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Chapter Text

Book 1: Simon Snow and the Mage's Heir

I. BAZ 

Of all the things I expect my father to tell me when we convene in his study, it very much isn’t, “The Old Families want you to befriend the Chosen One.” 

At first, I think I’ve misheard him. Or I’m having an auditory hallucination. The latter is highly probable, given the stress I’ve been under.  

I suppose a lot of people experience anxiety or some variety of giddy dread at the start of the school year. Especially when their school is Watford School of Magicks. Watford is one of Great Britain’s most illustrious enchanted academies, where ignorant children grow to be renowned spell-casters. (Or at least they should.) (Who knows what kinds of duds the school is turning out now that the Mage is in charge?)   

Unlike most students, though, it won’t be my first time stepping onto the grounds. I was reared from infancy to toddlerhood there. For five glorious years, I breathed in the smell of parchment, ink and dust that radiated from the vast library, and I basked in the warmth of the fires that lit Mother’s office. She used to be Headmistress, Watford’s most accomplished leader.  

I doubt any other student will enter Watford with those memories: of a brilliant, powerful mother who raised them in the Weeping Tower; or the night of her murder, a haze of blood and fire and the bite of fangs that transformed happy, hopeful toddler me into an undead, blood-sucking monster.   

In short, I feel particularly entitled to be stressed.  

In fact, when I first got Father’s summons, I had the mad notion  that might be what he wanted to address. My dead mother, my undead existence, and how returning to Watford would bring my numerous traumas and personal issues back to the surface.  

After all, it’s not like we have a habit of chatting for pleasure or to pass the time. I’ve only had one other conversation with him since June. It was ghastly. So, what other extraordinary circumstance would compel him to speak with me now, other than the impending school year? 

Apparently, a follow-up on the ghastly conversation. 

“The Old Families want me to befriend the Mage’s Heir?” I choke out after a long, stunned silence. “You mean the protégé of our sworn enemy? The boy I’m supposed to kill?” 

Because that’s what Father told me last time.  

In a more roundabout and euphemistic way, of course: 

There will be a time when you’ll have to act, Basilton, and it will hard but also the necessary thing to do. An unimaginable threat faces our family, all the Families. And someday you’ll have to meet it. To destroy it before it destroys us. So, prepare yourself.   

“Our sworn enemy is the Insidious Humdrum, not the Mage,” Father backtracks this time.  

Fine, I suppose I’ll give him that.  

The Mage is a pest, a self-aggrandizing, self-proclaiming revolutionary bent on changing magickal society for the worst. Even though he preaches about democratizing magic for all creatures, from the most impertinent pixies to the thickest trolls, he’s really a mustachioed narcissist drunk on his own power (a power the Old Families live to curtail). 

But the Humdrum doesn’t just threaten our values and traditions. 

It will annihilate everything good in our world. 

Just like it did Mother when it sent the vampires to the Nursery. 

“So, the Old Families want me to befriend the Mage’s Heir… as a trick?” That seems to be the only logical reason. It makes my stomach turn, though. My family may be many things— rich and entitled conservatives who discriminate against all manner of Dark and non-Dark Creatures— but we’re not dishonorable. When we’re coming for our enemies, we feel it is our duty to make them painfully aware of it. “I make him believe I’m on his side, and then I use his trust to take him out?”  

“Of course not,” Father replies sharply, as if the idea also sickens him. I’m relieved, but then he has to ruin it: “You are to get close to him because the Chosen One is a key part of the Mage’s campaign against the Families. Wellbelove has seen to him, and he says the boy’s magic is… immense. Like the stuff of legend. And worst, untrained and volatile. Which is why we can’t let the Mage just do whatever he pleases with him.” 

I’m irked by this onslaught of praise. Father declaring something to be dangerous is a rare and glowing endorsement, one I rarely receive. My burgeoning skills as a fire mage only occasionally merit a passing mention to my stepmother at dinner, even though I’m far younger than any flame caster in Pitch family history. (Except my mother.) (But no one compares to her.) (The awful truth is that she didn’t just die— she left the world and us behind, making us the ghosts, shadows of the people we once were.)   

Anyway: I won’t be beat by some random boy, especially one whose sole guarantors are Dr. Wellbelove, a mediocre magician (I’ve seen the offspring he's produced: one daydreaming, horse-obsessed, and singularly unimpressive daughter), and the Mage.  

“But no one else in the Families has seen the Mage’s Heir?” I interrogate. “Seen him do magic? The Mage could have interfered. Cast something on Oliver Twist and fooled the good doctor.” 

“Perhaps.” Father sounds like he’s seriously considering it. “Which is why we get close. Why you get close, Basilton. The timing couldn’t be more perfect. You’re both starting school in the same year, and the boy will be all alone, with no contacts in our world other than Wellbelove. You can confirm the extent of his powers first-hand. If you discover the Chosen One is a ruse, we cast the boy aside”— Father gestures as if he’s throwing a piece of kindling into the fire— “and we do what we always planned: overtake the Mage with our might. And if he does turn out to be the golden soldier, the perfect weapon… then the Mage will never win the war once he’s on our side.” 

I understand Father’s logic. The Families’ logic. I really do.  

But this feels wrong.  

Up until this moment I thought I’d have to slay the Mage’s Heir, not become his dread companion. It wasn’t that I wanted to become a soldier at the tender age of eleven. But everyone told me that I had to. That by spilling this stranger’s blood, whose master was a virus on the respected magical community, I’d be protecting my mother’s memory; it was all I had left of her. I’d be protecting the people I cared about— Aunt Fiona, Father, my stepmother Daphne, and my baby sister Mordelia— who were all I had left of my humanity.  

So, having committed to child-murder, I now find it difficult to make a non-lethal 180.  

I must be doing a poor job of concealing my feelings (another undesirable first), because Father frowns and shakes his head, sensing my internal conflict. I lower mine in shame (my saving grace— or terrible curse, depending on how you look at it— is that after the bite, it’s almost impossible for me to blush with mortification.) 

But instead of delivering the lecture I expect, Father rises from his armchair and stands before me. He kneels so that we’re eye-level, and then he places his hands on my shoulders, watching me closely and dare I say fondly. 

I’m shocked, a little pleased, and extremely uncomfortable. Father also appears ill at ease with this up-close and personal parenting approach, but he’s determined to see it through.   

“Basilton. I’m not asking you to ingratiate yourself to that heretical moron the Coven calls the Mage. But this is the best way to stop him from doing unforeseeable damage in the future. You are the only one who can do this.” 

Though moved, I don’t miss how similar this speech is to the one Father gave when he told me to kill an eleven-year-old boy to save our friends and family. (He said I was the only one who could do it then, too, which struck me as neither true nor praiseworthy.) 

“But…” I murmur, aware that I’m fighting a lost cause, “surely the Mage has poisoned the Chosen One against us. Against me.” 

“Naturally.” 

“Then how am I supposed to be his friend when he expects us to be enemies?” 

Father scoffs. “You won’t fail, Basilton. You are a Pitch. There will never be a mage you can’t bend to your will.” 

Then, brushing invisible dust motes from his knees, Father returns to his armchair. He resumes his reading on magickal agriculture, leafing through Rodents of Unusual Size and Other Pests in Your Fantastical Fields.   

He’s calm. I’m not. 

Although I exit his study projecting boredom and aloofness, his instructions ring though my mind all night as I finish packing. I’m so distracted that it’s two in the morning by the time I’ve meticulously folded my clothes and jammed as many books in my suitcase as I can carry.   

Befriend the Chosen One, befriend the Chosen One, befriend…  

I suspect the Chosen One crosses into my dreams, too, though I can’t remember them when I wake up. All that remain are sensations. I feel disoriented, and my heart is pounding in my chest, the way it does after a nightmare. (Other than nightmares, my heart barely beats.) (Which is one of many reasons my family has ceased taking me to magickal doctors.)  

It’s utterly ridiculous. I don’t even know what the boy looks like. Is he really more flesh-and-blood than myth, something conservative parents hang over their children’s heads to make them finish their vegetables and attend their dance lessons? 

I resolve to put him out of my mind when I join my family for breakfast. Although the dining room is spacious, lit by chandeliers and candles on account of my sensitivity to sunlight, I feel claustrophobic, strangled.  

Across our long table, Father alternates between reading a newspaper and casting Clean as a whistle on the tablecloth. Mordelia is painting it with globs of baby food. Daphne tries to coax her into keeping down some of her mushy carrots, a venture she is no more successful at today than she was last night, last week, or last month.  

Although I’m wary about Mordelia launching half-liquidized projectiles onto my outfit, I’m also glad for the diversion. Father and Daphne don’t notice when I put far too many sugar cubes in my tea (seven is a lucky number). By the time Daphne turns toward me, the sugar and caffeine have helped soothe some of my nerves. 

“You look very nice, Basilton,” says Daphne.  

“Thank you, Mother.” I’ve called Daphne Mother for the past several years. Neither of us minds. 

“I see the tailors properly sized your blazer,” she observes with satisfaction. 

“Yes, they did.” Not that my current ensemble matters. At Watford, I’ll be forced to swap out my lovely maroon suit and midnight blue jumper for their travesty of a uniform. I mean, striped shades of purple and green, topped off with a garish red tie? It’s like the staff lifted the contents of a cheap Halloween emporium.  

(At least I’m good-looking enough to pull it off.) 

“We should take a picture before you leave,” Daphne suggests as Mordelia exfoliates herself with handfuls of mushy peas. “To commemorate the occasion.” 

“…I suppose.” 

I’m not sure which occasion we’re commemorating. Me starting my quest to bring our political enemy over to our side of the war? My return to a site of long-repressed pain and familiarity?   

I decide to go with celebrating being free of Mordelia’s screaming, crying, and food-flinging for a while. 

Once breakfast is over, our family poses in front of the house. Vera, our Normal nanny, takes pictures, standing far, far back to get the elaborate façade of our Victorian mansion in the frame. Poised to my left is Father, who clasps my shoulder and grimaces at the camera. He looks like the crushed velvet-adorned, silver-haired villain of a young adult novel. To my right, Daphne smiles and struggles to contain the wriggling baby in her arms. I smirk into the lens and try to remain just out of arms’ reach of Mordelia’s chubby fingers. Despite my efforts, she still manages to fist a lock of my hair, yanking like an intrepid rider at the reins of her steed. The family dog drapes himself across the toes of our suede shoes. 

Once the photo op is over and Father fusses over the shots, Daphne presses a palm to my cheek (she’s warm, so much warmer than I am), kisses my brow, and wishes me a happy school year. Mordelia doesn’t understand what’s happening. When Daphne tugs her away, she whines for me to hold her: “Bazzy! Bazzy! Carry!” I firmly remind myself that she’s a little demon, but it doesn’t stop my heart from aching with bruises in the shape of her little hands.  

(You’d think babies would have better self-preservation instincts than to be drawn toward man-eating creatures, but no— Mordelia latched onto me the moment she was born. It astounds me that Daphne is not concerned. Then again, Daphne has always surprised me. She chooses to love and care for me even though I am another woman’s monstrous offspring.) 

I’m packing the trunk of Father’s Jaguar when it hits me that soon I’ll be away from all this:  

The lush grounds of the manor, fragrant with Father’s mulch and controlled blazes; the sleepy sounds of Daphne coaching Mordelia through Baby Einstein in the cushioned comfort of the living room; the shade of the yew tree where I practice violin; and the clove-and-spice odor of cigarettes that occasionally waft from Fiona’s guest room. 

Speaking of which— 

“MALCOLM, YOU TRAITOROUS, COWARDLY CUNT!”  

Crowley. Fiona must have cast Hear ye, hear ye on herself. Her profanities ring loud and clear over the roar of her motorbike engine and the crunch of gravel. 

I can’t catch Father’s expression from where I’m sitting. However, going by his carefully vacant and neutral tones, he’s furious.  

“How wonderful to catch you before we leave, Fiona,” he says. “Though I’ll remind you to watch your language in spite of your excitement.”  

Fiona pulls up sharply beside the passenger’s door. She presses a leather-gloved hand against my window. I’d try to lower the glass if I wasn’t convinced that Father would charm the mechanism frozen. 

When Fiona takes off her helmet, she’s not her ordinarily disheveled punk self. (She’s the one who calls it punk.) (I call it getting so high and wasted that she passes out in her make-up).  

Now, she’s not just a mess— she’s insane. Her hair wreathes her face like a storm cloud, dark and electric, and her eyes are wide and shining against her gunpowder-black eyeliner. She’s almost as wild with fury and pain as she appeared seven years ago at my bedside, casting healing spell after healing spell to undo the damage from the bite. (Spoiler: it didn’t work.)  

“I’ll call you and the fucking Families whatever I like,” she hisses at Father. “This is about my sister. My nephew.” 

“My son,” Father says stonily. 

Fiona throws her head back, laughing viciously. “Who you’re sacrificing on the Mage’s altar like a fucking lamb!” Then she whips her head to me, staring with such intensity that I can imagine the glass melting between us. “Don’t you listen to them, boyo. The only reason you get close to the Chosen One is to take him out, yeah?”  

“So, they didn’t consult you about the plan,” I mutter, having suspected as much. 

How Fiona hears me through the glass is beyond me. I hope she hasn’t learned to read lips. She screams, “No, I was away when this item came onto the agenda! Look. You do this, and you’re falling right into the Mage’s smarmy lap. And that’s not a place a pretty thing like you wants to be in—” 

“Fiona!” Father shouts. 

“That sleazy bastard will use his bloodhound to get to you. Just how the Families are trying to use you to get to him. The Mage is a revolting usurper. You can only expect his star pupil to be the same.”  

“Basilton knows that this is the best move,” Father says tersely, pressing on the gas.  

Fiona jabs her wand at the Jaguar and yells, “Stay in your lane!”   

I brace myself as the car jerks suddenly to a halt. 

The knuckles of my father’s hand go bone white on the steering wheel. He releases his wand from his sleeve.  

“Turn, turn, my wheel!” he cries, and the car jolts violently forward. 

I’m glad I went light on breakfast as Fiona screams, “Just spinning your wheels!” and the car stops again. The wheels screech on the driveway, revolving rapidly but going nowhere.  

Fiona leans toward me, so close I can see where strands of her dark hair are turning prematurely white. “You can’t play nice with him, Basil! He’s not gonna go easy on you when the day comes.” 

“The Chosen One can’t hurt me, Fi,” I argue. 

“We must soldier on,” Father says through gritted teeth, but the vehicle refuses to budge. 

“Not if you get to him first, you cheeky brat.”  

“Fi.” 

“Baz. Please.” I’m properly disconcerted now. My aunt never begs. “Do you know what the Mage will do if that boy discovers what you are ? He’ll burn you to a crisp. And that’s only if the Chosen One doesn’t light you up himself—” 

The force of my father’s next incantation floods the car with magic so thick and furious I could choke. “We must fight our way onward. We must be brave. There are obstacles to be met, and we must meet, and crush them!”  

Next thing I know, we’re tearing from the driveway, powered by David Copperfield’s iconic verse. 

I watch as Fiona disappears through the rearview window. She doesn’t try to follow us. Instead, she signals to me with her thumb and forefinger pressed against her ear before she dons her helmet and races away. In my back pocket, I feel the weight of the burner phone she secretly gave me (phone are prohibited on Watford’s campus— one of the Mage’s dumb new rules).  

Our drive proceeds along at an illegal speed, Father partially slumped over the steering wheel. He’s expended himself with his last incantation. I should worry about his fatigue causing an accident. (Although the Jaguar is as impregnable as the Queen’s castle with protection spells.) Instead, I’m grateful his attention is occupied changing lanes. 

I hadn’t considered that getting close to the Mage’s Heir could mean him learning the truth about what sort of creature I am. 

But he won’t, not even if I did follow through with Father and the Families’ preposterous plan. (Which I likely will. Unfortunately.) (Pitches are nothing if not loyal.)  

Firstly, the average mage has never seen a vampire, doesn’t even realize when one attends the same posh clubs or luxury resorts. It’s not like a random, prophesied orphan will be able to detect me. Secondly, my ancestors are famous vampire slayers. That Father and Fiona didn’t kill me when I was Turned still weighs on them, I think. Finally, other than my fangs (which only drop when I eat—don’t ask me from where), my pale complexion, my super-strength, and my flammability (hypothetically), I’m not a vampire in the one way that counts: 

I don’t drink blood.  

I never have, never wanted to, and hopefully never will. Even though I have my fears. 

(Do other humans sometimes notice how enticing their brethren smell?) 

Hours later, Watford’s imposing, wrought-iron gates appear from a mist of wards. I recall the ornate metal grilles and the motto inscribed on the crossbars: magic separates us from the world; let nothing separate us from each other.

I guess now’s the time to see if that’s true. 

Vampires were never supposed to be able to get into Watford. A major thing that inhibits them from rampantly slaughtering everyone and everything is that they can’t enter where they’re not invited (something that’s caused me issues in many a restaurant). Still, on the night of Mother’s murder, they found a way to break in. Ever since, protection spells against Dark Creatures have multiplied to the nth degree. Even minor pests like magickal dandelions struggle to invade the Great Lawn.  

I have no idea what that means for me. 

The Jaguar inches closer to the gates, and even though I resolutely gaze forward, my nails dig into my palms, drawing blood. Father seems to be holding his breath, tapping on the gas pedal as lightly as an egg.  

How do the gates repel threats, I wonder. Is it a basic magickal force field— relatively harmless, like an electric collar— or something more… aggressive?  

And could it alert the Mage? 

After an indefinite period, the gates creak open. 

I go dizzy with relief.  

Merlin, Morgana, and Methuselah.   

(Thank you, Mother.) 

As the car passes through layer upon layer of Watford’s walled town, the school comes into view. There are the steepled silhouettes of the dormitories; glowing orange windows outside the many classrooms; the green carpet of the football pitch; the lake teeming with disgusting merwolves; and the gnarled boughs and dense foliage of the Wavering Wood flanking the campus’ edges.   

The air is potent with magic, sweet, nostalgic and wonderful. 

(And the delectable odors of my blood-bag peers, which I studiously ignore.) 

Father eventually parks in a throng of other (much cheaper) student family vehicles. I remove my suitcases from the trunk, and we’re left standing before each other in awkward silence. Surrounding us are families engaged in varying stages of dramatic goodbyes. Children scream, wail, or beg their caretakers not to leave them; parents tearfully tell their children they love them and will miss them.  

It’s unbearable. 

For my father, an appropriate send-off apparently goes, “Study hard for your classes, Basilton. I don’t want to find that your grades have dropped from too much violin practice or football.” 

“Yes, Father.” 

“And write your mother. She’ll want to hear from you.” 

“I will.” 

“Your cousin Dev is in your year. It would be in your interests to form a connection with him.” 

I vaguely remember Dev Grimm. Unambitious, easily bored, and requiring a short leash. I supposed I could find a worse minion. “I’ll speak with him.” 

“Most importantly, remember your duties.” 

By which he means, remember the Chosen One.  

I nod. “…I’ll see to it, Father.”   

He nods back. “Very well.” Then he pauses, twisting his wedding ring. His gaze flickers back and forth across the school grounds, lines deepening in the corner of his eyes and his mouth.  

At that moment, I realize he also hasn’t been back to Watford since Mother died: here, where they first met as classmates; here, where they grew to love each other; here, where she would be forever lost.   

I don’t know what to do or say. Clearly, neither does he. In lieu of an emotionally healthy response, Father stiffly states, “I will see you during the holiday, Basilton,” and locks himself behind the walls of his vehicle.  

Then he drives away without a backward glance. 

I’ve spent enough time wallowing about his withdrawn nature than to presently indulge in self-pity. (I’ll do that later in my new dorm. A fine way to christen the space.)  

For now, I relish being back. 

Inside the castle, so much is familiar. The stone corridors, lofty ceilings, stained-glass windows, and flickering torchlight— it’s like I’m a toddler again, holding Mother’s hand as we hurry to her next class.  

Except now, stationed at the corner of every hall is a soldier from the Mage’s personal army. They wear the same Robin Hood-esque tights, impractical capes, and clashing color schemes (I can’t tell which is more deplorable, the man’s politics or his sense of fashion). When these sentries catch my eye, they glare and ready themselves to pounce, wary of me as a member of the Families. 

I refrain from summoning fire in my palms to show them their places. 

The Mage has ruined everything. I’m where I belong, but the second home of my youth is now some creep’s prison-slash-training camp. I hate it. I hate him. 

How can Father possibly expect me to play nice with his mindless puppet? 

I’d prefer to befriend a numpty. (Not that I’m convinced the Mage’s Heir isn’t one.) 

“Your attention, please!”   

The magickal command compels me and the other first year students to turn our gazes toward a member of the faculty. She’s tall, willowy, and dressed in shimmering robes. Miss Possibelf, I think.  

“Welcome to Watford School of Magicks,” she says in a low, echoing voice, one that strikes me as inhuman. (I should know— my hearing range rivals the family dog.) “Dinner starts shortly.” My peers twitter with excitement while I inwardly groan. Don’t get me wrong; I love Cook Pritchard’s cooking. The problem is that I can’t exactly dig in and enjoy it in present company. “Then, we’ll hold the Crucible ceremony, during which time you’ll meet your roommate and closest companion for your time at Watford.” 

Crowley, the Crucible? I had nearly forgotten about that awful artifact. 

I’m dreading what simpleton I’ll be paired up with when something… unprecedented happens. 

Like an electrical storm but charged with magic. 

Several students gasp, startled by the current of pure power, of magic so raw and concentrated it almost hurts. I feel it thrum through my veins, vibrate against my teeth. What is that? I’ve never experienced anything like it before. No, wait, I have; it’s like when I first called up my own fire magic: radiant, all-consuming, and invigorating.  

And coming from an entirely unexpected source: 

A boy in ratty jeans and a stained t-shirt. His fair hair shaved close to the scalp. His skin mottled with freckles and moles. I smell dried blood on his knuckles, dirt under his nails. His eyes are blue. Just blue. The most ordinary, non-descript type.  

And magic oozes inexplicably from every pore of his body, like every atom of his short, skinny body is made of it. 

I know who he is. Judging by the room’s collectively held breath, there’s not a person here who doesn’t.  

Still, I can’t believe it. 

This is the Chosen One? 

Chapter Text

Book 1: Simon Snow and the Mage's Heir

II. SIMON 

I know I probably look like an idiot, but Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. 

I never imagined a place like this. Not in my wildest dreams.  

And my dreams can be a wild place. 

Like the one I had two months ago on my eleventh birthday. (Probably.) (I’ve never seen the birth certificate if I came with one.) 

The boys’ home doesn’t do individual birthdays. To save on time and money, they lump all the summer ones into a single June celebration. During the first Friday, we ate cake made in the local supermarket that read Happy Birthday in bubblegum pink frosting. No names, ages, or candles. I didn’t care— I was grateful for the opportunity to eat two slices because I was one of the birthday boys. 

But later that night, I tossed and turned in bed. I thought it might’ve been indigestion; wouldn’t be the first time the Matron fed us something expired.  

Except I felt like I was burning alive. 

I dreamt of fire. It was almost alive, a great beast with a scarlet tongue, golden wings, and a thrashing, white-bright tail.  

I felt like I was sweating and screaming for hours, begging the flames to go out before they killed everyone. (It didn’t matter that the boys and Matron never cared for me.) (I still didn’t want them to get hurt.) 

When I woke up, my voice was hoarse and my bed a pile of ashes.  

The whole building was gone— just charred brick and black, wizened stumps of foundation. The firemen had no idea what caused it. As suddenly as the fire came, then it was gone. 

Except I knew what caused it: me. Because somehow, in the middle of the night, everyone except for me was transported from the home, like magic.  

No, not like. It was magic. My magic. 

At least that’s what the Mage tells me. 

I wish he was here now.  

I get the sense that he’s a busy guy, slaying evil monsters and rescuing magickal orphans. He even looks like a hero from an adventure book, with his pointy shoes and pointy goatee that he’s constantly rubbing. I couldn’t believe when he came for me, told me what I was.  

Apparently, I’m not just any mage. I’m the greatest mage to ever live.  

The Chosen One, the Power of Powers, stuff like that. One day, I’m gonna stop whatever’s threatening the World of Mages. Oh, and I’ll quash the civil wars tearing the magickal community apart. (Did you know that there are, like, three?) (Being a mage is wicked controversial, I guess.)  

I don’t know all the details. The Mage tried to fill me in on the car ride over, but I was too dumbstruck by the school literally appearing out of nowhere. 

Not nowhere, Simon, he chided. It’s concealed by magic. Well, except during football season. Then we play invite some of the Normal teams to play on our pitch. Not that they’d ever dream we were magic.  

Anyway, standing in this enchanted school that’s as grand as a medieval castle makes me feel like I’m about to explode. 

Which I might just do, given the faces my classmates are making. 

(Fuck— I really wanted to make a better impression than the one I made on the boys back home.) (Not that they bullied me, per say. Just feared me.) (Never understood why.) (One time, a seventeen-year-old told everyone I was a psychotic killer, and I didn’t even know his name!) 

Now, I duck my head, try to make myself small, unassuming. The unassuming part isn’t difficult, given I’m the most poorly dressed out of everyone here. Mages must be mostly middle-class. 

Our teacher clears her throat. “If there are no questions,” she says, “Professor Minos will show you to the dining room.” She points to a burly figure in the crowd. 

I thought Minos was just a cool name. This guy actually has a bull head! With horns and flared nostrils and everything. And he’s wearing a teacher’s robes. A minotaur is going teach me to do magic! 

“Ancient Greek, actually,” someone says over my shoulder. 

The girl behind me is miraculously shorter than I am. Even though she doesn’t have a black cat or carry a broomstick, she somehow fits what I picture a young witch would look like. She’s wearing horn-rimmed glasses, a pleated skirt, and knee-high socks, and her curly hair is candied-apple red. 

“Oh,” I say. I hadn’t realized I was speaking out loud.  

I’m also a little disappointed. I mean, Greek? Really? 

My disappointment doesn’t last for long. 

In the enormous dining hall, we get in line for a banquet-like spread. Now, this is magic: roast beef smothered in gravy; fluffy mashed potatoes dimpled with pockets of melted butter; and Yorkshire pudding with flaky dough and caramelized sugar. The dishes are endless, as if Watford is feeding a child army.  

I pile my plates high and heavy the way I never have in my life. Part of me fears the food will disappear the moment it touches my tongue. Gone like magic. A cruel illusion.  

But it doesn’t. I shovel beef and potatoes and pastry into my mullet, and I’m ecstatic to taste every morsel.  

My food and I sit at a long, communal table with the other new students. I gotta admit, I’d been nervous about meeting everybody, but to my relief, the people here are nice. Really nice. The Mage said they would be.  

You’re their savior, Simon, he said. He reminded me of a religious man selling Jesus door to door. 

But I haven’t saved anyone, I said. I remember fiercely regretting the words when they left my mouth. I didn’t want him to think I was talking back. I was just being truthful. 

The Mage sniffed and answered dismissively, You will, someday.  

I can’t imagine saving anyone, let alone the whole magickal world. But my new classmates act like they believe it. They gather around, ignoring my terrible table manners as they try to get to know me.  

Where’re you from?   

I’ve never heard of the Snow family. Are they Germanic?   

My nan said the Greatest Mage wields a sword! Have you chopped off a monster’s head yet?  

You’ve gotta know some wicked powerful spells! Show me, show me!   

As much as I enjoy the positive attention, it’s also making me nervy. And confused. The more questions people ask, the more I shrug and stuff my face with dinner, shutting myself up. 

It’s a relief when the teachers tell us that it’s time for the Crucible ceremony. Then I remember that I don’t know what a Crucible ceremony is, and I’m a lost, anxious mess again. Couldn’t the Mage have given me a rulebook or introductory pamphlet? (Welcome to the World of Mages!) (Here’s everything you need to know to avoid making a fool of yourself.)  

The teachers lead us out of the well-lit dining hall and into the courtyard. The sun has set, the temperature has dropped, and the only light comes from the full moon overhead and a massive bonfire in the center of the green. The older students stand by it, wands— actual magic wands!— held at the ready. 

I’m overjoyed to recognize the Mage beyond the flames.  

“Welcome, new students, to one of Watford’s most sacred traditions!” he shouts, voice booming impossibly loud.  

Some of the younger students are startled. My neighbor jumps, knocks into me, and repeatedly apologizes. (Never had that happen before.) 

The teachers spread across the courtyard and instruct us to gather in a wide ring around the Mage. I try to position myself directly across from him, even though I can’t clearly see his face through the flickering flames. It’s hard to see anyone. My classmates are inky smudges, small and fearful. Wind whistles through the trees like the sighing of spirits. If I were still Normal, I’d think we were in a cult or doing a Satanic sacrifice.  

The Mage lifts a pair of tongs, holding a giant cup above the fire.  

Someone who sounds a lot like the red-headed girl gasps and whispers, “the Crucible!”  

Oh. So, not a cup, then. 

“You are taking place in one of Watford’s most sacred traditions,” the Mage explains. “The Crucible will cast you together as siblings, as brothers and sisters. Only death can sever your bonds.” 

Okay, a bit creepy. But still exciting.   

“Now”— the Mage lowers the Crucible into the fire; it sizzles and burns red-hot— “when you feel the pull, follow it. For it is your magickal destiny.” 

No sooner than the Mage has spoken do several students break from the ring and stumble into the center of the courtyard. They look ungainly, confused, practically drunk. Soon, most of the ring has clumsily dispersed. Pairs of student shake hands near the fire, awkwardly greeting their new life partners. 

But I don’t feel anything. My feet stay rooted to the grass. 

Christ. It’s my worst fears coming true. I’m as much an outsider here as I was in the Normal world. 

What if I’m not paired with anyone because I’m not like other mages? What if they’re like the boys at home, resentful and afraid of me? What if I’m just as alone here as everywhere else, with nothing and nobody on my side? 

Then— I feel it.  

It’s sharp, precise, analytical. The magic hooks into my stomach, and it pulls me forward, nearly out of my skin. 

I trip, catch myself, and frantically scope out my roommate.  

There’s only one other person who hasn’t been paired up. A boy. He’s walking toward me, slow and confident.  

I’m going to puke. 

This boy has the same, posh appearance as those private school kids I see at street corners and convenience stores. I hate them. Those condescending gits make me burn with anger and shame, even though they’re always too nervous to do more than silently smirk before turning tail.  

But this boy is different. He’s more. More grand, more self-possessed, more… inhuman. His pearly white skin glows in the firelight. He walks in a steady line, shoulders squared. His nose is high and straight, his eyes hooded and gray, and his eyebrows are two perfect arches on his handsome, symmetrical face. 

We couldn’t be less alike. The Crucible must have made a mistake. 

Still, when we come face-to-face, I stick out my hand, like I’ve seen the other students do. Also, I physically need to touch him. My guts are seconds from ripping themselves free of my body and ensnaring him.  

But the boy doesn’t take my hand. He just looks at me. I have no idea what he’s thinking. His arms rest casually at his sides, thumbs hooked into his pockets. (How is this not excruciating torment for him?) 

“Snow,” he says with an upper-class accent. Smooth, crisp. If he weren’t a kid, I’d expect to witness him drinking one of James Bond’s martinis. 

“Yeah,” I reply. Seems like everyone knows my name, even the elite mages. 

I gesture with my outstretched hand again. He ignores me.  

“Here,” I say, more forcefully. 

His hand doesn’t so much as twitch. “The Mage’s Heir,” he goes on, as if for clarification. 

I nod, confused and frustrated. I’m not sure what Mage’s Heir means; I just need him to shake my hand. Or I’ll grab his myself. 

My intestines are about to mutiny when the boy finally touches me.  

His fingers are long, surprisingly rough, and cold. Ice cold. But they satisfy the magic that threatens to tear me apart. 

Thank Christ.  

I’m vigorously pumping my arm (and his) up and down when I realize I still don’t know who he is. “What’s your name?” 

Again, radio silence. God, is he always going to be this difficult? Then, what leaves his mouth is an unintelligible string of syllables.  

“Huh?” I ask. 

“Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch,” he repeats, annoyed. We’re still holding hands, though.  

I blink. I grin nervously. It must be a joke.  

He’s not smiling.  

“That’s your name?” I say incredulously.  

The boy— Tyrant-Basil-the Grim-Whatever— pulls himself away from me and crosses his arms.  

“Like yours is any better,” he replies. “Simon Snow. Sounds like the world’s most generic and forgettable hero.” 

I gape. 

What the hell?  

I’m coming up with a witty rejoinder— or trying to— when the boy takes a long sigh. It’s unnecessarily showy. Like all of him. “You can call me Basilton,” he allows, though it sounds like it pains him. 

“How about Baz?” I offer, because Basilton is ridiculous. Do his sort do nicknames? 

He glares at me. Guess not, then. “No.” 

“Come on,” I say, throwing my hands up. “I’m trying to be friendly, Baz.” 

“Is that right, Snow?”  

He says my name with more venom than I thought was possible. Not even the Matron or social workers or boys at the home addressed me with such disdain. 

I kind of want to hit something. Or cry. 

This is not what I wanted for my first day at Watford. 

Apparently, my roommate, brother, and closest companion for the next seven years is an asshole. 

We’re interrupted when the teachers tell us to take our things to our new rooms.  

I don’t have things. Only a backpack with some donated clothes, my new wand, and my tiny red ball. (Okay, maybe that’s five things.) (Most people would count it as nothing.) 

My roommate, on the other hand, has loads. His three shiny leather suitcases are swollen with stuff. When he catches me staring, he sneers and marches ahead.  

My one consolation for being saddled with him is that our dorm is amazing. It’s in Mummers House, an old stone building on the edge of the grounds. A pair of older students explain the house’s history and rules, but I’m not listening. I’m entranced by the cobwebs, the immense hearth, the dusty sofas, and the long spiral staircase we climb all the way up the tower, until it’s just me and my roommate standing in front of an aged wooden door.  

I grab the brass knob. It won’t budge. I jostle it more aggressively, and it remains immovable. 

“You have to introduce yourself to the room,” Baz— I refuse to call him any other pretentious name— says. 

“What?” Introduce myself to the room? “Is it alive?” 

Huffing, he steps in front of me. He flicks his wrist, and his wand slides out from his sleeve. (So, that’s where he was keeping it.) (But where was it attached?)  

“This won’t hurt a bit,” Baz says, and I’m confused until his wand cuts his skin like a knife. 

I nearly grab him, exclaiming, “Stop—” 

Baz ignores me and presses his bleeding finger against the door. The lock clicks, and the door swings open.  

“…Whoa.” Was that blood magic? Freaky. 

I’m following Baz over the threshold when the door slams behind him and right into my face, sending me falling on my ass.  

I clutch my nose and shout, “Baz! What the hell?” 

“Not my fault, Chosen One,” he says beyond the door. “You need to introduce yourself, too.” 

He could have told me that. 

Instead of doing a fancy spell like Baz— how did he do that anyway?— I use my teeth to tear open my cuticle and press my thumb against the door until my blood soaks into the wood grain.  

When the door opens, I find myself in the nicest space I’ve ever been able to call my own. (Or half my own.) It’s clean and simply furnished, with a wardrobe, a full-length mirror, two desks and two beds, a private ensuite that smells fresh and floral, and a window that overlooks the moat. Baz has placed his suitcases at the foot of the bed closest to the bathroom, so I collapse onto the one that’s positioned beneath the window. I sink into it face-first. The mattress is thick and feathery soft, buoying me weightlessly. 

I can’t believe this. I can’t believe I’m here. 

“Get well soon,” I hear Baz say, and I look up from my pillow to watch him cast another spell. 

His wound closes, leaving unmarred skin. 

“How’d you do that?” 

Baz examines his fingernails and refuses to make eye contact. “Do what?” 

“You know.” I motion like a mad opera conductor. “Spells. Magic.” 

“You’re the so-called Greatest Mage,” he says. “You tell me.” 

Blood roars in my ears, and I shake, clutching my pillow tightly. 

Baz’s expression changes. “Stop that,” he says, holding his body tense. 

Stop what, I want to say, but my muscles are wound too tight, my teeth clenched too hard.  

Stop being rightly pissed at my mean roommate? Stop trying to work out the strange rules of world I don’t understand but desperately want to be a part of?  

I’m getting dizzy, overheated. 

“Snow. Whatever you’re doing, stop.” 

Why won’t he call me Simon? “Stop what?”  

“Oozing magic,” Baz says. “Can’t you feel it? You’re making the air burn.” 

I shoot up on my bed. 

Fuck.   

I’ve only used magic four times, twice unconsciously and twice on command. The first two times I caused the fire that destroyed my old boys’ home and transported all the Normal residents to safety. 

The third and fourth times were in this very school when the Mage brought me to his office.  

He’d been telling me about my role, my destiny. As the Greatest Mage Who Ever Lived, it was high time I learned some spells. 

I started with the (extremely long) incantation to summon the Sword of Mages. It took forever for me to memorize, but when I finally recalled every line— “In justice. In courage. In defense of the weak. In the face of the mighty. Through magic and wisdom and good”— I was able to summon this beautiful, immense sword, its pommel perfectly suited to the palm of my hand. 

The Mage looked so proud.  

But then he asked me to recite a basic spell, and I failed to get it again and again. The magic just wouldn’t follow my words. Like my thoughts often do.  

My frustration and embarrassment built so high I basically… 

Exploded.  

Like a magical bomb that levels the walls of ancient towers and razes antique libraries. 

It took hours and the Mage plus a team of his men to repair the damage. The smoky odor of my disastrous magic lingered for days. Although the Mage’s men seemed to gain new respect (and fear) for me, the Mage was frustrated I couldn’t even get a simple spell right. 

I promised him I’d do better. It’s important, then, that I don’t blow up my new room and roommate. 

Screwing my eyes shut, I try to calm myself. Lower the temperature in my body and my magic. I turn off the thinking, counting down inside my head, sucking in cool breaths of air… 

It seems to work, after a while.  

The air in the room is still hot and charged, but more like a heatwave than a hellish inferno. 

Baz is staring like he has no idea what to make of me.  

Keep calm, keep calm, keep calm…  

“How did you do that ?” he asks. 

I shrug. I don’t have a good answer. 

He honest to God hisses. “Speak clearly, Snow.” 

“I didn’t mean to!” I shout. No, stay calm — “It’s just… when things are too much, my magic… goes off.”   

“’Goes off,’” Baz repeats tonelessly.  

“It’s not on purpose,” I insist. “I can’t control it.” 

“That’s not how magic works, you numpty,” says Baz. 

“You what?” 

“You don’t detonate it like a weapon. Magic is focused, specific, careful. You only channel it with purpose and after years of practice.” 

“Not mine,” I mutter. 

“Of course yours,” Baz says exasperatedly. “Why should your magic be different than anyone else’s?”  

“Cuz I’m different!” I put my head in my hands, grabbing my scalp. (I usually grab fistfuls of my hair, but the home shaves it off every autumn, leaving me scrabbling at the short, spiky strands.) “I don’t have… I’m not like…” 

There’s a hard lump in my throat, so I race to the bathroom and slam the door shut. Then, to my horror, the tears start to fall. 

I’m not like everyone here, with magickal families who taught them what it means to be a mage. All I’ve got is my unruly power and my willingness to do whatever it takes to belong.  

(I just wish I knew what that meant.) 

I’m so tired. I was exhausted the last time I went off, too. I’m falling asleep on the bathroom floor, covered in tears and snot, when I hear three sharp knocks. 

“Get out, you nightmare,” Baz demands from outside. “I need to shower and get ready for bed.” 

Sod that. He can piss himself and sleep covered in his own filth for all I care.  

“Open sesame.”    

My back is to the door, but I hear it swing open. 

Does he have a spell for everything? What’s the point of going to school if you already know magic inside and out? 

I watch Baz watch me on the floor. One of his eyebrows is lifted high on his face, but it’s otherwise impossible to read his intentions. 

Though his wand is pointed at me. 

“You try anything,” I sniffle, “And I’ll hit you.” 

Baz scoffs. “You do that, and the Anathema will get you, too.” 

I don’t reply, but I must look puzzled.  

“Didn’t you listen to anything the upper classmen said?” Baz asks. “Or are Chosen Ones exempt from paying attention to tours? The Anathema prevents roommates from harming each other, with and without spells. So, if you want to get hurled into the moat, be my guest. Punch me like a powerless Normal.” 

I do want to punch him. (And I rarely punch people.) But I also don’t want to get expelled from the room or worse, the school. 

Wait a second, if that’s the case, then why’s he pointing his wand at me—? 

“Tidy up.”  

For a moment, I think he’s burned me. Heat prickles beneath my skin, but my panic fades when I realize it’s not painful. It’s kinda soothing, actually. Like a warm compress. 

Baz is frowning, so I assume his plan to incinerate me failed. He scrutinizes the tip of his wand. 

“You’re such a mess it’s impossible to spell you clean,” he complains. 

Clean? I press my hands to my face. My tears and mucus (ew) have magickally dried. My sweat is also gone, even though I was drenched with it after almost going off. 

Was Baz just… nice to me?  

Then he shoves me out of the bathroom and locks the door behind him. 

“The room better not be on fire by the time I’m done,” he threatens. 

I don’t see him again before I pass out in bed. 

When I wake up the next day at the break of dawn, I don’t recognize where I am. Then my eyes adjust to the early morning darkness, and I remember. 

It wasn’t a dream. Watford is real. Magic is real, Mummer’s House is real. My annoying roommate is real.  

And breakfast— breakfast is real. It’s real and delicious and I’ll never be able to live without it again. 

Barely anyone is up at six, so I take my time piling my plate with sausages and biscuits and the most amazing invention ever: sour cherry scones.  

Imagine pure, buttery, flaky goodness, combined with bursts of sweetness and tartness. Then add moisture and flavor from extra melted butter. Sprinkle a final pinch of magic.  

I only wish classes were as easy as gorging myself on scones.  

Every class is about words. Books and songs and phrases. Apparently, these become magic when Normals repeat them and give them meaning, which mages tap into. 

I’m crap with words. Lots of boys at my home are. Adult don’t talk to us, and we don’t talk to each other, so our words grow crooked and curl inwards, like plants without supports. 

At least I’ve got Penelope Bunce, the brown-skinned, red-headed girl who corrected me earlier. Turns out she’s always helpful. (And loves to correct people.) (She tells me I’m an idiot when I argue that Indian girls don’t go by boring names like Penelope.) 

She takes one of the many empty seats next to me during Magickal Words. (I think the other students are intimidated by my celebrity status.) (I hope that’s all it is.)  

When Penny sees me struggle to make my two-pence grow wings, she points at it with an oversized ring with a purple gemstone and casts the spell herself. 

“Fly away home,” Penny commands. 

My two-pence grows an insect-like thorax and scurries with thin metal legs across the desk.  

I gape at Penny in amazement; she smiles and fails to look coy. 

We’re immediate friends. 

I’m grateful that Penny and I share almost every class. While I clam up, unsure how to shape my ugly, skewed words into magic, Penny shows me what spellcasting looks like. She’s not patient, but she is determined to guide me. It helps that she’s one of the smartest students in our year. 

The other is Baz. 

I knew he was smart, judging from the way he talks down at me. And I knew he knows magic. I just didn’t realize how much smarter and more magickal he is than everybody else. 

Miss Possibelf praises his emphasis during Magickal Words. Professor Minos is impressed with his conjugating during Greek. He even excels at football, racing around the other students and kicking savage goals that give the goalies bruises or send them running in the other direction.  

It’s infuriating.  

“He’s gotta be half-demon or something,” I complain to Penny over dinner. It’s always the two of us. 

“Demons don’t reproduce with mortals,” Penny says airily. “It’s more likely because he’s a Pitch.” 

I struggle to swallow a mouthful of shepherd’s pie. When I get it down, Penny is both fascinated and disgusted.  

“What’s that?” I ask. “Some special monster?”  

“Some special family. Most of the Watford’s headmasters were Basilton’s ancestors, including his mother, Natasha Grimm-Pitch.” Penny’s eyes go soft and dreamy. “She was a brilliant mage. Mum agrees, even though she doesn’t like Pitch family politics.” 

Penny’s mum is a professor (an overqualified one, says Penny) of Medieval History at a Normal University. When she calls someone brilliant, it matters. 

Of course Baz is the equivalent of mage royalty. I’m not surprised. “Wait,” I say, “was?” 

Penny nods. “She died years ago.” 

“Oh.” I don’t know how I feel about that. A bit bad, I suppose.  

I’m not the only one without a mother, then. 

(If only that made me and Baz friends.) 

“Not that that excuses him for saying I oversimplified the Great Vowel Shift,” Penny huffs, remembering Linguistics. 

I don’t know what the Great Vowel shift is. “Yeah, he’s a git.” 

Baz is sitting across the dining hall with two students I don’t recognize. We never eat or sit together in class. We give each other a wide berth in the room, too. 

Now, Baz looks as sour-faced as ever. And— 

“He’s not eating,” I say incredulously. He hasn’t touched his food except to push it around his plate. “Why isn’t he eating? The food’s fantastic. Does he only eat meals made by private chefs?” 

“Does it matter?” Penny says distractedly, probably preoccupied by magickal syntax.  

“Yeah, it does!” 

Penny doesn’t seem to agree. She slowly sips her tea. “Maybe he’s not hungry.” 

Not hungry. A phrase I’ve never understood and never will. 

Baz catches my gaze. For a moment, we stare at each other, waging our wordless battle. Then, sneering, Baz pushes himself from his seat, deposits his mutilated plate into the dirty dishes bin, and strides out of the dining room. 

“Wow,” Penny comments. “How do you two dislike each other so much when it’s only been a week?” 

“You don’t like your roommate.” 

“That’s because Trixie leaves pixie dust everywhere. There are no spells for getting pixie dust out of carpeting. It’s practically enchanted glitter! I can’t imagine Basil being a slob.”  

She’s right. Baz’s side of the room is immaculate. His many books are arranged in alphabetical order, even his luxurious shampoo and conditioner, which smell piney and brisk like the woods. 

“It doesn’t matter how tidy he is. I don’t like Baz cuz he’s a jerk.” (I try not to think about when he cast his cleaning spell on my tear-stained face.) (Why did he help me?) (Maybe he was sick of the sorry sight of me.) “I have no clue why he doesn’t like me.” 

“Probably because of his family,” says Penny. “They don’t like the Mage’s ideologies. You embody them. Ergo, he doesn’t like you.” 

I’m flabbergasted. “You mean it’s not even about me?” 

“It is, in a way. Your role, not your character.” 

This is mental. I never thought my title as the Chosen One would work against me. 

I need to talk to Baz, to change his mind. 

When I get to our room, I fling the door open so hard it bangs against the wall. 

“Shit,” I say, closing it more softly. 

Baz is sitting at his desk, reading a thick book.  

“They didn’t give us readings, did they?” I ask, forgetting my mission. (There’s no way I’m getting through a whole book tonight.) 

“No.” Baz licks his fingertip and turns a gold-rimmed page. “Some of us just enjoy intellectually stimulating activities like reading. They help us act like competent magicians.” 

I stomp over to him. “Look. Can we just stop?” 

“Stop what? Me saying something insightful and you being a bumbling moron?” 

I rip his book from his hands, holding it above his head. “I don’t want to be enemies, you twat.” 

“Yes, you demonstrate that every day with your exceptional manners and considerate behavior.” 

“Baz.” 

“Or is this how you and your chavvy Normal friends cavort?” Baz continues icily. “Like ill-bred beasts?” 

I hurl his book at him. 

Baz catches it before it smacks him in the nose. 

My hands aren’t so lucky, though. 

“Fuck!” I howl, shoving them under my armpits. They’re burning, but not with heat. With terrible, gnawing cold, frostbite so fierce it scalds me, even though on the surface my hands look fine. 

“Anathema,” Baz tells me uselessly as he observes me shake my arms out, desperate to get some circulation.  

I take a sharp, steadying breath. “You said the Anathema kicks us out of the room.” 

“I said it hurls us out the window and into the moat. But that’s only for the third infraction. The first two punishments are milder.” 

“This is mild?” I can’t move my fingers.  

Baz waves an easy, unconcerned hand. “It’ll go away eventually. Long enough for you to get over your violent urges.” 

“I don’t have violent urges,” I lie. 

Baz flashes the cover of his book at me in silent protest. 

(It’s embossed with fancy gold lettering and an illustration of a figure in armor and a shining fleece. The Labours of Heracles.) (I sort of want to know the story, but I doubt Baz will read it to me.) 

“Fine.” My hands tingle painfully. “M’sorry.” 

“I’m sorry, too. Sorry I’m stuck with you.” 

I guess he is. Wish I could blame him, but I can’t. 

I’m a terrible roommate, as the Anathema has shown. And I’m a terrible mage based on all my classes. 

“I’m sorry,” I say fervently, miserably. “I really am, Baz.” 

Baz says nothing; my earnestness must shock him. 

“Look, I… I don’t want to fight. I just forget. But I don’t want to. So, can’t we be friends? Can’t you stop doing what your family tells you?” 

Baz arches an eyebrow. “You want me to stop doing what my family tells me.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Which is…” 

“You know. Fighting me. We could get along if we wanted.” (He lost his mother, too.) (Though my mother might have lost me.) “… I want to. Get along, that is.” 

Most of Baz’s facial features are rigid as a mask, but there’s something going on with his eyes. I never noticed how expressive they are. They’re like the dark parts of water, a blue-green-grey that shifts and shimmers. 

Without answering me, Baz lowers his book onto his desk and exits the room. 

Over time, I try to forget about him.  

Just because the Crucible bound us together doesn’t mean we have to be friends. 

And the semester keeps me busy enough without being vexed by my cold and remote roommate.  

Despite Penny’s help, I still struggle with classwork. September, October, and early November pass, and I haven’t improved. My peers and teachers are confused— I’m supposed to be the Greatest Mage, after all— but when they try to wheedle an explanation from me, I seal my lips and radiate magic. 

Penny says my magic is like catnip. (Or magenip?) People can’t stay mad or stressed with me because of my intoxicating influence. 

(Why doesn’t it work on Baz?) 

When the Mage learns about my performance on the eve of exams, he’s not happy. But he comes up with a plan. 

We’re in his office, and he’s packing his knapsack with weapons, artefacts, and potions. He looks like he’s preparing for an expedition.  

“Do you know what Winston Churchill said about tests and life, Simon?” he asks me. 

“Uh, no, sir.” 

“Life is a test and this world a place of trial.” The Mage’s directionless magic hangs in the air like confetti. “In other words, you can only learn so much from school. Sometimes, you must go out into the world and face its trials to learn life’s deepest lessons.” 

“I guess.” I do know a lot more about the world than school. And its trials. 

“Good lad,” says the Mage, ruffling my hair. I blush, not used to receiving such affection. “Let’s see if we can put your skills to real-world tests, shall we?” 

Thus, my special missions with the Mage begin. 

They’re horrifying.   

We’re negotiating in a cave with a group of goblins, who want to use my death to decide their next king. I’m forced to try to talk them out of murdering me. 

It doesn’t work. Instead, we’re compelled to murder them. (It’s self-defense, obviously.) (I don’t want to attack anyone, even Baz most of the time.) 

My magic refuses to cooperate.  

“Off with your head!” the Mage shouts. A goblin’s head splinters away from its body and rolls across the ground, blood spilling in a shining, crimson carpet.  

I’m going to be sick. 

“Say off with their heads !” The Mage commands, decapitating another goblin. Its body crumples to the cave floor like a puppet with severed strings. “Simon!” 

“Off with your head!” I scream, pointing my wand at a fast-approaching goblin. 

Nothing happens.  

The goblin slashes my arm with his talons, and I burn. 

Frantic, I summon my sword, which responds to my call. 

I go from spelling to hacking at the goblins instead. 

Swing, swing, swing, swing…  

Blood, blood, blood, blood…  

The Mage drives us back to Watford after the massacre. I’m covered in gore and stink like a butcher’s shop plus a site for nuclear experimentation.  

“We’ll have better luck next time,” the Mage says resolutely. “Now, get some rest. I don’t want to hear about you falling asleep in your classes tomorrow.” 

He leaves me to walk back to Mummer’s House alone. I sway on my feet, half-blinded by the dark. 

When I enter our room, Baz is preparing for bed and stunned by the sight of me. He’s wearing his fussy silk pajamas. (They’re stripped and buttoned over his collarbones like the kind old men wear on television.) 

I won’t bicker with him. I can’t. 

I prop my sword against my bedpost. (I’m too tired to return it… wherever it goes.) I strip my shirt and trousers (don’t think I’ll use them again) as I hobble to the shower.  

The spray of water stings my patchwork of bruises and nicks. The worst is a laceration that wraps around my upper arm in a bloody ring. Should I be getting it wet? I remember the Matron complaining about infections. It’s not like I have medical supplies to treat my wounds, though. (Don’t get me started on healing spells.) (First years aren’t supposed to know those yet.) (I’ll ask Penny tomorrow; she’s brilliant, so she’ll probably know some.) 

When I re-enter the room, Baz is closely examining the Sword of Mages. 

“Don’t even think of stealing it,” I snap at him before I collapse into bed. 

“The nurse sent you back like this ?” Baz asks.  

“Nurse?” I mumble into the pillow. 

“Crowley,” says Baz, bewildered. “I better not be blamed for your death.” Then his eyes flicker over to the sword. “You can summon it?” 

His voice is surprisingly intense. I shrug. Why does he care? He hates my Mage’s Heir-related stuff.  

“Show me,” Baz demands.   

I groan. No fucking way. 

“Snow.” 

“Can’t. Too tired.” And injured. If I don’t bleed out tonight, I’ll have agonizing muscle soreness tomorrow. 

Despite the pain, I begin to fall asleep. 

I’m awoken by a dip in the bed and Baz saying, “Get well soon.”  

The pain recedes, flooding my body with relief. 

Baz... is healing me. 

“What in Merlin’s name did you do?” Baz asks heatedly between spells. “Use your sword like a boomerang? Good as new! Early to bed and early to rise!”   

“You’re healing me,” I say, blissed out from the magical analgesic. 

“I’m healing what I can,” says Baz humbly (and irritatedly). “Now, show me the incantation to summon the Sword of Mages in return.” 

“Too tired.” 

“Do you really trust me enough to leave the sword out all night, unattended?” 

I don’t.  

But… “You’re healing me.” 

“Therefore, I expect you to be convalesced enough to cast the incantation.” 

I loathe the idea of rising from my bed, but I do it, grabbing the sword’s pommel as a crutch. 

When I recite the incantation, I funnel my rampant magic into the familiar words. They’re as smooth as a well-worn stone on my tongue: “In justice. In courage. In defense of the weak. In the face of the mighty. Through magic and wisdom and good.”  

The sword vanishes in a magickal glimmer. (Though it leaves a bloody residue on our floor.) (I hope it doesn’t stain.) 

Baz isn’t exhibiting either of his two limited emotions: sadistic glee and disgust. He’s transfixed.  

And unwell, panting hard as sweat beads his brow. 

It’s from the spells. He’s wiped himself out lathering me with healing spells. 

“Baz, are you okay—” 

“You can actually summon the sword using the incantation,” he says dazedly.  

Baz is never dazed. Always razor sharp. “L-lie down, alright?” I tell him. 

“It won’t work unless you really mean the words,” he says, ignoring me. “About being committed wholeheartedly to good and defending the weak. About being brave and true. You can’t just understand the words. You have to be them, Snow.” 

“Yeah?” I’m flushed again for some reason. “S’not— not a big deal.” 

Though Miss Possibelf said the same thing about magickal words. Mages’ spells only work when they truly, deeply get their meanings. 

I didn’t realize I was applying that knowledge when I summoned the sword.  

(Did Baz just call me brave and true?) 

Baz limps over to his bed. I hope he doesn’t faint. I have no energy left to catch him. Thankfully, he makes it to his mattress and crawls under his duvet. I watch the slow, almost imperceptible rise and fall of his breath from beneath his sheets. 

“Thanks,” I whisper. “For healing me.” 

He doesn’t say anything. We both fall asleep. 

Chapter Text

Book 1: Simon Snow and the Mage's Heir

III. BAZ 

I know Father will be outraged when he hears that I still haven’t lured the Chosen One over to our side, but he has no idea what I’m dealing with. 

I can barely tolerate Simon Snow. 

His childish ignorance, his naïve friendliness, and his golden-haired joie de vivre (over the months, his buzz-cut has grown into honeyed curls) stir something tempestuous inside me. 

It hurts to look at him too long.  

It’s a torment to listen to him “uh” and “er” in class. (Though he usually hides himself behind a fortress of silence.) (His spell work is atrocious, so he opts for leaking magic and going off.)  

Even thinking about him gives me a headache. 

After the Crucible paired us and I shook his clammy hand, I called Fiona in a panic. 

She laughed for half an hour, which was rude and a waste of my secret phone call. 

“So even the Crucible is in on Malcolm’s scheme,” she hiccupped eventually.  

“The Crucible only paired me with Snow because he’s a disaster, and I’m the best mage in our year,” I insisted. “It’s balancing out the cosmic scales.” 

“Or maybe it wants to give you an advantage to take him out,” Fiona suggested. “Wish I’d thought of it myself. There’s no better way than being his roommate.” 

“Fi. I can’t. The Anathema.” And Father’s plans. 

“There are ways around the Anathema,” Fiona said arcanely. “Just keep a look out for his weaknesses, yeah?” 

“He’s riddled with them,” I said, remembering his lack of magickal knowledge, his impoverished state.  

“Then, fan-fucking-tastic.” 

(Fan-fucking-tastic is the world’s most useless spell. It’s the magickal equivalent of imbibing a six-pack of energy drinks.) 

The next day, I wrote to Daphne and was forced to convey the news. Immediately after, Father sent an elaborate letter congratulating me on manipulating the Crucible and inquiring about my multiple-step plan to ensnare Snow in a web of friendship. 

That plan doesn’t exist. In fact, for the last few months, I’ve done the opposite.  

I’ve pushed Snow far away from me with insults and sneers. I’ve made him cry and hit me.  

He hates it, but he miraculously doesn’t hate me yet. (At least not entirely.) Again and again, he demands to be friends. The irksome goody-goody.  

I can’t let him close. If I do as he wants, I have no idea what will happen. 

Though going by my past lapses in judgement, I’ll probably dry his tears and heal his wounds. 

It’s just… I hadn’t been prepared for his special training with the Mage to include getting torn to ribbons.  

The Mage didn’t even take him to the Nurse. Isn’t this boy his perfect weapon? Shouldn’t he try to make him last to adulthood? 

(Also, the smell of blood gets to me. Not like hunger. But I find myself distracted when it sticks around.)   

When Snow first began fumbling through classes, I had my doubts that he really was the promised one, the boy who’d defeat the Humdrum. Then he summoned the Mages’ Sword, using the ancient incantation. The storied verses about heroism, magic, and protecting others.  

Those words are so sacred and potent that I don’t think I’d ever be able to put magic into them. (My magic is fire magic, which scorches and incinerates.) (And it’s poisoned by the vampirism that courses through my veins.) 

But Snow, who can’t handle the simplest of spells, recited the incantation perfectly, vanishing the sword in a swirl of light and splendor. 

Things like that make it hard to resist falling under the wordless spell Snow seems to have enchanted the school with. 

But they also make me want to take Snow and crack him open like an egg, to discern all his secrets, witness everything he’s made of. 

He’s driving me insane. 

Especially now that his internal friendship-antagonism pendulum has swung, and he thinks we’re bosom buddies instead of mortal enemies. 

“What are you doing for break, Baz?” he asks me one wintery morning. 

It’s snowing outside our room, and Snow won’t stop bothering me inside. I’m surrounded by snow. 

“I’ll be celebrating the fact that I studied for exams instead of procrastinating with inane questions,” I answer, resuming my notes. 

Snow frowns. “I study.” I think he’s upset enough to shut up before he adds, “with Miss Possibelf.” 

“Miss Possibelf?” I ask despite myself. 

Snow nods, chewing his lip unhappily. (Merlin, does everything have to be so physical with him?) “She noticed I’m no good with… words. She’s trying to teach me. To speak better, I mean. Read more.” 

“So, Miss Possibelf shares the Mage’s favoritism.” 

“It’s not favoritism,” Snow argues, though he’s red with shame. “Everyone else here has magickal families. They grew up with it. Miss Possibelf is catching me up.” 

I know Snow is right, despite it being inconceivable that he grew up without magickal caretakers. (I might’ve, if Fiona and Father had abandoned me when I was bitten.) (Although they would have killed me first.) 

“So?” I say, swinging my pen between my fingers. 

“So?” Snow repeats dumbly. 

“Show me the fruits of your special tutoring. Say something.” 

What am I doing? I should be studying for Politickal History and revising my Latin essay, not messing with Snow, no matter how pleasurable working him up may be. 

Snow jumps on the opportunity, grabbing his wand from his desk drawer.  

“You should keep your wand on you at all times, Chosen One,” I rebuke. 

“Shut up,” he says, his face screwing tight and his tongue sticking out between his teeth. He’s pointing his (trembling) wand at a used sock. “Clean as a whistle.” 

Nothing happens. 

“Clean as a whistle,” Snow says more firmly. The sock remains defiantly unclean. “Clean as a whistle!” he shouts, and suddenly the sock is emitting a high-pitched, metallic screech. 

“For snakes’ sake— as you were!” I point my wand at the shrill piece of laundry, and it returns to its inert, soundless state. 

Snow is leaking magic, unsurprisingly. “Thought that’d work.” 

“You mean it hasn’t?” 

He shakes his head morosely. 

“You’re saying it all wrong,” I tell him. “The emphasis should be on clean, not whistle. Or your laundry will caterwaul instead of going spick-and-span.” 

“Clean as a whistle,” Snow says dejectedly. “Clean as a whistle!” Magic builds dangerously in the air. (Our neighbors will start complaining soon.) (Mummer’s House has been forced to evacuate on no less than three occasions due to a Simon Snow meltdown.) “Clean as a whistle!”  

This time the sock does change, but it’s only perceptible to my vampire senses. It smells a shade less rank and fungal.  

“Baz,” Snow whines, like I’m the sock that won’t break. 

“Say it again, Snow.”  

“No.” 

“Say what you mean.” 

“Clean as a whistle!” Snow says, amplifying his voice on the word clean. The sock is daisy-fresh and spotless. 

But it’s not just the sock. The dust is eradicated on our carpet, linens, and furniture. The wood shines with a magickal polish, and the air is clean, heavenly. 

This isn’t possible. No one should have this much magic.  

“It worked!” Snow cries exuberantly. He’s on his feet, reaching for me as if to embrace me before he pulls away. “I gotta tell Penny.” 

“Right,” I say, off-kilter.  

“Let’s go! She’s probably in the library.” 

I adamantly refuse to follow Snow and gossip with Bunce. Instead, it falls upon them to harass me the next time I’m in the library finishing my final papers. 

Although the content is no exceptional hardship, I’m stymied by Watford’s lack of resources. The generously stocked library shelves of Mother’s era have been stripped down, reduced to children’s books and collections of colloquialisms. The Mage and his rules are a true pestilence, insects that have eaten the school’s body of knowledge down to its bones. I’m so upset and chilled by the cold that permeates the thick stone building that my words cease to flow from my pen. 

Then, Bunce and Snow bound over to my table. 

“Basilton,” Bunce says curtly, sitting across from me. 

Snow sits at my side, peering at my paper from over my shoulder. His bronze curls almost brush against my cheek. 

“Bunce,” I reply, angling away from my neighbor.  

“What’re you writing about?” Snow asks, radiating heat. 

Honesty will be more off-putting than sarcasm or cruelty in this instance, so I say, “Shakespeare’s influence on our conceptions of tragic heroes.” 

Snow is appropriately unnerved by the topic. 

“Not very original,” says Bunce, settling in with her own multi-page essay. (I count a little less than ten pages.) “What we need is to examine how Ophelia and Lady Macbeth have influenced our thoughts on women who are ambitious but are also written off as mad.” 

“Ambitious heroes go mad in Shakespeare, too,” I argue. “Or have you forgotten about Horatio’s warning, And there assume some other horrible form/ Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason/ And draw you into madness?” 

Bunce scoffs. “That’s nowhere near as influential as Ophelia’s O, woe is me/ To have seen what I have seen, see/ What I see!” 

What follows is a debate that I find inadvisably enjoyable. Bunce is smart, fierce. It’s hard not to like her company, not matter how contentious and morally upright it is. 

When she leaves for the restroom, Snow again asks me, “what’re you doing for holiday?”  

He’s been quietly playing with his little red ball throughout our discussion. I’d been hoping that he’d be so bored he’d either leave like an unloved pet or enter a semi-comatose stupor. 

“Why do you care, Snow?”  

Snow shrugs, bouncing the ball against the tabletop. “Just curious.” 

“It doesn’t matter,” I say.  

“M’going to Doctor Wellbelove’s,” he says. 

“Thank you for sharing that vital piece of information,” I reply. He’s spending Christmas with Welby Wellbelove, that quack? Why not the Mage? 

“D’you think… is his daughter going to be there?” 

Agatha Wellbelove? I couldn’t care less. “Children typically spend their holidays with their parents, Snow. Not that you would know.” 

Snow glares, catching his ball mid-bounce and clenching his fist around it. 

Before he can try to fight me, Bunce returns to the table. (How disappointing.)  

“Are you still fussing over Agatha, Simon?” she asks. “She’s not that pretty.” 

“I didn’t say anything, Pen,” Snow fumes. He’s looking away from me, his face scarlet. 

“Wait. Are you asking me about your juvenile crush? You’re infatuated with Agatha Wellbelove?” 

He’s unresponsive, grimacing and glowing red. 

I want to crush something.  

Snow thinks Wellbelove is pretty, even though she’s as interesting as a mass-printed postcard of a sunset on a beach?  

“If you’re not interested in Wellbelove,” I say coolly, “then maybe you want to steal her parents for the holiday. Feel like you have parents who want you for a change.” 

“Basil!” Bunce shouts.  

Magic rolls in hot waves from Snow. Maybe he’ll be what ignites me.  

“So what?” he hisses. “You’re no better than me. You’re missing people, too. You won’t have your mum for Christmas.” 

How dare he. 

“To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness,” I tell him. “Oscar Wilde’s greatest truth.” 

That’s a lie. But it’s worth the sweltering storm it provokes, the fiery vortex of Snow’s overwhelming magic. He looks livid. He looks confused. He looks hurt.  

Before he can go off, he races from the library. 

Bunce hastily gathers both their things and glares at me as she chases after Snow.  

I think of Snow’s fury (and pain) throughout my holiday break back home at Hampshire.  

This will never work. I’m incapable of fulfilling Father’s plans, even though he interrogates me about them at every opportunity: when we’re unwrapping presents, when Mordelia cries because I’m playing the violin too loud, and when I get tipsy on the adult eggnog. 

(He almost gets me there, but I grew up with Fiona; I know every detox spell ever invented.) (I haven’t mastered them yet, but I’ve got plenty of time.) 

I can’t keep putting this off, I know. I must befriend Snow at some point. But then I think of him at Wellbelove’s, blushing as Agatha Wellbelove passes him a gingerbread cookie. I rage across the icy grounds until my fingers sting, having exhausted my fire magic.  

“Take it the mission’s not going well?” Dev asks upon our return to school.  

As my cousin, Dev is privy to the plan to coax Snow into the Old Families’ camp. However, he’s useless at doing anything to accomplish it. (Niall, too, who has learned about the plan though associating with us.) 

“What do you think?” I ask. 

Across from us in Astronomy, Snow stammers over Agatha Wellbelove, who hasn’t left his side since their shared holiday. Although they hadn’t interacted before then, she’s now the beautiful and bland third figure in his and Bunce’s Holy Trinity.  

I’ve been cast out entirely. 

“I don’t see what’s so hard about getting him to like you,” says Dev. “Just be nicer to him. Flatter him. Pay him. Do his homework. Lie about his magickal skills.” 

Dev is progressing through increasingly immoral means to get Snow to “like” me when I interject, “If it’s so easy, why don’t you do it yourself?” 

I know why. Dev won’t befriend Snow because he can’t. While he’s more indifferent to Snow than I am, he’s also frightened by him. (Like Niall and most of our first-year class.) 

I can’t tell if I resent or appreciate the few opportunities that I still get to antagonize Snow face-to-face on the football pitch. All the first years play together, even though I’m easily at a fourth-year level.  

It’s clear that Snow compensates for his verbal ineloquence with his natural physical gifts. Although he lacks grace, he knows how to duck, weave, and charge his opponents, refusing to give up until he’s stolen the ball and scored a goal. 

A victorious hero to the very end.  

We always play on opposite sides. (Because my life is dictated by irony.) Every time our teams face off, Snow’s attention homes in on me. I relish the dogged way he pursues me across the green, the tenacity with which he hooks our legs together trying to wrestle the ball away. 

Snow’s athleticism translates into his sword work as well. After he returns from his special missions with the Mage, bloody and singed, he’ll summon his blade and practice the motions, gouging his bedpost.   

(I don’t heal his wounds.) (He doesn’t ask me to.) 

When spring arrives with its dewy, tentative warmth, I operate as if I’m not the scion to the Grimm-Pitch legacies and their contradictory schemes, nor am I the roommate to one impossible Simon Snow. Dev, Niall, and I frolic across the grounds and loiter in their room like our carefree, idiotic peers. I pretend that April showers bring May flowers is a restorative frame of mind instead of a mediocre gardening spell, casting it on my sorry brain. 

Then the Mage makes an urgent announcement.  

“A new dead spot in the magickal atmosphere has opened up east of London,” he reports somberly. “The biggest we have ever seen. Tragically, a neighborhood of mages was wiped out.” 

The students and faculty make sympathetic and anxious noises. 

He nods insipidly. “What happened to these magicians shows that we must set aside our differences and act as one to eliminate the Insidious Humdrum. Before he eliminates us.” 

Leave it to the Mage to muck up facts to rally mindless followers to his cause. “He’s making it sound like they died,” I complain to Dev and Niall. “Holes take out magic, not people.” 

My minions chortle. 

An angry voice responds, “Losing magic is as good as dying.” 

Snow is standing beside me, outraged.  

“Like you would know,” I scoff. 

“It would be,” Snow insists, eyes flashing. “I never wanna lose my magic.” 

I hear Bunce protest, “What’s the point of making a pact not to talk to him when you’re going to be the first to break it?” but she’s too short for me to observe in the crowd. 

Dev and Niall think they’re being subtle, slowly backing away from us, but I notice them. I inwardly vow to exact my revenge later. 

The Mage exclaims, “Luckily, in the first generation ever, we have a mage to unite behind.” Then he points an overzealous finger, crying, “Behold, The Chosen One of prophecy, Simon Snow!”  

The crowd’s gaze turns on Snow, their combined scrutiny as glaring as a magickal spotlight. 

Like a performer who missed his rehearsal, Snow flinches and bows his shoulders, trying to disappear. 

Magickal fumes pour from him. They appear to be stoking the crowd’s unrest. 

The Mage ignores the impending pandemonium like the stalwart leader he is, blathering on, “We must support Simon as he leads us out of these dark times. He is the mender of our divisions, the antithesis to the destructive powers of the Humdrum, the one to…”  

When the Mage trails off, expression blank, I realize that Snow has grabbed my wrist.  

His fingers curl around me, soft and warm. His calloused palms are hard and smooth, evidence of his rigorous sword-training.  

(What is he doing?) (Is he... holding onto me?) (For support?) (Why in Merlin’s name would he do that?) 

Even though his gaze remains averted from me, Snow looks back onto the spectating crowd. Somehow, his confidence has been renewed, his heroic self-assurance restored. His chin juts out and his back is straight and tall as he holds onto me. (Why?) 

I should tear myself away. Curse him and cut him with my words. But even though his magickal leakage is diminishing, I somehow still feel it, its charge flickering inside me. It’s not a terrible sensation. 

(Can Snow feel it too?) 

The faculty decide classes have been reduced enough for the day, and the Mage summons Snow to his office. 

They’re gone for two weeks, and Snow misses the final exam period, even though I know how long and hard he prepared for it. (I’m still certain he would have failed, because he often got overwhelmed by the course materials and ended up creating risky new spells as alternatives.) 

Bunce is concerned. She keeps sneaking looks at me during class. The teachers allow it because they know we’re too competitive and proud to cheat off each other. 

(I’m not concerned, although I know Father will be disappointed if Snow is either killed or incapacitated.) (Which he won’t be— the Mage is a fool, but he’s also the most powerful magic-user we have, apart from Snow.) (He’ll protect him; he has to.)  

I’m alerted to Snow’s return on the last days of school when Bunce cries out, “Simon!” 

I look up too fast from my violin and twist my neck. (That it hurts despite my super-strength worries me; would I have broken it as a regular mage?)  

Snow stands on the twisted, overgrown outskirts of the Wavering Woods. His sword is concealed, and going by smell, he’s incurred no major injuries.  

That doesn’t stop Bunce from pelting across the Great Lawn to reach him. 

(I don’t.) (I remain sitting beneath my yew, watching hungrily like the vulture I am.) 

Other students wouldn’t be able to hear them, but with my ears I catch snippets of Bunce’s harried words: “Did you fight the Humdrum?” “Where’s the Mage?” and “What do you mean, you killed a dragon?” 

That gets me onto my feet. 

I’m all at once too close to Snow, nearly pushing him against a tree when I shout, “You killed a dragon, you vile heathen?” 

Snow doesn’t back away from me. In fact, he’s barely moving at all. His lips are pale and cracked, and the skin under his eyes is paper-thin. “It was trying to kill me.” 

“Then it had a reason!” I exclaim, enraged. “Dragons only attack those who attack them first! They don’t enjoy harming people, even ingrates like you.”   

“Why do you care, Baz?” Snow asks, his voice hard and brittle. 

Why do I care? Because Mother reared me on tales of dragons, the magnificent forebears of fire mages. They’re what we aspire to be, she told me. Gentle with our flames around what we love; nurturing with our heat to grow what is precious; and willing to unleash blazes on that which needs to be destroyed and restored.  

I care because dragons are the misunderstood and dangerous good in this world. 

And Snow is supposed to be, too. 

“Because they’re not monsters,” I say. “We don’t have to fight them.” 

“Simon didn’t mean to kill it,” Bunce says vehemently, jamming herself between us. Her voice softens as she asks, “did you, Simon?” 

Simon looks at Bunce. Then he looks at me. 

He sinks to the forest floor and sobs. 

I’m too slow and too near to avoid him grabbing ahold of me, dragging me down with him. (Where are my vampire reflexes when I need them?)   

“I-I didn’t mean to slay it,” he weeps. He’s touching me in two places: my bicep, which he has locked in a vice grip, and my chest, upon which he’s resting his brow. “It didn’t want t’ hurt me.” 

Bunce holds onto one side of him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “Then why?”  

“The Mage…” Snow inhales shakily. He dissolves into incoherent sobs again. “I shouldn’t’ve gone off,” he eventually gasps. “The fire… burned it from the inside out… like… a cigarette burn eating a piece of paper…”  

I shiver. 

I’ve heard of vampires dying the same way.  

I imagine a dragon, a huge and magnificent being, curling and shrinking into a husk of itself as its lit from within. 

Snow had the power to do that. 

“It was helpless,” he sobs. “Upset. Afraid. Alone. And I killed it.” 

But he didn’t have the heart. 

Of course, he doesn’t. 

“Dragons don’t feel such petty emotions,” I tell him. “They don’t fear death.” 

Snow swallows hard. “Y’don’t k-know that.” 

He’s so stupid he won’t take an out when it’s staring him right in his face. 

“They’re grand creatures. Bigger than life itself. Death wouldn’t lessen them. Even death delivered by a wreck like you.” 

“It’s okay, Simon,” says Bunce. She rolls her eyes at me but doesn’t spell me a mile away. “You were only trying to do what’s right.” 

Snow shakes his head. Whether it’s in denial or disbelief, I do not know.  

But his running nose is pressed against my sternum, his curls shaking against my face.  

I don’t know why I’m comforting Snow now, not after he’s done something so heinous. I still intend to lecture him until his ears bleed and then assign him every book on dragons I can find as his life-long homework. 

Perhaps I let him hold me because I’m doing as Father said. Perhaps I curl my spine, allowing Snow’s head to sink further into me, because I need to as heir of the Pitch family.  

It’s not because I want his closeness, his companionship. It’s not because I want him to need me.  

It’s not because I want to heal his pain. 

Right? 

Chapter Text

Book 2: Simon Snow and the Second Serpent

IV. SIMON 

By the time the roiling summer heat has died down and I’m on a train back to Watford to start my second year, I’ve beaten all my memories of magic and belonging to a bloody pulp in my mind.  

I know that sounds unnecessarily violent. (That’s what Baz would say.) (He’d probably add something about me being an “ignorant brute”.) But it’s been painful for me, too. Every detail of last school year has made me ache with longing. I’ve spent my summer rehashing the good and the bad, every second, more times than I can count.   

It’s the only way I’ve gotten through my return to the boys’ home. 

Well, not the same boys’ home I came from. I’ve spent the summer at another. The Mage dropped me off here at the end of last school year. 

I’d been so sure that he’d let me live with him. (Even though he was my headmaster, not my foster father.) (But he did sign the forms to become my legal guardian the first time he took me out.) 

Despite my hopes, when the summer started, the Mage didn’t escort me to a cabin in the middle of a magickal forest. That was what I envisioned his home to be. Instead, he drove me up to the curb of an ugly brick building. The bronze placard, crummy playground, and suspicious gazes out the window were almost identical to the ones I’d left for Watford. 

I thought the Mage decided to put me back in a home as punishment. But when I suggested it, he stared at me from the driver’s seat in confusion. 

“Why ever would you think I’m punishing you, Simon?” he asked me incredulously. 

“Cuz I failed?”   

“You’ll do better next time on your exams.”  

“Not that.” Though my marks weren’t great, either. Alright, they were abysmal. But I did miss out on a lot of studying while the Mage and I were tracking the Humdrum. “The dragon.”  

The Mage drummed his fingers on the wheel, his knee bouncing beside the gas pedal. “What about the dragon?” he asked impatiently. 

I really didn’t want to say it. But I did. “…I killed it.”   

Instead of giving me the stink-eye, of telling me I should be ashamed of myself (I was), the Mage snorted. Then, he began to whole-heartedly laugh. 

“You think I’m mad at you for slaying the Humdrum’s dangerous beast? Heavens, no! My boy, you’re well on your way to becoming a proper warrior. Now, if you’d only refine your wand work…”  

That the Mage wasn’t upset with me, and I was still being returned to the Normal world anyway, made my head spin.  

He explained that being back in the home would make me stronger, keep me close to the language that fuels our powers. I’m not sure if I feel stronger so much as feral and desperate for magic to return to my life. 

I’m willing to do anything, even ride a hundred trains and buses to get to Watford. Which I am. Because according to the Mage, slaying dragons qualifies you for a lot of other things, including traveling by yourself as a minor.  

I sit on the early morning train with my wand in my backpack and a mint Aero in my pocket. It’s half-melted into a chocolate-peppermint mess. I ignore the confused looks people send me. (I hope no one asks me if I need help finding my parents again.) (I do, but I don’t think they can provide it.) 

As I wait for the train to cross the blue-shadowed countryside, I shut my eyes, and I review my list of good things. 

I’m great at making lists: 

No. 1— Sour cherry scones: obviously. When I was forced to subsist on boys’ home meals again, I was convinced I’d dreamt those scones up. (Not that I’m ever really forced to eat food; the greasiest fish and chips are a delicacy to me.) At Watford, I’m going to fill the emptiness inside me with those scones. 

No. 2— Roast beef: see scones.  

No. 3—Penelope Bunce: I might not’ve known her very long, but I love Penny. Like a sister, of course. She’s brave, smart, and always there for me. Except this summer. I wonder if she’ll think I died or something. Penny’s probably the one person who would grieve my absence, not as the Chosen One, but as Simon, her trouble-making friend. 

No. 4— The football pitch: the boys’ home’s pitch is a dried-up piece of grass, their football a badly patched rubber ball. I can’t wait to get back onto Watford’s green, to play with people who tolerate me, and to face off against Baz. 

No. 5— My school uniform: Baz says it’s an offence to good taste everywhere. I don’t care. The first time I put on my Watford uniform was the first time I wore clothes that fit me, didn’t itch, or have holes in them. I wonder if they’ll still look okay after all the weight I’ve lost. 

No. 6— My room: wait, scratch that— I mean our room. Mine and Baz’s. This summer, I returned to sharing bunks with ten other kids. I hardly believe that soon I’ll have a room of my own again. (Sorta).  

No. 7— The Mage: whether or not he drives me to school or lets me spend the summer with him, the Mage brought me to Watford. I’m grateful to him. He even called on the month of my birthday, which is the first time that’s happened. (He didn’t give me cake, though.) (Shame.) (Stop thinking about food, Simon.) 

No. 8— Magic: in truth, my whole list is about magic. I only separate it out because I don’t miss my magic as much as I miss magic in general. My magic is chancy and frustrating. But the magic at Watford is bigger than me, and that’s reassuring. 

No. 9— Agatha Wellbelove: when the Mage said I wouldn’t be staying with him, I almost asked if I could go back to Doctor Wellbelove’s. I like Agatha and her family, and I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye last year. I miss the way she brightens a room, how she makes me feel like a part of things. 

No. 10— Baz Pitch: well. Baz. Baz is…frankly, I don’t know if he belongs on my list. I didn’t put him there at first. But then I ended up thinking about him so much anyway that I decided I should tack him onto the end for convenience’s sake. I don’t really know where we stand. First, we’re enemies, then we’re friends, then we’re enemies again. I guess at this point in the cycle, we should be friends, yeah? God, I want us to be. Doesn’t matter if it’s the kind of friends who occasionally rub each other the wrong way. What’s important is that Baz won’t hold my worst actions against me, like when I kill the creatures he loves. And I’ll keep trying to look for good in him, even when he’s being a git. 

“Now arriving in Salisbury.” 

Shit. I’m so immersed in my list that I almost miss the conductor announcing my stop.  

I barely manage to get off at the correct station and catch the cab that Watford hired for me.  

(This is the first time I’ve traveled by train or cab. Never had other places to go, although other boys ran away.) (My driver says it’s crazy how young I am, both to be traveling a hundred miles by myself and to be the Chosen One.) (I don’t know what to tell him: that learning train schedules will help me grow and combat the dark forces that ride public transit?) 

Before I know it, our little, cigarette-smoke filled vehicle pulls up outside Watford’s gates. I nearly wrench the cab door off its hinges in my haste. (Oops.) (Should probably hire another cabbie next time.) 

Everything that struck me as novel, impossible, and likely a trick the first time here now hits me with loving remembrance. The ancient architecture, the moat and drawbridge, and the woods that create the outermost walls of the town aren’t just anyone’s story. They’re mine. Those fairytales I told myself during July and August are chapters of my better life.  

Before I go anywhere— the dining hall, the Mage’s office— I stop by Mummer’s House. It’s hauntingly familiar. Haunting in the sense that what should be plain comforting feels somewhat wrong. With half of its inhabitants still arriving, its rooms are too large, their vacant spaces like the gaps where my baggy clothes no longer fit on my body.  

“All right, Simon?” asks my classmate Rhys, surprising me. He’s sitting at the low table where he and Gareth, his roommate, play checkers. Rhys is currently engaged in solitaire. (I guess Gareth isn’t back yet.) 

Right. Here, boys talk to me.  

I nod, grinning fiercely. “All right, Rhys?” 

Rhys nods and smiles back.  

I hurtle up the staircase and catch my other classmate Niall hauling his luggage into his room. We make eye contact. Then we look away, returning to our pursuits. Niall’s one of Baz’s friends, one I don’t know. Niall’s roommate and Baz’s other friend, Dev (who also remains a mystery to me), doesn’t appear to have arrived. 

Is Baz here? I wonder how the room would feel without him.  

I summon the Sword of Mages to nick my finger and smear my blood on the door. (It strikes me how unsanitary this is; does all the accumulated blood get magickally cleaned at some point?)  

Our tower room gives me a warm if silent welcome. It’s fragrant with lavender, the afternoon light painting the cylindrical walls with bright, flickering gold. Illuminated specks of dust swirl throughout the air in lazy eddies, gravitating toward the window. My bed has starched blankets and fluffed pillows. On top of the duvet lays my new uniform, instantly recognizable with its green and purple hues. 

I forget about keeping it clean as I cling to the bed and sob. 

I’m here.  

I’m home. 

“You’ve expended the appropriate period to bawl like a baby and get away with it, Snow. Now, be quiet. Or I’ll be forced to come up with a real reason for you to cry.” 

Baz stands in the doorway, his luggage in his hands.  

I have no clue how long he’s been there. (The appropriate period to wait for your roommate to cry himself out?) 

“Baz.” 

Still a git. But Baz is my magickal git in our magickal room in our magickal story, so like everything else, I drink up the sight of him. 

He’s grown taller. (Means he’s still taller than me, unfortunately.) He’s wearing similar stuck-up clothes to the first time I saw him, like he’s entering a fancy soiree instead of our personal bedroom. 

But his poshness isn’t the only thing that causes me to reflect on how different he is than the Normals I’ve been living with. The details of him became blurry while we were apart. (Other than his prattish behavior that I weirdly, illogically missed.) It’s clear to me now that Baz is nothing like anyone I’ve seen outside of Watford, with his statue-like complexion and the eerily fluid way he unpacks his things. But he’s also different from other mages, too. Something about him reminds me of the goblins instead. The smoldering dragon. Like he’s a creature and a person rolled into one. 

I don’t mention it, ‘cause he’d probably kill me. 

“How was your summer?” I ask. (I scrub my hands across my wet face. I’m embarrassed when I hiccup.)  

Baz is busying himself by laying out his possessions with extreme care: his violin, his new books, his footballer kit. When he catches sight of our new uniform, his face scrunches up like an angry rabbit.  

Then, a blood-red envelop falls open on his mattress. It has looping cursive and a wax seal, a true-to-life wax seal, embossed with an image of a flame. 

Baz’s expression goes from annoyed to incensed. 

“Baz?” 

He’s distracted reading. (I can’t see what). Eventually he acknowledges me. “My summer was fine, Snow. I didn’t starve or become a pauper, which evidently happened to you. Did you and the Mage get lost in the mountains while you were out on a noble quest and prove incapable of foraging? Seems like Fearless Adventurers 101.” 

I flush. (Haven’t done that all summer without Baz to upset me.) (I don’t think anyone at the home could come up with his insults.)  

“…I didn’t go with the Mage,” I mutter. 

“What?” 

“The Mage didn’t take me,” I say more forcefully.  

“The Mage didn’t take you?” Baz repeats, bewildered. 

I grunt. Baz hates it when I do that. “Yeah.” 

“Well… you spent the summer with Bunce, then?” Baz tuts chidingly. “I know she has far too many siblings, but surely they could have spared you supper and a new shirt.” 

“I wasn’t with Penny.” I wish I had been. Even though Penny says her five siblings are a living hell, especially Premal, who’s seventeen and suffers from delusions of grandeur. (Penny’s words, not mine.) (I met Premal once with the Mage; he seemed well-meaning, if… a lot.) 

“Wellbelove, then.” Baz sounds annoyed by something, a hangnail or missing cravat, probably. 

“ No.” 

Baz halts his unpacking. A shirt I’ve never seen him wear, with mauve and burgundy flowers, hangs from his hands. It’s nice but seems gaudy for Baz. (And fun.) (Baz doesn’t do fun.) 

“Then, where were you, Snow?”  

I shouldn’t have started us on this topic. “With Normals. At the boys’ home.” The admission hurts about as much as I thought it would. 

“You mean you weren’t with mages?” Baz’s voice is steadily rising. “With magic?” 

At least he doesn’t sound like he’s pitying or shaming me. However, his disbelief also makes my stomach tie up in knots. 

I don’t have things I can busy myself with, so I decide to strip into my new uniform. I grab the hem of my shirt and tug the sheer cotton over my head. “Doesn’t matter.” 

“It very much does,” Baz argues, having forgotten about his luggage. “It matters when the Chosen One, the Greatest Mage, is removed from the World of Mages. That’s the whole point of your existence.” 

(I agree, but I won’t admit that.) 

I unlace my trainers and toss them haphazardly across the floor. “Was still doing my part. I stuck with Normals to be close to the language.” 

“Oh?” Baz sneers. “And what good has being close to their language done you before? Other than making you choose to go off to avoid speaking their tongues?” 

“Shut up, Baz.” I tug my socks off, hoping he doesn’t notice my big toe sticking out of a hole. 

He doesn’t, but he also refuses to stop talking. “What was the Mage’s bright idea for when you were surrounded by Normals and went off? That their language would prevent them from going up in flames? That their begging alone would suddenly teach you to be a spell-caster with self-control?” 

“Shut up!” 

This time Baz listens to me. 

But not for the right reasons. He’s interrogating me with his eyes, searching my half-naked body. He surveys my chest, where my ribs protrude through my skin. Then, he examines my shoulders, which have become bony and unwieldy. Had I taken off my trousers, he’d have seen how the muscle and fat have gone from my legs, leaving knobby knees and ankles. 

“Snow,” he says in a voice I don’t recognize. 

My magic pours from me like a weather event. 

I stuff myself into my uniform as fast as possible. 

Baz and I are both startled when something knocks against the windowpane. 

It’s a robin carrying a message from the Mage. 

Simon,  

Come to my office. We have plans to discuss.  

Baz’s expression becomes murderous, so I wave the bird off, urging it to fly to safety. 

Then I do the same, exiting our room to head for the Weeping Tower. 

(Just when I thought Baz and I were becoming friends.) (Does he always have to make things hard for me?) 

Climbing up the Weeping Tower makes me nervous, not just because it holds the Mage’s office. They call it weeping because the tower slants, causing ivy to tumble down its precarious walls like streams of tears. (The only thing that keeps it upright are spells.) (Which isn’t reassuring.)  

I’m very careful not to trip and break my neck, although I experience some vertigo. 

There’s a woman I don’t recognize standing outside the Mage’s door. 

The Normals I lived with would take one look at her and call the cops. She’s covered in studs and leather. Her make-up is stark and off-putting, like it’s evidence that she survived an electric chair on willpower alone. 

“Are you breaking in?” I ask.  

(Good work, Simon.) (That’s obviously how you handle someone with criminal intentions.) 

The woman’s attention, which was levelled with terrifying intensity at the door, whips over to me. 

(Great idea number two: get the crazy mage to focus on you.) 

“Chosen One,” she says, perfectly blasé. “Tell me, are you the world’s Greatest Mage or a glorified hall-monitor?” 

I don’t like her. Not at all. 

“I asked you a question,” I say, adjusting my stance. (Not that I want to fight here.) (Then I’ll fall down the stairs and off myself for sure.) 

The woman pushes herself away from the wall, like she’s ready to fight back. (Jesus, is she mad?) (I’m twelve years old.)  

“Could you stop me if I were?” she taunts. 

She reaches inside her boot. 

Bells go off throughout my brain.  

Danger, danger: do not engage with your level of spell-work. 

But there’s another bell, too. A bell of recognition.  

I’ve seen this woman before.  

I know her.  

“He most certainly could.” The Mage steps outside of his office, frowning at the stranger. “Simon is the most powerful mage.” 

The woman smirks. Then, instead of pulling out her wand, she draws a lighter from her boot. (She keeps a lighter there?) (Is it for intimidation or practicality?) (Can’t be practicality, you’d be eternally cursed to burn your shins.) 

She lights a cigarette and puffs a foul-smelling waft into the narrow stairwell. My eyes burn, and the Mage grimaces.  

“Maybe,” she says. “But he’s not the world’s most insightful detective. I was just leaving, Mage’s Heir. After carrying out my loathsome but official Coven duties. Not breaking and entering.” 

I don’t believe her. She’s up to something. She’s too snide, too antagonistic. Plus, why was she waiting outside the door? 

The Mage glares at her. “Come, Simon.” 

After he locks the door to his office behind us, he spells the room secure. Really secure. Silence is golden; still waters run deep; out of sight, out of mind; better safe than sorry; and silent as the grave-level secure. 

“Sit down, my boy,” he tells me when he’s done with his fortifications. 

I sit in a soft, satin chair that always makes me feel too short. “I knew she was dangerous,” I say passionately. 

“Good instincts.” The Mage props his hip against his messy desk, towering over me. “One must never trust a Pitch. Their family is full of snakes and betrayers.” 

Wait.  

“A Pitch?” 

“Lower your voice. Yes, Miss Fiona Pitch. An especially nasty one. Though she’d be more dangerous if she held a steady job instead of freelancing for the Coven.” 

This woman is related to Baz. I met one of Baz’s family. 

The Mage clears his throat. “In fact, she’s connected to the reason I wanted to speak with you. I trust that your travels were easy? That you’ve had time to get settled into your room?” 

“Yes,” I say, though it took me six hours to travel by bus, another bus, a train, and a taxi. 

“Good, good,” the Mage says absent-mindedly. He goes silent. I’m squirming in my too-soft seat, afraid the cushion will swallow me, when he continues, “I’ve noticed you’ve grown closer to your roommate, Basilton Pitch.” 

“Oh.” He’s not wrong. For a while, I thought we were getting closer. More friendly. But then he proved me wrong. “‘M trying to do what you said. To watch out for each other. Know each other as well as brothers.” 

That was how the Mage justified me being unable to switch rooms last year when Baz and I were at each other’s throats.  

“Indeed,” the Mage says. “You’re doing exactly as you should be, minding my wisdom. However, you must also be careful. That boy doesn’t come from an ordinary family. The Grimms and the Pitches are staunchly opposed to me and the betterment of our magickal world, so they’ll likely use him against you.” 

Penny told me a similar story, but it’s weird getting the Mage’s confirmation. The civil wars he mentioned are starting to feel more real, more concrete. 

“So. What should I do?” 

“Be vigilant. Don’t let your guard down. And practice your spell-work.” 

So, more of the usual. “Yes, sir.” 

Are Baz and I not supposed to be friends, then? I’d ask if I didn’t expect the Mage to say something like, this is war, Simon. There’s no time to indulge in trivial, childish things like friends or loved ones or hobbies. 

I’m confused (and cautious— those bloody stairs) when I leave the Mage’s office and the Weeping Tower. 

I ought to trust him. He knows what’s best for me. What being the Chosen One means. 

He can do the thinking, while I get down to eating. 

(Lord, I missed the dining hall so much.) 

I’m well into my second plate when Penny finds me and greets me. 

I’m so overjoyed that I leap from my seat and wrap her in a big hug. (My tea spills everywhere.) (Penny fondly says, “Oh, Simon”, followed by “As you were!”, which returns the liquid to my cup.) (Her hair has gone from ruby red to sapphire blue; it looks good.) 

She catches me up with everything that happened this summer. Penny helped her dad research the Humdrum’s dead spots; she proofread a book chapter written by her mum; and she tried to develop an untraceable silencing spell to use on her younger siblings. (She’s still working on the untraceable bit.) (Her mum promises her next illegal spell will be her last.) 

I try to keep her talking about herself, but she insists that I tell her why she didn’t hear from me all summer long. (She considered casting another illegal spell to find me, but she was already on dangerously thin ice.) 

I tell her I was with Normals. In my boys’ home. Or a boys’ home.  

“Why in Circe’s name would the Mage send you there?” she shouts in outrage. 

The rest of the dining hall watches us. 

“Pen, please!” I implore, bowing over my plate. “He said I’d be closer to the language. Which is good for my magic.”  

“What you need to be is closer to spell-books,” she huffs. “To magickal mentors. To mages.” 

I complain, “You sound like Baz.” (A more polite and humane version of him.) 

“Well, Basilton’s not always wrong.” 

“Penny!” I gasp like I’ve been stabbed. “I thought you hated him.” 

“I do not,” she insists, not wholly convincingly. “I dislike when he picks on you for no reason, like a hawk teasing a hamster. But he doesn’t always act abhorrently.” 

Her voice ends on a thoughtful note. She’s referencing the dragon episode:  

When Baz let me hang onto his arm and weep on his shoulder without hexing me into a fugue state. Penny was there, too, holding me and comforting me for well over an hour. Baz didn’t leave until Penny was done, which she attributed then to his competitive nature. Now, she doesn’t sound so sure.  

“At the very least, he’s right about the futility of surrounding yourself with Normals,” she says peevishly. 

“I quite like Normals,” a musical voice offers. 

Agatha places her dinner tray on our table, sitting beside me. 

“Aggie!” I say in greeting, then blush. I’m not sure if she likes me calling her that. I also don’t move to embrace her, since the two of us aren’t as close as Penny and I are. 

“Simon,” she says, smiling. “It’s good to see you again. You, too, Penelope.” 

“What do you mean you like Normals, Agatha?” Penny asks, rarely one for pleasantries.  

Agatha shirks her shoulders, causing her sheet of golden hair to gently rustle. It amazes me how her shrugging comes off as delicate while I look shifty. “Sometimes, I prefer my Normal friends and my Normal dance school to Watford. Magic’s not everything. I envy Simon getting a break from all this.” 

I wholeheartedly disagree, but I don’t let that show. 

“How are my sympathies more aligned with Basil than anyone at this table?” Penny despairs, head in her hands. 

“Maybe your priorities are in the wrong order,” I say. 

She fixes me with an intent stare. It’s not the mildly irritated one when she thinks I’m being an idiot. There’s hurt and puzzlement on her face.  

“They’re not,” she tells me firmly. Worriedly.  

I realize she’s seeing what Baz saw: 

My gauntness, my hollowed-out quality. Like a hole has developed where love and patience and wonderment should be, gnawing at my edges. 

Agatha senses the tension. But instead of addressing it, thankfully, she cheerfully interjects, “Did you catch the most recent episodes of Doctor Who, Simon? I watched a lot over the summer.” 

I run with the change in topic, letting Agatha do most of the talking about her favorite Normal programs and accessories. I find it mind-numbing, soothing.  

Penny disagrees, at turns bored and repulsed. When Agatha dives into Normal horse competitions, Penny says its late and that they should be getting back to the Cloisters. That’s where the girls reside. 

I walk Penny and Agatha over, even though Mummer’s House is in the opposite direction. It’s good to just work my legs out instead of thinking about things. (I also prefer to be in open spaces when there’s a chance my magic might leak.) (It’s not only dangerous—it’s embarrassing. My magic is like a dog tail, wagging and alerting everyone about my excited emotions.) 

I’m midway back to Mummer’s House when I see Baz step into the Wavering Woods. 

I almost fail to notice him. He’s far away and moving fast.  

Where’s he going? 

The Mage’s command crosses my mind. 

I go after Baz, attempting to track his path.  I’m not sure if I can locate him in the darkness or the forest. (No, Baz, I never received Fearless Adventurers Training.) (Would’ve been bloody useful.) 

I’m hopelessly lost when I hear a familiar hiss. 

“…you shouldn’t be here…!” 

That was Baz’s voice. I blindly follow it. 

“…cool down, boyo. I was here for Coven business.” 

That’s Fiona Pitch: dry, arrogant. 

“So, you weren’t making the brilliant decision to check up on me in-person despite giving me a phone to use for these very occasions?” Baz asks drily. 

Baz has a phone? He shouldn’t. They’re not allowed.  

Fiona laughs. “As hard as it is to believe, not all my brilliant decisions revolve around you.” 

“I’m your favorite nephew,” Baz argues. 

Hold up. This terror is his aunt? 

“My only nephew,” Fiona corrects. “But you’re alright. So, I’ll take pity on you and not report to your father. Even though he’s gagging for news.” 

And now Baz’s father is involved. Great. Please don’t tell me he’s evil, too. 

“I said I’d write back on the first day of classes,” says Baz. He’s whiney, petulant. 

“And you’ll tell him the same drivel you always tell him: that you’re working on it. Not even the good farmer Malcolm will let you keep piling on the horseshit. You have to make a choice, Baz. Do what he wants you to, or don’t.”  

Baz has no answer. Then he exhales sharply. “Not doing what he wants doesn’t mean having to do what you want, Fi.” 

“You got a brighter idea?” Fiona asks. 

A light bursts through the darkness. 

I can finally see Baz and his aunt in a small clearing. 

Standing face-to-face, they look extraordinarily alike. Same bone structure, same prideful set to their eyebrows, same black hair. But they don’t carry themselves identically. Baz stands like a mini king, which is as much absurd as it is successful. Fiona is sloppier, more disarming, the slope of her shoulder and twist of her knee primed to pounce. She’d be good in a street fight. 

But something’s off. Even in the amber firelight, Baz is much paler than his aunt. Her face glows copper beneath her heavy make-up.  

Baz is white as death. 

“Cut that out, you little fire demon,” Fiona tells Baz. 

She reaches for the flame hovering above his palm, deftly plucking it away. Baz and his family handle flame like it’s a toy. 

“I should’ve never encouraged you to summon fire when you started crawling around in your onesie,” Fiona says fervently. “But it was fucking bunny-print. How else was I supposed to make you seem dangerous? I should’ve listened to Malcolm, waited until you could form full sentences.” 

She extinguishes the ball of light.    

I need to get closer to see them again. 

“Fi, I’m not going to—” 

Baz cuts off. 

I freeze mid-stride. 

“What?” Even Fiona Pitch’s questions are sharp. “What is it? Is someone there, Basil?” 

Fuck.  

I jolt back and recede into the bushes. Baz must have heard me, sensed me. How? I’m still so far off. 

Then, I stumble into something that isn’t a mass of thorns. It’s a person. I think. It’s either a person drowning in smelly wool or a talking, bipedal goat. 

Turns out it’s a goatherd, going by her staff and the bleating goats flocking around her. 

“All right, love?” she asks me. Her voice is gruff but kind. 

“Sorry,” I say stuffily. I’m desperately trying not to inhale. She smells very strongly of damp hay, unwashed wool, and manure. And something more pungent and magickal, like my own uncontrollable fumes. 

I discover that the goatherd, Ebb, might not be pleasant on the nose, but she’s sweet and friendly. She helps me escape Baz and his aunt. Actually, I help her escape, because when she makes out their faint, tiny figures through the trees, she abruptly starts weeping. 

She’s possibly a bit batty. 

Maybe that’s why I’ve never heard of her. I’d like to get to know her better, though. (It’s nice not being the weepiest one at Watford.) When she invites me for a mug of hot chocolate in her cabin, I genuinely regret telling her I can’t, but that I’ll come back later.  

I just need to beat Baz getting back to our room first. 

To my relief, the room is empty. There’s only the smell of Baz’s fancy soaps from the shower he must have taken before dinner. I hop into the shower myself, wash off the lingering odor of goats, and brush my teeth while I wait for his arrival.  

I’m casually positioned on top of my bed when Baz comes through the door. (I wish I had my red ball to toss during instances like these.) (I lost it at the end of last year, and Baz refused to help me look for it.) (He knows the spell, but he said my ball was a nuisance. I fretted over the possibility that he tossed it into the lake.) (He still could’ve.) 

Baz looks exhausted.  

I’m surprised.  

And I find myself feeling bad for him.  

It can’t be easy to have a crazy aunt and demanding father.  

But what do they want from him so badly? Is it what the Mage suspects? 

(Is this why Baz is so resistant to us being friends?) 

He doesn’t say anything to me once he’s curled up in bed, his blankets piled high.  

You’d think I’d have gotten my fill of watching other boys sleep from my stint in the home’s communal bedrooms. But when Baz conks out, I use the opportunity to examine the way his skin reflects the moonlight, and how his body lies nearly motionless and unbreathing under his mountain of sheets. 

I wish I could get into his dreaming head, see what he’s seeing.  

Before I can trouble myself with that proposition for long, his silent presence lulls me to sleep. 

Chapter Text

Book 2: Simon Snow and the Second Serpent

V. BAZ

After receiving Fiona’s ultimatum, I decide to put my fiendish plan into action: 

(Alright, Father’s fiendish plan.) (I’m the one who has to live with it.) (Depending on your definition of the word “live.”) 

I’m going to befriend Simon Snow. 

Crowley, the very notion makes me queasy. 

You’d think I would have inured myself to it over the course of the summer. But I mainly wasted my time pretending I was vacationing in Corsica instead of being confined to the club’s swimming pool. (It’s impossible to travel with Mordelia.) (Even my family isn’t so cruel as to subject a plane full of passengers to a screaming two-year-old.) (And we can’t spell her quiet in public, because Mordelia’s a talented pantomime of suffering. Her face distorted with mute fury is the stuff of my recent nightmares.) 

I might have also thought about Snow over the summer.  

But I wasn’t plotting to get him into my clutches.  

I was trying to understand him.  

Sometimes, Snow is a good-natured fool pleased by a warm dinner and a soft bed. At other times, he’s a proficient killing machine. (And a very young one.)  

It was as if he were a spell I couldn’t grasp. Was his nature to help me or to harm me? 

Like any other confounding piece of magic, I dedicated myself to studying him.  

I bought the Chosen One merchandise they sold at local toy stores: dolls, posters, plastic swords. There are far too many Simon Snow™ products. Trying to imagine the reasons why people other than I collect them makes me shudder.  

Fiona teased me outrageously for my Snow-shaped cuddly toys. The plush cotton bore a shocking resemblance to the real thing. I wasted a lot of money demonstrating my lack of attachment to them by burning them. Daphne cut off my allowance for the first time; I think the cuddly toy pyres crossed an invisible line.  

I also listened to the songs children sang. They, like my baby sister, deeply disturbed me: Come, he comes, the Mage’s Heir/ With flaming sword and shining hair/ And should evil meet him there/ The blood will flow, the world will know/ So evil doers ought beware…   

And finally, I reviewed the memories I accumulated over our first year.  

I had a surprising number of vivid experiences with Snow. 

Despite my in-depth research, by the end of summer, I was no closer to a plan for making Snow my friend than I was when Father first tasked me with this ridiculous assignment. 

That doesn’t stop Father from reminding me to do the impossible. I carry the letter with his high expectations. It’s an incriminating document, but if I don’t look at it every now and again, I forget about the truth of my miserable existence at Watford. 

(He was so disappointed that I didn’t convince Snow to spend the summer with us. I think he pictured us playing tennis together at the club and bonding as we harvested crops.) (I wish Snow had come, if only to witness Father’s inevitable change of heart when subjected to his buffoonery.) 

Now that we’ve reunited at Watford, I’m unsure if I can do what Father wants. I don’t even know if Snow is interested in renewing our post-dragon détente. He’s been cautious around me. Cagey. 

I know why: it’s because of my reaction to his summer.  

But who can blame me? (Father, perhaps.) (My own consciousness, for sure.) I was blindsided by our re-encounter. You see, when I contemplated Snow over the break, my mind produced quintessential images of him: apple-cheeked and bright-eyed. Solid and strong from his sword-training and footballing.  

The boy I returned to in Mummer’s House, stripped of his ill-fitting clothes, was the farthest thing from that. He’d become skeletal, jaundiced from being deprived of the magickal world.   

How can Snow be so brainless as to continue defending the Mage for his role in reducing him so? For causing him to sob with joy reuniting with magic, when it should always be surrounding him? 

At least it doesn’t take Snow long to recover. 

A couple days into the term, and he’s already regaining a healthy layer of fat from all the buttery food he consumes. He’s happier, more energetic in the company of Bunce and his many other school friends.  

I don’t tell Father any of this in my letter. It’s irrelevant to my inability to exploit Snow with the promise of friendship. 

Dev and Niall are convinced I’m overthinking things. They advise me to bribe Snow or brainwash him and get it over with. It’s our second year, after all— do I plan to spend all seven obsessing over him? Dev reminds me that Fiona ought to have a spell or cursed object to help. 

She does, but I’m not encouraging her. She’s already made my mission enough of a mess. (She’s part of why I can’t commit to a course of action.) (Her vehement disagreement with Father stokes my inner turmoil over what Mother would have wanted me to do.) 

Besides, I know my cause isn’t as hopeless as it may frequently seem. Because Snow hasn’t completely rejected me.  

Every so often, I’ll catch him looking at me. Simply looking. 

Like at the opening picnic.   

The opening picnic of second year takes place on a balmy late afternoon before the first day of classes. Snow and his companions idle beneath a moss-covered tree on a corner of the Great Lawn, the setting sun drenching them in fiery half-light. Bunce has spelled her pullover into a midnight-blue blanket that she unfurls over the damp grass. Snow sprawls across it, eating bread with cheese and fruit. Wellbelove hangs her painted toes over the blanket’s edge and sips her lemonade. 

Snow looks so relaxed, so peaceful as he listens to the girls chatting. When his bottomless stomach is momentarily sated, he drowses off with his head in Bunce’s lap. 

But he’s not asleep for long. I’m listening to Dev convey something trite to Niall when I feel the force of Snow’s gaze on me. 

I know he’s trying to be covert. How he imagines subtlety or surreptitiousness to look I can barely fathom. (It’s a good thing the Mage made Snow his greatest monster-slayer instead of superspy.) (That would have ended in immediate disaster).  

Snow’s stare is like his magic: fierce and confused. 

I’m extremely uncomfortable. I hate it when people watch me during mealtimes. (Their mealtimes, not mine— mine are a secret and shameful affair.) 

So, I take my violin out of its case. (I bring it as a contingency plan for when Dev and Niall slip into dull and mundane conversation topics). I love the violin. Playing it helps me think. On truly blessed occasions, it helps me not to. 

Snow looks befuddled when I start to play. 

He knows I take lessons, but I haven’t played in the room. It didn’t feel like something Snow needed to be aware of, my weakness for music. 

I can’t tell if he enjoys it. Wellbelove evidently does. She turns her head toward the sound and smiles at me. (Bunce ignores me, which I expected.) (She’s all brains, no art or culture.) 

Although I’m apathetic to Wellbelove in my best of moods, I smile coolly back at her. She looks pleased. 

Snow’s confusion grows, almost comically. Then, he’s upset. 

Merlin, I don’t understand him. 

“Circe, Simon,” Bunce complains, batting his smoky magic away. “What’s wrong?” 

The picnic disperses on account of Snow’s noxious magic. 

The next instance I catch him staring at me is during Chemistry. 

Usually, Snow and I avoid working together in class. But Professor Chillblains demands that we pair up. It’s horrible, because even though there’s no chance of Snow butchering a spell, he’s also no pro at lighting a Bunsen burner. Our assignment is extraordinarily simple: evaporate a beaker full of liquid, first using water and then ice. It’s that easy. Boiling water.  

Snow will probably turn it into a magickal catastrophe anyway. 

Last year, I would have delighted in making incisive comments that pushed Snow to tears. Now, I just try to get through our experiment as quickly as possible. Except Snow won’t let me do that. 

I’m bent over the needle valve, using it to adjust the flame, when I tell Snow, “Hand me the ice.”  

I blindly reach out my hand to him. He doesn’t give me any. 

“The ice, Snow,” I hiss as I continue monitoring the steaming beaker. (When class began, we wordlessly decided that I would run the experiment while Snow took notes.) (I don’t trust Snow with gases or fire.) (Judging by his mute compliance, he doesn’t, either.) 

Snow still doesn’t give me the ice. 

I turn to him angrily. “Snow, what are you—” 

I find that Snow isn’t paying attention to the experiment. But he is paying attention to me . 

He’s been watching me again. His goggles are skewed on his face. He looks at me, unblinking and breathing through his open mouth, absorbed and mystified.  

For some absurd reason, I blush. I feel the heat rise into my hairline. It’s a good thing I’m so pale he can’t see it. 

This time, instead of pretending that I don’t notice him, I cross my arms and stare back. 

Snow is startled. His skin becomes mottled with deep, deep red. (See what I mean about apple-cheeked?) (I can only imagine how dark and juicy the imprint of his goggles will be.)  

Crouching over his notebook, he pretends to jot down our discoveries on the boiling point. 

I read them in horror. Now I know he was watching me and not the experiment. “Did you write down that the boiling point of water is 1,000°C?” 

Snow answers hesitantly. I must not sound entirely placid. “…Yeah?” 

“That’s the temperature of lava during a volcanic eruption, Snow. For snake’s sake, our thermometer doesn’t even go that high!”  

Simon looks appropriately mortified. He smells it, too, going by the thick, dangerous odor that fills the Bunsen burner-lit classroom. 

“Gentlemen!” Professor Chillblains cries in a panic, rushing over with his wand held aloft. Other students cough and complain. “What in Merlin’s name are you doing?” 

“Finding the melting-point for Snow,” I say wryly. 

The man is petrified and responds as many teachers do during an imminent Simon Snow disaster: he spells Snow out of the classroom. 

Unfortunately, I’m expelled with him. We stand in the empty hall, Snow’s agitation rolling off him in choking, sulfurous waves that flood the flagstones. 

“Crowley, Snow!” I say, ripping my goggles off. My voice echoes through the large, vacant space. “Do you always have to be the Greatest Disaster?” 

“Do you always have to be a bloody tosser?” he shouts back. 

“I was doing our assignment. You’re the one who was acting like you’d gone daft.” 

“I wasn’t,” Snow complains, but his face is gleaming scarlet. (He still hasn’t removed his goggles.) (The marks they’ll leave are going to be wine-dark.)  

I wanted to get away without addressing it, but it seems I’ll have to: “why do you keep looking at me?” 

“’M not,” Snow lies. 

I scoff. “Well, then, I’m utterly convinced. Someone must have spelled me with Off your rocker when I wasn’t looking. Repeatedly.” 

Snow stonewalls me with his stubborn silence. 

I feel like I’m in a sauna enwrapped in his magickal heatwaves. I wish it annoyed me, but I’m usually so deadly cold that I find this experience pleasurable. I should stalk off and start designing a petition against Professor Chillblains’ unreasonable treatment, but instead I linger and bask in Snow’s therapeutic heat. 

“…Are you up to something?” Snow whispers. 

I fall sharply back down to earth. “What?” 

“Y’know,” Snow says reluctantly. “Plotting against me. Doing something nefarious.” 

So, this is what it feels like when one’s heart races. It’s unbearable. How do the living tolerate it?  

“You do realize how ridiculous you sound?” I ask with a cold laugh. I’m proud that my voice doesn’t shake. 

Snow says nothing, eyes averted to the floor. Then they cut to me, bright and probing. 

“The Mage says I shouldn’t trust Pitches,” he says adamantly. 

“So, do as he says. Trust him. Trust the man who left you rot over the summer in a Normal orphanage.” 

“It’s not an orphanage,” Snow growls. 

“Normal orphanage, Normal upper-crust estate— it doesn’t matter. That doesn’t change the fact that the Mage left you in a place without magic when you’re the most magickal being to ever exist. You even exude it.” I gesture to the magic-filled hallway, the heat of it making me feel heady. “You don’t belong there. You belong here.” 

I regret voicing such genuine thoughts. 

But Snow doesn’t react with the same outrage that he exhibited in Mummer’s House.  

Instead, he looks dumbfounded. Unmoored. Then, his expression turns thoughtful, like he’s seriously ruminating on my words. (Snow’s thoughtful face is always a touch distressed, like the effort causes him pain.) 

“That’s true,” he says finally. Sadly. 

“Don’t sound so miserable about it,” I snap, irate. 

Snow belongs to this world like no other. He’s the missing piece, the greatest good to offset the Insidious Humdrum’s most banal evil.  

I’m not like him. I don’t fit anywhere. Not entirely in the World of Mages, and certainly not in the secret vampire underground. (Once, when she was extremely drunk, Fiona let it slip that vampires’ clandestine societies transpire in pubs and cheap hostels.) (I’ve never been bold enough to ask her for additional information.)  

That’s why, at the very least, I must prove my place in my family. With the Grimm-Pitches. I’ll provide any services, fulfil my role, give them what they want.  

If only that wasn’t so paradoxical. 

But at least now that I’ve repaired the damage wrought by my previous indictments of the Mage (I still loathe the man; I just refuse to be as verbose about it around Snow), Snow should begin to lay off. He’ll stop monitoring me with what was apparently suspicion. (I feel stupid for not realizing earlier.) (This is why I don’t do evil plots.) 

But to my shock and chagrin, Snow doesn’t stop. 

He just. Keeps. Looking.  

He watches me on the pitch, even when I’m nowhere near him. He gets so distracted that the ball whacks him in the face and gives him a bloody nose.  

He watches me in the library as he studies with Bunce. (By studying with Bunce, I mean he’s in the vicinity of her studying but in no way contributing to it.) Around midterms, Bunce gets so annoyed by his absent-mindedness that she spells their texts into the air with See what I mean. Snow is unable to spy on me through her dense web of words. 

Worst of all, he watches me in our room nonstop:  

While I ignore him and read at my desk, he’s watching me.  

While I sneak salt-and-vinegar crisps in bed, he’s watching me. (And complaining.) (He reasons that any food in the room is communal, which is when I bring up his extra ham-and-cheese sandwiches.) (That shuts him up.)  

While I exit the ensuite from my shower, he’s watching me. (I really wish he would stop doing that.) (Every time his eyes follow the beads of water that fall from the tips of my hair, I feel the urge to burn something.) 

One late October evening, I observe him watching me from across the dining hall, and I snap.  

Seizing my dinner tray, I rise from my spot, turn on my heel, and walk toward Snow’s table. 

Dev and Niall’s jaws drop.  

Snow’s almost does when I stand opposite him. (The only thing that keeps his jaw level is his desperation not to release the food he’s crammed into the pouches of his cheeks.) (He resembles a rodent.) 

But I don’t speak to him; I speak to his brainier counterpart, who is currently sitting across the table from Snow and Wellbelove. “Mind if I sit here?” 

Bunce doesn’t endeavor to conceal her surprise. She also doesn’t try to stop me. 

“Of course not, Basil,” she says, sounding intrigued and… amused. (I feel like I should be concerned.) (I’m not, since all my mental capacities are engaged with being vexed by Snow.)  

Bunce scoots down the bench so that she sits opposite Wellbelove. Which leaves the spot directly across from Snow free. 

Well, I was aiming for a confrontation. 

I take a seat. As predicted, Snow carefully and unrepentantly watches as I drop four cubes of sugar into my tea. I let him get his fill, slowly swirling my spoon. 

“You have quite the sweet tooth, Basilton,” Wellbelove remarks, the first to adjust to the paradigm shift.  

“A bit,” I admit. I sip my Earl Grey. It’s still too bitter for my taste, but even Snow would find seven sugar cubes to be ostentatious. “They do have the finest cakes at the club.” 

Wellbelove jumps at the mention of our shared club experiences, flashing a perfect white smile. “Oh, I adore the lemon drizzle cake.” 

“Lady Ruth is an excellent baker,” I agree, although I prefer Ruth Salisbury’s Black Forest Gâteau. I’d commit murder for that dark chocolate, those glazed cherries. 

“Did you come over to talk about sweets, Basilton?” Bunce asks. 

I cross my legs, responding at my leisure. “Not exactly. I came to spend some quality time with my roommate. It seems that he can’t get enough of me.” 

“Th-that’s not—” Snow chokes, having inhaled too quickly.  

“A breath of fresh air,” Bunce casts. She sounds bored as she flicks her ringed hand and helps clear Snow’s airways. 

“Thanks, Pen,” Snow gasps. He’s torn between glaring at me and gaping in pure consternation. “Why’re you here, Baz?” 

“To let you watch me up-close and personal,” I say, even though it’s the last thing I want. “Maybe then you’ll get the voyeurism out of your system.” 

“S’not voyeurism,” he grumbles.  

“Then psychological warfare. Whatever. What I’m requesting is that it stop.” 

“Why?” Snow asks, surprisingly acute. “Why does it bother you?”  

Luckily, Wellbelove intervenes. “Because it’s not polite, Simon. You can’t stare at people for no reason.” 

Snow flushes. I’m irritated and relieved. 

Then he says, impassioned, “I have a reason,” and my throat tightens with anxiety. 

I keep my hand very still on the handle of my spoon. The fingers of my other hand circle the rim of my saucer. “Oh?” I ask. “I hope it’s not me hiding some evil secret.” 

“Simon!” Wellbelove chides. 

“S’not,” says Simon tersely.  

“Then why?” 

“…I want to know you.” 

My hands freeze. I hold my breath. Did I hear him correctly? 

I must have.  

“I want to know you better,” Snow says again, speaking slowly. It’s like divulging the truth hurts but also unburdens him. 

Is this a trick? 

Snow’s face is still red with embarrassment, but it’s also open and unguarded. Yes, there’s indeed curiosity. But there are also shades of a darker distrust that Snow possesses despite his claims. Mostly, however, his expression holds the earnest, agenda-free desire for knowledge. Knowledge about me.  

“Why?” I ask, my voice sharp and rigid.  

Snow’s either giving me one of two things: a gift for Father or the spark that’ll destroy me. 

He blinks. “’Dunno.” 

I want to throttle him. 

What does he mean he doesn’t know? 

“You are roommates,” Bunce volunteers. Her tone is the same as the one she uses in class, when she’s absorbed the material and has arrived at an informed understanding. (I want to hex her for her reasonableness.) “The Crucible cast you together for a purpose. Perhaps there’s something you can teach each other.” 

Snow knits his eyebrows together, dissatisfied. “That’s not what you say about Trixie.” 

“The Crucible paired you with the pixie?” I ask Bunce, alarmed. (Wait, that’s not remotely important right now.) 

“It’s awful,” Bunce confesses. “The pixie dust, Basilton.” 

“I think Penelope’s right,” Wellbelove adds. “You two are roommates. It’s better to be friends than to quarrel.” 

Bunce huffs in irritation. “I said they might learn something from each other, not inflict themselves with Why can’t we be friends.” 

Wellbelove frowns and tosses her hair over her shoulder. 

“Is that what you want, Snow? To learn magic from me?” Good. I sound detached as usual, not like my world has gone askew.  

“I didn’t say that!” he protests. His equilibrium has been restored enough for him to continue eating. 

(I envy him.) (Even if my fangs didn’t drop, there’s no way I could eat now.) (My appetite has completely vanished.) 

“That wouldn’t be a terrible thing,” says Bunce, contemplative. She looks at me. “Simon told me how you helped him with Clean as a whistle last year.” 

I avoid her gaze. “Well, Snow did pervert the spell into a new form of torture. What with the shrieking dirty laundry.” 

“Is that what happened?” Bunce asks, turning heatedly to Snow. He apparently spared her some crucial details. 

“It only shrieked a little,” he argues. (Categorically untrue: it sounded worse than Mordelia.) Then, he brightens. “But I cleaned the entire room!” 

Bunce’s eyes widen behind her thick lenses. 

“It was an ungodly display of magic,” I agree. 

“What d’you mean by that?” Snow asks.  

“Nicks and Slick,” says Bunce, impressed. “Imagine if you could use your power with Basil’s control, Simon. Maybe this is why the Crucible paired the two of you together. After all, this school is too retrogressive to put us in the same room.” 

“If that’s the case, then I fail to see what I get out of this,” I argue. 

“This is obviously a good thing for you, too, Basil,” Bunce retorts. “Simon having control over his magic means he’ll be able to defeat the Insidious Humdrum. Your family wants the Humdrum defeated more than anyone.” 

I release my tea before I crack the porcelain with my grip. “Stop, Bunce.”  

“Why does Baz’s family hate the Humdrum the most?” Snow asks like I’m not here. 

“The Humdrum sent the vampires that killed Natasha Grimm-Pitch, Basil’s mother,” Bunce answers factually. 

I can’t take this. 

I rise from my seat and stride rapidly out of the dining hall.  

Because I have no plan for where to go, I end up in Mummer’s House, furiously pacing the floor of mine and Snow’s room. He meets me there eventually, tie tossed over his shoulder and gasping for breath. 

“Jesus, you’re fast!” he says. “Did you use a spell or something?” 

“Yes,” I lie.  

(Fuck.) (I must have used my vampire-speed without realizing it.) (And now I’m cursing like a Normal— thanks a lot, Fiona.) 

Snow collapses onto his bed, gulping air. After most acts of physical exertion, he turns splotchy red, his dusting of freckles further darkening his flushed skin. I focus on that, the many aspects of Snow, and try not to think about anything else.  

“Penny didn’t mean to upset you,” Snow tells me. “She just gets wrapped up in facts and history. She forgets about people’s feelings, but it’s not that she doesn’t care.” 

“I’m fine,” I say resolutely. 

“…I didn’t know the Humdrum killed your Mum.” 

For once, Snow isn’t looking at me. He’s staring at the ceiling, his hands laced over his stomach. 

“Now you know,” I say, falling onto my own bed. “You don’t have my permission to write about it for our next Politickal Theory essay.” 

Snow turns his face toward me, still lying belly-up on his mattress. “Would you tell me things if we were friends?”  

“Why do you want to know so much about me, Snow?” I ask exasperatedly. 

Do you want to be my ally or my enemy? 

“…Dunno,” he says simply, just like at dinner. But his voice is softer this time. “Just do.” 

Snow and I share a look, like there’s a string pulled taut between us. I wish I could say that understanding passes there, but it doesn’t. I just can’t tear myself away. 

“Then,” I say, “truce?” 

Chapter Text

Book 2: Simon Snow and the Second Serpent

VI. SIMON 

Despite Baz’s insinuations, I do know what a truce is. (Tosser.) 

I only hesitated when he suggested it because 1.) It had been a bloody long and exhausting day, and 2.) my mind was boggled. But I was happy about it. I think. 

If we’re friends, I’ll know what Baz is up to. No more secrets, no more distance. I won’t have to worry about him rendezvousing in the Woods with crazy relatives who hate me or plotting whatever schemes the Mage suspects. 

A truce is better. Safer.  

Baz must think so, too, because he gradually starts acting like he’s gotten permission to demand countless changes to my dressing habits, study routines, and dining etiquette that he’s apparently wanted me to make since our first year. 

“You’re the one who doesn’t know what a truce is,” I complain while Baz reprimands me for the state of my uniform. He does it almost every morning. “I’m supposed to be your friend, not another minion.” 

Baz arches an eyebrow, fussing with his blazer in the mirror. I don’t see what he needs to fix. His collar is straight, tie fastidiously knotted, lapels flat and smooth. The only other first year I’ve seen get their clothing as crisp and clean with spell work is Penny, and she doesn’t have Baz’s iron-hot magic.   

“A truce means we’re merely ceasing hostilities, Snow, not skipping hand in hand across the Lawn. Especially not when the ends of your tie are stained with tea and the seat of your trousers caked with mud.” 

Fine, he’s got me there. (The trousers aren’t my fault— did you know that there are magickal, carnivorous pumpkins on the school grounds? As autumnal lawn decorations, deliberately planted by Watford’s gardeners? And parents send their children here anyway?)  

Despite my griping, Baz’s behavior doesn’t truly bother me. Since the implementation of our truce, I know Baz doesn’t intend to follow up his grumpy, barbed comments with real attempts to hurt me.  

The reason why I’m kicking up a fuss is because Baz’s criticisms of my clothes have two possible outcomes, all of which involve me becoming clean and presentable. Either he coaches me into correctly casting Clean as a whistle using violent threats and excruciating persistence, or, in the best-case scenarios, he reaches the limits of his patience and casts the spell himself. (Instead of turning me into a pile of soot; another benefit of the truce.) 

Baz’s magic washing over me is a strange and confusing sensation. I don’t know if I like it: his magic is hot, like the fierce, semi-corporal aura of a flame, and I’m constantly overheated. But it’s nice not having to humiliate myself barely casting a first-year spell.  

It’s also nice to have someone take care of you. Not that Baz cares for me. I simply like to imagine that his heat, on the verge of being too much and too close, is like the excessive, reassuring presence of someone who’s there for me.   

(I don’t tell Baz this. He’ll accuse me of projecting my orphan issues onto him.) 

“Clean as a whistle,” I say timidly, pointing my wand at my knees. The grass-stains humor my nervous casting, lightening into an olive-green instead of vivid emerald. “Clean as a whistle,” I repeat with greater stress, and the tea stains become fainter watery splotches on my tie, the mud not quite as dark and awkward on my arse. It’s good enough. 

Not for Baz.  

“Clean as a whistle,” Baz says, his voice low and words clearly enunciated. (I often feel that magic is classist.) (S’not my fault that I grew up around consonants and vowels that slide and crash into each other like the surf on Lancashire’s southern coasts.) 

I feel the warm and familiar flare of Baz’s spell, as if my clothes are being dry steamed on my body. When I peer into the mirror, I find that my outfit is perfect. Or nearly perfect. 

My boater hat is crooked and seconds from falling into my face. As usual.  

Baz always makes my boater hat the exception to his magickal aid. 

Still, I’ve got to try now like I do every morning, pointing to my hat and beseeching, “Can’t you just…” 

“No, Snow,” Baz says tartly. “Stay put is a first-year spell. You’ve had ample time to muck it up. Now’s the time you get it right.” 

Wanker.  

With its oddly flattened cap, ungainly brim, and broad ribbon with green and purple stripes, the boater hat is the bane of all underclassmen. Watford requires students to wear it from their first through fourth years. Baz will sometimes watch his own with a maniacal gleam in his grey eyes, fingers twitching, a sure sign that he’s seconds from setting the straw alight. 

But what’s so dreadful about the boater hats isn’t just that they’re ugly. (Which should be enough.) Students are required to keep the squat, slippery hats fixed to their heads with Stay put, an enchantment that prevents them from being picked up by stray winds and sent into the moat for the merwolves to tear to pieces. (Not that many students would mind.) (But I don’t want to get a detention for littering and feeding the wildlife.) 

“Stay put!” I frustratedly tell my hat. The boater slides off like something dead instead of something that lives to torture me. “Stay put! Stay put! Bloody shite and piss — can’t you just spell it for me, Baz? That’s what Penny does.” 

Baz sighs. “What happened to Bunce’s work ethic? She’s going to have to try harder if she wants to beat me for top marks. And no, I’m not spelling your filthy hat.” 

“Your hat is the exact same—”  

“We’re getting food in you before you get more useless,” Baz decides, slipping out the door. His boater stays infuriatingly on. It doesn’t budge a centimeter on his sleek hair when he whips around and says menacingly, “Don’t stop casting.” 

I reluctantly obey him, casting Stay put repeatedly as we leave Mummer’s House and attend breakfast in the White Chapel. The spell refuses to stick.  

“Oh, Simon,” Penny says sympathetically when Baz and I arrive at the table. Her magic holds her boater perfectly in place, her mint-and-violet bow mocking me. 

She’s raising her ringed hand when Baz cuts in, “Don’t help him. Snow will never learn to do it himself if you insist on showing off.” 

“I’m not showing off,” Penny snaps, keeping her hand aloft but refraining from casting. 

“I don’t like bungling up magic in the mornings,” I growl at Baz, shoving bits of scone into my mouth. My stomach could have been half-full of sour cherry scones by now, only I waited for Baz to grumpily rejoin the waking world. I strongly regret it. “It ruins the rest of my day. And everyone else’s.” 

“While that’s uncharacteristically wise of you, it also won’t help you become a better, more practiced magician,” Baz responds. “Stay put is so simple my two-year-old sister could cast it.” 

“You have a sister?” I ask. 

Baz appears to regret revealing this. He ignores me and points at the butter tray. (I’ve already carved away half of its contents.)  

“Cast Stay put on this,” he says. 

“Why?” 

“Just do it, Snow.” 

I’d prefer to cast Stay put on Baz’s irritating mouth, but I do as he says. The faster he gets through commenting on my inadequacy, the more time I get to enjoy breakfast without further shame. “Stay put!” 

Baz then slaps the butter tray off the table. 

Or he tries to. The dish refuses to move. The scalloped edges of the white china fracture under the force of his blow, but the bottom of the plate sticks stubbornly to the table. (Just how hard did he hit it?) 

“Great snakes!” Penny says excitedly. She shoves Baz’s hand away and tries prying the platter loose, wedging the heels of her shoes against our bench for leverage.  

The dish won’t budge. 

“You almost threw the butter onto the floor!” I yell at Baz, horrified. 

“But I didn’t,” he says smugly. “Because you managed to get a spell right in this extraordinary and singular moment.” 

“As you were!” Penny casts at the dish when it remains unmovable. She wraps her fingers around it, but she still can’t lift it. “Good as new! Morgana. Simon, cast As you were.” 

I groan miserably. “Not another spell, Penny.” 

“Simon,” she says forbiddingly, her tone not entirely dissimilar from Baz’s. 

“Fine. But no more after this!”  

Baz complains, “Your hat, Snow—” 

I point my wand at the butter and say firmly, “As you were!” 

Before Baz or Penny can interfere, I effortlessly seize the dish and scatter cubes of the remaining butter onto my scones, roasted tomatoes, beans, and fried eggs. 

While I turn off my brain and eat, Penny and Baz get comfortable conferring amongst themselves, Baz sipping his overly sweet tea and Penny peeling layers of flaky dough from her croissant.  

“But why did it work for the butter dish and not the boater?” Penny asks. 

“Snow’s attachment to butter, possibly,” Baz says. “Stay put is often used by overwhelmed parents and terrified pet owners.” 

“S’not like I knew you’d try launching it across the dining room,” I protest. 

“That is possible,” Penny muses. “But I think it’s more likely because the butter dish was spelled to Stay put on the table instead of Simon’s head.” 

“What are you saying, Bunce?” 

“Simon has a tendency to repel long-term magic that’s less powerful than the everyday magic he radiates. It’s like an involuntary forcefield. Even when I cast Stay put on him, it lasts for eight hours at most. When I cast it on myself, it lasts all day.” 

I pause my chewing. “You didn’t tell me that.” 

“I didn’t want you to feel bad,” says Penny, too intrigued to be concerned for my feelings right now. 

Baz frowns. Then, he releases his wand from his arm-holster (I’ve learned recently that he wears one) (and that arm-holsters exist) and points at my hat, saying, “Stay put!” 

His fiery magic courses down my body from the crown of my skull. 

“Give me some warning,” I tell him, though I’m secretly relieved that Baz is casting the spell instead of me. When I reach up to adjust the boater’s brim, it holds firmly but not uncomfortably on my head. 

“We’ll see how long it lasts this time.” Baz checks his watch. (It’s dark silver and expensive). “Perhaps this will prove once and for all that I am the superior magician, Bunce.” 

Penny snorts. “In your dreams, Tyrannus .” 

Baz glares. I could never tell him that, partly because In your dreams is a wicked spell and I’d probably cast myself into Baz’s sleeping mind, giving him nightmares and a real reason to hate me. I don’t think I’d get away with Tyrannus, either, although I’m the only one in school who calls him Baz. 

“Good morning, Basil,” Agatha says when she arrives at our table, sitting beside him. I’m a little jealous. Today, I sat next to Penny in my rush for breakfast. Usually, I sit across from her and Baz to get another chance to be with Agatha.    

Baz’s gaze flickers over to her and then back to his tea. “Wellbelove,” he says coolly.  

I think he’s a right berk when he acts like this, remote and aloof, especially to someone as sweet as Agatha. But Agatha isn’t fazed. Every time, she’ll smile and tilt her head, sending her sheet of bright blond hair cascading down one shoulder. This morning, her hair is dark gold, slightly stringy and damp from the shower she takes after her five AM lacrosse practice. (Watford’s 50s-era hairdryers are a fire hazard, and Agatha refuses to use Dry as a bone, claiming that magic leaves her hair brittle and lusterless.) (It doesn’t when Baz uses it— his hair is always posh and thick and glossy.) 

“And good morning to you both,” Agatha tells Penny and me, and even though she’s basically repeating her greeting to Baz, the words feel different. Her delivery isn’t as coy, as self-conscious. Agatha tends to act like she and Baz are the lone grown-ups of our group, people with magic but more importantly manners, sophistication, and seasonal social calendars. (I’ve laid eyes on Baz’s Rolodex. His Rolodex.) (Why does he need one when he has a mobile? And lives in the twenty-first century?) (Before our truce, I couldn’t tell whether the Rolodex was a sign of evil or worthy of my pity. I’m still unsure.) 

The contrast between me and Baz is especially clear when Agatha points to her chin and quietly tells me, “You’ve got a little something, Si.” 

I forcefully brush my face. Turns out I shouldn’t’ve. Now I’ve smeared butter all over myself. 

“Brilliant effort, Snow,” Baz sneers. “And after all the work I did spelling you tidy this morning.” 

I almost jump from my seat to get at him. “This is your fault! I ate too fast ‘cuz I was afraid you’d hurl more butter across the room!” 

“What?” asks Agatha, blinking. 

“We were conducting a magickal experiment,” Penny explains. “And now we know why Simon’s Stay put won’t work on his boater.” 

“We have a theory, not an incontrovertible fact,” Baz corrects. “We’d know more if Snow would bother practicing spelling himself instead of exploiting his Chosen One privileges and getting others to do his work for him.”  

“I do spell myself!” I say, somewhat hurt.  

Baz knows I spell myself. He’s the one who reminds me every morning, who traps me in our room and painstakingly guides me through getting my enunciation right. He should know as well as Penny how hard I try. 

“Not nearly enough to make up for your abundant deficiencies,” Baz says acidly. 

“Sod off!” I shout. My blood is roiling, the hairs sticking up on the back of my neck. “You know that’s not fair! My magic isn’t like yours! ” 

“Calm down, Simon,” says Agatha. 

“You don’t know what my magic’s like,” says Baz.  

I fling my hands into the air. (I regret it when Agatha flinches.) (Baz is utterly unmoved.) “I know you can turn it on and off, like it’s the easiest thing in the world.” 

“And you can’t?” Baz asks.  

Of course, I can’t. He should know— he’s got to know— how can he not know, the bloody prat.  

Penny grabs my hand. “You will, Simon,” she says earnestly.  

Some of my rage leaves me. I slump into Penny’s touch. “I can’t control it, Pen.” 

Penny laughs, but not unkindly. She clasps my hand more tightly between her palms. “That’s because you don’t control magic; you are magic, Simon. When I cast spells, I draw on the well of magic that’s inside me. If I stay focused, I can use it however and whenever I need to.” 

I fall into a worse depression, a bottomless, black pit that Penny’s kind touch can’t raise me out of. That’s not how I experience magic at all.  

“What about you, Aggie?” I ask desperately. 

Agatha hesitates. She uses the blade of her fork to carefully divide her tea cake into even pieces.  

“I don’t really think about magic,” she eventually says. 

“But you’re magickal,” says Penny. 

“That’s not all I am,” Agatha replies crossly. 

“Baz?” I ask, even though I don’t want to. (I want to get between a bickering Penny and Agatha even less.) “What does magic feel like to you?” 

Baz doesn’t immediately answer either. But I suspect he’s holding out for different reasons than Agatha. While magic excites her less than dancing and horse-riding, Baz loves magic. He’s obsessed with it, almost as much as Penny, almost as much as me. It enables him to show off in class, convincingly threaten to commit arson, and steal library books without punishment. (I’ve learned that he’s never officially borrowed a single book he’s gotten from Watford’s stacks.) (What gives? I thought books were, like, sacred to him.) 

“It’s like lighting a match,” he says. 

What? “What?” 

Baz shuts his eyes with what I first think is irritation. Then, he explains, “You close your eyes, light a match inside your heart, and then blow on the tinder. That’s what magic feels like. That’s how you use it.” 

While Baz speaks, he raises his hand, thumb and forefinger pinched as if they’re holding an invisible matchstick. He leans in and rounds his lips. Then, he blows.  

But there are no magickal sparks, no characteristically Baz embers— only a gesture. A gesture I’m too dumb, too Normal, too Simon Snow to understand. 

“But what’s that supposed to mean?” I ask miserably. 

“Precisely what I said it does,” Baz retorts. He resumes his haughty pose, arms crossed and chin raised so he can glare down his nose at me. 

“But I don’t get it. It doesn’t mean anything to me.” 

“For once, figure out your problems on your own.” Baz rises from his seat, casting an impatient look across the dining hall. That’s where Dev and Niall sit. As he abandons us, his tea half-drunken, he says distantly, “Ladies. Snow.”  

He leads his cronies out through the immense doors. 

That’s another unwritten condition of our truce:  

(I’d get it down in writing if I didn’t anticipate Baz adding a million clauses and conditions.) (Penny won’t agree to draft a possible version of our contract.) 

Baz only “helps” or interacts with me in our room and during some mealtimes.  

At all other instances— during class time, when we pass each other in the halls, and when we play together on the pitch— Baz won’t acknowledge me beyond a flat glance. 

I don’t know why. The likeliest answer seems to be his reputation, but awestruck faculty and students have already witnessed Baz join me, Penny, and Agatha for two months of breakfasts and dinners. In fact, Miss Possibelf and Madam Bellamy have separately pulled us aside and confided their relief at our newfound maturity, which made me leak magic and made Baz nearly break our truce and murder me.  

If only they knew about the narrow parameters of our conciliation. On Friday nights, when Baz rejects my company, I’ll see him, Dev, and Niall in Mummer’s common room, lounging around and unwinding from the pressures of the week like everyone else. Dev and Niall will usually play a card game like Gin Rummy or Egyptian Rat-screws, and Baz will idly strum his violin. My eyes will linger on Baz’s fingers slowly drawing his bow across the violin’s strings, and I’ll get the urge to yank him by his flawless tie back into our room. 

“Why does he still hang out with them?” I ask, ripping a chewy cord of fat and muscle from my slice of bacon.  

“Mouth closed, Simon,” Agatha reminds me. 

Abashed, I tamp down on my satisfying savagery.  

Penny utters a long, drawn-out groan. She has as much patience for me venting about Baz as she has for Trixie co-existing in their dorm room. “What did we talk about last time, Simon?” 

“Baz needing time and space,” I answer reluctantly. 

“And why does he need it?” 

I swallow hard. “To get over his family’s long-held vendetta against my mentor.”  

“Precisely,” says Penny, pleased by my ability to repeat her almost verbatim.  

“But he won’t call me Simon! Doesn’t it bother either of you that he won’t use your first names?”  

It really bothers me. 

“It might be an Old Families’ custom,” says Agatha. “Basilton is the picture of politeness.” 

Maybe to you, I don’t say. 

Yes, Baz is an unfaltering gentleman with Agatha. He also appears to genuinely enjoy debating magic with Penny. (She won’t admit to reciprocating the feeling, but I know she’s disappointed when Baz doesn’t attend our library study sessions.) 

In fact, Baz is polite to most people at Watford, apart from me and the Mage. Not that he goes around insulting the Mage to his face. (Though he’s written some truly inflammatory essays, essays I had to admit were brave.)  

That leaves me as the one person Baz treats differently than anyone else. The only one who he criticizes and needles and selectively ignores and helps when the fancy strikes him. 

Why do I always have to be so different?  

With magic, with everything? 

“S’alright bein’ different, Simon,” Ebb counsels me while we guide her goats through the fast-falling December snow. 

I’ve been Ebb’s unofficial assistant goatherd since the end of October. Baz mocked me mercilessly when he learned about it. But I like helping Ebb, especially on days like today, when the snowflakes fall like cotton balls spun with the finest ice crystals, gathering in piles that lay thick and soft and glittering atop the rolling hills. Even on the bad days, when we’re tossed by wind and rain, I enjoy herding goats with Ebb. It’s peaceful. Physical. Non-magickal.  

And Ebb’s a great listener. (I don’t think she gets to do that much with the goats.) (Even though the goats are painfully vocal.) 

“But I don’t want to be different, Ebb,” I say. “I was different before Watford, and it sucked. I don’t wanna to be out of place here, too. I just want to belong.” 

“That’s alright, too, love.”  

Everything’s like that with Ebb: alright. Being different is alright, being like others is alright, being powerful is alright, being weak is alright, not being alright is alright. I wonder if I could be like that, accepting of everything, the good and the bad. Maybe if my destiny wasn’t to slay evil monsters. To face down the Insidious Humdrum. 

“My magic won’t let me be like everyone else,” I tell Ebb urgently. “Penny’s theory was right. My magic doesn’t mix well with others.” 

After our experiment, we discovered that Baz’s Stay put only keeps my boater hat on for ten hours, two hours longer than Penny’s spell. Baz was incensed by the shortness of the spell compared to the one he cast on himself, and Penny was incensed by the discrepancy between her and Baz. They insisted on spelling me again to test whose magic was stronger, and I almost went off.  

I’ve since avoided Baz casting anything more than temporary Tidy up and Clean as a whistle on me. Penny suspects that the only reason his healing spells work is because they’re finite— when the wound closes, Baz’s magic disappears. (Baz was extremely unwilling to admit to casting healing spells on me in the first place, but his desire to know why some spells worked on me and others didn’t won out.) (Penny didn’t help get him there, teasing him relentlessly.) 

“When I was a student, my magic was different, too,” says Ebb.  

“Couldn’t have been as different as mine,” I say ungraciously. 

Ebb chuckles. “You’d be surprised. I wasn’t polished like the other kids. Working-class brat from the East End of London. Cockney accent an’ filthy clothes. Half-disintegrated wand. I didn’t look how magic was s’posed to look.” 

“Oh.” I know about that feeling. 

“Yeah.” Ebb smiles understandingly.  

“But they still let you in?” Penny has told me how exclusive Watford used to be when Baz’s mum was in charge. I don’t bring it up around Baz. (Well, not all the time.) (When I do, we get into a terrible fight, me shouting and going off, him icing me out.) 

Ebb shrugs. “I was too powerful not to.” Something both warm and uncomfortable curls in my gut. Ebb is like me. (I was stunned when I first heard that she used to be a student at Watford. And elated. If it was possible for Ebb to continue living and working at Watford post-graduation, maybe it would be possible for me, too, even as a goatherd.) “But my power made me diff’rent from everyone else. Even Nicky wasn’t exactly the same.”  

Her blue eyes immediately fill with tears.  

I’m not too alarmed. Just like dryness is the natural state for some people’s eyes, Ebb’s eyes are normally red, wet, and weepy. The only breaks she gets from her perpetual state of crying are for lunch, goat herding, and brewing tea.  

(Ebb has complained about waking up to a cold, wet pillow due to weeping in her sleep.) (The only reason she keeps herself from crying while making tea is because her tears make the drink as salty as seawater.) 

As Ebb cries presently, I’m not so worried about her mental state as I am the possibility of her eyelids freezing shut.  

“Who’s Nicky?” I ask, trudging back to the cabin and trying to urge Ebb along. 

“My twin brother,” Ebb weeps, blindly trailing after me as tears paint icy paths down her cheeks.  

I half-listen and endeavor not to disturb a hibernating merwolf, snow demon, or flesh-eating pumpkin hiding in the snow. Then Ebb’s words register.  

“You have a twin brother?” I ask, shocked. “Is he at Watford?” 

“Not anymore. It used t’be just the three of us. Nicky an’ me an’ Fi. That was all we needed. Not all the magic in the world. Just us…” 

It gets harder and harder to understand Ebb through her thick, choking tears.  

I do catch her saying, “Diff’rent or not, you gotta hold onto your friends, Simon. ‘Cuz the diff’rences don’t matter. The people you love will love you back anyway. And they’ll leave you. They’ll go… go where you can’t follow… an’ then you’re alone. All alone in this world, more alone than you’d ever been.” 

The awful misery in Ebb’s words, like the sheer face of a cliff, makes me run to her, the snow soaking through my trainers and below the knees of my trousers. 

“I’m here, Ebb,” I tell her fiercely, looking into Ebb’s eyes. They’re so pale they might be prophetic, unseeing. I’m reflected in them, washed of all my color. “You’re not alone. I’ll protect you.” 

Ebb gives me a watery smile. “Thanks, love.” She sniffs loudly and pulls a knotted rag from her jumper. When she noisily blows her nose, I refrain from wincing. “Don’t worry. ‘Tis an old hurt. I just don’t want you t’ experience it.” 

“Ebb,” I say helplessly. Her regrets and pain aren’t a monster I can decapitate. 

She shakes her head, patting me on the back. “Let’s get the goats dry and get ourselves some hot chocolate, yeah? Warmth in the stomach warms the cockles of the heart.” 

Unable to be more helpful, I nod, eager to make way to the cabin.  

In my haste, I don’t notice the goat at my feet. 

Knocking into it, I sail into the air, and then tumble down the snowy hillside, unable to stop my descent. My head spins furiously as I roll, my scarf and blazer peeling away, until I sink on my back into the snowy flats below.  

“You alright, Simon?” Ebb calls out from the distance. 

I stare into the white sky, blinking the snowflakes out of my eyes, my heart racing. Limbs loose and shaky with adrenaline, I struggle to get up, grabbing onto a slippery rock— that then shirks me off, grumpily bleating.  

It’s another bloody goat. I fall onto my face, snow in my mouth. The goat breathes a hot gust against my face and then eats the snow clinging to my hair like sugar. Several other goats mimic its actions, chewing and lapping at me like a frosted bale of straw. 

I burst out into laughter. 

I can’t help it.  

The strongest, strangest, most different mage ever, and here I am, getting felled by goats. 

I howl with wild, absurd glee. It feels good. I go on longer than I should, relieved that at least no one’s here, just me and the goats and— 

Baz. 

Who’s standing maybe twenty feet away. And watching me. 

I try to stop laughing, though a few giggles escape my lips, as uncontrollable as fizzy pop bubbles. I’d be more mortified by my state— red in the face, my clothes soaked and disheveled, my hair dusted with white, snowflakes in my eyes— if I wasn’t puzzled by Baz’s expression. 

He looks like he’s been caught. Like he’s been staring for a while, and now he can’t determine how to properly rearrange his facial features. (My slapstick routine must have been amusing.) (Even I don’t usually fall on my arse so spectacularly.) 

It’s weird. Baz appears to be panicking. I’ve never seen him panic, not once, not even when I’m on the verge of going off.  

The cold has turned his skin pink, cheeks rosy. 

“Baz?” I ask, breathless from laughing. 

He stares. And stares. And stares. 

Then, Ebb skids down the hill, and Baz leaps back, despite being nowhere near me. (I hope he didn’t see a snow demon.) (They’re endangered, so students can’t kill them, only flee in terror.)  

He’s halfway across the field, returning to the pitch, when Ebb has helped me to my feet. 

“You and Young Master Pitch weren’t fighting again, were ya?” Ebb asks. “I thought you’d put that past you.” 

“We have,” I say, confused by Baz’s behavior.  

Ebb lifts her staff and says, “Dry as a bone!” My clothes are perfectly laundered by her magic, and we quickly take shelter from the increasing snowfall in Ebb’s tiny cabin, sitting close to the fire. 

“M’glad you and Young Master Pitch are getting along,” Ebb admits. “His mum was a good sort. Looked out for me an’ Nicky. I miss Headmistress Pitch every day.” 

I nod, not understanding but glad Ebb likes a member of Baz’s family. That must mean something, right?  

Ebb hands me a wide mug with hot chocolate that foams at the top. I grab it gratefully. 

“I’m glad he has you,” Ebb says quietly. 

I keep myself from choking on my drink. “Me?” Our teachers think of it the opposite way, that I should appreciate all the help Baz gives me. 

Ebb nods, getting teary again. “’M sure it’s hard for him. Was terrible what happened. Losing his mum like that…I only hope he doesn’t remember seein’ her die.” 

I’m colder than I’ve ever felt. There’s a snowstorm in my chest, turning my ribs into bands of ice, and my lungs congeal, freeze over. 

“He saw her die?” I ask hoarsely. 

Ebbs shakes her head, trembling and muttering. 

“Ebb.”  

“I really shouldn’t have said anything, Simon,” she whispers. “Mum’s the word. ”  

“Ebb!” I can’t believe she casted on herself. Ebb merely returns to nursing her drink, unbothered by the bombshell she just delivered. (Or as unbothered by grave news as usual.) 

Great.  

Now I have another mystery about Baz Pitch that will torture my sleeping and waking thoughts. 

(Why won’t he tell me things?) (Do people tell others when they see their mums die?) (Our truce, though.) 

“You ought to get back to your room, Simon. Before you get snowed out.” 

“Fine.” I gulp down the rest of my drink, belch and don’t apologize. Ebb does the same. Then, I remember what I wanted to ask her. “What does magic feel like to you, Ebb?” 

“My magic?” Ebb’s tears stop flowing, and she seems at peace. Faraway. “Like tree roots, I’spose. I’m connected to everything in the Woods: the trees, the goats, the dryads. My magic binds me to everything and leads me elsewhere, outside myself. I lose myself in it, but it’s a good thing.” 

“…Thanks, Ebb.” I push out her door, hands in my pockets. 

I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe I was hoping for something else that Ebb and I shared, a frame of reference. 

But that’s not how my magic feels, either. When I lose myself in my magic, I don’t feel connected.  

I feel more alone than ever. 

I blame my morbid thoughts on the upcoming holiday. A couple weeks after I speak with Ebb, Watford is on the cusp of winter break. Students are excited to return home and get presents and kisses from their family.  

Our pre-holiday dinner is particularly decadent. There’s a thick and meaty shepherd’s pie; glazed ham dressed with sweet rings of pineapple; honey-roasted carrots, green beans, and potatoes; and a warm and spicy ginger cake with creamy vanilla frosting, in addition to several other tarts and holiday-themed biscuits. I’d typically be absorbed in all the salty, sweet, buttery fare, but I’m on tenterhooks waiting for a response to the note I’d sent the Mage about spending the holiday with him. He told me I could, but that was in mid-November, before he was away from Watford for over a month.  

His reply reaches me via robin, the bird alighting on the short crust of my treacle tart. It lifts its leg and offers me a ribboned scroll. Inside the scroll of parchment is the Mage’s crisp, slanted handwriting: 

Away on Coven business. Remember to train and practice your spells over the holiday.  

Baz lifts the note from my hand, reads it, and burns it. 

“Baz!” I protest uselessly. The paper drifts onto the table in blackened shreds. 

“Unless you intended to reply yes sir, very good, sir, I don’t see what the problem is,” Baz says, brushing the ashes from his fingertips. 

“You got cinders on my potatoes,” Penny complains. She points her ring at the Mage’s robin and says brusquely, “Fly away home!” Her eyes are narrowed at the bird as it flutters off. 

“He’s busy,” I say, unsurprised but still hollow inside. “Does he want me to stay at Watford? Where am I supposed to go?” 

Agatha gently touches my shoulder. I blush. I’m not used to Agatha touching me. Her fingers are warm and feathery and make me squirm. “You can stay with me for the holiday, Simon. My dad wanted me to invite you last week, but I told him you were waiting on the Mage. He’ll be thrilled to hear that you can come.” 

“Really?” I ask excitedly. It’s better than I could have hoped: another Christmas with the Wellbeloves.  

Agatha smiles, the crystalline light of the chandeliers haloing her like an angel. “Really,” she says in her musical, lilting voice. “We’d love to have you.” 

I’m floating through the air on the walk back to Mummers, a convert to the notion of Christmas miracles. (Those are a rare breed among orphans— trust me.)  

I think about how, before bed, I’ll quickly shower and hurl my few things into my backpack. (I’m not worried about my scant possessions.) (The Wellbeloves always lend my clothes and pajamas and toiletries.) Then, I’ll lay, still-dressed on the top of my duvet, ecstatic for tomorrow morning and the potential of pleasant, Agatha-filled dreams tonight— 

“Don’t go with Wellbelove,” Baz says. “Come to Hampshire with me.” 

What? 

Did I fall asleep while walking? I never thought I was a sleepwalker — the boys in the home would have definitely derided and additionally ostracized me for it— but sleepwalking is the only way I can process what I’m hearing. Which must be a dream.  

Except Baz is too vexed and agonized by his invitation (or command) for this to be a fantasy. (He’s so vexed that he’s ignoring how the night wind ruins his perfectly gelled hairdo, blowing stray locks of dark hair against his pale temples.) 

“What?” I ask. 

It’s not the smartest reply, but at least I managed to say something. For a good minute, I was drawing a blank.  

“Come with me to Hampshire,” Baz repeats, very slowly, like he’s teaching me a spell. “You can Be our guest. You’ll be as welcome with us as you would be with the Wellbeloves.” 

I highly doubt that, given his aunt’s words.  

And the Mage’s suspicions. 

“You want me to come with you,” I say disbelievingly. 

Baz rolls his eyes, drumming his fingers on his bicep. “Has your troll-sized dinner made you as dumb as one? Yes, I said you should come with me.” 

I don’t know what to think. Does the truce still hold in Baz’s house? (I know the Anathema doesn’t.) Baz might tolerate me, but what would his family do? What do they want from me? What do I want from them?  

“Why?” I ask. 

“Why?” Baz scoffs. “Why else does anyone invite people over for the holiday? To suffer through it together, I suppose.” 

“I…I already said yes to Agatha.” My favorite vision of her replays in my imagination: sweet, beautiful, and generous Agatha, flanked by loving parents who treat me like their own son. 

“You can take it back,” Baz says easily, like it’s not everything I’ve ever wanted. “Conversations don’t need to end at two sentences, despite what you’re used to.” 

“Now you’re really making me really want to go,” I say, irritated. “Are you up to something?” 

Baz freezes, his loafers rotating in a quarter circle in the snow. “I thought you were over that. What about the truce?” 

“The truce doesn’t apply to your family,” I say, my tones unconsciously echoing the Mage.  

“So what? My family wouldn’t harm you.” 

We’re close enough to Mummers now that I can see the dark fringes of the Wavering Woods dusted by fallen snow. The trees where Baz and his aunt secretly convened after she threatened me at the top of the Weeping Tower.  

“…They might.” 

Baz’s eyes narrow, his foot crunching on the ice. (Which is how I know, in the back of my mind, that Baz is gunning for a confrontation.) (He’s usually graceful and soundless as a snake.) “And what makes you the authority on my family or any family for that matter?” 

“I know your aunt won’t honor the truce,” I state decisively. 

This time Baz pivots on me fully, impeding me from entering Mummers, my sanctuary for dreaming about an easy, mindless holiday with Agatha and the Wellbeloves. “What in the seven hells do you know about my aunt?” he asks, eyes flashing. 

I try to push past him. “Enough. I’ve met her—” 

Baz blocks my way. (Strong, tall fucker.) He stares at me in incredulity. “You’ve met her—?” 

“And I know she hates me, she’s crazy, and you’re still close with her, despite all that,” I say. “How am I supposed to trust she won’t—”  

“’Close with her,’” Baz says slowly, strangely. “I’m close with her.” 

“That’s what I said, innit? You can’t say you’re not.” 

“And how would you know what I’m like with my aunt one bit?” Baz asks, the quality of his questioning changing from disbelief to…accusation. 

Then, he sees when my eyes involuntarily cut to the Woods. 

As he follows my gaze to the steel-green tree lines, his voice becomes as harrowing as the winter air.  

“Were you there in the Woods, Snow?” he asks, his breath barely visible in the cold despite the fact that inside, he’s probably burning up with rage. 

Fuck.  

I really want to get back to the room now. Or is that a bad idea in case I go off? (Should I be fleeing to the Woods instead, the way Baz and his aunt did?)  

“Were you spying on me? ” Baz asks, walking closer. 

I take a step back, nearly slipping on the ice, before I realize that I can’t let him scare me. (Or shouldn’t, because it’s hard to convince yourself not to be apprehensive of your enraged, magic fire-wielding roommate.) 

“You were there!” Baz shouts, throwing his hands up and stalking away from me, toward the Woods. “I knew it. I knew it was you!” 

How’d he know that? (I don’t care that Baz regularly calls me a clumsy, heavy-footed numpty. I know I can sneak around when necessary.) (Otherwise, I would have gotten kidnapped and eaten a lot more on my missions with the Mage.) 

“What else did you hear?” Baz hisses at me from a distance, framed by the shadowy branches and their icy leaves. 

“Why does it matter?” I yell, forgetting myself as I stomp toward him this time, toward the boundary of the Woods. “You shouldn’t be hiding secrets from me anymore! We have the truce!” 

Before I can grab him (wait, no, I don’t want to do that), Baz spins on his heel and throws open the door to Mummers House. “That’s not what the truce is about, you nightmare! It doesn’t give you license to stalk me or hound my relations!” 

Blood is pounding in my ears, which should make me deaf to everything else. 

But I still hear Dev and Niall snickering from the sofas. 

Spying on and ridiculing and plotting against me like the rest of Baz’s family.  

“I WOULDN’T HAVE TO IF YOU WEREN’T SUCH A SNEAKY GIT!”  

My voice carries through the halls as I stomp after Baz on the spiral stairs. (I’m going to get a noise complaint.) (Another one.) (I don’t care.)  

Baz pauses, almost making me fall down the steps and break my neck. (Like aunt, like nephew, it seems.) 

“You blindly trust the Mage,” he says coolly. Literally looking down on me. “You blindly trust the Wellbeloves. You blindly trust them to use your power, your status, and your bloody martyr complex. Yet you doubt my family. You doubt me.” 

“THEY’RE NOT USING ME.”  

I’m shoving past Baz up the stairs toward our room. (I’d never be able to do this in our room without activating the Anathema: pressing hard into Baz’s shoulder to jostle him the way he’s verbally jostling me.) 

I wish I had adequate control over my magic to spell our door shut. Or time to barricade it with furniture. Instead, I’m too slow to stop Baz from apprehending me outside our door, the wood dark with our old blood.  

“They are!” he hisses. “You’re so wrapped up in your Chosen One façade— in being the golden idol the innocent people slavishly adore— that you can’t see how they really view you: as a weapon. As a magickal anomaly.” 

“The Mage is nothing like you!” I shout. “Agatha’s nothing like you, either!” 

“What are they screaming about now?” someone downstairs says— probably Rhys. 

“Could you two be quiet for once?” someone downstairs shouts— probably Gareth.  

Baz, who would usually respond to Gareth by emitting sparks from his fingers, ignores him and says snidely, “Hah! Why ever not? Because she smiles at you so prettily and says gorgeous nothings that let you pretend you’re a hero?” 

“Look, could you two please just—”  

I slam our door shut, confronting Baz against it, in the silence of our room. “Because she’s light and good and selfless,” I say, my face so close to him that I can see the snowflakes dotting his black hair, “and you’re dark and twisted and only care about yourself.” 

Baz freezes, either because we’re never this close (not since the dragon—)  

Or because of his surprise at my words.  

(I’m surprised at them, too.) (But then, I’m not thinking about what’s leaving my mouth at this point.) (Just doing anything I can to make Baz stop.) 

“…Is that it?” he asks. Surprisingly softly. “That’s why you followed me? Because I’m dark and twisted and only care about myself?” 

Yes, obviously.  

But why does admitting that make me feel uncomfortable? 

I try to push that feeling away. 

The same way Baz pushes lightly past me into the room, his back turned on me. (Don’t do that.) 

(Don’t turn your back on me, Baz Pitch.) 

“I had a good reason,” I declare. (Like I don’t feel queasy saying this to his back as he pauses by the window, his slim fingers resting with unnerving stillness on the curtain.)   

“Your good reason being that to keep on pretending you’re the hero,” Baz’s back tells me, “You have to make me into the villain?” 

(That’s not what I’m doing.) (I’m not pretending.)  

(Why won’t Baz look at me?) (I don’t want to shout at his silhouette.)  

“I’m not making you into anything.” 

Baz clicks the lamp off on his nightstand. 

When he turns his back to me, he’s half-covered in shadow. 

It’s like I’m in the Woods again, watching him and his aunt from afar through the trees and darkness in the woods. 

No— strangely enough, even though our room is better lit, it’s like I can barely see him now. 

He’s more unknown than ever.  

He’s further away from me. 

“You are, Snow,” Baz tells me. 

(Why am I mutely standing here instead of shouting at the top of my lungs?) 

(Maybe because Baz is being quiet in a way that isn’t his usual, superior silences.) 

(This one is darker.) (More foreboding.) (More… resigned.)  

Which is how he sounds, half-veiled in the dark side of the room except for a shard of light that falls from our door onto the startlingly bright, complex, solemn grey of one eye, saying, “You are because you must. Because if I’m wrong, you’re right. If I’m dark, you’re light. You’re what the World of Mages needs - and I’m what they should be without.” 

What— 

No. 

Wait.  

That’s not what I— 

That’s not what I meant. 

Baz — 

—is what I think during my holiday with the Wellbeloves. During my whole visit with the Wellbeloves.  

I can’t believe it: I refuse to visit his house, and Baz makes a home for himself in my mind. 

I feel awful, like I failed to go off and the molten heat lingers in me as a slow-burning star. Space must really itch with discomfort.  

Even when I flush and stammer as Mrs. Wellbelove calls me a handsome young man, it simmers inside me. Even when I glow with pride while Mr. Wellbelove says what help I’ll be in the Coven someday, it simmers inside me. Even when Helen, the Wellbeloves’ nanny, slips me pieces of peppermint biscuit that I eat one after the other, it simmers inside me. And even when I’m enjoying watching Christmas specials with Agatha, stretched out together on the fur carpet, the firelight twinkling on her hair, it simmers inside me. 

The simmer dies down a little when I return to Watford. At least there I’ve got Penny; I’ve got Ebb and the goats eating sprouts of spring grass; I’ve got my difficult classes and my terrible spellcasting— 

Oh, and I’ve got the mystery of the Second Serpent. There’s that, too. 

“The Second what?” Agatha asks incredulously while Penny and I research in the library. 

Penny uses her magic to leaf through an immense, snake-skin bound book, not looking up from Agatha as she takes notes. She’s got notebooks full of them. I think she plans to turn our righteous quest into a final paper. “The Second Serpent. You know. A legendary monster that inhabits the Catacombs beneath the White Chapel. Big snake, big fangs, big issue for Watford’s warm-blooded populace.” 

Agatha looks appalled. “Why aren’t we telling the Mage? Or our teachers? Or the Coven? Any adult authority, really.” 

“Because I’m the Chosen One, Aggie,” I say, waving an unconcerned hand. “I’ve got it.” 

I very much do not have it. It’s just nice to have a problem that I can dispatch with my sword. (Probably.) (Swords kill snakes, right?) 

If only the Baz problem was so easy. Not that I want to kill him.  

I don’t want him to be my villain, no matter what Baz says. 

That doesn’t stop him from acting like a prime example of one. Truce evidently nulled, he regresses back to avoiding me at mealtimes and in our room. I have no idea where he goes wondering the shadowy recesses of Watford’s campus late into the night before I find him deeply asleep in his bed the next morning. 

(How does he expect me not to suspect the worst of him when he won’t let me know where he is, what he’s doing, every time, all the time?) 

(I just want our truce back.) 

“Well, at least something good could come of this,” Penny says.  

I lift my heavy eyes up from my book, frowning at her. “That’s not what you’ve been saying. You said Baz and I should grow up and get over our inconsequential fights so we can focus on more important things, like solving this case together.” 

“We should really leave this to the adults,” Agatha volunteers again, like she has every other hour. 

“I stand by my words,” says Penny, which is also a spell I haven’t gotten a hang of. It’s dead useful: it helps imbue your magickal words with extra conviction. “But at least with Basil out of your room most of the day, Agatha and I can sneak in, and we can do some work outside of the library.” 

“Penny!” Agatha cries reproachfully. “That’s the boys’ dorm! We’re not allowed. And even if we didn’t get in trouble, Mummer’s House is enchanted to keep girls out.” 

“Isn’t it?” I ask. 

Penny nods. “It is, per Watford’s antiquated gender norms. But that doesn’t mean I can’t get us in. I could even do it tonight.” 

“Penny,” I say in awe. 

“Penny,” Agatha says in anguish. 

“Good. We’re agreed. So, while Basil’s out, we’ll—” 

“Wait!” I say urgently. 

This is precisely what I needed. 

“What in Merlin’s name is going on here?” Baz asks, practically breathing fire, when he finds Penny and I in the room one late Friday evening.  

(If Agatha was unwilling to accompany us before, she renounced her involvement entirely when she heard my proposal to drop in on Baz unannounced.) (I’ll try to get her back on board eventually.) (Even though she’s been pretty indifferent to our quest.) 

“Good to see you too, Basil,” says Penny, barely glancing up from her notes. 

Baz doesn’t know who to hex first, me or Penny. I should be more concerned for Penny, given that she doesn’t have the Anathema’s protection, but I doubt Baz would ever hurt anyone else when I’m an option. “How did you get in here, Bunce?” 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” 

“I would. It would put a nice bow on my report to the teachers about you breaking dorm rules.” 

“You won’t tell them.” 

“It would help me secure my spot at the top of our class.” 

“You mean you’re not confident enough to unseat me from first place through academics alone?” 

“Get off my bed, Bunce.” 

Penny huffs and flops onto my bed instead, rocking me close to the edge. 

Baz locks himself into the ensuite.  

Despite her devil-may-care attitude about breaking curfew and entering restricted buildings, even Penny is forced to sneak back to the Cloisters by the time Baz exits the bathroom in his pajamas, his hair still wet from his shower. (When water drips from Baz’s hair, it’s like someone carved him out of ebony and polished him to a dark sheen.) 

Ignoring all the books I have opened on the floor, he steps over my research and into his bed, curling on his side, turned away from me.  

“Where were you?” 

He doesn’t answer. 

“Were you playing cards with Dev and Niall?” 

Nothing.  

“…Penny and I could really use your help. We’re trying to find this serpent that has a nest under Watford. The Second Serpent. We don’t know what happened to the first. It’s really dangerous, apparently. The second one. Even though Watford won’t hire magickal exterminators to get rid of it. Those exists, right? We should have magickal pest control; there’re a lot of magickal pests. I guess the Serpent isn’t that dangerous since the Catacombs are full of dead people. It seems barmy to just keep a massive snake inside the school, though…” 

I wake up the next morning using my book as a pillow, my mouth rough and dry as sandpaper from talking. Baz never responded to me. 

I do find that he’s taken one of our books, though. 

I don’t even have to coax Penny the next time to break into our dorm room. She seems to have gotten a taste for flouting Watford’s historied residential regulations. 

Baz doesn’t agree to help us, although he engages, voicing his exasperation. 

“You numpties plan to charge into the nest of a massive, man-eating serpent armed with book-learning alone? Merlin. You’ll only be helping Watford by temporarily sating the beast’s appetite.” 

He and Penny argue until the moon is high in the sky, and Penny slowly ambles back to the Cloisters, yawning and rubbing her eyes. 

Baz still won’t say a word to me, but he stops acting like my half of the room has ceased to exist. 

Then, Penny and I can’t wait anymore because the Serpent drags Agatha down to its lair.  

(She’s gotta be scared, but also pissed — Agatha was adamant not to be involved in our adventure.)  

Creeping through the Catacombs beneath the White Chapel’s floor, I realize that whatever magic I thought would offset the underground graveyard’s creepiness doesn’t appear to exist. Penny and I blindly navigate a maze of granite crypts, jumping when we knock over mounds of yellowed bones, rats scurrying with beady red eyes at our feet. 

Goosebumps prickle our skin when we hear wet, predatorial slithering across the flagstone. 

It turns out the Second Serpent is second because its mate was the First Serpent. Meaning the Second Serpent is the mother to both snakes’ countless unhatched young, their eggshells thin and membranous. The dark, rope-thin bodies of tiny reptiles swirl inside the colossal cache. 

Agatha looks vaguely nauseous as she sits among the Serpent’s coils. 

Penny is preoccupied casting individual spells on each egg— “Don’t count your eggs before they hatch!” — while I parry the Serpent’s snapping teeth with the Sword of Mages.  

It’s exhilarating, terrifying, and grueling in the way that fighting the dragon was. At least now I have Penny to rely on, who’s ensuring the Serpent’s brood won’t emerge and overtake Watford. Although Agatha’s missing her wand, she assists Penny by mysteriously deflecting the Serpent’s tail— I don’t think it took her to hurt her. Agatha’s so pretty she probably attracts the attention of all sorts of creatures.  

I’m glad to have the assistance of my friends, but I’m also frenetic with the fear that something will happen to them. I can’t let them be bitten or strangled by the gargantuan, reptilian body. I’ve got to protect everyone. I must protect them.  

Then, the Serpent’s tail sweeps behind me, knocking me off my feet.  

I fall and smash the back of my head against the flagstone, light and pain bursting behind my momentarily closed eyes. 

When my eyelids snap back open, the Serpent is lunging at me, her fangs a fatal, pearly crown. 

I bring my sword up as a guard, but I know it won’t be enough. 

It never is.  

“When did a dragon ever die from the poison of a snake?” Penny cries, but she’s exhausted her magic. Her ring crackles with ineffective purple light. 

“Simon!” Agatha screams. 

Through the tumult, I hear Baz half-singing, half-shouting: 

“The union of the snake is on the climb  

It’s gonna race, it's gonna break, it’s gonna move up   

To the borderline!”   

Abruptly changing path, the Serpent’s fangs veer from impaling me to hooking around my sword. Bewildered and enraged, her body lashes around her, causing the Catacombs to quake, raining cobwebs and dust and debris. Despite the destruction that she wreaks around us, her teeth stay drawn to my blade like a magnet. 

Baz keeps his wand aimed at that exact point where metal and fangs meet, his arms trembling with the effort of maintaining the spell. “Why…are you always…such a disaster…Snow?” 

I’ve never been happier to see Baz. 

I’ve never been more upset. 

“Get Pen and Aggie out of here,” I say through gritted teeth, my knees buckling under the Serpent’s weight. 

“Hey, we’re not your helpless female friends!” Penny shouts, outraged.  

Baz steps closer to me and the Serpent. When the tail whips toward him, he barely avoids it, ducking under its scales, broad and brutal as plate armor.  

“Get away, Baz!” I yell. 

He laughs viciously. “After… you were… so eager to… drag me down here… to my death? I don’t… think so.” 

I’m about to put my final reserves of energy into screaming at him when the Serpent pushes down on me with meters of its extensive body mass, using all its feral magic. I’m on the precipice of being pierced or crushed or both. 

Baz sings again, louder and more melodic: 

“Nightshade on a warning  

Give me strength, at least give me light  

Give me anything, even sympathy  

There’s a chance you could be right  

If I listen close, I can hear them singers, oh  

Voices in your body coming through on the radio  

The union of the snake is on the climb  

Moving up, it’s gonna race, it’s gonna break  

Through the borderline!”  

The load of the Serpent lightens, and I stay firmly on my knees. 

But I can tell Baz is fading fast. He’s as pale as the bone fragments scattered across the blood-stained floor. (Thankfully, none of the blood came from Agatha or Penny.) (Just the Serpent.) (And me.)  

“A song is too much for you, Basil!” Penny shouts, clambering over granite boulders to get closer but unable to avoid the Serpent’s flailing body. 

“Please…it’s merely… Duran…Duran.” Baz’s eyes are glassy, both arms flexed ramrod straight to support his quivering wand. “That’s…child’s play.” 

The Serpent’s new restraint appears to be too much for it to bear. It goes into a frenzy, its coils contracting and expanding like celestial rings on the fringes of a planetary collapse. It crashes against the ceiling, pummels the crumbling walls, and hurtles with sickening density and velocity toward Penny and Agatha and Baz. 

My magic explodes. 

When I wake up, I’m confronted by an off-white ceiling I don’t recognize. 

Then, I meet the Nurse for the first time ever as I’m treated in Watford’s fabled Infirmary. (‘Fabled’ because I haven’t been here before.) (Never saw the need to between Penny and Baz’s healing spells and my own hardiness.) (The Nurse is not pleased by that explanation; she makes my concussed head ring as she scolds me for “hitherto unwitnessed levels of prepubescent recklessness”.) 

My resentment for being stuck on an overly firm cot with a hammering headache and a medical warden changes drastically when Penny and Agatha appear through the bed curtains. Indifferent to my possible injuries, Penny wraps me in a suffocating hug and berates me for half an hour. Agatha persuades her to save the rest of her ear-splitting recriminations for another day and asks about my wounds. 

I find Baz standing half-cloaked in the curtains, his clothes clean of dust and blood, and his complexion restored to a porcelain hue. 

I have a million questions I want to ask him — why did you come to save me at the last minute? Are you mental, you could have been killed! — but I end up croaking out (the Nurse still hasn’t returned with a glass of water) (She hates me, I’m sure of it), “What was the song you sang?” 

Baz’s eyebrow shoots up. “Really, Snow?” Lines of tension I hadn’t recognized in his shoulders and hips ease away. “You survived yet another heroic trial, and you want to celebrate with a lesson on incantations?” 

“Using a song was incredibly stupid,” Penny tells Baz from where she sits atop my bed. “What if it hadn’t worked, as songs are extremely liable to do? Then you would have been useless except as snake food.”  

“Next time I’ll leave you to die on your half-baked quests by yourselves,” Baz assures her.  

“Thank you for your help, Basil,” Agatha interjects, smoothing the wrinkles on her lacrosse sweatshirt. “I was worried for a moment that I was going to become a snake bride…”  

“What were you singing?” I ask again. 

Baz sighs, running a hand up the vermillion linen of the curtain. He hasn’t approached my cot. “Union of the Snake if you must know. By Duran Duran.”  

“You can use Duran Duran songs for spells?” I ask, astonished. “Wait, you listen to Duran Duran?”  

My concussed head reels. I thought Baz only listened to classical music played on priceless violins. He actually enjoys 80s pop songs?  

“Yes, I do,” Baz replies scathingly. “You’re welcome.” 

Penny remarks, “A strange choice. Why Union of the Snake instead of a killing spell like Off with your head? That’s famously effective on snakes.” 

“Says the person who casted a Nietzsche quote,” Baz answers. “Union of the Snake is about balancing opposing forces, like good and evil. It was supposed to help Snow meet the Serpent as her equal. Not help him kill her.” 

My stomach becomes a stone. My fingers curl into fists on the bedspread. “Did I kill the Serpent?”  

“You had no choice,” says Penny. “It almost killed all of us.” 

“But you didn’t kill all the snakes,” says Agatha. “The eggs were all right. My dad gave them to a magickal veterinarian he knows. Maybe they can raise them not to be blood-thirsty monsters.” 

Baz is angled away from us, looking toward the entrance of the Infirmary, but I know by the slow furling and unfurling of his fingers, like he’s casting an invisible flame, that his mind isn’t elsewhere— it’s here, reflecting deeply upon the conversation. The breeze from an open window stirs the curtain, the fabric surging and rippling around him, partially eclipsing his face, his form, before it recedes. 

I wish he would get closer. 

“Did I need to kill it, Baz?” I ask. 

Baz shifts ever so slightly. “Does it matter, Snow? It’s dead now. It can’t threaten Watford anymore, which is what you wanted.” 

That was what I wanted, but… “Was me going off the only way?” 

“Your magic didn’t just kill the Serpent, Simon. It also protected us,” Penny interrupts, jostling me with her shoulder. “Even when you went off and part of the ceiling collapsed on top of us, your magic shielded me and Agatha and Basil. It’s unheard of. Well, as unheard of as magickally going off is.” 

“Really?” I ask. “I protected you?” 

“Yes, your magic is capable of both imploding magickal beasts and protecting people,” says Baz.   

“Everyone’s okay then?” I insist. 

“We’re alright, Simon,” says Agatha, but a little tightly, her smile frayed like the hem of an over-washed skirt.  

I listen while Penny and Agatha catch me up on the speech the Mage gave to the entire school praising my valor, as well as the Coven’s desire to interview me to determine if the Serpent was sent by the Humdrum. From his corner of our shrouded space, Baz occasionally contributes with acute criticisms about the Mage and Coven, but he mostly waits. 

And he hums so quietly I can barely hear him. But I recognize the melody: it’s the song he saved me with in the Catacombs. His voice is pleasant, reverberating deeply from within his chest. 

The few words I recollect him casting against the Serpent course through my head as I lay unsleeping in our dormitory. (It was as arduous a fight to win my freedom from the Infirmary as it was to survive the murderous beast.) (First, I tried righteously demanding my early release from the Nurse, which didn’t work.) (Then, Baz tried charming her, which also failed.) (Our combined efforts eventually irritated her enough to permit me to leave.) (I’m never going back if I can help it.) 

While Baz is slipping under his duvet, the words force themselves from me: “I didn’t mean to kill it. Really. But… I also wasn’t thinking about whether it lived or not, in the end. All I wanted was for it to stop hurting us.”  

Baz doesn’t reply, readjusting his bedding and casting “Lights out.” The orange glow of the lampshade vanishes. With the room plunged into darkness, the gray walls buttressing mine and Baz’s beds flicker with spots of moonlight that filter through the gaps in the gauzy shades.  

“I didn’t have any other choice,” I speak into the silence, trying to explain. 

“You mean you didn’t think you had another choice,” Baz corrects me. But he doesn’t sound as severe as I feared he would. Just tired and resigned. 

I don’t want that. 

I rotate onto my side, attempting to make out his expression in the darkness. I can’t; all I get are crude outlines of his features, his calm, smooth face framed with wavering moonlight. “I just wanted to save my friends.” 

“You always do, you unflagging hero,” Baz says indifferently.  

“I wanted to save you, too,” I admit.  

A moonbeam projects down onto the center of the floor, filmy like a ghost. 

“I didn’t go down there for sightseeing either, Snow,” Baz tells me at length.  

My heart swells with something. Joy? Perhaps, but it’s too great, too diffuse, a bit like pain. And sadness. (Ebb must be rubbing off on me.) “Meaning what?” 

“Meaning I won’t tolerate such pedestrian mistakes on our next merry misadventure. Now, do the noble thing and let me get some sleep.” 

“Okay,” I say, grinning against my pillow. “Night, Baz.” 

“Rest now, Snow.” 

I sleep a long and dreamless sleep. 

It turns out that the remaining weeks of the school year pass by in a blur after you’ve barely survived confronting yet another ferocious magickal beast. Unfortunately, that’s not something my teachers take into account during final exams. I’m nearly eradicated by studying and writing papers.  

Penny thinks I should dedicate more time to studying instead of goat-herding with Ebb. She doesn’t get Ebb: “If she’s constantly miserable, why doesn’t she do anything about it?” I don’t have an answer that satisfies Penny’s determination to solve every riddle and fix every problem. When I try to explain the bliss of rolling around in the lush, late-spring turf with the newly shorn flock licking and nipping at me, Penny is revolted.  

Baz stares blankly, unable to devise an adequate insult.  

That’s another thing besides goat-herding that lifts my spirits during finals: Baz and I have renewed our truce. But aside from mutually admitting to wanting to save each other from certain death, there haven’t been any seismic shifts in our relationship. Baz corrects my spell work when it suits him and pretends to be oblivious to my presence in multiple public spaces.  

But at least I have him now. Part of him, I mean. 

I definitely don’t have him when I go running off to the goats. Nobody understands that part of me except for Agatha. When the pressures of final exams become too much for either of us, we escape to the sunny, goat-populated hills. She’s so pretty with wildflowers plaited into her hair and her lacy, white sundress fanning around her.  

(Baz would incinerate my poor attempts at a daisy chain; he’d accuse me of acting like a lord with my flower crown.) 

(I should get him to try to make one. It would be a lark. He’s got the dexterity for it but none of the whimsy.) 

(But didn’t he have that flower-patterned shirt in his luggage? Why haven’t I ever seen him wearing it? I can’t imagine how he would look. When I try, my brain fuzzes out, like a television screen during a storm.) 

(I’m almost tempted to ask him about the shirt when he packs his stuff away on the last day of term, except—) 

“Ahem. Are you listening to me, my boy?” 

I snap back to attention. “Sorry, sir,” I tell the Mage. 

I fidget uncomfortably on my bed. 

The Mage nods, offering me some leniency as I adjust to the sight of him in my dorm room. Without the context of his office, where the Mage and I have always met, my mind is having difficulty reconciling his appearance— in expedition-ready leather boots, a heavily tooled belt, and a sword sheathed in a woven scabbard— with the room where I sleep, study, and waste the hours away like an average student.  

(With a not-so-average detonation rate and kill count.) 

I didn’t even receive a bird before the Mage arrived at my door. Or rather, when I arrived and found him already inside. He was hovering over Baz’s bed and his half-packed suitcase. The Mage is lucky Baz wasn’t the one who came in, he’d have invoked the Anathema for sure. (Though I guess that doesn’t apply to mentors of roommates.) (Does something worse happen when you attack Watford’s Headmaster, which is a fifty-fifty possibility for Baz?) 

“I was saying that I want you to report if anything unusual happens to you over the summer,” the Mage tells me, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. “After your fight with the Serpent, we discovered another dead spot near Wales.” 

“Another one, sir?” I ask, leaping to my feet to do… well, I don’t know what. 

“Yes,” the Mage confirms, lifting his hand and gesturing for me to settle down. “That’s why I need you to be vigilant while you’re with the Normals.”    

I fall heavily back onto my bed. “Yes, sir,” I say, although I don’t understand why a worsening crisis in the World of Mages involving the entity I’m prophesied to exterminate necessitates me returning to the world of Normals. 

The Mage is oblivious to my doubts. He nods and cranes his head toward the door. “You have my mobile number?”   

“Yes, sir.” I pat my pocket, where I keep my folded scrap of lined paper with the Mage’s number. “But what if the home won’t let me use the phone? Last summer, they had strict rules about phoning outsiders—” 

“It’ll be different in your new home,” the Mage cuts in.  

My hand freezes over the note. I hear the crunch of paper. “My new home, sir?” 

“Yes, Simon. Your new boys’ home.” 

“…I don’t understand, sir,” I say. “I’m not returning to the home where I lived last summer?” 

The Mage shakes his head, chuckling. “Surely you can’t expect to stay safe if you return to the same place every summer, Simon. No, tomorrow you’ll be going to a new home where the Humdrum won’t be able to track you.” 

I’ve got to start over in another boy’s home? A place where I’ll be subjected to refreshed rounds of speculation by gossiping social workers, distrustful Matrons, and boys who suspect I’m on summer release from juvie?  

“If I need to be safe, shouldn’t I stay with mages, sir?” I ask, confounded. “I could stay with the Wellbeloves like I did over the holidays.” 

The Mage laughs, bending over to slap his tight-clad knee. “That’s a good one, Simon! Welby is a good man, but he’s hardly an exceptional magician. You wouldn’t be safe from a clan of worsegers at his house.” 

“What’re worsegers?” 

“Worse than badgers, obviously,” says the Mage.  

“But, how— never mind. What about the Bunces? Penny’s mum is—” 

“—A talented magician, yes, but even Mitali is no match for the Humdrum,” the Mage asserts. “That’s what makes it Insidious, Simon. No one can face it except you. That’s why you must prepare by overcoming hardships in the world of Normals. It’s where you’re completely on your own, no other mages to hold you back or be endangered by your presence.” 

I open my mouth to speak, but I can’t find the words.  

“I know it seems trying, my boy,” the Mage says, approaching me. It appears for a moment as if he’s considering sitting beside me on my bed, but he doesn’t, towering over me and gripping my shoulders instead. “Even if you feel alone now, your destiny setting you apart from others is the greatest thing. You’re what everyone wants to be: special. Better than the jealous and cowardly mages who will try to make you doubt yourself or deceive you. That’s why you must trust only your own power. That’s why you must hone it in secret where no one can steal it or use it against you.” 

“…Are people really trying to use my power, sir?” I ask.  

“Yes,” the Mage says, leaning in close, his eyes electric. “Which is why you can’t trust—”   

“I didn’t expect to see you here. Sir.” 

Baz is standing in the doorway. 

With his hands resting in the pockets of his blazer and his head cocked to one side, he could be a model in a poster about disinterested youths. But I know Baz: I know that his stolid, unreachable expression betrays how upset he is. He’s looked at me the same way he’s now looking at the Mage on the night when we first met, shaking hands before the Crucible. 

“That’s quite alright, Mister Pitch,” says the Mage, like Baz was apologizing for interrupting us rather than complaining about the Mage’s sudden presence. My mentor’s clipped tones and furrowed brow remind me of his confrontation with Fiona Pitch, Baz’s aunt. “I was giving my regards to Simon before the summer.” 

“Before he returns to the Normals,” Baz clarifies.  

The Mage shoots me a reproving glance, as if I should know better than to divulge my summer experiences to my roommate. “Yes. Where he can grow to be a more powerful mage.” 

Baz glides into the room, smoother than water. The Mage pivots sharply when Baz gets behind him to resume his packing. 

“I see,” says Baz, folding his clothes. He’s turning out his collars while I’m almost bursting out of my skin. “Well, that’s too bad. There are plenty of extra rooms at Hampshire for Simon to stay with me and my family.” 

Really? I don’t ask, because the more pressing matter is— 

Baz called me Simon.  

He never calls me Simon.  

“Yes, that’s too bad,” the Mage says brusquely. “As the Head of the Coven and Watford’s Headmaster, it is my expert opinion that Simon needs to prepare himself to defeat the Humdrum by being among the Normals who give us our magic. Unfortunately, the Grimms and Pitches go to great pains to separate themselves from Normals and the rest of the world of magic. Not all of us can rely so disproportionately on old magic, cutting ourselves off from direct and undiluted sources of power.” 

“It is certainly a revolutionary approach,” Baz says sanguinely. “Very experimental. Untried, untested. Possibly untrue. At the very least, reckless.” 

“I know that your family has difficulty keeping up with the times, but remember that your headmaster is I, Mister Pitch,” the Mage declares, rising up to his full height, “not your mother.” As he turns to leave, the Mage seizes my hand, squeezing it tightly. I’m caught off guard; we haven’t shaken hands since our initial meeting. “Don’t forget what I told you, my boy,” he says to me, dragging me close to thump a bony, ringed hand against my back and to whisper in my ear, “Now you see me.” 

I feel something small and brittle manifest between our hands. Almost instantaneously, the Mage curls my hand into a fist and presses it onto my knee. 

“Mister Pitch,” the Mage says. 

Baz glares openly. “Sir.” 

The Mage slams our door closed, making the windowpane shudder. 

Baz springs to his feet, wand slipping from his sleeve. “Silence is golden,” he casts with an aggressive jab at the door. 

“You don’t have to go that far,” I say, my fist clenched around the Mage’s secret gift.  

“He shouldn’t be allowed to barge into student dorms,” Baz says passionately. “They’re private. It’s a flagrant abuse of power. Mother would never—” 

He stops, his tongue caught between his teeth. Although I hate Baz criticizing the Mage, I wish he’d continue: Baz never tells me personal things, things about his mum. 

Which reminds me: “You called me Simon.” 

Baz snaps out of his reverie. “No, I didn’t.” 

“Uh, yeah, you did.” I’d remember the one time he used my first name. “I heard you, Baz. You said ‘Simon’.” 

“You misheard me,” says Baz, cheeks flushed with anger. 

“You should call me Simon more,” I suggest. 

Clicking his tongue, Baz disappears into the ensuite, probably seeking a safe place to vent his frustrations. 

Does everything have to be such a battle with him? Though to Baz’s credit, I also have difficulty imagining a non-combative relationship between us. One where we’re not pushing and pulling and getting each other worked up to the point of blows. We mostly resolve our differences physically. But it’d be nice to get along and call each other by name. 

I mean, Baz did offer to open his house to me for the whole summer, even if his invitation was mainly to mess with the Mage. Did he mean it?  

I did reject his offer last holiday, and he seemed genuine about that… 

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to spend the summer with Baz. He’s a terrible partner in a truce, but he’s my terrible truce partner. 

The sharp corners of the item in my hand bite at my skin. I almost forgot.  

At first, I think it’s a magickal artefact, but when I locate the tightly folded seams and peel them back, I realize it’s a letter. 

The thick, velvety parchment and elaborate script resemble the letter Baz read on our first day back in Mummer’s: 

Basilton,  

Your mother tells me you slew a magickal serpent with Simon Snow. In the future, write me directly about such incidents: Daphne’s stomach is weak due to her pregnancy, and your vivid recounting of the episode did not sit well over breakfast.   

I commend you on your dedication to your duties.   

However, rushing headfirst into brash rescue scenarios is unwise. And unlike you. (Don’t lie to me— Welby has thanked me to a disgusting degree for helping save his daughter.) (It wasn’t a wholly terrible idea; you ought to develop a more positive relationship with the girl in the future, she has good breeding.)    

Don’t lose your head. You must accomplish your task without becoming oblivious to our larger goals, no matter how much the Chosen One clouds your senses.  

Cordially,  

Your Father  

(What parent signs their letters “cordially?”) 

I read the letter. I read it again. I’ve reread each line ten times over and memorized the punctuation when Baz re-emerges from the ensuite. 

I crumple up the note from his father in my fist. 

“Alright, Snow?” Baz asks, eyebrow arched. 

I nod, swallowing. “Yeah.” I ball the note up until it’s as hard as a stone. “I’m fine.” 

Chapter Text

Book 3: Simon Snow and the Third Gate

VII. BAZ

How dare they. 

After forcing me to befriend Snow for two years, Father and the Old Families have the gall to tell me that they’ve changed their minds? 

That I’m to act as if we’re enemies again because of the “alarming volatility of the Mage’s Heir’s magic and the erratic behavior of his mentor who could set him off on us any day now”? 

“Situations change, Basil,” Father told me in a reversal of our initial study meeting. “We must adapt, and this is how we do it: by making sure the Chosen One can’t hurt us. By making sure he can’t hurt anyone.”   

Fuck that. 

I’ve worked hard to get to this point. I’m not letting go of Simon Snow now that I’m this close to having him. 

Snow is mine. 

To make matters worse, Daphne is pregnant again, and Mordelia both highly anticipates becoming an older sister and furiously grieves the prospect of being deprived of her youngest child privileges. All summer, she demands that I proactively make-up for the love and attention she’s apt to lose when the twins arrive. When I refuse to comply, she accuses me of being a moody teenager and throws herself upon the mercies of my nauseated and exhausted stepmother. 

While I am a moody teenager, the reasons I don’t play with Mordelia aren’t because of hormones: they’re because life is a miserable farce, and no amount of tea parties with cuddly dolls will make me forget that. 

Due to Daphne’s condition, Mordelia’s wild temper, and Father’s inability to convince me to change the course of my own plans for Snow, he sends me to London to live with Fiona until my third term at Watford begins. Now that Father and Fiona’s objectives are aligned once more (i.e., using me to kill Snow), he believes that she will rally me to the Families’ cause. 

If it weren’t for Fiona’s heavy-handed pro-Pitch proselytizing and anti-Chosen One tirades, I wouldn’t mind living in her London flat. Sure, her borough is located in one of the most dangerous parts of the city. And the state of her flat is horrific. She leaves weeks-old Chinese take-out containers on the coffee table, and her dirty laundry is perpetually strewn over the upholstery like limp spiders in a nest doused with poisonous gas.  

But it’s also nostalgic. Fiona lived with us after Mother’s death until Father remarried. Father was incapable of processing his pain and taking care of his newly monstrous son simultaneously, and Fiona was desperate to retain as much of her sister as was left on this planet, even if that remnant was hideously deformed. It wasn’t a terrible year, our family’s crippling traumas notwithstanding. 

Being with Fiona also gives me license to pour my frustrations with my lot into buying clothes I could never wear at home.  

I max out my credit card (paid for by Father) shopping London’s streets for dark, skin-tight jeans; expensive jackets; and blood-red shirts with ebony flowers, the scarlet buttons done low beneath my sternum. I love every decadent, rebellious scrap of fabric; I’ll probably have to burn them when I leave the city. If I dared to put them on at Hampshire, Father’s hair would become even starker white.  

“You got your eye on a bloke, Basil?” Fiona asks me on the eve of my return to Watford.  

I almost choke on my red wine.  

Fiona lets me drink with her during dinners because otherwise she feels too lonely. Once, she dressed me up to sneak into a pub with her, and my mature appearance enabled us to sit at the bar and throw back whiskeys. She’s a terrible guardian. 

Tonight, we’re in the apartment eating aish baladi— a crisp Egyptian flatbread— with tangy baba ghanoush and Styrofoam containers full of kebab, falafel, and rice. I sneak mouthfuls of food while Fiona’s attention is occupied watching the television. (My fangs always drop when I eat juicy Egyptian beef and lamb dishes; must be something primordial about consuming flesh spiced with the flavors of my homeland.) 

“No,” I say, ignoring how I force the word out. (I blame my fangs.) “Why in the seven hells would you think that?” 

Fiona tips her head back, upending the bottle of red wine into her mouth. (Crowley, her manners.) (It amazes me that we’re related.) “You’ve been focusing a lot on your appearance.” 

“I’m always focused on my appearance,” I say, tucking my legs into my chest. (Levi Strauss & Co., premium black denim, £400, courtesy my ignorant father.) 

“Yeah, I know, you pretty bastard. You look more like Tash every day.” The momentary solemnity on Fiona’s face transforms into slyness. “Which is also why I know when you’re dressing up like your normal stuck-up self and when you’re trying to be sexy.” 

I flush violently. I shouldn’t have drunk that much wine. “As my blood relation, I forbid you from repeating those words.” 

Fiona cackles and peels strings of meat from her lambchop. “Doesn’t make them less true.” 

“I’m turning fourteen in six months. Can’t I dress more like an adult?”  

Fiona shrugs. “Sure, you can. Which bloke at Watford are you trying to look like an adult for, boyo?” 

I deeply wish that my aunt would stop implying that me being thirteen entails my stereotypical sexual awakening. 

I also regret her knowing that I’m queer.  

Usually, it’s not an issue I have with Fiona. The problem lies with Father, who has known about my sexuality for the same considerable length of time and refuses to acknowledge it. Like my vampirism. Like my dead mother. 

Fiona has been aware of and nonchalant about my preferences since I was less than ten years old. Until today, she hasn’t had the temerity to use them against me. 

“Et tu, Brute?” I cast, and the television goes on the fritz. It flips manically between football, non-descript action flicks, and passionate scenes from To have or have not . (Pity.) (I was hoping the spell would evaporate the remainder of Fiona’s Pinot Grigio, but it tends to be capricious about how it avenges the spell-caster against their wrongdoers.) 

“Little bugger— As you were!” The screen settles on a generic gameshow, the crowd screaming as the contestants battle it out for the grand prize. Fiona loves game shows: they’re her ideal combination of brain numbing, hedonistic, and exploitative entertainment. 

“You shouldn’t be able to cast Et tu, Brute,” Fiona tells me, irate. “That’s for jaded 20-somethings and crusty disappointments like Malcolm.” 

“I’ve been assailed on all sides recently, which the spell understands,” I argue. 

“Nobody’s assailing or betraying you, cheeky brat,” says Fiona, stomping the sole of her fishnet-clad foot onto the coffee table. (This is also why I don’t live with her.) (Her foot is perilously close to our supper.) (I don’t think she understands the first thing about hygiene.) “Your father’s plans have changed to protect you. From what you’ve written to Daphne, the Chosen One has managed to drag you into some truly idiotic ‘adventures’. I should know; I did fuck-all when I was at Watford, and your mum did right by laying the law down on me.” 

“And now your way of playing it smart and safe is by befriending and dating Normals? Normals, Fi.” I’ve never understood this pathetic facet of my aunt’s interpersonal life. “Forgive me if I seem uneager to follow your sage advice.” 

“Sod off,” says Fiona, as recalcitrant as ever about her youth at Watford and the mages she fell out with.  

Her attention gravitates back to the television. The emcee yells about the battle between the contestants heating up, their stats becoming razor thin. I utilize her distraction to wedge a plastic fork piled high with spiced lentils, chickpeas, and beef chunks between my teeth. It’s a struggle: my teeth are wide and razor sharp. 

That’s another thing I hate about this summer. My vampirism has gotten worse.  

I’m losing what little control I possessed over my fangs, which are coming in big and hungry. My gums are perpetually sore and inflamed from the hard tissue shifting underneath, like plate tectonics creating a horrific new landscape in my mouth. My sense of smell, which once helpfully alerted me to voyeurs like Simon Snow— I knew I smelled him spying on us in the Woods— is now a constant distraction. I’m inundated with odors of blood and magic, like Fiona’s scent, which resembles a bonfire melting cloves, rubber, hair, and incense. It’s appalling and alluring. 

But I don’t drink blood. At the very least I don’t do that.  

(The smells, though.) 

“You know, it would be easier if you gave in,” says Fiona, face still turned toward the screen. “Don’t you remember how outraged you were when the Crucible cast you with the Chosen One? You finally have a chance to undo it, Baz. To follow your heart’s desires and be free of the Mage’s Greatest Pain-In-the-Arse.” 

“As I told Father, I have a plan,” I lisp, my mouth full of fangs. (I don’t know what other vampires’ teeth look like, but I’ve seen images of wolves, and when my canines drop, we have disturbingly similar dental anatomies.) 

“Which is?” 

“Keep Snow close,” I say. “You know what they say about enemies.” 

The bright blue glow of the television is reflected in Fiona’s eyes, imbuing them with a quality of wistfulness, of envisioning someplace far away. There’s a ghostly pallor to her skin. “Are you sure you don’t have a crush on anybody at Watford?”  

I passionately long for us to move on from this line of inquiry. “Why does that matter?” 

“Might not,” says Fiona contemplatively. “I really fucking hope it doesn’t.” 

Her statement would seem unnecessarily vague and ominous if I hadn’t grown up around elusiveness, double-speak, and subtext as my family’s main modes of communication. (Don’t sit so close to the hearth, Basilton, you could burn.) (It’s what your mother would have wanted). As such, I understand what my aunt is referring to. Her obsession with my possible bloke at Watford and my stalling mission. 

And I will not go down that path. 

No. 

No, no, no.  

I down more of my wine.  

As unwilling to broach the possible implications of her queries as I am, Fiona becomes absorbed watching The Price is Right, following up her dinner with a joint.  

I’m unable to finish my dessert, instead using my knife to disembowel the nuts and custard that fill my syrup and honey-soaked goulash. 

The next morning as we’re preparing to drive to Watford, Fiona casts detox spells on both of us: “Hair of the dog!” “Fresh as a daisy!” “You’re in my blood like holy wine!” “Inebriate of air am I!” and so on, so forth.  

When she launches into a third round of cleansing spells, I raise a hand in my defense and state, “That’s enough, Fi. I’m fine.” 

“Don’t try to look cool in front of me,” Fiona complains, nursing a minor headache that’s making her wand work wide and sloppy. “I saw how much you put away last night. You don’t want to be vulnerable when you show up in front of the Mage.” 

There’s also the fact that I’m thirteen and shouldn’t appear hungover in front of my Headmaster, but Fiona and I don’t care about that. 

“Really,” I promise. I demonstrate my post-drinking Olympic routine, swiftly bending over to grab my luggage and rising sharply to my feet. I could be a member of the Queen’s guard with my clear-headedness, coordination, and hardy stomach. “I’m fine, Fi.” 

Her left cheek dimples in consternation. She knows my limit is three glasses before I wake up with a hangover from hell. 

But I really do feel fine. I’m recovering from wine and injuries better than ever.  

I have a sinking feeling why. 

“Oh,” Fiona says simply, reaching the same conclusion as I have concerning my superhuman healing rate.  

She offers no further comments, and we magickally bind my luggage to her bike before we speed through London’s cobbled alleyways.  

(As I cling to my aunt’s back and press my face into the crook of her neck, I’m struck again by the depths of her devotion to me and/or how self-destructively foolish she is. And she was accusing me of being the reckless one for my eventful second year.) 

(She smells so good. I can hear the thrumming of her carotid arteries, as loud and melodic as drums. I can feel the rush of her blood sloshing like wine in a chalice as we hurtle through the streets.)  

(But I won’t bite. I’ll never, ever bite.) 

Twice during our ride, we pull over on some country road so Fiona can stretch out her legs and pop her back. (I say her age is catching up with her.) (She counters with the topic of my virulent adolescent sexuality.) (We drive the next stretch in silence.)  

Three-quarters of the way to Watford, we pause atop emerald cliffs overlooking the sea. Hundreds of meters west of us, rain pours in sheets over the waves. I hear the distant crash. Poised above the precipice of the peninsula, Fiona and I epitomize moody wanderers: she smokes sullenly, and I twirl an orb of flames between my fingers. (I’m encouraged to do underage drinking and kill minors, but the one thing Fiona won’t permit is me smoking.) (I’ll die of alcoholism before I die of fire.)  

Before we get back on the bike, I cast spells on her sore arms and tense shoulders. Driving three hours over rolling hills and winding, rocky paths is difficult for even a veteran motorcyclist, not to mention the person holding on for dear life from the back seat. (But I’m fine, no aches or pains to complain of.) (I don’t reflect on why.) 

We arrive at Watford around dusk. 

The wrought-iron gates cast long shadows over the Great Lawn, the grass transformed into amber by the setting sun. All around us, the Wavering Woods hum like a dark chorus. 

Fiona almost runs over several of my peers as she weaves across the grounds toward the stony façade of Mummers House. 

“Well,” says Fiona once she drops me off, one leg planted in the dirt and the other straddling her bike, “I’ll let Malcolm know that I accomplished half of what he wanted for you this summer: getting back to Watford intact.” 

“You can tell Father that I’ll do the right thing,” I say, shaking my hair out from my helmet. (I’ll cast As you were when I get back in the room.) (I’m not entering the dining hall with hat-hair, for snake’s sake.) 

Fiona grimaces noticeably beneath her charcoal visor. “You can always change your mind.” 

“I know,” I tell her, eager to get my luggage into my dorm and less eager to change back into my uniform. (At least the design has gotten more bearable now that we’ve entered our third year.) 

Fiona wordlessly gestures for me to phone her tonight; I frown, my arms crossed; she flips me off and subsequently streaks away across the campus, iridescent clouds of exhaust fumes obscuring her from my sight as she passes beyond the gates. 

Inside Mummers House, I speak the incantation to enter mine and Snow’s room. The door swings out easily, inviting me back home. (Snow must have beat me; I see and smell a daub of his fresh blood on the wood.) (That numpty still can’t remember the spell to get inside.) (What a disaster.) 

Further evidence of Snow’s arrival awaits me inside our small, familiar space, even though he isn’t here. (Judging by the hour, he’s in the dining hall tempting fate with a butter-induced heart attack thirty years down the road.) 

Snow’s meager collection of things looks as pitiful as usual. On his already tousled duvet lay a fraying knapsack, t-shirts with underarm stains and tattered collars, creased and faded jeans, balled-up pairs of socks, a well-used notebook, and a ballpoint pen with a viciously gnawed plastic cap.  

If only I’d been able to drag him to Hampshire with me. (Damn the Mage and his interference.) Then, Father wouldn’t have been able to alter his plans so radically; then, Snow might have had decent meals and clothes that fit him; then, I wouldn’t be in this bloody mess. 

I wash away some of my irritation (and Fiona’s rank motorbike odors) in the ensuite. To bring an end to my dreadful anticipation, I force myself to don my new uniform, which is a slight improvement on its predecessor. Most importantly, it symbolizes my rise to the ranks of upperclassmen dressed in evergreen blazers, dove grey trousers, and crimson jumpers, the jumper’s necks so long that the surplus fabric pools around the throat.  

These are the outfits I associate with my toddler years at Watford under Mother’s care. Upperclassmen wearing these same clothes sought guidance with Mother during her office hours and would sometimes endeavor to coddle and cradle me. (I’d respond by glaring and scaring them off.) (I was an irritable child.) 

Now I look as they did, half-grown in my cream-lined blazer, my hair slicked back. 

If only it weren’t for these abominable boater hats. I barely refrain from kindling the straw— all it would take is one spark— and instead relegate my hat to (intact) non-wearability beside my London clothes. 

I hear Snow before I see him.  

The door groans on its hinges, the floor creaks under bounding footsteps, and Snow exclaims, ever obviously, “You’re back, Baz!” 

Merlin.  

The sight of Snow in our new uniform— 

No— 

The smell of him—  

I physically recoil.  

“Baz?” Snow asks, approaching me. 

I restrain my hands at my sides, ensuring that they don’t fly over my nose, saving and suffocating me. (I withhold from covering my mouth, too.) (My mouth: gums aching, teeth stirring underneath.)  

I’ve always been able to smell Snow - to perceive him more acutely than other humans, who, prior to this summer, were generic flesh-odors to me. Snow’s sulfurous magic stands apart from every mage I’ve known. But that vaguely irritating, benign scent is entirely different from the one I’m now experiencing. 

Snow smells like a meal I long to wake up to— like salt and sugar for breakfast— like fatty strips of bacon and gooey cinnamon buns, vanilla icing melting between coils of freshly-baked dough.  

I desperately turn my attention away, toward the details of his physical appearance instead.   

Like the beginning of last year, Snow has lost weight. His curls have been reduced to golden peach fuzz that exaggerates the crown of his skull and the sea-shell cartilage of his inner ears. His lower lip is split, the dry skin flaking like old wax.  

However, despite his deprivation and malnutrition, I can see where Snow has changed, where he’s… grown up. Grown older. 

He’s taller, but not as tall as me. (Serves him right.) His new uniform is a perfect fit, despite Snow’s habit of leaving his blazer open, buttons undone, so his overexcited magic can breathe. His jaw and shoulders are the most changed. Instead of jealously guarding its child-like softness, his lower face has become a series of valleys and ridges: the corners of his jaw are sharp and square, his chin prominent and persistent. Give him another couple of years, and he’ll have smile lines that emphasize his dimples and the gentle slopes below his cheeks.  

Snow’s shoulders are broad like a swordsman, not like a thirteen-year-old student in an academy that emphasizes oration and written language. But his torso has yet to catch up; it’s lean and most likely marred by prominent rib bones. Perhaps his body mass will even out after a year of eating, exercise, and magickal missions. 

For all these changes, what remain consistent are Snow’s eyes: simple, straightforward blue. Every emotion is as clear in them as a change in the weather.  

Right now, forecasts suggest excitement and concern over my mad behavior. But more, too.  

Snow is confronting me the way only he can - possessed by the need to know more. Except he isn’t looking at me like that. He’s surveying my bed, eyeing the clothes that lie on top. 

“Baz,” Snow says, disbelieving, “you wear jeans?” 

It takes me longer to respond than I care to admit. “That’s possibly the stupidest thing you’ve ever asked me,” I snap, the criticism helping to restore my equilibrium. 

(A fraction of it— I’m still dangerously unbalanced, my senses heightened to the point of agony.)  

“I’ve never seen you wearing jeans,” says Snow in amazement, trotting up to the edge of my bed. I step away, unable to tolerate his odor. “Put them back on,” he demands. 

What? “What?”  

Snow shrugs and is forced to explain when I don’t accept that as an answer: “You usually come back in a suit. I never get to see you in casual clothes.” 

He shamelessly scopes the mold of my new uniform along the lines of my body. I want him to look closer and to look away entirely. 

(No, no, no.) 

“So?” I reply. 

“Show me,” Snow insists, a hand hovering over my clothes, seconds from plucking them off my bed. 

I angle myself between Snow and my possessions, so close I can map the freckles and moles scattered across his face. “Absolutely not.” 

I studiously ignore how Snow frames seeing me in jeans and a dark button-up as a privilege he’s been denied.  

That thought becomes impossible to suppress when he whines like a spoiled child, “Baz.”  

I need him to stop. “How are you so demanding after dinner?” I ask, reaching over Snow to fold my clothes and deposit them into the wardrobe. Snow makes another disappointed noise; I stretch the cotton dangerously thin. “The whole point of feeding you is to make you bearable for two hours stretches of time.” 

“Why weren’t you at dinner?” Snow asks, taking advantage of me clearing my clothes to sit himself on my bed. He sinks into the mattress, arms folded behind his head. 

“Get off.” 

“You’re gonna get hungry,” Snow says with true concern, lounging near my pillow.  

I shove him off, moving quickly to minimize body contact. 

“Hey!” Snow cries as he stumbles onto the floor. “Anathema!” 

I sneer at him. Of course, the Anathema overlooks my justified actions to reclaim my bed from my commandeering roommate. “If I get hungry, I’ll get some food from Cook Pritchard.” 

“You can do that?” asks Snow, immediately diverted.  

“Yes, I can.” Although Cook Pritchard hates it when I do. I’ll simply break into the fridge in the dead of night. (With the aid of my night vision, I won’t have to risk using a torch light.) (I’m also stealthy enough to move soundlessly across the linoleum floors.) (That microwave is a nuisance, however.) 

“How?” Snow asks. 

I scoff. “Wouldn’t you like to know.” He wouldn’t if he knew that Cook Pritchard was my cousin through the Grimm side of my family.  

“Show me,” Snow repeats, mere inches away from me. 

(Did I misremember our sense of personal distance, or has Snow’s diminished over the summer?) 

I step back again. “You’ve just eaten enough for five people.” 

“You don’t know that,” Snow protests. 

“Then I’ll ask Bunce to confirm it.” 

Snow has no retort and resigns himself to flopping belly-up on his bed, one foot resting on his dirty clothes and his other leg dangling off the side of his mattress, aimlessly kicking at the air. 

“I’ll consider showing you when times get desperate,” I relent.  

Snow beams at me. 

(He mustn’t realize that by desperate, I mean famine-levels of agricultural apocalypse.) (I decide not to enlighten him.) (It’s too early in the term for a real conflict.) (Was he always this easy to please, or is his sunny disposition the result of a summer of scarcity?) 

When Snow’s restless, he’ll motion as if he’s throwing his little red ball, like he’s doing now, pawing the emptiness above his bed. (Thank Merlin that ball went missing.) (I have no idea where to, despite what Snow implies.)  

His mouth forms around a question, doubtlessly regarding my summer, so I speak first: “It seems that you survived your summer with Normals.” 

It takes Snow a moment to link my input to an adequate output: “Oh. Yeah. I guess.” He scratches the back of his neck and continues to pantomime bouncing his red ball against the wall. 

“Don’t you have anything more to say?” I ask. 

“Nothing to report,” Snow says in a strange voice. 

“Surely Bunce and Wellbelove wrote to you.” 

Snow shrugs. “Got a postcard from Aggie in Rome, I s’pose. One letter from Penny, but that was probably ‘cuz the home lost loads of letters. And the Mage called to wish me a happy birthday at the start of June.” 

The start of June? How can the Mage not know that Snow’s birthday is at the end of the month? The date is a national holiday, instituted by the man himself.  

When June twenty-first passed, I was busy avoiding Father, who was more loquacious with me than he’d been in years. (Defeating the Chosen One is our only choice, Basilton. Surely you must recognize that.) I locked myself in the library and played my violin through the night, singing along to the Beatles and Nick Cave and learning that my progressing vampirism prevents my throat from going raw. (My playlist included Here comes the sun.) (Eleanor Rigby.) (Spell.) 

“You should’ve written to me,” Snow says. 

Oh, my family would have loved that. 

“I don’t even know how to send letters to Normals,” I say, although Fiona must know.  

“It’s the same as sending letters to mages,” Snow answers.  

Really? Shouldn’t we have more efficient postal systems? On the other hand, the World of Mages is terribly impractical.  

“What’d you do over the summer?” Snow asks before I can intercede. 

“Nothing worth noting.”  

(Was charged by my family with taking you down.) (When Father couldn’t sway me, my aunt came in to convert me.) (If I thought matters were difficult when their opinions were divided, that was nowhere near as infuriating and conflicting as them uniting behind the express desire for me to destroy you.) 

Snow’s jaw knots and slackens, like he wants to say something but struggles with the delivery. “Don’t you, uh, have a littlun for a sister?” 

I regret letting that slip last year. “Yes.” 

“Did you do anything with her?” Snow presses. 

“No.” 

“Why not?” he asks. 

“I couldn’t,” I say. 

Snow grunts unhappily and rolls over with his arms and legs extended like a tree sloth. “Baz, can’t you give me something?” 

“I was in London. My sister was not, thank the Seven.” 

“Oh,” says Snow, blinking. “You were in London?” 

“Yes,” I say, resolute not to give Snow more. He hates Fiona enough as it is. (The feeling is mutual.) 

Snow hums in confirmation. I think that’s the end of things when he adds, “It’s hard to imagine you as an older brother.” 

“My feedback was unsolicited during the process,” I say, sucking on my fangs. (Another terrible habit I’ve developed.)  

“How many siblings do you have?” 

“More than you do,” I assure him. 

Snow assumes his usual defensive posture for when I mock him about his orphanhood. “You don’t know that. I could have siblings out there. Maybe my parents…” 

He drops soundlessly onto his bed, either reflecting or cutting off that line of thinking. (Snow does that, derailing every train of thought like it’ll smash through the walls of his contemplation stations.) 

I know what Snow thinks about his parents. When he attempted to coax me into friendship in our first year, he revealed his groundless fantasies: a world-renowned footballer for a father and a globe-trotting model for a mother. Magickal parents who sacrificed him out of untenable circumstances rather than an absence of love.  

I really took the piss out of him. It was one of the many things that tipped our scales toward enemies even when Snow forgot the extent of his hurt and the balance fluctuated once more. 

“You’ve got a magickal family,” Snow muses, boneless on his bed.  

“Obviously,” I’m forced to say when Snow fails to elaborate. “As all mages do. Even you, wherever your family is.” 

Snow snorts bitterly. “Maybe. Dunno. Penny says mages don’t give up their children.” 

“They don’t.” Even children who have been turned into man-eating monsters.  

Snow’s brow furrows. (Another change over the summer: the lines on his forehead run deeper, bolder.) “Got a toothache?” 

I freeze, my blood running as cold as glacial straits. A gap opens between my left fang and the hollow of my cheek. (Stop sucking on them.) (But they hurt.) (Is this what teething feels like? I almost sympathize with the memory of one-year-old Mordelia.) (When the twins come, we’re in for a world of pain.) 

“My dental health is fine,” I lie outrageously. (The roots of my teeth shift again, as if in reprimand.) (No, it’s more likely they’re taunting me.) (Torturing me.) 

“You probably ate too many sweets over the summer,” Snow theorizes, his eyes boring into the side of my face, examining my invisible fangs. 

I did consume too much sugar, but that’s not something I’m making Snow privy to. (One, because my sugar intake was directly correlated to the stress of my vampirism and my familial obligations.) (Two, because Snow has no right to judge me, given his indulgence in fatty dairy products.)  

Bored with the topic of potential cavities, Snow lays his head against his pillow and asks me, “What’re magickal families like?” 

If only he knew. 

You must defeat the Chosen One, Basilton—  

I really fucking hope it doesn’t—  

“Awful.” 

My hand is wrapped around the knob of our door when Snow leaps to his feet and asks, “Where are you going?” 

“Out.” 

“To get food?” Snow hopes, slipping into his trainers, his jumper pulled taut across his spine (too visible, too knobby) and back muscles (surprisingly defined). 

“I don’t believe these qualify as desperate times, Snow,” I say. They’re desperate for me, not him. 

“Still, I’ll go with you,” says Snow. “Penny’s probably in the library.” As he readjusts his blazer, Snow’s appetizing aroma wafts through the air, like open windows in the kitchen of my favorite diner.  

My nostrils flare, and I race down the stairs and out of Mummer’s House, Snow pumping his legs to keep abreast of me. 

(Great Snakes, fresh air.) (Thank you.) 

The evening campus is quiet. Stray upperclassmen wander across the moonlit lawn, talking in hushed voices, as if their words will rupture the purple-shadowed tranquility. Even though the autumnal wind is too low in temperature to be entirely comfortable to me, I slow my pace, listening to the mixture of human and animal heartbeats, the susurrant trees, and the softness of Snow’s breath. 

He exhibits the same easy patience as I do, ambling alongside me. 

I think this is the first time we’ve shared a peaceful moment between us. Often our respites come after blow-outs, Snow spent from screaming and I from seething.  

Meandering across the dark grounds, errant clouds causing the moonlight to dance across the grass and intermittently illuminate the faint smile on Snow’s face, is something we’ve never done. We haven’t experienced wordless serenity together. 

I walk a little slower. 

We’re outside the library when our harmonious silence is broken: 

“Oi, you’re back.” 

Dev and Niall are exiting the White Chapel, bags slung over their shoulders. 

They stare at me and Snow in befuddlement. 

Snow and I stare back before I realize that Snow and I don’t jointly stare at my minions.  

“Gentlemen,” I say, squaring my shoulders.  

“Alright, Basil?” asks Niall, his attention divided between me and Snow. I haven’t seen Niall since the end of May; the months have altered him, made him thinner, longer, but he’s not as drastically transformed as Snow. (His scent isn’t as potent, either; it’s sour-sweet and crisp as an apple.) “You missed dinner.” 

“Something I intend to rectify,” I say, because I’m certainly not accompanying Snow into the library to lounge with Penelope Bunce. 

“If you break into the kitchen, you’re gonna turn Cook Pritchard off all the cousins,” Dev complains, hands stuffed in his pockets and his gait wide. He wears a supercilious expression on his broad face. Unlike Niall, I’ve seen him twice over the summer and watched him become more solid, more severe. Whatever formidable pose he’s trying to put into effect, however, is a pale imitation of Fiona. (His odor is similar to Niall’s: faint and unripe, barely floral, fruity, and muddy.)  

“You’re related to Cook Pritchard?” Snow asks me, astonished. “That’s how you get extra food?” 

“Upset your Chosen One privileges don’t work on everyone, Snow?” Dev asks, sneering. 

Snow glares at him, fists bunched like a Normal. Confused and contemptuous, Dev and Niall take almost imperceptible steps back, resistant to being in the blast-radius of Snow’s magic and his knuckles. 

(They needn’t be so concerned; Snow won’t blow up on them.) (I’m the only one who can work him into such a strop.) 

(I wonder if his volcanic magic will feel different after the summer.) 

“Go along to Bunce,” I tell Snow, waving my hand. “And tell her no amount of preliminary work will allow her to surpass me.” 

“Baz,” Snow growls, his one-word statement communicating either sod off or come with me. 

I chose the former interpretation and wait until Snow stomps away, glaring daggers at Dev and Niall in his wake. 

They breathe more easily when he disappears into the library. 

And immediately turn on me. 

“What are you doing—” 

“Didn’t you get the memo? Snow’s our enemy again—” 

“Is this a plot—” 

“Uncle Malcolm’s gonna be pissed—” 

“Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?” I quote, not practiced enough to infuse Hamlet’s accusation with magic. 

“I’m not fucking Guilderstein,” Dev protests, mainly capable of identifying the line from listening to hours-long Shakespeare readings at Old Family get-togethers. (They’re the only aspects of those parties that I enjoy.) (Dev loathes them.) 

Niall crosses his arms and frowns. “What’s your plan?” 

“The same as before,” I say. “Stay close to Snow. Defeat the Mage. Stop the Humdrum.” 

“But the Families want us to defeat the Mage by eliminating Snow,” Dev says, exasperated. 

“What about the Humdrum?” I counter. 

“Is Snow really capable of stopping it?” Niall asks, and none of us answer.  

We know Snow’s ridiculous, God-like powers. But the Humdrum is a mystery. 

“Gentlemen, Snow’s roommate these past two years hasn’t been the Families or my father,” I assert. “It’s been me. I know what needs to be done.” 

“But wouldn’t it be easier to just get rid of him?” Dev asks, looking like he wants to start a riot. Niall nods in support. 

“No.” 

Unable to make Dev and Niall see logic at this juncture, I bid them goodnight, commit to persuading them tomorrow, steal far too many cold-cut sandwiches and bags of salt-and-vinegar crisps from the kitchen, and return to the dorm. 

I’m exhausted after I rapidly consume my food to ensure Snow won’t get a glimpse of my fangs. After I prepare for bed, I spell my mouth to allay the throbbing. I bury my nose in my pillow to block Snow’s fragrance that has diffused throughout the room. 

I’m awoken at two in the morning by my unbearable fangs half-breaking through my gums and vibrating in my skull. 

(Damned healing spells.) (They’re always only temporary.) (I’d ask Father or Fiona for advice if it didn’t mean betraying my advancing monstrosity.) 

Snow is asleep across from me, duvet bunched low beneath his shirtless stomach. 

With my night-vision, I can see every mole and scar; the ribcage that I knew would be glaringly present; the scars from his previous battles; and the minute motions of his beating heart, stirring like something fragile, something winged. 

I seal my eyes shut, nearly force my breathing to cease, and drift into undead sleep. 

Chapter Text

Book 3: Simon Snow and the Third Gate

VIII. SIMON

“Simon, I swear to Morgana—if you say another word about Basil, I will spell you silent for a week,” Penny promises. 

“But Pen!” I cry as we climb the hills near Ebb’s hut. (I convinced Penny to greet Ebb with me to start off the new school year.) (Ebb saw how much I grew, and how poorly I fared at the boys’ home, and she sobbed for the duration of our meeting.) (Penny offered to spell Ebb’s tears dry multiple times, but Ebb didn’t hear the threat in her words and gently rejected her help.) “I thought you liked solving mysteries.” 

“Mysteries that involve the school and the larger World of Mages,” Penny clarifies. “Not Basilton’s family.” 

The moment I arrived at Watford and re-united with Penny in the dining hall, I told her about Baz’s letter from his dad. I didn’t write to her about it because I knew I wouldn’t be able to communicate its significance in writing. 

That was the one thing I thought about the most in addition to magic and Watford while I languished in my new boys’ home, another brutal brick building in Liverpool.  

I poured over the letter, trying to understand it. (Baz has a stepmother?) (He’s an older brother? Wait, I knew that. He’s gonna have another little sibling?) (What does his dad mean by his duties?) 

(And what does it have to do with me?) 

I was so fixated on the scrap of paper, weakening its integrity with a network of folds from my constant rereading, that one of the boys dared to mention it. And the boys never talk to me. 

(When I think about it now, he was probably jealous and lonely and misinterpreted my letter. I wasn’t feeling quite as empathetic then:) 

“Got a letter from your crazy girlfriend, Snow?”  

“…No.”  

“Boyfriend, then?”  

“Sod off.”  

“That is your boyfriend! You got a crazy poufter!” 

I punched a Normal for the first time in my life. The Matron wouldn’t let me eat dinner, which was the worst injustice I’d faced at a boys’ home to date.  

But I don’t regret it. That boy was being disgusting; this was a letter from Baz’s dad’s, for Christ’s sake. (Fuck, I mean Merlin’s sake.) (I’m trying to get better at cursing like a mage.)  

Weirdly enough, when the boy taunted me, I thought he was referring to Baz. That he was calling Baz my boyfriend. 

Anyway, I was no closer to decoding the letter when the school year resumed, and who better to go to for help than Penny? 

“The Mage secretly gave it to me, so it must be important,” I tell her. 

Penny huffs, either from indignation or from trudging up the hills. “The Mage shouldn’t have been snooping around in Baz’s stuff.” 

That also makes me uneasy, but I brush the feeling aside. “He was just trying to help me, Penny. He doesn’t trust Baz’s family, and it’s not too hard to see why. You should’ve been there when I met his aunt. She treated me like I was a poisonous viper, and she didn’t even know me.” 

“So, what’s this letter supposed to prove, Si?” Penny asks, lowering her voice as we approach the Great Lawn. “That Basil’s family is up to no good? That he’s planning something?” 

“…Maybe.” 

“But there’s nothing conclusive in that letter, other than Basil having to put up with another sibling, for which he has my pity.” 

“What about the stuff his dad says about not losing his head or forgetting his family’s goals?” I ask.  

“He could be talking about Basilton’s school work,” Penny says dismissively; she would believe that schoolwork is as cut-throat and all-consuming as plotting a coup. “He has his mum’s legacy to live up to. I don’t think his dad would let him forget that.” 

I grunt, dissatisfied with this conclusion but incapable of verbalizing why. (Penny’s not wrong about Baz’s obsession with studying; it’s what makes them so similar.) (I hadn’t equated it with his memories of his mum.) (At the same time, I think he simply enjoys learning; he brings additional books to our room every year.) 

“Simon! Penny!” Agatha calls out to us, jogging elegantly across the lawn, her long hair and skirt waving behind her. 

“Hey, Aggie,” I say dumbly, unused to how much more beautiful Agatha has become.  

She smiles, her mouth twinkling with her strawberry lip-gloss. “I thought you’d be at the pitch.” 

“Why?” Penny asks excitedly. “Has there been an attack?” 

Agatha rolls her eyes. “Thankfully, no. They’re having trials for the football team. Aren’t you giving it a go, Simon? You love football.” 

“Uh,” I say, kicking my heel. “Coach Mac said it probably wouldn’t work. ‘Cuz of my missions with the Mage and stuff. They don’t follow the schedule of the football season. I can still go on the pitch and play for fun, though.” 

Agatha’s eyes soften; they’re as warm and dreamy as hot chocolate. “Maybe next year,” she says. “When your missions calm down.” 

“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.”  

Although I suspect that my missions will only increase from here on out. When the Mage called me over the summer to wish me a happy birthday, he also reminded me to keep my blade sharp for my upcoming battles. I realized by blade that he meant me and my dangerousness as opposed to the Sword of Mages, which I didn’t touch throughout the summer. I also didn’t use my wand, despite Miss Possibelf’s suggestions for strengthening my spell work. Instead, my wood-and-bone wand collected dust in my knapsack, which I kept securely under me like a pillow as I poured over Baz’s dad’s letter. 

“You’re not going to watch Basil at the trials, then?” Agatha asks. 

I snap violently back to the present. 

Penny groans. 

“What?” I yell. “Baz is trying out for the football team?” 

“I am not sitting through football tryouts and you continuing to fuss over Basil,” Penny says. 

I’m already striding toward the pitch, Agatha trotting shortly behind me and Penny following despite her claims.  

“He didn’t tell me he was going for the team,” I complain, thinking about the many opportunities when it could have come up in conversation. When Baz was criticizing my outfit, my reading, my table manners, my incantations… “Why didn’t he say anything?” 

“What do you mean by Simon fussing over Basil?” Agatha asks Penny. 

During matches between Watford and other schools, the football stadium is typically filled to capacity. The original 16th century wooden stands are enchanted to miraculously support throngs of purple-and-green-clad fans and hecklers. The crowd observing football trials is much thinner. Winds drive away the mildly curious, leaving those who support their friends scattered low on the grass. 

I quickly secure a spot just on the edge of the pitch. I can see prospective players dressed in green kits completing drills under the supervision of Coach Mac and Watford’s official team members, tall and muscled upperclassmen wearing deep purple kits emblazoned with the school crest. 

Baz is in a group with two other prospective players. They look nervous; Baz looks blasé, like he competes in football trials all the time. (Maybe he does.) (It’s not like he tells me the one time he does try for Watford’s team.)  

During his group exercises, Baz effortlessly bounces their rubber ball against the side of his foot, the tips of his toes, the crown of his head, and the center of his chest. If it wasn’t for his green shirt and shorts, I would have thought he was already on the team.   

While I watch standing at full attention, Penny and Agatha sit on Penny’s enchanted jumper, using their hands to fasten the wind-borne pleats of their skirts against their thighs. 

Penny hands Agatha Baz’s dad’s letter. “Here.” 

Agatha handles it primly, confused by the tears and smudges on the expensive piece of parchment. “What is it?” 

“A letter from Basil’s dad to Basil,” says Penny.  

Agatha immediately folds the letter closed on her lap, although she seems tempted to peek inside. “How did you get this letter? Did Basil give it to Simon?” 

“No,” I admit, half-listening to the conversation and half-watching Baz warm-up with stretches. Are all footballer kits as short as Baz’s? It doesn’t seem like it, but then I suppose most players’ legs aren’t as long. Baz’s upper and lower legs are endless ropes of slender muscle that I don’t typically witness from a distance. When I play Baz on the pitch, it’s face-to-face, our knees knocking and legs twisting around each other. “The Mage did.” 

“How in Merlin’s name did the Mage get Basil’s letter?” Agatha asks. 

“My point exactly,” says Penny. 

“No, you said it didn’t have anything explicitly incriminating in it,” I say. 

“Which it doesn’t,” Penny insists. 

“’Incriminating’?” Agatha repeats, appalled. “Why would you even think that?” 

“Simon thinks the letter contains Basil’s family’s evil plans, which the Mage is trying to reveal to him,” Penny says incredulously. 

“Simon,” Agatha says, exhaling wearily. 

“It could be true!” I exclaim.  

“It could be,” Penny allows. “But the letter alone isn’t proof. There’s nothing definitive in it. Think about it, Simon. If Basilton’s father was really plotting something, do you think he’d be so dumb as to put that information in a letter that the Mage and his men could easily intercept?” 

Penny’s right, as always, so I grumble incoherently and turn my full attention to the pitch.  

Baz (and the rest of the aspiring players) are almost ready. 

“I thought you and Basil were friends again,” Agatha complains, arms crossed against the cold and unwilling to cast You’re getting warmer.   

“We are,” I say. “It’s just…” 

Coach Mac separates the footballers into two teams and makes them play against each other. The moment the whistle blows, Baz claims the ball. He’s on it in an instant. As he kicks it across the pitch, both amateur and experienced players struggle to catch up, Baz’s feet surging impossibly fast across the grass, his black hair whipping behind him. The opposing side’s defense intervenes, but he pivots around them with the finesse of a dancer, shuffling the ball deftly between his boots.  

When he’s at an acute angle to the goalpost, so sharp his opening is barely a sliver, he halts for a moment, draws his leg back high, and kicks the ball toward the net of the opposing team. The goalkeeper is too stunned and slow to obstruct the ball’s path. It hits the net with such force that the braided polyester strains toward the stands, the aluminum bars vibrating. Once the ball loses velocity and gravity takes over, the goalkeeper slowly and dazedly retrieves it, stumbling like a sleepwalker.  

Some of players on the field cheer weakly for Baz. Others curse him out. They’re all wide-eyed and daunted.  

“Simon!” Penny shouts in my ear. I flinch and tackle an unsuspecting tree with my shoulder, a sneak attack that’s significantly more painful for me than the tree. “You were saying about Basil.” 

“Ow. Right.” I rub my arm and watch vicious triumph spread across Baz’s face. As he backs onto his team’s side of the pitch, he glides effortlessly, avoiding his winded teammates, his own breathing even and slow. “Doesn’t he seem… different to you?” 

Penny appears flummoxed, Agatha meditative. 

“Everybody seems different after the summer,” says Agatha. “You’re different, too, Simon.” 

I flush at the possibility of Agatha’s praise, although she might be commenting on my emaciation. I pretend that she means that I look more mature, like the Chosen One I’m supposed to be.  

“Are you saying Basil changed other than growing up?” Penny asks.  

“Dunno.” 

Some of Baz’s teammates try to talk to him. He pretends most of them are inanimate fixtures of the pitch that require no response, except for the seniors, who push into Baz’s space, thumping his back and dripping sweat on his jersey. Baz goes stock-still and does that thing again: his cheeks hollow. I make out the shadowy impressions of his teeth against his suctioned skin. He frowns as if they’re hurting him.  

“He just seems different,” I repeat. “Different from other mages, too.” 

Penny and Agatha don’t understand me.  

“And?” asks Agatha. “What does it matter if Basil’s exceptional?” 

Her praise bothers me, even though she’s probably right, given Baz’s dominance of the football trials. “I didn’t say exceptional.” 

“Then what do you mean by different?” Penny presses, impatiently bouncing her knee. Agatha shivers from the cold while waiting for me to arrive at my point.  

“I’m saying—!” I start fervently, too fervently; Agatha winces, and Penny scoots away from me, so I drop my voice and continue, “doesn’t he ever remind you of a magickal creature, like a vampire?” 

“SIMON!” Penny cries and leaps to her feet. 

The students watching the practice match redirect their attentions toward us, specifically Penny’s horrified outburst. The players on the field mimic them. As does Baz, his face changing when he recognizes us. 

Seven hells.  

I crouch low on Penny’s spelled jumper with the haste of a soldier ducking below the line of fire, tugging at skirt and imploring, “Calm down, Pen!” 

Agatha assists, yanking at Penny and urgently hissing at me, “you can’t say stuff like that, Simon! Calling someone a vampire is a serious accusation!” 

“But vampires are—” 

“Silence is golden!” Penny casts, dropping to her knees. 

The spell surrounds the three of us with the intangible walls of a noise-cancelling orb, golden particles of silence floating through the air. Prohibited from eavesdropping, our onlookers begrudgingly return to observing the trials. The football players resume their game, their focuses somewhat restored.  

Baz kicks the ball mercilessly away from his foes and teammates, visibly bothered by our presences in the sidelines. 

“What do you mean by a serious accusation?” I ask Agatha. “We have tons of magickal creatures at Watford. Like Trixie and Elspeth.” 

Agatha shakes her head. 

Penny elaborates, “Pixies are annoyances, not beings that suck blood and Turn people. Honestly, Simon. It’s like you never listen during Magickal History.” 

I don’t. I drift off thinking about how much more productive I’d be learning how to whittle with the Sword of Mages. Even though I’d probably lose a thumb, I’d still accomplish more amputating myself than listening to our teacher. (The only reason I don’t try my hand at sword-based woodworking is that I’m not sure if Baz or Penny would lower their standards to heal me.) 

Penny sighs, disturbingly privy to my private thoughts. “After the Tragedy of Watford— that’s what they call Basil’s mum’s death—the Coven and Old Families drove all the vampires they could find out of England. It was the one time the Mage’s men and Basil’s family worked together. The Mage tracked down the vampires with his magickal artefacts, and the Grimms and Pitches used their fire magic to eradicate them and scare the remaining vampires out of the country for good. Mum and Dad say those were dark times, and not just because no one was prepared for Natasha Grimm-Pitch’s death. It used to be that when the Coven couldn’t prove a vampire had killed somebody, they defanged them as a precaution. But after the raids, the Mage made vampirism punishable by death.”   

I imagine faceless mages pinning Baz to the ground, forcing his mouth open and ripping his canines out of his skull. I shiver.  

Then the image of the Mage impaling Baz’s chest with his sword comes into my mind. I vibrate in my very bones, the way the magickal steel of my own blade trembles when it crashes upon hard rock. 

“So, vampires are like goblins and the Humdrum’s creatures,” I conclude, antsy to return to familiar terrain. I know those monsters. I know what to do with them. 

(Right?) 

“Yes, they’re dangerous, dark creatures, Simon,” says Agatha. “So, you mustn’t accuse Basil of being one. It’s a terrible thing to say.” 

I nod, chastened. 

(But the knots won’t unravel in my gut.)  

(I envision hooked, white teeth.)  

(I think about Baz.) 

Penny leans back on her elbows and blows her fuchsia curls out of her face, declaring, “Now that’s enough about Basilton. If this goes on, I’m creating a rule, Simon— I’m warning you. You too, Agatha. I’ve overheard enough mindless twittering in the Cloisters about the beautiful Basilton Pitch.” 

Now I’m confronted by a very different sort of shocking news. It’s equally unsettling. “You have? Who’s talking about Baz?” 

“They’re just having fun, Penelope,” Agatha says light-heartedly, examining the imperfections in her white nail polish. “Boys gossip about us, too.” 

“Which boys are talking about you?” I demand to know. 

Agatha merely giggles and uses the blade of her hand to draw back her curtain of golden hair. Penny reaches across her jumper to kick me in the leg.  

“Penny!” I shout, clutching my shin. 

She huffs. “I’ve had enough of thirteen-year-olds ignoring their studies to obsess over shallow and hopeless fancies. Do you know how long Trixie kept me up last night talking about the fittest girls at Watford? If there’s anything worse than her being a pixie, it’s Trixie’s gay awakening after her summer of love.” 

“I don’t think you’re allowed to say that,” Agatha replies. 

I think they’re both missing the point. “Trixie’s gay?” 

“There’s nothing wrong with her being gay,” says Agatha defensively. 

“If you’re disappointed because you think Trixie’s cute, please do control yourself, Si,” says Penny drily. 

“That’s not what I meant,” I respond to both Agatha and Penny. “I was surprised, that’s all.” 

I didn’t think people had stuff like that figured out yet: their sexualities and everything. 

Not that I need to figure mine out.  

I know what I want. 

It’s Agatha.  

Who wouldn’t want her? She’s untouchably beautiful, composed under pressure, and graceful, although that might be the result of her posh upbringing.  

These reasons are so obvious that I don’t need to think about them. Not like Trixie and her explorations, or like Watford’s blokes who covertly gather to discuss the most desirable girls in school. 

I mean, what is there to think about? 

At dinner, Baz is back in his uniform, looking utterly different than he did on the pitch. Had I not been there, I would have never suspected he spent hours getting buffeted by the wind and racing through the mud, stealing ball after ball and sailing them into the net.  

He’s not happy when he arrives at our table, loudly dropping his dinner tray beside Penny’s. 

(Why does he even bother? I only see him drink tea and eat infrequent bits of bread.) 

(Why doesn’t he eat in front of me?) 

“Must you create a scene everywhere you go?” he asks Penny, Agatha, and I.  

Penny hums around her forkful of steak and kidney pie, feigning ignorance. “Whatever are you talking about, Basilton?” 

“Your stunt at the pitch,” Baz says, glaring. “Coach Mac is considering barring spectators in the future.” 

“Sorry,” says Agatha, a bit sheepish. “We didn’t mean to cause a fuss.” 

Baz gives Agatha a look that he reserves for her alone, a subtle glance that I can’t begin to decipher. I don’t know if Agatha comprehends him or if she pretends to. Nevertheless, she does what she always does, blinking her long, pale eyelashes and smiling angelically, as if her charm will cut to the heart of Baz’s dark and opaque meaning.  

(I hate whatever’s happening.)  

“Something tells me it wasn’t your fuss, Wellbelove,” Baz replies coolly. (He’s always cool with Agatha.) (How does he manage it? When I talk to her, I feel like I’m in the beginning stages of going off.) 

Baz’s gaze swivels toward me. “Well, Snow? What’s your excuse?” 

I shrug unapologetically. “You should’ve said you were going for the team.”  

“I didn’t because the trial was merely a formality,” Baz says. Then, he smirks. “Coach Mac already scouted me.” 

“That’s wonderful,” says Agatha, astonished. 

Penny couldn’t care less. 

Baz being scouted doesn’t surprise me in the least, but I’m not telling him that. I should probably congratulate him like Agatha. Instead, what comes out of my mouth is, “Doesn’t seem fair to the other players.” 

“Si,” says Agatha, squeezing my arm disapprovingly.  

“Don’t you tire of being the constant champion of the underdogs, Snow?” Baz asks. 

I grunt and stab a beef kidney.  

“Don’t be jealous, Simon,” says Penny. “Organized sports are ludicrous holdovers of our uncultured pastimes with Normals.” 

“Now, see here, Bunce—” Baz starts, and he and Penny engage in their daily debate. (They typically wait until lunch or dinner, when Baz has more fully woken up and Penny has had a chance to gather her thoughts for the day.) 

As they quibble, I wonder if I am jealous.  

Could be.  

I feel peculiar, buzzing with unspent energy.  

With his arms straining against his fully buttoned-up blazer, there are no traces of the savage portrait Baz painted earlier. In his Watford uniform, he resembles a mannequin in the window of a prestigious tailor shop.  

In his football kit, he was elemental. Wicking fabric flowed around his body, hugging his stomach and chest before it undulated in the breeze. 

Even the sight of Baz’s widow’s peak in his freshly gelled hair is driving me batty. I want Baz to mess it up again like it was on the pitch, his loose waves swimming around his face as he did laps around the other players. I want to witness him being uncivilized.  

“Then why were you there?” I ask. 

Baz looks annoyed at being interrupted in the middle of his argument. (Penny, too.) “Pardon?” 

“At the trials,” I say. “Why were you there if you’ve already got a spot on the team?” 

Baz does that thing again, his cheek flattening against his canines. (Why?) “Coach Mac wanted to see how I got along with the other players.” 

I remember Baz’s refusal to treat his teammates as sentient beings.  

I snort, and bits of food fly out of my mouth and onto the table.  

Penny casts a cleaning spell. Agatha feigns blindness. 

“Cutting wit as usual, Snow,” Baz responds. “Were you in the same barbaric mood at the stadium? Is that why you were inciting chaos?” 

“Penny’s the one who shouted!” I blurt out.  

Baz twists his neck toward Penny. “And why was that, Bunce?”  

Penny scrunches the bridge of her nose at me like a disapproving owl. Like an owl, she appears harmless but is terrifying when crossed. “I don’t recall. And neither would Simon. He was too distracted ogling you to have been listening.” 

That’s not true, but it’s safer for me to shut up and follow Penny’s lead. 

(I guess we’re not mentioning the vampire thing given how it worked up it made Penny and Agatha.) (Or maybe this is about Baz’s dad’s letter. That’s also taboo.) (I know they’re unrelated, but they’re getting jumbled up in my brain.)     

Oddly enough, Baz doesn’t press Penny for more information. He’s downing his tea, apparently as distracted as Penny claims I was. (I wasn’t.) (I just wanted to see what happened during the game.)  

“It wasn’t important,” Agatha adds, but she’s not as talented a liar as Penny.  

Baz picks up on something in her tone. He lowers his cup and eyes Agatha the way he did the other players on the pitch.  

“Surely you can say what wasn’t so important, Wellbelove,” Baz suggests, his smooth tones at odds with his scorching gaze.  

Penny twists her ring on her finger. (I hope she’s not on the verge of spelling Agatha quiet.)  

“Er,” Agatha stumbles. “Just a bit of magickal history.” 

“An unusual subject to inflame Bunce’s passions,” Baz answers.  

Penny huffs. “That’s not true. I helped Mum publish an article about medieval history in her university journey. And I care about all academic subjects as the top student in our year.” 

Baz looks like he’s going to take Penny’s very convincing bait when he turns toward me. 

I hope he doesn’t ask me.  

I want to ask him: about the letter, about why he’s changed. About everything. 

What are you hiding, Baz? 

Tell me—  

Show me—  

Give me—  

Baz’s alarmed and slightly glazed expression alerts me to the fact that I’m releasing hot, heady magic into the atmosphere. 

“Shit!” I shout, rising to my feet like sitting is causing my magic to overflow. “I mean, Aleister Crowley!” 

Penny doesn’t scold me for my slip into Normal cursing. She’s leaning in and drinking my magic up like mulled wine. Agatha usually hates my displays, but her eyes are half-lidded and enthralled. 

Before long, the students sitting further along our table gravitate toward me, moths drawn to a flame, if those moths were drunk in addition to suicidal.  

The Minotaur snorts and sneezes, expelling my magic from his pinched nostrils. (Ew.) (If he had a tail, I’d expect to see him beating my magic away like flies.)  

With her utmost willpower, Miss Possibelf resists the urge to languish in my magickal radiation. “As you were!” she casts on the student body. It works a little; Gareth isn’t bobbing so violently back and forth, and Rhys is no longer pouring tea onto Gareth’s lap. (Merlin, I hope that’s lukewarm.) “Dinner’s over. Please return to your dorms without any further excitement.” 

Baz is the first to regain his senses and race out of the White Chapel’s doors. 

(How did he recover so fast?) 

I’d follow him if I didn’t worry about Penny and Agatha hurting themselves or getting lost on their way to the Cloisters. I let them lean on me as we hobble across the grounds. Penny sobers enough to cast “Good as new!” on her and Agatha, who’s too upset being magickally inebriated to reject Penny’s spell. 

“You’ve gotten even stronger,” Penny tells me in amazement when we’re outside the long entrance of the Cloisters. Agatha hangs onto the columns of the open arcade for support. 

“Sorry,” I tell her and Agatha. “I didn’t mean to.” 

Agatha shakes her head, too strung out to speak. 

Penny should be down for the count, too, but she insists on asking, “What were you think of?”  

“What?” 

“For your magic to act like that.” 

“I was just… bothered.” 

Penny rolls her eyes. “Stop worrying about Basil’s letter, Simon. You won’t learn anything additional from rereading it for the 300th time.” 

“You’re the one who says to read things more than once,” I say. 

“That’s being careful. What you’re doing is being insane. Look, if it really bothers you, go speak with the Mage. He gave you the letter in the first place. Not that I think he knows any more about it. What you need is information aside from the letter.” 

Penny’s advice is good, but unfortunately the Mage is away from Watford on Humdrum-related business. So, I decided to follow up on her other suggestion while I wait for the Mage to return: gathering additional information.  

I keep close to Baz.  

It would be infinitely easier if I could ask him about the bloody letter. But even I know how that would go: 

“You dared to snoop in my stuff, Snow? I have only one question for you— do you and your mentor prefer to be cooked medium-rare or well-done? Oh, I know how I’ll prepare you: burnt to a crisp.”  

So, to avoid him changing whatever he’s planning or avoiding me (or killing me), I simply stay with him.  

Thankfully, that’s easier than ever. Unlike last year, when he steered clear of me, Baz goes out of his way to keep me company.  

I’m flabbergasted and thrilled.  

We’re together so often it makes Dev and Niall upset. They glare at me and send Baz silent pleas to return to their side. Although Baz sometimes joins them for lunch and idling in the common room, he mostly opts for my presence.  

My stomach turns with guilt about suspecting his family of unsavory things when Baz seems to genuinely enjoy spending time with me. (In a prickly manner that’s amiable enough for Baz.) At the same time, it hardens my resolve.  

If I unveil Baz’s secrets, I might absolve him. Once my doubts are cleared, we can be simple, uncomplicated friends.    

I surreptitiously go about doing so when Baz joins Penny, Agatha, and I in the library.  

We study in the library together much more regularly now, even though he complains about the heating and insulation around mid-October. Baz often wears thick wine-red or coal-black jumpers under his green blazer, the wool so soft I’ve considered asking if he’ll lend me one.  

(I don’t because it’s pointless.) (Instead, I touch his sleeves under the pretense of rubbing Baz’s hands to generate warmth; I earnestly want to help, he has terrible circulation.) (However, that causes him to snap at me for treating him like a child, and he storms off.) (I don’t try again.)  

Despite my attempts to get Baz to open up to me in the library, I’m unable to coax information out of him that’s unrelated to school. He doesn’t respond to my many questions about his little sister or his step-mum. When I manage to get a word in between his and Penny’s fierce studying, our conversations devolve like so: 

“For the last time, Snow, Leave the nest is a spell to ward off stray pests like griffins and manticores, not to send away one’s children.”  

“But how do you know? It might work on your little sister— what’s her name? Or it could work on your brother— you have a brother, right? You definitely said something about having another sibling…”  

“That reminds me, Snow. Have you finished your paragraph explaining the origins of Blood is thicker than water?”  

“Uh.”  

“If you don’t finish it in half an hour, I won’t read through any more of your Magickal Words assignments.”  

“For the year?”  

“For the end of your mortal life. Now, Get cracking.”  

I hate Get cracking, because the way Baz uses it is like Crack the whip, which results in my forgotten books clapping around my face like clamshells until I pry them open and read them with forced enthusiasm. 

Luckily, Baz can’t employ the same study-torture tactics in our room thanks to the Anathema. Unfortunately, I’m no more successful at getting him to tell me about his family there than in the library.  

When Baz whines too much about the cold, or Penny tires of being kicked out by the librarian, they’ll steal half the library’s contents and relocate our sessions to my and Baz’s room. Agatha is often scared off at this point, more bothered by breaking into the boys’ dormitories than by Penny and Baz’s kleptomania.  

Baz tends to relax more in our room. Half of the time, he sits on the floor so he can stretch out his long legs, twirling his wand between his fingers as he reads. When I lay on the floor beside him, I watch his wand spin with such conductor-like precision that I feel hypnotized. Baz doesn’t chide me, even though he nearly activates the Anathema when I press my sleeping face against his thigh. His state of ease should improve my chances of obtaining intel. 

It doesn’t: 

“So, that Get cracking spell is, er, impressive. Painful and motivating. Who’d you learn it from? Your aunt?”  

“I learned it from the horse-riding instructors at the club.”  

“What? You know how to ride horses?”  

“Naturally.”  

“That’s not fair, only posh people like you and Agatha learn stuff like riding horses, and you don’t even use it to go on quests and slay trolls— Wait, you are using Get Cracking like Crack the whip? Penny says that’s not how you’re s’posed to—”  

“If you’re searching for spells to satisfy Wellbelove’s equine desires, look elsewhere, Snow. I’m not interested.”  

“That’s not what I’m asking! And I don’t need your help with Agatha!”  

Cue Baz storming back to the library and Penny resenting me for the loss of her study partner. 

Apart from our room, the library, and the dining hall, the place where Baz and I spend most of our time together is on the pitch.  

Even though I’m not on the team, we’ll play informal games when both of us need to work off stress or surplus energy. It’s just us two, no Penny or Agatha. I like it. Twice a week, we play for an hour at dusk, after Baz’s official training time has ended and before the school raises the drawbridge for the night.  

At twilight, when the late autumn sun dips early and low, the frosted field glitters, preserved in crystals of ice that shatter under Baz’s and my boots. Without the clamor of spectators and Watford’s team, I can hear the hooting of owls and other creatures in the nearby Wavering Woods.  

You’d think that our solitude at this borderline between Watford’s inner gates and the outside wilderness would afford Baz and I the opportunity to speak with each other. For Baz to tell me about himself. But he doesn’t.  

Instead, Baz and I revert to the physical aspects of our relationship, which used to mean threats of violence. (And actual violence, even though Baz has absurdly avoided activating the Anathema.)  

It’s hard for me to remember what I want to ask him— why does your dad write to you like a stranger? What’s your family like? How do they feel about me— when all I can focus on is Baz in front of me in the flesh, requiring all my attention. 

We’ll bounce the ball between us. I’ll try to score a goal, and Baz will block it. Baz will run, and I’ll follow him until my lungs are tearing. When I get close enough, I’ll tackle Baz, and we’ll collapse onto the pitch together, frost spangling our clothes and adorning Baz’s black hair with silver. When I roll onto my back, wheezing and laughing, he’ll stare at me like he’s never seen anything like me in his life, his frigid breath wreathing his face, his cheeks grey-pink from the cold. 

I’ll forget that I even had questions for him then. 

For snake’s sake, Penny’s right— I’ve got to learn to focus. 

I get the perfect opportunity to when the Mage returns to Watford at the end of November.  

I receive his robin as I’m rushing from the White Chapel after slowly consuming my breakfast. Thankfully, Penny, Agatha, and Baz have already headed to class, so Penny isn’t able to fret about the possibility of me killing myself on a solo mission (she’s wrong, because I’m never solo, I’ve got the Mage to help me), and Baz can’t threaten to roast the Mage’s bird.  

I quickly read the Mage’s note. Before I’ve finished chewing my sour cherry scone, I run to the Weeping Tower and clamber up the stairs to the Mage’s office.  

The Mage doesn’t answer when I knock on his door, so I gingerly press it open. (I’m not worried about the wards, which are spelled to let me in, but I don’t want to bother the Mage if he’s in the middle of something.) 

“Simon, my boy!” the Mage greets me. “It’s good to see you.” 

I’m surprised and tickled by his enthusiasm. The Mage is always glad to see me, I know, but it’s not apparent when he’s busy with his missions. “Hello, sir. It’s good to see you, too.” 

I notice that the Mage is dressed like photographs of explorers in the arctic. He’s wearing a thick, fur-lined coat, heavy boots, a hat, and goggles. He lays a cloak over his Normal clothes.  

“Were you in a magickal tundra, sir?” I ask. 

The Mage shakes his head. “We, my boy, are heading to the snowy peaks of Eryri, specifically Clogwyn y Geifr. At Twll Du, we’ll search for the Third Gate and recover vital information about the Insidious Humdrum!” 

I don’t understand half of what came out of the Mage’s mouth. “I-I’m sorry, sir?” 

“Wales, boy, Wales!” the Mage says impatiently, and he tosses me a bundle of heavy winter clothes in addition to a huge, weighty backpack that jangles with metal instruments. I barely catch them before they send me to floor. I feel them bruise my chest. “I don’t know why I never thought of it before! Twll Du, ‘the black hole’— of course it’s related to the Humdrum and its dead spots!” 

“We’re going to Wales, sir?” I ask, already wrapping myself in the jacket and stuffing my feet in the boots. (I hate it.) (I’m already getting overheated.) 

“Yes, yes!” the Mage exclaims, spinning the ring of his car keys around his pointer finger. “Discovering the Third Gate is vital to your mission to defeat the Humdrum.” 

“Will we be gone long, sir?” I was hoping to get Baz and Penny to check my Elocution paper. 

“We’ll be gone however long we need to!” the Mage says, a manic gleam in his eye. “You cannot put a deadline on saving the World of Mages, Simon!” 

“Er, alright, I s’pose. Sir.” 

I don’t get the chance to tell my friends that I’m leaving, but that’s typical.  

Missions and fulfilling my Chosen One duty come first. 

Plus, if I’m with the Mage, he can tell me about the letter. 

We drive for roughly four hours, but I find it difficult to bring up the subject of Baz and his family while we’re in the car. For most of our ride to Wales, the Mage explains his theories about the Humdrum’s connection to the Third Gate and the Third Gate’s probable location in Twll Du, which is also called the Devil’s Kitchen. The Mage reveals to me that he’s originally from Wales, which is shocking. I forget that he isn’t just the Mage: he’s a man, David Cadwallader, who came a great distance to study magic at Watford, just like I did. 

He seems to take joy in detailing the magickal history of Wales to me, quizzing me on the Celtic names of famous locations and dates of significant events in Welsh history. Unlike most classes, I get his questions right; the Mage laughs and praises me, and I glow with pride; I’ve never had a teacher explain facts and histories with the zeal of the Mage, who really wants to impress them on me.  

Before I know it, we’ve pulled over in a village at the base of a mountainous national park, the ridged peaks covered in snow. 

The Mage shuts the driver’s door, announcing, “Here we are! Snowdonia.” 

“Snowdonia?” I ask. “I thought we were in Eryri.” 

Busy retrieving his items from the trunk, the Mage replies over his shoulder, “That’s another one of Eryri’s names: Snowdonia.” 

“Huh.” Strange coincidence, that. 

The Mage converses with the locals in Welsh before we start along our path. I wait outside the cottage, where it’s colder and preferrable to the fiery hearth indoors. As I blink the powdery snowflakes out of my eyes, I notice a flag hanging from the cottage’s wooden beam: it’s an image of a red dragon.  

One clawed hand is extended in attack or defense, its tongue lolling out like a lick of flame, and the tail is coiled with its sharp, red spade pointing at the heavens.  

I remember the dragon, my dragon; how it helplessly exploded with hot red light that I couldn’t contain; how Baz attacked me later with what I thought was simply fury, but which I now realize was also sadness.  

My stomach churns. My heart races. My hands ball into fists. 

“What is this?” I ask the Mage when he’s done collecting information. 

“Hmm?” 

I point at the flag. The Mage gives it a cursory glance before redirecting his gaze toward the top of the mountain. “That’s the Welsh Dragon, the symbol of Wales.” 

“Is that what… what dragons from Wales look like?” 

The Mage shrugs, which is uncharacteristic of him. “Who can say? People believe that the first dragons from this region looked like the emblem, but we haven’t seen dragons like it since. It’s most likely the demonic product of some desperate artist’s overactive imagination.” 

My dragon didn’t look like that, I don’t say. I know I’m not supposed to think about it as my dragon, but I killed it, so I suppose it is mine. My weight to carry, my first magickal disaster. 

The Mage and I quickly scale the path from Ogwen Cottage up the mountain toward the top of the Devil’s Kitchen. While the Mage reassures me that thousands of Normals make the trek, I don’t think they do it in our conditions:  

(My theory is supported by the absence of any hikers apart from the Mage and myself.)  

The wind is raging, causing the mountains to moan. Although the snow isn’t falling dense and thick enough to constitute a blizzard, its rapid descent, and the blustering gales half-blind me on the path up. I’m slipping, scrabbling on my hands and knees to overcome the rocky scree slope, the loose stones hurling me backwards down the steep cliff. Even when I cling to the mountainside with my gloved hands, my grip is compromised by the snow-plastered sleekness of the volcanic rock. 

“Come!” the Mage tells me, his voice warped with the wind. “We’re almost there, Simon!” 

I don’t want to think about the possibility of plummeting down the scree, so while I scale up the cliff, I ask, “Why did you give me the letter, sir?” 

“What?” the Mage shouts, sliding down the mountain. 

I hurtle down after him, shaking and shuddering as I fall. “The letter! Baz’s letter!” 

The angle of the slope twists, and I’m about to collapse headfirst, but the Mage puts a hand on my chest and stops me.  

I hope he doesn’t feel my heart hammering against my sternum. If he does, he ignores it, continuing along the path and nodding for me to keep up behind him. “Why do you think I gave you the letter?” he asks me. 

The Mage obviously didn’t give me the letter to reveal that Baz’s step-mum is pregnant, that his dad doesn’t like it when Baz’s letters make her sick, or that Baz’s dad is encouraging Baz to pursue Agatha (which I’m still angry about and hope Baz doesn’t comply with), so that leaves… “You wanted to show me that Baz is plotting something?” 

“I wanted to show you that his family cannot be trusted,” says the Mage.  

We’re on a grass and snow-covered incline, massive slabs of basaltic rock impaling the earth. At the end of the unpaved, unmarked path is a great black precipice with a split down the middle. It’s as if a god took a hatchet and cleaved the mountain in half.  

“But… what do you think Baz’s family’s plotting, sir?”  

“The usual,” says the Mage. He steps into the divide. His voice echoes against the wet walls. “They want to take me down and steal Watford and the World of Mages back for themselves.”   

When I enter the split with him, my damp footsteps reverberate through the aperture. The wind howls around us, but in the dark jaws of the Devil’s Kitchen, we’re offered a reprieve from the gales, the blinding snowfall.  

“How are they going to do all that, sir?” I ask quietly, the stones causing my voice to carry. 

“I don’t know,” the Mage admits, his voice also low and solemn. “But that’s why you mustn’t let your roommate use you for his own ends.” 

(Is Baz using me?) “How d’you mean?”  

“The Grimms and Pitches live to put down people like us, Simon,” the Mage says through gritted teeth. “Because we’re powerful despite lacking their precious family names. They want to diminish us, control us. But you mustn’t let them.” 

“Then what am I supposed to do?” 

The Mage grins. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do that before. It’s eerily familiar. “Why, show them who you are, of course. The Chosen One, the greatest and most special mage to ever live. You must follow your destiny.”  

(But what do I do about Baz?) 

(What does it mean to show him who I am?) 

(I want him to show me who he is.) 

The Mage urges me out of the hall of splintered sediment and toward a lake in the mountain’s crevice. The water is black and dotted with snow, floating like white petals. It reflects nothing on its dull surface.  

“Here we are,” says the Mage as he stands at the water’s edge. “Llyn y Cwn, which lies in the fault line of Clogwyn y Geifr, the Cliff of the Goat, separating Y Garn and Glyder Fawr.” 

“The Cliff of the Goat?” I think of Ebb and her herd, but the Mage isn’t listening to me. 

“When steam rises from it, Twll Du becomes a chimney linked to hell and the Devil,” says the Mage. “The Third Gate to the underworld, the realm of the powerful and the dead. It must be able to reveal what the Humdrum is.” 

I gaze upon the cold, murky water. “…I don’t see steam, sir.” 

“You will.”  

The Mage raises his wand above the lake and shouts a string of words I cannot decipher, his language overflowing with magic. 

The lake becomes cloudy. However, the swirl of darkness and light eventually fades, and there are no signs of heat emanating from the water.  

Clutching his wand more tightly, the Mage thrusts it toward the lake and screams the incantation again. The black water quivers, eddies marring its surface and making it gleam, but otherwise it is cool and still. 

Shouting his incantation once more, the Mage tells me, “Use your magic, Simon!” 

I grab my wand and point it at the lake. “What am I supposed to—”  

“Adversity brings knowledge, and knowledge wisdom!”    

“Adversity—”  

“No, no, the original Welsh! It has more power! Adfyd a ddwg wybodaeth, a gwybodaeth ddoethineb!”  

I struggle to pronounce the Welsh words, but after many, many tries, steam pours from the boiling lake like a geyser. The snow melts into rain that plasters my hair and coat to my skin, but my discomfort and feverishness don’t matter.  

Because here is where I’ll discover what the Humdrum is and how to stop it from hurting everyone. Here is where I show everyone, show Baz’s family who I am. 

Except the Humdrum doesn’t show up in the polished mirror of the black lake.  

Once the bubbling ceases, all I see in the calm liquid is me. 

“What?” the Mage asks, his question directed not at me but at the lake. “Reveal yourself! Come out, come out wherever you are! The whole truth and nothing but the truth!”  

The image beneath the fog doesn’t change; there’s only my own reflection. 

“Simon!” the Mage screams at me. 

I cast again, repeating every spell the Mage has spoken, saying incantations he hasn’t, my magic spilling in greater and greater amounts from me… 

Until the water in the lake disappears. 

I’ve reduced it to a blistering, misty pit, like the scarred residue from a dragon’s breath. 

The Mage doesn’t care that I’ve destroyed a national landmark. Instead of replenishing the magickal water, we slowly make our way back to Watford, the Mage wrathfully wondering why the Third Gate failed, wildly gesticulating at the wheel. 

“I did everything— all the research, all the planning! Why did it still not work?” 

“Maybe—” 

“I’ve done things that other mages considered unthinkable: I drove the vampires out of London, I protected Watford against new threats—” 

“Sir—” 

“If only I had more knowledge, more resources— power the Old Families withhold out of spite and covetousness, even though I’ve accomplished far more than the eminent Grimms and Pitches!” 

“I—” 

“My heir is the Power of All Powers, the one who will vanquish that which imperils our magic! Can they say that about their heir, a boy whose future is bound to the memory of his dead mother?” 

Despite all the magic I’ve used today (or maybe because of it), I feel like I’m about to go off. 

(I can’t go off, not now in the Mage’s car, so I turn off my thinking.) (I become as empty as the chasm in the Cliff of the Goats.) (Didn’t the Mage call it a black hole?) 

I’m back at Watford by three in the morning. Without turning on the light, I collapse on my bed in Mummer’s still wearing my wet clothes. (I don’t care.) (I’m too tired, too disappointed.)  

I’m almost asleep when I hear something utterly foreign to me. 

It’s a whimper.  

Baz’s whimper.  

He’s having a nightmare, his breathing loud and erratic, his body squirming beneath his sheets.  

I know Baz has nightmares. We both do. I’ve just never witnessed him in the midst of his sleeping terrors, which are far more violent than I expected. 

“Baz?” I ask, approaching him despite my weariness. “Baz.”  

His fists are clenched white as bone on his duvet, his lips pulled so taut against his teeth that I fear they’ll shred like tissue paper. 

“Baz!” I shout, grabbing him. 

Baz startles awake and leaps at me.  

We both fall onto the floor, me on my back and Baz sprawled on top of me. As always, the Anathema favors Baz and doesn’t act up, despite my head ringing from knocking against the thinly carpeted ground. (I guess he didn’t mean to hurt me.) (Still, ow.)   

“Snow,” Baz gasps, his eyes wide. He’s lisping, a hand clutched over his mouth. A bead of something dark— blood, I realize— rolls down his chin. 

“Baz.” (Even though we’re pressed right against each other, and Baz’s skin should be aflame with fear and anxiety, he feels cool. Lukewarm.) “You cut yourself.” 

Baz only becomes aware of his injury when a droplet of blood falls onto my collar. It’s a centimeter shy of splashing onto my bare neck, the blood blooming against the damp fabric of my shirt. 

In an incredible rush of movement, Baz is off me and casting, “Clean as a whistle! Dry as a bone!”  

My clothes are immediately water and blood-free.  

“Merlin, Snow,” Baz says shakily, clutching his bedpost. “Why were you as wet as a dog whose master left it out in the rain?” 

“Sod off,” I say. “Are you going to heal yourself?” 

“What?”  

“Your mouth.” 

For a long time, Baz does nothing, his eyes wide and bright as the full moon. With painstaking slowness, he lowers his fingers from his lips. A long, crimson mark splits the center of his bottom lip.  

Baz’s tongue peeks out and licks it. Then, he points his wand at himself and says, “Good as new.”  

He must be frazzled, because the cut stops bleeding but the skin doesn’t close seamlessly. A silver-pink fissure remains. It bothers me; Baz shouldn’t have scars like that, not from nightmares and self-inflicted injuries. 

“Do you want me to heal you?” I ask. 

Baz laughs. It’s tense, but surprisingly warm. “If you cast Good as new on me, I’ll end up as a newborn. Why don’t you do something useful and tell me about your special mission with the Mage instead.” 

The Mage’s words flash through my mind, his suspicions. “…Why d’you want to know?” 

“To hear about how spectacularly you or he screwed up.” Baz lies on his bed, his composure restored. “That will help me sleep better than Sweet Dreams.”  

I growl and hurl myself onto my mattress. 

As my breathing evens with the passing minutes, Baz asks, “Where were you, Snow?” 

“Don’t wanna talk about it,” I answer, half-asleep.  

Baz hums. (I wish he wouldn’t ask me any more, but I wouldn’t mind if he sang a little.) (Baz has a nice voice. Even when he’s reading our texts aloud to me, it lulls me to sleep, which he hates.) (But I can’t ask him to sing me to sleep, that’s daft.) (Baz would either call me a baby or cast Music Soothe the Savage Beast, and I’m not a bloody beast despite my power.) 

Baz asks, “Is the Mage whisking you off to a mission over holiday break?” 

“No,” I grunt. 

“Then come with me.” 

I crack one eye open. Baz appears to be asleep, but I know he doesn’t sleep talk (that would’ve been useful), and his nightmare babbling isn’t coherent enough for me to understand.  

I don’t answer, my jaw boneless and nerveless with fatigue. If Baz tries to wake me up, I don’t hear him. 

Instead, when morning comes, I jump up like I’ve been snapped at by merwolves. (It’s painful and dangerous.) (Which is why I don’t nap by the moat anymore.)  

The room is still dark but with soft, pre-dawn shadows, auburn and tenuous like light through the thin skin of one’s closed eyes. Baz lies asleep with his hair sprawled across his pillow. 

“Baz,” I say urgently, not yet dressed for breakfast. “Baz!” 

Baz doesn’t stir. However, his expression becomes irate.  

“Did you mean it?” I ask. “Inviting me to spend the holiday with your family?” 

“What time is it?” Baz mumbles. 

“Six AM.” 

“Then, no.” He pulls his duvet over his face.  

“Baz!”  

He hisses, “Unless you promise not to wake me up at this godforsaken hour over break, I rescind my offer.”  

“Fine,” I say.  

At last, Baz opens his eyes and looks at me. I look at him back. 

“…Fine. You’re coming with me, Snow.”  

Chapter Text

Book 3: Simon Snow and the Third Gate

IX. BAZ

There are two possible ways for Father to interpret me dragging Snow to our family manor in Hampshire: 

One is that I’ve folded to his plans, and I intend to do something nefarious to Snow during the break. Or, at the very least, Father will suppose that I’m striving to uncover additional weaknesses that I somehow haven’t managed to scope out as Snow’s roommate these last three years. 

The second possibility is that Father will more accurately discern my invitation as an act of rebellion. After all, I chose not to send him a letter to alert him to Snow returning with me. This isn’t simply because I want to catch Father unawares, which I do. (If I write to him, Father may also write me back and convince me to stop my foolishness.) (He can be very persuasive and I easy to please as his otherwise irredeemable monster son.)  

The full truth, however, is that I hadn’t known whether I’d invite Snow myself. I had been toying with the idea since my summer in London, although I knew my chances were slim given Snow’s proclivity for spending the holidays with the milquetoast Wellbeloves. I only knew that I must get Snow to come with me after his special mission with the Mage. 

Snow stubbornly refuses to speak about it. He lapses into the protective silence he walled himself with during our first year and confides solely in Bunce, which makes me want to deride him for their childish no-secrets pact and kill him for shutting me out. (At least the numpty has Bunce to listen to him.) 

All I know is that after his surprise mission, he looked terrible. Snow’s always in a deplorable condition in the aftermath of his adventures with the Mage, whether he’s cut to ribbons or not, but for a week after he came back to Watford, he wouldn’t stop emitting low-level magickal radiation. He was like a leaky vessel, except instead of taking in water, he was releasing a constant stream of magic that for regular mages would mean certain death. 

I was seriously considering whether Snow’s magickal output would be a boon for our trip (inebriating Father) or a reason to cancel it (posing potential risks to Daphne’s pregnancy and my toddler sister’s health) when, suddenly, Snow’s magic healed, as inexplicably as always. 

(Bunce theorizes that it may have been the Snow equivalent of a cold; he was sopping wet on the night of his return.) (Aleister Crowley, why didn’t the Mage cast any cleaning spells on him when he dropped him off?) 

Anyway, my many musings and conundrums aside, the morning that Watford closes for the holiday, Snow and I set off to Hampshire. 

I can scarcely believe it. 

And apparently, neither can Snow.  

He’s dressed like a teenage runaway, not a guest in one of Hampshire’s historic estates. One of the fraying straps of his grubby little knapsack is slung over his shoulder. He’s wearing a sheer grey t-shirt barely concealed by an undersized bomber jacket, the ribbed collar, waistband, and cuffs throttling him. 

Snow is as skeptical of my outfit as I am of his. 

“That’s what you’re wearing?” he asks me.   

“How else am I supposed to offset your vagrant ensemble?” I reply, which is partly true. I’m also hoping that Father will be more amenable to me bringing our mortal enemy home if I do so in a three-piece suit, even if my forest green jacket is single-breasted, single-buttoned, and I’ve forgone a tie. 

“You’re the one who said I couldn’t wear my uniform,” Snow grumbles. 

“Which you can’t, because we’re not going to be at school.” 

“It’s the nicest thing I own,” Snow protests.  

I’m already dragging my suitcase out the door. “We’ll buy you nicer clothes on the way over.” 

Snow hastens after me. “Wait, what?” 

“We’ll have time when we’re traveling,” I explain as Snow and I exit the warmth of Mummer’s House for the wintry grounds.  

(Dev and Niall, who are playing Snap near the fireplace, send me their typical expressions of confusion and discontent with my plans.) (They’ve become annoyingly forthright with me.) (I’ll have to remind them who’s in charge later.)  

Snow follows me to the courtyard. When I push past Watford’s gates, he frowns, searching for something. “I thought your dad was picking us up.” 

I suppress my laughter. “Merlin, no.” 

“But he always picks you up,” says Snow. 

“He’s staying home with my half-sister and step-mother,” I say, which is a half-truth. Yes, Father and I had initially arranged for me to get home on my own so Daphne, who’s heavily pregnant, wouldn’t have to deal with an unruly toddler by herself. Vera’s taking the weekend off before Christmas, and it would be a disaster for Mordelia to have less than two responsible adults on hand.  

Traveling independently also works to my advantage since I can’t imagine Father tolerating Snow in his Jaguar for several hours. 

Snow is surprised when a taxi arrives.  

He follows me into the backseat, his knapsack between his knees and his thigh touching mine. 

I take it back: this was a terrible idea. 

The smell of the taxi driver— nicotine, spearmint, and nutmeg— is strenuous enough, but the salty-sweet fragrance of Snow in a confined space is torture.   

After what feels like eons but is in fact fifteen minutes, I crack the window open. Snow is stunned; I never let him open the window in our dorm, not during the late summer heatwaves in September or the unseasonable warmth of June. (He better not think this gives him license to do whatever he pleases in Mummer’s.) 

“Oi, it’s 5 degrees out there!” the driver complains.  

I ignore him. (He’ll put up with whatever I want for a fat tip.)    

“Are you car sick?” Snow asks, scooting— seven hells — closer to me.  

Our legs are pressed right against each other, Snow’s body heat bleeding through his denim. Can smells transfer this way, I wonder. Will Snow’s doughy, cinnamon aroma adhere to my trousers?  

“I’m fine,” I say, trying not to feel like a scurrying animal as I push myself up against the car door. 

“You’re pale,” says Snow. 

I’m always pale , I don’t say. “Back off, or I’ll be sick on you,” I threaten instead.  

“I’m pulling over if anyone’s sick,” the driver says. 

(What an appalling man.) (He’s lucky that my impeccable manners and my family’s penchant for flaunting our vast wealth requires me to tip him above the plebian 15 percent.) 

Snow isn’t deterred by my warning. In fact, he seems to think that I’m too posh, too self-possessed to be sick in public. If only he knew about the negative side effects of Fiona’s poor caretaking when I was twelve years old. 

To my relief, the driver waits to eject Snow and I when we’re outside the station.  

I greedily inhale the odors of exhaust fumes, muddy streets, and unkept travelers, anything to replace the sugary, savory smell of Snow. I don’t double-check the outrageous tip I give the driver, who streaks down the icy road the moment my money leaves my hand. (I hope his next passengers are queasy pub crawlers. Or a serial killer.) 

“Baz, I can pay my own way,” Snow complains when we’re inside the station. 

“With the same funds that you used on your splendid attire, I expect,” I say as I wait in line for the ticket vending machine. 

Snow glares and cuts in front of me in the queue. (Uncouth moron.) “I’ve got money. It’s just… it’s in leprechaun gold.” 

“Leprechaun gold?” The Normals in line stare at us like we’re insane. I couldn’t care less about what they think. “How in hell’s name do you have that?” 

“A mission.” Snow doesn’t elaborate. I assume it’s either secret or a stupendous mess of a story. 

Or it’s Snow’s caginess when subjected to Normal scrutiny. He glares at the people around us. 

And he huddles closer to me, his shoulder against my chest. 

I press my nose into my collarbone, unable to back away with the queue behind me. 

Snow is a nightmare to travel with.  

It’s him against the world, holding onto what gives him comfort. 

(Wait, I don’t give Snow comfort.) (Right?)  

“You do realize that leprechaun gold needs to be converted before it’s usable currency?” I snipe. 

“Course I do.” Snow withdraws a pitiful wad of £5 notes in addition to a handful of coins. I take it that leprechaun gold doesn’t convert well on account of much of it being an illusion.  

(Snow’s elbow presses against my stomach.) (Get your bloody ticket faster, Snow.)  

Competitive as ever, the fool Snow buys my ticket, practically exhausting his supply of what I imagine was illegally obtained leprechaun gold. 

He uses the rest on a ham-and-cheese sandwich and fizzy drink. I purchase a bag of salt-and-vinegar crisps because my gums ache, and chewing soothes them more than spell work. Then, I buy Snow an ugly but semi-presentable jumper, enchanting the garish holiday greeting invisible to reveal the midnight-blue wool underneath. Snow accepts the article of clothing only when I threaten to do unholy things to his t-shirt. 

When I double-check the timetable for the South Western Railway, he watches me oddly.   

(My teeth are throbbing, but they shouldn’t have broken through.) “What?” 

“You use the train?” he asks. 

“Occasionally.” I predominantly ride public transit in London when Fiona is sloshed or busy. “Is that why you look so gob smacked?”  

Snow shrugs. “Thought you were chauffeured everywhere.”  

“My family’s not that out of touch,” I say, which is true for some of my family. Then I realize that Snow buying me a ticket wasn’t simply to outdo me. It was a gesture of misplaced chivalry, his ill-contrived attempt to rescue me. 

I rush us across the platform into our train.        

It’s far easier to relax when I sit across from Snow rather than side-to-side. The smells of the passengers are also more diffused along the compartments, the individual blood-magic so negligible that I can almost pretend this summer never happened, that I haven’t undergone another beastly transformation.  

That is, I could pretend if it weren’t for my traitorous teeth. They hum horribly, magnets drawn from the cavern of my mouth.  

I resist them while I munch on my crisps. For once, Snow isn’t watching me eat. He’s distracted by the passing of the countryside through the window like a foreign film. I suspect he’s never been to southeast England; his old home in Lancashire and my family estate in Hampshire are on opposite sides of each other.  

(There’s so much I could show him: the staggering black poplars, the gnarled holm oaks, the hawthorns replete with red berries, and the cypresses with their sprays of steel-blue needles. Icicles hang from the old trees and weigh down their branches like ornaments spun from glass.) 

(The wintry grounds are brutal and beautiful like the Wavering Woods, but I also wish Snow could see my home during the spring. My window in the library where I sit and play violin overlooks the garden.)  

(What would Snow make of the gardens: the tiny snowdrops, golden narcissi, dark-hearted anemones, and pink clusters of daphne flowers planted in my stepmother’s name?)  

Snow and I arrive at the station in Winchester and hire another taxi that truly impoverishes Snow. He’s adamant about splitting the fare, too noble to let me be the one to sacrifice my pocket change. It’s ridiculous. But I also think he desires having control over some of our situation, because he grows increasingly nervous (and magickally ripe) the closer we get to my house.  

(I, on the other hand, am far less anxious.) (My bag of crisps during the train ride has temporarily satisfied my restless teeth and appetite, so even though Snow’s scent remains as rich and delectable as Christmas breakfast, I’m able to push it from the forefront of my mind.) 

Snow’s unease peaks when our taxi driver refuses to take us up to the house and drops us off on the main road.  

“Couldn’t he have gotten us closer?” I complain. I lead Snow across the gravel-lined sideroad toward my house. “We’re almost five miles away. Cowards, the lot of them.” 

“The lot of them?” Snow asks. “Do all taxi drivers do that?” 

“Taxi drivers, neighbors, salespeople, solicitors— they get worse every year. It used to be that they’d make it to the gate before turning tail.”  

“Shit,” says Snow as he steps into a puddle that splashes muddy ice-water over the tops of his leather boots. “Why do they avoid your house?” 

I scoff. “They think it’s haunted.” 

“Oh. I mean, I guess Normals can get superstitious about silly things like old houses—” 

“They’re not wrong; it is haunted. But the wraiths only care about intruders when they enter the house, not the grounds.” 

Snow turns into a statue on the gravel. “Your house is haunted? By wraiths?” 

“Oh, please, you’ve killed a dragon and a magickal serpent,” I say, trudging along. “The wraiths won’t harm you. Significantly. Besides, you have no compunction to slay them, they’re already dead.” 

“…Maybe I should head back.” 

“Be my guest,” I say. “Scavenge for scraps in Watford while the kitchens are closed for the holidays.” 

“There wouldn’t be wraiths at Agatha’s house,” Snow mumbles in a voice he thinks is too soft for me to hear, but I understand him perfectly. 

In retaliation, I point my wand at the pine trees. The dry brush crackles and snaps, causing Snow to jump and utter a strangled scream. 

We make the climb to my front door in record time due to Snow’s fear. When he hears distant howling, which I assure him is nearby dogs, not werewolves, he asks if he can summon the Sword of Mages. So that he’ll feel better, safer, he says.  

“Of course you can’t charge over to my house brandishing the Sword of Mages, you numpty!” I shout at Snow. If Father looked out the window and saw the Mage’s Heir swinging his blade as he marched toward the prized acacias, he’d call the Old Families for sure, and we’d have civil war because I invited Snow over for Christmas holiday.  

Snow barely heeds me and races to the safety of my front door. When he’s confronted with the impending oak panels, scarlet stained-glass, and lion-headed gold knockers, he appears to reconsider his strategy. 

I’m glad Vera’s on break for the weekend— who knows how her Normal mind would rationalize the grim determination on Snow’s face, one that belongs to a much older veteran of battle? 

I turn my key in the door. 

And I let Snow into my family home.  

Snow is speechless. He gapes at everything: the high ceiling with crystal chandeliers; the crimson brocade and polished mahogany lining the foyer; the tapestries embellished with scenes of medieval European agriculture; the electrum statuettes of half-man, half-beast Ra, Sekhmet, and Wadjet, Egyptian deities of fire; and the annoyingly high-pitched sounds of a children’s program blaring from the living room. 

(Thank you for the wonderful introduction, Mordelia.) 

Snow takes a step forward, asking, “is that your—” 

“Stand your ground!” I say, pointing my wand at Snow.  

He nearly falls onto his face as his feet glue themselves to the welcome mat. “Baz!” Snow fumes. 

“Clean as a whistle!” I cast, the mud spiraling off Snow’s boots and trousers and out the door. “As you were.”  

Liberated from the ground, Snow grunts at me, peels the bomber jacket from his shoulders, and toes off his boots. “You could’ve just said.”  

“Give those to me,” I say, hanging Snow’s worn jacket alongside Father’s peacoats, Daphne’s faux fur, and Mordelia’s merino wool Kensington. I place my cashmere sportscoat beside it.   

When I’m done, Snow is left standing in his jumper, jeans, and red stockings, wiggling his toes on the floor. His cheeks are flushed from the cold. His blue eyes are bright with wariness but also intrigue, flickering back and forth between me and my surroundings. He’s trying to slot me into place like a puzzle piece. He chews his lip, flexing the muscles in his neck, and blinking with eyelashes turned bronze from beads of condensation formed by his warm breath mingling with the cold air outdoors. 

(Is it my vampirism that’s making me attentive to all these little details?) 

(Or is it—) 

“Let me show you to your room,” I say, turning swiftly away. 

“Don’t I get a tour of the house first?” Snow asks. “I don’t have much to put away.” He lifts his knapsack like the world’s saddest dumbbell.   

“…Fine.” 

I usher Snow into the kitchen, which he observes with predictable astonishment. Shortbread biscuits, raisin scones, and mincemeat pies sit in descending order upon a three-tiered dessert tray. There’s a half-filled tea pot with Earl Gray beside it on the table, although the lack of steam suggests that it hasn’t been drunk in some time.   

Before Snow can request permission to root through the fridge, I guide him through the dining room, by the open door of the library, by the closed door of Father’s study, and when I can avoid it no longer, into the living room.  

Daphne and Mordelia sit on the sofa watching a fanciful series about fairies who teach children maths instead of kidnapping them to live parentless lives in immortal glens.  

Daphne turns to greet me. When she sees Snow, her lips go immobile. Mordelia stares in daunting, childish fascination.  

Snow looked more comfortable facing the hungry maws of the Serpent. 

“Mother.” I kiss Daphne’s cheeks; she mechanically kisses me back, staring at Snow over my shoulder. (She smells spicy, soapy, and floral, like honeysuckle.) (Her scent is also similar to the kindling of fresh, green wood, most likely due her pregnancy. All Grimms smell like fire.) “It’s good to see you.” 

“Welcome back, Basilton,” she says dazedly. “I see you’ve brought a…” 

“Guest. Simon Snow,” I clarify, as if Daphne didn’t recognize him the moment he stepped into the room.  

Even Mordelia knows. (During the summer of my second year when I was researching Snow and his various merchandise, Mordelia discovered my Simon Snow cuddly toys and tried to purloin one.) (I incinerated it in front of her to teach her a lesson.) (She screamed and used her crayon to draw all over my priceless violin.) (And now Daphne’s pregnant with two more children; will the indignities never cease?) 

“Chosen One!” Mordelia screams, pointing at Snow. 

Snow backs away, either in tactical retreat or fear. 

“Manners, Mordelia,” Daphne chides. 

“Hush, you,” I command, hoping her voice didn’t carry into Father’s study. “And don’t call him that.” 

“You still call me that,” says Snow. 

I feign deafness. “Snow, this is my stepmother, Daphne Grimm.” 

Snow bolts forward too suddenly, causing Daphne to flinch. He slows and extends his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Grimm.” 

Daphne daintily takes it and shakes it, her other hand draped over her round belly. Snow watches her, petrified. Either he hasn’t had much exposure to pregnant women, or he suspects my stepmother of incubating a horde of demons. “And you, Mr. Snow. Did you boys greet Basil’s father yet?” 

In other words, is Father aware that the Mage’s Heir is wondering his halls? “He’s busy in his study,” I say. Obviously, Father doesn’t know.  

Daphne smiles beatifically and acts as if our whole family is united behind my invitation to Snow. One doesn’t live in a family like mine without learning how to pretend that things are fine when they’re in fact a disaster. “Please make yourselves comfortable. Dinner’s rather simple tonight without Vera.” 

“Vera?” Snow asks me. “Is she your other sister?”  

“Vera’s our maid and nanny.” 

“You have a maid?” Snow asks incredulously. 

Bored by the lack of attention, Mordelia clambers down from the sofa and waddles toward me. 

“Basil! Carry me!” she says. 

“No, Mordelia,” I answer firmly. 

“Mama, carry me!” Mordelia whines at Daphne. She’s learned that as long as she holds my pregnant stepmother hostage with her unreasonable requests, she has the power to get anyone else in the house to do whatever she wants.  

“Fine,” I hiss, lifting Mordelia as far from my body as possible and glaring at her.  

She pouts and swings from my hands until I’m forced to settle her on my hip.  

As I press my lips against her whorl of dark hair, I whisper, “I’m sending Father Christmas a petition to reduce your gifts.” 

“What’s a petition?” Mordelia asks, clinging to me. (She’s fragrant like burning autumn leaves, scalded milk, and sticky toffee pudding.) (But more importantly, how is her vocabulary so limited? By the time I was three, I understood words like irrigation and jurisprudence.)  

“A very official document that will stop you from getting the ice skates you want so badly.” 

“No!” Mordelia shrieks. 

Daphne recommends putting Mordelia down for a nap before dinner. It’s easy to subdue her kicking, flailing body with my vampire strength as we ascend the stairs. Snow trails after my stepmother and me from a distance, noticing the female nudes sculpted into the railing and gazing into the orbs of magickal fire that they raise overhead. He waits outside Mordelia’s room as I place her on her bed, spelling the roses and asphodels on her bed curtains to bloom, wilt, and regrow while Daphne reads her fables to lull her to sleep. 

When I exit the room, I realize that Snow’s been watching me through the open door. He’s wearing a mystified, pensive expression, the kind of poker face that suggests even he does not know what he’s thinking. 

I fail to come up with an adequately incisive response. The words are lodged in my throat, like they’re lodged in Snow’s.  

“I’ll show you to your room,” I say instead, coughing lightly.  

The room I’ve picked for Snow is perfect.  

The red dragon of Arthurian legend is painted on the archway of the door. The magickal pigments enable the dragon to paw and slither across the band of wood, its face glowing like an ember and its leathery wings flared in defense of the room’s inhabitants. 

Snow is deeply unnerved. Especially when my dead ancestors kick up a fuss at a non-Pitch, non-Grimm sitting on their bed.  

Snow leaps off the mattress and asks, “Are those the wraiths?” 

“Be quiet,” I command them. They don’t listen to me, stirring up a ruckus with their incessant moaning and clicking and rocking. Ingrates. “It’s not your bed anymore.”  

“They died in this bed?” Snow asks, aghast. 

“People die in a lot of beds. Mine included.” I died there, too, when Father and Fiona couldn’t heal the toxins from the vampire bite. 

“I’m going back to Watford,” Snow declares. 

“No, you’re not.” I’m not really doing this, am I? “You can sleep on the couch in my room.” I suppose I am. “The wraiths stay out of there.”  

Snow’s focus abruptly narrows in on me the way it does with magickal quests and monsters. His ability to turn it on and off, like his thinking, is honestly alarming. I feel like the image on the other side of a viewfinder, my body expanding and contracting to Snow’s whims. I itch; I burn.  

“Why?” he asks me. 

Because vampires scare even wraiths.  

I’ll never say that. “Because they know better than to mess with me.” 

Snow snorts disbelievingly and then desperately follows me down the hall.  

“Merlin,” he says when we enter my door. “This is your room? You chose to decorate it like this?” 

“I inherited it in this condition.” 

It’s not that I dislike my room: I’m accustomed to the blood-red upholstery, the gargoyle-festooned bedpost and wardrobe, and the perfume of rotten wood magickally suspended mid-decay that emits from the chest and sundry family heirlooms and can’t be concealed by platters of potpourri. 

But after nearly three years at Watford, I’ve come to no longer view this room as my true bedroom.  

My room is in my shared suite with Snow. That’s where I can hang posters of footballers without the wallpaper making them catch fire, where the sunlight filters through the window and illuminates a partitioned spot of brightness on Snow’s bed, where I can fall asleep to the sound of Snow’s breathing… 

(No.)  

“There’s the couch,” I tell Snow. 

Snow gingerly lowers himself onto the satin and goose down cushions. When his actions don’t incite spectral wailing, his spine uncoils, and he lays against the sofa like it’s his bed at Watford.  

(Is my sofa going to smell like him after this? Like mellow, syrupy warmth—) 

“I’m taking a shower,” I say and shut the door to the ensuite before Snow can reply. 

I try to regain my balance under the boiling spray. It’s only logical that my senses have been thrown off by traveling with Snow, hosting Snow in my home, and seeing him anywhere other than Watford.    

I need to remember my purpose: to show Father that I know what I’m doing. That everything’s going according to my plans.  

Father isn’t convinced one bit.  

He alternates between stoically gazing at me, silently asking what in the seven hells are you doing, and then Snow, silently demanding to know what in the seven hells are you doing here?  

The wordless interrogation makes Snow fumble even more spectacularly with his silverware. (I probably should have coached him through the uses of various forks, spoons, and knives, but I assumed Wellbelove had done the job.) (How do they eat in her family? I thought those people pretended to be cultured.) 

I can’t wait for dinner to be over, though Snow doesn’t help with that. He inhales every serving of cold-cuts, soup, and bread that my stepmother dishes out to him. It’s nothing as elaborate as what Vera puts together, but it whets Snow’s appetite. 

And causes him to stare at me in confusion when my plate remains empty.  

“Aren’t you hungry?” Snow asks.  

“I’ve had enough,” I say. I sip my tea to appease my empty stomach. 

Snow doesn’t believe me. “But you only had crisps on the train. You haven’t eaten all day. Here—” 

“I’m fine, Snow.”  

I push away the platter of sliced ham and turkey.  

(The wet, inner lining of my cheeks pulse like the overbeaten skin on a drum.) (I’m hungry; it hurts, my face and my intestines.) 

Snow frowns quizzically.  

Father’s gaze sharpens. 

I only avoid a summons to his study because Vera’s not there to deliver it, and Father won’t come to my bedroom while I share it with Snow. 

(I wish he didn’t know about that part, but it doesn’t matter.) (Snow and I share a room at Watford; sharing another one in my family home makes no difference.) 

Despite his promise, Snow wakes me up bright and early the next day to winter birdsong and the crowing of roosters on the farmlands of our property. 

I’m tempted to kill him, but Snow looks so energized, his freckles pronounced against his bare chest, that I… insist he shower so we can explore the grounds.  

While my family breaks their fasts, Snow and I wander across acres of snow-covered fields. We pass by the stables housing Daphne’s horses (which are agitated by Snow and agitate him in turn) and by the pens for Father’s livestock (which are agitated by me). (Snow is delighted by the goats.)  

I show Snow the forests where Father and the Old Families sometimes hunt for game. He’s as amazed with the dense thicket as I thought he’d be. We slowly pass beneath the oaks, beeches, and pines, the December light dappled upon Snow’s face. (I let myself linger because I don’t smell the blood that often marks these woods: of pheasants shot by hunters, of hares killed by foxes, their soft, furry carcasses strewn across the forest floor.)  

“Baz,” Snow says from behind me. His voice is tense, urgent. 

I whip around. (It better not be a loose steer.) “What—” 

I barely dodge the snowball he hurls in my direction; it shatters on the silver-grey bark of a tree. 

I cross my arms; Snow is a little shamefaced.  

“Even you can’t be this monumentally clichéd,” I retort. 

Snow shrugs. “Never had a snowball fight before. Penny doesn’t like them, and the boys at the homes didn’t like me.” 

“Be clear, Snow. Do you want me to weep over your tragic orphan backstory or pelt you with icy projectiles?” 

“The second one,” says Snow, already arranging himself into a fighting stance. 

I test the snow in my palm, pressing it into what resembles a crystalline fruit pit. I can’t recall if I’ve ever had a snowball fight, either.    

It turns out to be great exercise. Snow exhibits his life-and-death athleticism, balling up dense orbs and hurling them at me as he rushes out from his protection behind the trees. 

With my reflexes, it’s simple to dodge, although Snow overwhelms me on one or two occasions. As I said, every scuffle with him is a matter of survival. The hits I land on him, though many, are not the ones I intend— blows to his smiling face clip his ear, shots to the heart go sideways on his shoulders, and snowballs to the gut graze his thighs and waist. Snow’s energy isn’t directed toward avoiding blows, only making them non-fatal.   

(It’s disturbing how much I’m learning of Snow’s real battle strategy during this juvenile game.)  

(And how much he learns about me.) 

“How are you so fast?” Snow rasps, hurling another snowball at me.  

I allow this one to bounce off my forearm. “Did you forget that I’m on the football team?” 

“But you’re so much faster than them, too.” Snow presses the snowball in his hands until it’s firm and smooth. “So agile it shouldn’t be possible. How do you—” 

“We should get brunch before it’s too late.” 

When we’re inside, I cast Clean as a whistle and Dry as a bone on Snow, who’s too ravenous to stop by our room (my room— my room) in his beeline for brunch. Having calculated our excursion to end when my family evacuated the dining room, I leave Snow to his devices and take my time grooming myself. I mold my appearance to be appropriately sharp, professional, and cut-throat. Hopefully that will pacify Father for day two of my strategy: Convince Him I Know What the Devil I’m Doing. 

I join Snow at the dining table; he gapes at me and asks, “you’re dressing like that on holiday?”  

His confoundment isn’t entirely misplaced. Ordinarily, I reserve the silk-blend polo necks, suit vests, and wool flannel trousers for outings and more casual gatherings of the Families. But I’m on a mission here, as Snow would put it. 

And I’m not in the habit of giving him the pleasure of knowing when he’s right. “Says the troll with clotted cream all over his face.” 

Snow licks the daubs from his lips. Like an animal.  

His tongue explores the corners of his mouth, cleaning the traces of cream.  

I redirect all my focus toward pouring myself a cup of tea.   

I barely hear him saying, “I mean, I always s’posed you’d lounge around in suits and waistcoats and silk scarves. Just not on Christmas hols.”  

How can Snow be so wrong? In my leisure, I prefer wearing jumpers and button-ups and jeans. Clothes that lead Father to view me as a somewhat average, vampiric teenager, not a capable representative of our family who knows what our agenda should be. 

I push away from the table. “Do you plan to fuss over my appearance all day, or do you want to see the library?”  

“That sounds like Penny’s holiday plans,” says Snow. He doesn’t sound too averse to them. 

“Come. Follow me.” 

Snow’s confused concern reappears. “But you haven’t eaten—” 

“Come, Snow.” 

He sneaks the remaining crumpets into the library. On other occasions, I would cruelly demean his unhygienic hording, but I’m grateful for it now. I’ve hardly eaten anything these past two days due to being around Snow constantly. While he admires the library, navigating the labyrinthine shelves, I wolf down the crumpets, sucking the butter from my fingers.  

(It’s not enough.)    

Snow snorts like a wild pig at the sight of the gramophone. He points at the flamboyant, lily-shaped horn and says, “your family couldn’t go for another antique like a turntable or radio? There’s no way this plays music.” 

“It does.” I root through the vinyl. (I know I’m not supposed to play them on the gramophone, but I’ll cast a protective charm.) (Fiona’s not here to judge me.) “When outsiders play the gramophone or anyone tries to remove it from the library, it curses the listeners with an earworm that drives them mad. It was enchanted by my grandfather, who could cast spells with his violin.” 

Snow’s hand goes to his hip as if to summon his sword.  

I place myself between him and the gramophone. “Stop that, you travesty. Unless you want the gramophone or I to dispose of you.” 

“How many belongings in your house are cursed?” Snow asks, suspicious. 

“I haven’t taken an inventory,” I lie. (There are four hundred and sixty-two cursed Grimm-Pitch heirlooms last I checked, which is also why I haven’t replaced the gramophone with a cleaner audio system.) 

Snow watches warily when I lay the spindle on the groove of the record. I touch it with my wand. “Time heals all wounds,” I say.  

Then I play it. 

An electric guitar riff blasts through the library, accompanied by drums, cymbals, an electronic keyboard, and high, otherworldly vocals singing Moonage Daydream: 

I’m an alligator  

I’m a mama-papa coming for you  

I’m the space invader  

I’ll be the rock-n’-rolling bitch for you  

Keep your mouth shut  

You’re squawking like a pink monkey bird  

And I’m busting up my brains for the words…  

“Bowie?” asks Snow, seemingly surprised that the music hasn’t injured him. 

“At ease, Snow,” I say, dropping into an armchair. “I’ll let you know when you prompt the gramophone to kill you or psychically wound you.” 

Snow shakes his head, which I interpret as either doubt that I would warn him or him amending his one-word question. “Not Vivaldi or Beethoven?”  

Oh. “Not exclusively.” 

Snow grunts, which is as clarifying as always. 

I sigh. “Really, the ideas you have of me, Snow.” 

He shrugs in neither confirmation nor disconfirmation.  

Keep your electric eye on me, babe 
Put your ray gun to my head 
Press your space face close to mine, love 
Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah! 

I turn the pages of a random book, not truly reading.  

Snow perches on the windowsill where I play violin, glancing through the misty windows at the sleeping garden. He kicks his leg to the beat of the song, his toes centimeters from my calves. 

When I move away from him in my seat, he slides closer to me. 

Don't fake it baby, lay the real thing on me 
The church of man, love 
Is such a holy place to be 
Make me baby, make me know you really care 
Make me jump into the air… 

“Can you play it on your violin?” Snow asks.  

“Well enough.” This song certainly isn’t a part of my lessons, however.  

“Play for me,” Snow says, sounding remarkably akin to Mordelia. 

“I’m already playing music for you, you ungrateful creature.” 

Snow props him feet on my armrest, which is terrible way to treat the furniture. It also places the bones of his ankles against my wrist.  

I draw my arm back.  

“I want to hear you play,” says Snow, his blue eyes bright. 

I won’t play for him. My violin is all the way over in our (my) room, where I risk passing Mordelia, Daphne, and Father in the adjoining wings. I’ve also gotten warm in my seat, and I have no desire to wander the drafty, old halls. 

I grab my violin anyway. 

(Stop, stop, sto—)  

(I also pause by the kitchen and quickly consume the cold, leftover meat from last night.) (Bathed in the cool refrigerator light that spills across the empty linoleum while my family carries out their lives in distant rooms, I feel like a ghoul haunting my own home.) (I chew ferociously, accidentally swallowing some bones, before I return to the library.) 

I find Snow scouring the books, maps, globes, statues, and portraits. When he’s on the look for something, anything, he does it with terrifying, single-minded determination. 

I don’t know what he’s looking for. 

(I don’t care.) 

I turn off the gramophone and take Snow’s seat at the windowsill, luring him back to my side. 

Snow sits cross-legged on the floor by my knees and listens raptly while I play Moonage Daydream, Change, and Ashes to Ashes.  

With the music swelling through the library, resonating against the stone, wood, and glass, I could almost believe that I have my grandfather’s magickal abilities, that I can channel magic through my bow. I can’t, but Snow’s captivation nearly persuades me otherwise. 

“It’s amazing in here,” Snow says quietly.  

“Watford’s library used to be like this,” I say, strumming my strings.  

“Don’t try to play in there, or the librarians’ll have your neck.” 

“I wouldn’t. Not after the Mage desecrated it.” 

Snow pulls away and faces me, his jaw clenched.  

I stop playing. I slowly remove the violin from beneath my chin and place it near the windowsill, my fingers looped around its neck.  

“Don’t talk about him like that,” Snow tells me. 

“Why not?” I ask sharply. “The Mage’s silly soldier boys won’t hear me here, even if nothing would make him happier.” 

“Baz,” Snow growls, rising to his feet. 

I laugh, my voice cutting through the still library. “I take it that you lack the words to defend him. Why else can’t you explain what he did to you on your last mission?” 

“He didn’t do anything to me!” Snow shouts. 

“Silence is golden!” I cast on the door. “Crowley, Snow, do you want the entire house to hear you?” 

“I would if that would convince your family that the Mage isn’t a bad person,” says Snow. “His methods might be… intense…” 

“Insane,” I hiss. “He sent you back to Mummer’s drenched and quaking—”  

“He only wants what’s best for everyone—” 

“You were bleeding magic!” 

“He wants what’s best for me!” Snow yells. 

“You really believe that?” I can’t shout, so I sneer, my lips curling in rage.  

“Yeah, I do.” 

“You infernal fool. You colossal moron. You thickest of clods.”  

Eyes flashing, Snow stomps over to me and says, “He’s not like your family.” 

I stand and meet Snow halfway. “What do you mean by that?”  

I’m so close my head spins with Snow’s terrible, overpowering, mouthwatering scent. For once, Snow recognizes the scant distance between us. But he doesn’t back away. 

“Anathema,” he says, automatically by the looks of it: there’s no fear in his eyes, only fiery conviction. 

“That doesn’t work here,” I say, but I hadn’t remembered myself until I answered him. I wasn’t even planning to lay hands on Snow.  

I just— just— 

“Oh,” says Snow, his eyes wide with realization. They flick over to my hands that rest at my sides, wandless, weapon-free. His eyes move to the center of my chest. 

Snow’s right hand follows them, his palm and fingers pressing flat against my breastbone.    

I trip backward onto the ledge by the window, my tailbone jolting against the cherry wood.  

Snow follows me, his fingers half-curled onto my shirt, half-clasping my sternum. 

I can feel his warmth on my skin. It’s unbearable. 

“What are you doing?” I ask quickly. “Let go of me; I wasn’t going to hurt you, you nightmare.” 

“I know, I know,” says Snow, but he appears confused, disoriented.  

“If you’re planning on attacking me, I—” 

“I’m not,” Snow says, shaking his head. “I was just…” 

He presses in closer, stepping between my legs. (Merlin.) My back hits the cold windowpane, Snow’s hand firmly upon me. 

His fingers curl and uncurl, sliding slowly, ever so slowly, over my heart.  

My undead heart. 

Snow blinks. “What…” 

His hand pushes more forcefully against my skin and bones, like he’s trying to grab the organ underneath. 

“How are you so calm?” he asks, feeling the slight, resurrected beating. 

(What is he asking me?) (Does he even know?) 

I grab Snow’s wrist (why didn’t I grab it earlier?) and yank him away. 

His pulse, unlike mine, flutters like a winged creature in a storm. 

The door to the library opens.  

Snow grabs his arm away, still hovering over me. 

Father is in the doorway, observing us. He appears calm, unflappable; ergo, he’s very, very unhappy. 

“Would you do us the honor of joining our family for dinner, Mr. Snow?” Father asks in a low, foreboding voice. 

Snow swallows. (His Adam’s apple bobs aggressively up and down.) “Er, of course, Mr. Grimm.” 

Unlike last dinner when Father wordlessly glowered at his guest, this time he employs a new strategy: probing the Mage’s Heir for his political views. 

Snow answers him only somewhat less catastrophically than he answered me. He mumbles his support of the Mage’s policies in between bites of chicken and cucumber sandwiches, his plate perpetually refilled by Daphne. When Father’s questions become increasingly sharp and surgical, Snow shields himself with stuttering, masticating silence. 

Daphne tries to defuse the tension by inviting Snow to watch television with Mordelia and I once our meal is done.  

Snow nods mutely. Then, he silently stuffs himself with popcorn as The Princess Bride plays onscreen. The only times he verbalizes his responses are when Mordelia interrupts the movie with questions about whether he’s as skilled with a sword as the characters on screen (“M’ decent, I guess”) and whether he’ll show her the Sword of Mages (“Uh, I don’t think that’s a good idea…”) 

I’m so preoccupied wondering why Father isn’t inviting me to his study that I almost don’t notice when Snow dozes off against my knee.  

(Almost.) 

I kick Snow awake. 

He instinctively shouts, “Anathema!”  

Mordelia also wakes up, listlessly watching the end credits. 

“I already told you, that doesn’t work here.”  

Then, I haul my screaming baby sister off to bed, and Snow and I retire for the night. 

(He drifts off on the sofa, breathing deep and steadily.) 

The next morning I’m awoken by a sharp knock on the door.  

At first, I’m convinced that Father is launching a surprise interrogation on me at the break of dawn. When the knocking repeats more softly, I realize it’s Vera, who’s returned from her weekend break. 

I lower my guard, preparing myself for an inquisition around dinner after I’ve finally taught Snow how to use the silverware, except I notice that… Snow isn’t on the couch or in the ensuite. He isn’t in my room at all. Which means he must be wandering around the house, unsupervised. 

Merlin, Morgana, and Methuselah.  

I toss my duvet back and slide into my slippers. “You may come in,” I tell Vera, throwing on my robe. 

Vera opens the door. She quietly examines my state of disarray and then the sofa, draped in a tousled blanket and a dirty knapsack. She communicates an impressive amount of open judgment for someone who believes my family are mafioso.  

“Welcome back, Young Master Pitch,” she says. 

“Welcome back to you, too, Vera,” I say, grabbing random clothes from my dresser. 

“Your father would like to speak to you after breakfast.” 

Earlier than I thought— fantastic. “Of course. I’ll drop by his study at ten.” 

“…He requests nine.” 

“Fine. I’ll see him then.” 

Vera nods and closes the door.  

I hastily jump into my trousers, tug my jumper over my head, and glance at the mirror before I exit my room and speed down the hall.  

While I avoid using them in most instances, my vampire senses can be bloody useful. I keep my face low as I sniff Snow out like a bloodhound. (A blood hound— hah!)  

His scent leads outdoors, and the dread that I felt at the prospect of Snow digging through my family belongings and getting cursed or enlightened in a way he shouldn’t is outweighed by the iron that forms in my gut at the thought of him leaving. 

Snow’s scent, however, doesn’t disappear down the gravel-lined path toward the main road: it leads into the pine-dotted hunting grounds on the outskirts of the property. 

I find Snow practicing his sword-work, not with the Sword of Mages— thank Merlin he heeded my warning— but with a stick. He’s stripped a long pine branch of its twigs and bark and uses it to cut through the air, slashing at clouds of pine needles. The snowy ground exhibits his various footwork, his pivots, steps, and lunges.  

(I can smell the sweat on his brow and neck.) 

“Is this how you spend your Christmas holiday with Wellbelove, Snow? Fending off imaginary attackers instead of singing carols?”  

Snow startles and whips toward me, mumbling something about being impossibly quiet. 

Then he shuts up. His lips part, and his expression goes blank.  

“Baz,” he says in a voice I don’t recognize. “You’re wearing jeans.” 

I look down at myself. I forgot that I threw them on in my rush to locate Snow. And here I was trying to dress more authoritatively this break.  

“We’ve already established that my wardrobe includes more than suits, Snow,” I say, sliding my hands into my pockets and stretching my dark, denim-clad legs. 

Snow doesn’t say anything. He chews on his lip and turns the handle of his make-shift sword. 

The wind gusts through the bare trees, and I shiver. “If you have excess energy to burn, we might as well play a game of football before breakfast.” 

I’m stepping toward the shed when Snow says, “Or we could do sword-fighting together.” 

“What—” 

I reflexively catch the stick Snow suddenly hurls at me, the wood smooth and warm from his grip. 

Snow grabs another piece of wood, a broader and more warped branch that apparently didn’t make the final cut. He seems reasonably comfortable holding it, arranging his hands just so on the imaginary heft. He gets into position with his arms low and center, his knees bent. 

If anyone else proposed to do imaginary sword-fighting with me using yard waste, I’d call them out for being juvenile and in desperate need of a reality check. Unfortunately, I know that killing things with a sword is a significant and high-stakes component of Snow’s demented, heroic reality.   

Snow must sense some of my skepticism because he grins and says, “Come on, it’ll be fun. Like the movie last night.” 

I test the unfamiliar weight of the stick in one hand. “As much as it pains me to admit it, I’ve never done sword-fighting.” (Although I try to sound indifferent, it does pain me to admit that Snow possesses a skill I’ve failed to learn.) (Maybe I should take lessons just to show him up.) 

“Really?” Snow sounds genuinely surprised. “You never took fencing or other posh sword lessons?” 

“Why would I when I have a perfectly good wand?” I ask, releasing my wand from my arm holster beneath my sleeve. 

For whatever reason, Snow’s mind is transported meters away. His glassy eyes follow my wand as it slides down my inner arm and falls smoothly into my fingers. I twirl it, trying to jar his attention, but he continues to stare in my direction vacantly, gaze locked on my wrist and fingertips. He’d better not be wary that I’m going to curse him. “Snow. Snow!” 

Snow shakes his head. “Sorry… er… let’s say your wand got broken or tampered with or stolen by an enemy. What do you do then?” 

Use my vampire strength and senses to kill them. (But never bite. Never, ever bite.)  

“Alright.” I put my wand in my back pocket and readjust my grip on my branch, feeling like a five-year-old. (Which was one of the highlights of my life— the first part of it, anyway.) “How would you suggest incapacitating my opponent in a swordfight?”    

“Easy,” says Snow. “Sword-fighting’s just sticking the pointy bit in the other guy.” 

(Does this idiot even hear himself?)  

“I’m afraid you’ll have to get more technical.” 

“I’ll show you,” Snow replies, and he abruptly raises his branch overhead, encroaching lightning-fast into my space. 

I parry him on reflex. 

His stick sharply clatters against my own, knocking loose dry patches of bark and shards of ice that shower my clothes. 

“Wicked,” says Snow, his smile wide but his eyes fierce and combative. It reminds me of how he looked at me in our first year. 

“You’re a terrible guest,” I say, pushing his stick away. “Only you would launch surprise attacks on your host under the guise of having fun.” 

He snorts. “As if you wouldn’t block it with your reflexes.” (Was that a compliment?) “Try to strike me this time.” 

“Drawing from my vast knowledge of sword techniques,” I say sardonically. 

“You’ve seen movies and book illustrations,” Snow says easily. 

“Is that how you learned to use a sword?” I ask, horrified. “From reruns of The Mark of Zorro, not an actual instructor?”  

“The Mage showed me some moves,” Snow mumbles. I take “some” to mean the bare minimum, aka, “stick the pointy bit in the other guy.” 

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll show you what I’ve got. It can’t be worse than what you’ve picked up from the Mage’s abysmal teaching and popular media.” 

Snow growls, and I lunge at him, careful not to overuse my enhanced strength and speed. 

I needn’t have worried— Snow performs some complicated maneuver with his shoulder that enables him to twist my faux-blade away and slash at me with his own. 

I draw my stomach in and dodge. Snow continues to come at me with diagonal swings that my parries halt only for a moment before he executes a fluid, circular motion with his wrist that bats my branch away and diverts it to the ground. Then, he swipes at me, pushing me further and further into the trees. My consciousness is split between being cognizant of my surroundings as Snow forces me backwards and avoiding Snow’s confident slashing. 

Crowley, if only he handled a football the way he does a sword.   

Taking his advice by repeating what I’ve seen in movies, I grab a fistful of powder snow from the ground and hurl it in his face.  

“Baz!” Snow yells, pausing to rub the snow out of his eyes. 

I laugh. “Sword-fighting also about feints and deception, if I’m not mistaken.” And I go on the attack.  

Less skilled at treating my pretend sword as an extension of my body, I mainly employ strategy. I aim for Snow’s blind spots, making him stumble over snaking tree roots and logs as I guide us across the thicket. 

“Do you always have to be such a villain?” Snow asks. (Melted snow clings to his eyelashes.) (His cheeks are apple-red with exertion.) 

“You’re just upset that I’m smarter than you,” I respond and raise my stick overhead. 

Snow parries me. Then, shoving both of our weapons out of his way, he has the audacity to kick me in the chest. 

I fall on my arse into the snow. “You belligerent bonnacon!”  

“Sword-fighting isn’t only about using a sword,” Snow says cockily, bringing the blade of his branch straight down on me; I roll out of the way; his stick slams into the ground, a plume of powder snow erupting from the blow. “And what’s a bonnacon?” 

“A magickal bull that sprays its enemies with burning feces,” I hiss, jumping to my feet and clanging my wooden sword against Snow’s.  

Our interlocking weapons create an X in the air. With our swords trapped in place, both of us strain against each other, trying to get the upper hand through sheer strength of will. 

“There’s no way that’s real,” says Snow. 

It’s not, thankfully, only a revolting myth from deranged medieval agriculturalists. “You don’t sound entirely certain.”  

“Not because I am one,” says Snow.  

That’s painfully obvious. Snow’s savory-sweet aroma—cured meat glazed with honey, marbled fat crackling from the low heat of a slow-roasting flame—is clouding my brain. It’s making my teeth twinge. I try not the breath.  

“There are worse magickal creatures to be,” I say. 

“That’s hard to imagine,” says Snow. 

I recognize too late that he’s using some technique again. By incrementally sliding his sword along mine, Snow has shifted the fulcrum of our joined weapons, leveraging himself higher and higher while my center of gravity lowers, forcing me into a half-crouch beneath him. 

I consider tapping into my vampire strength, but I lack the finesse to know how much I need in this situation. Too little is pointless, and too much I could break Snow’s neck. 

I decide to steal another strategy from him instead: sweeping my leg to knock his feet from under him.  

But Snow anticipates my moves, dodging by hopping from foot to foot, and exploiting my disrupted balance to shove me onto the snowy ground.  

It’s as he’s driving the end of his weapon toward me that I realize that I’ve overlooked something crucial: 

I’m a vampire— 

—And Snow’s about to stab me with a fragment of wood— 

Staking me.  

I catch his stick with both of my fists. The shattered point hovers above my chest. 

Although Snow wouldn’t hurt me (he’s the hero; he doesn’t hurt people) (but I’m not a person; I’m a vampire, a monster that heroes slay), my undead heart beats the wildest it ever has. 

Snow senses my unease. He moves to withdraw, but I’m clutching his weapon with every ounce of my strength. The unexpected resistance causes him to recoil. He stumbles onto his knees above me, supporting himself with one hand laid flat by my ear, and the other still clasping the branch. However, his hand has moved, wrapping around my own fist. His gloveless fingers are calloused and warm where they brush against my knuckles. 

I feel a hysterical giggle bubbling up my throat.  

With Snow’s hand wrapped around mine, it looks like he’s trying to stop me from impaling myself, not threatening to deliver the fatal blow. 

What a farce. 

I roll us both over.  

Snow’s back hits the ground, his eyes wide. I’m on my hands and knees above him. I hurl both of our wooden weapons onto the ground, remove my wand from my back pocket, and point it at them.  

“Burn, baby, burn,” I say. 

The sticks go up in flames. 

When Snow and I are both back on our feet, we brush the ice crystals from our clothes in silence. I think Snow is confused, but as ever, it’s hard to determine what he’s thinking or not thinking. 

We make our way back into the house far later than I’d intended; it’s nearly noon as opposed to mid-breakfast. I’m in such a rush to change that I’m knotting my tie when its dawns on me that I sent Snow off to lunch dripping wet from our outdoors excursion. 

Seven snakes, have I lost my mind?  

It appears that somebody casted cleaning and drying spells on Snow by the time I reach the dining room. It must have been Father; Snow is on edge, and he smells like a controlled fire, charred heather, bracken, and farmland plant litter. 

“Basilton,” Father says. “Good of you to join us.” 

“My apologies,” I reply, sitting across from Father and pouring myself a cup of tea. “I lost track of the time.” 

“Mr. Snow was telling us about your morning activities,” says Father coolly. 

I want to glare at Snow, but I can’t in front of Father; besides, Snow is distracted by Vera’s presence. Mordelia plays with his food while he gawks at our maid; Daphne tries to dissuade her, as usual to no avail.  

“Exercise is a healthy way to start the day,” I say. 

“You said no sword!” Mordelia shrieks at Snow, outraged. 

“They weren’t real swords,” Snow frantically explains. “Only—” 

“Pretend.” (Sticks of wood.) (How could I have been so blind?) (Maybe it wouldn’t have been too incriminating; after all, getting staked in the chest would also kill any ordinary mage.) “They were only pretend, Mordelia.” 

Even though I’ve stopped the words from leaving Snow’s lips, I can tell when Father connects the dots. When he recognizes my foolishness, the risk I was taking. 

His face becomes an impassive mask. 

Which he continues wearing even when he berates me in his office after lunch. (He’s garrisoned the room with silencing spells.) 

“You must stop this, Basilton,” he says, standing ramrod straight in front of the flaming hearth like an evil mastermind.  

“I’m following the plan, Father,” I say exasperatedly. 

“The plan has changed, and for good reason,” Father reiterates like he did throughout the summer before shipping me off to my aunt. “The Mage’s Heir is dangerous. Surely you can see that.”   

I hold myself stock-still, resisting the urge to summon a ball of flames to spin between by fingers. 

Father sighs, clasping his brow. Abandoning his place by the mantle, he opens a cabinet encased with glass and fire-like filigree, and he withdraws a bottle of old tokay. 

He sets a silver platter with the wine, a crystal decanter, and two glasses on his desk. After uncorking and carefully decanting the tokay, he pours the golden liquid into the two glasses, claiming one for himself and offering the other to me. 

I’m surprised.  

Whereas Fiona snuck me samples of cheap liquor from her flask ever since I hit double digits, Father usually demonstrates a little more regard for the laws against underage drinking. 

Standing beside him, however, I realize that we are beginning to reach the same height. When Father first gave me my mission to befriend Snow at the tender age of eleven, the crown of my head barely reached his chest. Now, two months shy of fourteen, I’m perhaps ten centimeters shorter than him, a mere half a head. My legs are almost as long as his, the lean lines of our faces so similar. 

I take the glass and nod at Father before sipping. 

Unlike the acrid taste of Fiona’s Merlot, the tokay is bittersweet. It reminds me of the succulent flesh of a stone fruit that surrounds the hard, inedible pit. There are also strange notes of flavor that I do not recognize: something moldy? There’s definite sourness, astringency.  

“You have done well to see your obligations to the Families through these past years,” says Father, emboldened by his own mouthful. 

“…Thank you, Father,” I say, drinking slowly. 

“I know how sudden it was for you then, and yet you adapted,” he says, “which is what you must do now.” 

(Must I?)  

(The wine sluices sickly-sweet down my throat, tasting like rot instead of fermentation.) 

“This is our best option, Basilton. Our only option.” 

“But it’s not,” I say. “Snow is here, and he isn’t harming anyone.” 

“For now,” says Father. “But what happens when the Mage commands him to stop acting as our happy, hungry houseguest? You know he won’t disobey him. He can’t.” 

I can convince him otherwise, I want to yell, but I don’t.  

(Can I?) (Would Snow ever trust me more than the Mage?) 

(I think about Snow’s passionate defense for the Mage in the library.) 

(I think about Snow running his hand down my chest, his warmth bleeding through my shirt and onto my skin.) 

I drink more. 

“He’ll wave his sword against whomever the Mage tells him to,” Father insists, “whether that sword is made of enchanted steel or simple wood.” 

(Snow didn’t know how it could hurt me.) 

(I think about Snow hovering above me, his hand wrapped around my fist, neither pushing forward nor pulling away.) 

(I think about him under me, his bronze curls sprawled across the snowy white ground.) 

(I think about his terrible, wonderful, exquisite scent—) 

I drop my glass on Father’s desk, clutching my mouth.  

My teeth squirm, breaking in and out of my gums. They’ve never been like this: spasmodic, uncontrollably descending and retracting from my soft tissue. 

“Basilton?” Father asks, approaching me. The smell of him is overwhelming: sunbaked dirt, kindling grass, tart and melancholy pomegranate juice— 

I back away, curling into myself. 

“Are you feeling sick? Was it the drink?” (I want to laugh and cry; Father really thinks I’d be drunk after half a glass?) “As you were!”   

His fiery magic washes over me, and the pain and spasming vanishes…leaving my canines jutting over my lower lip. (I guess that’s how the spell interprets me being what I am.)  

“Ith not th’ thokay,” I lisp, my hand concealing my fangs. 

But Father hears them. (He and Fiona were the ones to first witness my fangs dropping and to look askance, wordlessly instructing me to hide them away.) He must be confused: to his knowledge, my monstrous appendages only appear during mealtimes, not discussions about—  

“Basilton,” Father says urgently. “You can no longer pretend to be friends with the Chosen One.”  

He won’t say that it’s because of my vampirism. But it is.  

“You may have fooled him into coming over for Christmas and listening to music together and playing silly games, but that does not change the fact that he isn’t your ally. He can never know the truth. He…” 

When Father trails off, I think it is initially because of his reticence to even suggest that I might not be totally human. But I recognize the intoxicated look in his eye. His drunken bliss couldn’t have come from the tokay. I feel the volatile, angry, and injured magic swelling like miasma, poisoning the air as it permeates the study from beyond the closed door. 

But that’s not possible. Father charmed the study soundproof. Snow couldn’t have heard us, even if he was attempting to eavesdrop. 

Until, in a fit, Father cast As you were too diffusely and accidentally undid the wards. 

I throw the doors to his office open. (Father collapses magic-drunk into his armchair, utterly useless.) (He’s been reduced to a helpless babe from his first exposure to Snow’s power.)  

I hear Snow’s heavy footsteps racing through the house, flying down the stairs, and hurtling through the front door. 

By the time I’ve reached the entrance to the house, he’s already disappearing down the road, on his way back to Watford. 

Father recovers from Snow’s magic eventually. (As does Daphne, who sank into a dreamy stupor in her bath, and Mordelia, who giggled for hours at a black television screen.) Once he does, he’s relieved that Snow absconded. I didn’t even need to push him away. Father calls Fiona over to celebrate, and on Christmas eve, they toast to the prospects of our renewed war with the Mage and his heir. Then my father and aunt spend Christmas day with excruciating hangovers that I will not cast away for them.  

Because I’m furious. 

How could Snow simply leave? Without asking me anything? Without listening to what I had to say? 

He continues to neither ask nor listen when I return to Watford after the break.  

Snow isn’t only livid with me: I cease existing to him.  

I’m invisible in the room, in our classes, on the pitch, and in the dining room where I resume eating with Dev and Niall. 

When I’m in his range and he bothers to acknowledge my presence, Snow does it by secreting fetid, alluring magic, like the iridescence on an oil spill.  

“I can’t stand it,” I tell Dev and Niall in their room. They’re playing chess; I’m imagining all the ways I could hurt Snow for writing me off as his enemy so quickly.  

(It’s like nothing I did, nothing we experienced together, ever mattered.) 

Dev shrugs, moving his knight onto one of the black squares. “Knew you’d break sooner or later. Did you see how Snow practically blew up in Magic Words? Tosser.” 

Niall snickers and takes Dev’s knight with his rook. Dev curses and refocuses on the game. 

I did see Snow almost go off. I’d been sending him note after magickal note. He ignored the first wave, and the last notes he shredded in his sword-calloused hands. My only missive that succeeded in gaining his attention was the one that poured all my spite, all my disappointment into the accusation that he was “The worst Chosen One to have ever been chosen.” 

Snow’s toxic magic filled the classroom, but before he could detonate, he fled, throwing a wrathful and hurt look over his shoulder. 

(I won’t argue that I’m not trying to hurt you, Snow, because I am.) 

(It’s better than losing my place in your story, becoming a one-off villain best forgotten.) (If that’s the case, I’d rather be your arch nemesis, your sole obsession.)  

(We can both go down in flames.) 

“A melt-down over obscure 18th century idioms won’t be enough to take him down,” says Niall. 

“Maybe a monopod?” Dev suggests. “Or a kelpie?” 

“You really think a one-footed giant or glorified sea horse can beat Snow?” I ask acidly. The Serpent couldn’t take Snow down at twelve; he slew a dragon the first year he discovered he was magic.   

Dev huffs. “Maybe he has a foot or horse phobia.” 

“It’s not like the Families can hire the Humdrum to do it for them,” says Niall more reasonably. 

I try to think of a beast that could even begin to match Snow in crude, bombastic, and prodigious power. A graceless, mindless being of mythic proportions. “A chimera is likely the only creature the Families could use to take Snow down a peg.” 

Dev whistles low and impressed. “Not even the Mage is powerful enough to take down a chimera by himself.” 

“Of course not.” 

Describing this scenario gives me the pleasure of imagining Snow desperately calling from my aid instead of levelling me with that cold, flat stare. 

Only later do I learn that Dev and Niall don’t perceive my words to be a mere thought experiment: they consider them to be a proposal.  

On a brisk April night, we lounge in Mummer’s common room. I struggle to master the bridge for David Bowie’s The Prettiest Star, singing quietly under my breath while Dev and Niall play Othello: 

“To sing a song of when I loved 
The prettiest star 
One day though it might as well be someday 
You and I will rise up all the way 
All because of what you are 
The prettiest star…” 

(The constellation of freckles on Snow’s wrathful face flashes through my mind as vividly as a photograph.) 

My bow wails on the violin strings. I shove the instrument back in its case. 

“I’m retiring early, gentlemen,” I say, one foot already on the stairs. 

“Don’t wait up for your roommate,” Dev says. Niall cackles. “He might not be coming back.” 

It’s when I hear the distressed groaning of cherry tree wood that I become aware of how tightly I’m gripping my violin case. 

“…What do you mean by that?” 

“The chimera,” says Niall. “Like you were talking about earlier in the term.” 

“A distant cousin sent me one,” says Dev proudly.  

A member of the Grimm family sent a chimera to our school, a place full of children as opposed to magickal beast keepers? And they sent it to Dev, who perennially forgets that cousins Ethelinda and Pestilentia can’t eat devilled eggs without going into anaphylactic shock? 

He sicced a three-headed monster merged from major predators and satanic creatures on Snow? 

“Where?”  

“…The Wavering Woods,” says Niall, watching me strangely. Dev also appears unnerved. 

A chimera— a fucking chimera.  

I track Snow’s scent into the Wavering Woods, following the lightning scent of raw magic and his salt-and-cinnamon odors.  

When I find him wandering through the darkness, he’s blessedly not in the middle of an intense battle with an extremely dangerous dark creature. He appears to be wandering aimlessly, his trains of thought, as always, parked in the station or stopped completely before the branching railway switch. 

Then, he sees me. 

And his semi-conscious visage transforms into disdain and hurt. 

(Don’t look at me like that, Snow.) 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he growls at me.  

He assumes a fighting stance, a hand on his hip. 

(I’m not the one you should be fighting.) 

I don’t get a chance to answer, because I detect a change in air pressure, a clash between wildly different temperatures— 

—And a carnivore-shaped vortex hurls me through the saplings and against the massive trunk of a tree. 

My body collapses into a thorny mass of bramble in the forest’s undergrowth. 

Deafening tinnitus rings through my ears; I blink the black spots out of my eyes.  

“Baz!” Snow cries. “In justice. In courage. In defense of the weak. In the face of the mighty. Through magic and wisdom and good.”  

Trampling the grass and shattering the trees is an ugly, semi-amorphous creature the size of a lorry. Its misshaped lion’s head bares its teeth at me; a second head, a red-eyed goat with twisted horns, emerges from the lumpy torso fused to the lion’s shoulders; and the creature’s sentient tail, a hissing snake’s head, flicks its forked tongue and flashes its fangs, venom dripping onto the earth and killing the plants. 

This hodgepodge of monsters like a child’s over-enthusiastic Lego creation is bad enough, but I notice how the air shimmers around the chimera’s faint, distorted body. Its magickal aura is an effluvial, more menacing take on Snow’s magickal heatwaves. 

“It’s fucking incorporeal,” I gasp. That’s why I didn’t smell it. 

“How do you…” Snow’s eyes narrow. He brandishes his sword at me. “You sent it!” 

“It wasn’t me! I— Great snakes.” The chimera runs towards me, sending tremors through the ground with its non-existent mass. (How?) “I wouldn’t touch you with a barge-pole!” 

The chimera’s intangible magic still collides with me (that makes no fucking sense, it’s incorporeal) , but instead of ricocheting me against the forest, it merely knocks me back.  

“Then how did you know it was here?” Snow yells. 

Attracted by Snow’s cries, the chimera turns towards him. The snake head lashes at me while the lion-head surrounds Snow with its immaterial jaws. 

“Batten down the hatches!” I cast on Snow.  

Snow repels the ethereal teeth with his sword and tries to slash at the chimera, but his blade passes through its mist and gossamer body. 

The chimera’s rippling, gaseous muscles shove Snow into a boulder. 

“Fuck!” Snow shouts, clutching his arm and tightening his grip on his sword. He barely dodges when the snake head lunges at him; the lion head snaps at me. “How do we kill it when we can’t touch it?”  

“Losing your touch!” I cast on the lion’s teeth, but they still graze my arm, drawing blood.  

“How is it fucking hurting us when it can’t touch us?” Snow shouts when the snake’s head coils around his arms and squeezes.  

“Out of touch!” I say and roll out of the way. The lion head sinks its teeth into a nearby tree, rending the bark and soft, white flesh. (I have no clue what’s going on anymore.) (I try to remember anything I might have read or heard about surviving attacks by murderous, incorporeal entities.) “I don’t have all the bleeding answers, Snow!” 

“You’re the one who set it on me!” 

“Giving up the ghost!” I say, and the spell works a little: the chimera’s diaphanous form ripples tentatively, but it doesn’t die. “ I’m the one who’s trying to save you from it!” 

“No, you’re making sure your family’s pet gets the job done!” Snow bellows, slashing at thin air. 

“It can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but it cannot bring it into substance itself!” I cast, but I know the spell will have little effect; Mary Shelly’s line doesn’t have widespread recognition. “I’m not doing this for my family!” 

The chimera flips around again, its serpentine face spitting venom at me and its massive, feline claws pawing it Snow, scrabbling for deadly purchase. 

“Merlin!” Snow howls when the chimera slashes through his shirt. The only thing that stops me from racing to Snow’s side is the minimal scent of blood in the air. (The cut must be shallow.) (Also, I’m preoccupied by the immaterial viper trying to swallow me whole.)  

“Cast something!” I yell at him.  

Snow ignores me, swinging his silver blade into the vapors, the invisible bonds joining the lion’s shoulders to the chords in the goat’s neck.  

“Snow! Not even your bloody blade can slit an imaginary throat! Use your fucking magic!” 

“Shut up, Baz!” 

“Not until you listen to me!” 

“Why should I?” Snow growls, exhaustedly dragging his sword across the earth. “I heard your dad. I know everything was a plot to use me." 

“I’m not—” 

“It’s just like the Mage said,” Snow says hoarsely. “Your family made you stick with me because I’m the Mage’s Heir… you’d never want anything to do with me otherwise. Not if I wasn’t the Chosen One.” 

“I choose you, Simon!” I cry. “I choose you despite my father, despite my aunt, despite the Families, despite the fucking Mage! And I’m not choosing you because you’re the one the World of Mages has chosen to save us. I’m not even choosing you because the Crucible made us roommates. Being by your side is my choice; I choose it for myself.”   

Snow says nothing; he’s utterly motionless. 

The chimera’s three heads lurch behind him. 

“Invisible things are the only realities!” I cast at the chimera. Its sheer body congeals into something real, something breakable. “Stab it! Do it now, Snow!” 

Brow furrowed and arms trembling from fatigue, Snow nevertheless launches himself at the chimera. His sword finally pierces it. Pink, transparent blood drips down its half-mammal, half-reptile flank, lacing the edge of Snow’s blade with color. The fantastic, impossible creature roars in pain.  

But the damage is temporary. Almost immediately, the fabled beast dissolves into a nightmarish illusion that no hero’s blade can exorcise. 

“Snow!”  

Snow races toward me, and we take shelter behind a slab of sandstone. We listen to the chimera shred the forest leaf by leaf. It pounds against the rock, slowly cracking it. 

“So, you didn’t send the chimera?” Snow asks quietly. 

“I told you, I didn’t.” Although I may have flouted the possibility. But I didn’t deliver it gift-wrapped to Watford’s gates. (I can’t fathom how Dev managed it.) (I’d be impressed if I didn’t long with my entire being to repay him with a gruesome, fiery death.) 

“… You’re not trying to use me?” Snow asks. 

I sigh. “If I was, you’d have already blown up the chimera with your unquantifiable magic.” 

“You called me Simon.” 

“Would you like that to be one of my last words?”  

The chimera’s dynamic rage creates a magickal tempest that splinters the trees down their fibrous cores and lifts the stones into the sky. 

Snow huddles into himself, hugging his knees to his chest. The side of his body is pressed against mine, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. I see no point resisting given our impending deaths. 

(Why was I resisting before…?) 

“I can’t beat it with magic,” Snow says.  

“You can. You’re the one mage with enough power to do so.” 

“I can’t control it.” 

“Simply turn it on,” I explain like I did in our second year. “Light it up like you’re striking a match.” 

“I can’t,” says Snow, his magic unconsciously leaking. “That’s not how my magic works.” 

“How does it work?” I press. 

“I don’t know,” he says, clutching his hair, head between his knees. “I don’t, I…” His magic pours like invisible smoke, like a charged, living thing desperate to escape his body. 

“Snow.”  

“I can’t save us,” Snow mutters. 

I’m drowning in his magic now, my hands wrapped around his shoulders. “Snow! You can. You have to.” 

“I can’t save you,” says Snow, wreathing himself with burning magic and— 

Going off. 

Or he must have. 

I don’t remember it, like I don’t remember entering a state of unconsciousness after the vampire bite. 

All I know is that I wake up in a blackened pit that resembles the site of an impact event, the traces of a flaming meteor that pummeled the earth.  

I lay in a soft bed of ashes. The sandstone boulder is now a pile of glimmering dust.  

My vampire self should be dead, but I’m not. (I should at the very least be minus my eyebrows and lashes.) (I run my fingers along them; sure enough, I feel my facial hair.)  

I’m intact, whole. Snow’s fire didn’t destroy me; in fact, I’m buzzing with its excited molecules, its kinetic energy. 

“We’re still here,” says Snow. His face is smudged with soft streaks of make-shift charcoal, darkening his moles. 

I refrain from rubbing the dirt away. I’m sure he’d feel warm to my touch, his skin smooth beneath my fingers.  

Snow grins at me, uncertain but happy. With his smile, his ruddy cheeks, and his bright eyes, he’s so…  

“…Alive.” 

“Yeah. We’re both alive, Baz,” Snow says. He scans the ravaged horizon of the forest. “Do you think the chimera…” 

“I didn’t see it,” I answer, managing to lift myself onto my feet even though my body aches. “It could have been vaporized. Or it could have joined the other child-killing creatures in the Woods.” 

Snow uses his sword as a crutch, burying the tip into the earth and then hauling himself into the smoky air. 

But after a moment of swaying feebly, Snow lets himself fall back into the ashes, splayed like he’ll be on the pitch after our football matches. 

“On your feet, Snow,” I tell him. “You can rest in our room.” 

“The drawbridge’ll be raised,” says Snow, gazing up at the sky. 

“Ah.” That’s right: it’s black as midnight out here. “We should send a bird to Bunce. She’ll let the teachers know that—” 

“You tried to kill me?” Snow says, but he’s chuckling, his hands laced on his stomach. (I can see where the chimera miraculously cut him.) (The cut in his shirt reveals a long, red line that contours his bare abdomen, his navel, and the jut of his hip.) 

“Quiet, you.” With no other alternatives, I lay beside Snow. The stars glint above our nest of cinders. 

“You have enough magic to cast A little bird told me?” Snow asks.  

I summon the strength to half sneer at him. “What do you take me for, Snow? Other than a foiled murderer?” 

“You were practically singing spells earlier,” Snow argues, turning on his elbow to examine me. 

He’s right. I shouldn’t be able to cast anything, let alone move a muscle.  

But I could cast the spell. Instead of incinerating my unatonable, vampiric essence, it feels like Snow’s magic transmitted through a strange osmosis to me. I feel warm in a rare instance in my life, so warm that I yearn to sleep outdoors in this toasty cradle of ashes with Snow safe and peaceful beside me— 

Oh.  

“I’ll… I’ll try the spell later,” I say. 

Snow hums contentedly in reply. The sound sends a hot sensation slithering through my gut. 

Oh.   

“Wake m’ up if any more magickal creatures come to kill us,” Snow mumbles, his eyes closed and his face centimeters from mine.  

His breath fans over my lips. When I map the pattern of his moles— three scattered across his right cheek, two packed tight below the lobe of his left ear, and one dotting the skin over his left eye— I realize that I know where they are by heart, by memory.  

“Don’t you trust me to protect you?” I ask him, swallowing. 

Snow shakes his head. Pain lances through my heart until he says, “I’ll fight alongside you.” Then, he blinks awake. His eyes are half-lidded, the corner of his mouth quirked up fondly.  

I want to close the gap and kiss it. And then his freckles, too. Even the soot on his skin. 

“I choose you, too, Baz,” says Snow. He’s asleep in less than a minute. 

I’m not. 

I won’t get any sleep, and it’s not simply due to the magic flaring through my veins. 

It’s also because I may be a little attracted to Simon Snow. 

Chapter Text

Book 4: Simon Snow and the Four Selkies

X. SIMON

If I thought that I couldn’t wait to get back to Watford during the summer of my second year, I’m practically jumping out of my skin with excitement before my fourth. 

It finally feels like things are going my way: 

No. 1— The boys at my new home were relatively polite to me. It helped that my magic wasn’t as erratic as it had been the previous summer when I was puzzling out Baz’s dad’s letter. (I knew he was up to something!) (Fuck Malcolm Grimm… is what I’d think if I wasn’t terrified of him using his dark magic to read my thoughts and curse me from afar.) 

No. 2— The Mage has invited me, Penny, and Agatha to a Coven meeting for young people to learn what’s going on in the World of Mages. I mean, that’s what Watford is for, but what we’re learning from the Coven is how to use our magic in the everyday, adult world and our eventual adult lives. Like Professor Bunce and Dr. Wellbelove. (And possibly the Mage— not that I know what he gets up to when he isn’t tracking the Humdrum.) (Does he take cooking classes? Have a gym membership? Do crochet?)  

We’ll probably also discuss the war with the Humdrum, dark creatures, and the Families, but what I really want to know is how to make sour cherry scones once I’ve left Watford. (They’ve got to be magic, right? I should ask Baz; Cook Pritchard is his cousin. He’ll know.) (But then I shouldn’t bring up attending a Coven meeting where the Mage will disparage Baz’s family… no matter how awful they are to me. Baz appears to love them, weirdly enough.)  

No. 3— During the Coven meeting, I’ll get to see Agatha again. Aggie. Since June, she’s sent me postcards with pictures of her tanning on the beaches in Ibiza and Morocco, her hair bleached pale gold and her white string bikini gleaming under the Mediterranean sun. She’s so beautiful.  

I can’t picture Baz relaxing at a beach. Crowley, he hates it when I leave the blinds open during the sunrise. If I dragged him to a beach, I bet he’d sit under an immense parasol with a posh sunhat for extra security, his slim fingers turning the pages of a summer paperback, and his long legs crossed over a beach chair, exposed to mid-thigh… 

No. 4— Oh, and Penny! That’s right. Because of the Coven meeting that’s happening right before term starts, the Mage has given me special permission to stay with the Bunces for the remainder of August. I’ve been here for two weeks now, and it’s grand. I love Penny. I miss her sorely every summer. I know why I don’t stay with her, though. The Mage’s theories about the Normals and my magic notwithstanding, Penny’s house definitely isn’t big enough for me plus Penny, her parents, and her four siblings. Baz says that I take up too much space as it is, even if it’s just in our room in Mummer’s. 

Penny doesn’t mind making space for me. I sleep in her room, or more accurately, we talk together late into the night before we get an hour of shut-eye on her Supersized bed. Her dad doesn’t mind having me over either, springing me with Humdrum-related questions at every turn; he’s less happy about Penny and me rooming together.  

Penny’s mum could care less about us sharing a bed, let alone a room. What worries her is the Mage: she wouldn’t invite him inside the house when he dropped me off. She says his men take whatever they want from people and break in wherever they want to go, even her son Premal.  

(I try not to listen when she talks like that…) 

No. 5— Lastly, what makes me really look forward to returning to Watford this year is knowing that Baz and I are proper friends. Finally: after three confusing years, no more lies, schemes, or secrets. Even if the Grimms and Pitches keep plotting against me, like the Mage thinks they will, I’m sure that Baz is on my side, and that I’m on his.   

I guess I should be somewhat grateful that Baz’s family schemed to make us friends during our first year. It’s not like he would have bothered with me if he wasn’t given strict orders. I know Baz: eleven-year-old him wasn’t feigning disgust and contempt the first time he saw me. His initial reaction makes sense, in a twisted way.  

Baz is mage royalty, smart, powerful, and fucking ruthless. And I’m a penniless orphan, a quasi-Normal lacking a magickal family legacy and the magickal know-how to easily take down the Humdrum. If it weren’t for me being the Chosen One, who knows what I’d amount to (and if Baz would want me) … 

“Stop talking about yourself like that, Si,” Penny whispers to me from across the bed. 

I shift under our shared covers. “Sorry,” I say quietly.  

“Stop saying that, too,” says Penny, tugging the blanket away from me. 

“Pen,” I say, grabbing futilely at the sheets; they’re charmed to obey her. 

“I told you, no more apologies or no more blankets,” Penny warns, her voice even more ominous in the carefully preserved quiet.   

The first few nights I stayed in Penny’s room, she’d spell it silent so we could talk all we wanted. The walls are really thin here, and everybody’s rooms are stacked right up against each other. But then Penny’s dad got concerned about a boy and girl sleeping together in a soundproof room; Penny laughed in his face. Her mum argued that letting Penny cast her silencing charms would mean brain fog every morning; Penny couldn’t refute that. 

So instead of spelling the room quiet or getting adequate sleep, Penny and I converse until daybreak in hushed voices. I’m glad we’re heading back to Watford tomorrow: Penny’s siblings are sick of smacking the walls to shut us up. 

Like Priya and Pace are doing right now. 

“What I meant,” I say in a low voice, “is that I’m glad Baz told me everything. Now, we can have an ace year. All four of us.” 

Penny rolls her eyes. “It will certainly make you more bearable. After you came back from his house for Christmas holiday last year, you were impossible to deal with.” 

“But I was right!” 

Penny’s siblings slam on the wall again. 

“Sorry,” I whisper at the plaster, my voice as timid as a mouse. “The point is, I did find out that Baz’s family was scheming against me. They were trying to use me and him.” 

“They could still be, and Baz could be letting them,” Penny says disinterestedly. The emotional repercussions of Baz betraying me don’t bother her, only the magickal complications. “How do you know that Basil isn’t lying about being your friend again? After all, you’re on opposite sides of the war. Maybe he plans to wheedle real information from you this time, about the Mage and the Coven and our fight against the Humdrum.” 

“We almost died fighting the chimera together, Pen,” I say, heated and desperate. “You should have seen him. All the spells he cast. Merlin. He was pure magic. Though I’m convinced Baz set the chimera on me in the first place. I’ll get him to admit it eventually…” 

Penny sighs, already bored by the topic. “I suppose if he says he chose you, Basil must be doing it in flagrant disregard for his family’s wishes.” She giggles. “So melodramatic, that Basilton Pitch. ‘I choose you, Simon. My family doesn’t choose you — I do.’”  

Penny cackles madly, and my face fills with heat. 

I shouldn’t have told her what he said verbatim. But I couldn’t stop myself when Baz and I returned to Watford the morning after the chimera attack. (Penny saw us covered in blood and ashes, and she promptly called us a splendid pair of morons.) 

“’You’re not their Chosen One, you’re my Chosen One,’” Penny mutters in an overly deep voice. She has to bury her face in her pillow to suppress her laughter. 

Pip still hears it, knocking against the ceiling. 

“He didn’t say that,” I hiss, blushing fiercely. 

“He basically did.” 

“Penny, I implore you, please don’t tell him that. He’s going to decide we’re enemies again. Or at least he won’t stop threatening to kill me, he does that at the drop of a hat.” 

“Relax, Simon,” Penny says, breathless from snickering. “I won’t sabotage your perfect year, including your friendship with Basil Pitch.” 

I do relax, easing on Penny’s highly enchanted mattress. It shifts like a marshmallow under my back. It even smells mildly sweet, like marzipan or the Indian, pistachio-and-condensed-milk candies that Penny’s mum introduced me to.  

(I love it here, even if Penny mocks me mercilessly.) (It’s like we could be real siblings, sleeping in a room together.)   

“You’re friends with Baz, too,” I tell Penny. I want them to be friends. If Baz is mine, then he’s also Penny’s. 

“Half-friends,” she says. “I already have you and Agatha, and I told you: I don’t need more than two and a half friends.” 

“But you two study together and have constant debates.” 

“It’s nice having someone to talk about magic to,” Penny admits. 

I’m a bit hurt, but I try not to let it show. I mustn’t succeed, because Penny’s face softens, and she scoots closer to me. She usually keeps to her side of the bed, not out of propriety but because my magic gets her overheated.  

“You can talk about magic with me,” I say childishly. 

Penny takes my hand in hers. “Oh, Simon. You don’t talk about magic so much as you live magic and breath magic and make magic happen all the time. Even Basil can’t do that and still talk about spells.” 

I know Penny means to comfort me, but I don’t like hearing about how different I am from her, from Baz.  

It makes my insides twist the way it does when our classmates treat me like a celebrity instead of a peer, the teachers a ticking time-bomb instead of a student. 

Penny yawns, squeezing my fingers. 

I squeeze hers back.  

We both fall asleep. The next morning is a flurry of activity.  

“What was Davy thinking, making the Coven meeting the day of the kids’ return to school?” Professor Bunce asks her husband at breakfast. 

She’s rapidly drinking coffee and grading student papers at the edge of the dining table. Priya is complaining about her new Watford uniform to Pacey. Pacey is spilling tea on Professor Bunce’s tower of essays, which she’s had the foresight to spell Stain-free. Premal is lecturing Pip about a man’s responsibilities. Pip is still pestering Premal to tie his shoes. 

“He’s a busy mage, Mitali,” says Penny’s dad, lifting his cast-iron skillet from the stove.  

He does a little jig around his children to spill extra sausage and biscuits onto my plate. The Bunces have made it their mission to help me recover all the weight I’ve lost over the summer, even though they’re already feeding six mouths. I’m grateful and ashamed. 

“Thanks, Mister Bunce,” I say, chewing my breakfast very slowly. 

“Martin, Simon,” says Penny’s dad— Martin— who insists on treating me like a magickal colleague in pursuit of the Humdrum instead of his daughter’s burdensome friend. 

“Sorry, yeah— thanks, er, Martin.” 

“I’m looking forward to the Coven meeting,” says Penny, stirring canned coconut milk into her cornflakes. (She turned me onto it last week; I don’t know how I’ve eaten dry cereal without it.) 

Professor Bunce narrows her eyes at her daughter. Genetics are scary; she and Penny look identically suspicious. “You’d better not be listening and thinking of all the new ways you could endanger your young life this year. The same goes for you, Simon.” 

“’Course not, Professor Bunce,” I say. (I don’t look for danger, it looks for me.) (Penny, on the other hand…) 

“I merely want to learn about how we should develop our skills to be confident, independent, and reliable adult mages,” Penny tells her mum. 

Martin chuckles. “You’ve never lacked confidence, Penelope.” 

“Or independence,” says Professor Bunce.  

“Learning reliability, it is, then,” Penny replies tartly. 

“We’re excited to see Agatha, too,” I add hastily.  

It disarms me how Penny interacts with her parents. It’s not the plastic pleasantness I see in families on tv, or the strange distance (…and love?) in Baz’s house. They care for each other openly, with all their edges and imperfections on display. I can’t understand how parents or loved ones choose to be with you when you’re not prophesied levels of impressiveness. 

“That’s right, Welby’s daughter will be there, too,” Professor Bunce muses. 

“She’s your girlfriend, isn’t she, Simon?” Martin asks. 

“What? No!” I say. Not yet, at least. 

Martin’s face falls, either due to his incorrect assumptions or because me being unattached means I could be interested in Penny. (Which, no, never.) (The thought makes us both queasy.) 

My nervousness must show on my face because Professor Bunce laughs reassuringly. (I think.) (Or she finds the prospect of punishing me for my transgressions hilarious.) “My husband is a romantic, Simon. We’re bound together in five dimensions. The only thing that interests him more than the Humdrum is love.” 

“Really?” I ask. 

Penny’s mum and dad lace their hands together.  

I try to imagine being bound to someone that deeply. It would be nice, to be that fixated on each other, lives so closely interwoven. 

Maybe that’s what I’ll discover with Agatha. 

(Does Baz ever think about things like this?) (He’d better not regarding Agatha.) 

“Do you have your eye on anyone, Penelope?” Martin asks. “Remember, if you don’t find your partner at Watford, you’ll have to look during singles’ bus tours of Great Britain.” 

“You’re a terrible feminist, Dad,” Penny snips, but I can tell she’s a little concerned. That’s shocking. I always thought Penny was more concerned with finding a good book than finding a good boyfriend. “Finish your breakfast, Si. We need to get to Watford before Mum’s class.” 

“I’m afraid I can’t be there,” says Professor Bunce, shoving her papers into a much too small attaché briefcase.  

“Mitali, the Mage wants all the Coven to attend,” Martin insists. 

“Some of us are actually required to teach when we’re on school premises,” she replies. “Tell me if there’s anything new.” 

“Yes, yes,” Martin sighs.  

Professor Bunce quickly kisses the tops of her children’s heads, whispers something into Penny’s ear, and exits through the front door. 

Penny frowns, concerned or possibly dismayed.  

“What is it?” I ask. “What’s wrong?” 

Penny lifts her earthenware bowl over her face, slurping down the remaining dregs of soggy cornflakes in her discolored milk. (Baz would scold her horribly.) “Same old, same old. Nothing to worry about, Simon.” 

“Well,” says Martin, drying his hands on his seer-sucker dishrag, “let’s get to it, then.”  

Outside the house, I see one small car parked near the curb. Penny’s mum has taken the other car that might accommodate another four people if the vehicle were packed extremely strategically.  

“Are we taking two cars?” I ask as Premal, Pacey, Priya, and Pip converge with their suitcases. 

“It’s spelled to be Bigger on the inside,” says Penny. 

She opens the boot, and it extends like a bottomless well. I’m almost afraid to hurl our bags inside. (The only valuable thing in mine is my wand.) (I shouldn’t leave it around in my bag where anything could happen to it, but what I really care about is my sword, and that’ll never leave my side.) 

I’m about to slide into the back after Penny when Martin pats my shoulder and says, “Sit in the front with me, Simon. You’re our guest of honor. And we can go over every detail of the dead spots and your Humdrum theories!” 

“Oh. Great.” 

The ride over to Watford is… a lot. 

I try to answer Martin’s questions, but a lot of my responses are “I don’t know” or “I never heard about that.” All the adults think I know about these things. I don’t. I just do what the Mage tells me.  

(Me: “There are five dead spots?”) (Martin: “You didn’t know?”) (I shake my head.) (Martin: “Well, the locations and timing of when they opened up are absolutely fascinating. As the Chosen One, do you have a sense of why the Humdrum—”)  

I’m also distracted by Penny viciously fighting with Premal over freedom of speech and learning. She’s telling him that the Mage suppresses other points of view, and Premal argues that the Mage only wants to protect us. (He’s right.) (Isn’t he?) Priya cries when Pacey spells her hair rose-red instead of sky-blue, complaining that she looks like a villain. Pip needs us to pull over when he gets carsick. 

When we arrive at Watford’s courtyard, I almost drop on my knees and kiss the ground. 

Unfortunately, I don’t get to bask in the glory of being back with the brackish waters of the moat, the distant expanse of the pitch, and the shadowy fringe of the Wavering Woods, because Martin hurries me and Penny along to the Weeping Tower, where the Mage is convening the members of the Coven. 

We run into very few students at this early point of the day. By late afternoon, they’ll be crossing the lush lawn in droves. 

(It’s a good thing Baz probably isn’t back yet. A secret Coven meeting would drive him insane.)  

(When is he coming back? Will he be in my room when I get there?) 

(I wish I could check if he’s there already, but we’re on a tight schedule.) 

“Finally! What kept you, Martin?” the Mage asks when I get us through the wards to his office. 

“Sorry,” Martin mumbles.  

The Mage’s gaze flicks back to the door. “Where’s Mitali?” 

“Busy grading summer essays, I’m afraid.” 

“Hmm.” The Mage strokes his beard, a hand on his hip. The handle of his sword gleams in the torchlight. His long tunic and leather gloves and boots place his outfit somewhere on the spectrum between rugged adventurer and dress party host. “Well, sit down. We’re eager to get started.” The Mage grabs my arm and hauls me to the front. “Simon, my boy, come, come!” 

“Right,” I say, letting the Mage deposit me in a seat in the very front row. His loud announcement has drawn eyes I recognize and many I don’t toward me. At least I’m not alone up here, because Penny sits right beside me, always eager to be in the front rows of a lecture.  

I don’t know what I expected for the Coven meeting. Maybe a seminar-style circle of chairs around a magisterial, ancient artefact like the fire-and-brimstone Crucible? (I guess the circle of folded chairs could feel too much like a support group instead of an expert magickal organization.) (No, that’s only if we served refreshments, which we don’t, unfortunately.) 

Instead, the Mage’s office is set up like a classroom, the torchlight low and flickering, causing his shelves and cabinets with monster-hunting paraphernalia and gilded books to glitter. There are seven full rows of aluminum seats split down the center with an aisle for the Mage to cross back and forth. The chairs face a screen with a projector playing a slideshow, dust swirling in the beam of light. The slides say things like “Let us go where the gods have shown us the way and the injustice of our enemies calls us” and “Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”  

“Really? Julius Caesar instead of a great educator?” Penny huffs beside me.  

“It’s classic hero stuff,” I say. “Gallant bread and butter.” (If only I had bread and butter right now.) 

I feel a feathery touch on my shoulder. I shiver. 

It’s Agatha. 

“Aggie!” I whisper, putting my hand on hers. (I keep one eye out for the Mage, who has started his presentation.) (He seems to be talking about the children, aka me, Penny, and Agatha, as the future of the magickal world.) 

Agatha looks really good. More relaxed than when the school year has officially begun. She’s dressed casual, sans uniform, wearing a cream-colored camisole and wide-leg trousers, the kind you could dance or frolic in. She’d look exactly like a wood nymph with a sprig of apple blossoms in her hair. (That must be why the dryads love Agatha.)   

“It’s good to see you, Si,” she says, smiling and squeezing my fingers. 

I squeeze her back, holding her for a long beat. (I hope the Mage doesn’t scold me for not paying attention.) 

This is progress, isn’t it? Holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes? (Even though Penny and I often do the same thing.)  

The rest of the Mage’s speech discusses the importance of bolstering Watford’s defenses, so our gate’s motto of strength in unity isn’t reduced to a feel-good saying stitched into a throw-pillow. Then, he calls me up to the stage and introduces me with my long list of titles that should make me feel like a lord or a knight but instead make me feel like a prat. Now that the lecture component bit of our meeting is over, the Coven members assault me questions: how do we repel the Humdrum, control the dark creature populations, and co-exist with the Families? What does the underage savior of mages advise we do? 

Luckily, the Mage fields most of our impromptu Q and A. When I speak, I parrot explanations he’s given to me. (Baz would tear me apart for this, asking if I have a brain outside the Mage’s skull.) (And then he’d tear into my interviewers with polite and unforgiving eloquence.)  

“Before we wrap up,” the Mage says (thank Merlin), “I’d like to welcome our American brethren to Watford.” 

Two mages wave at us and introduce themselves with sharp American accents.  

Agatha looks intrigued, Penny disturbed. 

“Their presence at our school this year marks a revolutionary international union against the Humdrum,” the Mage says profoundly. “Once upon a time, the Pitch headmasters and headmistresses of Watford were too narrow-minded to invite Americans into our school. They forbade them from studying abroad here in the late 18th century. Even Natasha Grimm-Pitch refused to repeal those antiquated and unjust sanctions. But we’re entering a new age, one where mages with new and unique powers will help us fight the dark forces that threaten us all!” 

“We’re going to have Americans in our classes?” Penny whispers incredulously. 

“Baz’s family hates them, too?” I whisper back. (Is there anyone the Grimms and Pitches don’t hate?) (I hope Baz isn’t too pissed about this; he doesn’t need other reforms by the Mage to attack.) 

“How thrilling,” whispers Agatha, closely watching the American headmistress and dean of students. “I’ve always wanted to visit America. California sounds lovely.” 

“I encourage our American friends to look towards our Chosen One, the Greatest Mage, The Power of Powers Simon Snow for guidance during this time of need,” says the Mage, beckoning again at me. “He will lead us all to victory.” 

I grin weakly and sink down into my folding chair, oozing magic that turns the Coven members’ eyes as rapt and glassy as porcelain dolls. 

The meeting peters out after that. I linger long enough to greet Doctor Wellbelove, who recounts how much the family missed me last winter break and how they hope I’ll visit again this winter. I promise him I will, and he smiles at me warmly. (I don’t think I’d survive another winter at Hampshire, whether Baz and I are friends or not.) (Besides, I get him for the rest of the year, so I’ll be okay for a couple of weeks in December.) 

Before the Americans can greet me, I speed out of the office. (Penny and Agatha stick around with their dads, exchanging goodbyes before the school year.) 

I’ve had my fill of Humdrum-related inquiries today. After a good dinner in the White Chapel and a good night’s rest in Mummer’s House, I’ll be ready to take on everyone’s questions and concerns. Fed and rested before a battle. 

As I’m passing through the hall of portraits of Pitch headmistresses and headmasters, I feel like I catch a glimpse of Baz exiting the office. His shadow slips out of the sanctum and by the painting of his mother. I pause by her; she’s so like Baz in appearance, foreboding, regal, and beautiful, almost unfairly so compared to us common folk. Only she’s warm and red-gold complexioned, like her awful sister. Not like Baz. (His skin is white and cold…)  

Anyway, it’s not possible for Baz to have been here. Just a trick of the light and the many images of look-alike relatives like funhouse mirrors. The office has wards that only permit the Mage and I to enter.  

Though that shadow really looked like Baz, all slim and dark. 

I quickly proceed from Mummer’s House to the Weeping Tower, avoiding my latecomer peers like fixtures in an obstacle course. I hop over rolling bags and jog in place behind the slow-moving groups that I can’t bypass. Some of my classmates greet me, while others appear to think I’m in the middle of a dangerous quest, giving me a wide breadth. 

“Alright, Simon?” Rhys says brightly when I hurl open the old door to Mummer’s House. He and Gareth are in the common room by the striped, green-and-purple sofas, armchairs, and coffee table. (The coffee table has luckily avoided being adorned in Watford’s colors). I think Gareth is explaining some component of his magickal belt buckle to Rhys. He’s standing with his pelvis awkwardly thrust out, while Rhys is as far back in his wheelchair as he can be without hitting the wall. 

I nod. “Alright, Rhys?” I ask in reply. 

Rhys appears to be seriously considering my question, wheeling his chair further and further from his roommate.  

“In a hurry?” Gareth asks, and he rotates his hips towards me. “Let me tell you about—” 

“Later,” I promise. (I shouldn’t be promising that or anything to Gareth given his track record. He comes second to me in producing disasters and disappointments, and he doesn’t have uncontrollable magic, just a gaudy belt buckle.) (Oh well, what’s the worst that could happen?) “I gotta get to my room first.” 

“Basil is already in there,” Rhys cautions me. Gareth scowls, too. Neither Rhys nor Gareth care for Baz, who may use more superficial niceties than me, but who also isn’t shy about criticizing peoples’ magickal performances during class. He’s like a surgeon who operates without anesthetic, eschews basic bedside manners during the recovery period, and lights a fag in the smoke-free hospital suite, blowing smoke in your face without offering a pull.  

“Baz is in right now?” I ask, my foot on the stairs. 

“Yeah,” Gareth grumbles, hip cocked. (Something tells me he had the misfortune of asking Baz to review his most recent spell— why in Merlin’s name would he do that?— and got scorched for it.) 

“Great,” I say, smiling widely.  

I knew I couldn’t have seen Baz in the Mage’s office. Nobody could get from there to here so fast. 

I gotta stop worrying, the Humdrum and Americans regardless.  

This is going to be a brilliant year now that I’ve got my best friends and my (soon-to-be) girl.  

Outside my and Baz’s door, I summon the Sword of Mages to nick my thumb. I smear my blood along the wood, and it slowly swings out. I still have the sword in my hand when I enter the room to the familiar, woodsy scent of Baz’s shampoo and cologne.  

“Must you always opt for self-mutilation instead of the simple incantation?” Baz asks. 

He’s sitting on his bed, propped up against his headboard and reading a book by Virginia Woolf. (To the lighthouse.) (What a prat. My prat.) (He didn’t get the book as homework, so he’s reading it for fun. He must really like it: despite the glimmering protection charms, the pages are heavily earmarked and the cover singed around the corners.) 

“Baz,” I say, grinning. 

Baz smirks at me, dare I say fondly. “Snow.” 

“Simon,” I correct him. 

“I’m glad you remember your own name. Your hellish summer didn’t include traumatic head injuries, then.” 

I huff, twisting my sword in my hand. “You can call me by name now that we’re not mortal enemies.” 

“I could,” says Baz, turning the page of his book. (It’s startlingly like my beach fantasy.) (Wait, that wasn’t a fantasy— just a thought experiment.)  

“Well?” I ask. 

“Feel free to make yourself comfortable by sheathing your weapons and tending to your self-inflicted injuries, Snow,” Baz replies, as unyielding as ever.  

I don’t magickally vanish the Sword of Mages, swinging the silver blade in the air just to annoy him. “It’s good to practice my sword-work, make sure I don’t get rusty.”  

It’s half-true— I haven’t summoned the Sword of Mages all summer, but I don’t think I could forget how it feels and responds to me. 

“’Don’t get rusty.’ Does it ever bother you that you describe yourself the same way you describe your sword, like you’re one and the same?” 

“No,” I say. It doesn’t bother me because I don’t think about it. (I don’t let myself.) (The Mage described me like that, too. As a blade I had to keep sharp and battle-ready.) 

I raise my blade high into the air, my arms flexed by my cheekbones, resolutely not thinking. 

Baz is watching me, carefully following my movements. I catch his gaze.  

He swiftly returns his attention to his book. 

He’s already in his uniform, grey trousers hugging his legs and his dark green blazer draped over his red jumper. I wish he’d dawdle in his casual clothes like Agatha. I haven’t seen him in jeans for ages. It’s almost like I dreamt the experience up. 

Baz looks the same but also more maddeningly fit than ever. How does he return from each summer more posh, simply more than everyone else?  

There’s one thing I’m especially surprised about: his hair. He’s always worn it a bit long, the ends curling at the nape of his neck. But this year, he’s grown his waves out so that they brush against his shoulders. Without his copious pomade, I’m sure his black hair would fall into his face. He’d have to tuck it behind his ears, where the sleek locks would slip away and swing back into his grey eyes.  

My stomach growls. 

I flush; Baz arches an eyebrow, unsurprised and unimpressed. 

He claps his book shut on his lap. “Shall we get you some dinner before our housemates believe Mummer’s House is haunted by gluttonous ghouls?” 

“Sod off,” I say. I disappear the sword and carry my new uniform into the ensuite. (Baz and I aren’t the kinds of friends who change in front of each other.) (The thought makes my intestines curl.) I shuck Premal’s second-hand clothes (they’re too small for me since Premal’s thin and wiry, and I’ve gained some muscle back with the Bunces). I step into my trousers, jumper, and blazers, tailored to magickal perfection. Once I exit the ensuite, Baz appears to notice the change in the fit of my clothes, hopefully approving the state of me. (We can’t all look as perfect and put together as him.)  

We leave our room together and enter Watford’s green grounds.  

I missed this: the cool, clean air; overheard tidbits of student and faculty conversations about their favorite tv programs and enchantments; everything vibrating with ubiquitous, ordinary, and extraordinary magic. 

I’ve missed this as deeply as I’ve missed my friends. 

I need this. I need them. 

“So, how was your summer?” I ask Baz. 

He sneers at me. “I didn’t renounce my family’s plans so we could exchange banal chit-chat.” 

“Meaning you enjoyed not having to actively plot against me? You had the time to develop hobbies?” 

“You should know I’m very accomplished,” Baz snips. “I play violin, football, I’m fluent in four languages, I can expertly change nappies—” 

“Nappies?” I ask, thrown off. 

“My stepmother couldn’t keep my half-siblings in her womb forever, Snow,” Baz sighs. “As preferrable as that would have been.”  

“You’ve been handling babies over the summer?” I ask, amazed and horrified. I’ve never handled something as soft and fragile as a baby. I can’t imagine Baz— well, I suppose he has the dexterity to do it. And there was the way he rocked his baby sister on his hip and enchanted the flowers on her bed curtain to bloom, wither, and regrow. 

“I only ensured that Mordelia didn’t do anything Machiavellian to the twins while Vera was away,” Baz says.  

I lack the bandwidth to imagine Baz holding and cleaning newborns. “I stayed with Penny for part of the summer.” 

“That explains why you look half-starved as opposed to being on death’s door,” says Baz. Beneath his cutting words, he does sound glad. I think. “And why did the Mage decide to foist you onto the Bunces for a change?” 

I should’ve thought my answer through more. I wasn’t supposed to bring up the Coven thing. But they didn’t launch too many terrible accusations against the Grimms and Pitches. “There was a Coven meeting. They wanted young mages to be there.” ‘They’ meaning the Mage. 

“I see,” says Baz, sounding unsurprised. Also, not horribly angry. More pensive, stoic.  

I’m shocked when we enter the dining hall. During the first night when students are still moving in, the tables tend to be sparsely populated, the spread of food less dense. (But still delicious.) 

Tonight, the seats are overflowing with students, many in uniforms I don’t recognize. They’re wearing black blazers and capes with red-and-white stripes and blue stars. Nobody at Watford wears our school capes, except Penny when she’s feeling particularly gallivanting.  

“Americans,” Baz hisses, glaring and turning up his nose. (It seems like he shares his family’s prejudices.) 

“Over here!” Penny screams, waving at us from the nearly full table. She shoves Gareth to the side to make space, and his kindness is rewarded with Baz’s visible disdain for his neighbor. Agatha asks Phillippa to scooch, and I sit between them, Agatha smiling sweetly and Phillippa staring with unnerving intensity.  

“Can’t the Mage use basic maths to supply enough tables for his esteemed guests?” Baz asks, leaning away from both Penny and Gareth at the same time. Deciding that Penny is the lesser of two evils, he resigns himself to sitting pressed against her, shoulder to shoulder, his nose turned into his collar. (Rude.) 

“How are we supposed to have enough space in classes?” Penny moans, practically dropping her head onto Baz’s shoulder. 

It looks like Baz hadn’t thought of that; he glares even more fiercely, ladling generous spoonfuls of sugar into his tea.  

“It’s not so bad,” says Agatha. “The Americans are friendly. I was talking to a couple of them, Melanie, Ryan, and Jackson—” 

“The American blokes have been talking to you?” I ask, outraged. 

Penny scowls. (She’s told me on multiple occasions that my jealousy is the result of an antiquated misogynist belief system that reduces women to objects men can own.) (I’ve told Penny just as many times that I don’t think of Agatha as one of my possessions. I don’t think of anybody like that.) 

I glance at Baz. 

He also seems upset. Probably for less feminist reasons than Penny. 

(Oh Crowley. Baz better not be planning to court Agatha this year.) (If that’s the case, I…) 

“Your attention, please!” casts the Mage, standing on the stadium for staff tables. “Hear ye, hear ye!” His voice booms throughout the crowded hall.  

The chatter dies down.  

“We are very excited to open Watford’s illustrious halls to our American brothers-in-arms!” the Mage says. 

The Americans loudly whoop, clap, and whistle, startling the Watford staff and student body. 

“What about sisters-in-arms?” Penny mutters. 

“That’s what bothers you, Bunce?” Baz asks snidely. “Not being included as the Mage’s cannon fodder?” 

I reach across the table to kick him; Baz stares at me icily before clutching my ankle and hurling my leg to the floor.  

“While there is much for us to learn from each other in the spirit of cooperation,” the Mage says, a sly smile tweaking his mustache, “we can learn far more in the throes of competition, as my good American colleagues remind me! That’s why, while our friends are here from across the sea, we’ll battle it out in the classes, on the pitch, and in magickal tests to see who’s best prepared to face the evil that lies ahead of us!” 

“But how’s that supposed to help us come together to beat the Humdrum?” Agatha asks.  

I shrug—I like this plan. I find a little friendly competition to be healthy and invigorating. 

“So, we get to see if we’re smarter than the Americans,” Penny says, excited now.  

“Is that really a question?” Baz asks. 

“The question is who among us will beat them more soundly,” Penny answers. She and Baz share an eerily similar smirk. 

“Due to our guests’ interest in Watford’s unique English traditions, we will also reinstate the Wintertide Ball,” The Mage announces less enthusiastically than he issued his challenge to our visiting school. 

I groan. “A ball?” 

“A ball!” says Agatha gleefully. She grips my arm; my heart skips a beat. “Won’t it be fun, Simon? A chance to do something lively and athletic that isn’t killing monsters.” 

“Er, yeah,” I say, trying my best to muster up some zeal. It’ll make Agatha happy, and I get to dance with her. If only I knew how to dance. (I’m better at killing monsters.) 

Baz must know how to dance. I turn toward him.  

He’s gazing disinterestedly at the golden surface of his tea, dissolving his glittering cubes of sugar. 

“But most importantly,” cries the Mage, “Watford gets the chance to show the world how we will defeat great evil and protect the magickal world— with our prophesied savior, Simon Snow!” 

Seven hells.  

This is far worse than when I was put on the stage (literally) during the Coven meeting. 

The Americans are gazing upon me like a national landmark or a superhero. (They’re into those, right? That would explain the capes.)   

“Simon will demonstrate valor, determination, and goodness in three trials: trials of flame, sea, and earth. The Americans will test any, perhaps all of their impressive student body to see if they can match our champion!” the Mage shouts; the Americans scream in delight; Watford students and faculty cheer in support of me.  

What?  

I really should have spoken with the Mage after the Coven meeting. 

“You didn’t know about this?” Penny asks, correctly reading my dumbstruck expression. 

“No,” I say hoarsely.  

I’ve been saying that a lot today: no, I don’t know. 

I don’t know about the Humdrum, the Mage’s plans, anything. Things just happen to me, and I respond to them. Usually by swinging my sword or going off. 

I never have a clue about what’s happening to me next.  

“It can’t be that bad, Snow,” says Baz. “They’re just Americans.” 

I kick him again, but much feebler this time. My ankle ends up lacing around Baz’s, our legs loosely wound together. Baz does nothing for a moment, staring at his tea. Then he gently disentangles himself from me. The tip of my shoe brushes against the sliver of skin between his sock and trousers. 

“We will go over details after a night of revelry and commemorating our alliance!” roars the Mage. “Now, eat, drink, and be merry!”  

My stomach bubbles with magickally inspired gaiety and a renewed appetite for dinner and tea. I’m glad the Mage cast the spell and not me. I’d have ended up creating a brainwashed bacchanal. (I can’t believe I know what a bacchanal is.) (Penny and Baz are rubbing off on me.) The Mage’s spell is more of an invitation or suggestion to feel happy and indulge, like a message in an advertisement that buries itself in your subconscious and bothers you until you succumb. 

The dining hall digs in, chatting and laughing and spilling tea all over their new uniforms. 

“Now we won’t get any sleep before classes tomorrow,” Penny complains, spearing her shepherd’s pie. 

“How dare he use his magic like this,” says Baz, steadfastly not eating or drinking or being merry. His force of will is astounding; I don’t think I could dispel the Mage’s enchantments like that, even if I wasn’t perpetually hungry. 

“It’s all right, Basilton,” Agatha laughs, drunk with the Mage’s magic. “A ball and new friends. It’s just like the club. This will be a delightful year.” 

Baz is unconvinced. Maybe he’s like me, unhappy with all the attention he’s getting. The American girls have been doing double-takes since they scoped him out at our table— some blokes, too. (I know how they feel.) (Baz doesn’t look like something real, that exists in the flesh.)  

“A dragon, a serpent, and a chimera— you’ve faced far worse than adolescent drama and competitions, Simon,” Penny reassures me.  

“I s’pose,” I say. 

The truth is between confronting magickal creatures and negotiating interpersonal dramas with my classmates, I don’t feel prepared for either. 

Chapter Text

Book 4: Simon Snow and the Four Selkies

XI. BAZ 

How did my life become a farcical tale of teenage dislike, desire, and dancing dilemmas? 

I blame the fucking Mage. 

(My family is to blame for many other of my life’s tribulations, but at least those have substance. Mourning my prematurely deceased mother and my own monstrous becoming is far more dignified than the petty, overstuffed, and mortifying youth spectacles that lie in wait for me this year.) 

(I mean, American exchange students, magickal trials, and mid-winter balls? What is that madman thinking?) 

If only the Mage was entirely to blame for my… inconvenient Simon Snow situation.  

He is partly responsible, given that he removed Snow from his woeful, Normal boys’ home and stuck him in Watford in the first place. The Crucible is partly to blame, too, since it trapped us in the same room, living in close proximity these three years. And my family isn’t free of their share of culpability for making me befriend Snow in the first place.  

Although I suppose it’s mainly my own fault for coming to fancy Snow.  

But then, so what? 

It doesn’t have to mean anything.  

It’s just a minor inconvenience, a little pain, that’s all— a totally insignificant and fleeting attraction. 

Half of Watford’s population thinks Snow is attractive. It comes with being a big, bold hero type whose prophesied destiny is hammered home by repeated demonstrations of unimaginable magickal power. It also doesn’t hurt that Snow’s smile could power the sun, his cheeks are as red as apples and just as inviting to sink your teeth into, and his bronze curls shine like metallurgy poured by the gods… 

Anyway, it’s widely known that people fancy Snow, and their feelings are trite, inconsequential, and not worth being concerned about. I thank my proud and punitive predecessors that I haven’t stooped to the subterranean depths of writing Snow fan mail; gifting him with ugly mittens and mishappen scarves during Christmas; and, in the abysmal fashion of Phillippa-bloody-Stanton, scaring Snow out of his wits in the halls and on the Great Lawn with blatantly amateur stalking. (Seven hells, what will it take her to leave him alone?)   

I’d be able to stamp out my minor attraction much more swiftly and brutally or wait for it to reach its natural conclusion (ceasing to exist) if it weren’t for lovelorn spirit that’s possessed our school. 

The fourth years are obsessed with winning one another’s affections. It’s as if love games are part of the Mage’s interschool competitions. 

And Snow has set his heart on Agatha Wellbelove.  

Color me surprised. (If anyone actually cast that spell on me, I’d kill them.) (And by the blood-red hatred coloring my skin, they’d know I’d have no regrets or reservations.) 

The only difference between this year and the previous ones of Snow’s infatuation with Wellbelove is that he intends to transform his fantasies into realities. Turn Wellbelove into Mrs. Chosen One, the Princess of the Power of Powers, the Greatest Woman to Ever Live.  

I know that he wants to bring his plans up with me since that’s apparently something friends do— torture each with their heterosexuality. (Which would still be intolerable even if I didn’t fancy Snow, just a little bit.) My saving grace is that he doesn’t appear to know how to confide in me about it. Every time he looks from Wellbelove to me with a question on the tip of his irreversibly-tied tongue, he magickally implodes.  

And I go on pretending I don’t notice Snow’s obsession with obtaining the golden girl of his destiny.  

(Half of the school appears to be under the same spell for Wellbelove, which only amps up Snow’s pathetic bumbling.) (Dev is convinced I’m part of Wellbelove’s friend group solely to worm my way into her undergarments. And still he has the gall to ask if I’ll put in a good word for him.) (He’s a lust-addled disappointment to the Grimm family name.) 

Even Bunce, whom I once considered my rival in this intellectual institution, has fallen for the ploy that a teenager in possession of hormones must also be in want of a partner. She’s in pursuit of not just any partner: an American.  

(Is everyone losing their minds this year?)  

Mitchell or Milo or some similar nonsense… don’t ask me his family name, because devil knows if he has one. Other than his symmetrical features and Bunce’s ability to walk all over him, I don’t understand his appeal. 

(The Americans test my absolute limits. Every time I catch them trailing after Snow, which is incessantly after being indoctrinated by the Mage, I’m tempted to purge their paparazzi presences with a round of “Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn, and cauldron bubble!”)   

Unfortunately, while Snow is sabotaging himself seeking my advice for Wellbelove, Bunce is convinced that I’m sabotaging her burgeoning relationship.  

Me and Snow, her bosom boys. 

“What is it with men’s delusions that a girl with male friends must have sexual tension with one or both of them?” Bunce complains in the library.  

“Sorry, Pen,” says Snow. He’s fitfully watching our American onlookers. Bunce cast a silencing spell after tiring of their voyeurism and eavesdropping; with their mutely moving lips, they resemble fish behind the glass of an aquarium. (Or better yet, stranded and suffocating on a beach.) 

“It’s not your fault,” Bunce grumbles unconvincingly. 

“Should I talk to Micah again—” (So that’s his name.) 

“No,” Bunce says emphatically. “He only got more skittish after being confronted by Great Britain’s awe-inspiring Chosen One.” 

Snow frowns, curling into himself in his chair.  

I pity Bunce only insofar as I find it utterly hilarious that her American worries that I entertain any designs for her. (Other than crushing her during exam season.) But I’m never telling Bunce or her beau that I’m queer. Admitting that I’m hopelessly attracted to men is one step closer to admitting that I’m hopelessly attracted to Snow—  

Wait, no, not hopelessly: trivially. Temporarily.  

I’m manageably attracted to Snow. 

“Perhaps what you need is a change in approach,” I say. 

Bunce squints doubtfully but also leans into me. (This is why her American thinks she, Snow, and I are in a godawful love triangle. Neither she nor Snow understand personal boundaries.) “As in?” 

“Lead the fly in with honey instead of chasing him with a swatter.” 

“Penny doesn’t want to kill Micah,” Snow protests.  

I click my tongue. “Slay, seduce, it doesn’t matter— what you’re making sure is that no one else gets to him before you do.” 

“Crowley, is that how you think about love?” Snow asks. 

I glower at him. And I shove his foot off my seat. (His leg has been pressed against my side for over an hour.) (I’ve been too distracted with Bunce’s dilemma to push him away.) 

“So instead of pursuing him, I should entice him to pursue me,” Bunce muses. “But how?” 

I have no clue. What do fourteen-year-old boys look for in women? Cosmetics and cleavage? 

“Maybe Agatha will know,” Snow volunteers like a lovesick moron. 

Bunce scoffs. “Agatha will recommend clothes and make-up like they’re the solution to every magickal and non-magickal problem. I don’t need to change. What I need is for Micah to change his way of thinking. To not to be put off by you or Basil. To instead…” 

A look of enlightenment— and craftiness— crosses Bunce’s face. I don’t trust it. Snow is too gullible and good-natured a fool to raise his guard. 

“I hope your schemes don’t catastrophically backfire, Bunce,” I wish her as I rise from my seat and grab my sports bag.  

Snow leaps out of his chair. “Where are you going?” 

“Practice. Coach Mac wants us in tip top shape to beat the Americans.” Which is a logic that eludes me. The Americans are abysmal at football. I’ve seen them casually kicking balls between classes, their legwork sloppy, their power minimal, and their terms ludicrous.  

“I’ll go with you,” Snow says, but Bunce grabs his arm. 

“Basilton will be fine preparing to defeat the Americans on his own. What we need to do is prepare for your first trial.”     

Snow blinks. “Prepare?” 

It dawns on me that the Mage has prepared Snow for none of his missions. This man is someone’s foster father? He runs a school? 

Bunce looks unsurprised by Snow announcing that he charges into potentially lethal situations with minimal planning or guidance. “All we know is that the trial includes fire, but we don’t know if it’s a fire-based artefact or creature. You could be confronting a scald-dron or volcanus—” 

“A volcanus?” asks Snow. 

“A canine volcano,” answers Bunce. “Or it could be a toucandelabra—” 

“These are real magickal creatures?” Snow asks. 

“It’s the thrice removed cousin of the phoenix. Honestly, Simon, one day I’m sitting you down with a magickal creatures encyclopedia. Or your trial could be far more serious, like facing an ifrit—” 

“The Mage could never subdue or outsmart a djinn,” I argue. Like the sorry lapdog he is, Snow opens his mouth to protest, but I cut in, “only extremely proficient fire mages with the ability to cast in fluent Arabic can even draw an ifrit’s attention. For the Mage to bandy about the notion of Snow ensorcelling a djinn, when fire mages have been incinerated or reduced to vessels is—” I lower my bag onto the floor and hold out my hands, repeating a spell Mother taught me long ago. “لما اتفرّقت العقول كل واحد عجبه عقله، ولما اتفرّقت الأرزاق ماحدش عجبه رزقه.” 

Water fills the cup of my right palm, and blue-red fire dances above my left. Due to the nature of the spell, the fire burns impossibly close to my skin, so near it could kill me with a single, stray spark, but it doesn’t. (It won’t.) (Not Mother’s spells, not Mother’s silken, second tongue.) (Although maybe now she would have wanted to—) 

“A hand in the water is not like a hand in the fire,” I quickly translate and vanish the water and fire. (The head librarian is also scrutinizing me through the shelves; this is not the romance-ridden year I lose my library privileges.)  

Bunce is clearly pondering my words, while Snow looks… well, I couldn’t say. His face is blank, his blue eyes unblinking, and his lips parted as dumbly (and distractingly) as ever. 

“Why are we guessing at fire-based dangers when we have an actual, dangerous fire mage in our company?” Bunce asks. 

“High praise, Bunce,” I reply earnestly.  

“Forget that ridiculous match with the Americans, Basilton,” Bunce demands. “Help Simon prepare for his first trial instead.” 

Snow appears intrigued— until Wellbelove reaches our table. 

“What trial?” she asks. She’s walked off the pages of a fall fashion magazine, her purse in her fleeced elbow and a coffee in her manicured hand. (Probably a Caffè Americano; she’s as obsessed with Watford’s guests as they are with her.) 

“Aggie,” Snow barks out like a wretch. He almost falls off his chair to make room for her. 

Wellbelove smiles and sits at his side, stoking the Americans’ frenzied attentions. I’ve had the misfortune of overhearing (courtesy my vampire senses) the American gossip about Snow and Wellbelove as Watford’s eminent royal couple, a more thickly maned Prince William and simulacrum Kate Middleton. And Snow hasn’t even managed to ask her to the Wintertide Ball yet, much less court her.  

I have no desire to hear more from them or him. 

“Not now, Bunce,” I say, looping my duffle bag over my shoulder and stepping outside the parameters of her silencing spell. “I’m busy carrying out the Mage’s other wishes like a dutiful, little pawn.” 

“Baz,” Snow growls, momentarily distracted from Wellbelove. At least until she tilts her slim, pale neck, and her hair spills like waves of wheat down her shoulder. 

“This is more important,” Bunce argues, grabbing my arm. (How dare she; I could tear hers off with scant effort.) (I don’t, but I take great pleasure in letting Bunce uselessly tug at me without moving a centimeter.) 

“What’s more important?” Wellbelove asks, observing Snow’s attentions with fondness and Bunce’s antics with incredulity. 

“Saving Simon’s skin!” Bunce huffs, using her entire body to wrench my arm out of my socket. (Which might work if I wasn’t a monster.) (Because I am, the only thing she succeeds at is obscenely pressing her womanly appendages against me, a tactic she ought to employ on her American. Her surplus softness does nothing for me.) (Except irritate the vampirism I’ve worked hard this summer to get under control.)  

(After much torment and reflecting and biding my time with my younger siblings, my teeth obey me again.) (Thank Circe.) (I don’t like imagining what excited them up in the first place.)  

(Although I’ve had this new… twinge in my stomach. A constant, low-level aching and… problems eating to…)  

(…Feel full.) 

(No.)   

(I have enough paltry terrors in store, enough to be think about, be consumed with—) 

...Like the sudden appearance of Bunce’s American.  

“Penelope?” Bunce’s symmetrically proportioned man asks, hesitantly stepping from the crowd toward us. 

He’s staring at me and at Bunce, who’s wrapped around me in a partial stranglehold. His gaze flickers to Snow and Wellbelove, who are clearly wrapped up in each other. 

He advances toward Bunce, longingly, possessively.  

Bunce looks like she’s drunk deep from the fount of knowledge and is immediately addicted to the ambrosial flavor. She grasps me more tightly. 

“Oh, hello, Micah!” she says chipperly. “Fancy seeing you here.” 

The American’s face turns quizzical. “We said we’d study together—” 

“Terribly sorry, I forgot that I was walking Basilton to his practice today!”  

“What?” asks Snow, again leaping from his chair. He knocks into Wellbelove’s shoulder, making her spill her coffee. She frowns and spells the mess partially away, although it leaves a muddy stain on the edge of her purse. 

Bunce might have helped Wellbelove out of kindness and arrogance if she wasn’t preoccupied with yanking at me, this time in the opposite direction away from our group’s table. “Seriously, Basil, it’s like you’re made of steel.” 

Her American flushes, not appreciating (and entirely misunderstanding) Bunce’s complaint. “Wait, Penelope—”  

“Another time, Micah! You know how seriously us Brits take football.” 

“But you hate football,” Snow says weakly. He hovers on the edge of his seat, his unsettled, flummoxed expression like a character from the Twilight Zone. 

“We’ll be back after Basil’s practice,” Bunce tells Snow, following me away. (I’ve started walking because I can only imagine how much worse she’ll make this situation if we stay.) “In the meantime, you and Agatha research possible trials of fire and ways to survive them.” 

“But I thought we were talking about the Cloister’s welcoming party for the American girls,” says Wellbelove. 

“After the trials,” Bunce lies, linking her arm with mine.  

Snow’s eyes almost fall from their sockets. Wellbelove is flabbergasted and concerned. The American is extremely dismayed.  

“But—” says Wellbelove. 

“Pen—” says the American. 

“Baz—” starts Snow, clutching the back of his chair. 

“We’ll see you later!” Bunce tells them as we exit the library. 

When we cross the Great Lawn, I extricate myself from Bunce and hiss, “What are you doing?” 

“I thought it was obvious,” Bunce replies, unconcerned.  

I glare. “It’s idiotically obvious, which I thought was beneath you.” 

“I’m in this situation because of you and Simon,” Bunce counters. “Simon’s hopelessly besotted with Agatha; that leaves you to help me.” 

“By being your puppet as you put on this performance for the American?”  

“You don’t even need to do anything. Well, except maybe dancing with me at the Wintertide ball—” 

“Never, Bunce,” I promise, even though I love dancing and can think of no other way to do it in this context. 

“Be reasonable,” Bunce huffs, likely seconds away from hexing me into compliance with her ring. “I know you don’t have a partner for it yet, and I haven’t seen you express interest in any other girls at Watford.” 

That’s because I’m not interested in girls at Watford. (And I’m not interested enough in Snow to even entertain the notion of dancing at a ball together, despite how my libido is inclined.) 

“We’ll revisit the possibility another day,” says Bunce like a general mulling over war strategies. “But you really should help Simon with his trial by fire. As much as it pains me to admit, you are our best resource on the subject, Basilton Grimm-Pitch.” 

“If it gets you off my back,” I say like I wasn’t already planning to drill Snow on fire magic until his brain melted between his ears and his thoughts turned into smoke. 

“It won’t entirely, but thank you,” Bunce says sweetly before walking away from the pitch. (I knew she couldn’t make herself go that far in her schemes.) 

Snow finds me after practice. He waits and watches in the stands as usual, undeterred by the early October chill in the air.  

He’s either forgotten or is too puzzled and aghast with Bunce’s behavior to bring it up, which frees me to interrogate him on fire magic all the way to Mummer’s. He knows abysmally little beyond what I told him about how I cast magic, like striking a match in my heart and blowing out the flame. 

That Snow remembers. 

(Great snakes, I’m a sap.) (But if I have this much— if he gives me this little— maybe I’ll grow tired of it, get my fill…) 

(I ignore the gnawing in my stomach.) 

Bunce and I spend the term preparing Snow for his trial at the end of November. We squeeze in sessions teaching him between dominating the Americans in class and on assignments, which is as unchallenging as I expected. Very few American spells translate over in our Magickal Words, and their pronunciation causes regular flops and disasters in Elocution.  

In addition to outperforming the Americans with her class participation, Bunce uses Politickal Theory and Astrology to sidle close to me. Every day that she sits on my blazer and prods me with her pen, her American grows closer to hysterics. (I worry about Bunce’s qualifications as a romantic partner.)  

I should fight her plans more, but at least with our heads bent together and whispering in each other’s ears, Bunce and I can run through possible scenarios for Snow’s mysterious but most certainly life-and-death test. We’ve already eliminated one-hundred and twenty possibilities.  

Wellbelove doesn’t know what to make of Bunce’s actions. (And my resignation to them.) 

I’ve overheard them speaking about it:  

(Having enhanced senses is a nightmare when your school has turned into a theatre of drivel.) 

“You’re not really dating Basil, are you, Penny?”  

“I thought you liked Simon,” Bunce replied tartly. 

I heard Wellbelove’s heart skip in her breast because my vampiric nature exists to cause me pain. “Well, yes, but—”  

“Then you needn’t worry. Unless you plan to string Simon along by keeping your options open with Basilton and the Americans.”  

“You’re the one who’s stringing Basilton along with your American bloke! And you’re inappropriately close to Simon, too. You’re always breaking the wards on the boys’ dorms and sneaking into his room. He even told me that you two slept together at your house!” 

(Snow didn’t tell me that he and Bunce shared a bed for weeks in August. The most traitorous, hindbrain aspect of my being burns with envy.) 

“He’s practically my brother, you silly ninny—!”  

“Don’t call me—!”  

Snow is less vocal than Wellbelove about his unhappiness, although I suspect he doesn’t deem me a worthy partner for his dearest companion. (He’s right.) (Nobody deserves to be cursed with my affection, even Snow.) While Bunce and I collaborate to save his life, Snow watches us constantly, a stormy, ponderous look on his face. 

However, that’s not the worst thing he does. 

No, the most egregious thing is that as November elapses, he asks me about dancing. 

But he doesn’t just want me to explain the mechanics of holding Wellbelove and waltzing her across the ballroom floor. 

As with my fire magic, he wants a demonstration. 

He wants me to dance with him.   

“You can’t be serious,” I say in the low light of our bedroom.  

Snow nods furiously, perched on the edge of his desk chair. When I found him restlessly sitting at his desk near midnight, I had this wild fantasy that he was taking his studying seriously because of his imminent mortal peril. And still, this is further afield of my imaginations. 

“I don’t know who else to ask, and the Mage says dance-lessons are a waste of valuable training time,” says Snow.  

“Then he shouldn’t have thrown this stupid ball in the first place,” I say, which should not be my biggest grievance. 

“Baz, please,” Snow says, ignoring my slight against his mentor.  

Our present circumstances couldn’t be less ideal for practicing ballroom dancing. There’s barely enough room between our four-corner beds for Snow to swing around his sword, let alone for us to swing around each other. In the place of a tailcoat and black-patent leather shoes, Snow is dressed in his late autumn sleeping clothes, which are a step up from his shirt-less September pajamas. Even so, his grey joggers, bare feet, and light, sleeveless shirt with an overly stretched out collar are hardly formal.  

(His low neckline and bared arms reveal the many freckles dotting his biceps, collarbone, and shoulders.) (The dim illumination of Snow’s desk lamp throws into stark relief the muscle he’s redeveloped since he left the Bunces and re-entered Watford.) 

“I can’t,” I choke out. (Damn me.) 

“You can’t dance?” Snow asks incredulously.  

“Obviously I can dance, you dolt. I’ve been doing foxtrots and Viennese waltzes since I was five years old.” 

“Who would make a five-year-old learn Viennese— never mind. If you know it so well, it should be easy showing me.”  

“You’re not goading me into dancing with you,” I say, not moving from my bed.  

Snow is already on his feet, marching toward me. “You still haven’t gotten me back for our swordfight.” 

I wish he wouldn’t bring up the swordfight. It reminds me of what a weak fool I am when I’d rather delude myself with the theoretical strength of my untested convictions. “And you haven’t beaten me the many times we’ve played football, so don’t be too disheartened by failing again, Snow.” 

“Just once, Baz,” says Snow. “One or two moves. Then you don’t have to bother with me again.” 

(It is a tempting proposition.)  

(Just a bit of dancing, and then I can move on from this infatuation.)  

(My curiosity with how it feels when Snow moves against me, playing, fighting, and dancing, will be satisfied.)  

(I’ll never get the chance when Wellbelove snatches him away.) 

(A sharp pang shoots through my stomach, despite the crisps I’ve eaten, despite any of the food I’ve consumed these past months.)  

“Fine,” I say. 

I step onto the floor, the cold wood permeating through my socks.  

I lift my wand from my bedstand. “Silence is golden.” The room is bathed in soundproof specks of gold. “Maestro!” Boisterous strings and percussion play from my laptop to the melody of Johann Strauss’ Schatz-Walzer.   

I bend on one knee, folding the trailing hems of my long, silk pajamas. When I rise to face Snow, he appears to be daunted by the request he’s made, wincing at the orchestral music playing in the twinkling, bewitched air.  

I should give him an out, but I don’t. 

“Nervous about making a fool of yourself before our vast audience, Snow?” I ask, gesturing to the empty dorm. 

Snow grunts and springs upon me, his gaze steely. 

“Anathema,” I say. 

He freezes, arms outstretched and blushing violently. “I’m not attacking you. I thought we were dancing!”  

My god, this boy is a tragedy. “You don’t just grab your partner, you oaf. First, you bow. Your partner will curtsy.”  

I bend slightly at my waist. Snow mimics me, bowing stiff as a soldier with a midriff made of bricks.   

Despite the trainwreck I foresee, I approach Snow, raising my arms in a half circle.   

Snow seizes my hand in a vice-grip and cages me with an arm around my back. His blunt nails dig into the blade of my left shoulder.  

I shove him back. “You’re supposed to be holding me like a fair maiden, not subduing me like a gorgon.” 

“Sorry—”  

“And your hand goes over here.” I lift his left arm to lay atop my right one, which curls around Snow. His hand rests gently on my bicep, while my fingertips slip into the open sleeve of his shirt, touching his bare skin. It’s warm and soft. 

The hands that we don’t have wrapped around each other’s bodies we raise midair, clasping one another’s fingers. 

“Wait,” Snow says, finally recognizing his position. “I’m not dancing the woman’s part.” 

“It’s not the woman’s part.” The heterosexual disgrace. “I’m leading, and you’re following.” 

“But—”  

“Unless you have the confidence to lead me?” 

Snow makes an incoherent and beastly noise, fidgeting in my arms (Merlin) before growing still and accepting his fate. “I guess it’ll be good anticipating Agatha’s moves,” he rationalizes.   

“Yes, Snow, you’re mastered the fundamentals of the art of war. Now, pay attention to me. We don’t have enough space for anything other than the box step, which should tickle our Americans’ fancies. For the box step, I move forward…” Using my right foot, I step in between Snow’s legs. “…And you step back.”   

Snow does not step back. My chest swan dives into his, Snow’s heart thudding through his shirt onto my breastbone and his ribcage expanding and contracting against me. My leg is trapped between Snow’s thighs, and I can’t remove it due to our arms encircling each other. 

“Snow,” I growl, trying vainly to escape the circumference of his pelvis.  

“Sorry!” Snow says, taking a wide step back. “Fucking Merlin’s balls!” he shouts when the soft tendon of his heel bangs against his bedframe. Hopping on one foot, Snow grabs his injured leg with one hand and the fingers of his other hand tangle in mine for support. 

I wrench myself from his grasp.  

Snow yelps, plummeting to the ground. “Anathema!”  

Our room sympathizes with my plight and does nothing. (Although hurling me out the window might be considered an act of mercy.)  

“Goodnight, Snow,” I say, heading back to my bed. 

“Fuck, Baz, gimme another chance,” Snow pleads, crawling along the floor on his hands and knees to pull on my trouser leg. 

Just when I thought the two of us couldn’t get more pathetic. “Get up. You have one last chance.”  

Snow darts to his feet and encircles me swiftly. (And with surprising grace.) With one hand, he grasps my arm, tentative and feather soft. His other lays at ease between my fingers. 

“…Now,” I say, slowly, “I step forward…” I enter Snow’s space, my leg between his. “…And you step back.” Snow retreats, but not too far, maintaining the slight space between us. Aside from the minimal distance between our chests, we’re touching everywhere else.  

“How’s that?” Snow asks.   

“Adequate,” I say, ignoring the minty scent of his toothpaste, the warm hum of his body against mine. “Now, we move to the side…” I glide to the right; Snow follows me eagerly. “…And close. I move back…” I retreat a step, the back of my leg brushing against my mattress. “…And you move forward.”  

Snow rushes toward me. His forehead hovers against mine, the tips of our noses brushing against each other.  

(Pain lances my stomach.)  

I turn my face aside, the bridge of my nose caressing Snow’s, as if we were—  

“Too forward,” I say. I try not to breath, not to move my lips. 

“Sorry,” Snow murmurs almost directly into my mouth. 

He moves back. He squeezes my hand. Then, he releases it. 

I close my eyes and take a breath. (Why did I decide to do this again?) (Steady on, Basilton.) When my eyes open, Snow’s staring at me. (What is he thinking?) 

“We’re halfway through the box step,” I tell myself as much as Snow. “To complete it, we move to the side…” I go left; Snow slides left with me, moving in synchronicity with my steps. “…And close. That’s it.” 

“That’s all?” Snow asks. 

“It’s deceptively simple but takes practice to perform beautifully.” 

Snow brightens. “Then I can lead now?” 

I shouldn’t have said that. “Yes. You can lead.” 

Snow shifts our arms, sweeping his so low that his palm rests on my lower back, the crux of his elbow hugging the dip in my waist. 

“You need to raise your arm higher—” 

Snow ignores me, stepping between my legs and forcing me back. Then, he moves to the side, half-dragging, half-coaxing me along. I follow him, and I push into him, encroaching into his space. When Snow steps back, he draws me closer, chin raised and eyes flashing with a challenge. He moves sideways, and I move with him, keeping our legs parallel, our feet in step with each other. 

“Dancing’s not so bad,” Snow says eagerly. 

I scoff. “You’re butchering the footwork. Here, this is what it’s supposed to look like: heel toe, toe, toe heel…” 

Snow steps on my feet like a moron.  

I kick at his warm, fleshy soles with my nylon-clad toes.  

“You’re a disgrace. Look.” I raise the hem of my trousers to show him. Snow’s gaze follows the dark, inner curve of my knee down the line of my calf to the arch in my foot. “Toe heel, toe, toe heel...” 

Snow’s atrocious at elegant footwork, but he refuses to give up.  

I’m forced to repeat the silencing spell when its golden vibrance fades. 

Our music goes from Strauss to Tchaikovsky to Chopin and… 

Before I know it, we’ve done box steps in a small square between our beds into three in the morning.  

Snow is a liar. He is not satisfied with the one time.  

I continue helping him practice for his dance with Wellbelove because I’ve heard about the benefits of exposure therapy— of being in contact with something frequently enough that the strong feelings you once held for it disappear.  

(And I might as well get some enjoyment from my petty, insignificant fancy.) 

We go through Viennese waltzing, Snow and I alternating between swinging each other in half-circles across the room. (We barely avoid activating the Anathema.) (Snow has bruises for weeks from knocking into chairs, desks, and bedposts.) (When Bunce asks him about them, he sputters something about training.)  

We do the foxtrot and quickstep, which Snow vastly enjoys even though he never attains the ability to do either gracefully.  

But our strict dancing regiment is interrupted by Snow’s first trial. 

After wracking mine and Bunce’s collective brains about it, I feel like a clod when it happens: 

“Will-o’-wisps?” I ask disbelievingly from atop the stands of the pitch. The school is watching Snow complete his trial in the Wavering Woods from the stadium. (Coach Mac almost had an aneurism when he was told to clear out for the Mage’s games.) “That’s the deadly trial by fire? Glowing sprites with a talent for misdirection rivalled only by Noomle Maps?” 

“We did cross them off our list rather quickly,” says Bunce.  

“It’s a relief it’s not something that’s actually dangerous,” says Wellbelove, peering through the trees for a glimpse of Snow. (Or any of the dozen Americans who volunteered to try to beat him.) “The Mage wouldn’t put his students in danger like that.” 

Of course. That explains why the Mage has left Snow to wander back to our room bleeding and devastated by his missions. 

“As long as Snow doesn’t follow the shiny lights into a bog or the jaws of a lucky beast, I’m sure he’ll prevail,” I say, bored. “I can’t say the same for the Americans.” 

“You know, once upon a time, will-o’-wisps were truly dark and dangerous creatures,” says Bunce, who can regurgitate any fact about fire magic now. “Their illusory fire used to show mages’ unobtainable hope and dreams. People would follow the will-o’-wisps until their deaths, trying to reach the impossible.” 

“That’s horrible,” Wellbelove states obviously. “They don’t do that anymore, though.” 

“No. Now that they’ve faded from cultural memory, they’re stuck delaying travelers from reaching their dinner parties on time and giving people flat tires on country roads,” says Bunce, also uninterested by the sad scene before us. 

The dim light of the will-o’-wisps in the shadowy Woods makes it impossible for almost all spectators to see, except for me: 

Snow has summoned the Sword of Mages as a conduit for his magic. His power laces the blade with blue flames that course over the silver, gold, and ruby inlays. The air flares around him, bent by magic like a concave lens. Snow is an object who refuses to be beheld by average acts of perception. 

(Good thing my perception isn’t average.) 

When he comes upon a blinking will-o’-wisp, he’s deceived by it for a moment before he recollects himself and slashes the orb of light with his sword. He does the same with another and another, his pupils contracted into black pinpricks against his yawning irises. 

Finally, he comes to a clearing devoid of the will-o’-wisps’ false light, and he retrieves his prize: a lantern. The brass frame and glass globe protect the blaze within, a light that can shine through the will-o’-wisps’ deceptions.  

Guided by the lantern’s beam, Snow easily finds his way out of the Wavering Woods, where he’s greeted with a smattering of applause for those who can discern his figure on the dusky outskirts of the trees.  

Then, to everybody’s consternation, he walks back into the forest. 

“What is he doing?” asks Wellbelove. “Is he still being tricked? I thought most of the will-o’-wisps were dead.” 

“He’s going to save the Americans,” says Bunce proudly. 

“Like the apprentice goatherd he is, shepherding lost souls out of the darkness,” I say.  

When Snow guides the bumbling, confused Americans back, he’s greeted with a raucous round of applause and cheering. It’s heartwarming and underwhelming, which appears to be the opposite of what the Mage sought.   

“I suppose it’s no surprise that our Chosen One easily surmounted this obstacle and his American competitors,” the Mage announces. “However, next time, we will show the true extent of his powers with worthy foes— a more powerful darkness to his light!” 

Snow appears vaguely worried but mostly euphoric that he succeeded in killing something he was supposed to kill and saving people along the way. 

The American boys and Mummer’s residents celebrate by throwing him a party in the common room. (Bunce proposes to break in with Wellbelove; Wellbelove dissuades her from her madness.)  

The party quickly devolves into quasi-drunken revelry since Snow can’t turn off his post-trial magic, rendering everyone fantastically intoxicated. (Except me.) (My vampire constitution has developed an immunity to Snow’s mind-altering sorcery.) 

The lads’ magickal inebriation leads them to publicly express their anxieties about procuring dates for the ball and dancing passably with said nonexistent dates. The fortunate boys who have secured dates are violently booed and forced to cast protection spells against an onslaught of fizzy drinks and popcorn. The remaining losers miserably confer amongst themselves. 

(I would abandon this morose cesspit if Snow wasn’t sitting on the sofa with me, his ankle linked with mine.) 

“Wait, wait!” cries Gareth, leaping to his feet and swaying dangerously. “I can dance! With my magic.” He thrusts out his abominable belt buckle. “Sound of music!” He casts on himself. (When he accidentally offs himself with magic one day, no one will miss him.) “See? Now I can dance to any song like an expert!” 

Dev giggles drunkenly and points his wand at the radio. “Blow your own trumpet!”  

Electric guitar blasts through the room, accompanied by drums and John Lydon screaming: 

Lie lie lie lie you liar 
You lie lie lie, tell me why 
Tell me why, why d'you have to lie— 

Gareth’s magic forces him to dance along to the music. The room bursts into laughter and whooping. 

Gareth flips Dev the bird. When he can’t stop dancing, he shoots a pleading look to Rhys. Rhys pretends that he’s engrossed in a conversation with an American whom he can’t possibly hear over the cacophony. 

When Dev appears too self-satisfied, Niall turns toward him and slurs, “Din’t y’ get rejected by Wellb’love when y’ asked her t’the dance?” 

Snow startles, glaring at Dev. 

Dev flushes. “Dunno what you’re goin’ on ‘bout—” 

Niall snickers and points his wand at the radio, casting, “Face the music!”   

The Sex Pistols change songs, guitars riffing, drums crashing, and vocals shouting: 

Are you lonely? You got no one 
You get your body in suspension 
That's a problem, problem 
Problem, the problem is you— 

The room breaks out in renewed peels of manic laughter. 

Dev glowers. “I woulda got her if it wasn’t fer th’ Chosen One.”  

The room turns to Snow, who’s frozen on the couch, his leg tangled with mine.  

I pull away. 

“You got Agatha, Simon?” asks Gareth, still dancing to the music like a demented marionette. 

“Er.” Snow cracks a red-faced grin. “Yeah. After the trial, I asked, and she said yes.” 

The room screams with joy and resentment.  

“Then, I oughta teach you how to dance!” says Gareth, tugging Snow into the center of the chaotic floor. He shoves his groin forward. “Music to my ears!”  

The song changes again, thundering and unbearable: 

There’s no point in asking  

You’ll get no reply  

Oh just remember I don’t decide  

I got no reason it’s all too much  

You’ll always find us  

Out to lunch  

Oh we’re so pretty  

Oh so pretty  

We’re vacant…  

When Snow dances with Gareth, he offsets some of Gareth’s clumsy buffoonery with the dancing skills I’ve taught him. He’s imagining his partner is Wellbelove, swinging her in a circle and dipping her low. 

The half of the room that doesn’t hate Snow hoots and wolf-whistles. 

Snow smiles dashingly at them.  

While the party rages downstairs, I lock myself in our room, cast a silencing spell, and play No Feelings on my phone so loudly it makes my vampire eardrums throb against my plastic earbuds. 

(Even though I stuff my fanged mouth with handfuls of popcorn, the incapacitating pain in my stomach won’t go away.) 

(Is this how it feels during a famine? For prisoners starved in cells underground?) 

(Go away.) 

(Please.)  

“What are we wearing to the dance, Bunce?” I ask her the next week in Astronomy, making sure her American can hear. 

(He does.) (His symmetrical face blanches over Bunce’s shoulder.) 

Bunce smiles like the Cheshire cat. “’We’, Basilton?” 

“Yes, ‘we.’ Which means we must coordinate our outfits.” 

“Must we?” asks Bunce peevishly. “That sounds like the Old Families’ antiquated and patriarchal traditions. I don’t need to dress like you just because I’m the woman.” 

“This was your plan, Bunce, so you better see it through,” I whisper furiously. 

“Fine, fine!” Bunce says, throwing her hands in the air. “We’ll shop over the weekend together. But you’re using your credit card.” 

“Obviously,” I say. Father will be inordinately pleased when he sees the bill that I’ve racked up taking a girl to the ball. He might break out his 1787 Chateau Margaux.  

Despite the Mage’s lack of interest in the ball, the other Watford and American faculty manage to transform the White Chapel into an impressive ballroom.  

Lustrous drapes adorn the White Chapel’s pillars, their silk and satin reflecting the kaleidoscopic beams off the chandeliers. The floor-to-ceiling windows reveal the snow falling over the evening grounds, slow and weightless like glitter in a globe. The ceilings are enchanted to appear as if they’re molded, stuccoed, and painted with animated frescoes. The tableaus illustrate scenes from Great Britain’s history, an uncrowned King Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone, the magickal creation of the Crystal Palace during London’s 1851 Great Exhibition, and mage nurses and architects restoring England after the blitzkriegs of World War II.  

“I suppose this could be worse,” says Bunce, observing the décor more with an eye toward its spell work than its beauty. 

She’s wearing a saffron and buttermilk dress with ruby bangles and slippers. The horn-rimmed frames of her glasses transform from garnet to gold as we pass underneath the changing ceiling lights.  

“Great attitude, Bunce,” I say, smoothing my scarlet waistcoat and straightening my golden cufflinks.  

The last thing I adjust is the electrum pendant on my choker, which belonged to Mother. (The velvet ribboning my neck is my own innovation— I need something to hide the bite since I’ve been forced to tie up my hair. Ever since this summer, the pearlescent bite marks have grown more apparent with my aching gut...)  

I was able to rightfully retrieve the pendant from the Mage’s office the last time I snuck in on his Coven Meeting. (Which was another pathetic attempt to lambast my family that was otherwise inconsequential.) (Just because I’ve ceased plotting against Snow doesn’t mean I don’t aspire to take down his mentor.) (The latter didn’t even detect my presence, nor does he realize that Mother’s old wards continue to grant me access to his precious sanctuary— Mother’s precious sanctuary.) 

“Micah’s dancing with someone else,” Bunce grumbles. She glares at her American while he serves a cup of punch to a waif I don’t recognize. 

“Which you might have anticipated if your mind weren’t so clouded by infatuation. Come, Bunce. Dance with me tonight and have him in the palm of your hand tomorrow.” 

Despite her groaning, Bunce joins me on the dancefloor. (She does so especially eagerly when she catches her pixie roommate approaching with her girlfriend.) (I didn’t realize the pixie was gay, but then again, I barely register her existence throughout the term.) 

Bunce is a decent dancer. While we spin across the marble, we discuss possibilities for Snow’s trial by sea, including merwolves (“would you stop it with your merwolf prejudice, Basilton?”) and Leviathans (“like the Mage could hide a beast of Biblical proportions in the moat, Bunce”).   

When we’ve eliminated over eighty scenarios, we take a break from fussing over Snow to share our favorite pieces of Elizabethan poetry, debate the longevity of song lyrics in the top ten UK Singles Chart, and argue over the best translations of The Odyssey.  

If only I could straighten myself out enough to desire Bunce: she’s brilliant, hot-tempered, and loyal. Dating her instead of being a little drawn toward Snow would make my life fractionally simpler.  

(A pointless rumination I realize once Snow and Wellbelove enter the dancefloor—) 

Snow is dressed in blinding white: a white tailcoat, white trousers, white gloves, and white leather shoes. He has the Sword of Mages in a jewel-encrusted scabbard at his hip, which must be to humor the Mage and his grandstanding since it’s a terrible decision for permitting movement during a dance. (Did Wellbelove lend him the clothes?) (I would have recalled this evangelizing outfit in our wardrobe.)  

Wellbelove is dressed almost identically to Snow (save for an openly carried weapon). She wears a white sleeve of a gown and silver braided into her platinum hair. I swear her heels are made of glass when they sparkle on the marble.  

While Snow and his partner project magnificence, he appears to have forgotten all the dancing I’ve taught him. 

Two songs in, and he’s stomped on Wellbelove’s feet, snagged the hem of her dress, and he oozes distressed magic. 

What a nightmare. 

I’m about to swing Bunce over to them when her boytoy cuts in. 

“May I, Penelope?” he asks, offering a hand to Bunce. 

I glare, causing the American to flinch. Bunce grinds her magic ring into my knuckles and whispers, “Down for the count,” causing me to stumble back and nearly knock over the punch table. (Traitor.)  

“You may, Micah,” she says and dances off, giggling. 

(I will crush that girl during exams.) 

“Sorry, Ags!” Snow shouts across the dancefloor. Given how Wellbelove is angrily sprawled on the ground, her hair in her face, her partner has dropped her during a dip. 

Before Snow can reach her, I use my vampire speed to cut in front of him. 

“What—” 

“May I have this dance?” I interrupt, proffering my arm. 

“Please,” Wellbelove says desperately, wrapping herself around me as I haul her to her feet. 

Snow angrily grabs my shoulder. “I’m dancing with Agatha, Baz!” 

“If that’s what you want to call it.” 

“Just one dance, Simon,” says Wellbelove, although she’s clutching me like a lifeline.   

Snow curls his fist in my blazer, his pearly gloves in sharp contrast to my suit. He surveys me in my entirety, from the choker shining darkly upon my throat, to the red and gold interspersed across my black dress clothes, to my ebony wingtip shoes. 

I know we couldn’t be less alike. Me or Snow, or me and Wellbelove. 

(I ignore the pain in my stomach: the useless sloshing of punch, dregs of unsatisfying candied berries—) 

“Fine,” Snow says, reluctantly letting me go. “One dance.” 

“Much obliged.” I turn to Wellbelove. “Shall we?” 

Wellbelove nods frantically, and we revolve across the room. Wellbelove is light-footed, her execution flawless. We spin, step, rise, and fall, smoothly gliding over the marble as if our feet never leave the ground. 

She’s exhilarated by the time I relinquish her to Snow. 

Snow is enraged, emitting incandescent magic. 

Overwhelmed by his power, Wellbelove excuses herself for a drink. (Merlin knows if she’ll be back.) 

“What do you think you’re doing?” Snow asks. “You’re dancing with Penny.” 

“Bunce has a new paramour.” I gesture to her and her American as they butcher a foxtrot and laugh about it like twits.  

Snow’s anger diminishes. “Oh. Um, sorry, I guess.” 

“Spare me your pity. Surely she told you this was all a ruse.” 

“Yeah, but…” Snow bites his lip, blushing. “I thought she might’ve done it. You know. Fallen for you for real.” 

I bark out a laugh. “Did you dash your head on a boulder or ingest something poisonous during your trial?” 

“It’s not that crazy,” says Snow. “You like the same things: books and classes. Plus,” —his eyes scan me head to toe— “you’re the fittest bloke in school, fitter than everyone, even the Americans. Anyone would choose you.” 

I am not blushing to the roots of my hair. 

It just feels like it, or I’ve been doused in gasoline and set ablaze. 

Although, it might be the fire creatures that have invaded the ballroom. And not just any creatures. 

“Will-o’-wisps?” Snow asks, grabbing his sword as we’re surrounded by ghostly, blue lights. “Where did they come from? The trial is over.” 

Yes, these disembodied flames are will-o’-wisps. But they’re not the same will-o’-wisps from the trial. 

These entities are comprised of far more potent and dangerous fire magic, full of yearning, memory, hope, and obsession.  

In the blazing fairy lights, I see everything I’ve ever wanted, things I can never have:  

Mother alive, her hair streaked grey like Fiona’s; she’s Headmistress again, and when I go to her office, seeking advice for my fifth-year classes, she counsels me by the roaring hearth; she offers me tea and biscuits, saying she’s proud that I’m her son— 

My copper-complexioned self, but not as a toddler; I’m a dark-skinned fourteen-year-old, fully alive and human; I have no fangs that I need to hide from the world and my family, no stomach cramps that leave me stricken with nausea and fear, no irreversible monstrosity that worsens day by day—  

Bronze curls beneath my fingers; blue eyes twinkling at me; a smiling, freckled face, saying my name in one delighted syllable— 

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled!” I cast, shielding myself with a wall of flames.  

The brilliance of the will-o’-wisps lessens with the competing glow of my fire shining like a beacon in the darkness.  

(Did these creatures cause the lights to go out? The once resplendent ballroom is shrouded in a black morass, punctuated by the radiance of bewitched faces, slowly approaching their deaths by fairy lights.) 

“Snow!” I scream, searching for him. 

My vampire vision allows me to locate Snow in the patchwork shadows. 

He stands at the center of the ballroom, sword drawn and gleaming. 

But he’s not slashing at the will-o’-wisps—he’s reaching towards them. 

“Dad,” he says, staring into the radiance. “Mum…” 

“I am drowning, my dear, in seas of fire!”    

I whirl my wand widely so that my fire crests over the ballroom floor, swallowing the will-o’-wisps while avoiding the students and faculty. 

The orb in front of Snow is washed away by my ocean of flames. 

“Circe, Basil, must you always fight fire with fire?” Bunce yells, pelting toward me. Her dress is tied in a knot around her waist, and her ring is pointed at the ghost lights. “Even though I appreciate the Virginia Woolf. Make a wish! Fire is a good servant but a bad master!” The flames shrink, flicker, and fade. 

While the will-o’-wisps are blessedly evanescent, the problem is that tens, hundreds more emerge from the ballroom’s black corners, its inky floor, its nighttime windows quivering in the storm that also rages outside the school. It feels like we’re in a dark vacuum without oxygen, only dry, heatless fire. I’m finding it hard to breathe, and I don’t even need to.  

The luminous infestation multiplies as it feeds on the school’s thwarted desires, students wilting in dreaming heaps upon the floor, their expensive suits and skirts pooling carelessly around them. Although many teachers and upper-level students have regained their wits, casting wind, water, and darkening spells, our odds look dismal. (The Mage excused himself from the ball under the pretense of his busy schedule and therefore has been spared this disaster.) (As well as the opportunity to protect his school.) 

Snow does his heroic duties: hacking away at the field of spectral lights and coating his blade with their phosphorescence. 

But he isn’t wearing his usual valiant expression. With his teeth bared and the veins pulsing in his neck and arms, I’ve never seen him so predatorial, so vengeful. (Except during instances when I’ve pushed him to the brink.) 

Consumed with his extermination, Snow doesn’t notice a flurry of wisps sailing at his back, trails of phantasmagoric light streaming behind them.  

“Fire that’s closest kept burns most of all!” I cast, pointing my wand near Snow. 

The wisps disperse like fireworks as Snow is surrounded with my flames. 

“Baz!” Snow shouts, and I think he’s going to complain about me nearly torching him before he grabs my arm and pulls me towards him, slashing his sword behind my back. 

Fairy lights disintegrate in the peripheries of my vision. 

I tug Snow in a half-circle around me. “Oh, for a Muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention!”   

Sparks burst beside Snow’s ear, highlighting his shoulder and the side of his face with neon.   

Pressing a hand on my back, Snow rotates us in an arch, swinging his sword in my blind spots. He grunts in my ear as he spins us; his muscles jump beneath my fingers as he strikes the enemies at my back. His feet move in parallel with mine, legs weaving in and out between my thighs as we pause, dip, and pivot. 

Tapping into the ancient fire magic preserved in Mother’s pendant, I cast, “تبات نار تصبح رماد لها”  

My spell dissolves the ring of will-o’-wisps surrounding Snow, their effulgence crumbling into clouds of ash.  

“Aleister Crowley,” Snow breathes, gazing up as soot descends like snowfall from London’s most polluted regions. (I bite down a comment about orphaned child-laborers in Dickensian factories.) (I’m allowed to think it, though.) “What’s that spell mean?”   

“Tonight’s fire is tomorrow’s ashes,” I say, feeling the incantation’s drain on me.  

I direct the remainder of my energies toward wordlessly summoning spheres of flame and tossing them at the wisps. I resort to kicking my fire when I’m extremely vexed, taking shots between Snow’s legs. 

Snow twists and turns us around the dancefloor. We avoid the surge of will-o’-wisps that try to ensnare us, and Snow strikes down the ones that feed on weakened students while I defend him in his heroic endeavors, launching ember after ember. 

The fairy lights dwindle very, very slowly. 

By the time they’ve dissipated, and normal air-pressure has been restored to the chapel, maroon daylight is bleeding through the curtains. Our teachers transport hope-starved students in droves to the infirmary. 

Snow and I separate in the center of the dancefloor.  

While he’s been buzzing with excess magic, the lactic acid in Snow’s overworked limbs leaves one arm looped around my waist, his fingers encircling the wrist of my wand hand. He’s vanished the Sword of Mages. 

I’ve been barely keeping aloft using Snow as my support. His empty scabbard digs into my hip; his deep breathing rocks my head where it bends low over his shoulder, in the crux of his neck— 

I pull away, my stomach rioting. 

(I need to eat—) 

“Baz?” Snow asks dumbly as I stagger to the last standing banquet table. 

I toss crackers and fruit into my mouth, keeping my hand pressed over my lips as I chew. 

While Snow looks in concern at the fist I have clenched over my gut, he mindlessly mimics my eating, gorging himself on crisps and egg-and-cress sandwiches. We eat in silence, half-sitting on the tablecloth together while faculty and students limp out of the chapel. 

Some moronic band member who hasn’t been incapacitated plays Bowie’s Modern Love on his cello: 

“…Never gonna fall for modern love 
Walks beside me, modern love 
Walks on by modern love 
Gets me to the church on time…” 

Bunce approaches us eventually. She’s dragging her American, frazzled and glasses askew, and Wellbelove, whose wan face is shining with old tears. 

After she gestures to the scorch marks, soot, and slashes marring the ballroom floor, she asks, “What in Morgana’s name was that?” 

Chapter Text

Book 4: Simon Snow and the Four Selkies

XII. SIMON 

“It appears that the Humdrum has started sending dark creatures into the school,” says the Mage. 

He sounds awful excited about it. Which is understandable, given this is a chance to destroy the terrible monster threatening everyone’s magic. But in the current circumstances (an emergency meeting of frightened Coven members and parents), I’m worried Professor Bunce and Martin, and Agatha’s parents, and Baz’s dad — who forced his way in — might take offense. 

The attack on the Wintertide Ball left a lot of the students and faculty in a panic. Well, those of them who weren’t languishing in the overcrowded infirmary, dreaming about the visions they saw in the will-o’-wisps. The Nurse is conducting therapy with the Light of Truth that was in my lantern during the first trail. 

I’ve never faced magickal creatures like the will-o’-wisps that invaded the White Chapel.  

They used cruelty dressed as kindness to try to destroy me. 

I’m not sure if I could have beat them without Baz and Penny. 

One moment I was speaking with Baz, dressed to the nines in his ballroom clothes, and the next, I was staring into the will-o’-wisps ghostly flames, seeing— 

—Penny and I living together outside of Watford instead of me returning to a boys’ home or Penny cramming her books into her family home; we shared a quaint cottage, like Ebb’s, except cleaner and more spacious; during the weekends, we ordered Indian take-out and binged reality tv, which Penny only allowed when Agatha visited— 

—Baz laughing as we skated on the frozen pond in the Wavering Woods; he let me tug and spin him easily, gladly, the way he never does when we actually dance together; he insulted my clumsiness, as usual, but he did it with a fond smile, calling me by my first name, Simon, on a frosted sigh— 

—My parents driving me through the city and countryside; I didn’t know where we were going, or if we had a destination; I couldn’t see their faces clearly since I kept drifting in and out of consciousness in the backseat, confident in my dad’s driving (Penny says that was the will-o’-wisps sucking my life away); first my mum looked back at me from the passenger’s seat, and then she was sitting beside me; my head was in her lap, her freckled fingers brushing the hair out of my face; she said, Simon, Simon, I’d never leave you, my rosebud boy; stay with me, love; stay here, forever — 

And then I was back in the ballroom, pandemonium everywhere, Baz’s fire coursing through the darkness. 

The Coven called a meeting right away. Meaning the night after we fought until dawn broke, meaning I haven’t slept in… uh… Seven hells, I wish Penny would do the maths for me. 

It feels like I haven’t slept in an eternity.  

Even Baz doesn’t look entirely polished and put-together. Maybe that’s because he’s taking advantage of the opportunity to mess up the Mage’s office space. He’s thrown his blazer onto a sandalwood chair and rolled his dress sleeves up to his elbows. He’s also removed the charcoal ribbon from his hair, so it tumbles over his ears, curling on top of his shoulders.  

How does he look like a popstar spent from a night of performing while the rest of us look like death walking?  

(Except for Agatha, who looks like a princess in a fairytale who’s reeling from her traumatic rescue.) (Her mum is helping fix her make-up.) 

“How did the Humdrum enter the school?” Professor Bunce asks the Mage and the room.  

“The Humdrum didn’t enter the grounds; it merely sent its lackeys inside,” says the Mage. “Unlike the Humdrum, they were insignificant enough to slip past the wards.”  

“Did you decrease the strength of the wards to let your Americans in?” asks Malcolm Grimm. He stands in a far corner of the office, apart from everyone else, even Baz, who’s seated beside me. “There are strict spells in place to make sure they never step onto the grounds.” 

“We discovered a loophole in the original Pitch family spell,” says the Mage.  

“A loophole that didn’t undermine the security of the school and threaten the safety of the students,” Miss Possibelf adds.   

“Then how did the Humdrum’s creatures get inside?” Martin Bunce asks.  

“He got stronger,” I say. 

Everyone turns to me in horror (Penny’s parents, Aggie’s parents, most of the Coven, and the Americans) and outrage (Baz’s dad and the more conservative members of the Coven). 

“…I think?”  

“Simon’s right,” says the Mage, walking toward me and clapping his hands on my shoulders. 

(Baz scoots his chair away.) (I grab his knee to make him stay.) (He slaps my hand off him, and I almost whisper “Anathema” before realizing how pointless that would be here.) 

The Mage continues, “The only way the Humdrum could have sent its dark creatures into Watford after it hasn’t since the death of our former headmistress, Natasha Grimm-Pitch, is because its powers are growing. Very soon its dead spots could spread beyond the United Kingdoms, to America and other regions of the world where mages live and practice magic.”   

The room breaks into worried chatter. The Americans worry about dead spots opening up in New York, like those disastrous Hollywood blockbusters; Coven members ask what can be done to protect magic in Great Britain; the Bunces and the teachers discuss what can be done to protect the children; even Malcolm Grimm looks unsettled by the mention of the Humdrum’s mysterious powers in connection to his late wife. 

“What should we do, then?” asks Dr. Wellbelove, huddling protectively with his family.  

“My men and I have it handled,” the Mage answers, resuming his place behind his desk. “And Simon, of course.” 

“And when do you plan to tell us how you have it handled?” Professor Bunce asks testily. “During our next Coven meeting, after our children have been attacked again?”  

“Mitali,” the Mage sighs. 

“Davy,” Professor Bunce replies sharply. 

“It appears that you may be in over your head, Mr. Cadwallader,” says Malcolm Grimm, stepping into the circle of the room. “Perhaps now is the time to let the Old Families play their parts. We have the resources to defend the school and the ancient power to smite the Humdrum.” 

A few of the Coven members seem like they’re considering his proposal; the others cross their arms and shake their heads. 

“Old magic isn’t going to save us now, Mr. Grimm,” says the Mage. “It didn’t save Natasha Grimm-Pitch ten years ago.” 

A fire flares to life in the hearth, and I’m not sure if it’s because of Baz or his dad. (Or both of them.) It might also be Fiona Pitch, who bursts aggressively through the door and into the meeting, to the shock and indignation of the attendees. 

“How did you get in here?” the Mage asks angrily. “We made one exception for your brother-in-law—” 

“It’s my sister’s office,” Fiona spits out, pulling up a seat beside Baz. She glares at me; I glare back but also push my chair away. (That fire is really beginning to pop and crackle.) (Also, is she drunk? She smells like jet engine fuel.) 

“We’re not here to get wrapped up in political differences!” Professor Bunce shouts, leaping to her feet. “We’re talking about the safety of our children, which is being threatened by an arcane being that can send monsters into this very school!”  

“Which the Old Families could help exterminate!” Malcolm Grimm proclaims. “Our children were hurt today— my nephew, Marcus Grimm, is hallucinating in the Infirmary, along with half of the Old Families’ children. That’s the only reason I was able to claw my way in here when we should have full access to the school!” 

“Full access meaning complete control of Watford, the Coven, and our world! Which the Grimms and Pitches monopolized for centuries!” cries the Mage. 

“Like you’re trying to do now, you pale imitation!” Fiona seethes, hiccupping. 

Chaos erupts again. (Before now, I’d had this idea that organizations run by adults would be, I don’t know, structured and civil.) (Instead, I feel like I’m back in Mummers as the residents argue what to watch for Friday Frightfest.) (Those nights can get really ugly.) 

“Simon,” Dr. Wellbelove says, approaching me. “You’re the Chosen One— the only mage who can defeat the Humdrum. What do you think we should do?” 

“Uh…” 

Fuck. 

Everybody’s watching me. There are silent pleas for guidance on the Wellbeloves’ faces, daunting scrutiny on the Bunces’, cold anger on the Grimm-Pitches’, and high expectations in the Mage’s quietly intense stare. 

“…Finish the trials?” 

The Mage cuts through the ensuing discord, yelling, “Our Chosen One has spoken! We resume with our school year as intended, and Simon and I will see to protecting Watford from the Insidious Humdrum. Meeting adjourned.”  

“Meeting fucking not adjourned,” Fiona hisses, though she rises to her feet and stomps out to the hall. Malcolm Grimm is already there.  

Baz looks at me. Then he follows his family, draping his blazer over one shoulder and striding slowly out of his mum’s former office. 

Agatha approaches me while her parents speak with the Mage. She reaches out and grabs my hands. 

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Simon?” she asks quietly. 

“Sure I am,” I lie to her. “I’ll get through the trials like we planned. Nothing has to change.” 

“This year was supposed to be different,” Agatha says mournfully. “No life-threatening quests, no dangerous missions. We were just supposed to have fun with the Americans. You and I were supposed to…” 

She looks into my eyes, running her thumbs along my knuckles. 

I swallow, gazing back at her. “Y-Yeah. No, I mean, I know what you—” 

“We’ll just have to be better prepared than the Humdrum,” Penny interrupts, walking between me and Agatha and breaking us apart. 

Agatha frowns, her hands falling to her sides. 

I rub my arm, embarrassed. “But how do we do that, Pen?” 

“Easy,” says Penny. For anyone else it would sound like a bluff, but Penny speaks with complete confidence. “Like its name suggests, the Humdrum lacks a creative imagination. It merely copied the Mage’s trial, making his creatures stronger.” 

“Oh, is that all?” Agatha asks tartly. I remember the tears on her face after the ballroom attack— I wonder what she saw in the lights. 

Whatever Penny saw mustn’t have bothered her too much or she’s already processed it, because she easily continues, “Yes, it’s that simple. So, as long as we figure out how to defeat the Mage’s trials, we’ll be able to repel the Humdrum, too.” 

“But we don’t know what the next trial will be,” I say. I haven’t figured it out, at least. (I’m sure Penny and Baz have their theories; they seem to come up with them endlessly.) 

“Then we ask the Mage,” says Penny. (I guess her theories and Baz’s aren’t set in stone yet, then.) 

“But he can’t just tell us,” I argue. “That would be against the rules. It would be cheating—” 

“This isn’t about competing with the Americans anymore, Simon!” Penny exclaims, stomping her slipper on the floor. “Didn’t you hear the Mage? The Americans are in danger, too. The entire World of Mages is in danger. We should all be working together to defeat the Humdrum’s next monster.”  

“Alright, alright, but can I ask later? The Mage looks…” I point to the throng of British and American mages who are surrounding the Mage, asking him questions, expressing doubts and fear, and trying to get involved. 

“Fine,” Penny huffs. “I’m exhausted anyway.” She certainly looks it; there are wine-dark circles under her eyes, smudges all over her glasses, and her fancy skirt is rumpled from where she tied the surplus fabric to her waist and ran around the ballroom saving everybody, nearly exposing her knickers. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so brave. “If I stay any longer, I’m going to pass out in one of the Mage’s armchairs.” 

Agatha nods, adding, “My feet are killing me.” After removing her heels, she stares appreciatively at the Ottoman sitting by the Mage’s liquor cabinet. (Agatha shouldn’t sleep there.) (Neither should Penny.) (I’ve definitely laid a decapitated cockatrice head on the cushions, and I don’t know how the Mage got the stains— or stink— out.) 

I lend Agatha my arm as she gets onto her tiptoes to avoid the cold stone floors. Smiling sleepily at me, she places her hand in my elbow. Penny yawns and leads the way out of the Mage’s office, the turmoil from within quieting when we shut the door and follow the dark, narrow corridor out of the Weeping Tower. 

That is, until I hear— 

“This is why I told you to keep your distance, Basilton.” 

“That wasn’t the issue, Father,” Baz says crisply. “The will-o’-wisps enchanted janitors who were hiding in closets to avoid cleaning up sick and busboys sneaking in smoke breaks outside the kitchens. There’s no way I could have gotten enough distance to have stayed out of the Mage’s latest mess.”  

Baz, his dad, and his aunt are congregating in the passage decorated with pictures of past headmasters and headmistresses. They’re standing right under the portrait of Baz’s mum, who gazes placidly upon her living family members. Her bearing is far more detached and stately than her exasperated kin.  

I push Penny and Agatha behind a pillar. 

“Ouch!” says Agatha, grabbing her stockinged toe after I step on it. 

“Sorry,” I say. (I can’t seem to stop stepping on her feet tonight— or was that last night— Merlin, I need some sleep.) 

“What are we doing, Simon?” Agatha asks impatiently, hanging onto me.  

“Not this again,” Penny groans, peering over my shoulder at Baz’s family. 

“Seriously, boyo?” Fiona asks, lighting her cigarette with a ball of crimson flames. Baz’s dad frowns. Fiona’s fire magic burns and crackles in the tight space, starkly illuminating her, Malcolm Grimm, and Baz’s faces. (Baz’s dad must be worried about her singeing the paintings; I think she is drunk, going by her glassy eyes and swaying.) “Will-o’-wisps? You had this much trouble with fucking fairy lights?” 

“They weren’t the kind you buy your batty great-aunt who refuses to install satellite television,” Baz replies.  

“That’s not how you talk about your great-aunt Griseldannia,” his dad scolds him. (Griseldannia? What is with their family names?) 

“I can’t believe this is what our family has come to,” Fiona says to her sister’s portrait. “Pitches nearly done in by jack-o-lanterns.”  

She’s leaning into Baz, the end of her cigarette reflected in a cherry-red spot on Baz’s pale skin. 

“Fiona,” Malcolm Grimm barks, snapping his fingers. 

The cigarette is suddenly extinguished, throwing the hallway into a darkness only offset by the moonlight streaming through the stone-cut windows. 

“Circe’s tits,” Fiona cusses, stringing together a long and vulgar chain of curses. Stamping the cigarette out on her boot, where it’s nothing more than a trail of smoke, she turns to Baz. She pats the side of his face, the side she almost burned. 

“You’re sloshed,” Baz says accusingly. 

“Not so sloshed I wouldn’t’ve been able to take out fucking wispies by myself.” 

“The Humdrum did something to the will-o’-wisps,” Baz argues, pushing his aunt away and running a hand through his hair in irritation. “He made them the powerful, alluring magic they used to be. What they did shouldn’t have been possible. I shouldn’t have been able to see what I saw.”   

(What did Baz see?) 

(Did he see something like what I saw— his mum, his missing parent?) 

(What else did he see, who else did he see, what did he want to see, who did he want to—) 

Fiona tugs the pendant on Baz’s throat. The coin of yellow metal gleams in the low light. 

(I was surprised when I saw Baz wearing that.) (The choker, I mean.) (You don’t usually see blokes with velvet and gemstones around their necks, but if they all wore them like Baz…) 

After speaking in a tongue I don’t understand— can she speak Arabic, too?— Fiona says, “I didn’t know you had this.” 

“I didn’t,” Baz says, coldly. “The Mage had it.” 

Wait, does that mean— 

“He did break into the Mage’s office!” I whisper. “I knew I saw him!”  

“Basil broke into the Mage’s office?” Penny asks, intrigued. “But how?” 

“Basil broke into the Mage’s office?” Agatha asks, horrified. “Oops,” she adds when Baz, his dad, and his aunt turn toward her outburst.    

They stare down their noses at us like their fellow portrait sitters, as if they haven’t been caught doing anything remotely suspicious or treasonous.  

Penny, Agatha, and I also try not to act like we’ve been caught out, but I don’t think we succeed quite as well, even though we’re not the ones who broke into the Mage’s office, burst into his meeting uninvited, and essentially called for a rebellion. 

“Father,” says Baz, his aunt still holding the medallion at his neck. “You’ve met Simon Snow. May I introduce you to Penelope Bunce, my date for last night’s ball?” 

The indifference on Malcolm Grimm’s face immediately transforms into… glee? (What?)  

“Mitali Bunce’s daughter,” Malcolm Grimm says warmly, stepping forward to clasp Penny’s hand. (I didn’t realize Baz’s family liked the Bunces that much.) (The feeling definitely isn’t mutual.) “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He sounds genuinely enthusiastic. Penny shakes his hand back, confused but fascinated by the opportunity to extract information from Baz’s family. 

Fiona scoffs, slowly looking from Baz to me. 

Looping her finger into his choker and twisting it like a noose (Baz glares), she smirks and tells me, “Well, don’t you look the part, Chosen One.” (She sounds so much like Baz when he’s in a cruel, cutting mood. I wonder if he learned that from her.) “Prince Charming with his beautiful bride. All you’re missing is your white steed. Though I see that you’re equipped with your other weapons to slay dark creatures.” 

Agatha clutches my arm uncertainly, ducking behind the Sword of Mages at my hip. (I wish I could reassure her that there’s nothing wrong, but this woman honestly terrifies me.)  

Baz pulls away from his aunt, his choker unknotting around her finger, and the medallion (I guess it’s his family’s) (still, he shouldn’t have stolen it from the Mage’s office) falls into her palm.  

“It’s getting late,” he says, grabbing Penny from his dad. “We should be going.” 

“Wait,” says Penny. “I want to hear about how your mum defended your dad in three duels—”  

“Later, Bunce. Father, Fiona. I’ll tell you when the game comes up, and I crush the Americans.” 

“Basilton,” says Malcolm Grimm, a warning in his tone, but he doesn’t elaborate.  

Fiona says nothing, clutching the medallion tightly in her fist.  

When she catches me staring, she grins crookedly. Her eyes are unsmiling as she says, her voice gruff and low, “Best of luck with your trials, Chosen One. Watch your step, now, or some dark creature might catch ya by surprise.” 

“…Thanks,” I reply. 

I hightail it out of there (or, more accurately, walk slowly enough for a shoeless Agatha to step gingerly beside me.) By the time we’ve caught up with Penny and Baz on their way to the Cloisters, they’re discussing possible ways that the Humdrum might exploit my next trial, mixed with details of Baz’s mum’s proposal to his dad and Penny’s parents’ multi-dimensional marriage.  

(How are they this lucid with so little sleep?) (Also, is it any wonder that I worried they might fall for one another?) (Not that I think Penny or Baz don’t deserve someone who will make them happy, someone who’s equally smart and powerful.) (It’s just… weird, thinking of the two of them together.) (I don’t like it.) 

(It’s especially hard to imagine Baz wrapped up in someone else, dancing with them the way he danced with me.)  

(Although I can’t imagine him having the opportunity to dance with someone else in a too small dorm room or as he’s killing dark creatures.) 

“Why did you break into the Mage’s office?” I mumble face down in my pillow when we’re both back at Mummers. 

Baz sighs beneath his blankets. (He didn’t even manage to get changed before he smothered himself in his covers.) (Neither of us did.) “To poison his wine. Plant photos of him taking bribes from hobgoblins. Give him real plans for strengthening the curriculum at Watford before our college applications. You take your pick. Now, get some sleep and restore your strength, Snow. I’m not what you should be worrying about right now.”  

Easy for him to say.  

I’m constantly worrying about Baz. 

Like, will he decide to go for Agatha after all? They were dancing so perfectly on the dancefloor, Baz poured like fluid grace into his black suit, his tailcoat spinning behind him, his legs lean and lithe and powerful… 

Will he decide to listen to his family this time and turn against me? I know Baz is my friend— I know that despite his sharp words and cold demeanor, he’s there for me, always has been, even when we face obstacles that seem truly hopeless— but he’s got a family, something I’ve never had. He’s got people who want him and care for him unconditionally. Did he see them in the fairy lights…? 

Why does he keep grabbing his stomach? It doesn’t seem like he’s sick— it’s been going on too long for that— but I often catch him with his fingers knotted in his gut, like he’s trying to will the ache away. When I do that at the boys’ home, it’s because I’m hungry. I’m always hungry there. But Baz can’t be hungry. He has everything he needs right here at Watford.   

(But he doesn’t eat in front of us.) 

(But he’s paler than death.) 

(But he’s stronger and faster and more beautiful than anyone in school.) 

(But when I said that thing in third year, that he seemed like a—) 

“—Not a kraken, not a nereid, and certainly not a vodyanoy,” says Penny. “Those can’t be the trial by sea.”   

“I’m not sure if it matters right now, Pen,” I say, stripped down to my bathers in preparation for the second trial.  

The whole school (or three-fourths, after the Wintertide Ball) are standing on the drawbridge, looking down onto the moat.  

Three brave Americans have volunteered to participate in this trial while the rest seem happy to sit it out, harrowed by their experiences with the will-o’-wisps.  

“I can’t believe the Mage left before we could ask him about the trial!” Penny nearly screams. “How could he leave the school after we were attacked?” 

“He’s just trying to find other ways to stop the attacks,” I explain. At least, that’s what the Mage’s note said to me when I learned that he’d be gone for a month after Boxing Day. 

“So, his preoccupation with the Humdrum is why he scheduled a water-based challenge for January ,” says Baz icily. (Icy— heh. Like the moat down below.) (Baz loathes the cold; he’s decked out in a wool coat that goes down to his knees and a scarf with trailing, crimson tassels.) (The American girls can’t stop looking at him. Neither can the guys.) (The cold might also be why we have fewer contenders than the last challenge.) 

“He said it was a trial by sea!” Penny rages. “This isn’t the sea, just our algae-infested moat!”  

“Calm down, Penny,” says Agatha, huddling by Baz’s flame for warmth. (That rankles me worse than the cold.) (My magic takes care of my body temperature; it doesn’t regulate my concern and jealousy.) 

“May I have your attention, please?” Miss Possibelf announces. “Thank you. Because our esteemed headmaster is currently unavailable, I will be overseeing today’s trial. In this trial by sea” —Miss Possibelf also sounds critical of the use of the word— “our champions must retrieve one of four objects and return it to one of four owners. They will not know what their object is ahead of time, nor the owner of it. They must use their wit, determination, and most importantly magickal skills to complete this challenge.”   

“And this object is in the water?” one of the Americans asks, gesturing to the ice crystals forming on the surface of the moat. They shudder. 

“That is correct,” Miss Possibelf answers, brisk and unsympathetic. “The first champion to retrieve their item and return it to the appropriate owner wins. Take your places.” 

As I stand at the edge of the drawbridge like a diving board (or ship’s plank), Penny grabs my arm and whispers, “The item must belong to an aquatic creature, so look for Madonna-and-Child pearls, conch-iousness shells—” 

“Necklaces of merwolves’ enemies’ teeth,” Baz adds, leaning in close to my other ear. (His breath is cold.) (I shiver.) “Buried-the-hatchet treasures—” 

“Ships in It’s bigger on the inside bottles—” says Penny. 

“Sharks’ flasks with mercury-free blood—” says Baz. 

“Barnacoladas—” 

“Doubt-bloons—” 

“There’s no way I can remember all this,” I tell them. 

Then the Minotaur blows his bullhorn, and I leap into the lake without a second thought. (The water is frigid, but it doesn’t bother me.) (Unfortunately, the Americans don’t feel the same. Beside me, I hear splashes and shrieks.)  

Penny and Baz tried to teach me spells to breathe underwater in case the Mage flew me out to a deserted island or weighed me down to the ocean floor (they have extreme imaginations), but I decide to go magic-free. (I hate casting on myself, not knowing what I could do.)  

I alternate between swimming across the surface of the moat and taking deep breaths before I swim down below. It’s hard to see anything in the murky depths of the half-frozen water. 

The merwolves stay out of my way (which is not the case for the Americans, who frantically swim out of their reaches). My magic has formed an instinctive shield around me, probably because I began to get light-headed from the lack of oxygen after my eleventh dive. 

My bubble is useful, but unreliable. Water sometimes slips through the staticky barrier, and when it gets close to me and my sulfurous magic, the water occasionally gets hot enough to burn. (I’m more worried about being boiled alive then drowned.) 

I’m swimming along the vast perimeter of the moat as it winds across campus, rooting through the litter in the sandbanks (it’s truly disgusting— I’ve found flip-flops, aluminum wrappers, even condoms) when I notice bare feet hanging in the water. 

I surface, and there’s a girl sitting on a rock. She’s surrounded by other Watford and American girls, who shriek with excitement and scream my name. (And point at my naked chest.) (I sink lower, a little self-conscious.) 

I’ve swum further than I thought, already halfway around the school, the long building of the Cloisters behind me (which would explain the throng of residents), and the hills where Ebb leads her goats rolling in frost-covered mounds in the distance.  

I give the crowd my best version of a winning smile. (Penny tells me it’s miraculously effective, in combination with my reputation.) “I don’t suppose any of you have seen a magickal, water-based object?”  

They start speaking all at once in an incomprehensible slew of American and English accents.  

“Uh, never mind.” I prepare to be on my way. (I hope none of the other competitors have beat me.) (Plus, I have to swim all the way back. That’s almost a hundred meters.) “Are you alright?” I ask the bare-footed girl on the rock. 

She blinks her button-round eyes. (She’s pretty, with thick, dark hair and smooth skin.) (Not as pretty as Agatha, though.) (Or Baz.) “Me?” she asks quietly. 

“You look cold,” I say, referring to her tattered shawl and uncovered legs.  

The girl doesn’t answer, gazing further down the moat.  

I see what she’s staring at: it’s an animal pelt, sleek and mottled with shades of gray.  

That must be what I’m trying to find. 

I race toward it, to the cheers of the crowd behind me. 

I try to grab the pelt before it sinks into the moat. I’m so close. If I can get this, I’ll be able to thwart the Humdrum’s next attack and prove my place at Watford — 

“Stop, Snow!” 

Baz appears at the edge of the moat, wand held aloft. Penny is pressed against him, gasping for breath.  

“How… are you… so fast…?” she asks, wrapped tightly in Baz’s arms; I think he half-carried her here. 

“That pelt belongs to a selkie,” Baz says.  

A selkie. Baz and Penny told me about them. “A seal woman?”  

“Yes,” Penny wheezes. (She and Baz must have really run; Penny hates running— she says she’ll only do it when there’s a monster chasing us.) (I tell her at that point she’ll have wished she practiced more.) “You have to… tell the selkie… you don’t want… to take it… first.” 

“I don’t want to take it?” I ask incredulously, watching the pelt begin to sink into the water. 

“If she thinks you’ve taken it for yourself, she’ll be forced to marry you,” says Baz. (Yeah, forced marriage isn’t something heroes do.) 

“And then… when she returns to the sea… with her pelt… you’ll die of magickal heartbreak,” Penny rasps. (That’s also bad.) 

“So, what do I do? I didn’t see a seal woman.” 

“She’s… somewhere… there,” says Penny, pointing to the crowd. 

The girls break into a panic, trying to find the creature among them and running to safety. 

“Seven hells!” Penny points her ring. “Stand… your ground! Freeze! No… one move!”   

Many of the girls get trapped in place and curse Penny out. She continues to immobilize her classmates. (She’s not making any new friends in the Cloisters today.)  

I’m swimming rapidly along the edge of the water, looking between Baz and Penny and the scattered girls as they flee. 

Realization dawns on Baz’s face, his nostrils flared. (Can he smell something?) “Snow, she’s—” 

“Here,” I say, pulling up to the bare-footed girl in the shawl. I smile in reassurance. (She doesn’t look like a monster. Just lost and confused. I guess not all creatures want to kill me.) “Hi. I found your pelt. Can I give it back to you?” 

Blinking her enormous, black eyes, the selkie nods. 

Executing wide butterfly strokes, my legs kicking furiously behind me, I grab the slippery pelt before it’s washed away, and I hand it to the selkie. 

“Thank you,” she says, smiling faintly. Then she dons the pelt, transforms into a seal, and disappears into the moat. 

I’m swimming over to Baz and Penny when I feel teeth clamp around my ankle and drag me under. 

Fuck.  

Choking on brackish moat water, I hook my fingers between the gaps in the merwolf’s teeth. I tug and tug and tug, but the merwolf only bites down harder. I feel its teeth grind along my bone. I scream. More water floods into my lungs.  

My magic ignites, not quite going off, but propelling enough heat waves through the water that the merwolf retreats, scalded and howling. 

I’d swim back to the surface, but black spots are dancing before my eyes. It’s so dark this deep in the water, and I feel… 

A strong hand, pulling me up and wrenching me through the moat. 

The next gasp I take brings me air. I curl over my side, vomiting lake water that’s green with algae and pink with my blood. 

Penny claps her hand on my back, helping the water rise from my diaphragm. 

Baz is hacking up bile, too, although he couldn’t have been in the moat very long to rescue me. (He’s violently retching, though, saliva slipping through the gaps in his fingers as he holds his hands to his lips.)  

“Thanks,” I tell Baz and Penny, coughing my lungs up. “I beat… the challenge.” 

“For Morgana’s sake, Simon,” says Penny, rubbing her palm in circles along Baz’s back, too. (He’s stopped vomiting and has his eyes firmly shut; his knuckles are white as bone over his mouth.) Penny points her ring at my shredded ankle and casts, “Good as new.”  

When Penny, Baz, and I return to the drawbridge, the school celebrates my victory. (Miss Possibelf also annuls three American marriages to the other selkies.) (I didn’t realize we could have them annulled; it makes me feel daft for almost becoming merwolf chow and drowning.)   

What’s almost better than winning is Agatha kissing me on the cheek for my triumph.  

The Americans cheer, the Watford students clap and mutter enviously, Penny groans, and Baz walks away, probably in pursuit of warmth and dry clothes. 

(I hope he’s okay.) (He still looks sick from the lake water.) 

(He won’t stop clutching his stomach.) 

(When he wanders off, his dress shirt and trousers plastered to his body, I overhear the Americans gush about how he resembles Colin Firth in that one Pride and Prejudice adaptation. They won’t stop talking about how sexily British Baz is. Penny laughs when I tell her; Agatha blushes and tries to peer covertly in Baz’s direction; I gnash my teeth, upset with— well, everyone being obsessed with Baz. Although he did save me in the nick of time like the star of a movie.) 

Mostly, I feel like someone cast On cloud nine on me for weeks after the trial.  

I keep an eye out for the Humdrum sending other, more possessive selkies, but it feels like a calm has fallen over the school. 

The Mage returns in February and congratulates me for conquering my challenge. His eyes twinkle with pride. He says no one will stand in my way, not the Families, not the Americans, and not the Humdrum. 

Everyone forgets about the trials and gets invested in the upcoming football match.  

And Valentine’s Day, which is just around the corner. 

I wish my request that Agatha attend the ball with me extended to Valentine’s Day, too. I know I need to ask her soon, because she’s already turned down several Americans and Watford students, all while looking at me with a question in her eyes. 

“But I can’t ask her like Penny asked Micah,” I say. “She didn’t even ask him. She told him to give her books and chocolate-shaped books instead of flowers.” 

“If I wanted to know about Bunce’s dictatorial Valentine’s agenda, I’d ask her,” says Baz, distracted by kicking his football.  

Because of the match, Baz has been on the pitch every day. I don’t know why he’s training so hard after complaining about how poorly the Americans play.  

(Maybe he’s trying to escape all the people who’ve been suggestively asking about his Valentine’s Day plans.) (Coach Mac enchanted the grounds because admirers wouldn’t stop bothering the football team; people love footballers.) 

I shrug off my jacket and step onto the pitch. “Let me help you practice.” 

“You’ll only slow me down,” says Baz, bouncing the football higher and higher on his toes, knees, and forehead.  

I growl and try to intercept him, but Baz kicks the ball away. 

As he races along the pitch, I run after him, trying to steal the ball from between his feet. But he twists, dives, and soars around me.  

He’s right: this year, he’s gotten much better at football than I am. 

(The thought that we’re no longer somewhat on par with this— that Baz could run and leave me behind— makes me nearly explode.) (But I don’t.) 

Instead, I grab him, spinning him around to face me and taking the ball away from him. 

“That’s illegal,” Baz hisses, grabbing his arm back. 

Baz easily retrieves the ball, but I’m right behind him. I seize his shoulder and revolve him again, my hand sliding along his lower back. 

“This isn’t dancing, Snow,” Baz says, his face red with anger and exertion. He doesn’t shove me away, though. 

“Wish it was,” I say. “You were so much easier to handle then.” 

Baz’s jaw drops. (I don’t think I’ve seen him do that before.)  

“So?” I ask. “What should I do?” I hold him in place, making sure he can’t run away from me. (He feels like a football player: in his corded biceps, the solid muscle near his spine.) 

“About what?” he asks in a confused breath. 

“About Aggie?” 

Baz’s blank expression morphs into anger.  

He backs up and headbutts me. 

I fall on my arse and clutch my head, cursing blindly. (I’m not bleeding, but my mind reels with pain and shock.)  

“I told you I was the better player,” Baz snaps, grabbing the ball and his bag. 

“That was so fucking illegal, tosser!” I say, racing after him, my blood boiling.  

Baz is halfway up the stairs to the Astronomy classroom when I seize him. (I don’t know why we’re here; it’s the weekend, so we don’t have classes.) (I’m not thinking about that at the moment, though.)  

“You’re such a bloody traitor!”  

“Because I won’t help you get your dream girl?” Baz says disinterestedly. (I know he’s not disinterested. His tones are only this glacial, his eyes this steely, when he’s deeply upset. Usually due to murderous rage.) 

“Because you love hurting me. Just like your family,” I say. 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Chosen One,” Baz says, shoving me. 

I curl my hand into his collar. “Then why won’t you help me?” 

Baz laughs the way a dead tree shakes in the wind, its branches pronged like pitchforks. “You know what would help you, Snow? Putting you out of your misery by taking Wellbelove for myself.” 

“SHUT. UP.” 

“I could do it the way I danced with her at the ball,” says Baz. “Or maybe I’d invite myself into her room under the pretenses of practicing—” 

I hit him. 

I don’t even feel my knuckles slam into his face, though I know they’ve hit him hard. Blood spurts from and around his nose, and I hear the awful crack. 

I realize that I didn’t feel myself hit Baz because I’ve wrapped my body in magic, like an unstable, atomic suit of armor. It’s a decent offence as well as defense, because when Baz hurls me down the long flight of stairs, I’m not dead at the bottom.  

But my head rings, and my body aches, and my heart pounds in my chest like it knows I should have broken my neck. 

“Fuck,” I say, lying flat on the flagstone.  

“Snow?”  

Baz is crouched over me. Blood runs down his lips and chin, his skin dappled with pink and purple bruises. 

Fuck.  

I rise to meet him. (My head whirls; I think I’m going to throw up, either because I have a concussion or because Baz is bruised and bleeding, and I’m the cause.) 

“Good as new,” Baz casts. He points his wand at me.   

The spell doesn’t work, though— my magic repels it. It shatters along the peripheries of my energy field in red-blue light. 

Frowning, Baz points his wand at himself and says, “Good as new.” There’s a sickening snap— two, three— and Baz prods the side of his still-bruised nose, wincing and feeling the skewed bridge. 

“Let me—” 

“No,” Baz says emphatically, Clean as a whistle-ing the blood from his clothes. “I’ll get Bunce to sort me out. Or go to the nurse.” 

“Sorry,” I say, looking at the new twist in Baz’s face, the damage I caused. “I didn’t mean to.” 

Baz arches an eyebrow, which makes the violence we committed against one another almost seem normal. (Even I know it’s not.) “Then you only meant to break your fingers on my face?” 

“They’re not broken,” I say, flexing my hand, which is a bit sore. “Can’t say the same about my back.” 

“Your back is fine,” Baz says heatedly, as if he’s trying to convince us both of the fact. He watches carefully as I rise to my feet, twisting my sore shoulders and feeling my skull.  

I’m opening my mouth when Baz cuts in, “if you accuse me of trying to kill you, I’ll remind you that you assaulted me on the top of the stairs and there was no other way to defend myself.” 

I’m not sure if I was going to accuse him or apologize, so I merely shrug. 

That pisses Baz off but in the way I typically irk him, not to the degree that he comes at me with words honed like knives.  

When Baz casts A little bird told me to get Penny to visit our room, she sees the mutual damage we’ve done onto each other and refuses to heal anything. She says since we’re so set on making the Humdrum’s job easier, this is the best way she can assist us. No amount of pleading on my part or forcefully persuading on Baz’s compels her to try casting healing spells on us. 

(In the end, she leaves to plan her date with Micah, and Baz tries countless incantations. They don’t help my concussion, nor do they repair the bend in Baz’s nose. It’s as if we’re stubbornly composed of breaks and pains that no amount of magic can undo.) 

(Exhausted, we pass out on the floor.) 

(I try to apologize. Baz won’t let me.) 

(He won’t apologize either, merely running his fingertips across my knuckles and the side of my neck as it to ensure nothing’s irreversibly broken.) 

(I blame my clumsiness during my Valentine’s Day with Agatha on my lingering injuries. Although she accepts my invitation to Watford’s special Valentine’s Day brunch— couples, throuples, and other amorous relationships only— she leaves in a huff after I inadvertently insult her horse-riding and Normal friends, spill tea on her dress, and fling a pat of butter at her, barely missing her hair.)  

(Baz allows me to commiserate on the pitch as we kick the ball between us.) 

By the time April rolls around, bringing Baz’s match, Agatha has forgotten some of her disappointment with me, Penny and Micah are so close that she stops feigning interest in football (Agatha and I need to cajole her into attending the match), and Baz’s nose is still lopsided. I hear spectators gossiping about it in the stands. 

“You can’t even see it from here,” I say over the din of the packed stands. (The teachers had to Supersize the stadium to fit the American and Watford students; it’s an incredible magnification of the spell Penny used on her bed this summer. That’s the main reason why Penny resigned herself to watching the game.) 

“I don’t notice it,” says Penny, looking like she wants to be anywhere but here. 

“I can see it,” says Agatha reproachfully. “I can’t believe you did that, Simon.” 

“He almost killed me by throwing me down the stairs!”  

“Every year you two find something to almost kill each other over,” Penny complains. 

Micah seems concerned and vaguely horrified by this comment. I’d explain, but I don’t think the Americans can understand the relationship Baz and I have— most of Watford can’t understand it. 

“What were you two even fighting about?” Agatha asks. 

I can’t tell her the truth. What if she knew Baz was interested in her, and she chose him over me?  

I look at him in his football kit, his gaze steady and focused, his arms and legs chiseled with precision and power. Even the one imperfection I’ve given him only makes him seem more dangerous, like something you feel the urge to seize and never let go of in case it pulls you under. 

If I told Agatha that Baz wanted her, she might want him back. 

(Who wouldn’t?) 

“Just don’t forget what we’re doing here!” Penny shouts over the roar of the crowd; the American and Watford teams have finally lined up in front of each other, the stadium lights interlacing their shadows like paper doll chains. 

Down on the pitch, Baz is facing down his foe, an American who’s bulkier and seemingly older than him. Baz looks undaunted. He looks like he wants to step all over him.  

“Other than watching the game?” I say, all my attentions focused on the pitch. On Baz.  

“Obviously!” Penny yells. “The game isn’t important!” 

“Penny!” says Agatha.   

“With everyone collected here, this is the prime location for the Humdrum to launch its next attack!” says Penny.  

“We’re not close enough to the moat!” I say, waiting on the referee to blow the whistle. (Baz is, too.) 

“I know,” Penny says. “But…” 

The whistle blows, and the match begins. 

It goes just as Baz said it would: with Watford’s team scoring goal after goal, while the Americans struggle to make it through our defense. Our team is more disciplined than the Americans, more practiced, more cool-tempered, and more versed in different plays. 

And we have Baz, who’s merciless on the pitch. 

I try to do what Penny asks: I scope the edges of the stadium for conspicuous ripples and disturbances in the distant moat; I keep my hand at my hip, the incantation to summon the Sword of Mages half-formed on my lips; I have the Mage in my sight to warn him about the Humdrum’s invasion. 

But most of the time, I’m tracking Baz instead of other dark creatures. 

(By other, I don’t mean dark creatures like Baz. That Baz is a dark creature.) 

(He’s not.) 

(He’s just more eye-catching, fiercer, stronger, paler, darker, hungrier, more ethereal, more other than mages—) 

(Than other mages, I mean—) 

There’s the piercing sound of the whistle, signaling time’s up. Watford’s team is ahead by a huge margin.  

The stands explode in the loudest and most jubilant cheers I’ve heard on the pitch. (I think everybody’s craving a victory after our assault by dark creatures; the students most affected by the will-o’-wisps are still doing light therapy between classes.)  

Agatha throws her arms around me, jumping excitedly. I laugh and hug her and extend an arm around Penny. Penny begrudgingly lets me tuck her under my chin and Agatha fold her in an embrace. (She’s keeping an eye fixed on the horizon, searching for agitation in the murky waters.) Micah gracefully concedes his team’s loss to ours (to Baz) and offers his congratulations. 

As legions of purple-and-green clad crowds file out of the stands (alongside smatterings of Americans dressed in red, white, and blue face paint), I grab Penny and Agatha. “We gotta wait for Baz.” 

Penny groans, having no compunction to be on the pitch without the threat of the Humdrum. “They take forever in those locker rooms, Simon.” 

“We’ll see you two inside the gates,” Agatha suggests. 

“But—” 

Penny and Micah are already exiting the stadium, hand-in-hand. 

Agatha smiles and leans in to kiss my cheek again, her hair tickling my neck. (I try not to squirm, simply enjoying our closeness and the fruity fragrance of her ChapStick before she goes to chase Penny and Micah.)  

I sigh in contentment and observe the empty rings of the stadium, the bright illumination of the pitch, the goalpost where Baz— 

“It appears that our team isn’t the only one that triumphed tonight.” 

Baz has changed out of his kit into his jacket-less uniform, his hair still wet from his post-game shower. (It’s caused a dark ring to form around his collar, contouring the fine bones there.) 

When I’m stumped into silence, Baz points a finger at his cheek. 

“Oh,” I say. “Yeah. Guess we’re almost dating. Maybe after my next trial.” 

Baz doesn’t reply. (I hope he’s not jealous). (I want to beg him not to go after Agatha. I want to grab him and ensure he can’t run after her, even if it means trapping him beneath my fingers.) 

We’re silently walking back to the school when I notice that the ground is unusually soft and muddy. There wasn’t any rain on the pitch. As I’m tugging my boots from the sodden earth, I feel it: how the air hollows out, as if we’ve entered a void. Like that time with— 

“The Humdrum,” I gasp. I summon my sword and race toward the school. “But why didn’t it attack the pitch? Nobody was at the school!” 

“Which is why it attacked,” Baz says, trudging through the mud and rising water level, his wand at the ready. “There was no one to protect the school.” 

“Shit.”   

The Humdrum didn’t let the confines of the moat stop his plans: he’s made the moat overflow. The serpentine lake has transformed into a torrent of slimy, silty water, gushing into the high-walled school fortress through the lowered drawbridge.  

It’s like I’m back in the second challenge, swimming as hard as I can. (Which is difficult holding the sword.) Also, the lake is no longer placid (if merwolf-infested). The currents twist and rage with the force of a broken dam. The Humdrum is using the sluicing, whirlpool-like moat to wash the school off the map. 

Also, he’s using selkies, just like Penny thought he would. Unlike the friendly selkie at the trial, these creatures attack the students and staff bobbing in the currents, wrapping the stragglers with their slick bodies, and dragging them down below.  

One grabs ahold of Baz, forcing him under with a heavy splash. 

“Baz!” 

Baz and the selkie resurface. The selkie’s eyes are dark and vacant, her incisors razor sharp, and her canines as wide as carving knives. (Baz’s lips are stretched white and bloodless across his concealed teeth.) 

“I just want to know,” the selkie croons silkily, “where you belong. Do you belong to their world or ours?” 

“I certainly don’t belong with you indecisive husband-killers,” Baz growls, shoving the selkie’s flat, pinniped face away from him. He struggles to keep hold of his slippery wand. “For Pitches, it’s death do us part.”  

“All of us must make a choice someday,” the selkie responds, undisturbed. “The most difficult one. Will you stay in their world and risk your ruin? Or will you leave for the other, the world of—” 

The selkie shrieks when I slash her back, fleeing into the depths below. (Not below much longer; the water won’t stop rising, and the selkies are preventing anybody from casting reversal or drying spells.) 

“This isn’t like the will-o’-wisps,” I say. “I can’t kill all the selkies to stop the water.” 

“Didn’t stop you just then,” Baz replies, his fingers knotted into my wet clothes to keep us together when the river crests and falls. 

(I don’t think about what I didn’t want the selkie to ask Baz.) “How do I stop this?”  

By the ridges in Baz’s water-beaded brow, he doesn’t know. “We need to find Bunce.” 

“Penny— Agatha.” I almost forgot. I’m already swimming toward the Cloisters.  

The distance to the Cloisters seems almost insurmountable as Baz and I are buffeted by waves and clung onto by selkies. Their webbed fingers dig into our skin, and they whisper their hypnotic questions into our ears as they tug and pull and try to drown us. 

As I tousle with these monsters, they ask me the same questions they asked Baz: will you stay in their world, or will you go to the other you belong to?  

It feels like they’re telling me to choose between are the World of Mages—where I’ve found myself, the people I love, the power to change things—and the world of Normals, the ostracizing, bereft world I’ve tried to leave behind.  

(But I never can.) (I’m shuttled back every summer, never fully a part of the magickal world or the normal one.) (Never fully anywhere.) (The selkies don’t say this, but it feels like they’re telling me, you’re no Chosen One: you’re a gap, a no one; you’ll never truly belong here.)  

The selkie screams when Baz burns her, sinking in a roasted mound of freshwater flesh.  

“Don’t listen to her, Snow,” Baz commands me. “The selkies’ wishy-washy identity crises are theirs alone.” 

I don’t know if that’s true.  

Otherwise, why do I feel so empty, so threadbare every time the selkies ask me if I belong to the world of Normals or the world of mages?  

And why does Baz look so pained, unable to properly enunciate his spells, when they ask him to choose between the worlds of… what exactly? 

“Simon!” 

Penny and Agatha are standing on the roof of the Cloisters in a group of twenty other girls.  

Although the water hasn’t overtaken them yet, the selkies draw near, tempting the residents with their inquiries: who are you, do you belong here, which of your two worlds will you choose?  

“What do we do, Penny?” I shout. 

Agatha tries pulling me up onto the roof, but I slip on the shale. Baz catches me when I crash into the water. 

Penny shakes her head, overwhelmed. “Weatherization spells like Sun, sun, sun, here it comes won’t work because it’s night. Rain, rain, go away won’t work because it’s not raining. Down the drain might suck the selkies and everyone else into the moat…” 

“So, you’re saying we resign ourselves to becoming whiskered, blubbery ditherers like the selkies?” Baz shouts angrily. 

“Your favorite fire spells won’t work either, Basil, unless you want to boil everyone while you evaporate the water!” Penny snaps back. 

“Blown out of the water!”   

The selkies burst from the floodwaters, hissing and writhing. They’re slammed against the tall buildings, knocked unconscious on the stone, or staked on the spires. (One or two land on the roof of the Cloisters, causing the students to scream, run, and attack.) 

“The Mage!” I say exuberantly.  

He and a handful of other teachers are on makeshift rafts, casting countless spells. The Mage’s are the most effective (and lethal). 

“On the rocks!” Stalagmites explode from the ground, impaling the selkies. “Turn the tide!” The bloodied water slowly ebbs back through the opened gate of the drawbridge, only dragging the selkies with it, careful to distinguish friends from foes. 

The students cheer wildly for their headmaster. Agatha beams, and Penny is intrigued by the Mage’s spell work. 

Baz swims aggressively toward the Cloister’s roof when the mass of pink currents flows toward him. He hauls me with, an arm of iron looped around my waist. 

“Simon!” the Mage screams at me, his hand outstretched. “I need you to complete the spell!” 

“But—” I’m caught in Baz’s embrace, him trying to tug us to dry land, to safety.   

“NOW, MY BOY!” 

I wrench myself from Baz’s side. Penny and Agatha pull him up onto the Cloisters while I paddle toward the Mage and his precarious lifeboat. 

“Good lad,” the Mage says as he drags me up, sputtering and shaking. He glares reprovingly at Baz. Baz glares back between bouts of vomiting blood-soaked water through the net of his fingers. (Did he really swallow that much?) (Why’s he so desperate to cover his face when he’s retching?) (Why—)  

“Now, you must perform this spell,” says the Mage. “It will be… difficult. But it is the only thing that will work.” 

“Alright,” I say hoarsely, and the Mage whispers the spell in my ear. I don’t like it. “Are you sure I have to—” 

“Yes, Simon,” the Mage says sternly. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner should subdue this fake sea. You must do this as the Chosen One.” 

“…Yes, sir.” I don’t even draw my wand, my sword in hand as I repeat what the Mage told me:  

“An orphan’s curse would drag to hell  

A spirit from on high,  

But oh! More horrible than that  

Is the curse in a dead man’s eye!  

Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,  

And yet I could not die.”  

My spells have a tendency to either do too little or too much. In this case, it doesn’t appear to do too little: the water slinks back through the drawbridge like a repentant, slimy beast, rinsing its dead and gored creatures from the marshy grounds. 

I learn later that the spell did too much.  

For six days and six nights, I see the curse that is the Humdrum’s beasts: the flaming will-o’-wisps entrancing me with parents I cannot have, and fanged selkies torturing me with questions of whether I belong. My curse pokes a me-shaped hole in the joy I should be feeling, the joy that possesses the school after I, Watford’s champion, save them once more. It makes me fall even more behind in my coursework due to a lack of sleep. It annoys the hell out of my roommate. 

“How could he make you cast that spell?” Baz hisses when I wake up from my nightmares. (The spell will probably end on the seventh night; I’m almost through my self-inflicted agony.) (The problem is the nightmares get progressively worse, tormenting me with my highest hopes and deepest fears.) “There were countless other spells from the Ancient Mariner, and he chose the one with an orphan’s curse?” 

“It worked,” I say groggily. (It’s two thirty in the morning. I slept for maybe an hour and a half. After I spent an equal amount of time tossing and turning on my stripped-down mattress. My sheets are tossed onto the floor in my discomfort and frustration.)  

Baz is sitting up in his bed, his lamplight turned low. “And he topped off his brilliant idea with the most genius one of all: moving your final trial up to tomorrow.”  

“He says it might throw off the Humdrum,” I explain, like the Humdrum is also aware of our school’s schedule of events. 

“If only there was an equally idiotic way to throw off your magic,” says Baz. After the first three nightmares, he and Penny tried casting Sweet dreams and A dream is a wish your heart makes. Neither has prematurely terminated my spell. 

“I just won’t sleep,” I say, my eyes fluttering open and shut. 

“You won’t sleep before your next deadly trial,” Baz says deadpan. 

I nod. “Haven’t slept for… almost four days now…” 

“Congratulations. You are a champion insomniac.” 

“Almost as good… as I am at… fighting monsters…” 

“Go back to sleep, Snow.” 

I obey Baz, even though I don’t want to. 

I’m awake (again) and shouting at nearly four a.m., agitated by the memory of the selkies merging with a fantasy of my parents, Penny, Agatha, and Baz sinking underwater. 

Baz also startles awake. Tired and irritated, he watches as I gasp for breath. Then, gritting his teeth, he walks over to my bed. I think he’s going to activate the Anathema once and for all. 

Except he tugs me from my bed, placing my hands on his hips and his hands on my shoulders. It’s the sloppiest dance form I’ve ever seen from Baz. His silk pajamas are cool and plush beneath my fingers. 

“I can’t talk at you like Bunce,” Baz explains crossly. “Or kick around a ball with you on our swamp of a pitch. So, we’re doing another physical distraction.”  

“Yeah?” I say as Baz and I sway.  

Our dances are often extremely coordinated and athletic, but it’s nice to do something like this. Moving only a little back and forth, mainly staying in place, touching each other. 

“Yes, Snow,” Baz says. 

“Simon,” I correct him, yawning and leaning my brow on Baz’s shoulder. 

He gently sways, saying nothing.  

I manage to get another two hours of sleep. When I wake up at almost nine, I’m sitting on the floor propped against my bed.  

Baz is dozing beside me, his lips parted, a sliver of teeth gleaming in the sunlight. 

(I’d stare longer, but I’m late for breakfast.) (Why am I staring anyway?) (There’s nothing to stare at: not Baz’s smooth, flawless face, nor his strong, prominent teeth.)  

That afternoon as we’re gathered at the courtyard, Penny states vehemently, “I can’t believe the Mage didn’t give us more time to research. And he refused to tell us what his creature was in case of a security breach. What could be worse than the security breaches we’ve been having?” 

“Ones where the Old Families join the Humdrum at the party,” says Baz. (The Old Families have been extremely unhappy with recent attacks. Baz’s cousin, Dev, almost drowned during the selkie attack.) (Baz blames Dev’s downfall on his indiscriminative sex-drive; the more easily that Baz’s relations get picked off, the more I realize that Baz is the only truly dangerous one among them.) 

With Baz beside me on the courtyard, I’m reminded of the Crucible ceremony, even though the hour is vermillion sunset as opposed to plum-colored evening.  

Also, four years ago, the courtyard wasn’t overflowing with fifty Americans radiating frenzied, do-or-die energy. I think they’re planning a last-ditch effort to defeat me and save their school’s reputation.  

I’m not sure if I’m in the best condition for this.  

“Welcome, contenders!” says the Mage, placing a closed chest on the center of the cobblestone. “Step forward!” 

I reluctantly leave Agatha, Penny, and Baz on the grass to cross onto the inner threshold of the courtyard. (Agatha squeezes my hand; Penny feverishly whispers possible scenarios into my ear; Baz eyes the chest warily, his nostrils pinched as if smelling rot.) (The fifty Americans who can fit on the hewn stone join me and the Mage.)  

The Mage smiles conspiratorially at me. I try to grin in response, though I’m sure it’s more of a grimace. (Maybe not to the Mage. He seems unbothered.) 

“Your next trial will require the bravery, ingenuity, and the resolve to do whatever you must to achieve your goals,” the Mage says, unclasping the rusted latches on the chest. “Now, to win this challenge, you must find the heart of this” —the wood slithers, feathered with dry, dead leaves— “paradisolation!” 

“Paradisolation?” Penny exclaims, but her voice is immediately choked out by the vines and trees that cascade from the chest, surging into the air and spilling across the courtyard. 

The vegetation encloses me in a jewel-green jungle. A cocoon of fragrant flowers and fruit-heavy boughs. 

(As far as trials go, it could be much worse. I’d been preparing for something that could burn or bite me.) 

What did the Mage call it? Paradisolation?  

My one problem is that I have no idea what the “heart” of a paradisolation is. Alright, I may have a second problem: I can’t hear Penny or Baz guiding me. 

In fact, I can’t hear anyone. No spectators, no Mage, no fellow challengers. Only my soft footsteps on the loamy ground and my even breathing.  

It’s liberating.  

I don’t have to take charge and act like I know what’s going on, the way a Chosen One should. I’m also free of Penny and Baz’s judgements, capable of doing things they’d never let me do:  

I sample the fruit of the paradisolation, wondering if taste will allow me to find the heart. (I plan to spit out anything that’s suspiciously acrid, but it’s all sweet, ripe, and juicy.) (I’ve gotten pretty good at telling what’s poison and what isn’t from my toxins training with the Mage. I shouldn’t kill myself right away, even if I get a terrible stomachache afterward.) 

I also use the Sword of Mages to prune the wilderness, slashing the vines and ferns and briar and berry patches. Baz and Penny would stop me in case I angered a magickal guardian of the forest, but so far, I haven’t encountered anything or anyone.  

It’s beautiful. Tranquil. Vacant.  

Actually, I’m starting to kind of… hate it.  

It feels haunted. Like I’m nowhere — nothing — no one. 

I need to get out of here. 

I tear the lushness to pieces, and the lack of people I could hurt emboldens me to cast spells: “Marco Polo!” “You’re getting warmer!” “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” But nothing happens. (Other than some plants exploding in sappy fluid and stringy fibers.) (This is why I don’t cast magic around people.) 

I think I’m beginning to panic, which is mad. But it’s getting harder to breath.  

(What if I get trapped in this oasis? Without my sour cherry scones, my room, and my friends?) 

I’m even beginning to hear voices: muted shouts, rustling, thumps, and thuds. The forest appears to darken and die on the edges of my vision, its green curtain flickering with fast-moving shadows and lightning-bolt illumination.  

I should have known this challenge would include hallucinations. 

I’m on the verge of going off, leveling this garden of Eden to a smoldering plain, when I see the stump of a tree that I haven’t struck with my sword.  

The bark is thick and scaly, the base wide and low from whatever superpowered being felled this elm/yew/beech/birch/pine/alder/apple tree…  

As I approach the trunk, I remember Penny once complained to me about how ancients believed the heart to be the core of a person. (“Spoken like somebody without a brain.”)   

Perhaps the heart of this paradisolation is the core of a tree. 

I think I’m right: the outermost growth rings of the tree should outline the chambers of a real human heart. (I guess it was too much to ask for the halves of an innocent, cartoonish heart instead of the actual organ.) 

But the innermost rings are empty. There’s a gap in the center of the tree stump right where the heart should be.  

There’s nothing but a black hole. 

What—   

I realize that my breathlessness isn’t (just) because of panic. Something is sucking at the atmosphere. Carving it into a shell. 

The Humdrum. 

The green curtain of fleeting silhouettes and flashes of light aren’t hallucinations. They’re chaos transpiring outside the paradisolation. 

“Penny! Agatha!” I shout, annihilating the idyllic foliage with my sword, stomping on the dainty flowers with my frantic feet. But without the paradisolation’s heart, I’m missing the key for my release. “Baz!”  

I’m about to go off. But I can’t. If I go off now, I’ll be down for the count. I won’t be able to save everyone.  

Frustrated and moments from imploding, I stab the Sword of Mages into the stump of the heartless tree. I need to pour my anger, desperation, and magic somewhere, and— 

It appears that the tree absorbs some of my magic. I watch as the amber heart regrows, ventricle by atrium. 

My section of the paradisolation unravels, partially relinquishing me back into the world. 

The other hemispheres of the paradisolation, the sections containing my American competitors, aren’t so lucky. 

The plants have been transformed into something awful and feral, attacking the students and staff in the courtyard. The courtyard is overrun by the undead paradisolation’s spreading, snarling seedbed.  

Uncovered tree roots whip the fleeing crowd; monstrous flowers belch poisonous fumes; boulders hurtle through the air like reverse comets.  

“Simon!” I hear Penny scream.  

I run in the direction of her voice. 

Penny and Agatha are on the other side of a dense, pulsing net of plants. Their hands reach through the gaps toward me, faces and bodies mostly obscured beneath the wilderness. 

“Are you two okay?” I ask, grabbing their wrists and forearms, trying to tug them toward me. It’s useless. The green mesh knots more densely between us, swallowing them. (Or me.)  

“Ouch, Simon— stop! You’re going to dislocate our shoulders!” Agatha’s pale arm squirms away, though she links our fingers together. I can only see one, frightened eye.  

“Better than being plant food!” says Penny, her blunt nails scrabbling for purchase on my sweaty knuckles. She’s not wearing her ring, and her words are muffled, so she must be clenching it between her teeth as she reaches for me. “Or getting burned by Baz’s out of control fire magic!” 

Then I hear Baz’s familiar elitist sniping: 

“And whose family is it that regularly performs controlled burns on their vast farm estate? Not your middle-class clan of impractical academics, Bunce!”  

I still can’t see him through the monstrous greenery.  

I cry, “Baz! Get over here!” My arm is too thick to penetrate the living wall dividing our sides of the chaos. (I always thought my butter intake might be the death of me, but not like this.) All I can do is clasp Penny and Agatha’s quickly vanishing arms, now submerged up to their elbows in vines. 

“Basil isn’t here, he’s trying to get to us— oh, Morgana! Beat around the bush! Turn a new leaf! Food for worms! PUSHING UP DAISIES!”  

Agatha screams, and her fingers desperately claw at me. “It’s useless, Penny, nothing’s working!”  

“Pen, Ags! What’s going on, are you—” 

I scream. Pain erupts in my side. Pressing the fist of my sword hand against my lower back, I find hot, wet blood streaming down my clothes and sharp rocks lodged beneath my skin.  

“Simon!” 

“What’s happening, Si?” 

“Shit,” I breathe.  

On my end, the dead, blackened trees are extricating themselves from the jagged cliffs of the ruined paradisolation. As they shake their thorny limbs, they shower me with stones. 

I’m able to bat away the largest hunks of cursed sediment with my sword. But as the rocks fracture on my blade, they cut the side of my face, the fingers wrapped around my sword handle, and my arm that’s holding onto Penny and Agatha, causing me to lose my grip. 

Squeezing me hard enough to break my bones, Penny and Agatha try to wrench me through the vines.  

But the plants only harden and engorge between us, blocking me off from anyone, until— 

Baz’s hand rips through another section of the barrier and seizes my sword arm. Steadily, forcefully, relentlessly, he drags his body through the stranglehold of vegetation toward me.  

“Baz.” I grab whatever of him I can get ahold of, trying to meet him halfway. (I don’t know how he broke through.) (The matted weave is as impenetrable as a steel hull. The roots are unbending no matter how hard I twist and tug.) 

“Snow,” Baz gasps, parts of him coming into my vision through the ripping, rending, pulsing forest. I see the nicks scoring his skin; his dirty fingernails; his gritted teeth; his wide, anxious eyes looking at me and then over my shoulder— 

With an abrupt and powerful wrench (one that probably dislocates my shoulder), Baz flips us.  

I’m tossed against the forest wall. 

And a hundred pellet-shaped rocks, small and round and brutal, embed themselves in Baz’s body like a cloud of shotgun fire. 

He falls soundlessly to the forest floor, his shirt punctured with countless holes. The torn fabric reveals broken skin underneath. Blood pools beneath Baz’s torso, running from his lips, coating his hair, and I— 

I detonate. 

Then, I wake up. 

It’s like I had a horrible dream. Only I didn’t: I’m in the Infirmary with hundreds of other students, wrapped in gauze and what I can tell are invisible healing spells. 

But if I’m injured, and that really happened, then— 

Baz— 

NO—  

I’m about to go off again, until Penny hurls herself at me, hugging me fiercely. Agatha follows right after her, sniffling against my ear and shrouding me with her golden hair.  

“It’s alright, Si,” Agatha tells me, her words watery. “It’s over now.” 

“You beat it,” says Penny, more resolutely. “You beat the Humdrum’s monster.” 

I didn’t, I didn’t, I couldn’t beat it, I couldn’t save him, I— 

“Will you put a cork on your odious magic, Snow? Have some sympathy for the wounded and weary.” 

Agatha yelps when I toss her down onto my bed, and Penny screeches when she lands on top of her, cursing me.  

(I’ll apologize to them later.) (Once I’ve figured out which of them will be most angry at me: Agatha about the rude roughness, or Penny about a man like me throwing around girls.) 

But I’m not thinking about that.  

Because Baz is standing at the foot of my bed.  

His arms are crossed, his eyebrows arched, his general person grumpy and alive.  

The words scrape through the desert of my throat: “But… you can’t… this isn’t…I saw you…" 

“I’d say they wired something wrong in your brain when they healed you if I didn’t know how you usually form sentences,” Baz replies. He’s calm, snide, his usual self. Unbloodied, unbroken, and unvanquished.   

That doesn’t stop me from launching out of my bed and grabbing him, slipping my hand beneath his shirt. 

“CROWLEY! What the fuck are you—” 

There’s gauze beneath Baz’s clothes that wraps around his stomach and chest. The ribbons extend as high as his collarbone. When I press down, Baz whimpers, his fingers tightening in my sleeve.  

His bandages are pebbled, like they’re filled with rocks. I caress their edges. (Gently. Lightly. With barely any weight.) As I trace a path from the center of his chest down below his navel, I try not to hurt him. I move slowly, softly, thoroughly. 

“Snow,” Baz breathes, voice strained, in my ear.   

He’s injured— of course he was, I saw it— but his injuries didn’t kill him. Even though there was so, so, so much blood. 

(How?) 

(It doesn’t matter.) 

(But he should be—) 

(Here, alive. Here, with me. Here, where nothing else can touch him.) 

I bite my lip to stop from weeping. 

Baz can probably feel my stoppered sobs. I’m shaking violently against him, coiled tight, my magic spilling.    

Maybe that’s why he only gradually removes my hand from beneath his shirt. My palm slides carefully over his wrappings, seeking something I don’t know how to search for. 

“Er, I hope this isn’t a bad time…” 

Micah’s standing at the edge of the bedcurtain, fidgeting nervously.  

Penny huffs, rolling off my bed and into Micah’s arms. “It’s always a bad time with these two. Honestly.”   

“Is everything alright, Micah?” Agatha asks. She stands to one side of me, touching my wrist.  

Baz stands on my other side, arms loosely encircling his body. He’s staring into some distance beyond the Infirmary, beyond the here and now. 

(But not beyond me.) (I don’t let him; I press the side of my bare foot against the length of his shoe.) (It feels weird touching him here when I’ve avoided stepping on him so often for our dancing.) 

“I just wanted to congratulate you, Simon,” says Micah. “For becoming the champion and beating us in the games. Cheers!”

Chapter Text

Book 5: Simon Snow and the Five Blades

XIIV. BAZ

If there’s one thing my damned life should have taught me, it’s that greater misery always lies ahead. But in that regard, I’m a slow learner.  

I thought things couldn’t get worse after I almost died saving Snow from the Humdrum. It’s not just that I almost died; I should have died.  

For weeks after my injury, I recovered small, firm stones from my body, like pellets from buckshot. My body was pushing them out.  

Any normal mage would have kicked the bucket. But not me. I’m a vampire, which means bullets won’t do the trick. (That would be good to know if the sight of my mangled body expelling bloody stone bullets from my flesh wasn’t so horrifying.) 

But after presumably sacrificing my life to save Snow, doing what I did with the certainty that I’d die (I had never before pushed my vampirism that far), I was also forced to reckon with a more devastating realization. I don’t just fancy Snow. 

I may be a little in love with him. 

Willing to die for him. 

Ready to set the world on fire before the light leaves his blue eyes. 

Wishing he’d get over Wellbelove and want me.   

That should have been the worst thing I underwent the summer before my fifth year at Watford - recognizing that I’m hopelessly in love with Simon Snow. The boy who considers me to be one of his closest friends. The one whom my family deems public enemy no. 2, right after the Mage. 

But on top of all that, I’ve become a monster that must drink blood to survive. 

I don’t know if the change was triggered because I’ve reached a certain age. Maybe it kicked in out of self-preservation, to make up for all the blood I lost to save Snow.  

All I know is that my stomach pangs and unruly teeth have culminated in blood-drinking.  

I thought I might die this summer, laying feverish and starved in my bed. I think I knew what was happening at that point, in the back of my mind. I knew what I had to do to go on. I thought about surrendering to death instead and joining Mother. (But would I even see her in the afterlife? Vampires have no souls…)  

Then I thought about never seeing Snow again. His stupid smile, his messy freckles, and I… 

…Gave in. 

It was so easy.   

It was so good.  

Warm, thick, syrupy animal’s blood. Savory and sweet. So refreshing. So addictive. 

Drinking it made me feel satiated and  alive . I licked the juices as they dribbled down my chin; I sucked them from beneath my fingernails; I lapped them from my palms— 

Then, acknowledging what I had done— what this meant— I vomited into my toilet from sundown to sunrise.  

I remember looking down into the crimson-stained bowl and thinking it could have been partially digested red wine, if it weren’t for my abhorrent, abominable nature.  

Purging the blood that I’d succumbed to drinking was futile. Have gotten a taste for it, and learning that abstaining only made me spy my baby sisters’ pinkness with terrible thirst (I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate—) , I was forced to drink more afterwards.  

I spelled the birds from the sky and into the palms of my eager, self-loathing hands. 

My ravenous appetite led to the most embarrassing (and horrifying) conversation I’ve had with Father to date. (I never had to speak with him about my queerness, thankfully. We both avoid that topic like the plague. That would probably make the list as most mortifying.)  

Obviously, I didn’t come forward and tell him that I was now an unpardonable monster. That there was no going back from the magickal changes to my DNA.  

But one day as I was playing my violin in the library, distancing myself from my blood-bag family, he showed up with a cache of dead hares, pigeons, and barn cats, their legs bound tidily with string.  

They weren’t game he killed. (Especially the cats.) The animals’ withered husks bore identical sets of puncture wounds on their necks, the blood licked clean from their fur and feathers. (I also learned this summer that I don’t get rabies, ticks, or animal-borne diseases. I’m messed up enough already, it appears.) 

Father looked at me, holding the bodies between us. His expression was unreadable. “…Do I need to stock the grounds with more game?” 

The wood of my violin creaked under my fingers. “...I think so.” 

Father nodded, looking at the floor (anywhere but me) and tossing the bundles of animal carcasses over his shoulder. (A farmer to the very end; he doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty with a little animal blood. Or a lot, in the foreseeable future.) 

“How big?” he asked, almost rote.  

I wished that I would spontaneously combust. “Bigger than goats. And a… regular supply.” 

“Cattle?” 

I shook my head. (I didn’t think it would come to that. Yet. I’d drained a pony when I was really low after my near-death experience, and it was awful forcing my teeth in the horse’s corded neck. I used all my strength restraining its kicking, gasping body, the powerful legs enfeebled by my bite.)  

“Deer, then,” said Father. He spoke as if he were purchasing regular livestock instead of sacrifices to his undead son. 

I nodded.  

Father nodded in reply, a barely perceptible frown dimpling his chin. Then, he walked away, leaving me in the library in my self-imprisonment and exile. 

Drinking blood changes everything and nothing, it seems. 

Father must have told Daphne. (What husband wouldn’t tell his wife about sheltering the likes of me in the same house as their vulnerable young daughters, even if they’re my sisters?) But all that led to was Daphne watching me with pointed concern over dinner; she even asked if it was time to change up our menu. (To what? Blood pudding and steak so rare it was raw?)  

Other than the new game populating the hunting grounds, and the increased protein in the meals I take up to my room, nothing has changed.  

Neither Father nor Daphne mentions my vampirism. Mordelia doesn’t know about it. She’s starting kindergarten this year and asks me ways to intimidate and befriend other children. (I refuse to help her.) (She demands to speak with the Chosen One instead; she claims he seems better at getting people to like him.) (I shut myself back into the library.) When I’m not avoiding Mordelia, I somehow end up taking care of Petra and Sophronora, whom my parents trust me with despite everything. (Or they’ve given up on the twins after seeing how Mordelia’s shaped up. Though I doubt it.)  

On the day of my return to Watford, I feel like I’m walking to my execution. 

I’m in love with Simon Snow, who will never love me, bastion as he is of heterosexual light and goodness.  

I’m a blood-sucking monster who’s about to surround myself with mages who could determine what I am, snap my wand, pluck out my teeth, strike me from the Book of Names, and/or kill me. That is if their odors don’t entice me to drain them first.  

I’ll never return to Watford as the boy I was—my mother’s happy, human son, who dreamed peacefully in the Nursery before the monsters broke in and destroyed everything. 

I honestly don’t know how I’m going to get by. 

Other than drinking myself silly. Two-thirds of my luggage are filled with wine and whiskey bottles I’ve stolen from Father’s reserves.  

(I don’t think Father notices they’re missing, consumed as he is with tending to my more pressing animal-endangering problems.) 

“Oi, boyo.” 

Fiona is waiting outside, leaning on Father’s car to meet us before we drive to Watford. Father’s busy inside the house, explaining to Mordelia for the tenth time why she can’t come with us. I’m hauling my books-and-liquor-filled suitcases, rain pouring down on the hood of my coat.  

Because why wouldn’t it be raining?  

Fiona’s black umbrella is tipped to one side, and the elevated soles of her Doc Martens squeak on the slick gravel.   

She’s looking at me how Father has come to look at me— her emotions cleared from her face in case they betray her. But she’s also got that particular Fiona expression, like the sight of me endears and pains her at the same time.  

“Are you going to help?” I ask, shaking my full arms and gesturing to the boot of Father’s Jaguar, which she’s sitting on. 

“Pitches don’t ask for help,” says Fiona, like that’s something to be proud of. (I am proud of it.) (Which is why I also didn’t ask Father for more game when the hares and birds were so depleted that I resorted to draining stray cats.) 

Fiona moves a little so I can deposit my bags. Her gaze flickers over the rain dripping down my hair and the nose that Snow made crooked. (At least he’s not responsible for other parts of me becoming bent. I was born that way.)  

“Your weatherization spells are shite,” says Fiona. 

“I’m not using any.” What’s the point? I can’t die from essentially being shot; I can’t die from pneumonia; the only things that can kill me are fire and starvation, but not the ordinary kind.  

I fixate on Fiona’s cigarette. 

She glares at me. “Not on your life.” 

Hah— my life!   

Like I have one. 

A soul, a life. 

I just have my cursed fangs.    

Father is exiting the house, Mordelia joining him in her raincoat and galoshes. (Crowley, did she win after all? Hours of driving to my doom with Mordelia in the car, pestering me and smelling good enough to eat…) 

As I open the car door, Fiona grabs my hand.  

“Call me the moment you decide to take care of the Mage’s Heir,” she says. 

Hells no. “Why would I do that?” 

“Because you’re in particular jeopardy this year, that’s why.” Fiona glares at my gaunt face, my deathly whiteness, my traitorous mouth. “You’ve let him too close, Baz. I told you, he’ll see what you are, and he’ll—” 

“That’s enough, Fi,” I say, grabbing my arm from her and sliding into the car.  

Fiona follows me inside, sitting behind the wheel. (Father’s going to have a fit.) “There are ways of making sure he can’t speak about it. Not to anyone, especially the Mage.” 

“How many times do I have to tell you and Father? I’m not killing Snow.” He’s more likely to kill me via heartbreak, execution by his mentor, mercy killing with his own blade, or pushing me to alcohol poisoning.  

“There are ways to get him to stay away that don’t mean killing him,” says Fiona, though she doesn’t enjoy admitting it.  

I wish I could believe her.  

When Snow’s set on chasing me, he’s impossible to shake. 

I love and hate that part of him.  

Aleister Crowley, I am truly broken. 

Fiona exits the car when Father and Mordelia come inside. (Father seems more unhappy finding Fiona at the wheel of his beloved Jaguar than discovering I exterminated half the creatures living on his grounds.)    

I don’t look back at her or the house as we drive away.  

Luckily, being tortured by thoughts of my vampirism and Snow make it easy to drown out Mordelia’s incessant chatter. (Father enchants himself deaf.) 

“Are there elves who clean and make food at Watford?” she asks. 

No. Why would powerful magickal beings like elves serve lowly humans?  

“Why do you play boring football when you can play magic sports instead?” she continues. 

I will disown her when I come into my inheritance.  

“If Watford’s so special, why haven’t I been there before?” 

I’m at the end of my rope. “Because you’re five years old, Mordelia,” I reply. “You’re only—” 

—the same age I was when Mother was killed.  

The same age I was when I was bitten.  

I glance in the mirror at Mordelia. She’s singing a song Daphne taught her, her pink cheeks filled with air. She scribbles on her coloring book, the pages laid out on her child-soft knees. She clutches a crayon between her fingers, too clumsy to do more than obliterate the stick of colored wax.    

A vampire saw a child like me, like Mordelia (more sophisticated, obviously) and Turned me. 

And I’m capable of Turning her the same way.  

I already know that I hunger for it, piercing this child with my bite. And the animal part of me doesn’t care if I hurt her. (If my food survives.) 

When we arrive at the courtyard, I grab my bags as quickly as I can, and Father speeds away. (Perhaps it’s dawned on him that Mordelia’s the same age I was when I was attacked on campus.) (Or maybe he doesn’t want his daughter in the vicinity of the Mage.) 

In either case, I hear her scream and cry after me, and the knife in my heart reminds me that I’m still a little human. 

Snow’s not in the room when I get there. He’s at the school, I know: his uniform is gone, and his blood in pungent on the door. (I Out, damned spot-ted it the moment I smelled the wood and my teeth dropped.) (At least they come in more easily.)  

(I’ve had practice after sinking my fangs into deer throats. Unlike ponies, deer go easy; they become hauntingly still, their eyes glassy and snouts trembling, their bodies pale and limp. I’ve crushed so many beautiful things this summer.) 

“Oh. You’re not Simon.” 

Penelope Bunce is standing in the doorway. Her hair is charmed amaranth this year. Her blood smells good. (What does it taste like, I wonder—) 

“You’re not allowed in here, Bunce.” 

Bunce rolls her eyes at me and lays down on Snow’s bed. She observes my wet clothes, which I haven’t casted dry or changed out of. “You’re a wreck, Basilton.” 

Tell me something I don’t know. 

“I was getting comfortable in the privacy of my own room, so if you don’t mind.” 

Bunce does mind, relaxing on Snow’s pillow and gazing up at the ceiling. “Did you know that I was in America this summer? In Chicago, with Micah?” 

Merlin, she better not be going where I think she is. “I want no further part in your boyfriend schemes. Deal with your trouble in paradise on your own.” 

Bunce glares at me. “Your services are no longer required, thank Circe. What I meant was a dead spot opened in America. In New York, where the America school is. Right before summer started.” 

“What?” 

I start stripping out of my clothes, feeling the urgency of an imminent brainstorming session regarding Snow’s safety. I don’t care that Bunce sees my half-naked body. When water trickles down my bare torso, she merely clicks her tongue and mutters something about “stupid hormonal teenagers”.   

“Why then?” I ask, pulling my head through my jumper. “Why in America? And more importantly, why would the Humdrum care about disempowering New York mages, pitiful as they are? They’re not even involved in our war.” 

“Precisely,” says Bunce. “It feels like whatever the Humdrum does is to…” 

“Get a rise out of Snow.”  

I know best what it looks like when something is trying to work up Snow. Other than the Humdrum, I’m the world’s leading authority.  

Bunce nods grimly. “Simon’s the Chosen One, so obviously the Humdrum’s obsessed with him. But doesn’t it feel like too much? For every one of Simon’s actions, there is a reverse action by the Humdrum. Simon saves the Americans; the Humdrum takes away their magic. It’s like his shadow, or…” 

I don’t like this line of inquiry.    

Neither I nor Bunce are compelled to muse on it too long because Snow bursts through the door. In the middle of me tugging on my trousers. 

I quickly pull my bare legs through the sleeves of fabric, doing my zipper and buttons over my soaking pants. (Crowley. Why didn’t I spell myself dry earlier? Self-pity is for the dogs.) Once I’m fully clothed, I turn my burning face to the floor. (I shouldn’t have drunk that full-grown doe.)   

“I… uh… what…” Snow stammers, sounding lost.  

“There you are!” Bunce says as she springs off Snow’s bed. “Where were you? I half thought the Humdrum sent another monster to get you.” 

Snow makes a strange gurgling sound. He’s frozen in place. “Um…” 

“Simon, focus! Is everything alright?” 

“M’ fine,” Snow chokes out, coughing. He clears his throat again. “I was just with, um, Aggie. We got distracted.” His face is beet red, his blush swallowing every lovely mole. 

That’s all I can bear.  

Seizing my blazer, I lock myself into the ensuite to make myself presentable and escape this situation.  

I soundproof the door so Bunce and Snow can’t hear me, nor can I hear them. (I can catch up on Bunce’s Humdrum theories later; I could avoid Snow’s bumbling about his girlfriend for the rest of my immortal existence.)  

Before I dry the damp patches on my clothes, which are many because I’m a sham of my former self, I grip the porcelain edges of the sink. I’ve been doing that a lot this summer: hovering over a running faucet as I try to keep everything down in my stomach, including my screams of frustration and terror. But I haven’t allowed myself to look at my reflection in the mirror. (Alright, apart from quickly checking that I still had a reflection.) (Luckily — or unluckily, I suppose — I do.) (It seems that’s still in the realm of absurd vampire myths.) 

Anyway, I can see Bunce was right: I am a wreck. My hair is stringy and limp with rainwater. My eyes are lusterless, the same matte grey as dishwater. My complexion is ashen, my undead skin stretched across a severe, skull-like face. 

I cast as many grooming spells as I can without aggravating my monstrous appetite. (My magickal output is unfortunately correlated with my vampiric metabolism.) (Because everything is connected with my vampirism.) (Because it’s what I’ve been reduced to.)  

My magic helps me look a little less corpse-like. It’ll do. 

I exit the bathroom to find Bunce is gone. 

Snow remains. He’s standing in the middle of the floor, his hands fidgeting restlessly with what I assume are the motions of swinging his imaginary sword or bouncing his missing red ball. 

He’s whipping around to face me.  

“Baz,” he says.  

It’s astounding how mundane and uninspired his greetings are. Baz. Simply repeating my name over and over again. 

It drives me crazy. 

I want him to say it all the time. 

I want him to stop torturing me with it.  

“I’d have thought you’d follow Bunce and your stomach down to the dining hall,” I say, falling back into my role. I can do this: wound, wind, irk him. 

Want him even though he’s the end of me.  

(And the beginning.) 

(And everything in between.) 

(Why did I have to inherit my family’s imprudent romanticism?) 

“Let’s go together,” says Snow, voice still a little gruff. (Does Wellbelove get to have that? That husky sound is her privilege—) 

“Fine,” I say, even though I’m less invested in human food than ever. (Although I still have to eat it. Apparently, vampires need blood and actual sustenance. Who knew? I’ve read fuck-all expertise on the subject.) 

Snow is surprisingly quiet on our walk to the White Chapel. Although he asks about my summer (you really don’t want to hear about it, Snow) and how my wounds have healed (again, the less you know, the better), he’s mainly silent, watching me out of the corner of his eye. 

His head must be too filled with Wellbelove to consider anything else.  

(That lucky wench.) 

(Even though Snow’s hollowed out the same way he does every summer, his hair cut too close to the skin, I can tell that he’s grown. That he’s beautiful in a way that frustrated and confused younger me.) 

(Snow is built like the heroes in old stories— you could hang from the planes of his broad shoulders, kiss his square jaw, stretch your hands across his wide palms, and be blessed with the bound in his step and twinkle in his eye. He smiles easily, but warily, like he doesn’t know how the world will react. I want to take every grin and put it in a chest, building up my treasures.) 

(I want to put my lips on his neck and suck him every time I grow thirsty.) 

I want to scorch him off the face of the earth when he sits beside Wellbelove in the dining hall, and they share a chaste kiss. 

Bunce largely succeeds in distracting me with her questions and thoughts about the Humdrum, as well as her magickal discoveries in America. I’m glad I’ve never experienced the misfortune of being stranded there. She’s even planning to take a cross-country trip after we graduate Watford. Sometimes I wonder if this girl has any brains at all.     

“Assuming I do well on my F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S.,” Bunce clarifies. “Mum wasn’t too eager to let me roam across American after everything I got up to with Simon last year.” 

“It wasn’t my fault,” says Snow. “Wait, F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S?” 

Bunce sighs. (I don’t know why. She’s aware of how little Snow knows about the magickal world. And how little Snow cares about his education.) “Yes, Simon. Now that we’re fifteen and preparing for what happens after Watford, we’re required to take a series of exams. The first are the F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S.: Formidable And Magickal Initiatory Levels Imitating Academic Real-world Success.” 

“That’s not what F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. stands for,” I argue. “They’re Ferocious Assessments Made Infamously Lethal Insofar As Ravaging Sanity.” 

“That’s not what I thought F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. were,” Wellbelove offers. “Aren’t they Fair And Mandatory Investigations Linking Intelligence And Righteous Spirit?”  

“So, they’re exams?” Snow asks, his voice already veering toward distress.  

Bunce and I answer simultaneously: “Yes.”   

Wellbelove nods reluctantly. 

Snow groans and stuffs his face with shepherd’s pie. 

“You have to take them seriously, Si,” Bunce insists, reaching across the table to slap his elbow. “Just as seriously as you take the Humdrum.” 

Snow snorts. “Exams aren’t nearly as important as defeating the Humdrum and saving the magickal world, Pen.” 

Bad mistake, Snow.  

He realizes that when Bunce pulls herself up to her insignificant but surprisingly intimidating height. Her ring sparkles with purple magic. Snow backs up in his seat, juggling his plates of food in his arms and apparently seconds away from fleeing.  

“THEY. ARE. JUST. AS. IMPORTANT,” Bunce proclaims with a tone that brooks no arguments. “The reason we’re trying to defeat the Humdrum is the same reason we’re taking the F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S.: to ensure our futures. This year is pivotal for us to determine our roles in the World of Mages, not just at Watford. You need to care about this, Simon. Chosen One or not, you can’t carry on killing dark creatures forever.” 

Snow says nothing, properly chastened, afraid, or imagining doing just that— killing dark creatures in perpetuity. It’s what he excels at, after all. 

Slaying monsters like me. 

(Should I be caring about the F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. either?) (Bunce’s threats aside.) 

(Although I loathe putting less than two hundred percent behind achieving academic excellence, my future in the business and economics sectors seems less and less viable with my increasing transmutations.)  

(But many would say that bankers are bloodsuckers, so perhaps I’d fit right in.) 

(I can picture myself now, ten years down the road: I’m one of many pale-faced bank employees, closing the books for the night and strolling to the pub with my mates. Except instead of grabbing a pint of lager, my fanged coworkers and I grab pints of blood from drunks languishing in Oxford’s alleys.) 

(I’d prefer death by self-immolation.) 

“Penny’s right,” says Wellbelove.  

Snow gasps. He’s momentarily betrayed by his sole companion in not giving a rat’s arse about grades.  

(Perhaps that’s why he and Wellbelove got together. Apart from heralding the union of divine goodness.) (They can also enjoy each other’s beautiful, brainless company.)  

“Perhaps the Mage will lessen your missions this year so you can focus on other things: regular, teenage things,” says Wellbelove. (Proving my point about her mindlessness.) “Not necessarily exams.” 

“Yes, necessarily exams,” Bunce says in rebuttal. 

“But also normal things,” Wellbelove asserts. “Stupid, carefree, fifteen-year-old things, before everything changes. Before we’re adults working fulltime jobs or taking classes at university. That’s why we should use this year to hang out with our friends. Go out on dates over the weekend. Have fun at parties.” 

Wellbelove concludes her rousing speech on teenage mediocrity by lacing her hand in Snow’s, placing them together atop the table. 

Snow blinks in surprise. Wellbelove smiles at him, all love and beauty and brightness. 

Snow smiles back and holds her tighter. 

I’m about to escape this bloody, sentimental scene when Bunce moans like she’s been fatally injured. 

“Is this why you’re forcing me to help you and the Cloister’s residents break into Mummers?” she asks. 

“Penny, shush!” says Wellbelove, glancing at the faculty tables. 

“Break into what?” asks Snow.     

His confusion is cleared (and my disillusionment with life skyrockets) when we discover a secret party that the Mummer’s and Cloister’s students are cohosting in Mummer’s common room. 

(Bunce has been forced to grant them illegal entry, either to make up for all the danger she subjected her dormmates to last year or because her pixie roommate has finally realized what power she holds over her.) 

The presence of Cloisters’ residents has significantly elevated the pathetic quality of the Mummer’s lads-only parties.  

The fluorescents have been turned off, making it so that the darkness is punctuated by twinkling, blue-and-magenta string lights. They’ve been enchanted to shimmer and change shape by Trixie. Some other girls have spelled paper lanterns to float mid-air, emitting soft, white light. 

Gareth has been assigned DJ. That alone ensures that this party will be hell on earth. He and his abominable belt buckle are playing technopop with the bass cranked so loud it reverberates through my blood-empty gut. 

Bunce mutters something about using her limited time on earth wisely and going to the library. 

I consider joining her when I discover Dev and Niall by a punch bowl that smells half fruit juice, half vodka. They appear to have volunteered for food and drinks. (I vaguely wonder if my family has an alcohol problem.) 

“Oi, cuz!” Dev says drunkenly. “Come over here. I’ve mixed a special drink for you.” 

Niall adds, “Dev plans to use his F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. to see if he can get an actual job, or if he should give up and become a bartender.” 

“Fuck you,” says Dev. “You’re just waiting on Baz to tell us when we can finally try to kill Snow again. Don’t need to pass F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. to accomplish that.” 

Dev and Niall snicker. 

“Ahem,” Bunce says irately at my shoulder. 

“Oh.” Dev blinks slowly, fully inebriated. “Sorry, Bunce. Didn’t see you there.” He pours a red concoction into two cups and adorns them with pink paper parasols. He holds one out to Bunce. “Want some liquid courage before taking on your latest monster?” 

“You mean exams, or the beasts that Snow attracts?” asks Niall, and they’re laughing all over again, three sheets to the wind. 

Bunce’s nose crinkles. “I’ll pass.” 

Dev shrugs, passing Bunce’s cup to Niall. Niall downs it in one gulp, his hard swallow followed by violent coughing. Dev giggles and tops off his own cup, decorated with a curly straw and rings of pineapple. 

Bunce opens her mouth to either scold Dev and Niall for their irresponsible behavior or their comments about Snow, but she’s interrupted by whooping and whistling from a corner of the dark room. 

Trixie and her latest girlfriend— a half wood-elf with leaves and twigs in her birds’ nest hair— are snogging obscenely on an armchair. Their moment of passion has either interrupted their studying, or they’re staging a performance about academic rebellion, because they’re shredding F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. prep booklets and practice sheets under their erotically flailing trainers. 

Bunce angrily excuses herself for the night, departing from this den of iniquity. 

“Come on, Baz,” says Dev, passing me my cup of crimson drink. It shines darkly.  

“We know you can take it,” says Niall, chewing on his tiny umbrella like a toothpick, like a minor stake. 

I push the cup away. “I’ll wait until one of you earns your premises license.” 

“Suit yourself,” says Dev. “But you might change your mind after seeing this display.” 

I follow his resentful gaze to the west-facing window, and I find— 

Snow and Wellbelove kissing beneath a string of rainbow lights. Her slender limbs are wrapped around his shoulders; his strong arms enclose her waist. They’re kissing hungrily, ardently. Snow almost lifts her feet off the ground as they press against each other, drinking each other in. The moon shines through the windowpane, painting them in gold and silver.  

I’m going to be sick.  

I’m going to burn this fucking building to the ground. 

“Lucky bastard,” Dev says. Niall claps him sympathetically on the shoulder, and they link arms as they down more alcohol. 

I don’t know what kind of excuse I make to them. 

I don’t know anything until I’m down in the Catacombs, beneath the floor of the White Chapel. 

I should have taken that drink, I think absentmindedly to myself when I smell— 

Rats. 

Millions and millions of rats, crawling everywhere. In half-disintegrated piles of bones; near the dusty crypts. Pulsing with blood alongside skinnier, insubstantial spiders and centipedes. I smell old rats, hearts beating fast from age; I smell hairless newborn rats, crying piteously in dark corners. 

Seizing one is easy.  

I take a fat, squirming adult from the floor when it scurries by my feet. (As I’ve hunted game in Father’s grounds, I’ve learned to make myself impossibly still and soundless. I don’t even breath when I track prey in the dark.) 

Before the squealing, writhing rat can try to bite me, I break its neck. After the snap— after the terrible squeak—its red eyes go dark and lifeless.  

I part the skin beneath its grey fur like the rind on a grapefruit.  

I let the blood flow into my open mouth, beading my lips. I massage its body, from its still hindlegs to its warm cheeks, squeezing out as much hot, dark liquid as possible. (Like the last remains in a tube of toothpaste.) 

When I’ve exhausted this one, I drain another. 

And another. 

And another. 

And another… 

By the time I’ve had my fill, I’ve wandered far into the Catacombs, leaving a trail of shrunken, desiccated corpses behind me. 

I’ve gotten so far that I’ve reached Les Tombeau des Enfants — the Children’s Tomb. 

Where children who died at Watford are buried. 

(Not me, though.) (I’m still here.) 

I laugh.  

I laugh all the way to Mother’s tomb, a beautiful, highly engraved crypt with a bronze placard enchanted to shine as brightly as flames.  

And I’m dripping blood all over it.  

I’m ruining it. I’m ruining her.  

Just like I’d ruin Snow. 

Who looks beautiful kissing Wellbelove beneath the moon and fairy lights.  

The way his hands become gentle around her body; the way the muscles in his face relax when pressed against her; how his mouth goes soft, moving ever so slowly while they exchange kisses like promises…  

Snow is so lovely, I find it hard to breathe. 

It’s easier to burn. 

Chapter Text

Book 5: Simon Snow and the Five Blades

XIV. SIMON

I started out this year wanting it to go like Aggie said:  

With a break on school-wide mysteries, confusing quests, and life-threatening battles against monsters.  

Especially after what happened last year to Baz.  

(I had nightmares about that for a long stretch of summer. Of Baz lying on the ground, still and bloody, his body covered in wounds the shapes of life-draining, scarlet flowers.) (Instead of going off in those dreams, I’d scream and weep. I’d hold his lifeless body in my arms and beg the Humdrum to stop, stop, stop.)   

(Those dreams led to a couple close calls in the boys’ home— minor fires and explosions— but nothing as bad as that first summer before Watford when I torched the whole building.) 

Anyway, I wanted a lot of what Agatha said during the opening dinner of our fifth year:  

To simply hang out with her and Penny and Baz and have a good time.  

To take Aggie out to shops over the weekend and to eat lunch together while we walked in the park.  

To maybe attend some additional parties at Mummer’s.  

(Although that last one got out of control.) (Dev, Baz’s terrible cousin, ended up building a pyre out of F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. study guides, and, egged on by the drunk crowd, he lighted it up on the carpeted floor.) (What is it with Baz’s family and fire?) (Mummers almost got burned down, and now the Minotaur is closely monitoring our building for further incidents.) (He’s threatened to strand the next party instigator in a labyrinse-and-repeat.)  

So, yes, I did want everything that Agatha talked about— the peacefulness and easiness— but… 

The Mage recently sent me a robin saying I’d be starting a new training regimen: wielding something called the Five Blades. They’re supposed to help me beat the Humdrum and other dark creatures without relying so much on going off. (Maybe they’ll help me protect Baz next time.) I hope the Mage tells my teachers this is why I’m going to miss a lot of classes. 

On the subjects of classes, exam prep is kicking my arse. To prepare fifth years for our F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S., teachers are testing us on virtually everything, including stuff we learned way back in first year. I can barely remember material we covered last week. Penny doesn’t tell me I’m screwed, but I think we both feel it. Not that my inability to retain academic information stops her from trying to ingrain four years of coursework in me. Agatha acts unfazed by our upcoming F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S., which could be her real feelings. Her parents are pretty laid back about academics, unlike Penny’s. In terms of exams, Baz is… 

Baz is… 

Acting weird. 

Really weird. 

But not just stressed about exams weird.  

(Although he tried to use that as an excuse one night.) (Twenty minutes after he left our room, I checked to see if he went to the library to study like he said. I couldn’t find him anywhere.) 

Baz has been acting suspiciously weird. I know it, despite how Penny thinks I overapply the word suspicious when it comes to Baz.  

How else am I supposed to interpret him disappearing from our room every night when he thinks I’ve fallen asleep?  

(I’m not.) 

(About a week into the start of term, I woke up with another nightmare about Baz dying. Blood running down his lips, his skin white and broken as marble, his body framed by the twisted greenery of the paradisolation. It was like a horribly beautiful funerary casket.) 

(When I woke up in a panic and turned to his bed for reassurance that he was intact and alive, he wasn’t fucking there.)  

(That almost made me go off.) 

(Where did he go?)  

(When Baz finally returned to our room, at nearly two in the morning, I was at my limit. I was burning anxious magic like carbon monoxide leaking from an open oven.)  

(Baz asked what the hell was wrong with me.) (I asked what the hell was wrong with him.)  

(We didn’t get very far.) 

(Although Baz got further than I did.)  

(He continues to avoid me, while I’m denied answers about where he’s going every evening.)  

“I’m breaking into the kitchens for a midnight snack,” Baz tells me when I pester him about it one late September night.  

I don’t believe him, though he does look peaky. Baz has looked peaky since the start of the term. All the edges have come out of him: the diamond cut of his jawline; the graceful arch of his eyebrows; the sharp jut of his hipbones above the line of his pants— 

(I try to forget the awkward moment I caught him dressing in our room. How his long legs were exposed and glistening with rain.) 

“Then why didn’t you eat anything at dinner?” I ask from my bed. (I’d been half-awake, half-asleep waiting for Baz to try escaping unnoticed.) (Shows him.) 

Baz frowns.  

He doesn’t eat dinner. He never eats anything at meals apart from pieces of bread and fruit.  

Per the unwritten, ever-evolving terms of our friendship contract, I’m not supposed to mention it.  

I’m fucking asking anyway.  

“I wasn’t hungry for anything at the dining hall,” Baz hisses, his voice low and rumbling.  

(That’s something that’s changed about him, too.) (His voice has gotten deeper, richer.) (He has a singer’s range, but more rough, more damaged, like the tenor in a tragic opera.)  

(Every time it seems impossible for Baz Pitch to get more fit, he proves me wrong at summer’s end.) (He comes back with a voice as shadowy as the inside of his violin, his physique more angular and dangerous, his gaze more smoldering.) 

That night, I don’t get anything from Baz, other than threats to convince Cook Pritchard to stop making sour cherry scones if I don’t cease bothering him.  

(I don’t think Baz can carry it out.) (But I’m not foolhardy enough to risk the possibility.)  

The next time I catch him leaving the room it’s 11:55PM, on October 3rd— I’m keeping dates now.  

When I confront him about it, Baz seems ready to hex me.  

“What do you care, Snow?” he seethes. “I’m surprised you’re even here. Shouldn’t you be warming Wellbelove’s bed? That seemed the direction your night was going with how you two got it on in the stands.” 

I blush from the roots of my hair to the soles of my feet. “Jesus Christ, she has a roommate, Baz.” 

Baz laughs. He laughs sharp and sleek, the way he does when he wants to cut deepest.  

“Oh, is that what’s holding you back? Phillippa Stainton? I’m sure she’d be all too happy to watch you and Wellbelove make beautiful love. You can’t tell me you don’t enjoy it: her pathetic pining on top of Wellbelove’s open adoration. You’re wanted by all the haves and have-nots.” 

“Stop it,” I say, jumping from my bed and putting myself between him and the door. At least now he can’t leave without risking activating the Anathema.        

Baz stares me down, his eyes blazing, his teeth nearly bared in a snarl.  

He steps in so close I can see the faint lamplight trembling in his irises.  

“Soon, you’ll break as many hearts as you’ve slain monsters, Chosen One,” Baz spits at me. 

His viciousness surprises me.  

Baz uses that opening to push past the door and rush down the stairs. 

By the time I’ve gotten over my alarm and followed him outside of Mummers, Baz is nowhere to be seen. I’m surrounded by the empty expanse of the Great Lawn, stars glimmering weakly in the cloud-ribboned sky.  

The next time I catch him leaving Mummers— one late October night, at nearly three in the morning— Baz doesn’t fight me.  

He doesn’t look up to fighting, let alone skulking the halls or wherever it is he goes at night. 

He looks… I don’t know. 

I haven’t seen Baz so empty, so pale, so drained. And I thought things had been getting better. He hadn’t left our room for four nights straight, sleeping fitfully beneath my covert watch.  

“Let me go, Snow,” Baz says when I position myself between him and the door. 

“Stay here, Baz,” I tell him. 

Baz doesn’t sigh and doesn’t glare. He barely reacts beyond a twitch of his fingers. 

“If only it were that simple,” he replies tonelessly. His eyes are glazed over. All the color has gone from his lips.  

(He looks as drab and dead as my nightmares.) 

“Why isn’t it?” I ask, more resolutely barricading him in. 

“You couldn’t begin to understand,” Baz says, again without passion. “Not you of all people.” 

That makes my blood boil. “Go to bed and get some sleep for once. Whatever you’re doing is affecting your classes. Penny’s been complaining that you’re slacking off on preparing for our F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. That’s not like you.” 

“Since when you do you know what I’m like?” Baz asks more heatedly. 

(Good.) (Heated is better than lifeless, even if it drives me crazy.) “Don’t try to pull that shite with me. I know you, tosser. I know you better than anyone.” 

“You don’t,” Baz growls, pushing me. (His usually iron grip has turned soft, feeble, frail.) (That makes the floor drop out of my stomach.) (Baz is stronger than anyone I’ve faced— he’s the only one I’ve never been afraid of breaking.)  

“Are you going out to meet somebody?” I ask, not realizing what I’m saying until it leaves my lips. 

Then, it hits me. It hits both of us. Baz looks a little surprised, too. 

Eventually, his surprise wanes, replaced with… sadness.  

“Yes, Snow,” Baz murmurs. “I’m going to see someone. The only person who loves me. And that’s because they’ll never know what I really am.” 

What—  

“Don’t do that.” 

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Baz says, and gathering his strength, he succeeds in pulling me from the door.  

I don’t follow him. I don’t know why. (With the condition he’s in, I could probably catch him.)  

After that, Baz stops leaving in the middle of the night. 

Instead, he avoids our room from the end of dinner until the crack of dawn, doing Merlin knows what. 

Since I can’t (try to) stop him from leaving anymore, I resolve to follow him. The problem is that I don’t successfully do that either. 

Baz is a stealthy bastard. (Especially for someone so eye-catching.) (When he moves, it’s like he’s gliding through a room: no wasted movement. Just poise, grace, and efficiency.)  

During the most opportune times to track him, I’m also preoccupied hanging out with Agatha. I haven’t been someone’s boyfriend before, but if Agatha’s any judge— which she is as my girlfriend— I’m not as skilled at dating as I am at overcoming magickal quests. Quests only require that I focus my attention on one thing: defeating my enemy.  

When your sole objective is pursuing your foe, you don’t forget about movie watching nights, or get distracted looking through shopping catalogues, or lose the thread of a conversation thinking about what Baz could be doing.  

Agatha’s vexation with me only gets worse when the Mage starts my training sessions using the Five Blades.  

(My F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. test prep also fares poorly, but I’m not going to pretend that’s a surprise.) (Despite Penny’s concerted efforts.) 

“You’ve already proved yourself adept at using one of the Five Blades,” the Mage tells me as we stand in his office. He’s cleared it out to look more like a stage, like a dueling arena. In one of his leather-gloved hands, he brandishes his sword, a silver longsword with the finest edge I’ve witnessed on a weapon. When I entered his office, I found him sharpening it on an immense whetstone.  

“The Sword of Mages is one of the Five Blades?” I ask.  

(I hadn’t put it in a group of things. Other than it being my sword.) (The Chosen One’s mighty weapon.) 

“Indeed, it is,” says the Mage. He swishes his blade, gesturing for me to summon mine. 

The incantation flows effortlessly and automatically from my tongue. When the Sword of Mages appears in a mist of golden dust in my palm, I position myself in a fighting stance with one flick of my wrist. 

The Mage glows with pride, approval, and excitement.  

I bask in his positive attention.  

(Lately, I haven’t felt capable or in control of anything— not my exams, not my love life, not Baz.) 

“You see, my boy, the Sword of Mages is only one powerful blade in an arsenal of weapons to dispose of evil,” the Mage explains. “It is otherwise known as the Sword of Character. Only the just and brave can wield it. What you will accomplish this year is using all five blades.” 

“At once?” I try to imagine how I’d handle five swords simultaneously without slicing off my fingers— maybe placing them between my teeth and my toes? I don’t think that would work. 

“No, of course not,” says the Mage brusquely. “You’ll use a different blade for different opponents. Suiting your weapons to your enemies is superior to indiscriminately going off. That is strategy.”  

And here I was hoping I could forget about strategy by simply mastering a weapon. “You mean like the F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S.” 

The Mage scoffs. “Unlike the Fanciful Antiquated Magickal Initiations Lowering Innovating Adventurers’ Revolutionary Standards, our training will actually help you stop wrongdoers and save the World of Mages.” (Great. The Mage has another interpretation of the acronym.) (What does F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. bloody stand for?) “Now, to counter the blight and ugliness the Humdrum has wrought on the world with its hideous powers, we need the Sword of Beauty. Otherwise known as the Sword of Fairness and Goodness.” 

I’m not really sure if beauty is capable of defeating the Humdrum. There are a lot of beautiful dark creatures, like goblins. But I follow the Mage’s commands. 

It turns out that the Sword of Beauty is useless. 

I don’t have much trouble summoning it, which is flattering. (I’m sure Baz would summon it in a heartbeat.) But all the thin rapier does is shine with blinding light. And it creates mysterious nicks in my shirt, even when I’m slashing opposite my body, the tip of the blade nowhere near me. By the end of my training session with the Mage, my shirt has fallen apart, exposing my chest and shoulders, and my hair has grown out in a wild, tousled tapestry of bronze curls that reach my ankles. (They’re an extreme liability in a fight.)  

Penny laughs like mad when she sees me. She even thanks me for helping her destress from exams.  

Agatha enjoys my transformation so much that she almost forgets her disappointment with my romantic overtures. She cuddles my bare chest and showers me with kisses, twirling my long hair around her fingers.   

When Baz finds me in the room with Penny, trying to determine a counter-spell to eliminate some of my hair (the sword’s magic makes it impervious to scissors), he stares. For the longest time, he doesn’t utter a word, only recovering his voice (yes, I know I look like a mess— thanks, Baz) after Penny repeatedly explains our predicament and interrogates him about powerful grooming spells. (One magickal area that Penny hasn’t expended any previous energy studying.) 

Baz doesn’t cast the spell on me himself. Instead, he instructs Penny how to do it. (Guidance that she only accepts in this rare circumstance.)  

I’m surprised by the spell he tells her to cast: Too much of a good thing.   

(I guess some people might consider all this hair to be beneficial?) (For the wig or beautician industry, maybe.)  

Penny carefully uses her ring to cut my hair around the spirals of my ears and the base of my neck. At the end, I’m left with a spill of curls that uncoils over my forehead, the sides of my head buzzed clean. I feel lighter, my neck cool and comfortably bare. (I prefer this. Greater breathability, mobility.) 

When I look toward Baz for his approval, he’s already vanished. He’s probably on an early escapade to regions unknown, locations undisclosed. 

(He’s driving me insane.) 

“It appears that the Sword of Beauty is insufficient to take out our enemy,” the Mage says the next time we meet. 

(I could have told him that.) (I wish our F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. were this obvious.) 

The Mage has cleared additional space in his office, moving bookshelves and tables to the peripheries. He speaks to me from a great distance over the echoing stone. “Given that the Humdrum has never shown its physical form, if it has one, and it relies on taking away magic rather than imparting it, what we need is to counter it with the twin blades: the Sword of Body and the Sword of Magic. These will unlock the key to facing the Humdrum as its equal and opposite.” 

The Sword of Body and Sword of Magic are extremely powerful magickal weapons.  

So powerful that they overwhelm even me.  

As I hold the dual blades in my hands, slashing, stabbing, and lunging, my magic burns and roils in my chest. It feels awful, like molten fire. Something’s awakening inside me, something I can’t control.  

I feel the phantom sensation of limbs I don’t possess. They flex against the rounded stumps of my scapulae, my too short shoulder blades. (Not too short— I don’t know why I’m thinking that.) (Not thinking that: feeling it, like a life and death instinct, like a primal drive.) There’s a searing itch in the stymied tailbone at the base of my spine. My skeleton trembles and aches beneath the confines of my all-too-human skin. (What?) 

I’m developing cracks all over.  

Liquid heat, inferno magic is pouring out.  

I need to fly away.  

I’m terrified.   

The Mage forces the Sword of Body and Sword of Magic away from me before my— transformation? Deformation? — overcomes me.  

He seems deeply concerned by the blades’ effects on me.  

(I guess they weren’t supposed to do that: fundamentally alter someone’s nature.) 

When I return to my room after our session, I feel scorched, pounded, and tempered, like a soldered piece of red-hot metal. Is this how a blade feels? Trapped, like its metal should be free to flow like lava instead of being constrained to cut or kill? 

That night, I dream of terrible things. A cruel silhouette— the Humdrum?— holds me down. It rips things— wings, I think; appendages of sheer flesh and brittle bone— from my body. Then, it takes my tail, playing with it, winding it around its fingers, before it snaps it like rope.  

I roar in agony.  

“Sweet dreams.”  

My nightmare undergoes a seismic shift. Instead of being tortured, torn apart and reconstructed fragment by painful fragment, I’m with Penny, Agatha, and Baz.  

When I wake up, I can’t remember what we were doing. Only that we were together, safe, and happy. 

(Did Baz spell me last night?) (I swear I heard someone cast Sweet Dreams.) (The only people who have done that before are Penny and Baz.) (But Baz wasn’t in the room when I woke up. He’d also been absent that entire evening, until I passed out in my bed, too weary and wracked by pain to try to catch him, to make him stay.)  

Given my disastrous experiences with the Five Blades, except the Sword of Mages, I’m not looking forward to when the Mage calls me to his office again mid-November. 

I’m not sure if I’m relieved or anxious when I learn the last blade isn’t a physical weapon. 

It’s a mental one. 

“The Sword of Mind,” says the Mage, with the reverie of someone who’s had an epiphany. “Of course. That is the only way to defeat the Humdrum, an enemy that we can’t see or reach physically. An enemy whose only moves have been to manipulate brute creatures. To beat it, you must hone your mental strength, Simon.” 

I take it back— I’d prefer the physical blades.  

This one doesn’t play to any of my strengths. (Except maybe my ability to make mental lists. One of them details the activities I’m shite at, which includes meditation, reflection, and anything involving self-awareness.) 

I don’t tell that to the Mage. “So, how do I practice using a sword that’s only in my mind? Sir.” 

“Focus, my boy.” (Perfect.) (If only I were Baz. He’d be able to do this flawlessly.) (If Baz—) “The Sword of Mind is always directed toward the thing you want most. The being you desire to grasp above all others. Your fated enemy: The Humdrum.” 

“Right,” I say. I swallow hard, curling and uncurling my fingers at my sides.  

The Mage nods absently, still caught up in the thrall of his enlightenment. “Therefore, you’ll learn how to mentally summon the sword and point it to your ultimate desire; your most important pursuit; your greatest foe.” 

Our session focusing my Sword of Mind on my sole fixation, the Humdrum, goes as well as my studies for my F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S.: 

We get nowhere. 

I do develop the world’s worst headache trying to focus and find the silvery tip of my blade in the thick mists of my mind. (It’s a dismal, clouded scene in there.)   

Slogging through the bog of my mental landscape, struggling for clarity and peace, reminds me of my efforts to calm down after my nightmares about Baz— 

“That’s enough for tonight, Simon,” the Mage tells me. I’m shaking, red in the face. I probably look like I’m about to go off. (I wouldn’t put it off the table.) “We’ll resume next week.” 

That’ll be something to tell my teachers. And Agatha. This’ll be the… third… fourth… fifth time (maybe?) I’m blowing her off in a row. (And I was looking forward to our date: we planned to discuss dessert recipes to implement during my visit with her family this holiday break.) (Aggie hates my newest Mage adventures with a passion, although they haven’t put her in harm’s way.) (At this point in the school year.) 

I’m leaving the Weeping Tower, combatting my splitting headache with the cool, night air, when I observe something that freezes me in my tracks. It dials my attention to a single node on the map: 

Baz, walking in the direction of the White Chapel. 

(But why? Dinner’s been over for hours, to my regret.)  

(Is he going to sneak into the kitchens for another midnight snack?) 

(Is he going to meet somebody?) 

(Is it the person he talked about last time, who might have been a bluff to throw me off the scent, or might have been very real—) 

I follow him.    

Luckily, Baz doesn’t suspect I’m out wandering the grounds. He’s walking slower and more gracelessly than usual. (Is he alright?) He doesn’t even throw a cautionary glance over his shoulder when I follow him past the dining hall; past the apse, naves, and pews in the truly reverential sections of the Chapel; past the Poets’ Sanctum at the edges of the holy congregation space. 

Past the high, open arch forming the entrance to the Catacombs down below. 

(Why is Baz going there?)  

I lose track of him.  

It’s impossible to follow Baz in the dark. I don’t know how he’s navigating the shadowy underground— I can’t see the telltale glow of his flames, a beacon in the gloom. 

I blindly stumble into things I recognize from the last time I entered the Catacombs, back in second year when I confronted the Second Serpent.  

I feel the smoothness and hear the clatter of my trainers knocking into bones.  

I hear my feet reverberating across the endless flagstone.  

I wrestle my blazer from immense, thickly spun spiderwebs. 

And then I step on something strange, soft, and wet. 

A lot of somethings. 

When I bend down and reaching towards the dark floor, my fingers brush against an object that’s cold and… furry. 

It’s a rat. A dead rat. 

Many, many dead rats. They’re strewn across the ground like leftovers in the lair of a jungle cat or a million ravenous hawks. 

I’d be more revolted if I hadn’t encountered every manner of conventionally unbearable things in my years at the boys’ homes and during my excursions with the Mage.  

Instead of withdrawing my hand, I go into investigation mode. I grab the rat, feeling its limp, crumpled body. It’s lighter than I thought it would be. Its skin is loose. Too loose. Like the body has been emptied of all its contents. Like it’s been drained of all its—  

A cold, horrible realization is creeping on me.  

I can’t fight it. (The train of thought is gathering speed now, blasting through all my barriers. Bulldozing every stop and every station.)  

I scour the rest of the Catacombs. (The parts I can access, that is— this place goes on for meters and meters). As I crawl on my hands and knees in the blackness, plucking dead rat after dead rat from the ground, running my fingers across their soft, empty corpses like old socks, the pieces come together in my mind— 

—what I mentioned in third year. What I’ve noticed throughout these past five years. How Baz is — 

Pale as death. 

Strong as steel. 

Scary quick.  

Magic like no one else. 

Always unwilling to eat in my presence. 

Avoiding me this year, like getting close means death. 

Because it might. (Would it?) Because he can’t let me know. Because he can’t let anyone know. 

That he’s a— 

“Vampire?” Penny says critically. “Not again, Simon.” 

I tug my hair in frustration as I pace around the room. (Baz isn’t here.) (He’s never here.) (Because—) 

I think I’m on the verge of going off again. After keeping it down in the Catacombs, not wanting the ceiling to crash down on me or Baz, however far he’d slunk into the crypt’s depths, I’ve suffered and endured each day standing on the weathered, eroding edge of going off.  

I’m one step from falling. 

“The evidence, Pen,” I say. Urgently, angrily, desperately. “The rats that’ve been squeezed like lemons. Baz’s refusal to eat anything else in front of us. The fact that he’s paler than any of his family.” 

“He might have the misfortune of taking after the recessive traits in the Grimm family hereditary pool,” says Penny. 

“I’m being serious!” I nearly shout. (Also, that can’t be true.) (He looks like his mum in every way that counts— his elegance, his regality, his fire.) 

“So am I,” says Penny, firm and calm. (I’m glad she’s calm.) (No, her blasé attitude is only pushing me closer to my breaking point.)  

“Come with me, Pen.” I’m already shoving my feet into my trainers, smashing in my heels. “I’ll show you. You’ll see.” 

Penny sighs, but she follows me. She can never leave a good mystery alone. 

Or a terrible one. 

When we enter the Catacombs, Penny casts the faintest lavender illumination with her ring, unwilling to give our position away in case Baz can see. (She learned it in America: This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.)   

It doesn’t take me long to recover a dead, withered sack of rat. It’s been reduced to fur, skin, and bones.  

There are more like it, more than last time. 

This one is even warm.  

“Hmm,” says Penny, turning the furry corpse in her palm, examining every detail with her ring. (She has no hesitations about handling dead things either.) (It’s one of the ways we’re alike.) “It has been drained of blood, but… there are no puncture wounds. No iconic marks from a pair of fangs.” 

“Maybe he drank the blood from the skin around its broken neck,” I say, pointing to the brutal tear around the rat’s head. It’s like a gleaming, pink collar. 

Penny does grimace at that. “I suppose Basil could have drunken the blood from this rat. Or that one. Or that one. Circe, this school has a vermin problem.” 

“Focus, Pen.” 

She huffs with irritation. “The problem is that we haven’t seen him do it: drink blood. All we have are dead rats.” 

“So, you don’t think he’s a vampire?” I’m not sure what I want to hear. 

“I didn’t say that,” says Penny. “It would explain a lot of things. Perhaps even why he’s slacked off on schoolwork and F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. prep.” Penny sounds particularly aggrieved by that. 

“That’s not important!” I whisper fiercely. I grab another rat from the ground. Still warm, still soft, still dead and bloodless. “Cast something. Something that’ll give us clues.” 

“Like what?” Penny asks indignantly. “Dead men tell no tales? Silent as the grave? Death is notoriously difficult to obtain knowledge from, Si. It’s not a spoil to be claimed; it’s a gift to be granted. A gift that only the dead can impart, like ghosts during Visitings. That’s why mages fear the end of life. Those who have tried to obtain truth and information from the arcane realm of the dead have been driven mad by their obsessions.” 

“But I’m the Chosen One,” I insist. 

Withdrawing my wand, I prepare to cast any number of forbidden, experimental spells. 

Penny seizes my wand arm and holds it tight. Her fingers are unyielding as manacles. 

“Not even you can do this,” Penny says, her eyes flashing. “Promise me you won’t try. Swear it to me.” 

“But Pen—” 

“Tell me you won’t go this far, Simon!” 

“…Fine.” 

“Good,” Penny says, releasing my hand.  

But she seems to be mulling over something. She’s silent for a while, looking toward the sea of endless dead rats.  

Furrowing her brow and turning back to me, she says, “Do what I do.” I watch blankly as she traces an X over her chest; I unthinkingly mirror her actions. When I’ve finished, my finger resting over my heart, Penny points her ring and casts, “Cross my heart and hope to die.”  

The potentially lethal magic settles painfully over my chest, like the warning pricking of needles before they pierce the skin. 

“Pen!” I cry, alarmed. “Did you have to do that?” 

Penny doesn’t seem fazed by tricking me into a possibly deadly magickal contract. (Well, I guess we’re always dragging each other into dangerous things anyway.) “It’s hard to tell how far you’ll go for Baz,” she says. 

(That surprises me.) (I should tell her that’s not the case. But I can’t.) (I simply grunt and continue combing the area for clues.) 

When we’re unable to recover further evidence of Baz’s probable vampirism (not probable— I’m sure he is) Penny and I are forced to retire to our respective rooms.  

We resume out investigations the next night. And the night after that. And the subsequent night. For a week, we descend into the muddled, putrid darkness of the Catacombs, from ten at night to one in the morning. 

But we find nothing other than a growing graveyard for rats. 

Penny calls it quits. I nearly bite her head off. (Like Baz is doing to the rats.) (Well, not entirely; he hasn’t decapitated them, at least from what Penny and I have discovered.)  

“We have F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. to study for, Simon!” Penny screams with equal vigor back at me. “It’s what you should be focused on! It’s what Baz should be focused on, instead of throwing everything away because of a little blood drinking.” 

“A little blood—”  

“I’m going to the library,” Penny proclaims, hoisting her bookbag over her shoulder and pushing open the door to my room. (Baz’s room, too. When he’s here. Which is never, nowadays.) (He merely lives— or doesn’t— are vampires alive?— in the crypts.) “If you encounter Basil in the Catacombs, tell him I refuse to make top student in our year on a technicality.” 

I don’t find Baz in the Catacombs to convey Penny’s complaints. (If only she would help me and communicate them herself.) 

I barely see Baz apart from classes. I’m rarely in class because of my training with the Mage. Otherwise, during every course, I’d scrutinize Baz, wondering how I could have seen him as anything other than a vampire.  

He’s too ethereal, too powerful, too aggravating, too beautiful to simply be human. 

Anyway, on nights when Baz is sequestering himself amidst rodents and the dead, I’m in the Mage’s office trying to wield the Sword of Mind, directing it like a compass toward what I want to find most: the Humdrum. To slay it, obviously. 

Except, I’m so bothered by Baz that he’s all I see in the mists of my inner thoughts.  

(Penny’s right.) (I may go a little far when Baz is involved.) (But only because he makes me.) 

My thoughts shift from the nebulous Humdrum to concrete, vivid, so-clear-I-could-grasp-him Baz. I imagine him down in the Catacombs, where I’ve been looking for him night after night. I picture how he’d appear if I ever succeeded in locating him.  

(It’s weird, how readily the images come.) (Almost like I’m not imagining them at all. Almost like I’m seeing them, in my mind’s eye.) (But that’s absurd, ‘cuz that’s what I need the Sword of Mind for.) (And the Sword of Mind can only help me find what I desire most – my foe, the Humdrum.) 

Still, my distracted brain keeps drifting from the task at hand to preoccupied possibilities of Baz...  

He’s haunting the netherworld of the White Chapel and ticking every box for Classic Vampire:  

Night-vision: check. Crazy long and sharp canines: check. Fluidly stepping through the dark, like the combination of a shadow and a dancer, his body perfectly choreographed to the inky blackness: check, check, check. 

But then my wandering mind adds in something else. (I don’t know why.) 

When I’m distractedly thinking of Baz when I should be trying to summon the Sword of Mind, I always envision him a little bit drunk.  

Not on blood (I think): on a flask. Sometimes wine bottles. And whiskey. (They have fancy labels and designs, like something Baz’s dad would keep in his mansion’s stash.)  

Inebriated, he’s not ungainly or slobbering like the boys who sometimes slip six-packs into the homes, or Mummer’s residents in the punch-induced madness of a romp. 

No. Drunk Baz is weirdly… sensual.  

Like how he tips back his flask to reveal the long line of his throat. Like how his Adam’s apple bobs up and down when he swallows his drink. Like how he drags his knuckles across his lips and licks them with his tongue.  

The torchlight (where in the Catacombs is there torchlight? How can I get there?) illuminates one corner of his jaw. It moves wordlessly, soundlessly as he says something (what it is, I can’t hear; you’d think my imagination would be equipped with video and audio). He cracks a lopsided grin, his lips stained with wine. (Or blood.) His eyes are half-lidded, hooded, sleepy.   

When he starts twirling his wand between his fingers, he doesn’t show any loss of motor skills. No, drunk Baz still handles his wand like something delicate.  

He slides his fingertips across it. Carefully. Slowly. He drags the point of it down his throat, across his heart, digging the point into his breast.  

Then, he exhales and closes his eyes, collapsing onto the ground in a sprawl of long limbs.  

That’s it. The Mage interrupts and asks if I’ve gotten any closer to utilizing the Sword of Mind. 

I’m always forced to tell him the truth: no.  

(I don’t reveal the full truth; that I get sidetracked imagining Baz in wildly bizarre scenarios, languidly drunk scenarios, sad and wrecked scenarios.) 

(Because who would believe me?)  

(Even I can’t believe my mind is generating this stuff.) 

When holiday break begins, and I go home with Agatha, I continue my training at her house. It’s important, after all. 

Agatha doesn’t see it that way.  

“I thought we weren’t going to get caught up in all this dark creatures, Humdrum, Mage missions, whatever stuff, Simon,” she tells me while we’re boiling cranberry sauce. (It looks so much like blood.) (Is this how blood tastes?) (Does Baz enjoy drinking it, or does he have to?) “Not this year. Not when we’re trying to be normal, peaceful, regular teenagers.” 

“It’s not whatever stuff, Aggie,” I say. I wish I could be a normal, peaceful, regular teenager, like Agatha. But my training with the Mage and Baz’s transformations reminds me that I can’t. 

“And now”— Agatha’s voice drops to a whisper— “now you’re saying Basil is a vampire again?” 

“Yes! Doesn’t it make sense? It’s the only thing that makes sense.” 

“I suppose,” says Agatha. “He does have that… air about him.” 

I pause midway through dipping my finger in the cranberry sauce. (It’s burning but delicious.) (Sweet and sour.) “What air?” 

“You know.” Agatha goes pink. “Dark. Mysterious. Bad boy type.” 

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. 

I mean, I thought of something remarkably similar. 

But when Agatha says it, a knot forms in my gut. I feel like I did after using the Sword of Body and Magic— something feral is bursting from me, clawing to break free. 

Do you like him, I don’t ask her. 

Because what if she does? 

What if they get together, despite the fact that Baz is a vampire? 

(Still, I ask Agatha if she’ll help me search the Catacombs when we’re back at Watford.) (Agatha says no. She argues that I’m completely missing the point; we’re not supposed to be doing dangerous things anymore.) (I say this isn’t dangerous, this is about Baz.) (She says if he’s a dark creature, it’s obviously dangerous.) 

(I worry that Agatha has broken up with me that night, but she doesn’t tell me so on Christmas Eve. She is a little frosty, distant.) 

When we exchange gifts on Christmas morning, I receive so many beautifully wrapped boxes from the Wellbeloves that it makes me feel guilty. (Mrs. Wellbelove gives me a handsome jumper and scarf with the family crest, saying I’m basically one of them. It’s only a matter of time.) (Dr. Wellbelove gives me a watch, which is nice, but even nicer is the salve for my achy joints after my physical and mental sword-training.) 

Agatha’s gifts surprise me. Well, one doesn’t: it’s a collection of Normal dessert recipes with instructions for making scones. (Aggie knows me well.) (We make just as good friends as boyfriend and girlfriend.) 

And she also gives me a gilded cross on a golden necklace. 

“Just in case,” she explains, sounding only a little concerned.  

I nod wordlessly. I tug the necklace over my head, Agatha helping when my curls get caught in the clasp.  

The cross hangs by its long chain over my heart, simultaneously heavy and weightless. I tuck it away beneath my shirt. 

That night, after Agatha and I make up with a kiss beneath the mistletoe, I lie in my (borrowed) bed, and I toy with my cross. 

I practice using the Sword of Mind again. (Agatha can’t scold me from the adjoining room.) I attempt to focus on my greatest enemy, the thing I most desire to find, to fight. 

I get distracted.  

Instead of the Humdrum, I see Baz. 

He’s in Hampshire, decked out in a holiday suit, red with white accents.  

He’s sitting on his bed, evidently too tired to change out of his attire. His knees are drawn up to his chin. His head is in his arms. I can’t see his face. 

And a bottle of red wine sinks into the duvet by his feet. 

Chapter Text

Book 5: Simon Snow and the Five Blades

XV. BAZ

I’m this close to succumbing to my unforgivable, monstrous nature and killing Snow. 

I won’t take (much) pleasure in it.  

But if killing him is the only way to stop him from following me like a fucking bloodhound, I’ll do it.  

“If only I could get my wretched heart to stand behind my brain,” I tell Mother’s ashes as I lean against her crypt. 

On this dark and freezing January night, I’m lying (half-drunk) where I am every night: the furthest reaches of the Catacombs. With the wintry cold filling the sept, I could be inhabiting the lowest circle of Dante’s inferno, where the most flagrant offenders to goodness are trapped beneath the ice. 

(If I seem deplorably maudlin, you can blame it on Snow. You can blame everything on Snow.)  

(He’s even driven me to lamenting my lovesickness to my dead mother.)  

(That’s in addition to motivating me to down four bottles of wine on a weeknight when I should be studying for my F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S.) 

(But what do standardized tests matter when you’re an undead bloodsucker whose only relevant assessments measure how well you skulk around the school without people determining you’re a monster and incinerating you with a ball of flames?) 

“Sorry, Mum.” I take a swig of my Pinot Grigio. Its floral bouquet, crisp palate, and silky texture pair nicely with my main course of rats’ blood. “I don’t think I’ll be able to get anywhere near your F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. results.” (If I drink enough, maybe that’ll stop hurting— me failing to honor Mother’s legacy.) 

(Fuck tests, though.) (No apologies to Bunce.) 

My real issue is Simon bloody Snow, who won’t. Stop. Following. Me. 

Ever since he returned from his Christmas holiday with Wellbelove, doing things with her that I only imagine in my lowest, most self-hating moments, he’s been stalking me everywhere.  

On the pitch.  

In the halls.  

Through the library.  

Even into the fucking bathroom.  

(In that instance, I gave into my anger and embarrassment and hexed the urinals using My cup runneth over. It was mildly satisfying watching Snow panic to save unfortunate lads from being swept away by floodwaters of plumbing and piss.) 

(But my reprieve didn’t last.) 

At dinner, I ate with Dev and Niall, by which I mean I drank tea and glared at my plate while my minions stuffed themselves. Snow was thoroughly pissed off by me avoiding our dinner table, so much so that he oozed crackling magic. But there was no way I was sitting with Snow.  

Just as he won’t stop stalking me across campus, he’s also been relentlessly monitoring me throughout breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even weekend brunches.  

“I couldn’t endure it tonight,” I tell Mother. “The way his blue eyes get when he wants something. Like burners on a gas stove. Like jet engines. Crowley.” (For once, I’m glad Mother’s dead and doesn’t have to suffer through me relaying this to her.) (And moaning.) “Unfortunately, that gave Snow other ideas.”   

Other ideas meaning Snow stalking me after dinner, forcing me to divert my usual path from the Catacombs to the courtyard.  

In the brisk night air, I impatiently waited for Snow to get over his pursuit. My teeth chattered and my stomach rebelled from the lack of blood. I was painfully aware of how good Snow smelled, poorly camouflaged against the side of the Astronomy building.  

Even Phillippa Stainton smelled tolerable.  

Stainton’s been Snow’s pathetic, little shadow all year. But her stalking activities— like Snow— have surged since the end of Christmas break.  

She follows him with the same persistence he uses to follow me. Even though she’s as terrible at hiding herself and being surreptitious as Snow, that fool of fools hasn’t noticed her because he’s too obsessed pursuing me. 

I thought he might catch me tonight heading down to the Catacombs, as I was almost unable to hold out in the cold with Snow and Stainton smelling so appetizing nearby.  

Only, unimaginably, the Mage saved me when one of his robins alighted on Snow’s curly hair and reminded him about his training.  

Snow abandoned his pursuit with a loud and exasperated huff— he makes a terrible spy— and I was finally able to come down here, to Mother, to complain and fill my stomach with rat juice and fermented grapes. 

“It’s not fair,” I whine as I sip more wine. “Snow’s supposed to be distracted with the Mage’s newest, idiotic, self-destructive training for him. The Five Blades or some nonsense. Speaking of which, our buffoonish headmaster is nothing like you, Mother. He doesn’t deserve to be anyone’s teacher. Even Snow’s, that beautiful moron. The first blade the Mage made Snow practice with was”— I remember entering our room and finding Snow with his shirt in shreds and his bronze curls spilling down his arse like a Greek god— “…well, I suppose it could have been worse. But that second and third blade.” 

I returned to Mummers that night around four in the morning. I’d hoped to discover Snow deeply asleep instead of on the look-out like some demented night watchman.  

What I found instead was horrifying: Snow screaming in his bed, his body spasming and straining as if it were breaking and reforming under his skin. The way mine did after the bite. 

“… I thought I might have bitten him,” I confess to Mother. Which is absurd. I’d never bite Simon Snow. That’s the last thing I’ll do. Curse him, kill him— but never bite him. Even though I want to. Hells, do I want to; to sink my teeth in that freckled neck; to sample that cinnamon-and-bacon blood, just a taste… 

I shake the image away and fill my mouth with alcohol.  

“Whatever cursed sword training Snow was doing didn’t have lasting effects on him,” I move on. “I think. He slept like a baby after I spelled him with Sweet dreams. I’m not sure if I can say the same about the newest sword he’s training with. The one the Mage is making him practice using every minute of every day.” 

That seems to be the one thing other than following me that consumes Snow’s thoughts: wielding his mysterious, invisible blade. The Sword of Mind. That’s how I’ve overheard Bunce and Snow describing it.  

(What a stupid name.) (Is he supposed to slay a monster in his mind, and that will cause it to die in reality?) (Actually, that’s bloody terrifying. And inconceivable if only it didn’t involve Snow and his reality-bending powers.) 

Snow envisions brandishing his metaphysical blade all the time. 

While Bunce is in the library, cramming for F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S., Snow will envision using his sword. He’ll direct his glazed eyes away from Bunce’s notes and toward nowhere, his hands formed around an imaginary sword handle.  

On the rare nights that Snow stays up late enough to catch me returning to the room, I find him sitting at his bed, a simultaneously dreaming and laser-focused expression on his face. He’ll sift his mind for something, poised with his intangible blade drawing him forward like a dowsing rod.  

(Then he’ll see me and point his immaterial weapon in my direction, demanding that I tell him where I’ve been.) (I’ll shut the door to the ensuite and slip into my bed ignoring his protests.)  

Even during meals, Snow will lapse into that hyper-focused daze. (It’s caused many a fight with Wellbelove, to my vindication.)  

When Snow isn’t blowing off studying, eating, and sleeping to pretend sword fight in the arena of his thick skull, the Mage has Snow practice in his office.  

It’s almost as if we’ve deliberately coordinated out schedules so Snow’s night training to eliminate dark creatures coincides with my night-eradication of Watford’s pest problem in the Catacombs.  

Once I’ve killed those vermin, Snow can wipe me off the face of the earth. 

(I wish part of me were joking.) (I wish the whole of me were serious.) 

(I really should consider calling Fiona to help pump a healthy dose of self-preservation back in me.) 

I nearly ring her when I enter the Catacombs one February night.  

Instead, I hurl blazing fistfuls of fire into the damp torches, and then onto the disgusting piles of rat carcasses I’ve amassed, and then on the cobwebs, the ceiling, the insects, the rubble, the ruin…  

Because it’s not just any February night— it’s the night of Valentine’s Day.  

Which Snow is spending with Wellbelove, most likely heeding my advice and getting it on with Stainton as his and Wellbelove’s avid audience. 

I toss the bouquet of flame-colored roses I got for Mother on her crypt, more brutally than I should be treating the delicate flowers but still careful not to singe their yellow-red petals.  

(When Snow found me exiting our room carrying the roses, he pressed himself against the door and wouldn’t let me leave until I told him where I was going.) 

(I told him it was none of his bloody business.) 

(Then, enraged by his stubborn gatekeeping, I mocked him for not being an adequate enough boyfriend to buy Wellbelove her own bouquet. Snow angrily reassured me that he’d already purchased the perfect gift, which he’d be giving her tonight. Alone, in the privacy of her room.) 

(The image of Snow and Wellbelove nakedly writhing on her sheets burned into my miserable mind. In retaliation, I told Snow I didn’t need Valentine’s Day to lure away his damsel; I didn’t even need a bouquet. All I needed was a single rose.) 

(I removed one flower from my thorny bouquet and inhaled its sweet spicy scent.) 

(Snow stared at me, his expression vacantly incisive like when he’s mentally sword-training. Once he’d remembered himself, he reached toward me and stole the rose.) 

(He hadn’t finished forbidding me from approaching Wellbelove before he cut his thumb on a thorn. The scent of blood filled our room.) 

(I was forced to flee to the Catacombs.)  

“I hate him,” I seethe, collapsing by Mother’s tomb. The stone encasement is cold and firm, nothing like the warm, calloused touch of Mother’s hands when she was alive. 

(Nothing like Snow’s hot, heavy hands when he seized my rose.) (Which is most likely lying on Wellbelove’s crumpled bedsheets.) 

“I’m glad you can’t see Snow and Wellbelove. Their public displays of affection on the Great Lawn, in the library — even in the dining hall. People eat there, for Merlin’s sake!” 

(Not me. I don’t eat there.) 

(But I’m not people.)  

I turn the image over again and again in my mind, because I’m a glutton for punishment as well as blood:  

Wellbelove straddling Snow’s lap. Snow’s hand gliding along her back, her shoulders, and her long, lustrous hair. Their lips on each other’s, their tongues visibly entwining when their mouths slip apart and slide back together like puzzle pieces.  

I laugh because I can’t help it. 

Because I want to sob instead. 

I can’t believe what Snow has driven me to. Me! The once proud heir of the Grimm-Pitch families, scion to my mother’s many accomplishments and contributions to the magickal world. 

Me, the formerly capable mage in my own right. With hobbies, convictions, and ostensibly the better sense than to fall for the Mage’s Heir. Any boy would be better, despite my father’s feelings.  

Me, a vampire without a chance in hell of having him.  

And yet, Snow diminishes and demeans me by making me imagine him and Wellbelove riding into the sunset toward their happy ending.  

He curses me with the knowledge that they’re a boy and a girl who are oh so good and oh so in love with each other and therefore must end up together.  

He tortures me with fantasies of the beautiful, blonde-haired, and blue-eyed babies he and Wellbelove will have in their perfect future. 

(Despite their abysmal F.A.M.I.I.L.I.A.R.S. test scores.) (People like Snow and Wellbelove don’t need tests or schooling to prosper.) 

The next time I visit Mother in April, I drain my rats quickly, partly because I’m on a tight schedule, and partly because I’m queasy with the plans I have in store.  

Plans that involve the device Fiona gave me, the one she promised would take care of my Snow problem.  

(Without killing him.) (I made her swear on it.) 

I drink from my flask, only taking a swig to steel my nerves. Still, my hands shake when I reach into my blazer pocket and withdraw the tape recorder. 

“Crowley.” I hold onto Mother’s tomb for support, for stability.  

I’m not sure if my suspicions are allayed or heightened by the fact that it doesn’t look nefarious. The pocket recorder resembles any number of non-functional, 1980s junk that Fiona hoards in her room at Hampshire. 

Behind the chipped plastic is a blank cassette that Fiona preloaded into the machine. She made me swear not to speak when I clicked the Record button, and the reels began to turn. 

“Even if this entraps Snow or incapacitates him, it won’t seriously wound or maim him,” I say to Mother, to myself. (Followed by another swig from my flask.) “He’s the Chosen One. Nothing can kill him.” 

It’s easier to tell myself that when I leave the Catacombs early and discover Snow walking dangerously close to the White Chapel. To my hiding place. To my den of slayable vampirism.  

I need to put an end to his incessant stalking now.  

Making sure that Snow catches a glimpse of me without betraying that I’m aware of him, I start ambling toward the drawbridge.  

As I lower the bridge and approach the main gates, I ensure that he’s trailing behind me. I smell his delectable breakfast odor. I listen closely to the sound of his trainers padding across the damp grass, his breath growing heavier and more uneven as he hastens after me. 

I’m so distracted by Snow— my senses overwhelmed by him— that when I turn around, he’s all I can see: 

That slightly dreamy expression, like he’s still in the mental morass of his sword-training. 

His curl-covered brow furrowed in suspicion. 

His chewed-on bottom lip falling in confusion and accusation— 

— And I don’t notice Phillippa Stainton trailing behind like the doomed and lovestruck simpleton that she is.  

I’ve hit the button; the recorder swallows up her voice before I can stop it. 

(I’m never going to trust Fiona again after this.) 

(And Snow will never trust me, given the suddenly battle-ready, horrified expression he throws at me and then Phillippa Stainton.) 

(She squeaks helplessly at the two of us, hyperventilates when her voice won’t come out— it’s already gone— and faints in Snow’s arms.) 

I accompany Snow to the Infirmary as he princess-carries his damsel. I don’t know why. I should be running in the other direction, anywhere but here, given I’m the monster who stole this girl’s voice. 

I’m in the process of fleeing to the Catacombs after Snow tries explaining what happened to the Nurse, but he won’t let me. 

He seizes me in the dark, empty hallway, pushing me up against a wall. 

“What did you do?” he asks, furious, concerned, bewildered. 

I say nothing. It’s like the recorder sucked up my words, too. 

“Why?” asks Snow, squeezing my arms and trapping them at my sides. The moonlight streaming through the stained-glass paints him in color. In flickering reds and blues, like an avenging angel. “Why would you do that, Baz?” 

Because I’m damned anyway. 

Because being in love with you damns me twice. 

Because I never imagined I’d get this close to actually hurting you. Stealing your voice and taking your magic. 

“Tell me, Baz,” Snow growls, giving me that piercing look. Like he could cut to the quick of me with his force of will, the blade of his intentions, and examine what I’m made of. “Speak to me.” 

Snow’s hands slide down my shoulders to my wrists. 

Dangerously close to the recorder in my pocket. 

I grip his hand before he can hit it, accidentally turn it on. 

Snow is about to yell something at me, to wrench himself away, when he notices— 

The blood on my cuff. The blood that stained me when I was fast, sloppy, and nauseously feeding on those rats.  

What isn’t so disturbing is that I’ve revealed this evidence of my vampirism. It’s that Snow doesn’t appear shocked or disgusted. 

It’s like he’s found the thing he’s been searching for.  

No. 

Utilizing my enhanced strength and speed, I tear myself away from him and run back into the Catacombs. I despair and descend into a drunken stupor by Mother’s grave. 

When I wake up in the morning (I think; there isn’t any natural light in here) with my head pounding, my mouth bitter and dry as sandpaper, and centipedes crawling over my dust-covered clothes, I realize that there’s something liberating about hitting rock bottom.  

(Not that I’ve entirely hit rock bottom.)  

(Snow doesn’t know I’m a vampire, and he doesn’t know I’m in love with him. He suspects one of those things.)  

(I pray to the gods he doesn’t suspect both.) 

But now that I’ve fallen this far— I’ve become as much of a disgrace as I could possibly be, to Mother, Father, and Fiona, whom I left a wrathful voice-message for last night, replete with curses and expletives— I might as well…  

Claw my way back up. 

“Circe, Basil, you look awful,” Bunce says when she finds me in the library trying to get on track with my F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S.  

(That’s a fitting way to forget that I’m an unpardonable monster who stole a girl’s magic, right?) (Getting caught up in exams?) 

“That seems to be all you tell me recently, Bunce,” I reply, immersing myself in my text. 

“You’re not around enough to say anything more,” Bunce complains. 

I scoff. “Don’t tell me you missed me.” 

Bunce sits across from me. “You’re driving Simon crazy. Even crazier than his sword training with the Mage.” 

I pause. (My fingers nearly break my pen in half.)  

If Snow suspects that I am… what I am… 

Did he tell Bunce? 

“Well,” I say. “He should focus on other pursuits. Like studying for our F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. Or cuddling up to Wellbelove.” 

Bunce doesn’t reply. She merely scrutinizes me beneath her horn-rimmed glasses. 

If Snow told her (that he suspects) I’m a vampire, and she believes him, she doesn’t indicate it during our study session. That, or she believes that it’s wise to linger in the company of a blood-sucking creature for over eight hours. 

We spend the remainder of the weekend together studying for F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S., only taking breaks for biscuits and tea.  

(Seven hells, I missed Bunce.) (There isn’t intellectual company in the Catacombs, beyond what I imagine Mother might say to me.) (Although most of those imaginary dialogues consist of her recriminating me for the monstrous wretch I’ve become.) 

Every night after our study sessions end, I drink my rats in the Chapel basement and return to Mummers. 

Snow is always gone, off to his training with the Mage. 

Whereas my performance in class rises now that I’ve decided to fight tooth and nail to honor my family name, Snow’s performance plummets. 

His sword training is inflicting a new kind of damage on him.  

He doesn’t stumble into class covered in lacerations. (Like he has in the past.) 

Instead, he passes each period in a semi-conscious state. If it weren’t for my sense of smell, I’d believe that the Mage was administering Snow with heavy doses of opiates and other mind-altering, magickal substances. 

The only time clarity and focus possess his features is when Miss Possibelf assures our Magickal Words class that Phillippa Stainton, who is in an unspecified hospital for undisclosed reasons, will be fine and return to school shortly.  

Given the indifferent and unpromising message I got in reply from Fiona, I don’t think that’s going to be the case. 

I don’t think Snow believes it either, although it’s hard to tell anything he’s thinking behind his clouded eyes.  

He surprises (and alarms) both me and Bunce when he stumbles across us in the library. He walks soundlessly through the dark stacks, his vision milky. The lucid blues of his eyes might be mixed with Propofol. 

“What’s wrong, Simon?” Bunce asks, leaping from her seat and grabbing him. “Why aren’t you with the Mage? Has something happened?” 

That snaps Snow out of his haze. He blinks down at Bunce like he hadn’t seen her. 

His hands are wrapped in open fists in front of him. As if they’re holding a sword. 

The point of which is aimed at me. 

“Oh,” Snow says. “Pen? What’re you doing here?” 

“What am I doing here?” Bunce asks, voice rising sharply. “What do you mean? We’re in the library. F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. are three weeks away. Of course, I’m here!” 

“The library?” Snow asks, looking around and dropping his swordsman’s pose.  

Bunce becomes incredibly concerned, using her ring to scan Snow. “Did you hit your head during training? Did the Mage expose you to some strange artifact? Are you doing that godforsaken poison-testing again?” 

“No, no, no,” says Snow as Bunce revolves around him. She lifts his arms and sticks her ring in his ears and armpits. “Stop that, Pen! I’m fine! I just got a little… confused.” 

When he speaks, he doesn’t look at Bunce. (Bunce doesn’t notice, concerned as she is by examining him with her magic.) 

Snow’s looking at me. Quizzically. Warily. Blankly. 

I refuse to break his gaze, although inside me there’s a war between my fight-and-flight instincts. (My fight, as always, is putting up a strong front.) (I’m seconds away from hexing Snow or saying something cruel.) 

“Why did you get confused?” Bunce asks. “Did you know that you were walking down here from the Mage’s office?” 

Snow grunts, scratching the back of his head.  

“Simon,” Bunce says warningly. 

“Sorta,” Snow elaborates. (A single word is an elaboration from him, given his preference for the gestural and non-communicative.) 

Bunce isn’t happy, but because she has no other course of action, she demands that Snow stays with us for the remainder of our study session. Snow begrudgingly agrees, although he doesn’t achieve any studying. 

He only watches me. 

It’s like I’m back in first year, and Snow’s suspicious staring wouldn’t cease. 

(Except this time, he has an accurate guess of what I am.) 

(And he’s seen the worst of me stealing Phillippa Stainton’s voice.) 

Snow’s quasi-sleepwalking only intensifies over the week. 

I figure that out when the fifth years, absolute morons that they are, throw one last hurrah before F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. (Because our teachers highly recommended being wasted the day of exams.) 

They sneak into the dining hall at midnight and break out the enchanted Jell-O shots. Gareth’s dance music blasts with the beat of his pelvic thrusts. Trixie and her girlfriend make out all as they roll across the dining tables.  

(Bunce is spared this sight since she is in her customary habitat at the library.)  

(I was with her until she forced me to break into the kitchens and procure us sandwiches with a thinly veiled mention of my vampirism.)  

(Snow did tell her, that numpty!)  

(I’m going to kill the both of them. After I trounce Bunce in our exams.)  

The one upside of this party is that Snow and Wellbelove are not engaged in another passionate lip-locking session.  

Wellbelove is dancing with a group of girls. 

I suspect Snow is off training with the Mage. Again. On the eve of our exams. 

I’m midway through carrying out Bunce’s coercive request, pivotting from the chrome kitchen doors to escape this sorry soiree unnoticed, when I come face to face with— 

Snow. 

His eyes clouded. His hands grasping an imaginary sword. The fine tip of that nonexistent blade pointed at me. 

(I’ve been studying so long I’ve gone insane.) (How can I feel the edge of an unreal weapon caressing the skin above my heart?) 

“Simon? What are you doing here?” 

Wellbelove’s voice wakes Snow from his muddled reveries.  

He blinks but doesn’t turn to look at her. He looks at me. “...Baz?”  

His face is such a scant distance from mine that he’d close the gap between us if he took one step closer.  

I would be blushing if there weren’t this terrible buzzing in my jaw filling my teeth with static. (I remember experiencing this on the night I stole Phillippa Stainton’s voice; I thought it was induced by panic, dissociation, and lightheadedness.) 

Wellbelove grabs Snow’s wrist and rotates him toward her.  

Our increased distance brings me some relief, although I feel the residual aching, a magnetized pain, polarized opposite to my fangs. 

What the hell was that? 

“I thought you had training tonight,” Wellbelove asks, somewhat petulantly. 

“I did,” Snow says, astounded as he observes the party around him.  

Mystified as he observes me. 

He makes as if to step toward me. 

“Then why are you—” Wellbelove follows Snow’s gaze and finally notices me. “Basil.”  

There goes my hope for avoiding her. (Which I’ve managed to do regularly since Christmas holiday.) “Wellbelove.” 

“I didn’t know you were here,” Wellbelove says, her arms around Snow’s shoulders. She’s holding him the way Andromeda clutched her rock during Poseidon’s storm. She’s skittish and uncertain.  

(Merlin, Morgana, and Methuselah, did Snow tell her, too?) 

(Better question: whom didn’t he tell?) 

(The goatherd?) 

(The Mage?)  

(Fiona was right.) (I have to get rid of him.) (But I’m not going to use her methods.) 

(I’m going to bake him into a raisin.) (I’m going to roast his bones into charcoal.)  

(I—) 

— Catch the glimmer of a gold necklace hanging around Snow’s neck. When Wellbelove shifts the circle of her arms around Snow, the chain rises, Snow’s collar falls open, and out tumbles— 

A cross. 

There are violent tremors throughout my teeth. Near hairline fractures in my mandible. 

Snow is aware of the moment I recognize the cross. Wellbelove, too.  

She clutches him tighter, Snow’s arm looped around her waist. 

So, that’s how this is. 

The holy couple, aligned against the monster. 

(What else did I expect?) 

I sneer. “Best of luck with your F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. tomorrow, Chosen One. You’ll need it, in addition to a kiss from your fair maiden. Unless her love is adequate protection against your own short attention span.” 

Snow tenses at the tone of my words. 

“Good luck to you, too, Wellbelove,” I say. (She’ll need it after how much she drank tonight.) 

I don’t return to the library, to Bunce, to my books and study guides.  

I creep down to the Catacombs and See what I mean my notes into the air. I lean against Mother’s crypt as I try to invoke her acumen, her insight, and her determination. 

I scorch our exams the next day like I’m trying to burn down a forest with a wildfire.  

(Bunce is single-minded and driven.) (Wellbelove is apathetic and scrawls her essays at an easy pace.) (Many of the hung-over fifth years, including Gareth, groan and unsuccessfully try to cheat their ways through our test booklets.) 

(Snow is forced to take his examinations in isolation after he releases noxious magickal fumes in every classroom.) 

When I’ve penned the last word and final punctuation mark on my ultimate essay, I feel a rush of endorphins, the lingering high of adrenaline.   

Those chemicals die like champagne bubbles when I’m sitting in the Catacombs, wondering about my fate.  

Even if Snow does tell the Mage I’m a vampire, it’s not like he has proof. 

And even if the Mage believes him, snaps my wand, defangs me, and strikes me from the Book of Names, I have an academic record that would make Mother proud.  

As least if they kill me, my family will know the truth: that I never drank from anyone or Turned them. 

I died before I became a total monster.  

I tell myself that when late into the night, I hear footsteps in the Catacombs. I smell it: the awful, lovely scent— 

Of Snow. 

He finally made his way to me. (Took him long enough, given how frequently he stalked me.) 

And he’s wielding his newest weapon, which appears to be both physical and metaphysical somehow. The blade of the Sword of Mind is so silver it appears blue, giving color back to Snow’s sleepwalking vision.  

Well. If Snow’s armed for battle, that means we must be at that point of the school year when he slays a deadly monster. In the past, it was a dragon, a serpent, a chimera...  

This year, the monster is different.  

This year, the monster is me.  

I smile with haughty cruelty as I straighten my spine and cross my legs. (Partially to hide my flask.) To complete the sinister effect, I raise one of the skulls of les enfants — my siblings, those who also died at Watford— and cradle it like a wine glass. (I’d never drink from it. Not if it was full of Merlot or blood.)  

I make sure Snow sees me as an evil prince atop a throne of death. 

But the way Snow’s staring…  

Merlin. Is this the way he looks at all the dark creatures who are his enemies? 

Because if it is, it’s so intoxicating that in another life I’d be hard-pressed to stop antagonizing him.  

“So, you found me,” I say carelessly.  

Snow looks uncertain about that fact. He’s glancing around the darkness of the stony sept, lit only by crackling lantern light, like he’s not sure he’s really here. (Typical lost blundering Snow.)  

“What now?” I ask, pressing on. 

I already know the answer: Snow tells me I’m a monster; we tousle; he slays me in valiant rage and self-defense. I die for love, from love, a literal broken heart. 

Instead, Snow says, “Now you tell me what you’re up to.”  

What I’m up to? 

He’s not going to accuse me of dragging Watford’s pitiful and unmemorable first years down here to feast on their blood and their screams?   

He’s not going to make me put on a grand macabre show, with me soliloquizing on the children who died from the plague, as well as my great-great-great-uncle, the previous headmaster who tried to save them?  

He’s not going to provoke me into pointing out that this is where all those who die in Watford are entombed, and that’s why I’m here? 

He’s not going to let me drop some big fucking hints? 

...Maybe it’s for the best. I don’t feel like doing a whole song and dance routine.  

I’m so, so tired.  

I rise from my bed of skulls. (Smoothly, instead of staggering the way my mind and body begs me to.) Snow startles, blinking and shaking his head, like he’s in the misty realm of a dream. (This is no dream, Snow.) (We’re in a nightmare.) 

“Why don’t you tell me what I’m up to, Snow?” I say as I slink past the tombs of les enfants. As I drag my fingers along the cold surface of Mother’s tomb. “You’ve been following me.”  

Then I twist my fingers, and the fires blaze in their torches. We’re both bathed in orange light, like there’s a conflagration burning all around us. 

“Did you find what you were looking for?” I ask. 

Snow tears his gaze from my dangling fingertips. His expression hardens. “I know what you are.” 

“Your roommate?” I say, half in fear, half because I can’t help myself. 

“Yes, my roommate,” he repeats forcefully. “Meaning I know when you’re putting on a bloody performance. So fucking cut it out.” 

How dare he accuse me of hammy acting and melodrama. How dare he figure me out. 

“My performance?” I step closer. “Who’s coming in here brandishing his unsheathed sword, like a knight in shining armor?”   

“I’m not wearing any armor,” Snow argues. “And I just followed it here.” 

“You just followed it here? You mean your sword?” 

Snow nods. 

Snow and his stupid, confusing body language. “That makes no fucking sense!”  

“The Mage said—” 

“Don’t tell me what the Mage said!” I hiss. My fists curl over Mother’s tomb. “I don’t want to know what he told you when he learned what you think I am.” 

Snow blinks rapidly, trying to dispel some haze. (If I wasn’t so upset right now, I’d worry something is seriously wrong with him.) That worry becomes stronger when Snow says, “I didn’t tell him.” 

What?  

“What?” I ask.  

Have I lost the plot? Has Snow? 

“I didn’t tell him,” Snow repeats. He steps forward without hesitation.  

I back up.  

Then realize I’m in front of Mother’s tomb. I can’t move— tactical error number one. Tactical error number two: “Why the fuck wouldn’t you tell him?” 

Snow’s eyebrows knit together. “Why wouldn’t I tell the Mage that you’re a vampire?” 

There it is. 

I thought I prepared myself for Snow saying it, but it turns out I haven’t. 

My undead heart cleaves in two. 

“...That you think I’m a vampire,” I reply, after too long a pause.  

But Snow’s turned his attention away from me. (Though his sword is still pointed in my direction.) (Would it kill him to lower it for one second?) He’s staring disbelievingly at my flask, at the Nebbiolo dripping onto the floor. (What a waste— that’s a good year.) (Who am I kidding? I have more purloined wine than Snow has spells memorized.) 

When Snow looks at me again, the confrontational skew of his features has softened into confusion. And concern.  

Hells no.   

Snow is not pitying me, no matter how pathetic I truly am.  

I draw myself up to my full height, a good seven centimeters taller than him. (This way I can loom over him.) (Even if I feel as worthless as the dirt under his feet.) 

“You think I’m a vampire,” I say. My words flow like silk, like poison flowing into one’s ear. “And you refused to tell your mentor. Is it because you want the honor of killing me yourself? The Chosen One, the Mage’s Heir, slaying the ruined scion of the Pitch family?” 

“No,” Snow growls. 

“No, you don’t want to hog the fame for yourself?”  

“No, I don’t want to kill you!” Snow roars. 

But that makes no sense, you numpty, you colossal idiot—  

“You and your newest murder weapon are very convincing,” I say drily, pointing to his blade. Snow and I are less than three strides away from each other. He can sugarcoat his intentions with all the nobleness he wants, but that doesn’t change the fact that his sword hovers over my heart. 

“It doesn’t listen to me,” Snow says begrudgingly.  

Tensing his whole body, he shakes his arms and tries pulling in his elbows. The stubborn blade won’t budge. It’s just like any other facet of Snow’s uncontrollable magic.   

I almost sigh. (A typical response for this familiarly strange situation.) “Why would your sword be pointing itself at me of its own accord?” 

Snow does that thing again, that series of irritated and spasmic gestures. He scrunches his eyes shut and twists his neck. It’s like he’s trying to break free. 

“…It’s supposed to lead me to my greatest enemy,” he admits. “The Humdrum.” 

It’s a good thing I’m half-sitting on Mother’s tomb. If I wasn’t, I’d have collapsed with the bones, dust, and dead rats on the floor. 

Snow’s latest heroic blade thinks I’m his greatest enemy? Me, as opposed to the Humdrum?  

Isn’t that swell?  

Isn’t that damning proof? 

I break into laughter—manic, hysterical laughter— and I sprawl my shaking body on Mother’s grave.  

“Baz,” Snow barks, drawing closer. 

His blade draws closer, too.  

(It’s not just the Mage who has condemned me to my fate.) 

(It’s the very forces of good and evil themselves.) 

(It’s the cosmic laws that govern the World of Magic.) 

By the time my uncontrollable laughter has subsided—transformed into giggles that brokenly escape my chest— Snow’s divine weapon has drawn us so close that our chests almost touch. The flat blade rests on my collarbone. I can feel its cool metal. 

(I’m reminded he also has a cross when I feel that rattling, gnawing discomfort in my fangs.) 

“I’m not here to kill you,” Snow promises. “The sword isn’t working. It’s supposed to show me the Humdrum, not you.” 

“You don’t think I’m your greatest enemy?” I ask mirthlessly. “Even with what you suspect I am?”  

“You’ve never even bitten anyone,” Snow states with baseless confidence. 

“I’ve hurt people,” I say. I don’t dismiss the possibility of biting people like any normal human would. (Who cares? He knows. He knows already.) 

“Everybody does that,” he insists. “Not only vampires.”  

“Not everybody does what I did to Phillippa Stainton.” Only a monster would rip that girl’s magic from her vocal cords like pulling a plug in a sink and sucking a small animal down the drainpipe.  

Only a monster would get that close to doing the same thing to Snow. 

“You didn’t mean to do that,” Snow says defiantly. “I saw your face. You didn’t want that to happen.” 

“That doesn’t matter,” I reply. “Just look at your sword. It knows the truth. It knows I’m the dark creature you have to slay.” 

“You’re not!” 

I’m so sick of this. I’m so sick of Snow making me feel like I have hope.  

I duck my hand around his sword and seize the golden chain under the collar of his jumper. I yank at it, causing Snow to stumble and knock against me on the crypt. He hovers right over me, his sword at my throat.  

We’re so close, there’s no way he doesn’t see my fangs flashing at him in the torchlight or my fingers blistering around his shining, holy cross. 

“Do you see now, Snow?” I hiss. “I’m a vampire!”  

I’ve never said it out loud; that I’m a vampire.  

My words bounce off the dingy walls of the Catacombs, multiplied and echoed infinitely back at me. They grow like the hellish tears spilling from the lanterns, until all I can hear is, I’m a vampire I’m a vampire I’m a vampire.  

Snow’s voice cuts through the din.  

“Yeah, I know you think I’m thick, but I fucking figured that out!” He tears his cross from my hands— I wince, feeling my charred skin peel away— Snow momentarily hesitates, transfixed by my raw, bloody hand— and throws it away. I hear the cross’s distant clatter on the floor. 

How could he do that? 

Why would he do that? 

“You are the worst Chosen One who’s ever been chosen,” I breathe. “You just threw away your protection.”  

“I know you’re not going to bite me,” Snow says. 

Then why can’t you stop looking at my mouth?  

(My long, vile fangs are all I can see reflected in his cloudy irises.) 

“Move, Snow.” I snarl, baring my teeth. “Unless you’re going to smite me, you better stay away.” 

“I’m not going to do that.” He refuses to budge. “And you’re not going to hurt me.” Bloody Privileged Chosen One, speaking like he knows things. Like he can will them into being. 

“I hurt you all the time,” I remind him.  

“Not in ways that count. Even when you’re being an arsehole.”  

My eyes flick down to his sword, the point of which is currently under my jaw. In the perfect position to slit my throat.  

“Your holy weapon doesn’t seem to think so,” I say. I lower my head just a little, allowing the blade to nick me. Beads of warm blood trickle down my neck. 

Snow pries one hand from his sword and seizes my chin. My face is frozen beneath his grip.  

“Are you always this self-destructive when you’re drunk?” he asks angrily. 

“I’m not drunk.” Though I might be more than I thought. I find myself giving in and lingering under Snow’s touch instead of resisting as I should. 

“You smell like a distillery,” Snow says, leaning in. He tugs my head closer. When he sniffs the air around my lips, his nose brushes against my cheek. 

What are you doing—  

“Maybe you’re right,” I say, turning my head away. Snow’s breath fans in a hot stripe over the corner of my mouth. “If I was in my right mind, I’d tell you that beheading doesn’t work. Only if you keep my head away from my body.” (Or so that’s the myth I’ve heard.)  

“Stop talking like that, Baz.” 

“Yes, you’re right, as always, Chosen One…best go with fire. I could even coach you through it. My last lesson. My final assist with defeating your dark creature of the year.” 

“JUST. STOP. TALKING.” 

I obey him. I hum instead. 

My bleeding throat reverberates with the refrain to Ring around the rosie/ a pocket full of posies/ ashes, ashes/ we all fall down.  

“That’s not what I meant,” Snow hisses, his fingers scrabbling across my jaw, angling my face toward him. 

(What are you doing, Snow?) 

(What do you want from me?) 

“Then say what you mean,” I tell him like I’ve always told him. 

“I don’t want us to fight,” says Snow. “Let’s just… go back to our room. Back to Mummers. Let’s get out of here.” 

“And then what?” I ask. “Pretend I don’t come back here to drain the sorry, little bit of life that crawls in this pit? Go back by yourself, Snow. This is where I belong.” 

“You belong with me!”  

“No, I don’t!”  

My mad magic makes the torches flare and spit around me.  

“Don’t you get it?” I sneer miserably. “I’m the one creature that everyone— the Mage, the Families, my family— agrees should be sent up in smoke. Even your sword led you here to slay me.” 

“The sword was wrong,” says Snow. He’s growling at the sparks to keep them at bay. (Always fighting lost causes, this one, trying to save what shouldn’t be saved. This beautiful, heartbreaking idiot.) 

“That’s not your call.” 

“It is!” Snow proclaims earnestly. Desperately. “Baz. You said you chose me, whether I was the Chosen One or not. So, guess what— I choose not to kill you. I don’t care that you’re a vampire. I’m choosing not to let you burn.” 

“That’s not your choice,” I say, weakly. Yes, I can admit that now.  

Snow makes me weak and wretched with want: the wanting to live. The wanting to live, loving him. And weak, tender, vulnerable feelings like that are wounds that need to be cauterized with flames.  

“Put the fire out, Baz,” Snow urges me, his face painted orange and crimson and gold.  

“Leave,” I say. “And the fire will burn out on its own.”  

“Not with you inside of it,” Snow pleads.     

I giggle. Or sob. Can’t tell the difference anymore. It’s so hot, the tears could be evaporating off my face.  

“My fire. Your sword. The next year. The next five. It’s doesn’t matter, Simon. Soon, I’m going to be ashes. Nothing but ashes. And those belong here, underground. Not with you. Not even staining your hands.” 

“No.” 

“Ashes, ashes—”  

“Baz—” 

“We all fall—”  

I don’t know if Snow realizes the nursery rhyme possesses no magic. If it did, children would be torching themselves every day, razing their neighborhoods as they sang silly songs.  

Maybe he’s still in the half-conscious, milky-eyed thrall of his Sword of Mind. He’s not truly aware of where he is or what he’s doing.  

It’s more likely that he’s not thinking at all.  

He’s pure action, pure movement. 

That’s the only halfway decent explanation for why he’s suddenly kissing me. 

My body is the first thing that jolts into the awareness that Snow is crushing his mouth against mine, my lips parted mid-vowel. (My mind lags, trying to process it.) 

I feel the glide of his lips. The push of his chin. The swipe of his tongue. The edges of his teeth. 

His Sword of Mind has vanished between us like mist. 

Leaving us pressed against one another. 

Snow, pushing against me as he kisses me. 

Me, unclear as to why he’s doing this but gripping him all the same.  

Me, trying to capture each kiss he’s giving me and give him double, no, ten times the number of kisses in return. 

Merlin, Simon Snow is kissing me. 

He feels so good. (Better than fire.) 

He tastes so good. (Better than blood.) 

I never want Simon to stop kissing me. 

Why is Simon kissing me? 

I don’t get to ask, because the moment we part for breath, the magickal filminess overtakes his eyes. 

He slumps unconscious in my arms.

Chapter Text

Book 6: Simon Snow and the Sixth Hare

XVI. SIMON

All this summer, I’ve tried to do what I’m best at— not think. 

That’s never worked well for me in the past when Baz was involved, and I feel like a numpty (as Baz would put it) for thinking that blocking him out would work even an iota now. 

Especially now that I know how he tastes. 

(Stop that, fucking brain.)  

I can’t stop thinking about the kiss. Our kiss. 

Me kissing Baz. 

Him… kissing me back. 

I think? 

When and shortly after it happened, I wasn’t entirely sure that I hadn’t dreamt the whole episode up, which is a mindfuck in and of itself.  

But my head wasn’t entirely there that end of fifth year: it was constantly following Baz. Whether it was across campus as I sought to confirm beyond refute or doubt that he was a vampire, or imagining him while using the Sword of Mind. Most of my conscious and subconscious thoughts that year were centered around Baz. 

(For a long stretch of this summer, when I was violently possessed by my visions of kissing Baz, I tried summoning the Sword of Mind again.) (Just to see him.) (See what he was doing.) (But it wouldn’t appear for me. It’s never reappeared for me after the Catacombs and our kiss.) 

Another reason I thought the kiss might have been a magickal weapon-induced hallucination, an outlandish dream, was because after it transpired in the darkness and the fire, I blacked out. 

And I woke up in my bed in Mummers. Sunlight was streaming through the windows. Birds were chirping on nearby branches like Disney mascots, high on life. 

And Baz was there. Sitting on his bed. Resuming reading at his desk. Going to sleep at reasonable hours.  

Not mentioning the kiss.  

But also not avoiding me. 

Which means it must have happened, right?  

That I convinced him to stay? To not let the fire overtake him, the Catacombs prematurely entomb him, just because he was bitten and Turned when he was a bloody kid?  

(I thought a lot about that this summer, too, connecting what Ebb let slip in second year about Baz seeing his mum die the night the vampires broke into Watford.) (He must have been bitten then.) (He was only five years old.) (Jesus fucking Christ.)  

(And to think I briefly considered that the Old Families did it for a mad power grab; Baz’s vampire abilities—and his fangs— now that I’ve seen them, I also can’t stop thinking about how massive and sharp and shining they are—are crazy impressive.) 

Anyway, if I did all that— persuaded Baz that he wasn’t a monster I’d refuse to rescue— that he was a boy, just a boy who deserved to live— then the kiss must have also happened. 

It felt so real.  

Baz’s face, cool in my hands. Warmed only by the fire raging around us. 

Baz’s lips, soft and plush and tasting faintly of wine.  

Baz’s surprised tongue— just the tip of it, brushing against mine—sweet and bitter with iron. 

Baz’s hands hauling me in and holding me close. 

It’s so fucking vivid in the memories and thoughts and dreams and fantasies I keep having of him. 

They rear up all the time beneath my pounding skull. They’re uncontrollable. 

(It’s been a real inconvenient for maintaining some semblance of normalcy in the boys’ homes and not going off every couple of hours when Baz crops up in my brain. Thoughts of him are prompted by simple, seemingly random things: someone cutting their thumb; boys playing football in the field; and ads for cosmetics on models’ lips, darker but nowhere near as striking, as potentially kissable as Baz’s.) 

I’m not sure how I feel about returning to Watford this year, even though I’m already sitting on the train, these thoughts of Baz flooding through the idleness. 

I mean, I don’t want to avoid him. Obviously. We’re not enemies, now that I know he’ll never betray me for his family, and he won’t bite or hurt anyone because of his vampirism. 

I want to see Baz. That urge itches under my skin (activating my errant magic) every time I imagine him again. Me kissing him. Him kissing me.  

I just don’t know what to do about it.  

Do I get to kiss him? (Again?) Even though I don’t know why I did it before? Even though I don’t know why he let me and didn’t burn me afterwards? (He seemed to enjoy it; he seemed to want it.) 

At least Agatha and I decided to go on a break before I went and kissed Baz with no planning or foresight whatsoever. (That’s how Aggie and I spent the depressing pre-F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. party. She said she couldn’t put up with all my Mage missions and sword-training and stalking Baz to undercover his vampirism. I didn’t like hearing it then, but it turned out to really save me.) (Are Agatha and I going to make up this year and get back together?) 

(This ranks low on the scales of vampirism and Baz’s suicidal ideation, but I also have to wonder, am I gay? Would that explain why I can’t stop thinking about kissing Baz?) (But I liked kissing Agatha, too.) (It was nothing like kissing Baz.) (Kissing Agatha was like getting a sweet, something pleasant and desirable.) (Kissing Baz was like getting food after I’d been starving.) (It made me ache all over.) (Is that because I’m gay? I want to kiss boys?) (But the only boy I ever considered kissing was Baz. And that was in hindsight, in the aftermath of mindlessly doing it.) 

(Aleister Crowley, I wish I put some of this in a letter to Penny.) (I really wanted to talk to her about it, but I could never get it down in writing.) (And I didn’t get a chance to tell her at the end of fifth year because of post-F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S., schoolwide celebrations.) (I shouldn’t have celebrated; I bombed my F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S.) (Unsurprisingly.) (I got the results in my mail at the boys’ home, with a note from Miss Possibelf about focusing and applying myself in the future.) (I can focus— solely on Baz.) 

(I desperately need to speak with Penny when we’re on campus.) 

After the train reaches the station, and I catch a cab to Watford, the driver kicks me out halfway because my magic is spilling uncontrollably. 

I run the remainder of the distance to Watford. It’s good. It helps me release some of my stress, my frenetic energy. It helps me not think. 

That doesn’t last for long, because then I’m back at Watford, back in Mummers, back in mine and Baz’s room with the fresh, woodsy scent of his cologne in the air, and— 

Baz is here. 

After I’ve been imagining him all summer but haven’t been able to see him. 

And he’s wearing his fucking jeans, snug on his ankles and around his hips and across his long, endless legs. 

Fuck, I want to kiss him.  

I want to push him up against his bed and snog him senseless. 

But I can’t just do that.  

I shouldn’t have kissed him in first place in the Catacombs, without asking if he wanted it. That wasn’t heroic. Also, because he was a mess, a drunk, suicidal mess, and I took advantage of that— without planning to— and kissed him. 

And I can’t do it again until I figure out if I like Baz (but I don’t feel at all the same way about him as I did Agatha), if I’m queer (but I don’t think about kissing other boys), and if Baz could possibly, maybe, somehow, miraculously like me kissing him (of course he couldn’t; this is Baz we’re talking about; this is me.)  

Maybe, once I do figure it out, I’ll realize I don’t actually want to kiss Baz again. The desire will leave me after tormenting (and saving me) this summer. Maybe I’ll exorcise it like a demon and return to my future path with Agatha. 

But that’s hard to believe or seriously consider when Baz is standing in front of me in his jeans and his dress shirt, his hair in loose waves before he’s had a chance to gel it, and his eyebrow arched sardonically. 

“Did you mess up your first spell of the year, Snow?” he asks. “Cast yourself with Cat got your tongue?”  

Call me Simon.  

You called me Simon before you kissed me.  

(Before I kissed you.)  

“Or maybe you got your FAMILIARS results in the mail, and they’ve left you speechless ever since,” Baz continues, lifting his Watford uniform from his bed. (Don’t do that— stay like this, if only a little while longer.) 

“I didn’t do that bad,” I manage to say. (To lie.) (I did terribly.) (But I can’t tell Baz I got Numpty scores; he’ll never stop making fun of me.) (He’ll call me that for the end of my life instead of my name, first or last.) 

Baz’s eyebrow rises higher in disbelief.  

His stupid, smug, highly kissable face— 

“How did you do?” I ask, biding my time until I’ve gotten a chance to speak with Penny.  

“Adequately enough,” Baz replies. Which means he must have gotten Seraphim-level scores or something. (The way they rank tests is crazy— I’m still not completely sure which categories of magickal creatures are good or bad.) 

“You didn’t even study much,” I complain. 

“More than you,” Baz says dispassionately. 

“Sure, between bouts of blood and wine drinking, I’ll bet.” 

“Crowley, have you no tact?” Baz hisses, but he doesn’t look ready to hex me. Just irritated by my forthrightness. (Baz isn’t forthright about anything.) (Like if he remembers me kissing him.) (Like if he enjoyed it.) 

I shrug, throwing my bag on my bed with my uniform, not picking it up to put it on just yet. (Trying to prolong this moment.) “I told you. It’s not a big deal.” 

“Me draining rats beneath the school because my bloodthirst could mean turning on my classmates is no big deal,” Baz says, drily but also with real steel in his voice. 

“But you haven’t turned on them,” I say. “The most disturbing part of that sentence is you having to drink rats, which definitely isn’t hygienic.” 

“I assure you, Snow, I get more haute cuisine on my family’s estate,” Baz scoffs. He’s holding himself tensely, shoulders rigid, posed to flee. 

(You’re not fleeing from me.)  

“Like what?” 

“What’s the use in talking about this? Morbid curiosity? That would explain your gruesome adventures.” 

“I could help you,” I say, not thinking before I suggest it. 

But now that I’ve said it, I realize that’s it. This is what I have to do if I don’t know whether I should kiss Baz or not.  

I can at least help him with his vampirism.      

“You could help me,” Baz says. Shit— now he sounds upset. Cold. (For someone so obsessed with fire, his anger and self-defensiveness burns like ice.) “I don’t need your help, Snow. I’m not your charity case, your dark creature to fix and reform since you gave me mercy and spared me.” 

“I didn’t say that,” I growl, jumping off my bed and stalking toward Baz before I’ve processed my actions.  

Baz grabs the door to the ensuite. I slam my palm onto it, keeping it from opening. He manages to pull it open anyway, easily. (Merlin, he’s strong. Ruthless.) 

“I just want to help,” I say. 

Baz isn’t looking at me. He’s staring at his fist around the doorknob. His fingers are curled so tightly around it, they’re almost denting the metal. “Why, Snow?” 

“Simon.” 

Baz pries the door open wider. I thrust all my weight against it. 

I trap him against the door.  

Baz stops pulling on the knob, too startled by our sudden lack of distance. I can see the way his throat moves. How wide his eyes are. 

We’re close enough to kiss. 

Can I kiss him? Am I allowed to? 

I just— 

I take a step back. “Please… let me help you, Baz. You always say I’m good at killing things. Deer are easier to kill than chimera. I think. I could help you hunt in the Wavering Woods for animals that aren’t rats. Or I could keep guard and make sure nothing attacks you.” 

“I can protect myself, Snow,” Baz says, though he sounds uncertain. Like he’s considering it. Maybe. Fractionally. Then, his gaze shutters, pulling the blinds on any intentions I can read. “I’m fine on my own.” 

That’s not true.  

But before I can say it, Baz has disappeared into the ensuite, locking and spelling the door quiet behind him. 

And I’m on the verge of going off.  

Quickly stripping out of my jeans and t-shirt and changing into my uniform in our room, I make a mad dash for the Cloisters, hoping I can find Penny entering or leaving. 

I don’t, so I leave for the White Chapel, the dining hall. 

She isn’t there, either. (Neither is dinner, not for another couple of hours, anyway.) (My hunger makes my magickal radiation intensify.) 

When I finally locate Penny in the library— why didn’t I look here first? Baz has commandeered my brain; he’s driving it onto the rocks— I’m a hair-trigger away from detonating. 

Penny sees this and claps her books shut, springing into action with her purple ring shining.  

“Simon!” she says, happily and unhappily. “What’s wrong? Did something attack already? Is one of the Humdrum’s creatures in the school?” 

“No,” I say, trying to calm down. “It’s Baz.” 

“What about Baz?” Penny asks, still in battle position. Then, her eyes widen. Her mouth drops. She looks enraged. “Did he bite you? Did he try to Turn—” 

“No!”   

Penny freezes; the librarian glares at us beyond the stacks. 

Unwilling to be kicked out until I’ve either had my say or gone off, I pull a chair and sit at Penny’s table, knocking into it noisily. 

Penny sits across from me, frustration and concern twisting her features. Without breaking our shared gaze, she lifts her ring and casts Silence is golden. Shining, soundless particles surround us. 

“So,” Penny says. “Baz isn’t a vampire?” 

“No, he definitely is,” I say, quietly, despite Penny’s spell. “He even told me. In the Catacombs. When I managed to find him.” 

“Circe.” Penny exhales deeply and slides down in her seat, half-hidden by her stacks of books.  

“I saw his fangs, Pen,” I say desperately, even though she clearly believes me. Nevertheless, the words tumble urgently from my lips. “And my cross, the one Aggie gave me— it burned him. Like something from a movie.” 

“What are you going to do, Simon?” Penny asks.  

I blink in confusion. “About his vampirism?” 

“Obviously about his vampirism!” Penny says in exasperation. “What else could there be?” 

Well…  

“I said I’d help him. You know. Hunt and stuff.” 

“You’re going to help him?” Penny asks incredulously. “Not turn him over to the Mage?” 

I huff. “Why do you and Baz keep thinking I’m going to do that?” 

“Because it’s the obvious answer. Because it’s what you always do. Basil and his family do something remotely suspicious, and you run up to the Mage’s office, even when it’s frequently empty.”  

I ignore Penny’s unfair slight against the Mage (and her air quotes around the words “suspicious”) and ask, “Is that what you think I should do? Tell the Mage that Baz is a vampire?” 

Penny sighs. “I don’t know. We haven’t found evidence that Basil has bitten anybody.” 

“He wouldn’t.” 

“And he is Natasha Grimm-Pitch’s son,” Penny adds. “And I don’t want to get top student because he’s been defanged and expelled.” 

“Is that all, Pen?” I ask, irritated. “Doesn’t it bother you that Baz could be hurt? His vampirism isn’t a threat; it’s something we have to protect him from!” 

Penny frowns, her nose scrunching. “That’s what you’re in a strop about? You’re worried about Basil getting found out and injured because of his vampirism?” 

I cross my arms, sinking further into the cushions of my chair. “…I s’pose.” 

Penny scoffs. She even has the gall to open her books back up. “Basil’s going to be fine. The only one who’s ever suspected him of being a vampire is you. And if he’s not going to bite anyone, he’s really no concern of ours. Other than because of his academic performance. Did you see him yet? Did he happen to tell you what score he got on his F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S.? In detail?” 

“That’s not the issue, Pen!” I shout, testing the boundaries of her magic. Which is already dissolving because of my bleeding power. 

“Then what is, Simon?” Penny shouts back. 

“I kissed him!”  

Her book drops suddenly onto the tabletop, startling me with its bang. Penny’s magickal barrier even dematerializes from her shock. (Fuck, I hope that was after, not before, I shouted my confession.) 

“Penny—” 

“Silence is golden!” Penny quickly casts again, her magic sparkling with dangerous brightness. Before her ringed hand has left the air, she’s leaning across the table toward me. “Did you just say you kissed Basilton?” 

Why did I tell her this? I shouldn’t have told her. 

I feel like I’m going to go off again. 

I feel like my face is on fire.  

“SIMON,” Penny insists. 

“Crowley, Penny, yes! I kissed Baz. I’m pretty sure.” 

“What do you mean you’re pretty sure?” Penny hisses. “How can you not know if you kissed him? Was it dark? Were you aiming for Agatha, and you kissed Basil instead?” 

“No.” I definitely knew I was kissing Baz, not Agatha. “It was— I mean— we were in the Catacombs, and I had my sword—” 

“Your sword?” Penny exclaims in outrage. “What were you trying to do? Stab him, and then you missed and kissed him by accident?”   

“No! Even though Baz tried to— the sword just led me there— the Mage said— there was fire, and Baz was drunk, and—” 

“You kissed Baz because he was drunk?” Penny asks. She sounds one word away from cursing me.  

“No! He wouldn’t come back to the room! He said he belonged there because he was a monster! He told me to leave him— to let him become ashes. He said I had no choice!" 

“He said you had no choice other than to kiss him,” Penny says warily. 

(How is Penny being the dense one in this situation?) (I’m already dense enough for the both of us.)  

“NO! Kissing him was my choice!” 

Penny says nothing after that. 

Her eyes grow so wide they eclipse the frames of her glasses. She’s finally getting it. 

(Or I hope she does— I still don’t get why I acted like I did.) 

(Like I had to kiss him.) (I’m realizing now that there were other ways to put out the fire and drag Baz to safety.) 

“You chose to kiss Basil,” Penny repeats. That’s her thinking voice; her puzzling out mysteries tone.  

“…It seemed like the best idea at the time.” (Even though it probably wasn’t.) (But I’m not known for making wise, well-considered decisions.) 

Penny leans extremely close to me, so close I can see the library lights flash on her lenses. “But did you want to?” 

“…Yes.” 

Penny’s connecting the dots. “But?” 

“But I don’t know why,” I admit. 

“Merlin, Morgana, and Methuselah,” she says. “This is why I told you to stop doing things without thinking them through.” 

“You never said that would lead me to fantasize nonstop about snogging my roommate!” I exclaim. 

“Wait, you’re still thinking about kissing Basil?” Penny asks, with what sounds like sheer disbelief. “You’re fantasizing about snogging him?” 

Now I wish one of the Humdrum’s monsters was attacking the school.  

Nothing could be as mortifying as this interrogation.  

“Pen, please.” (I don’t know what I’m begging her for.) (Mercy?) (The ground to swallow me whole?) (Baz to change his mind and suck me dry?) 

“Do you love him?” Penny asks. 

“I don’t know.” 

“Are you gay?”  

“I don’t know.”  

With a deeply vexed and ponderous expression, the one Penny wears when she’s trying to decode old English spells written by Chaucer, she waves her ringed hand again.  

“We’re not done, not by a long chalk!”  

There’s a loud clatter of rickety wood and the sharp squeaking of rusted wheels, and one of the library’s ancient chalkboards comes flying at us. It barely stops before it crashes into the table, its box of multicolored chalk hurtling into Penny’s hand. 

Jumping to her feet, she reaches toward the highest corners of the chalkboard and begins to write. (Noting my occasional contributions). 

What we know:

-Simon kissed Baz

-He wanted to kiss him (unknowingly)

-He chose to kiss him (unthinkingly)

What we don’t know:

-WHY???

-Does Simon ̶l̶o̶v̶e̶ like Baz? (Let’s start there)

-Sexuality— gay?

-Bi?

-Confused straight boy?

-What about Agatha— does Simon still want to date her?

-How will the Mage respond to this— if he finds out?

-Will the Families try to kill Simon for laying his hands on Baz?

-Will the Grimms and Pitches?

-Can mages date vampires? Is that a thing?

-Is Simon confusing friendship and concern for attraction?

-What about…

“I can’t do this without dinner,” I say hopelessly.  

(We’ve been listing things for over an hour.) (Usually I love lists, but this one is growing extremely depressing.) (The What we don’t know column keeps getting bigger and bigger.) 

“We have to figure this out,” Penny states, her face streaked with pink and green chalk. “Are you sure you don’t know anything more about why you kissed Basil?” 

“Penny, please. Let’s get food.”  

Anything to stop this. 

Grumbling and cursing under her breath, she relents and spells the chalkboard clean. “I swear, your mind is a steel trap. Or a stash of dragon’s gold. It’s impossible to see what’s inside it.” 

I feel the same way. Even I’m rarely granted the privilege of peeking inside my vault of thoughts and feelings. 

But I try to use that to my advantage when we’re seated in the dining hall. My plate is piled high with rich and fatty foods that I never get the chance to eat at the boys’ homes. The gravy-slathered mashed potatoes and tender pot roast almost make me forget about my woes. 

Almost. 

“Why is Agatha eating over there?” Penny asks, lifting her fork at the table where Agatha is dining with Elspeth, Trixie, and Keris. “Did you tell her?” 

Did I tell the girl that I’m currently taking a break from dating that I kissed my male friend/enemy and can’t stop considering a repeat? 

Seven hells, Great Snakes, and Merlin’s beard no.  

(I shake my head.) 

“Then why’s she avoiding us?” Penny asks, irate. “You two broke up ages ago.” 

“It was only the end of fifth year.” 

“It feels like longer,” says Penny. “This is why I don’t like my friends dating each other. Causes nothing but trouble.” 

“What’s nothing but trouble, Bunce? Your F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S. results?” 

I choke on my dinner roll. 

Penny ignores my sputtering and coughing to stare hard at Baz. He’s changed into his uniform (pity) (stop thinking like that, Simon) and sits across from us. 

He has his usual light (non-existent) meal: a cup of Earl Grey and a shiny green apple. 

(And now I finally know why.)  

(Are his teeth always as sharp as they appeared when he bared them at me in the Catacombs?) (I feel like I’d have noticed them earlier if that were the case.) (They were like wolves’ teeth, like sharks.)  

(They were wicked.)  

“I did perfectly well, if you must know,” Penny says primly, like she wasn’t eagerly awaiting the chance to hold her scores over Baz’s head. (I can’t give her the awe and envy she desires since I can’t decode three-quarters of what our evaluations mean.) “Unicorns, Hesperides, and Valkyries, all across the board.” (See?) (Complete nonsense.) “I should be well set up for T.H.A.U.M.A.T.U.R.G.I.E.S. this year.” (Wait, we have more of this type of thing?) (Why didn’t anyone warn me?) “I don’t imagine you did better than that.” 

Baz and Penny launch into a passionate and in-depth debate of exam scores that I can’t even begin to follow. 

I’m mostly trying to keep my desire to kiss Baz under wraps, which is proportional to me putting a lid on my bubbling, overflowing magic. 

The magic I’m barely managing to suppress. 

The thoughts of kissing him, on the other hand… 

(Unlike last year when Baz came back to Watford looking hollow and skeletal, he looks more filled out. Still too pale, but healthy. Glowing. Italian marble instead of bone white.) 

(He’s so fucking fit it’s not fair. I want to rip my hair out. I want to jostle him and get that slicked-back mane of black waves to come undone, to curl over his forehead, to brush his ears, to slip in front of his eyes.) (I want to push it away.) 

(Maybe the reason I can’t stop staring at his mouth isn’t because I want to kiss him.)  

(Maybe it’s because I can’t stop thinking about his vampirism: the mechanics of when he’s able to hold his fangs back and when they drop regardless of his intentions.)  

(Maybe it’s because I want to witness when he hungers for something. Not like now, when he’s holding himself back from food and subsistence, perfectly in control.)  

(I want to see him be greedy. Ravenous.) 

“Simon, Cool down!”  

Penny’s pointing her ring at me, her face blurred in the electrical field of my powers. 

Baz is staring at me, too. No—glaring. Glaring at the way my eyes have been fixated on his mouth.  

Shit. 

Through a combination of Penny’s spells and my own efforts, my magic dwindles, causing the whole dining hall to settle back in relief. 

(I wonder if they’re questioning why I was about to go off.)  

(I halt that line of thinking before I die of mortification).  

“Instead of being so worried about my diet,” Baz hisses lowly (and only partially deducing my fixation), “why don’t you see to your own sad, skin-and-bones state?”  

I bristle. “Sod off,” I say, well-aware that I’m not half as modelesque as Baz. Especially not after I’ve lost so much muscle and general body mass from my meager meals at the boys’ home. 

I automatically catch the apple Baz hurls at me.  

“Eat it,” he commands.  

His eyes flicker over my pronounced cheekbones, my knobby shoulders.  

I growl. “You eat it,” I say, hurling the apple back. 

Baz easily deflects it. I’m forced to grab the hard piece of fruit before it whacks me in the nose.  

“I’m not hungry right now,” says Baz, like it’s obvious. (He could be hungry.) (Yearning for blood right now.) (He should just show me.) “Restore your strength after your harrowing summer, Snow. I’m sure you’ll need it for when the Mage builds you back up after breaking you down, like an overgrown child playing with Legos.” 

“Shut up,” I snarl, biting a large chunk out of the apple. (Fuck, he probably riled me up for that very reason.) (Whatever.) (I’ve never been able to force Baz to eat when he doesn’t want to.) (If only I could coax him, entice him…) 

Apple juice drips down my chin, a drop splashing, cool and wet, on my collarbone. I drag my thumb through the bead of sweetness. I raise my wet hand to my mouth. Having cleaned the pad of my finger with my tongue, I resume chewing, aggressively knotting and flexing my jaw to work through my frustrations. 

Baz stares at me.  

(Is he jealous that I can eat out in the open like this?) (Maybe I shouldn’t have taken the apple.) (But he doesn’t look hungry, per say.) (Or a type of hungry I understand.) 

When Baz finally tears his gaze away, I notice that Penny is watching him too. Her eyes are narrowed into suspicious slits. (I told her not to worry about the vampire thing, Baz isn’t going to bite me.) 

When dinner finishes, I expect Penny to resume our grueling analysis of my sexuality. 

She doesn’t.  

Instead, she links her arm with Baz. He, like me, is taken off guard. 

“You go ahead, Si,” she says, smiling brightly. “Basil and I have additional materials to discuss.” 

“But—” 

“We’ll join you later,” Penny insists.  

Baz isn’t happy, but he submits to Penny out of evident curiosity and leeriness. 

(I don’t want to let him go.) “You won’t go to the Catacombs without me?” I’ve resolved not to move until I’ve gotten confirmation. 

“I’ve never gone with you, Snow,” Baz says sharply. (He doesn’t appear to care that I mentioned the Catacombs in front of Penny.) (He must suspect that I told her about it.) (Well, part of it.) 

I get up in his space, drawn into his orbit.  

Baz can’t back off with Penny’s arm in his elbow.  

“Don’t go without me,” I tell him. 

“It’s none of your concern,” he replies. 

“I’m your roommate, of course it’s my concern!” 

Baz laughs incisively. “I don’t think that’s what Watford’s founders intended with the Crucible. Forcing one to help feed the other’s unique appetite.”  

“It’s not forcing if I want to.” I’ve edged really close to Baz now. Kissing close. Again. (Why does my body keep acting this way?) “Please. Let me go with you. You don’t have to do this alone.” 

Before Baz can say something— I don’t think he knows what to say; his eyes are wide, the soft, subtle grey of sunlight breaking through a stormy sky— Penny tugs him away from me. 

“You two will have time to fuss all over Basil’s exceptional needs when we’re done,” she says, sending me a reproachful look. “Now, on your way, Simon.” 

I have no other choice than to watch Penny and Baz depart across the dark grounds. (I have some choice as to how long I linger to watch them leave, the sight of Baz’s fit figure retreating through the darkness…) 

I can’t take this. 

Without Penny to help me unpack these urges, I need something else to occupy me. 

I head to the Weeping Tower, hoping that the Mage has some mission or training in store. I’m much better at those than I am at self-reflection. 

Although the Mage is here (take that, Pen), he doesn’t have any mission or training prepared for me. 

In fact, given his duffel bags and wooden chests and coat pockets filled to the brims with magickal artifacts, he’s leaving school to embark on a quest. 

One that I’m not allowed on. 

“But sir!” I say desperately. The Mage has his back turned toward me, tossing delicate glass instruments into a suitcase with loud, damaging clinks. “Don’t you need help?” 

“What I need is for you to guard Watford,” says the Mage. “Due to our inability to track the Humdrum down and slay it with the Five Blades, the creature remains at large. It could send a another of its puppets to Watford at any time. The school would be utterly defenseless with neither of us here to defend it.” 

“But what about the other teachers like Miss Possibelf or Professor Minos or Madam—” 

“They’re mere educators, Simon— you’re the one who’s been Chosen to combat great evil,” the Mage proclaims. (I hope he doesn’t speak like this at faculty meetings.) (It would explain why my professor are always annoyed when I skip classes for my missions.) (Or that might be due to the volume of classwork I miss while I’m away.) “But aside from being vigilant for the Humdrum, there is something even more important that I want you to attend to while I’m away.” 

“Yes, sir?” I ask, perking up. 

The Mage shuts his cabinet, noisily and angrily. “The Old Families have been trying to exploit the fact that you and I haven’t stopped the Humdrum thus far. They’re campaigning to nullify my reforms, infiltrate the Coven, and make Watford the exclusive aristocrats’ society it used to be. But we can’t let them do that. We must stop the spies they keep in the school.” 

“Meaning?” I ask nervously, already predicting and dreading where the Mage is going. 

“Meaning I need you to keep a close eye on your roommate,” says the Mage, just like I thought he would. “Can you do that for me?” 

Sure, no problem. 

It’s keeping my eyes off him that’s challenging. 

“Are you sure that’s all, sir?” I ask. “Absolutely nothing else to devote my time and energies to?”  

As The Mage heads towards the door, his keyring spinning on his finger, he stops and claps a hand on my shoulder. 

“You’re becoming a fine young man, Simon,” he tells me. “Very strapping.” 

Although I’m confused, I say “Thanks, sir.” I don’t feel especially strapping after my summer of two meals-a-day in addition to my unending inner turmoil. 

“You and Wellbelove’s daughter are dating, yes?” Before I can correct him, the Mage goes on, “her father might not be much of a mage, but their family is well-respected in the Coven. A fine companion for the Chosen One. Good work, my boy—keep it up.” 

“Yes, sir,” I say, vowing not to mention that Agatha and I are taking a break.  

Or that I subsequently kissed the heir of the Mage’s worst enemies. 

And that I’m unable to take my mind off it. 

“But what’s most important,” says the Mage somberly, “is not to lose your head and let romance consume you.” 

Yeah. Great. 

When the Mage heads off without further ado, I linger in his office, combing his libraries for… something.  

One of the school’s many potentially lethal secrets that I have yet to uncover before it endangers the student body?  

An absorbing paperback to take back to Mummers to prevent me from wasting away thinking about Baz? 

I find nothing.  

My magic rolling off me in waves, I proceed on the warpath toward Mummers, growing enraged and more magickally unhinged as I imagine the room absent, Baz creeping through the dark underside of the White Chapel without me. 

Except—  

“You’re here,” I gasp.  

Baz is sitting on his bed, a contemplative expression on his (torturously handsome) face. 

When I slam the door loudly open, he lapses back into haughty stoicism.  

“I thought I’d be efficient, knowing you’ll stalk me down to the Catacombs anyway,” he says. 

“It’s not stalking,” I argue. (I might have been a little stalkery in fifth year, but now my intentions are pure.) (I ignore the twinge in my gut when I think that.) 

Baz draws himself up, sighing. “Shall we get this over with?” 

I don’t like his tone, but I follow him all the same.  

Not to the Wavering Woods with its refreshing and open night sky, glittering with stars and moonlight. 

We go down to the stale, suffocating, and squeaking blackness of the Catacombs. 

It’s so hard to see anything. And following Baz by sound (as I know from last year) is nearly impossible. (He’s too quiet, too fluid, too predatorial.) 

When I trip and nearly brain myself on a crypt, Baz is forced to stop hunting and grab my hand. 

“Sorry,” I mutter. (My hand must feel like fire with how I’m burning up.) 

“As ever, you have a unique and blundering definition of the word ‘help’,” Baz says, slurring between his fangs. (They must be massive.) (I wish I could see them.)  

“You could cast a light spell,” I say, squeezing his fingers. (Not that he needs to cast it for himself, given his night vision.) 

“You could, too, if you were an adequate magician,” Baz replies, and before I can form my own insult, he seizes a rat from the floor. He silences its squirming shrieks by crushing its neck in his fist. The bones and sinews snap with startling volume and clarity. 

When I flinch from surprise, Baz freezes. Then, he releases his hold on me. He exhales from his nose.  

He doesn’t sound insulted by my reaction. He seems unsurprised, almost… vindicated. 

“Wait,” I say, grabbing him before he can retreat into the Catacomb’s inky recesses. “Are you testing me?” 

When Baz doesn’t respond immediately, I steal the rat from his hand. (It’s warm, wet, soft.) (Not like Baz’s fingers, which are smooth and cool like lakeside stones in the hellish throes of summer.) 

Summoning the Sword of Mages in a swirl of light, I slit the rat’s neck. The hot blood is a shock to my system in contrast to the clammy coolness of the sept.  

“I can’t believe the incantation worked for you in these circumstances,” Baz says with real (if snide) astonishment. “Or that you had to summon a whole sword to nick a rodent when a pocketknife would do.” 

“I don’t have a pocketknife.” 

“You have a wand. You’d be surprised by how much more versatile they are than swords, given that you can cast any number of spells with them.” 

“Here,” I growl, holding the bleeding rat to his lips. (I think.) (Again, it’s hard to tell where anything is in the dark.) 

Baz clutches my hand with punishing force, though going by his trembling fingers, it’s hard for him to resist eating out of the palm of my hand. (Warmth bursts in my gut like a supernova.) (It flutters and spreads, igniting all the nerve endings in its shared space.) “Do you think that I want you to handfeed me like a baby, Snow?”  

“Dunno. How else am I supposed to pass your stupid tests and prove that you need me?” 

Baz makes a strangled sound. (I’m definitely not cataloguing it in the back of my mind.) (Or noticing how much it sounds like his muffled surprise when I kissed him.) 

“Now, eat your damned rat.” 

Baz doesn’t eat out of my hand. (I ignore my swelling disappointment.) (I have no idea what’s going on in my head or body; they’re accountable to no one, certainly not me.) 

He does hold my hand and lead me slowly over piles of bones and rubble from broken graves, stopping every now and again to kill a rat (more quietly than he did before) and drink its blood.  

The sound of Baz eating is soft, slick. From the slow sinking of his teeth to the press of his tongue. 

I feel some body heat return to him with every rat he consumes. His temperature is like spring-frozen earth thawing under the sun. 

I hold him tighter, twisting and curling our fingers together to imbue him with more of my own warmth.  

By the time Baz has filled his stomach and we’re back in Mummers, it’s past midnight, and I have dust and dirt clinging to my clothes, rat blood under my nails, and cobwebs blanketing my hair.  

I’m planning to fall asleep like this when Baz forces me to take a shower. 

“This is why I told you not to come with me,” he chides. 

“How are you spotless?” I complain mid-yawn. “Last year, you got blood on your cuffs.” 

“I’ve had more practice,” Baz says, tones flinty. But he looks better. Rosier. I know from experience that he feels flushed and more alive. 

“Is that how you spent this summer? Applying your fancy and overcomplicated table manners to drinking blood from deer and pheasants?”   

Baz says nothing.  

His complexion has improved so much that it almost looks like he’s blushing. 

(What is he thinking of?)  

His cheeks are still colored when I finish my shower and return to bed, only wearing my threadbare, grey joggers.  

He’s changed into his shiny, silk pajamas, which means he must have stripped out here in the room while I was in the ensuite. Which means he was nearly naked in our shared room, near my bed. Which mean I need to stop thinking before I do something I regret. 

That becomes easier when I’m distracted by Baz’s frown, followed by him tersely asking, “Where’s your cross?” 

“Don’t need it.” I flop onto my bed, folding my arms beneath me. 

“You most certainly do.” 

“You’re not going to bite me.” 

“Not with that attitude,” Baz hisses and lifts his wand. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”  

My cross necklace flies out of my drawer, its broken chain trailing behind it. (I never got around to repairing the thing.) 

Before the pendant flies into Baz’s hand and gives him a bloody, x-shaped scar, I manage to intervene and snatch it out of the air. 

“Self-mutilation isn’t going to convince me you don’t need my help,” I growl.  

“Put your cross on,” Baz says, looking away from me. His restored blood is so near to the surface of his pale skin that it looks faintly scarlet. 

“Why? You said so yourself. You’ve gotten better at controlling your teeth.” 

“Better doesn’t mean cured,” Baz grits out. 

“I’ll put on the cross if you let me help you hunt,” I say. 

“This isn’t a negotiation, Snow.” 

“It’s called compromising, you berk. You want me to wear the cross—fine. I’ll help with your vampirism your way. But I’ll also help my way. And that means getting out of the awful Catacombs and hunting in the Wavering Woods.” 

Baz must be impressed by my coherence (I am) because he seems to consider my proposal. (If only to get me to wear the cross.) 

“So be it,” he relents. “Now put your necklace on and spare me another hour of putting up with you.” 

I knot the broken chain around my neck and walk over to Baz’s bed, my hand outstretched. “Shake on it.” 

Baz’s eyebrow rises. “We’re not eleven-year-olds in front of the Crucible again.” 

I hadn’t thought about it like that. But it does feel strangely nostalgic, like every other time Baz and I have shaken hands and made our truces. 

Except in those instances, I didn’t think that we were close enough for me to haul him into my arms and kiss him all over. 

(Baz makes me want to kiss him when he’s wearing jeans.) (When he’s being frosty and brutal and shutting me out.) (When he’s startled by me caring about him.) 

(I want to kiss him all the time, especially on that vampiric mouth that causes him such pain.) 

(Is that gay? I just want to heal him. Make the pain go away.) 

(Kiss it away, if we’re getting nitty-gritty.) 

“Come on, Baz.” 

Giving in, Baz wordlessly outstretches his arm and wraps his fingers around mine. We shake once. 

“Good,” I say, then, “It’s a promise.”   

Those words shouldn’t be a spell, but that doesn’t stop my magic from snaring mine and Baz’s arms in a shining, golden cord. 

“What the fuck?” Baz exclaims. (One of the rare instances I get to hear him curse like a normal.)  

When my magic fades and allows us to draw our arms away from each other, I examine my limb. I don’t see anything, but knowing my magic, a lack of visible evidence doesn’t mean that I haven’t done something catastrophically stupid. 

“What in Merlin’s name did you do, Snow?” Baz asks, baring his teeth, including his huge canines. (That should be intimidating, not attractive, but my brain doesn’t get the memo.) 

“Uh…” 

“Did you just wandlessly cast an Infrangible Affiance?” 

“A what?”  

Baz gestures frustratedly before he slips beneath his duvet. “After we get Bunce to help undo your mindless magic, we’re preparing you for your T.H.A.U.M.A.T.U.R.G.I.E.S. so thoroughly you’ll wish one of us had killed the other last year. Lights out.”  

With the lamplights dimmed, the moon glowing beyond the windowpane transforms our room’s dark interior into something mutable, velvety soft. 

I’d be more worried about Baz’s threats concerning study-induced death wishes if my eyes weren’t still adjusted to the darkness of the Catacombs. 

As it is, I catch him lying on his side, gazing at me with his night vision.  

His brow is slightly furrowed, his canines worriedly prodding his bottom lip. 

Unwilling to scare him away, I watch him back through my peripheries until we both fall asleep. 

(And if memories of kissing him in the Catacombs in April merge with fantasies of kissing him tonight below the White Chapel, our hands bonded together by magickal, golden light, it simply can’t be helped.)   

Chapter Text

Book 6: Simon Snow and the Sixth Hare

XVII. BAZ

Despite narrowly avoiding self-immolation, I feel like a phoenix risen from its ashes.

I’m reborn from my pitiful condition last year.

Not even Bunce discovering I’m in love with Simon Snow can put a damper on that.

In fact, I find it hilarious that it took her so long to figure it out and that she’s so vexed about her uncharacteristic ignorance. (She only realized the truth after Snow told her he’d kissed me.)

(Snow kissed me.) (Seven Hells.) (I’m still in amazement about that fact.) (And that he took the revelation of my vampirism so well, although I should have guessed he would, given his nobility and good heartedness.) (Both Snow kissing me and the assurance that I would live another year went a long way toward improving my summer.)

(Also, I did a lot of wanking to the memory of his lips on mine.) (I would have done so regardless of us having any real physical intimacy.) (The kiss helped make my fantasies far more vivid, though.)

All those factors alongside my diminished appetite for blood— it’s still there, but less gnawing and ubiquitous than before— have exponentially enhanced the quality of my summer vacation across the board.

Not that I’m telling Bunce this, despite how much she bothers me with her newfound knowledge about my feelings.

“You love Simon!” she shouts again as she stomps around mine and Snow’s room. She’s shouted this exact statement five times already.

(We’re holding a secret meeting while Snow’s away.) (He’s taking weekend remedial lessons with a handful of other students whose prospects for T.H.A.U.M.A.T.U.R.G.I.E.S. are especially grim after last year’s F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S.) (Meaning, he’s been condemned to suffer through them with Gareth. It’s the first time I’ve almost felt pity for Snow.)

“Yes, yes, your IQ might be astonishing, Bunce, but your EQ leaves much to be desired,” I say, leaning back against my bed and enjoying watching Bunce work herself into a strop over something her impressive brain couldn’t come up with.

(I’ve even been emboldened to eat a bag of crisps. Bunce is mostly too distracted to notice my fangs.) (When she does see them, she writes them off as less pressing than her current line of inquiry: uncovering the workings of Snow’s mysterious, iron-clad mind. It appears that once she’s solved one mystery— my vampirism— then it no longer concerns her, and she moves briskly onto other matters.)

(If only Snow felt the same way.)

“How did I not see it?” Bunce seethes. “You getting close to him despite your family’s politics, saving his life repeatedly despite your awful personality, and getting so jealous over Agatha despite not caring about her one bit. It all makes sense now! You were so obvious!”

I was when she says it like that, but I can’t take her words lying down. “There’s no need to insult me for your own shortcomings.”

“I can’t believe it took Simon kissing you and you not killing him for me to puzzle it out,” Bunce says miserably.

“To be fair, Snow hasn’t puzzled it out either.” (Snow, unlike Bunce, has the added experiential knowledge of me kissing him passionately back, though I have no idea how he’s rationalizing my actions.) (Probably with denial.) (Or by considering them a hallucination.) (That’s how I intend to gaslight him if he ever brings it up.) “Rest assured that you’re not as bad as the lowest denominator.”

Bunce is the definition of a sourpuss: her face crinkles and she squints at me like I’m a lemon she’s has the misfortune of ingesting.

“But why did Simon kiss you?” she asks, referring to the copious notes she’s transcribed on her chalkboard. She’s Up, up, and away-ed it into the room.

The surface of the board is full of incendiary comments, including Basil is such a sap that he’s loved Simon since they were 11 under the What we know column, and Are all vampires such overly dramatic romantics? under What we don’t know.

Adopting Snow’s mannerisms, I shrug. “Perhaps he thought it was fitting, given that he tried to save me like a damsel in distress. Perhaps his Sword of Mind was driving him to insane and irrational actions. Who can say?”

Taking another leaf out of Snow’s playbook, I resolve not to ponder it. I’m simply enjoying the fact that I got a kiss from him, a kiss I never expected.

(And Crowley, what a kiss it was.) (As soon as Bunce leaves—and while Snow is away tearing his hair out with test prep—I’m going to enjoy myself to the memory of it again, playing in my blissed-out mind on repeat.)

(Since I’ll never get another kiss, why worry about this one?)

“Those can’t be the reasons,” says Bunce, although she lists my hypotheses on the chalkboard with many rude addendums. “Simon said he wanted to kiss you.”

I jolt out of my bed. “Snow said what?”

Bunce gives me a look of absolute disgust and buries her head in her hands, asking, “how did I not see this?” She adds to her list of What we know that Basil is an obvious lovesick moron.

I stride over to the chalkboard and wipe the surface clean in one stroke. I start recording my own notes.

“Hey!” Bunce protests, but she’s no match for my vampire strength and my lovesick determination not to overthink a good thing. (Or nurture the hope for something I can never obtain.)

“Snow’s moral conundrums over locking lips with his roommate aren’t important. What we need to solve is this.” I noisily stab the end of my chalk on What we don’t know— How to break the Infrangible Affiance that idiot Snow cast on us.

Bunce shoves me aside. “That’s right, I need to add the Infrangible Affiance to my list. Clean slate! See what I mean!” My text is magickally eliminated and replaced with What we don’t know— Why did Simon’s magic accidentally trap him and Basil in an Infrangible Affiance?

“Are you regularly so impudent, or only when you’re being a sore loser? Tabula rasa!” Bunce’s words disappear again.

Bunce scowls and aims her ring at the board. “I’d have figured your feelings out earlier if your flirting techniques didn’t involve so much self-sabotage. The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ/ Moves on: nor all the Piety nor Wit/Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line/ Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it!”

The incriminating words about my longing for Snow fix themselves permanently onto our chalkboard, adhering despite my vicious swiping. (There goes another antiquated library resource.) (Also, damn this girl.)

“It’s not self-sabotage if I had no intention to ever get him for myself,” I tell her, baring my teeth.

Instead of showing fear, Bunce’s expression becomes uneasy, uncertain, and mildly pitying. It’s unbearable. “Basil—”

“Stop with this teenage lunacy and focus on our actual magickal task: breaking Snow’s spell.”

“This is why I’m sick of my friends getting involved with each other,” Bunce mutters, then adds more loudly, “We already tried everything we could to break the spell, short of killing one of you. If only we could determine if Simon cast a platonic pledge or a romantic betrothal. Magickal betrothals are just as tricky if not more deadly to get out of—”

“He did it platonically.”

I swiftly apprehend the last piece of chalk from Bunce.

She thrusts her ringed fist at me. “Butterfingers!”

“Finders, keepers!” I reply, fixing the chalk in my hand.

“Use it or lose it!”

“What you lose on the swings, you gain on the roundabouts!”

“Losing your grip!” she cries, but we both know it’s an inferior spell.

Stomping her foot in frustration, Bunce grabs her bookbag and exits the room, slamming the door behind her. (How has no one caught this girl breaking into the boys’ dorms?) (She and Snow have all the stealth of belligerently drunk wildebeests.)

After destroying the chalkboard and the evidence of my feelings inscribed upon it, I indulge myself in a feverish and highly satisfying sexual fantasy of Snow smashing his lips on mine. My bed-shaking climax and subsequent afterglow help me destress from Bunce’s guerrilla psychoanalysis session.

If she wants to decode Snow’s motives, fine. She can restore her brainy reputation on her own.

She better leave me out of it.

I get enough of torturing myself over Snow every time he insists that we go hunting together. Because leaving without him might mean activating whatever spell he cast on us and imperiling both of our lives, I reluctantly let him trail after me over the drawbridge and into the Wavering Woods.

(I also turn our nighttime hunts to my own advantage by tacking them onto hours-long T.H.A.U.M.A.T.U.R.G.I.E.S. study sessions.) (I’m a brutal teacher.)

(Snow vents his frustrations with my spartan tutoring methods by slaughtering woodlands creatures for me to eat.) (He’s a bloody brute.) (I love it, but then, I’m disturbed.)

(He only gets more irritated, his magic disrupting the midnight stillness, when I refuse to let him watch me eat.) (Not a snowball’s chance in hell, Snow.) (Nobody’s ever watched me eat. Not Father. Not Fiona.) (No one.)

(I have no idea why he wants so badly to witness me consuming the life’s blood of freshly killed things.) (If I didn’t know better, I’d think he’s as disturbed as I am.)

(But that can’t be right.) (Snow’s a hero.)

(He’s not like me.)

(He doesn’t like things like me.)

(Right?)

I’d be able to maintain that line of reasoning more easily if I had one moment free from him. (Wanking unfortunately doesn’t fit that bill.) It’s like fifth year all over again, except instead of being paranoid and potentially persecuting me, Snow is constantly inserting himself into my space, caring for me. (Aleister fucking Crowley.) (No wonder my spank bank is so full lately.)

The one area where he doesn’t monitor me is on the pitch when I’m playing football. Merlin knows why. He used to come all the time in fifth year and observe me like an inept and unsuccessful hawk.

But the one time he sat in the stands this year, he almost went off. No explanation whatsoever.  I was using the hem of my shirt to wipe the sweat off my brow (I’d just made a particularly difficult goal), when I felt Snow’s burst of electrically charged magic.

Snow hasn’t been to another session since.

That’s fine by me. It normally gives me the ideal opportunity to pretend that a small portion of my life doesn’t revolve around Snow. (What a lark.) (But one my dignified bloodline compels me to put on all the same.)

Except today, it looks like the pitch has been assailed by a meteor shower. There are holes everywhere, tripping up my teammates and vanishing our team’s footballs down endless, black pits.

Coach Mac is purple-faced and quickly approaching a stroke. Half of the team is sent to the infirmary with twisted ankles.

This has Snow written all over it.

“It’s not my fault!” Snow insists that evening, his mouth half-full of bangers and mash.

“Maybe it was the Humdrum,” Bunce theorizes.

“The Humdrum’s gone from terrorizing the school with man-eating creatures to using psychological warfare to break the football team’s spirits?” I ask. “I think not.”

“We should investigate,” Snow says eagerly, leaping from his seat and then remembering that he has four plates full of food left to devour.

That night, Snow, Bunce, and I don’t discover anything menacing on the pitch other than the fact that the grass has been turned to Swiss cheese.

“These aren’t dead spots,” Bunce says, peering down the holes with the light of her ring. “They look like gopher holes. Or rabbit holes.”

“Fantastic. Now get out of here, Bunce.” I’m beginning to feel uncomfortably hungry.

(When was the last time I fed? Snow hounding me is throwing off my schedule.)

Bunce peers at me (my mouth specifically) with silent consideration. “You know, I wouldn’t mind learning more about your vampirism. It’s fascinating how much mages don’t know regarding the subject. I’ll come with you and Simon—”

“No!” Snow and I say at the same time.

All three of us are startled.

I stare at Snow.

Snow refuses to look at me, gazing down the endless abysses in the pitch.

Bunce glances between the two of us with the utmost annoyance on her features before she throws her hands in the air and stalks away, muttering angrily.

When Snow and I wander into the Wavering Woods for prey, we do so in silence.

Snow is aggressively swinging his sword at anything, from foxes (no hunting predators, you numpty; you’ll ruin the ecosystem) and trees (great way to make the dryads hate me more, Snow).

He’s making my hunting impossible.

(I have no idea why he’s in such a foul mood.) (Is it his unceasing test preparation?) (Or the psychoanalytical sessions that I suspect Bunce is also conducting with him?) (Or is it Wellbelove, who continues to eat separately and draws Snow’s curious and confused gazes from across the dining hall—)

“What the fuck?” Snow says from somewhere in the Woods.

I’ve lost track of him.

Crowley, did he run into something dangerous? Like an offspring of the chimera we faced in third year?

But before I can reach Snow, I’m confronted by something odd myself: a hare.

It’s translucent like glass, clear as a crystal ball. As its pink eyes blink at me, the transparency of its body transforms into images.

Horrifying, mortifying images.

I see my fantasies of Snow dropping his sword to the ground and backing me into a tree—

Turning his frustrations toward kissing me fiercely as he presses me against the bark—

His hands groping me all over, and his fingers slipping below my shirt to caress the bare skin on my stomach—

Then, there’s not just one tell-tale, fantasy projecting hare. It’s multiplied into terrible triplets.

“Tough break!” I cast, fatally striking one of the hares. It becomes opaque and furry as it bleeds out on the grass. (Fuck, its blood smells so good.) (But I can’t let anyone see those other hares.) (Certainly not Snow—)

As I dash through the dark woods, navigating the twisted tree trunks with my night vision, I eliminate another hare. It flashes heady images of me pressing Snow onto the forest floor and having my wicked way with him. (I barely avoid the temptation to stop and drink from it.)

I can’t find that last accursed rodent. My nose doesn’t work for whatever thrice-damned magic they are comprised of.

Then, I catch sight of translucent hindlegs. Hazy ears. A screen-like body.

And I watch Snow pelt furiously after the hare, his sword poised at his side.

“Stand your ground!” I cast, and the hare freezes while Snow brings his sword down on it. Blood splashes in a frayed, crimson arc around the hare’s opaque body and onto Snow’s trainers.

“What the fuck was that?” he asks, panting hard. He’s covered in quite a bit of blood, more than the fresh blood he’s accumulated from this animal. I wonder how many hares he felled.

(What did they show him?)

(Not my fantasies, I pray to every god I can think of.) (He’s not acting like it, thank Merlin.)

(Meaning he must have seen his own fantasies.)

(Could they really have been that panic-inducing?)

“Here,” Snow says.

He’s shoving the bleeding rabbit beneath my mouth.

When the wet flesh touches my lips, I realize that my fangs have dropped. Probably long ago.

I’m so hungry.

So hungry that I don’t even turn away, taking the hare from Snow’s hands and draining it in plain view of him. (If he thinks I’m a monster, too bad.) (He should have thought of that before he cast his completely irresponsible magic.)

Over the summer, I’ve learned to drink more tidily. Last year, I was reveling in my despair and fully embracing my ugly role as life-devouring dark creature; this summer, I strove to control my urges. Hide the evidence of my vampirism. Eat with swiftness and elegance.

I gently suck the blood from the hare, siphoning with my tongue and lips. When I’m satisfied, I release my mouth from its body and suck the blood from my fingertips. (The blood on my hands is all Snow and his bloody sword’s fault.)

As I’m curling my tongue around my fingers, slowly lapping the blood from my skin, I feel Snow’s magic flaring and buzzing like an electromagnetic field.

(What is wrong with him?)

(He’s the one who insisted on helping me with my hunting.)

(If he’s revolted now, then— then—)

I Into thin air the dead rabbit and turn toward Snow, fully prepared to tear him to pieces with my cutting words.

Except Snow’s knotting his hands in my hair and pressing his lips against mine.

He’s tasting the blood on my lower lip, his tongue gliding confidently across my teeth. Then, he’s licking inside my mouth for a greater sample. (I try not to gasp at the intrusion.) (I fail spectacularly, a.k.a., with embarrassing loudness.) (Snow isn’t deterred; he alternates between kissing me light and feather-soft, and hard and demandingly.) (Seven hells, this boy knows how to kiss.) (Must be a Chosen One thing.) (My brain has long ceased functioning logically.)

His hands gather my hair around my face. He runs his fingers through it while he cradles my jaw. (My desperately working jaw, trying to keep up with Snow.) (Trying to take everything I’ve ever wanted but never practiced getting.) (Not until now.)

Snow’s touch is wondering, tender, rough.

This is so like my imagination (and unlike it) that instead of freezing and questioning it, I hold Snow by the shoulders and kiss him back.

He tastes as good as I remember. He feels as warm and right in my arms.

I feel just as bereft when he pushes away, looking at me with wide eyes and kiss-swollen lips before he turns toward the school grounds.

(It’s then that I hear the screams arising from within the Inner Gates.) (The hares must have infested the school, too.) (Huh.) (I really don’t care.)

(Snow does.) (Fucking hero.) (It makes me want to grab him and kiss him again, but I’m not mindless like Snow.) (I can’t just do that.)

(The only reason Snow kissed me is likely because the hare’s magic infected him.) (When he slew it, my fantasies of kissing him transferred from the animal to him, enchanting him to act on my desires.)

(That must be why he kissed me.)

(There’s no other explanation.)

Penelope Bunce doesn’t accept that.

She silently stews over it as we conduct our T.H.A.U.M.A.T.U.R.G.I.E.S. study session, which is only a study session in the most brazenly false sense of the word.

It’s really a reconnaissance mission for Bunce, since I refuse to engage in her brainstorming sessions, and I imagine hers and Snow’s pow-wows are reaching a highly predictable impasse. (Two emotionally stunted adventurers does not equal profound psychological revelations.)

“So,” Bunce says, her glare swiveling between me and Snow. I act indifferent; Snow acts like he’s been arraigned before judge and jury. “Thought bunnies.”

Snow clears his throat, the tips of his ears cherry red. (Why does he confide in Bunce about kissing me if it tortures him so?) (What an attractive, delectable, and indecipherable moron.) “Y-yeah. Bunnies that show what people are, er… thinking.”

“But can the bunnies also influence people’s thoughts and therefore their behaviors?” Bunce asks sharply. Snow shrinks under her scrutiny. “Can they make them do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do? Things they should think about doing before they do them again? Serious actions that they should consciously contemplate for once?”

“Instead of guessing the hares’ abilities, which are null and void since they’ve been eradicated, we should determine where they came from,” I say airily.

Bunce levels me with her death glare.

Snow nods eagerly. He stops when his companion turns her evil eye on him.

“Could it be the Humdrum?” Bunce asks, submitting to her more powerful interests in solving magickal mysteries than riddling the contents of Snow’s uncrackable mind. (She’s certainly more adept at the former.) “But we didn’t feel it. That way it sucks the oxygen out of the air when it sends its monsters inside the gates.”

Before I can tell Bunce that stoking teenage lust seems below the Humdrum, Snow leaps excitedly to his feet.

“Could be one of the mysteries of the school,” he says, grinning (winsomely, idiotically handsomely) at the prospect of a quest. Finally, something in his wheelhouse: a non-academic and non-introspective challenge. “I mean, there are a lot of them. Maybe the thought bunnies are one of Watford’s secrets we haven’t uncovered.”

The hares do jog something in my memory. In the halcyon, soft-focused days of my toddlerhood.

But I can’t place them.

“We should discover what they are while the Mage is away,” Snow declares. “To protect the school and all that.”

I scoff. Snow frowns at me before quickly averting his gaze, his magic simmering.

“Stand down!” Bunce casts, forcing Snow back into his chair. “No more quests or mysteries until you’ve studied for your T.H.A.U.M.A.T.U.R.G.I.E.S., Simon.”  

“Penny!” Snow exclaims, his flickering, crackling magic testing the strength of Bunce’s spell work.

“So long as the hares aren’t a real threat, you’re focusing on thinking things through. Like what you want for your future.” Bunce’s eyes dart toward me. “Like what you want from—”

“That can wait!” Snow insists, his superpowered determination winning against Bunce’s enchantment and propelling him noisily out of our room.

Bunce swears colorfully. “This is all your fault,” she tells me.

“How?” I ask myself as much as her.

Bunce lacks the words for her vexation and resorts to bellicosely summoning the chalkboard from the closet. (Because she keeps one there now.) “That is what I’m going to figure out,” she vows, adapting the What we know column by erasing Simon has only kissed Baz once and replacing it with Simon has only kissed Baz twice. (I ignore the asterisk and minute for now that she adds on the bottom corner of the chalkboard.)

“You know,” Bunce says, “you could help by letting me analyze the existing evidence. Meaning you could stop letting him kiss you.”

I laugh. Like hell I will.

(I resist many human-shaped, blood-filled temptations in my life, but never Snow and his lips on mine.)

(Bunce responds to my ridicule by writing all manners of insults for me on her board.)

My sadistic glee expires by the time the new variety of magickal hares attacks the school in November.

They don’t just attack any part of the school— they ransack the kitchens, consuming all of Cook Pritchard’s Sunday brunch. Refrigerators and pantries and closets worth of lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, and sour-cherry scones are emptied, leaving only immaterial dust bunnies (hah!) behind.

If Snow’s mind has been an impenetrable fortress for much of this semester, it is now very clear what he’s feeling:

Hare-slaughtering, building-leveling rage.

He slices rabbits down the middle, leaving their torn hides and maroon viscera strewn over the marble floors, blood-stained benches, and gleaming dining hall tables.

Bunce and I try to mitigate the mess and prevent Snow’s imminent magickal combustion.

“Now run along, and don’t get into mischief!” I cast, causing the hares to scatter and flee before they meet their gruesome ends on Snow’s blade.

“Really? Peter Rabbit, Basilton?” Bunce asks mockingly. “Not a happy bunny!” The hares skitter at the omen of her ring.

“It was an obvious connection, Bunce, which is why I’m also going to get the highest T.H.A.U.M.A.T.U.R.G.I.E.S. scores this year— Work the rabbit’s foot!”

“Fat chance— Pastures new!”

Ours and the teachers’ combined efforts dispel many of the quickly multiplying hares. Unlike the thought bunnies, which splintered off their matrix as they reflected the branching minds of the students and faculty, these rabbits multiply proportionately to the food, essays, and textbooks they consume.

Which means there are still quite a lot of them.

Many of which Snow viciously exterminates, staining the White Chapel with a growing pool of red.

(I need to cut him off before he pushes my vampiric appetite too far.)

(Thankfully, I got an adequate fill of blood from last night when Snow and I hunted together.) (He vented about his inability to obtain information regarding the hares while slaying squirrels and badgers for me.) (I let him watch me drain them at his insistence.)

(He didn’t surprise me with a kiss.)

(Not that I wanted one.)

(Who the fuck am I lying to?)

“Snow—”

“Simon, stop!” Wellbelove cries, rushing toward him in the center of his violence and miasmic magic.

I hear the bloodstained students in the dining hall gasp as Wellbelove uses her beauty and purity to impede Snow’s massacre.

(That’s right.) (Stainless, untouchable Agatha Wellbelove.) (How could I have forgotten?) (I didn’t.)

(I don’t think I’ve seen her interact with Snow this year, other than to exchange stilted greetings and awkward small talk.)

(But that doesn’t stop Snow from staring at her. Or the student body from gossiping about the inevitable reconciliation of their favorite golden couple.)

(Dev complains about Snow and Wellbelove relentlessly.) (Niall mocks him for it but agrees with the general sentiment of the school: failure though Snow may be in tests and wand work, in light and goodness, his only equal is Agatha Wellbelove.)

“Going down in flames!” I cast, throwing my blood-free pacifism to the curb and roasting ten hares on the spot.

“Watch it!” Bunce complains, jumping out of the path of my fire. Then, she sees what I’m responding to:

Wellbelove is clinging to Snow’s shoulder. (Carefully avoiding his sword arm.) “You can’t kill them like they’re dark creatures. They’re just hungry rabbits. Harmlessly ordinary magickal animals.”

“But…” Snow gasps, slowly coming out of his bloodlust.

“I’ve already called my dad, and his veterinary colleagues are going to pick up the hares,” Wellbelove explains. She wraps Snow in her comforting, loving embrace. (Bile fills in my mouth.) (My undead heart constricts.) “So, there’s no need to kill them all. Let’s just have a peaceful, ordinary Sunday. Okay?”

Snow nods, his face pressed into the curve of Wellbelove’s neck.

She runs her fingers along the base of his shaved head.

Snow’s sword disappears in a shimmer of pink light.

That night as Snow insinuates himself back into Wellbelove’s graces, her father’s friendliness, and her family circle, I stalk the Wavering Woods.

(Not hunting.) (I don’t feel like feeding tonight.) (I do spy one lovely spotted doe and imagine draining the blood from her neck until her slim, pale limbs grow cold and lifeless.) (I imagine this because I’m a horrifying, unforgivable creature.) (Because Snow should stay away from the likes of me.)

When I return to Mummers after midnight— dawdling and killing time in case the golden couple planned an arduous reunion in her newly single dorm room— I’m startled to find Snow sitting on his bed.

He’s turning his cross listlessly between his fingers.

And he’s bleeding magic, gnashing his teeth. It’s like all the outrage he suppressed sparing the hares has risen back to the surface.

As usual, it’s directed at me.

“You said you wouldn’t hunt without me,” he grits out, crushing his cross in his fist. “You could kill me if you make me break the spell.”

“Which would be entirely your fault, given that you idiotically cast it,” I hiss, walking past him and into the ensuite. I have no patience for Snow tonight. I may activate the Anathema on him. I may do any number of bodily things that I’ll have extreme survivor’s remorse for in the morning.

When I open the door, Snow is standing right there, right outside the bathroom.

Fucking Merlin’s beard— “Is this your new occupation, a gargoyle instead of Mage’s Heir?” I snipe. “Not that it would be much of a change.”

Snow is scanning me head to toe. “You didn’t hunt,” he says, surprised.

“How in Crowley’s name would you know that?”

“Your skin. It’s not rosy enough. It’s only that way right after you feed.”

I sneer at him. “You’re delusional, Chosen One.”

Snow’s hand lands on my cheek.

He caresses me, his thumb running along my cheekbone. His forefinger hooks around the corner of my jaw.

“”M right,” he murmurs. “You’re not as warm as when you drink blood.”

I have no idea what to say.

I’m certain my body temperature is rising from sheer shock and arousal.

It turns out that I don’t need to speak, because Snow’s stomach fills the silence with its painfully loud gurgle.

His skin so flushed it matches his freckles, Snow removes his hand and hurls himself miserably onto his bed. His stomach continues to protest, and he digs his fist in it.

(The hares must have taken all the food.) (Why didn’t the Wellbeloves feed Snow, their prodigal son?) (I thought they were supposed to know him and his unsustainable appetite.)

I’ve resolved to let Snow suffer from his hunger throughout the night, but his stomach is so loud that the only way I’ll be impervious to it is by spelling myself deaf.

And I don’t want to do that. (I’ve become shamefully conditioned to the rhythms of Snow’s deep, sleepy breathing.)

Rifling through my drawer, I snag a bag of salt-and-vinegar crisps and hurl it at Snow.

Snow curses when the aluminum smacks him in the face, reflexively saying, “Anathema.” Then, he realizes what he’s been attacked by. Dunce that he is, he doesn’t connect all the dots.

“Are these your crisps?” he asks me hoarsely.

“They’re my sacrifice to your unruly stomach,” I say, turning away from him beneath my covers. “I pray that my offering will grant me some peace for tonight.”

It doesn’t.

Because Snow leaps out of his bed and kneels on mine, suddenly kissing me. Again.

He’s pinning me against my bed and kissing me like I’m his favorite thing to eat.

(Crowley, if I’d known earlier that giving him food would lead him to act this way...)

I should shove him off me. Demand that he slakes his hunger with his (probable) girlfriend.

Instead, I pour all my frustrations and disbelief and anger into aggressive kisses, modeling my technique after Snow’s. I use my chin to slot our mouths unbearably together. I angle my jaw to fill his every gasping breath with little kisses. I sink back into my pillow and coax him to follow me with his tongue and teeth.

(Snow uses all his mouth to kiss me.) (It’s intolerable.) (I didn’t know that kisses could be like this.) (This overwhelming and all-consuming.)

We’re interrupted by Snow’s rioting stomach.

Pulling away from me with a wet, suctioning sound (Merlin), Snow has no other emotion than confusion discernible on his dumbstruck face.

He ends up eating three of my bags of crisps before he passes out.

The next morning, his bed is empty.

He’s up as bright and early as usual.

But I don’t see him at breakfast.

(It doesn’t appear that he’s told Bunce about our newest snogging session.) (Which is good, because Wellbelove has returned to eating at our table.) (Hers and Snow’s armistice better not have involved a renewed romantic partnership.) (I don’t think so; Snow is the loyal type, even if he’s also enough of a coward to kiss and hide.)

(I get my confirmation that Snow and Wellbelove are maintaining their “break” when Wellbelove cozies up to me. She asks about my summer, speaks of our shared club experiences, and inquires about my plans for Christmas holiday.) (She smiles and laughs and plays with her long, flaxen hair with her pink-painted fingers.)

(What a joke.)

(Bunce seems to think it’s a comic tragedy, given the way she stares and shakes her head and complains under her breath.)  

Almost two weeks later, Snow interrupts our library “study session” (during which Wellbelove acts coy and flirts with me) (during which I coolly entertain her to hurt Snow from a distance) (during which Bunce covertly sends hexes at me and calls me a menace) with his joyful proclamation that, “I’ve finally figured it out!”

The librarian shushes Snow.

I rise from my chair, prepared to be outed.

Wellbelove stares at me and Snow in confusion.

Bunce is wide-eyed. “You mean you finally figured out whether you—”

“Not that,” Snow says, blushing. “I figured out what’s going on with the hares!”

He doesn’t elaborate.

“Well? What is it?” Bunce asks urgently.

Snow shakes his head. “Can’t say,” he answers resolutely.

I think Bunce is going to strangle him. (Not if I get to him first.)

“It said not to tell anyone,” Snow says, admitting, “I probably shouldn’t have even said this much.”

“What said not to tell anyone?” Bunce prods.

Snow shrugs. “Can’t say.”

“Fine by me,” says Wellbelove, equanimous. “Let’s get back to studying, Penny.”

Bunce seems torn between her student duties and her fixation with throwing herself into dangerous scenarios.

“It’s alright, Pen,” Snow insists, taking a seat next to her. “I’ve got it handled.”

“But—”

“It’s like you said: we gotta focus on T.H.A.U.M.A.T.U.R.G.I.E.S.”

Bunce groans at her own self-defeating prior statement.

Snow is opening a random book, his knee bouncing beneath the table, when he notices that Wellbelove and I are seated right next to each other.

She’s plaited her hair on her opposite shoulder, exposing her porcelain throat to me. We share a textbook. I let her use my pen emblazoned with the Pitch insignia as she scrawls useless marginalia and drawings of horses on the corners of my notes.

(Her entreaties to study are an utter ruse.) (She’s barely retained a word of what we’ve read, so I leaf through the textbook at my own pace without minding her wandering eye.)

Snow’s burst of barely contained magic forces all the cramming sixth years to flee the library.

(That night, we hunt in heated silence punctured only by the harsh words we volley at each other from a distance, nocking our insults and accusations like arrows on bowstrings.)

(I tell Snow that he’s a moron for not revealing what his special, secret quest is.) (That he might as well stop accompanying me if he’s going to get himself killed well before his Infrangible Affiance does us in.)

(Snow asks what I intend to do with Wellbelove.) (That’s all he asks on a constant loop.)

(I tell him the truth: that I don’t intend to do anything to her.) (It’s Wellbelove who has her sights on me.)

(That causes Snow to stab a stag and hurl the massive body at my feet before he stomps back to Mummers, his magic prompting all the other creatures to cry and fly off.)

(Foolish, impossible, Mage-loving, thick-headed, narrow-sighted—)

Whatever plans Snow had for stopping the upcoming hare aren’t going to work.

Two hares appear on campus at the beginning of December.

Students are playing Baby, It’s Cold Outside and other cloying Christmas romance songs as they hang sprays of mistletoe from the archways.

It turns out they needn’t have bothered. The hares are more than up to the task of instilling the school with horny, holiday spirit.

If our prior hares were thought bunnies and Peter Rabbit incarnations, then these appear to be overly sexual March Hares.

And it’s not even March.

That doesn’t matter, because as the hares magickally copulate across the school, they send students into glassy-eyed, apple-cheeked fits of lust.

It starts during an unfortunate and ironic Greek class. Professor Minos as is quizzing us on the myth of Psyche and Eros.

When it seems like my circumstances couldn’t deteriorate any further, I have the misfortune of explaining one translation of the famous love story.

I blame my slow recognition that something is happening to my classmates, that something is critically wrong, on the fact that Snow’s magickal aura is already flooding our classroom with dizzying sparks.

“"Why should you wish to behold me?"” I recite from Eros’s perspective. (I feel the burn of Snow’s magic pulsing through the air like a subterranean volcanic vent.) (I think that’s the reason I’m hot under the collar.) (Unsettled.) (Restless.) “"Have you any doubt of my love? Have you any wish ungratified? If you saw me, perhaps you would fear me, perhaps adore me, but all I ask of you is to love me…””  

I’m finding it difficult to maintain my train of thought, which is alarming. Even amidst my bloodlust, I’m surprisingly, agonizingly clear-headed.

The only time I’m freed from the burden of thinking is when I let myself go, when I—

Two hares appear in the middle of the classroom. Their agile bodies are sinuous, their fur pale pink, their ears draping lazily over their cheeks.

They bound over the desks, entwining and pressing their noses against each other.

Lusty moans and groans erupt throughout the classroom, followed by students writhing in their desks and searching each other out with scorching gazes.

“As you were!” Professor Minos casts desperately on his students, to no avail. (His minotaur nature must make him immune to the hares’ magic.) (Or the fact that he’s surrounded by sixteen-year-olds.)

(My vampirism barely takes off the edge off the lust that skyrockets through me, one that I’ve fortunately had practice repressing.)

“Circe’s tits,” Bunce mutters, her face flushed and voice shaking.

Instead of trying to rectify the situation, she flees from the class along with a dozen other students. Professor Minos follows to seek assistance from the other faculty members, although I assume the same lusty pandemonium is cropping up across the school.

Wellbelove runs off after men and women stare longingly in her direction.

I’d assumed that Snow would come to her defense. That he’d use his warm, muscled body (stop thinking) to block her pursuers before he whisked them both off to Wellbelove’s bed.

But Snow’s not going anywhere.

He’s sitting at his desk, trembling and wound tight. He’s spring-loaded to—

Go off.

I drag him away by his arm, ignoring how the touch lights a fire in my lower belly.

Merlin, Morgana, and Methuselah, we have to kill these hares.

“Snow,” I say in a shameful gasp as I tug us throughout the chaos-filled hallways. Some students are collapsed into each other and snogging; others are weeping over rejection; many are staring lovelorn at their objects of attraction. “What are we supposed to—”

Snow’s backing me up against a doorway, his nose buried beneath my ear, his breath hot and rapid against my neck.

His fingers dig into my waist.

(Beneath my surging desire, I can’t believe he’s doing this here.) (In front of people.) (Where he’ll be subjected to more inquiries that he can’t answer.)

(But no one seems to notice us.) (They’re all wrapped up in their own erotic suffering.)

“Sorry,” Snow grits out. I shiver; this is the first time he’s spoken to me during... whatever this is. “Fuck… Baz…”

His fingers tighten around me, his teeth ghosting the underside of my jaw.

I can’t let him do this.

I can’t let him kiss me now.

Who knows how far I’d let it go?

“Focus, Snow,” I say, forcing him away.

His pupils are blown, the blues of his eyes scant rims of light. He’s swallowing hard, probably to combat the same desert that’s forming in my mouth.

“Your fangs,” he says dazedly, reaching out to touch them.

My fangs have dropped. How long have they been out? Did anyone else—

Fuck.

Chapter Text

Book 6: Simon Snow and the Sixth Hare

XVIII. SIMON

Baz’s hand claps frantically over his mouth. Some of the blinding lust in the forefront of my mind parts, like a gauzy curtain, and I realize I have to stop the hares before Baz is outed as a vampire.

Before someone can hurt him or turn him in.

Before anyone can realize how maddeningly attractive his fangs are and want him for themselves.

“Where’d the hares go?” I pant, pulling Baz by his fingers. Our hands are knotted together. His cool palm feels so good against the sweat that’s pouring from my body.

Baz shakes his head, his hand still plastered to his lips. (Shame, that.) (No, Simon.) (Thank Merlin that he stopped me before I took advantage of the moment and kissed him.) (Again.) (For the… fourth time?) (I know that sounds awful, but it’s hard to keep track since my memories merge with my many Baz-centric snogging fantasies.)

(Now on top of the guilt and confusion that have been driving me berserk, I have to contend with the almost irrepressible lust that these recent hares have stoked in me.)

(Lust that I’m well-aware is aimed toward Baz.)

(That’s painfully, impossibly aimed towards Baz.)

(Maybe I could kiss him, for both our sakes, just a little—)

“Wait,” Baz slurs, his words muffled by his palm. He turns his head. He appears to be sniffing the air.

(He can do that? Track things by scent?)

(There goes another chink in my extremely fragile barracks of self-control.)

Baz leads us out of the halls. (The school is mostly empty except for a few couples that are going at it hard in public, the teachers repeatedly spelling them away.)

The brisk air of the December grounds is a relief to my overstrung senses. I breathe it in greedily to clear my mind, soothe my parched throat. To resist the lust that melts my brain like a wildfire.

(To manage to hang onto Baz without dragging him down with me.)

Baz and I find the hares in the snow-dusted courtyard.

They’re wound into each other on the icy stones, chirruping happily, kissing each other with their whiskers and pink noses and satin tongues.

They look so happy— so innocent— that I can’t bring myself to summon the Sword of Mages to slay them.

(They’re not even doing anything nefarious.) (Per say.) (Just infecting every living thing in their proximity with the same longing that they feel for each other.)

(I think some Watford couples could certainly benefit from their pre-holiday intervention.)

(Like Agatha and I could have last year.)

(But when I entertain even the vaguest thoughts of getting intimate with Agatha, my fantasy derails into snogging Baz on his plush bed at his Hampshire estate. I can almost feel his muscles shifting under my roaming hands.) (I can almost hear the lovely, lusty noises I’d draw out of him despite his family being close downstairs.)

(Yeah, these hares are a nuisance.)

“What are you waiting for, Snow?” Baz asks, squeezing my fingers so hard I feel my joints grind together.

“They’re not evil,” I struggle to say. “Just… in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“If they were mages, we’d lock them up for public indecency! If you’re too soft to kill them, I’ll—”

“There must be some other way,” I say, forcing Baz’s hand down. (I’m not simply restraining him for the hares’ sakes.) (The mere mental image of him summoning a ball of flame right now is too much for my lust.) “Where’s Penny?”

Baz sighs. (I earnestly hope he doesn’t do that again; his breathy exhalation is stirring awful ideas in me.) “Probably solving her personal, hare-induced problems in the privacy of her bedroom.”

“Merlin, don’t talk about her like that!” I’m deeply uncomfortable with the thought of Penny doing anything remotely sexual, even if it’s to herself. At least the notion helps kill my persistent arousal.

“Such a prude,” Baz says. The color is high in his cheeks that way it only is after he’s drained a gallon of blood; his teeth are jutting out and piercing his bottom lip; his chest is rising and falling rapidly with his excitement—

“Stop, Snow!” Baz shouts, clutching me. “I thought you didn’t want to kill the bloody beasts. You can’t go off.”

“Right,” I say, distracted by Baz’s hands on me. Merlin. “You have really strong hands…”

Baz tears himself away from me. (Did I say that out loud?) (Oops.) (These hares are stripping away all my inhibitions.)

Baz releases his wand from his sleeve (yup, I definitely wish he hadn’t done that) (why is that so sexy?) and points it at the hares.

“Wait, don’t—”

“I’m not going to kill them,” Baz says through his fangs, which are almost drawing blood now. “Who knows what kinds of minor gods of love and lust they are? They could be Ēostre’s familiars. Killing them could curse me with an immortal lifetime of unfulfilled libido.” 

“Who’s Ēostre—”

“The springtime goddess of light and fertility that Normals get their insipid Easter holiday from. We went over that in preparation for T.H.A.U.M.A.T.U.R.G.I.E.S. three weeks ago. Great snakes, Snow, you’d better be ready for me and Bunce to re-quiz you until the exams haunt your waking and sleeping thoughts—”

“Just cast the spell, Baz!”

“Sleep on it,” Baz says, and the hares’ rose-red eyes flicker, their bodies stilling on top and below each other. But it’s not enough. They continue to lick and nuzzle each other, rolling in the powdery snow. “Hit the hay! Give it a rest!”

The hares don’t heed Baz’s words. At least not entirely.

Instead of going at each other with passions inflamed, they drowsily coil around each other, chirruping contentedly in the other’s warm, sleeping embraces. It’s hard for me to conceive of a love like this— one that doesn’t burn, push, or pull, but a love that’s patient, content to simply revel in the other. A love that knows it has all the time in the world.

(It’s not fair.)

“Cast the spell, Snow,” Baz says, his voice quavering, his wand hand shaking. Both hands. I can feel him tremble where our fingers remain interlinked.

“I don’t think it’ll work.”

“It doesn’t matter that you’re an abominable mage. You have to try.”

“Not because of that, tosser.”

I don’t believe that these hares will be eliminated with violence or laid to rest with sleeping spells.

The only thing we can do is to satisfy them.

“Then, what’s your bright idea—”

I swallow Baz’s insults with my mouth on his.

For a startled moment, he flails against me.

Then, as I kiss him softly, gently, as delicately as the hares are caressing each other…

He goes boneless and wanting in my embrace.

(Merlin.) (Jesus.) (Fuck.)

(The lust roars back to life within me like a scaly, taloned monster, whipping its tail on the floor of my stomach and extending its wings against my ribcage.) (I resist its urges.) (I calm it down.)

I kiss Baz as preciously as if we’ll both shatter from any greater force.

And still, I wonder if I’m hurting him.

His body won’t stop shaking. (I like it.) He moans brokenly when our mouths tangle against each other. (I like that even more.) He’s sinking into my arms. (Let me catch you, Baz.)

When we stop, his fangs have retracted. My magic is still thrumming within me, but no longer like a live wire. It’s a constant current. Natural, life-giving energy instead of artificial, world-destroying power.

The hares have disappeared.

I don’t know how to interpret the look Baz gives me when we draw apart, strands of his dark hair clinging to my cheeks.

He appears contemplative. Awed. Disappointed.

Knowing that the students and faculty are otherwise occupied, we hunt early and then return to the school.

Everything is a mess. Cook Pritchard has laid a couple of cold dishes out in the dining hall— salads and fruit and sandwiches— but very few people are eating. (Other than the youngest students, who were unaffected by the hares.) (They’re only eleven and twelve years of age.) (I can’t believe Baz and I were like that once.)

(That at one time, I wasn’t possessed by the inexhaustible desire to kiss him.)

Baz leaves mid-way through our (my) meal, citing his fatigue.

I want to follow him (to Mummers) (to the library) (anywhere), but his weariness compels me to let him be. (At least until tonight, when we’re sharing the same room.) (Then, I have the license to bother him all I want.) (I have the Anathema on my side.)

Not five minutes after Baz has departed, Penny takes his place.

She’s furious. Her glasses sit askew on the accordioned bridge of her nose, and her turquoise curls are tousled and spilling everywhere. (I really hope her splotchy blush is the result of her intellectual stimulation, not a sexual one.) (And there goes my appetite.)

“Are you alright, Pen—”

“Silence is golden!” she casts. The first and second years ignore our soundless, golden bubble. “I saw you, Simon.”

Penny’s low voice is extremely ominous, as is the sparkling of her ring.

I swallow my rye and roast chicken. (I lied about my appetite; nerves only aggravate my hunger.) The food travels in a tight knot down my throat. I choke down some tea. “Saw what?”

“You kissing Basil in the courtyard!” Penny shrieks, pounding her fists on the table and jostling my plates.

“Crowley, keep it down!” I say, even though no one can hear us.

“Why. Can’t. You. Stop. Kissing. Him?”

“I thought that was what we were trying to figure out,” I say timidly, my cheeks burning. “Wait, did anyone else see us?”

“Did anyone else see you and Basil snogging in the middle of the grounds in broad daylight?” Penny asks shortly. “No, they were all preoccupied.”

That’s good. I can’t explain my actions to Penny or Baz, so I can’t imagine trying to justify them to Agatha.

(That’s right— Agatha. I hope she was okay after the hares enchanted the student body into an orgasmic frenzy.)

(I know how people feel about Agatha. How they want her. It’s similar to the reverent way they want Baz.) (I should have protected her.)

(But if Penny’s here scolding me, Agatha must be fine.) (Penny would surely go kill somebody if her only female friend was preyed on.)

(I would have aided Agatha if weren’t for the hares’ aphrodisiac abilities forcing me to confine myself to my seat, carving bloody half-crescents into my palms while I resisted the impulse to launch myself at Baz.)

(Or destroy the classroom with a blast of power.)

(Which is why Agatha faded to the back of my mind.)

“What are you doing?” Penny asks exasperatedly. She, like Baz, appears worn out by all the hoops we’ve been jumping through— or bunny hopping through— today.

“I was just trying to stop the hares.”

“By kissing Basil,” Penny says drily. “Again.”

I nod. There’s a sauna in my chest. My veins run red-hot with magma. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“But why?” Penny asks. “What aren’t you telling us, Si? What do you know about these hares?”

To be honest, not much.

I found an anonymous letter in the Mage’s office when I was digging through his belongings (sorry) for anything to take my mind off kissing Baz. To prevent me from taking further advantage of his confusion, his uncharacteristic mercy.

The letter only said my name and Danger and Six Hares and a list of other random items, phenomena, and creatures, including the Queen’s ogres. (Is that the issue the Mage is currently attending to?)

The letter also said to Tell no one else. No one can know. Only Simon Snow.

So, I haven’t told anyone.

What if it’s dangerous? What if I’m putting them at risk?

I have to solve this myself.

Even if one instance of solving this myself might mean involving Baz. Kissing Baz.

I probably won’t have to do it for the remaining hares.

Though my track record hasn’t been good.

“I know what I’m doing.”

Penny sees through my lie immediately. “Even though you don’t know why you keep kissing your roommate?”

“Pen.”

“I mean, I was too far away to be sure, but the way you kissed him…” Penny pauses, then volunteers, somewhat uncertainly, “that didn’t look like simple lust. Like what everyone else was feeling.”

I remind myself to breathe. “Meaning?”

“That even if you are gay or queer, I don’t think simple attraction is the only reason you’re kissing Basil nonstop,” Penny tells me. “Meaning we should consider other reasons.”

That both alleviates my concerns over categorizing my already muddled identity and crushes me with the weight of new worries.

There are very few reasons left for why I want Baz so badly.

(But I don’t know how he feels about me.)

(But he doesn’t push me away.)

(But he always pretends we’ve never kissed.)

(But he doesn’t kill me, either.)

(But he couldn’t want me.)

(Because he’s Baz fucking Pitch.)

(Because I’m the Mage’s Heir— The worst Chosen One in existence.)

As our school teeters on the verge of Christmas holidays, I keep on guard for the remaining hares. I’ve discovered a rabbit-shaped stone in the ritual tower, a stained-glass hare in the cathedral, and the rabbit sigil on the drawbridge.

But I have yet to turn up another hostile, flesh-and-blood creature. 

The school’s usual holiday spirits have been severely diminished after the amorous hares. (Penny and Baz call them not-March Hares.) (I don’t get it. They find their moniker hilarious.) (When the two of them are in a room together, it can be impossible to comprehend a word of what’s being said.) (Sometimes that’s reassuring, like Baz is mine the same way that Penny is, that we’re all together.) (Other times, it makes me feel like I’ll never measure up to him. Be good enough.)

Out of an abundance of caution this season, the teachers have secured all the holly and mistletoe, keeping it out of students’ clutches. The romantic Christmas songs have been replaced by generic, wintry jingles. The kind of classical music Baz enjoys.

(The kind we danced to in our fourth year.) (We haven’t danced since.) (I haven’t allowed myself to ask why.) (Even though I really want to.) (Like I want to kiss Baz.)

Despite having emerged from the hares unscathed, Agatha, like the other students, seems unsettled and depressed.

When she tells me, “Mum and Dad want to know if you’re spending Christmas with us,” her voice is flat. Sullen.

(Penny ran away the moment Agatha arrived.) (She said things were getting too overly complicated for her diagramming and chalk-boarding.) (She grumbled something needing to talk to Baz.)

Agatha’s invitation to her place— and my gut response to it— are completely different from last winter.

The night before we left for her house in fifth year, during one of our cohort’s many parties, we drank eggnog spiked with bourbon. Lots of bourbon. In our glowing, drunk joy, we snogged and petted each other through our clothes. Our inebriated classmates cheered us on.

(Baz was probably in the Catacombs when he should have been warming himself by a roaring fire.) (Judiciously, of course, given his flammability.)

Agatha and I went further in her house on Christmas eve.

But it seemed less mindlessly pleasurable then. Like clockwork instead of champaign bubbles.

I chalked our clumsiness up to inexperience. Agatha agreed. We continued to imitate the intimacy we’d seen on television, music videos, and enacted by loving strangers on the streets.

We were still trying when Agatha and I took our break before our F.A.M.I.L.I.A.R.S.

Before Baz and I—

“—I don’t know if I’m coming over this Christmas, Aggie,” I say.

“Oh.” Agatha blinks in surprise. The firelight is reflected in her pale hair. “Really?”

“Yeah.” I scratch the back of my neck. “I just… I gotta figure out what’s happening. You know. With the mysteries surrounding Watford.”

“Oh,” Agatha says, more tonelessly this time. “Right.”

“Sorry. To you and Dr. Wellbelove and your mum and Helen.”

“That’s fine. We wouldn’t want to impede your magickal quest,” she says dully. “That’s a girlfriend’s job, after all.”

We’ve had some iteration of this fight a million times before, but it still hurts and rankles to hear. “Is that what you think about us? About what we were?”

Agatha sighs, leaning in and kissing me lightly on the cheek. At this distance, she smells like apple blossoms and soap.

(Baz smells like blood and cedar and smoke.) (He tastes like them, too— bittersweet and pungent.)

“Keeping up our break is probably for the best,” Agatha concludes. “Being apart can be a good thing for people. Couples or… well. You know. You can’t see the forest for the trees.”

“Right,” I say, although I’m unsure how this proverb applies to our circumstances. (I try not to think about how it’s also a spell, one Agatha and I are too weak and unpracticed to spell, but one Baz could probably cast with an imperious flourish of his wand. He’d make the trees bend and sway to his will.)

Agatha’s hand stills when it drifts over my necklace. She tugs the golden cross up to the firelight, her expression curious.

“You’re still wearing this?” she asks, bemused. “Even though you and Basil are friends?”

(Something like that.)

In lieu of mentioning the Infrangible Affiance and all the forbidden kisses that have attended it, I say, “He is a vampire.”

(I forget how out of the loop Agatha is on everything that’s transpired recently. It’s making it difficult to remind myself what I’m allowed and prohibited from telling her.)

(Not the kisses.)

(That’s fairly obvious.)

Agatha frowns. “Have you told the Mage that Basil’s a vampire yet? Maybe when he gets back, you should—”

“Baz wouldn’t hurt me,” I interject, more vehemently than either Agatha or I expect. “Sorry. But it’s true.”

Likewise, it’s not as if I believe that the Mage would harm Baz if he knew. That Baz is a vampire, that is. He’s the Mage, the leader of the magickal world. Which Baz is a part of. (No matter his dietary restrictions.) (He’s more magic than anybody, even me.)

The Mage is my mentor: the man who sort of, sometimes raised me. My foster father on paper. My gateway to the magickal world.

Although now might not be the best time to tell him, he’d never hurt Baz.

He’d never do anything that would hurt me.

“Are you sure?” Agatha asks warily.

I nod, trying to remember what Agatha’s asking me. When Agatha continues to look unconvinced— could-tell-her-parents-and-the-Coven-that-Baz-is-a-dark-creature unconvinced— I add, “Baz is the one who wanted me to wear the cross. He insisted.” Then, I cursed us with our mutual vows.

“Really?”

“Yeah. He doesn’t want to hurt people.” I mean, he’s still a jerk, but he doesn’t want to hurt people all the time.

(Sometimes that dubious honor falls on me, brainless snogger extraordinaire.)

“I suppose that makes sense,” Agatha remarks, caressing the cross idly. Contemplatively. Biting her glossy bottom lip. (The one I used to kiss, far more than Baz’s, and yet I can’t remember how she tastes.) “Basil always seemed alright. Dark and lonely and a Torey, but… everybody deserves to be wanted. Loved. Even vampires. At least the halfway decent ones.”

It would be one thing if Agatha sounded patronizing. Pitying. But she doesn’t.

Instead, she’s playing with the chain around my cross like it’s a lock of Baz’s long hair—she sounds like she’s earnestly considering the prospect of wanting him—loving him—her complexion is pink with heartfelt intrigue—

“You can’t date Baz.”

Agatha draws away from me. She crosses her arms, her eyes flashing. “Not this again, Simon. You can’t tell me who I can and can’t date.”

“But I—I’m—”

“Not my boyfriend,” Agatha finishes, her fists clenched at her sides.

I don’t think that was what I was trying to say. “But he’s— he’s—Baz is—”

“A vampire?” Agatha cries. I also don’t think that was on the tip of my twisted tongue. “His vampirism doesn’t stop you from befriending him! Why should that stop me from dating him? I can date whomever I want. I’m my own person. I’m not the golden girl you or my parents or Helen or everyone else wants me to be!”

What?

Now I’m completely lost.

(Is this how Agatha felt while we were dating?) (I had no clue.) (Merlin’s balls, I was a terrible boyfriend.)

(But while that may be true—that Agatha is her own person—Baz isn’t.)

(Baz is mine.)

“Aggie, wait—”

I try to catch up with her as she races across the snowy grounds, but her long legs, dancer’s athleticism, and the late-night sour cherry scones that sit half-digested in my stomach make pursuing her difficult.

By the time I’ve located her, I’m on the verge of going off.

Agatha is crying in Baz’s arms, her tears glittering in the moonlight.

Baz is trying and failing not to appear shocked, his arms mechanically outstretched, not quite touching her.

He’s about to say something when he sees me.

I stare at him.

His face freezes in a cryptic, silvery mask.

Agatha turns from Baz’s chest (that must be hard for her) (Baz has a very nice chest, I know) and glares at me.

“That’s enough, Si,” she says, her voice watery, her tears twinkling like starlight. “I’m not—”

Agatha screams.

Something massive, white, and soft as a cloud lifts her from the ground— Baz tries to grab her, but he’s too slow— and Agatha disappears into the cold and clear night sky.

“Aggie!” I shout, summoning my sword and chasing after her. Or the sound of her terror.

I can’t make out her figure through the treetops. I only see flashes of her lacey dress, her stockinged feet, her golden hair.

Baz conjures a ball of fire in his hand. He winds up his arm to throw it.

“You can’t throw fire at Agatha!” I shout. “You might hurt her!”

“My aim is true!” Baz casts, and when his fire launches through the snow-blanketed verdure, hissing against the wet leaves, I hear Agatha’s scream of alarm but not of pain.

However, whatever apprehended her doesn’t appear to have let her go.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, why did it have to be an airborne enemy?

If only I could hurl my sword as reliably as Baz can hurl his flames.

“Hear ye, hear ye!” Baz casts on himself, and then, “Spell something at it, Wellbelove! Off with your head or Another one bites the dust!”

I can’t make out Agatha’s garbled reply from this distance with the wind whipping around my chilled ears, but Baz can. (Damned, impressive vampire hearing.) (Now is not an appropriate time to think about kissing him.) (It has never been a less appropriate time.)

“Isn’t carrying her wand,” Baz repeats darkly. “What is wrong with this girl? Why can’t she be more like Bunce?”

“Don’t talk about Agatha like that,” I gasp, a stitch tearing across my side as I struggle to race alongside Baz in the thick, knee-high snow. “What do we do?”

“Pray the monster likes her too much to eat her,” Baz replies. “If she becomes its bride, I’ll be sure to send an appropriate wedding present.”

“Not. Helping. And what were you doing with her anyway?”

“What did it look like I was doing?” Baz snarls.

I have no idea. (Realizing how much better you fit Agatha than I did?) (That you fit anyone more than me?) “Were you—”

“Assaulting her with a surprise snog session?” Baz asks sharply. “No, I’m not you.”

(I’m about to— I don’t— I can’t—)

Agatha’s scream lances through the air.

The beeches and oaks give way to a cloudless, indigo night sky, the full moon shining overhead and illuminating the snow with crushed, diffuse light.  

We’re on the hills beyond the outer gates, near Ebb’s cabin and the goats.

Fuckitty fuck, not hills.

I clamber over them despite my burning thighs and calf muscles, using my sword like the world’s deadliest and most impractical walking stick.

“Cast something, Snow!” Baz commands, lingering as I mount our steep and icy climbs.

“Like what?”

Baz begins to sing: “By the light of the silvery moon/ I want to spoon/ To my honey I’ll croon love’s tune.”

My heart races at the timber of Baz’s husky voice, at the content of his words. (Sorry, Aggie.) (I really am the worst boyfriend, in addition to the worst Chosen One.) “I can’t cast a song! You do it!”

“It won’t work for me!” Baz says furiously. “Do you want to save Wellbelove or not?”

“Fine!”

I sing the song. I repeat the verse almost a dozen times, shouting the words until my voice cracks and the hills are awash with my magic.

Nothing happens.

Baz is frustrated, perplexed, and a third emotion (or fourth or fifth or sixth) that I can’t place.

A shadow passes over us. I finally see what took Agatha:

It’s a hare.

An enormous, scarlet-gazed hare, its fur as pristine and white as Agatha’s dress, its long ears trailing after its body the same way Agatha’s hair streams in the wind. If it weren’t of such magnitude— and its broad-sword incisors weren’t buried in the neck of Agatha’s gown— I would call it cute. Like a child’s cuddly toy, or a watercolor illustration that hopped out of a book of fables.

Baz’s expression changes.

He’s no longer annoyed.

He’s reminiscent. Betrayed. Aggrieved.

“Shoot at the moon!” he shouts, and his fire strikes the rabbit on its shoulder.

It loosens a terrible shriek, unhooking its maw from Agatha.

She screams as she plummets to the earth.

Instead of casting a spell to slow her descent, I catch her with my whole body, and we both tumble down the hill.

When we finally stop rolling, I examine Agatha for injuries.

She’s fine.

Physically, that is. (Especially after Baz casts her with cleaning and drying spells.) (Agatha winces at the liquid burn of his magic.) (She and Penny can barely tolerate it.)

(The scorch of Baz’s magic is the only heat I can take.)

“That’s it,” she says. “I’ve had it. No more serpents. No more will-o’-wisps. No more selkies or paradisolations or feral rabbits. I don’t care how special this should make me feel. I didn’t choose to risk my life. I didn’t choose to be the girl who’s constantly kidnapped just so she can be rescued. I... I’m choosing something else.”

Something instead of me.

It hurts. (Not being chosen always does.)

But what hurts more is how Baz is staring at the moon and into the distance like he wants to disappear.

I walk with Agatha to the Cloisters. (She refuses to go to the Infirmary.) (Penny could probably heal her just as well as the Nurse.) (I don’t have the energy to talk to Penny tonight; I’ll tell her about the hare tomorrow, before she leaves to celebrate Christmas with her family.)  

I find Baz in Mummers.

I wasn’t sure that he’d be here— as Agatha and I trudged over to the Cloisters, I thought I saw him drift toward the White Chapel.

Toward the Catacombs.

(That made me ignore my muscle soreness and pelt through the snow after him.)

Even though we managed to save Agatha without too much casting or bloodshed, he looks utterly depleted.

I feel similarly carved out.

Probably because Agatha has made our break indefinite.

Although I don’t think that’s the only reason.

“D’you need to hunt?” I ask as I sink face-first into my mattress.

Baz makes a sound that’s too hard, too fractured to be a laugh. “Like I’d drag you out to hunt tonight. You look like you’re dead on your feet.”

“I could still do it,” I protest to my pillow. “You should get some blood before you go to Hampshire tomorrow.”

“I’m not going to Hampshire.”

I rise abruptly. “You’re not going to Hampshire?”

“Are you a broken record, or can you only communicate via mimicry after a certain hour, like a chimpanzee or a parrot?”

“Are you going with your aunt instead?” I hope not. What if she casts some hocus-pocus and learns that I’ve been snogging her nephew at random and repeated intervals?

“No,” Baz says tersely.

“So… you’re staying here.”

The constantly critical nature of Baz’s words means you have to read the variations in his silence. I’ve never mastered this, although I know that Baz’s silences are many: stony, angry, haughty, lost, miserable. They each hide something different.

I can’t categorize this quiet, although it seems closest to Baz’s register for sadness.

(Why?)

“Yes, I’m staying here, Snow.”

“Why?”

“Your Infrangible Affiance, for one.” (Shite.) (Almost forgot about that.) “And this mystery with the hares.”

“I don’t need your help,” I state, remembering the note.

Baz scoffs. “Obviously. That’s how you saved your damsel tonight: by swinging your sword at the air and screaming at the hare until it saw reason and relinquished her.”

“She’s not my damsel,” I growl. “Agatha’s not my… mine. She’s not mine.”

Baz settles back into his wordlessness. It’s eerie whenever he grows silent, mostly because I’m so used to Baz having words for everything— for a reprimand, an insult, a study tip, a spell.

His quietude isn’t revealing, isn’t laying him bare.

It’s another layer of armor I have yet to penetrate.  

“What do you know about the hares?” I ask.

“Beside the sigil on the drawbridge?” Baz asks.

“How did you know about that?” That took me weeks to uncover. (Baz is so smart, he knows bloody everything.)

“I know this school, Snow. I grew up here.”

“So did I.”

“Not like I did,” Baz says. He sounds like he’s in pain. Like he’s forlorn.

(But I can’t solve all his aches by throwing animal carcasses at him to drain.) (I can’t sympathize with his experiences of having a mum who presided over the school before she was killed.)

(I can’t do anything.)

(Or maybe I can.)

Baz is staring at me.

He continues doing so as I walk over to his bed.

He only closes his eyes when we kiss.

Baz.

The inexperienced way Baz reciprocated our first kisses has all but faded away.

(I’m the only one who’s kissed him, I’m sure of it.) (Aleister Almighty.) (How has no one else kissed Baz Pitch before?) (Although it’s hard to believe that anyone is good enough to kiss Baz, let alone me.)

Now, Baz knows how to move his lips.

How to turn his face into mine so our mouths glide and latch onto each other.

How to breathe through his nose, and his mouth when I let him, stealing open-mouthed kisses between his gasps.

How to knot his fingers in my shirt as he scrabbles for purchase on me.

He doesn’t use his tongue unless I catch him unawares.

He never uses his teeth, even though he’d never hurt me.

I want him so badly, it hurts.

I didn’t know I could want something so much.

I don’t tell that to Penny when she’s leaving the next morning. We don’t have enough time to get into another Why did Simon kiss Baz session. (I haven’t told her about the most recent kiss.) (I don’t know how to.)

“You better alert me the moment you and Basil get in over your heads,” Penny says. About the hares. I’m pretty sure. (Although with her insider knowledge, she could be speaking about anything.)

“But your home phone is always busy when I call. Why don’t you have a cellphone?”

“You don’t have one either, Simon.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Tell Basil to cast A little bird told me,” Penny says. “Where is he by the way?”

“Football practice,” I manage to lie smoothly.

(I have no clue where Baz is.) (For the first time ever, he woke up before I did.) (I hope he’s not running away from me.) (Regretting what he’s gotten himself into.)

(I’m glad Penny knows fuck-all about football, because she easily accepts this lie and promises to write me for Christmas.) (She never sends me a gift.) (I prefer it this way since I can never give her anything either.) (We say that our gifts to each other are our friendship, and most of the time, we mean it unironically.)

(I don’t catch Agatha before she goes back home, which is probably for the best.) (I don’t know what we would say to each other.) (I care about her.) (I care about her so much, but…)

The school empties of students and staff. I’m in the vacant dining hall, stuffing myself with pre-holiday brunch before the kitchens close for the holiday. I eat like a bear going into hibernation, and still, I know that won’t be enough.

At least Baz has access to the kitchens.

Which I could utilize if I could find Baz.

Where is he?

Maybe Ebb will have something to eat.

I go to her cabin while I bide my time and wait for Baz to reappear.

Her little cabin is more of a mess than usual, strewn with gold-wrapped Christmas presents, tins of frosted biscuits and crackers, and boxes of tea for her family in London.

“I would’ve gotten ya’ a gift if I knew you were spending the holiday at Watford,” Ebb says sadly.

“S’okay, Ebb.”

“D’you want a pair of Watford’s goat wool mittens and a matching scarf? Or some goat soap with lemon and chamomile? A dozen jars of goat candles?”

“’M good, Ebb.”

“How about goat butter?”

I’m stunned when Ebb gifts me with a heavy, parchment-wrapped pat of homemade goat butter sealed with twine. She also bestows me with a lumpy mound of flour-dusted sourdough to go with it. (Though I’d happily eat the butter alone.)

I fold her in my embrace, holding her tightly to me despite her powerful wet straw and manure odors. I marvel in how much smaller she feels than me now, even though Ebb’s head still comes up to my shoulder. Which she’s crying copiously onto.

Why don’t I visit her more often?

“Cause yer all grown up,” Ebb says when I accidentally voice my thoughts aloud. “Yer not that same twelve-year-old who needed my help with magic.”

“I still need your help with magic,” I honestly tell her. It feels stupid to pretend being the all-seeing, all-powerful Chosen One when I’m with Ebb. “I need everyone’s help with magic. I need, like, a lot of help with magic.”

“Isn’t Young Master Pitch helping ya now? His mum was such a talented mage. He must be the same.”

I grunt my affirmation, thanking the gods that Ebb doesn’t notice me flushing.

I’d be incredibly impressed if she did, given that her eyes are swimming with tears again, as they do when she talks about the dead, the dying.

Ebb knew what happened when Baz’s mum died— does she know about his vampirism, too?

I wish I could ask her.

There’s so much about Baz I wish I could say, so little of it I’m allowed to.

“…Ebb.”

“Mm?” Ebb blows her nose into a crocheted handkerchief stitched with the image of a goat grazing on Watford’s hills.

“That thing you said in second year about… loving people and…losing people.”

Ebb starts hiccupping with sobs. I rub circles on her back, also disentangling the straw and dry leaves from her hair. Although Ebb doesn’t stop crying, her sobs become less violent. That’s something I learned from Ebb: sometimes you don’t comfort people to save them from their pain, to fix it. Sometimes, you just want to be with them.

“Sorry, Simon. ‘Tis the holidays. They’re a lot. I remember Nicky n’ Fi…”

“Is that why you’re alone?” I ask because I’m tactless. (Baz could tell you that.) (Even Penny, in her darker moods.) “In this cabin with the goats? Cause otherwise you’re…”

Too powerful for people to understand?

Too worried about being good enough and loved enough to choose more than seclusion in a hut on the edges of a school full of your fondest childhood memories?

Too terrified of losing more than the nothingness you started out with, ending up an ever-growing, ever-expanding chasm of loneliness and longing?

Ebb is crying too hard to give me a coherent answer. So we drink hot chocolate, spooning the boiling liquid over chunks of rock-hard fruitcake. (Not even Good as new returns Ebb’s fruitcake to a fresh and moist state.)

When I leave, my cheeks are wet with her kisses and tears. I look— and feel— like a wreck.

Baz looks the same in our room.

It’s like we’re back in fifth year, when he returned to Watford grey and sunken with bloodshot eyes.

My magic overflows.

“Crowley, Snow, tamp it down. There aren’t any dark creatures in here other than me.”

“Where were you?” I ask with unintentional vigor.

“Researching.” Baz doesn’t elaborate.

“Researching what?”

“Everything. The Infrangible Affiance, T.H.A.U.M.A.T.U.R.G.I.E.S., the hares, gifts for my six and two-year-old sisters that don’t have choking hazards—”

“You should have been drinking blood.”

“Feasting from the copious blood they serve for pre-hols brunch like good Christians.”

Why is it always one step forward, one step back into a ditch, and the second step off a cliff with him? I should just kiss the insolence off his face. “Christians have eucharist, don’t they? Drinking blood for wine. Come on. We’re going to the Wavering Woods.”

“There aren’t enough animals in the woods at this time of the year,” Baz replies blandly. He doesn’t even tack on or did you miss that section of natural sciences at the end for mean posterity.

“Then, we’re going down to the Catacombs.”

“Fine,” Baz says.

“Fine,” I reply. (I’m unsure if we’re fighting or genuinely agreeing at this point.)

I hate going back into the Catacombs.

It’s black as death down there.

And Baz keeps pulling further and further into the darkness, even when I know he must have gotten his fill of rats.

“Where are you going?” I ask, grabbing his hand.

Baz tugs himself away from me. (My magic spits and sparks.) “Go back upstairs. I’ll give you my key to the kitchens.”

While that’s extremely tempting (there’s a key?) (I thought breaking into the kitchens would involve a highly intricate piece of magic) (I should have tried trespassing earlier)— “No. Come with me. You’re done feeding.”

“But I’m not done here,” Baz lisps through his fangs. “Leave.”

“Why? What do you need? Can’t I—”

Baz doesn’t answer me, and I’m forced to stumble my way back through the darkness when he plumbs the Catacomb’s depths.

The next day, Baz’s more affable insouciance is restored. (Both words I’ve learned this year due to T.H.A.U.M.A.T.U.R.G.I.E.S. remedial lessons.)

We abuse our kitchen privileges in between scavenging for more clues about the hares. Since I divulged the contents of my note to Baz, we’ve been trying to discover where the fifth and sixth hares might be.

For breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I eat scones, scalloped potatoes, French green beans, and sliced ham.

I watch Baz eat the same, combining his exquisite table manners with his fangs.

We even manage to secure a Tupperware of pigs’ blood that Cook Pritchard must have procured for black pudding.

I only coax Baz to drink a bit.

(“It’s one thing if the kitchen staff find stolen food, but stolen blood, Snow? Could it be any more suspicious? Thank Merlin, Morgana, and Methuselah you’re not a vampire.”)

But the teaspoons of blood do improve his complexion. The luster in his hair. The brightness of his eyes.   

I consider it an immense personal accomplishment that I don’t snog him then and there.

On the twenty-third, I begin to get antsy.

Ebb is visiting her family for Christmas, leaving the school uninhabited apart from Baz and me.

We haven’t sighted our newest hare, the one that kidnapped Agatha.

And I haven’t kissed Baz in forever. (Alright, a week.) (Still.)

“I know where the hare is,” Baz admits, but he sounds cagey.

“What?” I leap from the linoleum floor of the kitchens, upending my saucer of split pea soup. “Shite.”

“Clean as a whistle,” Baz casts, bored.

“Why didn’t you say so earlier? Where is it?”

Baz splits a wishbone with his teeth. “In the Weeping Tower.”

“You mean near the Mage’s Office.”

“…Yes.”

“…You want to break into the Weeping Tower?”

Things quickly deteriorate from there.

I may imply that Baz has a villainous agenda. He definitively lambasts me for being “a brainless drone.”

We hunt at a distance in the Catacombs.

Or at least Baz tries to hunt at a distance from me, but I won’t let him.

I’m sick of it.

I found him in fifth year.

I’m not losing him now.

“Go back, Snow,” Baz tells me through a mouth full of fangs.

“No,” I say, and then I recognize where we are. It’s the same room the Sword of Mind led me to. (The same spot where I kissed Baz.) “Why are we here?”

In the flickering firelight that Baz has summoned (he must have wanted me to follow him) (he doesn’t need the fire for himself), I can tell that he’s trying to put up a front.

But his antagonism leaves him as he approaches an elaborate tomb in the center of the crypt. “My family is buried here, Snow. Every headmaster and headmistress. Did you know that?”

No, of course not.

Baz never told me. Not even to mock me for my ignorance of magickal history.

But he’s telling me now.

I find dead flowers by the tomb he’s bent over. They look freshly wilted, their petals dry and brown but still clinging to the stem. It’s as if someone has been replacing them or renewing them with magic. A shining placard is inscribed with the name Natasha Grimm-Pitch.

Fuck.

So this is what the Catacombs mean for Baz. Not simply blood. Or all forms of blood.

I want to do for him what I do for Ebb. Comfort him while his tears dry. Wait until his sadness is no longer at its peak but is receding, even as it leaves silvery traces.

But Baz doesn’t cry. He doesn’t openly grieve. He sounds remarkably calm as he says, “I grew up with her. In the Weeping Tower.”

I grunt in response. I don’t know how to say more. For once, Baz doesn’t tear me to pieces for it.

“It used to have a Nursery,” Baz says, his voice almost nostalgic.

I recover my voice. “Used to?”

“When the vampires attacked, it hid itself away for its failure to protect the children within.”

Like him. Like Baz.

“But it’s still in the school,” he says. “It didn’t disappear. It just concealed itself.”

That’s what we look for on Christmas Eve.

It’s almost too easy for Baz to break into the Weeping Tower. (This school needs better security.) (We’re sixteen-year-olds, for Merlin’s sake— we shouldn’t have unlimited access to school property.) (Like Baz certainly has to the Mage’s office, which I’m putting out of my mind for now.)

Even though it’s simple to access the Weeping Tower, what’s hard is locating where the Nursery has been concealed.

Baz and I wander through the halls of teachers’ offices, past the break room and kitchens, double-checking the bathrooms and closets, but— nothing.

“I’m going to burn this place to the ground,” Baz says, and by the hot, blue orbs of flame he summons, I think he’s serious.

“Wait.” I’m desperate enough to start casting my own spells: “Show yourself!” “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

Still, no nursery.

“Where do you remember the door being?” I ask.

“I was five years old, Snow!” Baz cries semi-hysterically. “Like I could remember the layout of a multistory building!”

I tell myself there must be other ways to calm him down than kissing him. I’m struggling to come up with them.

I just want Baz to be safe.

No, that’s not it.

If there’s no reversing his vampirism, if there’s no going back in time to protect him from the traumas that the hares resurrect from his past, I want him to be where it’s safe for him to hurt.

(I want to be that harbor—that broken, imperfect sanctuary for him.)

“Morgana’s tooth.”

A door appears in front of us. Presumably the Nursery’s. I hope. I’m going through it all the same. Baz goes alongside me. (Demonstrating once and for all that he is just as foolhardy an adventurer as he’s always accused me and Penny of being.) (I’ll write her with the news.) (If we survive this.)

The Nursery doesn’t look like something that could kill us. Other than the windows being blocked out by earth and vines, like this ground-level building was swallowed beneath the Weeping Tower’s floor, it resembles a quaint children’s play area. There are toys, pillows, and a serpentine train track snaking in wide loops across the carpet, toy trains resting on their sides.

That innocent impression falls apart when we enter the next room, a domed space with cribs lining the walls, futons unfurled at their feet, and an immense fireplace cut into the far side of the stone.

In the center of the room, where there should be building blocks and children’s books, are rings of ash.

Auburn blood that’s so old it’s nearly black.

The empty circles at the center of the cinder piles make it appear as if they contained something solid, substantial, and flesh-like before it… disintegrated.

The blood on the dusty, carpeted floor is no more than a couple of drops. The same amount you’d lose if you pricked your finger to enter the room at Mummers.

Or if you were a child with a vampire’s teeth buried in your neck.

“Don’t go off, Snow,” Baz says in the coldest voice I’ve heard from him. It’s also hushed. As if there were the ghosts of young ones asleep in their beds.

Trying to reign in my tumultuous, unbridled magic— or because I need to see him— I grab Baz and turn him toward me.

“Is this where it happened?” I ask too loudly.

“Surely you’re enough of a junior detective to have deduced that,” Baz replies, his face turned away from me. His head is lowered toward the floor. I think I see the flash of teeth. Or tears.

That’s enough to compel me to kiss him.

Baz doesn’t let me.

Placing an icy hand over my mouth, he pushes me back. I keep him trapped in my arms, unable to tread over the ash. Over his old blood.

“Enough of this, Simon,” Baz says. (He’s not crying.) (He’s glaring.) (He’s gritting his teeth.) (He called me Simon.) “I’m not a pitiful child anymore, a toddler whose injuries you can make disappear by Kissing it better. My family already tried that, so if you think that you can rescue me from my monstrous misery with your heroic kisses, save yourself the spit and mental effort.”

“I’m not thinking that,” I say, although I wish I could. “I’m not thinking at all.”

“Even more reason for this façade to stop.” Baz tugs away from me and throws a ball of fire through the grate of the hearth. The tinder explodes in terrifying brilliance.

I seize Baz again and draw him toward me, not just because he’s flammable and the fire is roaring too high. “It’s not a façade,” I say. “I want to kiss you.”

Baz snarls. “I’ve heard as much from Penelope Bunce. Tell me something I don’t know.”

(Wait, Penny’s been talking to Baz about me kissing him?) (When— why— what— Penny!)

(What happened to our no secrets pact? I might go off from sheer embarrassment.)     

“Why aren’t you letting me kiss you now?” No, wait, that’s obvious: this is a godawful moment to unthinkingly kiss somebody. When they’re processing years-old pain. What I want to know is, “Why did you let me kiss you before? Every other time.”

Baz says nothing.

He shrugs me off and stalks around the room, in the inner circle of the empty cribs, his shoes leaving soft impressions in the shag carpet.

I interrupt his path. Not touching him. Just standing before him.

“Baz,” I say. “Did you want to kiss me, too?”

“What does it matter?”

“It fucking matters.”

“Because heroes can’t kiss hapless victims? Or because it’s a feather in your cap, an accomplishment worth puffing your chest over to have someone eagerly anticipating your kisses?”

“Not ‘someone’— you!” It’s so hard not to touch him right now. To not press his withdrawn face against mine and pry him open. “I want you to want to kiss me! Only me. And the only one I want to kiss is you. I want us to have that with each other all the time, not just when we’re killing monsters.”

Baz doesn’t say anything, shaking his head.

My stomach drops. My magic flares, causing the cobwebs and dust and ashes scattered about the Nursery to quake.

I think he’s rejecting me, but then he says, “We can’t do that. Not us, Simon.”

He says he can’t.

Not that he doesn’t want to.

If his only reasons are stupid ones— political reasons, social reasons, class issues, species differences— I don’t want to hear them.

I’d rather kiss him instead.

So I do.

Baz sighs against my lips.

He tangles his hands in my hair, closing his fists around my curls. Tugging, then gently petting, alternating with the pressure of his mouth on mine.

He’s never touched me like this.

Grabbing, exploring me back.

Maybe he’s always wanted to.

But then, he’s turning his lips away from mine.

I’m about to growl his name, demand that he kiss me again, when I notice that Baz is staring at the ceiling.

Above us, there’s a mural painted in periwinkles and midnight blues and violets depicting the swirling and silken night sky. It’s studded with diamond stars, wisps of clouds, the burning dots of distant planets.

The focal point of the skyscape is a rabbit in the shape of a moon. Its body is curled into itself, eyes closed, and its tail and ears are pressed back as it rests in a deep and easy slumber.

“This is the fifth hare?” I ask.

Baz nods.

“A moon hare,” I say. “That would explain why it kidnapped Agatha on a full moon. But why would they paint a kidnapping hare in a Nursery?”

“It’s not a kidnapping hare, as you so eloquently put it,” Baz replies. He sounds breathless. When he parts his lips to continue speaking, I steal a kiss. Baz moans in surprise and then draws away after four, five, six seconds. “Stop that, you nightmare.” His whispering words aren’t very convincing.

“You want this. Admit it.”

“The hare probably thought it was rescuing Wellbelove,” Baz says, admitting nothing. “It’s supposed to spirit people to where they feel safe. Happy. Like the moon. That’s why the children burned incense for it and gave it cakes as offerings.”

“Is that what you did? Here? Before…”

“Yes.”

I want to tell Baz that the Normals in my first orphanage never performed any strange rituals like sacrificing desserts to rodent deities. But we slept altogether like this. In a room so much smaller and bleaker and barer than this.

I want Baz to tell me more about who he was as a child, when he grew up with his mum at Watford.

I want him to tell me about afterwards. When he learned he was a vampire, when he got his step-mum and his half-sister, when he practiced his first incantations, when he had to be careful so fire wouldn’t burn him.

There are so many things I want from him, it feels like I’ll never get enough.

Like there will always be this hunger inside me.

This hole that gets bigger and bigger as my need for Baz expands.

And I’ll never be able to fill it—

“What the fuck?” Baz says.

The air leaves the Nursery as if we’re truly underground. Buried below the earth where no oxygen exists. No life. No magic.

The Humdrum.

There’s a terrible roar, and the grating of claws on stone, and the moon rabbit emerges from the mural, landing with an earth-shaking thud on the carpet below.

But this isn’t the same soft, gentle, and inquisitive hare that “rescued” Agatha.

The hare has become like the Humdrum’s other beasts: violent, desperate, and hollow.

I summon my sword, even though I don’t want to kill it.

Baz releases his wand, even though he can’t possibly want to wound it, either, given his memories.

The Humdrum doesn’t give us any choice.

“Nighty night!” Baz casts, but the sleep spell only bounces off the hare’s fat, furry body. “Back to start!” he exclaims, but the rabbit refuses to reenter the sky.

I leap in front of Baz when the hare charges him, parrying its teeth with my blade.

Even though I’m a far better swordsman than when I was twelve and countering the Serpent, I strain to halt the hare’s twitchy, muscled body.

Baz points his wand over my shoulder and chants:

“Little Peter Rabbit had a fly upon his nose,

Little Peter Rabbit had a fly upon his nose.

Little Peter Rabbit had a fly upon his nose,

So he flipped it and he flopped it,

And the fly flew away!”

If Baz intends for the rabbit to interpret the Humdrum as a fly, it doesn’t work.

Screeching, it disentangles its teeth from my sword and tries to pierce me between its maws.

I barely leap back in time, dragging Baz with me.

“I’m going to go off,” I say, feeling the magic popping and crackling as it unfurls in a staticky wave from my body.

“Don’t go off,” Baz says, pointing his wand again:

“Powder puffs and curly whiskers,

Powder puffs and curly whiskers,

Powder puffs and curly whiskers,

And he flipped it, and he flapped it, and it flew away!”

In the middle of its stampede, the hare rears back, whipping its head to and fro as if it is trying to dispel the Humdrum’s powers like a pest.

It doesn’t work. It bounds toward Baz and me.

I block it from swiping Baz. Its other paw cuffs me, sending me crashing into a crib and onto the floor, my ears ringing, nose bleeding.

“Simon!”

Through my double vision, I see Baz leap onto the hare from behind. It shrieks as he buries his face in its neck.

I stab it with the Sword of Mages, drawing my blade down the center of its belly as if it were a toy, and I were cutting the fabric for cotton. Only blood and entrails pour out.

The hare doesn’t stop twitching and panting until Baz withdraws from it, wiping the blood with his sleeve. Then, the rabbit is finally still again.

I close its eyes, the way it should appear in the mural.

“Into thin air!” Baz casts, but his magic is too exhausted. The hare doesn’t move, staining the Nursery with more blood, more ruin.

He throws a ball of fire onto it instead, lighting it up.

He seems so spent and miserable. I shouldn’t give into my urges and kiss him now, so I don’t.

Instead, he kisses me.

Hungrily, achingly. Using his tongue. Being mindful of his fangs.

“This is a terrible idea,” he gasps.

“Kissing you… ah… after the precious place from your childhood was… mmm… destroyed?”

“It was destroyed when the vampires came in,” Baz says into my mouth. He tugs me closer by my curls, digging his fingers into my hair. He really has a thing for it.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remember that Baz was complaining about something.

(He’s always complaining.) (How can he be complaining now?) (This is bloody perfect.) (Apart from the Humdrum’s monster trying to kill us.)

“What’s terrible?” I recall him saying.

“You. Me.” Baz punctuates each word with a kiss. Aleister Crowley, if only he did this every time he spoke. I can imagine us kissing through study sessions. Through mundane conversations.

“Do you want me?” I ask, although it feels obvious.

“You’re the Mage’s Heir,” Baz replies. “I’m from the Old Families. You’re a hero. I’m a vampire.”

“That’s not true.”

“Those are all facts, you gorgeous idiot.”

I kiss further insults from Baz’s mouth. (I also lick away his surprising compliment.) “Do you want me?”

“Yes,” Baz breathes.

I barely hold my magic down.

“Then, if it’s a terrible idea, it’s a good thing I want to be your terrible boyfriend.”

Baz makes an inarticulate noise against my mouth.

“Do you want that?”

Baz doesn’t respond with words. Instead, he rips the chain bearing my cross from my neck and discards it onto the floor.

(On Christmas morning, I wake up in Mummers with thoroughly swollen lips, tasting faintly of blood.)

(For the remainder of Christmas holiday, Baz and I try to determine what the sixth hare might be, though we don’t discover it on campus.) (Nor can we access the Nursery again.) (It’s been swallowed even deeper into the Weeping Tower, into the heart of Watford.)

(When term resumes, Penny and Baz study relentlessly for T.H.A.U.M.A.T.U.R.G.I.E.S. I scrape by, hoping that I obtained passing marks so I won’t be held back during our seventh year.)

(By May, the Mage has returned from his journey.) (He won’t tell me where he’s been, only that he’s made progress on the Humdrum front.) (I ask about the hares.) (He says he doesn’t know a thing about them.)

(As I’m rooting through the closet for my old red ball, I stumble across the sixth hare by accident. I’m looking for my ball because Baz insists that he didn’t throw it away after our first year, and I find myself needing it more and more when I can’t kiss him.) (Instead, I rediscover my old boater hat.) (When I turn it over, considering tossing it to the merwolves, a hare falls out.) (I guffaw embarrassingly loudly when I realize that I pulled a rabbit out of a hat like a Normal magician. When I put the hat back on it, it disappears, never to be seen again.) 

(At the end of the school year, Baz and I dissolve the Infrangible Affiance. Sort of. We still don’t entirely understand what it wants from us. As is usually the case with my magic.) (We do know that it won’t kill Baz or me if I take off my cross or if Baz hunts alone.) (We conducted some very careful and very reckless tests before we’d have to separate for the summer.) (I hate that we have to.) (Baz calls me a numpty and takes the sting off by kissing me.)

(On the last day of sixth year, I ask the Mage if it’s necessary for me to go back to the Normal world, to the boys’ homes. He says it’s more necessary than ever. The Old Families are vying for power. The Grimms and Pitches can’t be trusted. Dead spots are expanding, eating up the magickal world like burns in a piece of canvas.) (I ask if I can at least have a cellphone.) (He says he’ll look into it.)

(Before we leave Mummers for the summer, I kiss Baz in our room until he’s speechless. Until he can’t express doubts that we’re boyfriends, even if we’re terrible ones.) (Until my frustration, my emptiness eases, just a little, until the time when I can get my fill of him next fall.) (I can survive it, even if the Mage hasn’t given me a phone.)  

(After all, I don’t need to worry about Baz anymore. Not as my enemy. Not as the monster I have to slay.)

(That only leaves the Humdrum.)

Chapter Text

Book 7: Simon Snow and the Seventh Oak

XIX. BAZ

The night before I leave for Watford, I’m biding my time at one of my family’s late summer weddings. I barely know my seventh cousin Lycidas Jr. Grimm and his bride Despairatonnia Burdz, but that doesn’t spare me from suffering through their nuptials.

I’m usually partial to weddings. Although they’re as appallingly heterosexual and manipulative as other Old Family get-togethers, they have the bonus of honoring love, which I’m too soft-hearted a fool to scoff at.

As I attend the reception, dancing with distant relatives’ frisky grandmothers and my precocious little sister, I imagine being able to dance with Snow instead.

(I’d much prefer him groping me in the place of these eighty-year-old cougars.) (I’d even prefer him stepping on my feet as opposed to Mordelia, who does it not so much out of inability as to torture me.)

Obviously, that could never happen—Snow and I dancing under a black canvas tent illuminated by magickal lantern light. My family would literally roast him alive.

But I’m entitled to imagine it on the grounds that if it weren’t for our opposing political sides in this war, we could very well be dancing together at a wedding.

Because Simon Snow is my boyfriend.

Crowley.

I can scarcely believe it.

Probably because my current family gathering reminds me how impossible our situation is, for this Grimm wedding is as much about the Old Families celebrating holy matrimony between husband and wife as it is an excuse to plot our next moves against the Mage:

Wedding guests are editing drafts of critical editorials lampooning Watford’s headmaster over cocktails and slices of chocolate cake.

They’re discussing new ways to humiliate the Mage’s Men in public as they do the foxtrot in their loafers and stilettos.

They’re complaining about the Mage’s taxes and how to evade them while comparing lavish wedding gifts.

And they keep approaching me and asking on the sly how my spying and machinations against the Mage’s Heir are going. If I’ve uncovered his fatal flaw yet.

Sure, I don’t tell them. Simon Snow has a weakness for bloodsucking monsters whose families want to ruin his mentor and throw him into a dungeon (at best) or cast him back onto the Normal streets of Liverpool (at worst.)

Instead of divulging these terrible secrets, I sneer and tell the Families that I’ve got it handled.

I don’t.

If I thought that living with Simon without having him was like burning up from being too close to the sun, being apart from him while knowing that I could have his kisses and grins and clumsy buffoonery any time I want is a living (or undead) hell.

I’ve developed some truly unwise methods to cope.

One is my new smoking habit. Which I’m currently nursing as I escape from reception attendees who are too drunk to navigate the outskirts of the gardens.

(I can’t go back to the carriage house after Father found me smoking there in July; he got the closest that I’ve seen him to having a conniption.)

Snow is entirely to blame for the many, many packets of cigarettes I’ve gone through. Not that I’ll ever tell him that. He’d go mad the moment he discovered I was inhaling smoke and sparks for pleasure.

(I’d tell him that he’s to blame for my oral fixation. Which he is.) (He’s not responsible for my predilection toward going down in flames, but he also doesn’t diminish it.) (Actually, maybe I should let Snow “uncover” my habit when we’re back at Watford— it could lead to some very enticing alternatives to feed my addiction…)

“Make a wish!”

My cigarette extinguishes before I can bring it to my lips.

Crowley’s beard.

Fiona invades my hiding spot behind the trellises. Twirling her wand between her black-painted fingers, she ducks under the curtains of wisterias, jasmine, and clematis that I’d hoped would block me from the view of the tent and gazebo. (And dampen the scent of my tobacco with floral perfumes.)

(I guess I didn’t account for one drunk wedding guest infiltrating my hideaway.) (Although Fiona smells surprisingly… lucid.) (For her.) (She’s mostly gunpowder and quartz instead of cloves and alcohol.) (She smells like the flint that strikes the spark.)

“Aren’t you developing all sorts of self-destructive behaviors, boyo?” Fiona asks, like she has the right to talk about healthy lifestyles.

She plucks my cigarette from my hands and has the audacity to relight it between her own lips. Taking a slow, deep drag, she arches her eyebrow at me and leans against the garlanded, wooden grate.

(Snow’s right; my aunt can be a right bitch.) (Not that he meant to admit that.) (Not that I didn’t rake him over the coals for it.) (Not that I’m telling her even though it’s true.) (She’d make my life a worse hell than it already is.) (Because she’s a bitch.)

“I deserve something after a night of old biddies pinching my arse under the pretenses of dancing,” I say, pulling another cigarette from my pack, but not to light it. I simply beat it against my thigh to annoy Fiona. (It works; I relish her royally pissed expression.) (I can be a right bitch, too.)

“Hit the champagne instead,” says Fiona. “Don’t wanna singe your new suit, do you?” Which isn’t all she wants me to avoid singeing.

The veiled allusions to my vampirism are somewhat jarring after a year of Snow’s tactless comments. His curiosity. His tongue jamming brashly between my fangs.

(And for the record, I’d never damage my new suit, my vampirism notwithstanding. It’s double-breasted, iridescent forest green that morphs under the moonlight.) (I wish I could show it off to Snow.)

“Why are you here, Fi? You hate weddings.”

She’s clearly not dressed for one, not according to the Old Families’ dress standards.

The platforms on Fiona’s combat boots make her almost as tall as me. Her tattered tulle, loose corset, and the runs in her fishnets make her look like a punk who fell asleep on the docks in the 80s and only now woke up in 2012. A counter-culture Rip Van Winkle.

“It’s an important family event,” Fiona says airily, blowing smoke into the morning glories. “You know me. Always here to support the family.”

That’s one of the worst lies I’ve heard her utter. “You always say you’re not related to the Grimms.”

“I’m related to you, ain’t I?”

“Right. You care about Lycidas Jr. and Despairatonnia Grimm. Which is why you bought an adequate gift for the happy couple.”

“Got something better.” Reaching into her corset, Fiona withdraws a letter. It’s grease-smudged, dog-eared. The paper is covered in sloppy, painfully familiar writing from a dying ballpoint pen. “A gift for you.”

How—

Fuck.

I immediately light the letter up. (Not just because this paper has been pressed against my aunt’s breasts.) (Although that’s a contributing factor.)

“There’s more where that came from.” Fiona lifts another letter— which I burn— and a third— which I also set a flame— and a fourth, which I give up on igniting.

I don’t give up on retrieving them, though.

“If lost, please return to owner!” I shout, pointing my wand at my aunt’s chest. (This is a deeply unsettling scenario in more ways than one.)

“Finders keepers, losers weepers!” Fiona retaliates, keeping the letters trapped beneath her clothing.

“To each their own!”

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law!”

The letters stay resolutely in Fiona’s amoral possession.

I’d cast Return to sender if only that wouldn’t launch the notes straight back to their sender: Simon Snow.

That was the second bad habit I developed this summer apart from smoking: exchanging letters with my secret boyfriend.

The Mage doesn’t see fit to equip him with a cellphone, even though Snow could be attacked at any time outside of Watford and have no way to call someone for help. (The Mage deserves all the scorn my family piles onto him.) Snow’s also too poor to own a laptop; the school lends him one when he returns for the year and takes it back at the end of every spring. And the last time he tried to send me an e-mail from his public library, he almost went off. (I refuse to disclose the details of why or how.)

Which means that, due to Snow’s lack of access to technology, we’ve been forced to communicate the analogue way: writing letters to each other.

Leaving a paper trail.

Which is why I initially refused to do it. But Snow remembered my address from his last traumatic visit to my house. In mid-June, he sent me a note asking innocently about my summer and damningly about my diet.

I replied by asking how he could be such a numpty as to include sensitive information about my monstrosity in one of the Postal Services’ possible mail mishaps. Then, I sent more letters to ensure that Snow hadn’t died in whatever Normal hovel he’d been exiled to.

(Snow tells me very little about it; I think he’s mostly trying to forget he’s there.) (That’s why he’s writing me.) (Using me.) (Use me however you want, Simon.) (Use me up.)

(Snow doesn’t.) (Instead, he tells me how much he misses being at Mummers together; how we should play football when we get back on the pitch; how he wishes we could go on vacation, just the two of us, maybe next summer, picnicking and day tripping like proper boyfriends—)

“Why were you going through my room?” I hiss at Fiona, looming over her. (Because I’m unable to wrest my letters from her.) (For now.) (I’m not stopping until I retrieve them.) (Cross my heart, hope to die, again.)

“I was merely looking for my beloved nephew when, lo and behold, I find these instead.” Fiona’s eyes flash, undaunted by my physical advantage. (My many physical advantages.)

“Apis’s sacred bullshit. I cast There’s nothing to see here. How far did you go to find them? Did you cast There’s nowhere left to hide in my room?”

I don’t ask why she thought to look because that’s mortifying. And because I already know.

“Does it matter how I found the Mage’s Heir’s love letters to you?” Fiona holds one by its corner like it’s dripping with poison.

“They’re not love letters.”

“Oh, so the Chosen One doesn’t whine like a dog about missing your arse? He doesn’t go on and on about his sappy and cliché vacation fantasies? He doesn’t mention that you’re a fucking vampire?”

(I can’t remember the last time my aunt or any of my family explicitly acknowledged that I’m a vampire.)

“Ix-nay on the am-pire—”

“Don’t you cast that on me!” Fiona cries, deflecting my spell with an incantation-less slash of her wand. (She looks horrified that I tried Ix-nay, which is a Coven-level spell— a terrible one.) (But I can’t take the way she says “vampire” in connection to me.) “I should be fucking casting that on you! How could you tell him, Basil?”

I refuse to answer her.

“You’re Tash’s son! Her only child. How could you be so stupid?”

That I can’t take lying down. (One, because my T.H.A.U.M.A.T.U.R.G.I.E.S. marks were exceptional.) (In my letter to Snow, I both derided him and was genuinely relieved to hear he barely passed.)

(Two, because Fiona’s words about Mother always cut deepest since she knew her and loved her more than any of us.)

“I didn’t tell him,” I grit out.

“That makes it so much fucking worse!” Fiona shrieks. (Did one of us cast Silence is golden? Or make sure the other wedding guests are thoroughly inebriated and won’t remember overhearing this in the morning?) (Father might just let me get away with killing them.) (Regardless of their newly married statuses.) “This is what I warned Malcolm about when you were a hapless little sprog. Why I kept telling you not to get close.”

I could lie, telling my aunt that it isn’t serious. Just a fling with the Mage’s Heir to blow off some steam, to decompress from exams, to potentially deceive and wound him.

But she’s read my letters. His letters.

She knows.

Or so she should know, which is why I say, “Simon Snow is not a threat to me.”

Fiona laughs hard, cruelly. “Because he’s boyish and handsome? A good shag? A fucking hero? Wake up and smell the fucking roses, Baz— he’s a threat to all of us, especially you.”

Before I can respond, the magickally amplified clinking of glass cuts through the air, followed by Father’s booming voice:

“All Family members, gather in the drawing room for a post-ceremony meeting. We have important matters to discuss. Please leave children and plus-ones in the library and dining room.”

Lovely.

Our family meeting transpires in the usual fashion: within a curtained room that blocks out the external world, our long table dressed in a funerial black cloth, and candles burning in the eye sockets of yellowed skulls dripping with wax.

It’s not a dissimilar aesthetic from the ebony-and-crimson wedding.

Could we be more of a poster image for the Mage’s villainizing rhetoric?

Father is no doubt saying something that belongs on a script for Major Antagonists.

But I’m too distracted by my whisper match with Fiona to hear him. (We’ve cast Hear no evil on our corner of the table.) (We’re not the only ones who aren’t listening to the meeting, nor are we the most overt about it.)

“You should’ve gotten rid of him like we planned in your fifth year—”

“You didn’t tell me what the recorder did. If I’d known—”

“You’d have what? Done all the soppy, gallant shit the Mage’s Heir writes about in his letters? What a fucking blowhard—”

“I will incinerate them on your body, Fiona—”

“Why couldn’t you have avoided our family curse? Your mum might’ve lowered herself by marrying a Grimm, but you could have redeemed us, Basil. You could’ve been the one Pitch not to throw your lot in with a piece of shit bloke—”

“What was your poison, fucking Normals? At least Simon Snow is better than that—”

“The fuck he is! It makes me wanna gag thinking about the Mage’s Heir getting his hands on you—”

“Then don’t think about it. Which is what you should’ve been doing instead of searching my room like one of the Mage’s merry Men—”

“Oh, I’m going to reflect long and hard before I decide what I’m doing to the Mage’s Heir—”

“Don’t you dare—”

“Ahem.”

Fiona and I turn to Father, who’s glaring at us. (And hasn’t overheard our trenchant argument, or he’d be doing far more than that.)

“As I was saying,” Father resumes, snapping his fingers at the other members of the table who are distracted by their cellphones or drowsy with drink. “Now is the time for us to act against the Mage. Every day that he fails to destroy the Humdrum, more magic leaves our world. It is evident that the Families’ magic is weakening, thinning. The revered leader of the Coven is exploiting that to impose new taxes, new limitations on our freedom of speech, and new bans on all our traditions. We will need everyone’s cooperation to launch a counterassault to protect the magic that remains among us.”

Fiona looks like Christmas has come early, grinning wickedly.

All my neurons are firing, preemptively developing strategies to prevent the Families from incapacitating Snow for political reasons and Fiona from killing him for personal ones.

“Basilton, Dev, and Marcus”— Dev and Marcus put their phones away; I’m almost certain that Dev was complaining about the meeting with Niall while Marcus was betting his inheritance on virtual football— “are more useful to our cause as spies in Watford than as soldiers out in the field. This year, you three must be particularly vigilant for the Mage and the Chosen One.”

Neither Dev nor Marcus seems happy about this added responsibility, because what seventeen and fifteen-year-old would gladly sign away their free weekends to spy on a madman and his trigger-happy lapdog? (I may love Snow until my dying breath— until the planets grow cold and the universe constricts on itself— but I have eyes.) (And brains, despite what Fiona thinks.) (Sorry, love.)

“Spying should be Baz’s job, given that he’s Snow’s roommate and his best mate,” Dev says unironically.

(My minion will rue this day.) (Marcus, too, for nodding like an oblivious idiot while his phone beeps to the rhythms of his virtual football match.)

Father’s face solidifies into an even more nefarious mask, which is how I know he’s wondering how his life has come to this.

“Will that be a problem, Basilton?” he asks me.

That won’t be the problem so much as my intentions to keep Snow around until I lose my virginity. At the very least.

“I told you, Father: I have my plans.” (I’m not referring to my plans for Snow to deflower me; Father will forever remain ignorant to those.) (Fiona is probably painfully enlightened after reading our letters, which weren’t graphic so much as pitifully adolescent.)

Father is not assuaged by my statement, but he can’t get into a row before our audience.  

When the meeting comes to a foreboding and slightly hungover close, I evade Fiona while casting the only spell I can think of to get my letters back, an incantation that would make my skeletal predecessors roll around in the Catacombs. (Not for lack of skill.) (It’s another highly difficult, Coven-level spell: “Everything that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.”)

(I fear that if the incantation works and the letters do return to me, it’ll be in the form of toads or missing socks.) (But that night as I’m packing and listening to Rock and Roll Suicide on repeat, they knock lightly against my window, transformed into paper cranes and origami dragonflies.)

(I’ve never cast the spell before, so I don’t know how to undo it.) (The letters beat their brittle wings above my bed until the song’s refrain, at which point I burn them, and they descend as twinkling lights and ash on my sheets.)

“Oh no, love! you're not alone
No matter what or who you've been
No matter when or where you've seen
All the knives seem to lacerate your brain
I've had my share, I'll help you with the pain
You're not alone…”

The drive to Watford is a surreal reversal of my first year, when Father was trying to cajole me into making Snow my ally as opposed to my enemy.

As we surmount the hills to the gates, Father doesn’t tell me that I should prepare myself to betray my roommate for good, but he does communicate as much with his side glances and Hector Berlioz’s ominous Symphonie Fantastique playing on the radio.

I don’t tell him never, I’d rather set myself on fire than do anything to harm Simon.

Because how am I supposed to protect that beautiful numpty from the sidelines if Father suspects I’m using my new spying duties to do the opposite of what the Families want? To safeguard my boyfriend instead of get revenge on him and his mentor?

As neither of us are willing to say what we really mean, the most vocal communication that passes between me and Father throughout our car ride is Father getting into a coughing fit as he tries and fails to start a conversation.

The most he says is when we part ways beyond the gate. He reminds me to write to Daphne, and if I discover anything about the Mage’s schemes, to get in touch with him; he approves of my plans to take classes that focus on the business and economics route I intend to pursue in college, only two years away; and he tells me to be careful.

I say “yes, sir” on all fronts, interpreting his commands as they suit my desires.

And then he’s gone, leaving me at Watford.

I’ve never been happier to be here.

I think this is the first year I’ve felt that returning to Watford is returning home. Not the home I expected to return to when I was eleven, my mind ambling down the primrose path of my toddler memories. 

This is the place where I’ve learned magic, and where I befriended and fell in love with Simon.

(And where he’s fallen in love with me.) (I think.)

(He hasn’t said it in so many words, but then, neither have I; I feel that it’s obvious enough for even him to get, and if he needs me to explain it to him, I won’t. I’m going to make him work for it.)

(The last time I wrote to him was three weeks ago, before he got the Mage’s permission to visit Penelope Bunce and help her boring father with his research on dead spots.) (It’s good he didn’t send me a letter then, or Fiona would’ve had no choice but to relay it to Father and the Families and wouldn’t that be a hit to my reputation.)

(Did Snow sleep in her bed again while they were on the road like hearty explorers?) (He’s lucky I’m not jealous enough to incinerate him.) (If it was Wellbelove, sure, I’d have taken both me and Snow out in a torrent of hellfire. But I’ve spoken enough about my passionate, amorous love for Snow with Bunce that I’m confident she’s unsympathetic and disturbed by my feelings.)

When I arrive in Mummers, in our room, Snow isn’t here yet.

There’s no new blood on the door. His uniform is still perfectly laid out on the foot of his bed.

(I’m glad I beat him here.) (This way the Mage won’t have time to brainwash him, persuade Snow that our dalliance was a fever dream, a fit of madness he needs to cure himself of as the new stage of our war begins.)

(Though I know he’ll try, try to use Snow like the Old Families are using me.) (They’re more alike than either of them is willing to admit.)

(But Snow won’t easily fold to him.)

(Will he?)

(He didn’t say that his mind or feelings for me had changed at any point this summer.)

(Did they?)

(He should still want me.)

(Right?)

(But what if being with the Bunces convinced him that he’d prefer loving someone on the side of the Coven, of the light?)

(But what if being with chavvy Normals in his dilapidated boys’ home proved to him that he wasn’t gay after all? Or that he simply wasn’t gay for me, a vampire?)

(Which is my biggest concern— what if his remove from me enabled Snow to see reason? That loving a vampire is like loving a black hole, something that takes without ever giving back?)

“Baz!”

Simon Snow is standing in the doorway.

As is the case after every summer, his skin is stretched too thin over his bones, like butter scrapped into toast. (Snow would enjoy that analogy.) But his time with the Bunces has been good for him.

His t-shirt and jeans fit him for once (likely due to Bunce casting Fits like a glove on her family’s ocean of secondhand clothes). His curls are growing back. And his eyes are bright, lively blue.

“Si—”

Snow’s lips are on mine before I can finish speaking.

(I suppose he didn’t forget his infatuation with me after all.) (Merciful Morgana, the way this boy kisses.)

He’s currently backing me up against my bedpost, kissing me so thoroughly that my thoughts and worries dissolve like spiderwebs studded with raindrops, like monuments spun from sugar.

All I’m conscious of are his hands clutching my hips; his tongue swirling over my fangs, teasing them to drop; and how he brings every point of our bodies into contact (fuck), lighting me up from the inside and out.

Oh, I missed this.

The smell of him— the taste of him.

The weight of his body, his muscles rolling against me.

The heat of his skin and his panting, gasping breath.

The softness of his hair, how he moans into my mouth when I tug it.