“Well, I can work on that.”
“Can you?”
“Yeah…” He reaches his fingers up my cheek and sucks one side of his bottom lip into his mouth. (It’s an entire Joni Mitchell song. It’s a Mercury Prize.) “Yeah,” he says, letting his lip go. “Maybe when I feel that way, I’ll turn it into being glad that I didn’t lose you, as well.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “This is you trying, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.” There’s a lightness in his expression that I haven’t seen for so long. I want more of it. Even if I can’t trust it.
“If we do this”—my chin hits his palm with every syllable—“I want the full Simon Snow treatment.”
“What does that mean?”
“I want the locked jaw. The squinty eyes. The shoulders.”
He wrinkles his forehead. “The shoulders?”
“I want you to slay a dragon before you give up on me, do you understand?”
“I thought you didn’t like it when I slew dragons…”
I press my hands into Snow’s chest and clutch them in his jumper. “I want you to try everything before you give up on us again.”
He rubs his thumb below my lip. “I won’t give up, Baz. Unless you tell me to. Unless you’re, like, really clear that you want me to. And even then, I won’t give up. I’ll just persist from a distance.”
“You can’t put me through this again, Simon. I don’t want to spend my whole life, losing you. Watching you slip away. I never want to come home to another note.”
“You won’t.” He shakes his head. “I promise. I won’t.”
I wish I could believe him—what would it take for me to believe him? And what do I need in the meantime, what am I willing to withstand? (How would someone with pride answer these questions…)
I close my eyes. My voice is low. “I’m not saying you have to stay with me forever. But you can’t just give up without a fight.”
“I’m so sorry, Baz.”
I push and pull on his jumper. His forehead thunks against mine. I nod. “Okay,” I whisper.
“Okay?” he whispers back.
“Okay, Snow. We’ll try. We’ll try this with you trying.”
“Yeah?”
I nod against him. “Yeah.”
“Okay.” He exhales roughly against my lips, then takes another shuddering breath. “Christ, I’m so scared.”
“Already? Don’t we get a day of clinging to each other before things fall apart again?”
Simon laughs over my mouth. He’s been drinking orange juice. He needs a shower. He smells like a locker room and a back alley and something bleachy.
“I don’t—” he says, looking down. “I—”
His hair is in my eyes. I brush my nose against his.
He starts again: “I don’t know how not to be afraid that you’ll leave me.”
I scoff. “I won’t leave you. When have I ever left?”
“You can’t know how it will be,” he says, head hanging. “Over time. You might not want me once you don’t have to worry about me leaving.”
Who even knew Simon was capable of such mental gymnastics? “You have a real genius for catastrophizing, Snow.”
“Is that the same as having a genius for catastrophes? Because, obviously. How many times has Penny’s mum said so?”
I pull back so he can see me. “I’m not going to get tired of you.”
“You can’t know that,” he says, bumping my nose with his forehead.
“I can. Look at me.” I catch his chin. I wait for his blue eyes to settle on mine. “This thing between us didn’t start with us dating. It didn’t even start when you kissed me. You’re in me so deep, I wouldn’t know how to dig you out. I may get fed up with you … But, Simon, I’ll never get tired of you.”
His hand is still on my face. He traces his thumb under my eye. “Penelope always says that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.”
“Penelope didn’t say that. Everyone says that.”
“I literally destroy literally everything I touch.”
“That’s an overstatement.”
“I fuck it up, Baz, with everyone. Look what I did to Agatha. And the Mage. Merlin, who knows what happened with my own parents…”
“There is so much to unpack in that sentence.”
He laughs, but he looks miserable again.
I tug at his jumper. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Snow. You’re not allowed to feel sorry for yourself as long as you get to have me.”
I mean it. I’m thinking about kissing him, to drive the point home, but I’m gun-shy and unsure of my permissions. Maybe we have to build back up to kissing. Maybe Snow needs a high-speed chase to get him in the mood.
I’m thinking about it. About what I’m allowed. And what I deserve. And what I can stand—
And then he kisses me.
I kiss him back.
And back.
And back.
17
SIMON
I was worried that Baz wouldn’t want to kiss me—but it turns out, that wasn’t an issue.
He held my face with both hands, and I held his, and we kissed until my chin hurt from pushing into him. Baz can probably kiss for days without getting sore. With his superhuman vampire chin. His lips don’t even get puffed up.
We’ve stopped kissing now, but we’re still holding on to each other. I think we’re both afraid to pull away.
Baz smells terrible. Like day-old sweat, but also like day-old raw meat. I’m trying to remember if he’s ever smelled bad before. I don’t mind it, really. More proof that he isn’t dead.
He’s rubbing the corner of my mouth. “You’re bleeding,” he says, looking worried. “Did I cut you?”
I shake my head. “I think that’s from you. You’ve got a little…” I rub at the blood lingering near his chin.
“Oh, fuck!” he says, turning away from me and covering his mouth. “That’s rat blood. I got rat blood in your mouth.”
I try to pull him back by the shoulders. “Hey, I don’t mind.”
“You don’t mind rat blood?”
I shrug. “I’ll brush my teeth.”
“Fat lot of good that’ll do against the plague.” He’s still pulling away.
“Don’t go,” I say. “Not yet.”
Baz’s shoulders soften in my hands. He lets me turn him back. He lets me touch his chin, his cheeks. His hand is still over his mouth—I kiss it. I’m so relieved to still be here, I can feel it rolling off me in waves. I’m surprised it’s not visible.
“I need a shower,” Baz says. “I haven’t cleaned up since Oxford.”
“I’m kind of enjoying it.” I grin. “I didn’t know you could get rank.”
He rolls his eyes, and shoves at me. “You need a shower, too. You smell like—actually I don’t know what you smell like. Something corrosive.”
“It’s my wings,” I say.
His face falls. And so does his hand. I lick my thumb and scrape the rest of the rat blood from his mouth.
“Does it hurt?” he asks. He’s looking at my shoulder.
I shake my head. “Oh, uh—no. I mean, I didn’t have it done yet. I chickened out.”
It wasn’t quite like that. I didn’t chicken out. It was more like I got overwhelmed. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Baz had said and how I needed to talk to him. Immediately. It felt like some window was closing. It was probably already closed, and I’d need to break it open. And what if I needed my wings somehow? To get to him?
I told Niamh I was sorry, said good-bye to Agatha, and left.
Baz sits up tall and reaches around my shoulder to where my wings are flattened against my back. He hasn’t touched me there since I walked in. “I thought these were bandages,” he says, patting them.
“No. Just my wings. They, like, pulled in super tight when the doctor was trying to clean them. Some sort of panic response, I think.”
“Could you do this on purpose?” He�
�s probing my back with his fingers, one eyebrow cocked. “If you could, you wouldn’t even need a spell to hide them—they’re hardly noticeable like this.”
“Pfft, I look like that Disney character with the droopy eye.”
He stares at me for a second. “Quasimodo?”
“Yeah, him.”
He rolls his eyes again. “All right, maybe, but you don’t look like a dragon.”
“They’re so bunched up, I’m afraid to move them. It hurts a bit.” I pull my hoodie and T-shirt up over my head and turn, so Baz can see my bare back.
“Circe…” he says.
He touches me there, and I wince.
“They’re folded up like origami, Snow. How is that possible?”
“How is any of it possible? Dragons are magic, I reckon.”
Baz runs his hand up one wing to the bony black talon that’s curled against my shoulder. “Is this where it hurts?”
“No, it’s more like a muscle cramp, in the wings themselves.”
“Maybe from clenching them so tight?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“You’re sticky,” he says. “There’s this orange film…”
“That’s the Betadine. The disinfectant.”
“So you did go in for the surgery?”
I glance at him over my shoulder. “Yeah. I went. And then … Well. I needed to come here. I’m still going to do it, have them off, but I—I needed to talk to you.”
I feel something against my wings and crank my head back. Baz is kissing me. Well, he’s kissing the wings. Down one side. Slowly. And … Up … The other.
It feels like he’s kissing the inside of my ear. Or the back of my throat.
I shudder.
Baz puts his arms around my waist, and holds me there.
“You’ll get Betadine on your mouth,” I say.
His voice is low: “Probably needs it.”
It’s too much. My skin is crawling, and my wings are flinching. I’m worried they’re going to fly out, like someone opening a spiked umbrella in his face. I pull his hands apart at my stomach and turn around. His lips really are orange; it makes me laugh.
“We should take a shower,” I say.
Baz raises an eyebrow.
My cheeks get hot. “I mean, we should both take showers. Like you said. Can I—I mean, this is your aunt’s place, right? Does she have a shower? Would she mind?”
18
BAZ
Snow has never been to my flat, not in all the time we’ve been together—too far from his beloved sofa, I assumed. Also, I suppose there was the risk of my aunt trying to kill him if she found him here. (Fiona still hasn’t forgiven Simon for being the Mage’s No. 1 henchman and for helping to arrest some of my second cousins.) (I mean, fair enough.)
He’s standing in my bedroom door now, probably thinking about how little there is to take in: A couple of racks of clothes. My violin. The down duvet and pillows from my room in Hampshire.
Since I left Watford and moved to London, I’ve spent most of my free time at Simon and Penny’s place—I even studied there. All I really needed here was a bed.
I dig out some clean clothes for Simon to borrow and point him towards the bathroom connecting my room and Fiona’s. He can have the first shower.
While he’s in there, I make him a plate of ham sandwiches. I should eat, too—and I should probably hunt again. More substantially. But I don’t want to walk away from Simon right now. What if he’s not here when I return?
I hear it from the kitchen when the shower stops. It takes me back to Watford. To lying in my bed, knowing Snow had just finished his shower. Bracing for him to come out, all damp and surly. Telling myself that I wasn’t going to look at him. That I wasn’t going to care. And always doing both.
When I walk back to my bedroom, Simon is dressed and sitting tentatively at the edge of my mattress. Damp. Nervous. He looks like a dog who knows he isn’t supposed to be on the bed.
He’s wearing one of my old football shirts. (Have I manipulated this whole scenario just to see Snow in my Watford shirt? Perhaps. Take it up with the courts.) He must have pulled his wings in tight again, because he’s got the shirt stretched over them. They’re hanging out below the hem. It doesn’t look comfortable.
I motion at his back, walking closer. “I can fix that shirt for you—”
“I don’t want to ruin it.”
“I don’t mind.” I don’t. Then it would be his shirt, and he might wear it again. My name on his back, my number. I’ve already got my wand out and pointed at him.
Simon lifts up his hands, suddenly distressed. “Baz, no.”
“Oh,” I say, looking down at my wand. “Is this bad? Do you not want me to … magic? Around you?”
His hands drop. “No, I mean—Yeah, of course you can, you know, magic. I just—” He shakes his head, like he’s clearing it. “You know what? Go ahead. Do it. I’d like to spread my wings out a bit anyway.”
“If you’re certain.”
Simon takes my wrist and points my wand at his chest, so I cast the spell—“Like a glove!”—and the shirt refits itself around his wings. It looks very tidy. I can reverse the spell, too, but even when Penelope and I help Simon like this, he ends up cutting himself out of his clothes later; he won’t ask for our help getting undressed. (I should have just cut vents in the shirt for his wings, to make it easier for him. I could do that with magic, too.)
He arches his back and sighs. His wings unfurl behind him.
I remember thinking at first that it was too bad Simon gave himself dragon wings. He could have gone with something far more elegant. Pegasus wings—soft, white feathers tipped with sky blue. Or green fairy wings that shimmer in the moonlight.
But in the moment that he needed to fly, Simon summoned brute force and sharp edges. Red leather and bony black spikes. Now it’s ridiculous to think of him with anything else. Simon Snow with white feathers—absurd. He’d look like a cartoon angel. Or a Victoria’s Secret model …
“Is it all right that I’m sitting here?”
I shake my head. Then switch to nodding it. “Of course,” I say. “Make yourself at home. There are sandwiches in the kitchen. The kettle’s on.”
“Right,” Simon says. “Thanks.”
I nod again, backing towards the bathroom door. “I’ll just be a minute.”
The bathroom is still steamed up from Simon’s shower, and I swoon a little, thinking about him in here, even though it smells like he used my aunt’s shampoo. (Smoke and mirrors, how did I survive sharing a room with Simon Snow through my entire adolescence?) (Oh, yes, I remember: furious wanking. Furious everything.) I wash up more thoroughly than usual. Paranoid about the rat blood. And the fact that Simon said I smelled “rank.” I’m rather less thorough than usual with my hair, just towel drying it and combing it off my face. Chomsky, I used to spend so much time on my hair every morning when Snow and I shared a room … Carefully parting it and slicking it back. I thought it looked dramatic.
When I walk out of the bathroom, Simon is on my bed again. He’s got the plate of sandwiches, and there’s a pot of tea on the side table (sitting right on top of a stack of books, for pity’s sake). I clear my throat. “You didn’t have to bring them in—”
“Oh.” He stands up. “I thought that’s what you…” He picks up the plate and motions towards the door. “Should I?”
“No, it’s fine. This is fine. Better to stay out of Fiona’s path, anyway. Aren’t you hungry?”
“I was waiting for you.”
“Oh.” Why is this so strange? Why am I being so strange? “Thank you.” I take the plate from him and sit down against my pillows, crossing my legs and setting the sandwiches beside me.
Simon sits next to me, careful not to upset the plate. He’s pushed down the waist of his trousers to free his tail—and pulled down his shirt to hide how low his trousers are riding. It must wear him out, the constant adjusting and manoeuvring and tucking. He’s got his wings held
close to his body to keep from knocking everything off the bedside table as he pours me a mug of tea.
Our fingers touch when he hands it to me. I’d be blushing if I had enough blood in me. Why am I being so weird. Is it just relief? Is it the novelty of having Simon here? In my room? Or is it because we’re starting over, so everything feels new?
I pick up half a ham sandwich, and take a second to control my fangs before taking a bite. (I’m getting better at this.) Simon takes a sandwich as soon as I do, and shoves most of it into his mouth. He bites down, and his face lights up. He’s kissing my cheek now, holding his tea out to the side, so it won’t spill.
“What’s that about?” I ask.
He noses at my ear. Softly: “There’s butter on these ham sandwiches.”
“I thought you liked them that way.”
He nips at me. “I do.”
Then he pulls back, still smiling. What a ridiculous creature. Happy that I put butter on his sandwich. As if I wouldn’t make the world spin backwards if I thought he’d like it better that way.
“I haven’t eaten since last night,” he says, taking another sandwich.
“I haven’t eaten since the train yesterday.”
“That’s not true, you had rats.”
“I didn’t eat them,” I say.
“Maybe you should. There’d be less waste.”
“Maybe you should eat them. Then it could be something we do together.”
Snow laughs. He’s curling towards me as he eats. His legs are tucked up, and he’s leaning on me, his left wing pushing behind my shoulder. I move forward a bit, and he spreads it out, wrapping it around my back. The inside of his wings is softer than the outside. It’s rather like being wrapped in a suede blanket.
I can feel myself tensing up. Moments like this with Simon are so few and far between, and I never know what will startle him out of one. Or when he’ll collapse entirely. It’s like trying to be in a relationship with one of those fields Princess Diana was always drawing worthy attention to—the war is over, the armies have gone home, but no one knows where the mines are buried.
What does it even mean that Simon’s going to try now? How does a minefield try?
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