kiss you?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess I wanted to,” I say, shrugging.
“Since when?”
I shrug again, and it pisses him off. He wedges another log into the fire.
“Did you want me to?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “Why would I want that? Why would that thought even occur to me? ‘Hey, you know what would fix this miserable situation with the vampires and my mother and the war and the decline of magic? Snogging my halfwit roommate. The one who will probably fuck my life for good someday. That’s a plan.’”
“You don’t have to be such a prat,” I say. “We’re on the same side here.”
“For the moment,” Baz says. “You’ll help me find out who killed my mother, I’ll kill whoever it is, and then you’ll make sure I get thrown in a tower for it. You’ve already won—as soon as you tell the Mage I’m a vampire, he’ll pull out my fangs and snap my wand. I’ll end up in Covent Garden, licking Nicodemus’s heels. And that’s if I’m lucky.”
Does Baz really think I’d do that? Now? “Those vampires were in awe of you,” I say. “They wanted to put a crown on your head.”
“Are you suggesting I cross over?”
“No. I’m just saying, you were amazing today.”
“You’re not listening to me at all, are you?”
“I am,” I say. “But you’re wrong. Nothing’s going back to normal after this. How could it?”
“Because we’re friends now?”
“Because we’re more than that.”
Baz picks up a poker and jabs at the fire. “One kiss, and you think the world is upside down.”
“Two kisses,” I say. And I take him by the back of his neck.
BAZ
I don’t know what time it is.
The darkness has changed colour in the room, like the sun is sneaking up on us. We’re lying on our backs next to the fire, what’s left of it, holding hands.
Snow sighs and squeezes my hand—and when I yelp, he frowns and holds it up between us: There’s a cross-shaped burn on my palm from when I yanked his necklace off last night. (His cross is on the other side of the room now; Snow took care of it himself this time.)
He brings my palm to his mouth and kisses it.
“I didn’t think you were gay,” I say. Quietly.
He shrugs. Half of Snow’s sentences are shrugs.
“What does that mean?” I whisper.
“I don’t know,” he says, closing his eyes. “I guess I’ve never thought much about what I am. I’ve got a lot on my plate.”
That makes me laugh. A juvenile snorty laugh. Snow starts laughing with me. “A lot on your plate?” I repeat.
“Are you gay?” he asks, looking over at me, still laughing.
“Yeah,” I say. “Completely.”
“So you do this all the time?”
I roll my eyes. “No.”
“Then how do you know you’re gay?”
“I just do. How do you not know?”
“Dunno,” he says. He laces his fingers in mine and holds my hand loosely. “I try not to think.”
“About being gay?”
“About anything. I make lists of things not to think about.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he says, “it hurts to think about things that you can’t have or help. S’better not to think about it.”
I rub my thumb back and forth on the back of his hand. “Am I on your list?”
He laughs again and shakes his head; his hair brushes against mine. “Fat chance.” He sounds sleepy. “Trying not to think about you … S’like trying not to think about an elephant that’s standing on my chest.”
I think about that.
About Snow thinking about me.
I grin. “I can’t decide whether that’s a compliment.…”
“Me neither,” he says.
“So you don’t think,” I say.
“S’pointless.”
I raise myself up on one elbow and look down on him. “I don’t understand you. You’re the most powerful magician alive—who’s ever lived, probably. You can have anything you want. How is it pointless for you to think about that?”
Snow pushes up on both elbows and lets his head fall in my direction. “Because it doesn’t matter. In the end, I just do what’s expected of me. When the Humdrum comes after me, I fight him. When he sends dragons, I kill them. When you trick me into meeting a chimera, I go off. I don’t get to choose or plan. I just take it as it comes. And someday, something will catch me unawares or be too big to fight, but I’ll fight anyway. I’ll fight until I can’t anymore—what is there to think about?”
Simon drops back onto the floor. I reach out and very carefully push his curls back off his forehead. He closes his eyes.
“I always thought you were going to kill me,” I say.
“Me, too,” he says. “I tried not to think about it.”
I wind my fingers in his hair. It’s thicker than mine, and curlier, and it shines golden in the firelight. There’s a mole on his cheek that I’ve wanted to kiss since I was 12. I do.
“For a long time,” I say.
“Hmmm?” He opens one eye.
“I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. Almost since we met…”
Snow closes his eyes again and smiles like he’s trying not to.
I smile, too, only because he isn’t watching. “I thought it was going to kill me.”
63
AGATHA
Penelope wakes me up by pulling the covers down. I yank them back up.
“Wake up, Agatha. We have to go.”
“I’ll go later. I’m sleeping.”
“No, we have to go. Now. Come on.”
I’m lying at the end of her bed. We slept this way, and she kept kicking me in the back.
“Go away, Penelope.”
“I’m trying. But I need you to drive
me.”
I open my eyes. “Drive you where?”
“I can’t tell you. Yet. But I will.”
“Somewhere in London?”
“No.”
“Penny, it’s Christmas Eve. I have to go home.”
“I know!” She’s already dressed. She’s got her hair pulled back in a giant frizzy ponytail that would probably be nice and wavy if she’d put any product in it at all. Anything. Hand lotion. Shaving cream. “And you can go home, Agatha. But first I need you to drive me to the country.”
“Why?”
“It’s a surprise,” she says.
“No.”
“An adventure?”
“I’m going home.”
Penny sighs. “We have to go help Simon.”
I close my eyes and roll away from her.
“Agatha? Come on … Is that a yes or a no? If it’s a no, can I take your Volvo?”
64
BAZ
I wake up at least an hour before Snow.
It’s hard not to watch him sleep.
I’ve done it before—excessively—but that’s when I thought I was never going to get any more than that. That’s when creeping on Snow felt like my life’s consolation prize.
I’m still not sure what’s happening between us. We kissed last night. And this morning. A lot. Does that mean we get to do it today? He’s not even sure that he’s gay. (Which is moronic. But Snow is a moron. So.)
He’s lying on my couch, and I’m sitting at the end, next to his legs. He rolls into the cushions, burying his face. “You don’t get to watch me sleep now,” he says, “just because we’re snogging.”
“Just because we snogged,” I correct him. “And I’m not watching you; I’m trying to figure out how to wake you up without you pulling a sword on me.”
“I’m up,” he says, dragging one of the cushions down over his head.
“Come on. Bunce is on her way.”
He lifts the pillow up. “What? Why?”
“I told her we have new information—she has some, too. We’re having a briefing.”
He sits up. “So she’s just coming here?”
“Yes.”
“To your Gothic mansion?”
“It’s not Gothic; it’s Victorian.”
Snow rubs his hair. “Is this a trap? Are you luring us all here to kill us?” He seems genuinely suspicious.
“How did I lure you? You hitchhiked to my door.”
“After you invited me,” he snaps.
“Yes. You caught me. I’m a villain.” I stand. “I’ll see you in the library when you’ve cleaned up.” I try not to look like I’m stomping away from him—I wait till I leave the room, then stomp down the stairs.
I don’t know what I expected. For Snow to open his eyes and see me there, then pull me into one of his expert kisses and say, “Good morning, darling”?
Simon Snow is never going to call me “darling.”
Though he did just say we were snogging.…
We don’t have a chalkboard in the house, but my stepmother has a giant whiteboard in the kitchen that she uses to keep track of all my siblings’ lessons and sport. I take a photo of it with my mobile, then erase the board and lift it off the wall.
My 7-year-old sister watches me do it. “I’m telling Mum,” she says.
“If you do, I’ll stop up all the chimneys, so Father Christmas can’t get in.”
“There are too many chimneys,” she counters.
“Not for me,” I say. “I’m willing to put the time in.”
“He’ll just come to the door.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Mordelia, Father Christmas never comes to the door. And if he did, I’d tell him he had the wrong house.” I’m carefully manoeuvring the whiteboard through the kitchen door.
“I’m telling Mum!” she shouts after me.
I prop the board up in the library, and I’m making columns—Everything we know and Everything we still don’t—when Snow walks into the room. I ignore him.
“It’s not that I think you’ll betray us,” he says.
I make a noise that I’m afraid sounds a lot like “harrumph.”
Simon hassles his curls with one hand. “It’s just … Well, it’s still weird between us, isn’t it?”
I continue ignoring him.
“I mean … you haven’t said … that things are different now for you. I’ve said that I’m not going to kill you.”
“No, you haven’t,” I say.
“It must have been implied.”
“No.”
“Um, all right.” He clears his throat. “Baz. I’m not going to kill you. I’m not going to fight you at all, am I?”
“Good,” I say, stepping back from the whiteboard and admiring my columns. “That will make things much easier.”
“What things?”
“Crowley, I don’t know. Whatever the Families cook up for me. Probably I’ll be the one they ask to poison your Ribena, now that you trust me. What I can promise, Snow, is to weep over your corpse.”
“Or not,” he says.
“Fine, I’ll weep in privacy when the day arrives.”
“No,” he insists, “I’m serious. Or not.”
I look over my shoulder at him. “What are you trying to say?”
“That we don’t have to fight.”
“You realize that your mentor has raided my house twice this month.”
“Yeah—I mean, no, I didn’t realize that—but the point is, I didn’t raid your house. What if,” he says, stepping closer, “I help you find out who killed your mum, then you help me fight the Humdrum, and we just forget about the rest?”
“‘The rest,’” I say, turning around. “Way to oversimplify a decade of corruption and abuse of power.”
“Are you talking about the Mage?”
“Yes.”
He looks pained. “I wish you wouldn’t.”
“How can I not talk about the Mage when I’m talking to the Mage’s Heir?”
“Is that how you think of me?”
“Isn’t that how you think of yourself? Oh, right. I forgot—you don’t think at all.”
Simon groans and rakes at his hair. “Jesus Christ. Do you ever not go for the lowest blow? Like, do you ever think, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t say the most cruel thing just now?’”
“I’m trying to be efficient.”
He leans against the shelf where I’ve set the whiteboard. “It’s vicious.”
“You should talk, Snow. You always go for the kill shot.”
“When I’m fighting. We’re not fighting.”
“We’re always fighting,” I say, going back to the board.
I’m facing the board; he’s standing next to me, facing the room. He leans towards me a bit, without looking at me, and bumps his arm against mine, ruining the word I’m writing. “Or not,” he says.
I erase the word and start over. I’m working on the Everything we still don’t list. I’m tempted to write: everything important and also: whether Simon Snow is actually gay. And: whether I’ll live forever.
“I’ll help you find out who killed your mother,” he says again, like he’s laying out a plan. “And you’ll help me stop the Humdrum—that’s a shared goal, yeah?—and then we’ll worry about the rest later.”
“Is this how you get what you want? By just repeating it until it comes true?”
“Isn’t that how you cast a spell?”
My chalk hand drops, and I turn to him, exasperated. “Simon—”
“A-ha!” he shouts, springing up and pointing. It scares the hell out of me. I’ve seen him kill a dog with less effort. (He said the dog was were; I think it was just excited.) “You did it again!”
“Did what?” I say, slapping his hand away from my face.
He sticks his other hand in my face, pointing. “Called me Simon.”
“What would you prefer—Chosen One?”
His hand dips. “I prefer Simon, actually. I … I like it.”
&nb
sp; I swallow, and it must be obvious how nervous I am, because he looks down at my neck. “Simon,” I say, and swallow again, “you’re being idiotic.”
“Because I like this better than fighting?”
“There is no ‘this’!” I protest.
“You slept in my arms,” he says.
“Fitfully.”
He lets his hand fall, and I catch it. Because I’m weak. Because I’m a constant disappointment to myself. Because he’s standing right there with his tawny skin and his moles and his morning breath.
“Simon,” I say.
He squeezes my hand.
“It’s not that I don’t prefer this. It’s that…” I sigh. “I can’t even imagine it. My family objects to everything the Mage stands for.”
“I know,” he says emphatically. “But I actually think we have bigger problems than that. If we find out who killed your mum, and then we go after the Humdrum together—maybe we can help everyone see that we’re better off uniting, and then—”
“And then the whole World of Mages will see how much better it is to work together, and we’ll sing a song about co-operation.”
“I was thinking we’d stop cursing each other,” he says, “and locking each other up in towers.”
“Potato, potahto.”
He pulls at my arm and I fall forward a bit. Or maybe I’m swooning—it’s not beneath me. (Snow is. Beneath me. Always. By at least three inches.)
“How can you be like this?” I whisper. “How can you even trust me, after everything?”
“I’m not sure I do trust you,” he whispers back. He reaches out with his other hand and touches my stomach. I feel it drop to the floor. (My stomach, that is.) “But…” He shrugs.
He’s rubbing my stomach, and I close my eyes—because it feels good. (So good.) And also because I want him to kiss me again.
Snow kissed me last night until my mouth was sore. He kissed me so much, I was worried I’d Turn him with all my saliva. He held himself up on all fours above me and made me reach up for his mouth—and I did. I would again. I’d cross every line for him.
I’m in love with him.
And he likes this better than fighting.
65
SIMON
If Penelope were here, I’d tell her she’s wrong about me. She thinks I solve everything with my sword. But apparently, I can also solve things with my mouth—because, so far, every time I lean into Baz, he shuts up and closes his eyes.