* * *
Mordelia is passing through the living room when we walk in. She doesn’t look up from her phone.
“Delia,” Daphne says.
Mordelia looks up. “Mum!” She runs at Daphne’s middle. I step out of the way. “Dad!” Mordelia shouts. “Mum’s home!” She pulls away a bit to look at Daphne. “Are you home? Did you get the thing you needed?”
“I’m home,” Daphne says, smiling, her eyes too bright.
“Mordelia, I’ve asked you not to shout in the—” My father is walking into the living room, holding Swithin. He stops when he sees Daphne.
“Mum’s home!” Mordelia shouts again. (I never would have raised my voice in this situation, even at 8.)
“Hello, Malcolm,” Daphne says.
“The twins…” my father says.
Her face falls. “Are they all right?”
“They’re out back … I was just going to check on them.”
“I’ll do it,” I say. “Mordelia will help.”
Mordelia pouts. “Baz, no—”
“Come on, Mother’s not going anywhere.” I take Swithin from my father and haul Mordelia towards the back door. “Let them have a hug. You know they won’t do it in front of us.”
“Did Mum finish magic school?”
“Yes,” I say. “All done.”
“And she’s really home?”
“Yeah,” I say, hoping I’m right. We find Sophie and Petra in the garden, playing with the Tibetan mastiff my father bought when they moved to Oxford.
“Mum’s home!” Mordelia tells the twins.
“That’s Baz,” one of them says, climbing up my leg. I sit on the ground, so that I have some lap for her. The dog edges away from me, growling. Good instincts.
When Daphne comes out, fifteen minutes later, all three of the girls run to her. Swithin starts crying. Daphne takes him.
My father is standing in the doorway, watching. “Help me with dinner, Basilton?”
“Of course, Father.”
* * *
You’d never guess, at dinner, that Daphne has been gone for weeks. Which is a good sign, I think. My father treats her with as much polite tenderness as ever. He dotes on her, in his way. Caters to her every whim, without making a show of it.
I could get back to London before the trains stop, but Daphne asks me to stay the night. After dinner, I head to the attic to rummage through some boxes of my old things that were brought up from the house in Hampshire. Then I go hunting in the fields behind the house. (Two rabbits and a mole.)
Daphne makes a bed for me on the sofa. “You should have your own room here,” she says.
“I’m fine. The twins are already doubled up.” I’ve just taken a shower, and I’m wearing some old pyjamas I found upstairs—they’re a bit short. Daphne hands me a wool blanket, and I spread it out over the cushions.
“We could add on,” she says. “Your father could manage the spells. Or we could, you know, hire a builder.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary—”
“Or we could convert one of the barns! So you could come home for holidays. And bring a friend.”
“I…” I look over at her. Is she joking? My father would set me on fire if I brought Simon home. (Any boy, really. He’d set me on fire twice if it was Simon.) “That doesn’t seem likely.”
Daphne has just finished shaking a pillow into its case. She looks very sincere. And very cautious. Like someone who is very, very carefully stepping onto thin ice. “It’s possible, I think. Basilton.”
I nod. And take the pillow from her.
She touches my shoulder, just for a second. “Good night, darling.”
“Good night, Mum.”
I wait for her to leave, and then lie down, under the blanket. My phone is on the floor. I pick it up and open my text messages. I click on “SNOW.”
All of my unanswered messages from last week are still there. I shouldn’t reread them, it will just make me melancholy—I do read them, of course—and I definitely shouldn’t text Simon right now. Simon hates texting, even when he isn’t trying to ghost me.
“I’m staying in Oxford tonight. Did you make it home in one piece?” I send the text, then immediately set the phone on my chest, rolling my eyes at myself.
It buzzes, and I jump, knocking it to the floor.
I pick it up.
“3 pieces actually, do you know how to sew?”
I smile. And roll my eyes at myself some more. It takes nothing to please me. “Did you deliver Jamie Salisbury safely home?”
“yeah, you won’t believe what he told me—his sister dated the mage!”
Aleister Crowley. The Mage? “The actual Mage?” I text.
“THE MAGE,” Simon sends back.
“No wonder she fled the country.”
“no wonder her mum hates him!! lady ruth already called to thank us, for jamie and everything—she’s making us lunch tomorrow to celebrate, will you be back?”
“Yes,” I send.
He sends me back a thumbs-up.
I stare at the screen for a second, not sure what to say next. Simon and I don’t have text conversations. Not usually. Not really.
Simon starts typing—there’s a “…” on the screen—then stops. Then starts again.
“you still angry with me?” he finally sends.
I think about it for a second. “Yes.”
“can it wait until you come back?”
“What do you mean?”
“be angry with me tomorrow, when you’re here, not now”
“You want me to set it aside?”
“y”
I think again. “All right.”
“are you angry?”
“No,” I type. Honestly. It’s easy to set my anger aside; I don’t want to be angry with Simon. If anything, I want to apologize for being angry with him. Which isn’t fair. He’s the one who lied.
He doesn’t reply right away. Then—“you were right about smith.”
Well, obviously. “Yes.”
“i’m worried that I’m just going to keep falling for this bullshit”
“What bullshit?”
“first the mage, now smith”
I frown at the phone. “You didn’t fall for the Mage’s shit. You were a child.”
“fell for smith’s tho”
“Only for a minute. Then you brought him to justice. That’s the important part of the pattern, I think—the bringing to justice.”
“maybe”
Simon starts typing more, then stops. Then starts. Then stops.
I wait.
Finally he sends: “i wish smith had been the real thing”
For fuck’s sake. “Why?”
“because then i could stop feeling bad about letting everyone down, they’d have a greatest mage to do all their great mage stuff”
I scowl at the phone and tap his name to call him.
He picks up after a few seconds. “Baz?”
“You have never in your life let anyone down.”
Simon doesn’t say anything at first. (I can hear the three dots.) “That’s not true,” he says. “I let you down all the time.”
“It isn’t ‘letting someone down’ to be depressed.”
“You’re literally still angry at me from earlier today.”
“Because you lied to me, Snow!”
“Doesn’t that count?”
“Fine,” I whisper harshly, “you let me down all the time—I think that’s just being in a relationship—but you’ve never let the World of Mages down. You don’t owe the magickal community anything. You never did. But you’ve served it with unflagging honour.”
“I liked it!” he says. I’m speaking softly, but Simon isn’t—he’s practically shouting now. “I liked every part of it! I know you think it was wrong that the Mage used me and made me fight, but I liked it. I miss it. I liked having a job, and I liked that specific job, and I liked knowing who I was. In a larger sense. I didn’t know who my
parents were, but I knew who I was. Who I was supposed to be. Who the fuck am I now, Baz?”
“You’re the same person!”
“I was the Chosen One before.”
“You were you. You still are.”
He growls. “You’re not getting it—”
“I do get it.” I pull the blanket up over my head to muffle my voice. “I understand that you’ve lost something—a lot of things—but you’re still the same person. I know, because I loved you then, and I love you now, and I know that’s not enough to make you happy—to make anyone happy—but you’re the same person, Simon. You’re still you.”
He doesn’t answer me. It sounds like he’s pacing. I can hear his wings snapping open and closed.
“It’s enough,” he finally grumbles.
“What is,” I whisper.
“The fact that you love me. It does make me happy.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he sighs. “It doesn’t fix everything. I still don’t know who’s looking back at me in the mirror. But … it makes me happy.”
“You sound ecstatic, Snow.”
He laughs.
There’s a creaking noise, like he’s sitting down—on his mattress or the new sofa. “I want to tell you that I’m sorry I lied to you,” he says. “But then I think about you walking into the Chapel and getting that spell cast at you. That curse.”
“Why would Smith-Richards have cast a spell on me that would immediately make me more powerful?”
“I don’t know—to hurt you. He’s a fucked-up person!”
“You’ll get no argument there,” I say. “But you can’t lie to me every time there’s trouble. You can’t sideline me from every battle.”
“Are you expecting lots of battles in the future?”
“You may have forgotten who you are, Snow, but I haven’t.”
Simon sighs. He sounds tired. “You said we could set this aside until you come back.”
“You brought it up.”
“I know. I’m sorry. About that, anyway. Are … Are you still coming back?”
“Simon…” I know he’s damaged and insecure, but he keeps questioning the one thing I know for certain. It’s insulting. “I’ll always come back,” I say.
He’s quiet. I can hear him breathing. I can hear the three dots hovering over his head.
“Me, too,” he whispers.
82
BAZ
I hunt before I leave Oxford. (Two more rabbits, a fox.) Then my father drives me to the station.
He doesn’t say anything in the car, and I don’t expect him to.
It’s an hour on the train to London. When I get there, I go to Fiona’s flat first. I let myself in. “Fiona?”
There’s no answer. I suppose I could leave her a note …
“She went to get breakfast,” someone says.
Nico is standing in the door to my aunt’s bedroom, looking like he just threw on jeans and a T-shirt—and looking thoroughly displeased to be speaking to me.
“You could wait for her,” he says.
“I live here.”
“I know that, I just meant…” He smooths back his blond hair and sighs. “You want tea?”
I frown. And nod. I sit on the sofa.
Nico comes back from the kitchen with two mugs and a pint of milk. He sits on the chair.
I cross one leg over the other and pick a piece of lint off my knee. “So you’re going to marry my aunt.”
“That’s right.” His chin is sticking out, like he’s expecting whatever nasty thing I say next. I can’t overemphasize what an unpleasant face the man has. Sour and smirking. Handsome in an angry way. Like the lead singer of a band who resents how popular his music is with teenage girls.
He must be nearly 40—he’s Ebb’s twin brother—but he looks like an unhealthy 20-something. His skin is grey, and his eyes are tired. Is this what I look like? Is this what I’ll always look like? Like a 21-year-old who never gets any sleep?
Nico wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. There are gaps where his eyeteeth were. At least I still have my smile.
“Congratulations,” I say. “Does this mean you’re turning over a new leaf?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but my aunt is a vampire hunter.”
He smirks. “Yeah, I’ve noticed—have you?”
I find some more lint on my trousers. Perhaps I should just leave. Fiona doesn’t need my blessing for this.
“I’m not gonna Turn your aunty,” Nico says. “Is that what you’re worried about? If I were gonna Turn Fiona, I woulda done it already. I wouldn’t put a scratch on her.”
“That’s cold comfort for all the people you murder.”
“I don’t—” He sets his tea down, and pulls an e-cigarette out of his pocket. He takes a hit off it. “I’m done with all that. Fi’s made me go vegan.”
“Vegan?” I say, genuinely surprised.
He rolls his hand in the air. “You know … Rats, cats, bats. Nothing that talks back to me. I feel like shit, and now I can look forward to losing my hair, but I reckon it doesn’t matter. Don’t wanna live forever without Fiona, at any rate.”
I sit up. What does he—
Does that mean—
I refuse to ask Nicodemus Petty any vampire questions.
But …
“Do you mean…” I say, “that it affects you? Not having … people?”
“You fucking with me?” He sneers. “You think you can find immortality at the bottom of, what the shit, a squirrel?”
“I—”
The front door opens, and Fiona walks in with a paper bakery bag and coffee. “Basil.” She looks at me, then at Nico, then back at me. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” he says. “I made tea.”
“I…” I stand up. “Fiona, could I talk to you for a moment?”
“I’ll step out,” Nico says. “Could use a nip anyway.” He walks to the door, patting my aunt’s shoulder on the way out. Her hand goes to cover his for a second.
Then she sets her breakfast down on the coffee table. She narrows her eyes. “Did you forget something? Come back to ransack the kitchen cupboards?”
I reach into my jacket and fish my grandmother’s ring out of my pocket. It’s gold, with a sapphire and three diamonds. I hold it out to Fiona in my palm.
“Mum’s ring,” she says, eyes wide. She looks from my hand to my face. “Basil, did you rob your own mother’s grave?”
I shake my head. “My father gave it to me. Years ago, as a keepsake. He told me that my mother used to wear it every day…”
“She did,” Fiona says, her voice breaking.
I hold my hand farther out to her. “Take it.”
She looks away. “No. Your dad’s right. You should have it to remember your mum.”
“I’ll see it more often on your hand than I will if it stays in a box.”
She peers back at me, biting her cheek, but still doesn’t take it.
I look down at the ring. “I think my father hoped I might give it to a girl someday…”
Fiona snatches it from my palm. “Simon Snow is not getting my mother’s sapphire.”
I laugh. “Homophobic.”
“It isn’t because he’s a boy,” she says. “It’s because he’s a pain in my arse.” Then she screws up her face at me—like she feels guilty, and it’s my fault. “Well, shit … Did you want to give it to him?”
“No,” I say, still laughing. “Take it.”
She beams at me. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She grabs me into a hug, rocking us back and forth. “Thank you, thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Fiona.”
She pulls away and opens her fist, holding the ring so she can admire it. “I know you think I’m mad…”
“As a hatter. Are you telling anyone else about the wedding?”
“Can you im
agine? Pitches on one side of the Chapel, vampires on the other.”
“That would put me in a very awkward position.”
She bumps her shoulder into my arm, smiling at me. “Wasn’t planning a wedding. But Nicky’s going to move in.”
“I figured as much.”
“And we’re going to make it legal the Normal way. They haven’t stricken him from their books.” She quirks an eyebrow at me. “We could use a witness…”
* * *
I consider knocking at Snow’s door. But it’s still early, and I have a key.
His flat’s quiet. I’m quiet, too, in case he’s sleeping. I’ve brought scones. I set them on the kitchen counter.
“I thought you were a goblin,” Simon says. He’s standing in his bedroom door, holding a dinner knife like a dagger. He slept in his knit boxers—he still looks half asleep.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I say. “Goblins are fit.”
Simon rubs his face and walks back into the bedroom. When I get there, he’s under the duvet again.
I sit on the edge of the mattress. “Are you sleeping with a full set of cutlery or just the knife?”
“Don’t have a sword,” he mumbles, like that explains it. “Come back to bed.”
“I wasn’t in bed.”
“Don’t be a dick.”
I take off my jacket and waistcoat—the same thing I was wearing yesterday, maybe I should leave some clothes in Oxford—and look over my shoulder at Simon. He’s tucked himself into a knot under the blanket and buried his face in his pillow. His hair is curling in every direction. Big, fat curls. He must have gone to sleep with it wet.
I look down at my shoes and quickly unlace them. I take off my socks and my trousers, my button-down shirt, and—after a second of deliberation—my T-shirt. It feels strange to get undressed without anyone requesting it or giving me permission. I suppose I’m requesting it. I’m the one who wants it.
I get under the blanket. Snow reaches out to me and pulls me against him. He’s still sleep-warm. I feel his tail sliding over my thigh. We’re face-to-face, but he’s not looking in my eyes.
“Don’t be angry with me yet,” he whispers. His breath smells rotten. Maybe if he were someone else, I’d mind.
“When do I get to be angry?” I ask.
He knocks his forehead against mine, still looking down. “Later.”
Any Way the Wind Blows Page 40
