Carry On (18 page)

Father says Fiona thought my mother hung the moon. (To hear my father talk about her, my mother may have
actually
hung the moon. Or maybe it was hung for her pleasure.)

Fiona was apprenticing with an herbalist in Beijing when my mother died. She came home for the funeral and never went back. She stayed with my dad until he got remarried, then moved to London. Now my aunt lives on family money and magic, and lives to avenge her sister.

It's a bad fit.

Fiona is smart—and powerful—but my mother was the chess player in the family. My mother was groomed for greatness. (That's what everyone says.)

Fiona is vindictive. She's impatient. And sometimes she just wants to rage against the machine—even if she's not exactly sure where the machine is or how to properly rage at it.

Her grand plan for uncovering the Mage's plot is to send me sneaking up to his office. She's obsessed with the Mage's office; it was my mother's office, and I think Fiona thinks she can steal it back from him.

“Sneak into his office and do what?” I asked her.

“Look around.”

“What do you expect me to find?”

“Well, I don't know, do I? He must be leaving a trail somewhere. Check his computer.”

“He's never even there to use his computer,” I said. “He probably keeps everything on his phone.”

“Then steal his phone.”

“
You
steal his phone,” I said. “I've got homework.”

She said she'd be meeting soon with the Old Families—a consortium made up of everyone who got left behind in the Mage's revolution.

(My father goes to these meetings, too, but his heart's not in it. He'd rather talk about magickal livestock and archival seed stock. The Grimms are farmers. My mother must have been sick in love to marry him.)

After my mother died, anyone who had the courage to stand up to the Mage's military coup was quickly forced off the Coven. No one from the Old Families has had a seat for the last decade—even though most of the Mage's reforms are aimed at us:

Banned books, banned phrases. Rules about when we can meet and where. Taxes to cover all the Mage's initiatives; most notably to pay for every faun bastard and centaur cousin, and every pathetic excuse for a magician in the Realm to attend Watford. The World of Mages never had taxes before. Taxes were for Normals; we had standards instead.

You can't blame the Old Families for striking back at the Mage however we can.

Anyway, I told Fiona that I'd do it. That I'd go up to the Mage's office and look around, even if it was pointless.

“Take something,” she said, gripping her steering wheel.

I was in the back seat, so I could see only a slice of her face in the rearview mirror. “Take what?”

She shrugged. “Doesn't matter. Take something.”

“I'm not a thief,” I said.

“It's not thieving—that office is
hers,
it's yours. Take something for me.”

“All right,” I said.

I almost always go along with Fiona in the end. The way she misses my mother keeps her alive for me.

*   *   *

But tonight I'm too tired to do Fiona's bidding.

And too jumpy. I can't shake the feeling that I'm being followed—that whoever it was who paid the numpties to take me will try again.

By the time I'm done in the Catacombs, it feels like I'm dragging my own corpse up the tower steps to our room.

Snow's asleep when I come in.

Normally I shower in the mornings, and he showers at night.

We've got the dance all worked out, after so many years. Moving around the room without touching or talking or looking at each other. (Or at least not looking at each other while the other is paying attention.)

But there are cobwebs in my hair tonight, and I was so thirsty that I got blood under my nails when I fed.

That hasn't happened since I was 14, not since I was just getting the hang of this. I can usually drain a polo pony without staining my lips.

I move around the room quietly. As much as I enjoy disturbing Snow, tonight I just need to clean off and get some sleep.

I never should've tried to make it through a full day of classes. My leg's gone numb, and my head is killing me. Maybe it's good that Coach Mac won't take me back on the team, if I can't even manage seven hours in a desk. (He looked sad when I showed up at practice. And suspicious. He said I was on probation.)

I take a quick, quiet shower, and when I climb into bed, I feel every bone in my body groan happily.

Crowley, I missed this bed. Even though it's dusty and lumpy, with goose quills that sneak through the ticking and poke you.

My bedroom at home is enormous. All the furniture at home is hundreds of years old, and I'm not allowed to hang anything up or move anything around because it's all registered with the National Trust. Every few years or so, the local paper comes in and does an article.

My bed there is heavy and draped, and if you look close, you'll find forty-two gargoyles carved into the trim. There used to be a step stool at the head because the bed was too tall for me to climb into by myself.

This bed, at Watford, is more mine than that one ever was.

I roll over onto my side, facing Snow. He's sleeping, so it doesn't matter if I stare at him. Which I do. Even though I know it doesn't do me any good.

Snow sleeps in a knot: his legs pulled up and his fists drawn in, shoulders hunched high, head tucked low, and his hair a crush of curls on the pillowcase. What little moonlight there is catches on his tawny skin.

There was no light with the numpties. Just one endless night of pain and noise and blood.

I'm at least half dead, I think. I mean, just normally, when I'm walking around and feeling good—I'm at least half gone.

When I was in that coffin, I pushed myself closer.

I let myself slip away.…

Just to stay
sane.
Just to get
through
it.

And when I felt myself slipping too far, I held on to the one thing I'm always sure of—

Blue eyes.

Bronze curls.

The fact that Simon Snow is the most powerful magician alive. That nothing can hurt him, not even me.

That Simon Snow is
alive.

And I'm hopelessly in love with him.

 

33

BAZ

The operative word there is “hopeless.”

That was evident the moment I realized I'd be the one who was most miserable if I ever succeeded in doing Snow in.

It dawned on me during our fifth year. When Snow followed me around like a dog tied to my ankle. When he wouldn't give me a
single
moment of solace to sort through my feelings—or try to wank them away. (Which I eventually tried that summer. To no avail.)

I wish I'd never figured it out. That I love him.

It's only ever been a torment.

Sharing a room with the person you want most is like sharing a room with an open fire.

He's constantly drawing you in. And you're constantly stepping too close. And you know it's not good—that there is no good—that there's absolutely nothing that can ever come of it.

But you do it anyway.

And then …

Well. Then you burn.

Snow says I'm obsessed with fire. I'd argue that's an inevitable side effect of being flammable.

I mean, I guess everyone's flammable, ultimately—but vampires are oily rags. We're flash paper.

The cruel joke of it is that I come from a long line of fire magicians—two long lines, the Grimms and the Pitches. I'm brilliant with fire. As long as I don't get too close.

No …

The cruel joke of it is that Simon Snow smells like smoke.

Snow whimpers—he's plagued by nightmares, we both are—and rolls onto his back, one arm reaching for a moment before he lets it fall over his head. His ridiculous curls tumble back onto the pillow. Snow wears his hair short on the back and on the sides, but the top is a thatch of loose curls. Golden brown. It's dark now, but I can still see the colour.

I know his skin, too. Another shade of gold, the fairest. Snow never tans, but there are freckles on his shoulders, and moles scattered all over his back and chest, his arms and legs. Three moles on his right cheek, two below his left ear, one over his left eye.

It doesn't do me any good to know all this.

But I'm not sure it makes it any worse either. I'm not sure it could
get
any worse.

The windows are open; Snow sleeps with them open all year long unless I throw a snit about it. It's easier to sleep with extra blankets on my bed than to complain. I've got used to the weight of them against me.

I'm tired. And full. I can feel the blood sloshing around in my stomach—it's probably going to wake me up to piss.

Snow moans again, and tosses back onto his side.

I'm home. Finally.

I fall asleep.

 

34

BAZ

Snow doesn't give a shit about waking
me
up.

He likes to be the first person down to breakfast, Chomsky knows why. It's 6
A.M.
, and he's already banging around our room like a cow who accidentally wandered up here.

The windows are still open, and the sunlight is pouring in. I'm fine in sunlight—that's another myth. But I don't like it. It stings a bit, especially first thing in the morning. Snow suspects, I think, and is constantly opening the curtains.

I guess we used to fight more about stuff like this.

And then I almost killed him, and squabbling over the curtains suddenly felt ridiculous.

Snow will tell you I tried to kill him our third year. With the chimera. But I was only trying to scare him that day—I wanted to see him wet his pants and cry. Instead he went off like an H-bomb.

He also says I tried to throw him down a flight of stairs the next year. Really, we were fighting at the top of the staircase, and I got in a lucky punch that sent him flying. Then, when my aunt Fiona asked me if I'd pushed Simon Snow down a flight of stairs, I said, “Fuck yes I did.”

But the next year, fifth year, I actually did try to take Snow down.

I hated him so much that spring. I hated the sight of him—I hated what the sight of him did to me.

When Fiona told me she'd found a way to “take the Mage's Heir out of our way,” I was more than willing to help. She gave me the pocket recorder, an ancient thing with an actual tape, and warned me not to speak when it was on; she made me swear on my mother's grave.

I don't know what I was expecting to happen.… I felt like I was in a spy movie, standing by the gates and pushing the button in my pocket the moment I could see Snow start to lose his temper.

Maybe I thought I was entrapping him.…

Maybe I did think it would hurt him—or kill him.

Maybe I didn't think anything
could
kill him.

Then came Philippa bloody Stainton running across the lawn to embarrass herself. (She wouldn't leave Snow alone that year, even though he clearly wasn't interested.) The recorder swallowed up her voice in one horrible squeak, like a mouse being sucked up in a vacuum. I hit stop as soon as I heard her.… It was too late.

Snow knew I did it, but he couldn't prove anything. And no one else could either—I hadn't touched my wand. I hadn't said a word.

Aunt Fiona was hardly bothered by the mistake.
“Philippa Stainton—she's not one of ours, is she?”

I remember handing the recorder back to my aunt, thinking of the magic she must have poured into it. Wondering where she got that much magic.

“Don't look so glum, Basil,” Fiona said, taking it from me. “We'll get him next time.”

A few days later, in Magic Words, Miss Possibelf assured us all that Philippa would be fine. But she never came back to Watford.

I'll never forget Philippa's face when her voice ran out.

I'll never forget Snow's.

That's the last time I tried to hurt him. Permanently.

I throw curses at Snow. I harass him. I
think
about killing him all the time, and someday I'll have to try—but until then, what's the point?

I'm going to lose.

On that day. When Snow and I actually have to fight each other.

I might be immortal. (Maybe. I don't know whom to ask.) But I'm the kind of immortal you can still cut down or light on fire.

Snow is … something else.

When he goes off, he's more of an element than a magician. I don't think our side will ever put him out or contain him, but I know—I
know
—that I have to do my part.

We're at war.

The Humdrum may have killed my mother, but the Mage will drive my whole family out of magic. Just to make an example of us. He's already taken our influence. Drained our coffers. Blackened our name. We're all just waiting for the day he takes the nuclear option—

Snow
is the nuclear option. With Snow tucked in his belt, the Mage is omnipotent. He can make us do anything.… He can make us go away.

I can't let that happen.

This is my world, the World of Mages. I have to do my part to fight for it. Even if I know I'm going to lose.

Snow is standing in front of his wardrobe now, trying to find a clean shirt. He stretches one arm over his head, and I watch the muscles shifting in his shoulders.

All I do is lose.

I sit up and throw my covers off. Snow startles and grabs a shirt.

“Forget that I'm here?” I ask. I stride over to my wardrobe and lay my trousers and shirt over my arm. I don't know why Snow lingers over his clothes like he has big decisions to make. He wears his uniform every day, even on the weekend.

When I close my wardrobe door, he's staring at me. He looks unsettled. I'm not sure what I've done to unsettle him, but I sneer anyway, just to drive it home.