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Simon
I don’t think any of us will ever forget the day the visitings start.
~~*~~
It’s already been an unusual start to the school year, what with Baz not showing up for the back to school picnic. But then Pen and I are at breakfast the morning after—I’ve just jammed a hot buttered scone into my mouth and I’m busy trying to both breathe and eat through the burning pain—when the first scream rings out.
It’s a kid I barely recognize–a second or third year. She shrieks “Nan!” and turns to run.
There’s a figure at the door. A shambling, mouldy-grey figure. I can’t see it clearly from this distance, but there’s something wrong about the way it moves, the way it holds its head. I’m rushing through the incantation for my sword before I’ve even thought about it, and then I’m rushing forward, magickal sword leading the way.
I know without seeing it that Penny’s at my side, purple ring held high. I hear her shout something. “Freeze!” I think, and the thing in the doorway stops moving.
I’m close enough now to see it. And to smell it. A heavy odor of rot assaults my nose. And that’s not even the worst part. The thing I’m looking at—the person I’m looking at? Who that kid called “nan?”---is maybe not a person. Not a living person anyways. Its skull is wreathed with dirt clotted white curls, it has hollow sockets where eyes should be, and everywhere I look, it’s got bits falling off of it. Even as I stare in horrified disgust, an ear begins to slide slowly down the side of its head to splat on the floor.
I’m frozen as still as if Penny’s spell worked on me. I know my mouth is hanging open because the smell is flooding into my nose through the back of my throat as well. That thought is enough to have me snapping my mouth closed before I start to taste the fucking thing.
“Simon!” Penny shouts. “Cut off its head!”
“What good will that do?” I shout back. Even to my own ears, I sound hysterical. “It’s already dead!”
“It’s looking for brains,” she says urgently. She’s caught up to me now and doesn’t need to shout anymore. “Cutting off its head ends the magic. Besides, there’s no way for it to eat the brains if it has no head.”
“What the fuck, Penny!” I groan, but my sword is already whistling through the air. The zombie—it’s got to be a zombie, right?—barely wobbles when I slice through its spinal column. But when its head is fully severed from its body, the body drops to the ground like its mouldy skull was a string holding it up.
The momentum from my swing sends the head flying over several tables to land with a sickening splat in a warming tray of scrambled eggs. It’s hard to tell the flying egg bits from the flying brain bits, so I look away, feeling nauseated.
I may never eat eggs again.
I’m panting a bit, more from shock than tiredness, I think. I hardly used any energy—it was barely even a fight. I look around. There’s no sign of any more undead, and the students are creeping back, though only to gather their bookbags. I don’t think anyone is hungry after that.
I look down again at the remains of…of the remains? The corpse of the corpse? What the fuck do I call it?
I may be a little hysterical.
I don’t even realize that I’m shaking until Penny rubs a soothing hand up and down my arm. I cover her hand with my free one, grateful to have her here. “Pen, can you…” I mutely gesture at the pile of former zombie. I don’t want to do the disappearing spell myself and leave a crater in the Great Hall like I did when I disposed of that Goblin cabby.
“Of course, Simon,” she says. Then she points her purple gem at the thing and says, “Into Thin Air!” After, she walks over to the serving table and does the same for the creature’s head. All of the eggs vanish too, thank Merlin.
When she returns and takes my arm again, I let her drag me out of the hall. But I balk when she tries to pull me towards Magic Words class. “We’re not just going to class after that!” I protest.
Penny frowns at me. “Why wouldn’t we?” she asks, using her forefinger to push her glasses up her nose.
“Because…because we just fought off a zombie attack! There might be more of them!” Every Zombie movie I’ve ever seen says that zombies come in hordes, not one at a time. “Shouldn’t we be strategizing?” Pen’s usually the first to suggest that we make a plan. I’m baffled at her seeming indifference.
Instead of agreeing with me, Penny just rolls her eyes. “It was just a Visitor, Simon,” she says, in a faintly reproving tone of voice.
“A Visitor,” I say blankly. She tugs at my arm, and I start walking again.
“Yes, Simon. A Visitor.” Now she’s giving me that look that usually means I’ve disappointed her once again by not paying attention to our lessons. “I know you’ve learned about this. In Magickal History class, first year.”
I struggle to remember anything about zombies in Magickal History. Or in any class. I’m certain that sort of information would have caught my attention. But I’ve got nothing. I shake my head at her and she sighs.
“Every 20 years, the veil opens. The veil that separates the living from the dead. It used to just mean the occasional soul would pass through, if they had a strong reason and a message for someone on the other side. But decades ago, an evil necromancer cast a spell that tied those souls back to whatever was left of their bodies, and so when the spirit walks, the body walks with it.”
I stop walking.
“Do you mean I actually just killed that kid’s grandmother?” I say, my voice shaking.
No, Simon, no,” Penny soothes. “She was already dead. Beheading the corpse just allows the spirit to fly free again.”
“But that kid never got whatever message her nan came to tell her,” I say, still disturbed and upset.
Penny shrugs. “Yeah, well. Most visitors are, I think, so relieved to be free of their mortal remains that they fly back to the veil the moment they’re freed. Occasionally one is determined enough to stay despite the trauma of having had to drag their corpse around with them. But usually the visitor came back to pass on a family recipe for mossberry pie or something. Not particularly important, even if it felt important before they crossed the veil.”
She tugs at my arm again now and I give in and start walking again. “But you said that they’re looking for brains.”
She nods as if it’s not a horrifying piece of information. “Yes. While they’re trapped in a moldering corpse, their intelligence is limited to whatever part of their brain matter hasn’t decomposed yet. So, they’re dumb. Really dumb. And they all seem to think that eating someone else’s brains will help them remember what they’re here for. They’re wrong, but try reasoning with someone who’s brain is basically sludge.”
“So they are zombies, then.” I conclude.
Penny scowls. “Zombies are Normal fiction, Simon. They’re Visitors.”
I shake my head and decide to ignore the semantics for now. “And we have to cut off their heads whenever we see one?”
Penny looks troubled, now. “I think the teachers are supposed to do that. It’s not like most students are armed.”
“You don’t know?” I say, surprised. Penny always knows more than most anyone else.
She looks uncomfortable. “My parents never talked about it. Maybe it was traumatic for them? I know they had to take out the corpse of Aunt Beryl a few years back; that was probably upsetting. The textbook just advises students to stay away from the visitors until the magic animating them wears off or until an adult can intervene. I mean, Visitors are slow enough that it’s easy to stay ahead of them, I’d think. And even if they catch you, their muscles are deteriorating, so it’s unlikely they could hold you still long enough to get to your brains.”
“Well,” I say, thumbing my hip where my sword appears when I call for it, “Watford students won’t need to run away this year. I’ll take care of it.”
Penny smiles fondly at me. “I know you will, Simon. I know you will.”
Penny
Simon’s been as good as his word. It’s nearly All Hallow’s Eve, which is when, traditionally the visitings would stop, and he’s taken care of nearly a hundred visitors in that time. I managed to take out a couple myself with an “Off With Your Head!” but that spell really takes it out of you. Better to let Simon get to work with his blade–he can decapitate five zombies in a row with only the magic it takes to summon the sword.
On the other hand, I’ve grown extremely efficient with my “Into Thin Air.” It’s not the form of practice I’d have chosen for myself, but needs must.
Simon’s also gotten a lot more blasé about encountering what he still insists on calling ‘zombies’. “Normal fiction or not, Pen,” he’ll tell me, chin stubbornly squared, “you can’t argue that they’re walking dead people and that’s basically the definition of a zombie.”
I’ve given up arguing with him about it.
But now I’ve got another problem: Baz going missing. And the fact that I even care about Baz going missing is extremely vexing. But Simon hasn’t given me any choice.
After he got over the “zombie” fears, he started obsessing over the fact that Baz hasn’t come back to school this year. And he’s only getting worse as time goes on. Like yesterday, when someone’s dead brother showed up on the great lawn. Simon was whinging about how Baz would never miss school if he had a choice (as it happens, I agree with him, but saying that to Simon is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I can’t encourage him.)
The visitor popped up on the other side of the pitch from where we were sitting (cue the usual screaming/panicking/running), and Simon and I leaped to our feet and jogged over to deal with the situation. (There’s no point in running, it’s not like the visitor will get very far, even if we proceeded at a casual stroll). And even as he was swinging his sword and sending bits of rotten flesh and bone and random eyeballs flying, he was still going on about it. “But Pen, he must be plotting. We just need to figure out what the plot is so we can—”
At that point, I tuned him out because I was focusing on including all of the random body parts in my “Into Thin Air” (It wouldn’t do to forget any—if I leave a bit of jawbone or brain matter sitting in the grass, it’s likely to send a first year into hysterics).
“Pen!” Simon’s shout is so close to my ear that I startle and let out a little shriek myself. Once I recover myself, I spin around to give him a piece of my mind (not the literal pieces of someone else’s mind—those have been vanished off the lawn). But I stop because Simon’s eyes have gone wild and he’s blurring around the edges.
I immediately follow the direction of his gaze, thinking the humdrum has sent a new monster, even though I don’t feel that dry sucking sensation we associate with the Insidious Humdrum. But there’s nothing there. Just the empty pitch and the Wavering Wood beyond.
“What is it, Simon?” I say, as gently as I’m able (which is not very gently, I admit) (it’s possible I actually shout it at him).
“Baz…Pen, what if Baz is a visitor? What if Baz is…what if Baz is dead?” There’s something in Simon’s voice that I can’t place. But I can tell that this idea is upsetting him.
I have to admit, I’ve been thinking to myself lately that Baz might be dead. Simon’ s right that Baz would never miss school if he had any choice—he’s got too much ego tied up in meeting his dead mum’s expectations.
But Simon’s on the verge of going off just from the thought of it right now, so it’s probably best that I don’t share that thought. Instead, I say, “wouldn’t we have heard if he’s dead, Simon?”
I don’t know if we’d have heard, if Baz were dead. I think the old families would keep it from us if it served their interests. Still, it’s hard to believe that even Malcolm Grimm, cold snake that he is, would use his oldest son’s death in a game of political brinkmanship.
Whatever my true thoughts on the matter, it works. Simon’s magic settles and we’re able to go on with our day. The subject of Baz comes up again, of course—we are talking about Simon here. But at least he’s just fretting about where Baz is, not whether Baz is alive or not (is Baz alive? I’m with Simon, I believe he’s a vampire. But does that mean he’s already dead? And if he’s already dead, can he even become a zomb—I mean visitor?)
(Hopefully, I’ll never have to find out).
Simon
It’s been eight weeks of visitings and of Baz being missing, and I’m beginning to think that both of those things might never end. Penny’s started frowning and muttering everytime a new visitor shows up—I think that the latest a visitor’s ever been seen is All Hallow’s Eve. That’s tonight. She told me that generally, most of the visitors show up near the beginning of the veil opening and it trails off from there.
That’s not what’s happening.
Every day since the veil’s been open, the number of visitors has increased. There was one on that first day, but today I took out at least thirty.
And there’s another thing. Visitors go for the person the original spirit had a message for. Always, according to Penny. But, other than that first zombie (it didn’t get far enough for us to know where it was headed), they all seem to head straight for me.
“I don’t like it,” Pen said, after Magic Words class today, where I’d beheaded three zombies that climbed in through the classroom windows. Miss Possibelf canceled the rest of class. Zombies don’t smell great. They smell less great when their pieces have been scattered around a classroom. (It took me a few false swings to get their heads off—too many screaming students in the way. I ended up hacking off other bits first.)
Penny didn’t even try to “Into Thin Air” the pieces, because there was too much clutter in the room—she’d likely have “Into Thin Air”-ed everyone’s homework.
Actually, the class probably didn’t want their homework back after it’d been covered in chunks of rotting flesh.
I’m exhausted. My shoulders ache from swinging my sword, and there’s a constant flavour of smoke in the back of my throat from having to access my magic so often. The incantation for my sword doesn’t require much magic, but it does require some, and I’ve been calling it dozens of times a day of late. Pen told me that, by dinner, I was glowing a little. Like a nightlight. Or radioactive fallout.
I should probably just get some sort of physical sheath so I can keep my sword out.
I’m grateful that this day is almost over, and that it’ll all be over tomorrow, if things go as they should.
Well, Baz is still missing. But at least the Veil is closing tonight.
I get ready for bed in a fog of exhaustion. Just as I’m falling asleep, I think I hear scratching at my door, but it’s faint, and my bed is comfortable. Probably just my imagination, I tell myself, before drifting off to sleep.
Baz
There’s something distinctly odd going on at Watford, and I don’t know how, but I’m absolutely certain that Simon Snow, the Chosen One, is neck-deep in it.
For one, when I “Open-Sesame’d” the doors to the Great Hall, I expected surprise, maybe awe at my unexpected return. Perhaps some mild concern over my poor condition from those few who give a shit about me.
I did not expect everyone in the hall to leap up from their seats and scream.They stumbled and tripped over each other as they tried to escape.
Surely I don’t look that bad?
The one small island of stillness in the chaos is the table where the Chosen one usually sits with his harem. He’s there alright, and staring at me. Bunce is there too, clinging on to his elbow, though Wellbelove is nowhere to be found.
I latch onto that tiny bit of normality and curl my lip into a sneer at him.
Then my lips fall slack and I stare at him, because he’s not reacting the way he should either.
He’s still just staring at me, pale and silent. He looks like he’s seen a ghost. His sword is in his hand for some reason, but that hand is just hanging slack at his side, like the weapon is too heavy for him to lift.
I stare at him and wait for him to do something, anything. He doesn’t. He just looks at me. He looks…lost. And, for some reason, he looks guilty. And scared. And probably a whole lot of other emotions that I can’t decipher because of the complexity of the mix.
The room is empty now of anyone but me, Snow and Bunce. I get tired of waiting for an explanation to present itself, so I stalk forward, chin held high. I’m going to make Snow explain what’s going on even if I have to spell him to get him to talk.
For some reason, Snow’s expression grows lighter, happier, as I get closer to him.
What the fuck?
Simon
Oh thank Merlin.
It’s actually Baz, not a visitor. From a distance, he’d looked different enough from his usual fit self that I thought I was looking at his corpse… His body would have been fairly intact given how recently he’d have died, so I couldn’t be sure until I saw his eyes narrow and his brows lower. Zombies are always expressionless.
I’ve never been so happy to see Baz looking pissed off at me.
He’s heading straight for us (well, we are the only ones here), but I don’t wait for him.
“Baz!” I shout, and I start running.
He flinches back as I get close…he probably thinks I’m going to hit him. I’m not. I’m just so overjoyed that he’s not dead that I have to do something with these feelings. So I stagger to a halt just in front of him. “Baz,” I whisper. He looks at me warily. Then I reach out and pull him into a hug.
“Mmrph!” he grunts, in surprise, I think. He’s rigid in my arms. I can’t care. I just squeeze him tighter and press my face to his shoulder. A few tears I can’t help make a damp spot on his blazer.
It’s been a stressful start to the school year.
After a moment, his body softens against mine and he tentatively wraps his arms around me too. I smile into his shoulder. Baz Pitch is hugging me back, who’d have thought?
I barely get to enjoy that tiny show of humanity. It only lasts a moment before Baz stiffens again and, with oddly gentle hands, grasps my shoulders and pushes me back.
“What is this, Snow?” he asks, once he can meet my eyes. I can tell he’s striving to find his usual air of indifference, but my hug has mussed his hair, there’s a wet patch on his shoulder from my tears, and he’s still looking a little dazed.
I’m suddenly hit with a wave of embarrassment. Did I just hug (and cry on) Baz Pitch? My nemesis? I take a step back and drop my eyes to the floor, scrubbing one hand through the short hairs at the back of my head. “Er…sorry. It’s just…I…It’s been…you…”
Baz’s brows lower in irritation. Now there’s a more familiar expression. “Spit it out, Snow,” he snaps. He draws himself to his full height and glares down his nose at me.
“I thought you were a zombie!” I blurt, meeting his grey eyes for a moment. They go wide and then narrow again, and I look back at the floor.
“Zombies are Normal fiction, Snow. Have you lost all grasp of reality now, or have you suffered so many blows to the head that your brains leaked out through your nose over the summer?”
I wince at his comment, because I’ve recently gotten to experience seeing someone’s brains leak out through their nose and that’s not a memory I really wanted to revisit. But then I grin, a little. Baz is insulting my intelligence, so it seems we’re back to normal then.
I meet his eyes again. He’s looking annoyed and confused. Fair. I’m probably not reacting to his snark the way I would have last year. But a lot has changed since last year.
“Visitors,” I tell him. “I get that they’re not actual zombies, but you have to admit the resemblance is there.”
“Visitors,” Baz repeats, his expression going blank. “I’d forgotten that the veil was opening this year.”
Loathe as I am to destroy the fragile peace between us (Merlin, this is almost a conversation!), I need to tell Baz about his mum. I don’t want to tell him, but he deserves to know. I bite my lip and stare fixedly at the bottom half of his face so I don’t have to see his eyes fill with hate for me again. “Baz,” I start, “about the visitors…”
“Simon!” Penelope screams.
Baz
My head is still spinning a bit from being wrapped in the warm (so warm!) arms of Simon Snow, so I don’t react quickly enough when Snow leaps past me, his sword already lifting in his hand. I stare, mouth open, at Penelope Bunce, who’s running towards me with her purple ring pointed in my direction. Is she attacking me?
“Baz! Duck!” she shouts.
Belatedly I realize my danger, and obey, dropping to the floor. Something horrible smelling swipes through the air where my head just was. On instinct, I roll away, and then jump to my feet, wand out and pointed in the direction of the threat.
Snow and Bunce are both confronting what looks like an army of shambling…well, I can see why Snow couldn’t resist the word “zombie”. There’s at least two dozen Visitors facing them, and more pushing through the doorway every moment.
I feel like I’m in a scene from one of those Dawn of the Dead or Day of the Dead or whatever the fuck they’re called, one of those movies. Beyond Snow’s bright curls and Bunce’s wild brown mop of hair, all I can see is an ocean of staggering grey grave matter.
Snow is already swinging his sword, and I hear Bunce shout, “Off with your head!” Two zombie heads (Crowley, now he’s got me doing it) pop off and roll around under the churning mass of undead feet.
A couple of zombies trip over the heads, but that hardly makes a dent in the mob. There’s no way that the dynamic duo will be able to handle all of the necessary beheadings—”Off with your head,” takes a tremendous amount of magic, and I doubt Bunce can cast it more than two or three times. And Snow’s arms are already trembling—he’s in surprisingly poor condition for some reason.
I gather my magic as my thoughts rush around, looking for an answer. What Snow needs is time, a way to take on this horde in smaller groups. My lips tighten. What I’m thinking of will take all of my magic, but it ought to help.
I light a match in my heart and blow on the tinder, and then point my wand at the seething mass of unalive flesh and shout, “Sent to Coventry!”
Between one second and the next, the Visitor mob disappears, other than two headless bodies and two heads that are still rolling around.
I see both Snow and Bunce sigh in relief, but then Bunce tenses up again. “Baz,” she shouts, whirling on me, “did you send those Visitors to Coventry?”
“At ease, Bunce,” I drawl. “I’ve not got the power for that. At most, I’ve given you a breather. They’re probably a few hundred yards off. You’ve got a couple of minutes at least, to get a better position and make a plan. And,” I add, moving closer to them, “time to maybe explain what the fuck is going on?”
“It’s November first,” Bunce says, her face going blank with horror. “We’re still having Visitor attacks on November first. What the fuck is going on?”
“Figure that out later, Penny,” Snow growls. “Right now, we need a way to slow that horde down enough that I can take them all out.”
“What if,” I say, suddenly inspired, “there was a way to remove all their heads at once?”
“How?” Bunce asks, her arms crossed in front of her chest as she questions me. “The only head-removing spell is “Off With Your Head,” and it only takes out one at a time.”
I smirk at her. “Know where we could get some fishing wire?”
Penelope
I can hear the first groans in the distance by the time Baz returns from Mummer’s house with the clear plastic wire on a spool in his hand. I sigh in relief. “Where’d you find it?”
“Dev,” he says shortly. “He had a plan to use it in a prank.”
I start to ask ‘what prank,’ and then realize it was probably a plan to prank Simon, so maybe it’s better for our current state of cooperation if I leave that question unasked.
Baz strings the wire across the main entrance to the hall at about five feet above the ground. , and then has me cast my strongest “stuck like glue” on the ends so that the wire stays taut. He tests the hold by yanking powerfully on the wire, but it doesn’t budge.
Then, as Baz explained it to me, I get ready to cast a flurry of spells on the wire. First, “Cuts Like a Knife,” which gives it a razor edge.
As I open my mouth to cast the next spell, I hear Baz shout, “Simon, no! Don’t touch that!” followed by a muttered oath from my best friend. I roll my eyes and look over to see that, sure enough, Simon’s finger is bleeding from where he tried to test the wire’s sharpness.
“Simon!” I scold, “You could have cut your finger off!” But he’s not paying attention to me. Instead, he’s staring at Baz with a look of wonder on his face.
“Baz,” he says. “You called me Simon.”
Baz actually looks a little flustered, for the first time since I’ve known him. “Fuck off, Snow, there are more important things to worry about right now,” he mutters. I notice that he also looks pale and strained. Simon’s still bleeding—I wonder if the smell bothers Baz?
He’s right, though. I shake my head to clear it, and then return to my spells. The next one is tricky. We needed a way to keep the zombies moving even once they’re aware of the obstacle (if they even have the capacity to be aware of it) (But I’ve not seen Visitors run into walls, so I assume they have some faint spatial awareness). They already seem to be drawn to Simon, so
we decided that I’d ramp up that effect by casting “Flavour of the Month” on Simon, so that everything that walks (shambles) through that door will be drawn straight to him.
The next thing I know, Baz is clinging to Simon like a baby Koala clings to its mum. Thank Merlin Simon has stuck his bleeding finger in his mouth or I think Baz might start licking him like
a lollipop. I feel the pull towards my best friend too, but Baz must have gotten the full effect since he’d been standing closer to Simon (probably to keep him from touching the wire again).
Simon’s staring into Baz’s face, and I can’t read his expression, but at least he doesn’t look upset. It takes Baz a moment, but he does manage to step away from Simon, though every inch
of him seems to want to lean back into Simon’s space. His face is tight from fighting the pull. “The spell works, Bunce,” he grits out. “Now finish it.”
He’s got a point. Through the open doors, I can see a heaving sea of grey, only metres away. I lift my ring and cast the final spell. “There’s Nothing to See Here,” on the wire. It shimmers out of sight, though I can tell where it is if I look for it out of the corner of my eye.
Feeling drained, I step back several feet and join Simon and Baz (Baz’s hands have crept around Simon’s bicep again, but Simon doesn’t look like he minds).
The first zombie…I mean, Visitor, shuffles through the doorway. It keeps shuffling for several seconds after the razor sharp wire has separated its head from its shoulders. Then, like a puppet with its strings cut, it drops.
Simon whoops, but I’m watching with my heart thumping in my chest. Baz thinks that the Visitors can’t learn from watching others make mistakes, since their brains are goo. Over the next few minutes, with Visitor after Visitor, he’s proven correct. Each corpse walks right through the doorway and takes its own head off with the wire, and then the Visitors right after it do the exact same thing. It’s a beautiful plan; I wish it had been my idea.
Simon does, in the end, have to lop a few heads off—first, of the few zombies shorter than the wire who make it in nearly or completely intact, and then of the ones too tall, since parts of their torso are still attached to their heads, and therefore the spirit is still trapped. That last is pure butcher’s work, since the Visitors are on the ground, armless. Simon winces and grits his teeth but saws through the necks of every single one.
In the end, though, the mess is big enough that I don’t have enough power to vanish it all. It takes Simon three tries, but he manages to get every last corpse with an “Into Thin Air.”
He also vanishes the doors and part of the walkway outside, but at least we can all breathe without inhaling the smell of rot. I read once that when we smell things, we’re actually smelling tiny particles of that thing that got in our noses. The last thing I want is to think about having zombie bits up my nose, so I give a grateful sigh when the smell is gone, vanished with every other part of the mob.
I look up to realize that I’ve unconsciously gravitated over to Simon’s other side and I’m now hanging on to his other arm. We must look like right numpties, the three of us all clinging together like this. Like three quarters of Dorothy’s traveling companions on the yellow brick road, all arm in arm.
Randomly I wonder which of us is the tin man and which is the cowardly lion. (I don’t have to wonder who the scarecrow is—Simon’s still staring gormlessly at the hole he left in the hall entrance). Then I recognise my thoughts as the beginning of a spiral into hysteria and wrench them to a halt. I lift my trembling ring hand and point it towards Simon, managing an “As You Were.”
Baz drops Simon’s arm like it’s on fire, and Simon looks oddly reproachful about that, rubbing his arm where Baz had hold of him. I release my friend more slowly and then suck in a harsh breath.
“Now,” I say, “we need to figure out what the fuck is going on.”
Baz
After vanishing the wire (we hardly want to be responsible for the accidental decapitation of our classmates), Bunce tells Simon and I to follow her. To my astonishment, she leads us right to Mummer’s House, and, without even a pause, right up the stairs to our room. I’d thought the occasional whiffs I’d gotten of Bunce’s herb smell in our room had come in on Snow’s clothing or something, but it seems that Bunce is fiendishly clever and has always been able to come and go in the boy’s dormitory.
She notices my expression and gives me a cheeky wink. I shake my head. I feel wobbly, like the ground keeps repeatedly being yanked out from under me, starting with Simon’s hug this morning. I’m grateful to sink onto my bed and let Bunce take the lead. Simon casts a lingering look on my bed, like he’s considering sitting down next to me, but my nerves are frayed and I know I can’t handle any more proximity to the love of my life at the moment. So I glare at him until he huffs his way over to his own bed.
Bunce has cast a “See What I Mean,” and is talking rapid-fire as she fills in a column titled “What We Know,” writing the words on the air. The column fills as she tells me about the veil opening, how each Visitor seemed to make straight for Simon, how the numbers of Visitors grew every day. And now how Visitors are still coming, even though the veil should have closed last night.
“First,” she says, adding a second column and titling it "We Need to Know”, “we have to figure out why all of the Visitors go straight for Simon. That’s never happened before, so far as I’ve been able to ascertain from the books in the library.”
“Did you learn anything about how Visitors do find the mage they’re here for?” I ask. I’m fascinated by this line of inquiry because nobody in my family has ever spoken of previous Visitings. All I know about it is what I learned in school.
Bunce purses her lips and taps one finger against them. “The most anyone in any of the books I read knew is that they were drawn to that person’s magic.”
That makes sense. After all, it’s magic that allows them to pass the veil in the first place. “So you think they can sense the person’s specific ‘odor’ of magic, and it acts like a scent trail the Visitor can follow to find their person?”
She nods. “I think so. You know that any place a mage has spent a great deal of time in develops a kind of residue of their magic that lingers, right?”
I nod. Crowley knows I can always immediately smell Snow’s brimstone and green fire scent on entering our room, even if it’s the end of summer and he hasn’t been in the room for three months. It’s maddening (it’s enticing).
Bunce nods too and continues. ”Usually Visitors are here for family members or friends, people whose magic would have been well known to that person when he or she was alive. And a magical trail would either lead them to the person they’re looking for, or, at least, the place where that person spends the majority of their time. It’d be a logical system.”
Snow leans forward. “But wait. None of these zombies have been anyone I’ve ever met. They can’t have been there for me.” He’s right. But maybe…
“What if,” I say, frowning as I struggle to pin down the thought. “What if the Visitor has a direction when they cross the veil, and then when they’re trapped in their corpse, that corpse just continues in the same direction the Visitor started from?”
Bunce shakes her head. “They’d still end up going in random directions, not all in the same direction. But,” and now her eyes widen with excitement, “what if the trapped Visitor can still sense the magic, but there’s a much bigger and more obvious source of magic. They can’t think clearly once they’re embodied, so having the reasoning power to say, oh, yes, that’s magic, but the wrong kind…that kind of thinking is probably beyond their capabilities.”
She’s got it, I’m certain. “Yes! And what’s a bigger and more distracting source of magic than the Chosen One?” I notice Snow wince out of the peripheral vision, but I ignore him. He may hate the title, but he is the Chosen One, it’s pointless to ignore that.
Bunce smiles broadly and writes up our new conclusion on her makeshift blackboard. Then she leans back and crosses her arms over her chest. “You’re good to have on our side, Basil,” she says, smiling.
Snow snorts, and I’m tempted to agree with him. Just because I’m stuck in this situation with them doesn’t mean I’m on their side. Besides, Bunce has done almost all of the mental work so far. But she isn’t waiting for me to agree or to argue.
“Then, all that’s left is to figure out why we still have Visitors the day after the Veil closed,” she says, writing it up on the air.
At that, I finally find I have something to contribute. It’s so obvious that I wonder that neither of them had already thought of it. “The Veil might be closed, Bunce, but once a visitor crosses and is tied to their mortal remains, they can’t cross back over until that bond is severed. So it’s not odd that there are still Visitors. These Visitors must have crossed the veil before it closed, and just had a longer journey to get to Snow.”
Bunce’s eyes light up. “Basil! That does explain it! You must be right.” She heaves a relieved sigh. “That means the infestation will end eventually.”
I nod. “Once all the Visitors who’ve crossed the veil make their way here, it’ll be over.” We both grow grim as we realize the potential extent of the problem. There are probably about fifty thousand Mages in the British Isles. If even ten percent of them were due to receive a Visiting, we could be seeing five thousand total zombies (I think I’m going to continue to use Snow’s designation for the walking corpses in my thoughts; it feels fitting).
I voice these thoughts aloud and then ask, “How many total Visitors do you think you and Snow have already dealt with?”
Snow groans and flops backwards onto his pillow, and Bunce winces. “A few hundred,” she admits.
“Shit,” I mutter. Then, louder, I say, “well, then we’ll have to prepare for around 4000 more.”
“We?” Simon says, sitting up abruptly. His eyes are wide. “You’re going to help us?”
I sigh. “I hardly think the two of you alone will be enough.”
“Yeah, but wouldn’t it be in your best interests to let us fail?” he says, and, oh, there’s the suspicious Simon Snow I remember. I didn’t miss him.
My jaw tightens. I know it’s mostly my fault that Snow has such a low opinion of me, but this is intolerable. My voice is ice when I reply. “The Visitors were mages, one and all. And, through no fault of their own, they’re trapped in decaying flesh until they’re freed. I know you think I’m evil, Snow, but I’m not so villainous that I’m willing to permit our ancestors to continue to suffer while there’s something I can do about it.”
Simon looks chastened, but he has to dispute one thing. “Your ancestors,” he says, his eyes flashing in challenge. “My ancestors were Normals. Normals don’t cross the veil.”
I nod to concede his point. “So far as we know,” I say. I’m not actually convinced that Snow came from Normals, but I also have no way of explaining his origins otherwise.
“So!” Bunce says, clapping her hands at the same time. Snow and I both jump at the sound, we were so intensely focused on each other. We both turn to give her our attention again.
She eyes us warily, as if we were about to start brawling in our dorm room. I wouldn’t put it past Snow, but there’s the Anathema, so it can’t happen.
Once she sees she’s got our attention, she says briskly, “Now that we’ve got a better understanding of the problem, it’s time to figure out what to do about it. I don’t know about you, Basil,” and here she gives me a probing look. She looks concerned. I stiffen my spine and glare at her—I’d like to see her look better after starving in a coffin for six weeks. Not that she can know that. I’m not ever telling anyone about that.
She looks away from my faintly murderous expression. “But Simon and I are done in and we’ve potentially got several more weeks or even months of this situation to deal with. And—”
“Fine, Bunce,” I interrupt. “Let’s come up with a plan.”
Simon
If you had told me even two months ago that Baz and I would be working together to solve a problem for the good of the World of Mages, I’d have laughed in your face.
But that’s exactly what’s happened. And it’s been good. More than good. Baz has actually been decent to me for the last six weeks.
I would never have believed he could be decent. I don’t know if it was the hug, that first day, or something that happened to him while he was missing (which he still won’t tell me about), but he’s been nearly amicable. I mean, he’s still Baz, so if I do something dumb or annoying, he’ll start to say something shitty. But then a strange look flashes over his face, and he’ll stop, mutter a “sorry,” and restate what he was saying without the insults.
It may have all started with the hug, but things got even better after the dragon. It’s funny, Pen and I had been so caught up with the whole zombie thing that we’d both kind of forgotten that the Humdrum still exists. So when the Humdrum sent a dragon, we were caught off guard. Not Baz, though.
We were all at breakfast that morning, when the screaming started. I’m embarrassed to recall that I rolled my eyes at the noise. I’d gotten used to my peers panicking over the waves of zombies, and I was getting kind of annoyed with it. Zombies are fucking slow, alright? People could just get up from their meals and walk away, and the zombies would never catch up.
So, I just figured this was more of the same, and decided to eat the last couple of bites of my breakfast before I got up to deal with it.
It was Baz who yanked me out of my seat by the arm and took off running, dragging me behind him, my last bite of scone falling out of my mouth and down into the open neck of my shirt.
I was too surprised to struggle. I think at the time I was just wondering why he was still so panicked by the zombie threat.
It wasn’t until I saw the dragon herself, strafing the lawn while terrified students dodged the flames, that I woke up from my stupidity and noticed the hot, itchy feeling in the air. Humdrum!
I immediately started chanting the cantrip to call the Sword of Mages, but Baz squeezed my arm (he was still holding it for some reason) and shouted, “No, Simon! Dragons aren’t dark!”
I remembered, with a shudder of revulsion, the one dragon whose death I was responsible for, all the way back in first year, and I nodded. “What do we do, then?” I shouted back.
“Just—back me up,” Baz said, and then he let go of my arm and started running towards the dragon.
In sudden terror, I took off after him. “Baz, no!” I screamed. “You’re flammable!”
“So’s everyone!” he retorted. He stopped then, and planted his feet firmly. Lifting his right arm, he did some sort of weird wrist motion and his wand dropped into his palm. He must have a contraption up his sleeve that holds it, I guess. That’s kind of cool…
Then he started chanting a nursery rhyme, one meant for household pests. There’s no way it could work on a dragon!
I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to grab him and drag him to safety. He had the dragon’s attention and it wasn’t flaming at the moment, but all it would take is one little burst of fire, and Baz would just…poof!
But I knew he wouldn’t be moved by me. Baz Pitch is both stronger than me, by virtue of being a vampire, and more stubborn than me (by virtue of being an arse) (and I mean that affectionately) (mostly). So, on impulse, I rested my hand on his shoulder, and I pushed my magic into him.
It rushed out of me like ’into Baz’ is where it had always wanted to go, and Baz went stiff under my hand. When his voice rang out again, it was dense with my magic, and the dragon turned tail and fled within seconds.
Afterwards, we just stared at each other in shock and awe. Until Penny broke through our silent communion to demand that I try passing my magic to her. And Baz reminded her quietly that maybe I didn’t want the World of Mages to know that I could share my magic.
If I can actually share my magic. It may just be a Baz thing. Maybe because he’s a vampire, my magic can’t hurt him like it hurt Penny when I tried to share it with her.
But that was, I think, the beginning of Baz and I really trusting each other.
Well, that, and what happened in our room that night.
I know what you’re thinking, and no, nothing…untoward happened. (Again, mostly). I just suggested that we try the whole magic-sharing thing again, and Baz took me to the stars. (Yes, I know that sounds like a euphemism. It isn’t) (It mostly isn’t).
He turned “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” into a spell using my magic, and the next thing I knew, we were in space! Well, not really, but I couldn’t see our room or our beds anymore. Just Baz, in front of me, holding both of my hands. His face alight with ecstasy. I felt it too. More than even I knew.
Because when Baz finally let go of my hands with a sigh, I realized that I felt hot and uncomfortable and sticky. The ‘hot’ was from absorbing my magic back into myself. It always makes me feel overheated. The uncomfortable was the dried out scone end inside my shirt that was slowly fragmenting and leaving scone crumbs all over my chest and stomach. And the sticky…well, let’s just say that when Baz released the tide of my magic back into me, I had, er, released as well.
I looked up, face burning, to apologize for my body’s involuntary reaction, only to notice a largish wet spot growing on the front of Baz’s pajama trousers too. After that, neither of us could really look at each other. He took a shower, and I cleaned up with an old sock, we both changed into fresh pajamas and I think we silently agreed never to mention it again.
Doesn’t stop me thinking about it. I think about it every day. Sometimes every hour.
Baz
Snow ejaculated when we shared magic. I guess I did too, but I’d just been holding hands with the boy I love. A boy who had filled me with himself until it overflowed into an explosion of stars.
Ok, I guess that does sound kind of sexual. But Snow is straight!
Isn’t he?
The doubt has me second guessing everything I’ve ever thought regarding Simon Snow. First, there was that hug, which left me nearly catatonic around him for days. Then the magic and the stars and the…well, you get it. To say that I’m getting some mixed signals from Snow would be putting it mildly.
And then there’s the zombie issue. We’ve still been taking out anywhere from ten to thirty of them a day, which, with our school work, hardly leaves me time for figuring out what’s going on between Snow and me. (We’ve never been lucky enough to get a whole group done at once again, not like that first time. So it’s been a slog of beheading each of them by hand or spell, one at a time). (On the other hand, my magical dexterity has grown exceptionally. I’m well prepared for the next French Revolution).
And now he’s standing in front of me and telling me that he plans to just stay at Watford, alone, over the Christmas holiday.
“You can’t,” I say shortly.
Simon looks uncomfortable. “It’s alright, Baz. Normally, I’d go to Agatha’s or Penny’s, but neither of them can take me this year. I’ve stayed here before, I’ll be alright.”
“You’ll be left to deal with the Visitor problem on your own with no back-up,” I tell him. “That’s not acceptable.”
Simon winces a little at that reminder, and looks away. “Not many other options, are there?” he mumbles.
“There’s me,” I point out. And then, hearing myself, I scrabble to add, “my house, I mean. You could stay with my family over the holidays.”
Simon’s eyes shoot up to meet mine, wide and blue. “D’you mean that?” he asks, and he sounds a little breathless.
Does he actually like the idea? I expected to have to fight him on it.
“I do,” I tell him firmly. “And what’s more, it’s the smart thing to do. Every Visitor in the country is headed towards Watford. If we relocate you to Hampshire, they’ll have to adjust, and you’ll get several days of freedom from them. Perhaps they won’t even find you before we come back to school.”
“And your family will allow me to stay?” Now he looks skeptical.
“They will,” I tell him.I’ve actually already told my family that I’m collaborating with Snow and Bunce on the Zombie issue. My father and stepmother were tentatively approving of it, given that, as a family ancient in magic, we’ve got potentially hundreds of ancestors who might otherwise be shambling around trapped in a bag of rotting meat.
Fiona just laughed coarsely and said, “anything that gets the Chosen One to trust you is a good fucking idea, Baz. See if you can talk him into your bed too. If the Mage’s heir is fucking the heir of Pitch, wouldn’t that be one in old Davy’s eye?”
I’m not sure who Davy is, but Fiona was drunk (and high) at the time, so I didn’t take anything she said too seriously. (Even if I’d actually love to take her advice for the first time in—in nearly ever).
After that, Snow acquiesces without much of an argument, which is good because if he hadn’t, I was going to spell him to sleep and carry him out of here over my shoulder.
Simon
It’s actually been a grand few days at Pitch Manor. Mainly because, as Baz predicted, there are no zombies here. I haven’t had to call my sword once.
But also, Baz’s family are mostly lovely. His stepmum, Daphne, is extremely kind, and his many siblings are great fun. His father is a poisonous snake if I ever saw one (and I have seen one. Two actually. Actually, two heads on the same snake. I cut their—its heads off). But Malcolm Grimm only joins the family at supper, so I haven’t seen him much.
We had a snowball fight yesterday, and all four of his sibs joined forces with me to drown Baz in a hail of snowballs. After, all of the kids jumped on Baz, and he laughed and laughed. The kids told me I should jump on him too, and actually, I really wanted to. But things got a little awkward after that. Baz got up and dusted himself off, and then returned to the house despite the chorus of protests from the little ‘uns.
Then, Baz took me to a Christmas market last night. He bought me just about every food item the market had on offer, and offered me a loan so I could buy Christmas presents for his family. It was brilliant. Just like in one of those cheesy rom coms, it was Baz and I, strolling side by side, all wrapped up in coats and scarves, and looking at the holiday light displays while snow fell and made glittering stars in Baz’s hair.
And yes, I said rom coms. See, since the first night here, when chains rattling and ghastly moaning from under my bed in the guest bedroom sent me running, I’ve been sleeping in Baz’s room. And, after the first night, when I whinged about how my back was sore from Baz’s sofa, I’ve actually been sleeping in Baz’s bed. And because of that, I’ve come to a few uncomfortable realizations about myself.
Now, as I watch the children squabble over which holiday special we’re going to watch, I take out my mental list and go over it again.
I don’t think I’m straight.
I don’t even know if I was ever attracted to girls.
I am definitely attracted to boys.
Or at least Baz, if not other boys.
I want to kiss him.
I want to fall asleep in his arms.
I want him to hold me down and—
er, ahem. Well, you get it. The list descends into more and more detailed fantasies as it goes. And so far, I haven’t found the end of the list.
I’m pretty sure Baz is into me too. The way he couldn’t take his eyes off my arse when I was “rockin’ round the Christmas tree” with Mordelia last night was very good for my ego. There’s just two problems I’ve got to figure out.
How do I get Baz to have sex with me
and
How do I keep him from hating me when I tell him about his mum?
Baz
It’s Christmas Eve. Snow and I just finished reading to Mordelia. Reading the children A Visit From Saint Nicholas, by Clement Moore has been a yearly tradition in my family for as long as I can remember.
My sister is breathing quietly, her eyes closed and her little head pressed into the pillow now, so I make the amateur mistake of assuming she’s asleep. Giving Snow a gentle push to get him moving, I shepherd us both out the door. And, of course, just as I’m turning to close the door behind me, I hear, “Baz?”
I stop short and fight back an exasperated sigh. Then I turn and traipse back to Mordelia’s bedside, leaving Snow waiting for me at the door. Her eyes are open, though the lids keep dipping like she’s fighting hard to keep them that way. “What is it, love?” I ask, in my most soothing voice.
“Do you think Santa will actually come down that dirty old chimney, Baz?” she asks, in perfect seriousness. And then, while I try to gather my wits to reply to this confounding question, she sleepily asks “Why doesn’t he just knock at the door instead of getting his nice furs all sooty?
Sensible child.
I do my best to hide my amusement at her concern. “Santa is magic, little one,” I tell her. “He casts a spell to keep his furs sparkling clean.”
She nods in a satisfied sort of way. Then she surprises me into an actual laugh when she says, “I wish I had that magic. I’d like to climb down chimneys. Will you teach me that spell when I’m older, Baz?”
“I will, darling,” I tell her. Then I bend to give her a kiss on the cheek. And it’s at that moment when I swear I hear behind me the words, “I’d like to climb down your chimney.” It was far too soft for human ears to hear.
But I don’t have human ears.
I spin around, but Snow’s no longer in the doorway. Doing my best to keep calm, I bid Mordelia good night. Then I stride out of the room in search of my (potentially) (hopefully) dirty-minded roommate.
Simon
I shouldn’t have said that.
I don’t know what came over me. But Baz just looked so sexy, in his gentle consideration for his sister, that I think my brain slipped into thirsty Simon mode for a minute there.
Did I know my brain had a thirsty Simon mode? I did not. But I’m not mad about it.
The moment I saw Baz’s shoulder’s stiffen and remembered his vampire hearing, I panicked. Now I’m hiding in Baz’s enormous walk-in closet, hoping he’ll have had time to calm down before he finds me.
I know it’s silly to hide from him. But I’m afraid. Terribly afraid that he doesn’t want me the way I want him.
I’ve been such a twat. All those years of basically stalking him. Of going to his football games so I could ogle his arse in those tiny shorts. Of shoving him against walls just for an excuse to get my hands on him. How could I not have known?
But now, it’s like, having given myself permission to think of Baz this way, I’ve released a trapped demon and there’s no getting it back in its cage.
Two minutes later, I get a lesson on how futile it is to hide from someone who can hear your heart beat. Baz flings the closet door open and is on me before I’m even sure I’ve heard a noise.
“Baz! Mrmph! What?” I babble as he hauls me out of his closet and tosses me onto the nearest soft surface, which (gulp) happens to be his bed. Then suddenly he’s on top of me and I wonder if I’m about to get punched or kissed.
Turns out it’s neither.
Instead, he sits up, that glorious arse resting on my thighs and speaks to me. “You, Simon Snow, have got some explaining to do,” he says. His voice is severe, but his eyes are warm and his lips are twitching. That, and the fact that he’s basically on top of me gives me the courage to find my voice.
“What do you want to know?” I’m still nervous, so my voice is barely above a whisper.
HIs eyes go blank as he thinks for a moment, and then he asks the ten million dollar question: “how long have you wanted me?”
“---Er…” If I were sitting up, I’d be rubbing the back of my head in embarrassment. “I think…always?”
“W-what?” Baz stutters, and now his whole face has gone blank with shock.
“Yeah, I, I just was always obsessed with you, wasn’t I?” I tell him.
“But you mean you wanted me? Even in first year?”
“Well, maybe not physically, back then. But I admired everything about you. I wanted to be your friend. I wanted you to share things with me.” Now that the words are coming, they won’t fucking stop. “I’ve always wanted those things. And it pissed me off that you didn’t want them too. That’s why I always was an arse to you.”
“To be fair,” Baz admits, “I always was an arse to you too. And for a lot of the same reasons.”
I laugh, incredulous. “D’you mean that all this rivalry has been, all these years, is the both of us pulling each other’s pigtails?”
Baz’s eyes go wide, and he whispers, “Oh my!” Then he starts to laugh. I laugh too, I can’t help it. Baz is soon laughing so hard that he tumbles off me and rolls in a ball on the bed next to me, gasping for breath. I laugh so hard that my belly aches and my eyes stream tears.
When we’ve finally both recovered ourselves, with the occasional snicker or hiccup to liven up the empty air, we lay there, side by side, exhausted by our own stupidity.
Baz is the one to speak first (pretty much always). “I can’t believe that we’ve wasted so much time.”
I snort, and reach out to take his hand in mine. I thread our fingers together and marvel at how good it feels to hold him. “We’re only eighteen, Baz. There’s plenty more time to figure all this out.”
His voice is shy when he replies. “But you do want this, want…me, right?”
I roll up onto my elbow facing him (not letting go of his hand). “Are you mental? ‘Course I do! I want everything with you. I want to be your boyfriend, even though I’ll probably be terrible at it.”
His eyes soften and he reaches one hand up and runs his thumb down the side of my face. “You won’t be. You couldn’t be. And, if you’re asking, the answer is, yes, of course. I’d love to be your boyfriend.”
I feel a swell of joy growing under my breastbone, and I can’t help it, I have to kiss him. I lean down and, just as I can feel his rabid breaths brush my lips, I remember.
Baz
Instead of the glory of feeling Snow’s—Simon’s lips on mine, I hear a muttered, “shit!” and he pulls away from me.
“Shit?” I repeat, confused. “What’s shit?”
“I—I’m sorry, Baz,” Simon says in a low voice, “I can’t do this.”
“What?” My heart just turned to stone in my chest. But Snow’s next words lighten it, somewhat.
“I can’t be with you, not when I haven’t told you—” He stops, twisting his free hand into his pajama shirt (my pajama shirt, that I loaned him).
“Told me what?” I demand, sitting up. It’s only then that I realize that Simon is still holding my hand, and I soften towards him. “Tell me what?” I repeat, more kindly.
Simon looks up at me, and he’s got tears in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Baz. When you were gone, your mum, she came back. As a visitor.”
~~*~~
Simon
The scratching at the door of my room hadn’t gone away. Instead it had morphed into muffled thumps, like someone was repeatedly throwing a bag of laundry at the door.
“Alright, alright, I’m coming,” I grumbled. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t just knock like a normal person. I swung my legs out of bed and staggered to my feet, and then to the door. I rested my forehead against the door to regain my equilibrium, before shouting, “If that’s you, Gareth, I’m putting spiders in your tea tomorrow!”
I couldn’t hear anything other than what sounded like a faint, low groan. Exasperated, I flung open the door.
Before I could even parse, in the dimness, what I was looking at, the wave of grave-stench hit me. I staggered back in horror and dived for my sword where I’d left it on my desk. Then I stood on guard, my feet naturally falling into first position, and waited for the zombie to come to me.
It was a female zombie, that was the most I could tell in the dim moonlight filtering in through the window. Shorter than me and vaguely curvy, at least, what curves hadn’t already rotted off of its body. It was moaning. “Neeeeeeeeeee” was the sound.
I waited. And waited. Why did these fucking things have to be so slow? As it shuffled closer, the cadence of its moans changed, so that now it sounded like “cooohhhhhhhh”.
Finally, it got close enough to be illuminated by the moonlight. The first thing I noticed was that the corpse was in really rough shape. I looked like the person must have died in a house fire,
because its clothes were black and charred, as was a lot of the flesh that remained. Much of it was just bone, though.
The second thing I noticed was that I recognized this zombie. I’d seen that face, that hair, frequently, in the portrait outside the Mage’s office. Natasha Grimm-Pitch. Baz’s mum!
“Baaaaaaaaa” the zombie moaned and reached one skeletal hand towards me. I gritted my teeth against this new knowledge—this was the first zombie I’d actually recognized, even if I’d never known her in life.
Then I raised my sword and cut off her head.
~~*~~
Baz
I’m sitting on my bed in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve—or is it Christmas morning?--- listening to Simon’s story and wondering how on earth we got here.
“I’m so sorry, Baz,” he blubbers. “I killed your mum!”
That shakes me out of my stupor. I shake my head and grab for Simon’s hands. “No! No, Simon, you didn’t. You didn’t kill her. She was already dead.” I pull his hands to my face and kiss each knuckle. “You didn’t kill her,” I repeat. “You saved her. Simon, you freed my mum.”
Simon
“You freed my mum,” Baz is saying, even as his lips set my hands on fire. “Thank you, Simon. You freed her.”
I sniff back the phlegm in my nose and Baz winces at the ugly sound. Then I laugh, tearfully. “Yeah. I guess I did.”
Baz releases my hands and slides off the bed then, moving into the ensuite while I watch uncomprehendingly. When he returns, it’s with a damp flannel in his hand.
Tenderly, he wipes the tears and snot off of my face. Then he tosses the flannel off to the side and climbs back into the bed, where he pulls me into his arms.
We’re both exhausted with the night's events and all the emotions that came with it, but I still want to kiss him. I told Baz about his mom, and not only is he not mad at me, he actually thanked me. I really want to kiss him. Baz’s eyes are soft and warm, and getting closer. I think this is happening. I think he’s going to kiss me if I don’t kiss him first.
There’s less than a millimetre of space between our faces when a scream rings out.
Baz
We’re both out of my bed and down the hall in an instant. I hesitate at the top of the stairs and look down. “Baz,” Daphne says, in a trembling voice, when she sees me. She’s standing in the foyer in her long white nightgown, looking a bit like an apparition herself. “I thought I saw something from my window, so I came down to get a closer look, and—” here, she stops talking and just points.
My eyes follow her finger out the great bay windows that line our front door, and I freeze.
It seems that the remaining visitors have found Simon. All of the remaining visitors.
There’s zombies as far as I can see. A massive, undulating wave of them. I turn to Simon, eyes wide. He’s frozen in shock, his mouth hanging open. “How?” is all he can get out.
I shake my head. “I don’t know,” I say, numbly. “But we have to do something! The children…”
That shakes Daphne out of her paralysis. “I’ll go wake them and get them moving in case we need to run,” she says faintly. She turns and runs up the stairs. As she passes us, she lays a hand on my shoulder. “Be careful, Baz,” she whispers.
After she’s gone, Simon and I stare at each other in abject terror. We could stop ten zombies. Maybe even a hundred. But there are thousands out there. We’re probably doomed.
“Baz…” Simon whispers. Then he takes my face in both hands and kisses me, hard and thoroughly.
He breaks away before I’m completely aware that I’ve been kissed and says, “there. I’m tired of being cockblocked by fucking dead people. Now let's go take care of business.”
Numbly, I follow him downstairs, my fingers still touching my lips.
~~*~~
When we step outside, the stench is so overpowering that I fall to my knees. Simon pulls me back up again. His face is hard. His sword is already in his hand. Not that it will do any good. He could behead hundreds of zombies before the end, but sooner or later, his strength will run out.
We watch the seething mass of humanity—zombie-manity?---zumanity? Shuffle towards us in extreme slow motion. Every walk of former-life is represented here. Men, women, nonbinary folk, children. Folk in the remains of rich clothing, folk in the rags of cheap shirts and trousers.
Though most are relatively intact other than the usual zombie body part losses, they all show clear wear and tear from their tramp through the English countryside. But there’s one creature that stands out. From the hiss of Simon’s indrawn breath, I notice him at the same time Simon does.
A child—a boy, only eleven or twelve. That’s not unusual per se, but the fact that he appears to be completely alive and having all of his parts present and accounted for, is. He’s riding on the shoulders of a massive zombie. It must have been a great boulder of a man when it was alive.
A living kid hanging out in a zombie horde would be weird enough. But worse than that is the fact that I know that kid. I’ve had years of staring into that freckled face, those blue eyes.
“Simon…” I whisper.
“It’s the Humdrum,” Simon growls, at my side. My Simon, I mean.
“It’s you,” I say, awed.
“It’s not me!” Simon cries. “It’s the Humdrum!”
“Who looks just like an eleven-year-old you,” I agree.
At least the presence of the Humdrum explains how what looks like every zombie in the British isles ended up on my front lawn on Christmas morning.
“What do you want?” That’s Simon, the one standing next to me, shouting at his eleven year old counterpart. “Why are you here?”
The child makes an odd gesture and his zombie-mount stops and squats down. The boy slides off of its shoulders (taking a layer of flesh and rotting clothing with him) and walks towards us.
“I got to do something you didn’t, this time,” the Simon-clone says in a very familiar piping voice.
I can feel Simon—my Simon—boiling at my side, so I answer the child. “What’s that?”
The boy swings an arm around, his gesture encompassing the entire zombie horde. “I got to lead an army. And ride a zombie. You’ve never done those things,” he says, still talking to Simon.
“Big fat fucking deal,” Snow snarls at my side.
The boy, oddly, looks hurt at that. “You always get to do things I don’t. You get a sword. And a boyfriend…” My cheeks grow hot and I stare, wide-eyed at Simon, my boyfriend. How does the Humdrum know? But the child is still talking. “You even get to grow up. ‘Snot fair,” he sniffles.
I may be a complete sap and a moron, but my heart is going out to this child-who-isn’t-a-child. I can tell Simon wants to shout at it again, but I put a quelling hand on his shoulder. “Let me,” I whisper. His muscles are trembling in anger, but he nods, sharply, and keeps his lips firmly folded shut.
“I’m so sorry. That sounds really hard,” I tell the Humdrum.
The child looks gratified. “It is. It is hard. It sucks.”
It’s probably pointless, but I have to offer. “Is there anything I can do to help?” I ask, meaning it.
The child looks confused now. Has nobody ever offered it help before? Probably not. Its words confirm that. “What d’you mean by help?” it asks suspiciously.
I’m not quite sure myself. “Well,” I say, “is there something you need, something that would help you?”
The boy still looks confused. He seems to think for a moment and then shrugs.
That gesture is still infuriating, even though I know this isn’t my Simon. But I fight down my temper. While we’re palavering with the Humdrum, at least the zombie army isn’t advancing. So it’s in my best interest to not upset the child.
“Has anyone given you something before?” I suggest. “Something that helped you?”
This time the child doesn’t need to think. He shakes his head. “He,” he says, pointing to the Simon at my side, “gives me nothing. But nobody else gives me things.”
That—made no sense. Wary of irritating the boy, I ask, “what do you mean, he gives you nothing?”
The Humdrum shrugs again. But this time he also answers. “I send creatures, and he pulls the magic out of the world and leaves a nothing. And I get the nothing. But nobody else has ever given me anything.” The child’s hand rises and I realize that the thing is holding that infernal red ball that Simon never went anywhere without, first year.
Things are starting to take shape in my head, and I think I can actually feel my heart racing. And I’ve got a crazy idea. “Simon,” I say in an undertone, “I’ll be right back. Don’t antagonize him, please.”
All Simon is able to get out is a “What the fu—” before I’m inside the house and running towards the Christmas tree. I find what I need in milliseconds, and I’m back at Simon’s side in time to hear him say “--ck!”
The Humdrum is looking confused, and irritated, but I’ve got to try this. “Stay here,” I whisper to Snow, and I step off the porch.
“Baz, no!--” he protests, but I ignore him. I walk right up to the Humdrum, to this miniature version of the man I love with everything in me, and then I squat in front of him and hold out what I’m carrying.
“What’s this?” the boy asks, his brows low and his jaw jutting forward, a gesture of suspicion so familiar it makes my heart ache.
“It’s a present,” I say. “For you. So that you can have something, rather than nothing.”
The boy’s mouth drops open and his face goes slack in surprise, but his hands reach out greedily. I drop the package into his arms, and he stares at it, still astonished. It’s lovely, like all the gifts my stepmum wraps, in a crisp blue paper with snowflakes dancing over it (appropriate). A silver ribbon topped with an enormous bow completes the festive look.
(it was a gift for my cousin, Dev’s little brother) (We can get Ben a new gift tomorrow).
The Humdrum looks back up at me one more time. He looks…lost, somehow. And very young. “Are you sure?” he asks.
“Completely,” I tell him, and I stand up and step back. “Go on, open it.”
The boy looks at me one more time, and then dives into shredding the wrapping like a feral worseger. When every shred of ribbon and paper are making a festive mound in the snow at his feet, he’s left staring at the revealed present. It’s a brand new football. I remember how much Simon had loved the game from the very first, and thought it might be a nice replacement for that ratty red rubber ball.
Turns out, I was right. The Humdrum lifts his eyes to mine, and I think I actually see tears swimming in them. “Thank you,” he whispers, and then, between one moment and the next, he’s gone.
I start back, fearful that the zombies, released from his control, will immediately come after the nearest tasty brains (mine), but they all just seem confused. They start milling around, not going in any particular direction, so I take advantage of the opportunity and hurry back to Simon’s side.
Simon’s looking at me in awe, and I think I actually see a shiny silver tear track on his face. “You did it, Baz,” he whispers. “You defeated the Humdrum.”
“Temporarily,” I qualify. “I’m sure we’ll see him again.” Now that I understand what the humdrum is, I know we’ll see him again. But I’m not planning on telling Simon that immediately. I kind hope to have him dick me down before I have to shatter his view of himself.
Simon sniffles. “It was like seeing an alternate timeline. One where you and me could be kind to one another, you know?”
I nod. “It felt that way to me, too. Like a second chance to make a fresh start with you.”
“Thank you, Baz,” Simon says softly. “For being kind to me.”
I was kind to the Humdrum, not Simon, but, in a way, I was kind to the child Simon used to be, so I nod and accept his thanks.
“But what are we going to do about…them?” Simon continues, pointing at the aimless lot of walking dead on my lawn.
I frown. “I don’t know. There’s no spell that would behead all of them.” Not to mention that a violent battle feels wrong in this atmosphere of love and renewal, on Christmas morning.
Simon looks thoughtful. “You think maybe there’s a way to just un-trap the ghosts?” he asks.
“Un-trap isn’t a word,” I reply automatically. “And they’re visitors, not ghosts.” But now my mind is racing because really, it was a mage’s spell that caused the whole zombie-visitor phenomenon. Shouldn’t another spell be able to release them?
Simon’s thinking along the same lines. “If you were to use my power…”
“Maybe I could undo that original spell?” I finish.
He nods, looking lighter. He smiles at me, and he’s the sun on this moonless night. He reaches out, offering me his hand and his magic.
I take it, and shake out my wand as his magic floods into my like molten lava and cocaine. It fills me until I’m overflowing with power.
There’s one spell that’s sovereign for undoing other spells. It’s worth a try.
I gather up all of Simon’s magic and channel it into my wand. “As You Were,” I shout, aiming at the zombies. The words fill the air like thunder, and the magic rushes out of me and coats the entire army of zombies in golden light.
A shudder runs through the crowd. Then, it’s like each visitor shakes off an unwanted outfit. Their bodily remains drop unceremoniously to the ground, leaving thousands of piles of gore and bones on my front lawn. In their place…
Thousands of shining figures stand. Beings made of light. Visitors—freed at last from their fleshly prisons. The visitors turn as one to look at me and Simon, and we stare back at them, awestruck. Then, again in unison, every shining spirit bows or curtsies their thanks, and then the light that forms them shimmers back into darkness as they fade away.
Simon and I stare at each other, shocked stupid. In just a few minutes time, we’ve stopped the Humdrum, ended the zombie invasion and freed the spirits of thousands of mages.
“Not a bad night’s work,” I say, after a moment.
Simon laughs.