Carry On (34 page)

Everyone sitting along the aisles turns to look at us. A woman near the door drops her glass, and the man next to her catches it.

They don't look like vampires.

Are
they all vampires?

They just look rich. And … grey. But they don't look beautiful or thin or cheekboney like they do in the films.

It's Baz they're checking out, not me. He's got to be scared, or at least nervous, but he doesn't look it. I swear he gets less ruffled the more that he's threatened. (When I'm the one threatening him, that's infuriating. But it's kind of cool now.)

Every one of them must be so jealous of him. He's everything they are, plus magic. Plus he looks the part, like he was born to be some sort of dark king.

Baz stops at the first booth. “Nicodemus,” he says, and he doesn't even make it a question.

A man with grey hair and skin, and a shimmering grey suit meets Baz's eyes and nods towards the back of the room—then looks at me and sneers. I wonder if it's my cross or my scent that's getting to him. Or maybe he knows who I am. The Mage's Heir. (The Mage kills vampires; he doesn't think it's murder.) (Why hasn't the Mage killed
these
vampires?)

I follow Baz through the room, wishing I'd worn all the posh gear he tried to push on me before we left Hampshire. I'm wearing my Watford trousers and one of his Scandinavian jumpers—and I only took the jumper because he said my Watford uniform made me look 12.

Baz is walking so slow, I keep kicking the back of his heels. It's like he wants everyone here to get their fill of him. (Maybe he's also trying to hide his limp.) The room gets darker, the deeper we go. I scan the booths for Nicodemus, but I'm not sure I'd recognize him, even if there were enough light. Does he still look like a mean, boy version of Ebb?

We reach the back wall, and I'm ready to turn around, but Baz continues through a doorway I didn't even see. I follow him down a free-standing spiral staircase with a loose rail. By the time we get to the bottom, I'm dizzy.

Then we're in the basement, I think. It's like a cavern—much larger than the room above us, with an even lower ceiling, and dim blue lights set into the floor, like at the cinema.

It's hard to tell how many of them are down here, because I can't really see, but I feel like I'm in a room full of people. There's electronic music playing, but it's so soft, it sounds like it's coming from far away.

Baz stands at the bottom of the stairs with one hand in his trouser pocket, scanning the room like he's looking for a friend.

They could just set on us now, if they wanted—the vampires—and tear us to pieces. We're hopelessly outnumbered, and we wouldn't have time to cast any good spells. I don't even have my wand on me, though they don't know that. (Baz knows. He couldn't believe I left it at Watford.) (I was in a hurry!)

I could take on some of them with my sword, but probably not all.

I could
go off.
And then, who knows what would happen?

Baz starts walking. The clothes are less posh down here. Are these the down-on-their-luck vampires? How do vampires get down on their luck? Even though we're in the basement, everything and everyone is clean. I don't know what I was expecting. Bloodstains? Blood cocktails? It looks like most people down here are drinking gin. I see bottles of Bombay Sapphire on the tables. Someone makes eye contact with me and holds it, so I let my magic come to my skin—I just think about it overflowing. He looks away.

We're so deep into the cavern now, I've lost track of where the door is. Baz pulls on someone's sleeve—a man almost twice his size. “Nicodemus,” Baz says, still not asking questions. The man flicks his head behind him, and Baz lets go.

We walk on, till we get to a row of pool tables.

Baz stops. He pulls a pack of fags from inside his jacket, then lights one with his wand. Everyone standing at the table jolts back. Baz takes a deep breath—the end of the cigarette glows red—and blows the smoke out over the table.

I didn't know he smoked.

“Nicodemus,” Baz says, still puffing out smoke.

Then I see him—Ebb. A rougher, rangier Ebb. With his blond hair slicked back. He's wearing a suit, too, but it looks cheap, and there are popped stitches on the sleeve.

He smiles at Baz and eyes him up and down. “Well … look at you. Aren't you living the dream.”

Baz inhales again, then languidly meets Nicodemus's stare. “My name is Tyrannus Basilton Pitch. And I'm here to talk to you about my mother.”

“Of course you are, Mr. Pitch.” Nicodemus is practically whispering. “Of course you are.”

Nicodemus grins again, and I see the gaps in his smile; his eyeteeth are missing. His tongue is pushing at one of the holes.

The other men who were at the table with him have backed away, leaving the three of us alone now in the dark.

“What do you want from me?” Nicodemus asks.

“I want to know who killed my mother.”

“You know who killed her.” His tongue pushes into the gap, worrying his gum. “Everyone knows. And everyone knows what your mother did to them who were there.”

Baz brings the cigarette up to his mouth, breathes in, then drops his hand, flicking ashes on the floor. “Tell me the rest,” he says. “Tell me who was responsible.”

Nicodemus laughs. “Or what? Are you going to bite me?” He glances down at the cigarette. “Am I supposed to think you're your mother's son? Going to set us all alight? You haven't killed yourself yet, Mr. Pitch. I don't think you'll choose today.”

Baz looks around the room. Like he's thinking about how many vampires he could take with him.

“Tell him the rest,” I snarl. “Or
I'll
kill you.”

Nicodemus looks over Baz's shoulder at me, and his grin sours. “You think you're so invincible,” he says. “With all your power. Like nothing can beat you.”

“Nothing has yet,” I say.

He laughs again. It's nothing like Ebb's laugh—Nicodemus laughs like nothing matters; Ebb laughs like everything does.

“Fine,” he says. “I'll tell you. Some of it.” He lays his cue on the table. “Vampires can't just walk into Watford. We can't go anywhere uninvited. Except home. Someone came to me—a few weeks before the raid—wanting me to broker a deal. That's what I do to get by. Make deals, introduce people. Not a lot of work out there for a vampire who can't bite nor a magician without a wand.”

His tongue slides compulsively between his teeth. “The pay was good,” he says. “But I said no. My sister lives at Watford. I'd never send death to her door, not unless she wanted it.” He turns his jack-o'-lantern smile on Baz again. “I wonder if
you
were part of the plan, Mr. Pitch. Hard to believe the magicians have allowed it.… Why
do
they keep allowing it? What are they hoping to
do
with you?”

“Who was it?” Baz says. I don't think he's blinked since we walked in here. “Who came to you? Was it the Humdrum?”

“The Humdrum? Yeah, it was the bogeyman, Mr. Pitch. It was the monster under your bed.”

“Was it. The Humdrum,” Baz says again.

Nicodemus shakes his head, still smiling. “It was one of you,” he says. “But his name isn't worth my life. Maybe you'll kill me if I don't tell—but I'll die for certain if I do.”

Baz rests the fag between his lips and slips his wand out his sleeve into his palm. “I could make you tell.”

“That would be illegal,” Nicodemus says. He's right. Compulsion spells are forbidden.

“And dangerous,” he says. Right again.

“What would the Coven do if you cast a forbidden spell, Tyrannus Basilton?” Nicodemus smirks. “Do you think they would be forgiving of one such as you?”

“I should kill you right here,” Baz says, his chest pushing forward. “I don't think anyone would stop me. Or miss you.”

I put my hand on Baz's shoulder. “Let's go.”

“He hasn't
told
us anything,” Baz hisses at me.

“I've told you enough,” Nicodemus says.

“Come on,” I say, pulling Baz back.

“Yeah, go now,” Nicodemus says to Baz. “Go with your mate. You'll find your way back here someday.”

Baz tosses his cigarette onto the pool table, and Nicodemus jumps back, losing his composure for the first time. He flails out for his drink and pours it over the fag. Baz is already striding away.

I look at Nicodemus. “Your sister misses you,” I say.

Then I turn back to Baz and shuffle to catch up. He waits for me at the top of the stairs. (You'd think I was his best friend—I guess that's what he wants them to think.) Then he's cool as ice, cutting through the room upstairs to the door.

When we get outside, nighttime London is so bright, it hurts my eyes.

We find the car, his father's Jaguar, and Baz has it started before I've even opened the passenger door. As soon as I'm inside, he jerks out of the parking spot and guns it, driving as fast as he can down the busy street. He rides up on a taxi, then wrenches the car into the next lane.

“Hey,” I say.

“Shut up, Snow.”

“Look—”

“Shut up!”
He says it with magic, but he's not holding his wand, so it doesn't go anywhere. Then he grabs his wand, and I thinks he's going to curse me, but instead he points it at a bus.
“Make way for the king!”
The bus changes lanes, but there's another car just ahead of it. Baz points at it and casts the spell again. It's a stupid waste of magic.

“You're gonna keel over before we get out of the West End.”

He ignores me, points his wand ahead of him, and hits the gas. The next time he casts the spell, I put my hand on his biceps and push some magic into him.
“Make way!”
he says. The cars ahead of him cut to the left and the right. It's like the whole road is parting for him—I've never seen anything like it.

I've never
felt
anything like it.

I close my eyes at every red light and wish for green. Baz pushes the pedal into the floor.

We're flying.

*   *   *

The magic holds as long as I touch Baz's arm.

I feel clean.

I feel like a current.

I don't know how Baz feels. His face is stone, and when we get out of London, tears start to fall from his eyes. He doesn't wipe them or blink them away, so they streak down his cheeks and cling to his jaw.

Once we're in the countryside, he doesn't need my magic to clear the way anymore, and I let go of him. He keeps turning onto smaller and smaller roads until we're driving along some woods, gravel kicking up beneath us and banging on the bottom of the car.

Baz pulls off the road suddenly and hits the brakes, fishtailing halfway into a ditch, then gets out of the car like he's just parallel-parked it, and walks towards the trees.

I open my door and start to follow him, then go back to turn off the car and grab the keys. I run along his footprints in the snow, past the tree line, until I lose his trail in the darkness.

“Baz!” I shout. “Baz!”

I keep moving, nearly tripping on a branch. Then I do trip.
“Baz!”
I see a blaze of light—fire—ahead of me, deeper in the trees.

“Fuck off, Snow!” I hear him yell.

I run towards the light and his voice. “Baz?”

There's another shot of fire. It catches on a branch and takes hold—illuminating Baz, sitting under the tree, his head in his arms.

“What are you doing?” I say. “Put it out.”

He doesn't answer me. He's shaking.

“Baz, it's all right. We'll just get the name from someone else. This isn't over. We're going to do what your mother asked us to.”

He swings his wand and practically howls, spraying fire all around us. “
This
is what my mother would want for me, you idiot.”

I drop to my knees in front of him. “What are you even talking about?”

He sneers at me, baring his teeth—all of them. His canines are as sharp as a wolf's. “My mother died killing vampires,” he says. “And when they bit her, she killed herself. It's the last thing she did. If she knew what I am … She would never have let me live.”

“That's not true,” I say. “She loved you. She called you her ‘rosebud boy.'”

“She loved what I
was
!” he shouts. “I'm not that boy anymore. I'm one of them now.”

“You're not.”

“Haven't you been trying to prove I'm a monster since we were kids? Crowley, you have your proof now. Go tell the Mage—tell everyone you were right!” His face is dancing with firelight. I feel the heat at my back. “I'm a vampire, Snow! Are you happy?”

“You're not,” I say, and I don't know why I say it, and I don't know why I'm crying all of a sudden.

Baz looks surprised. And irritated. “What?”

“You've never even bitten anyone,” I say.

“Fuck.
Off.
”

“No!”

He drops his head in his arms again. “Seriously. Go. This fire isn't for you.”

I grab his wrists and pull. “That's right,” I say, “it can't be. You always said you'd make sure there was an audience when you finished me off.” I pull on him.
“Come on.”

Baz doesn't fight me, just slumps forward. A cloud of sparks settles near him, and I growl at them, blowing them out.

I lift up his chin. “Baz.”

“Go away, Snow.”

“You're not a monster,” I say. His face is cold as a corpse in my hand. “I was wrong. All those years. You're a bully. And a snob. And a complete arsehole. But you're not one of them.”

Baz tries to jerk his face away, but I hold it fast. He opens his eyes, and they're pools of grey and black and pain. I can't stand it. I growl again. The fire blows back.