“You didn’t hurt Baz.”

“Maybe I did—he’d never admit it.”

“Maybe it didn’t hurt him,” she says, “because he’s already dead.”

“Baz isn’t dead.”

“Well he’s not alive.”

“I … I think he is,” I say. “He has magic. That’s life.”

“Morgan’s tooth—imagine if you could do it again. If you could actually control your power, Simon.”

“Baz was the one controlling my power.”

“It was like you were focused for the first time—directed. You were using him like a wand.”

I close my eyes. “I wasn’t using him.”

48

BAZ

When I come back, Bunce is gone. I can tell she’s been sitting on my bed again—it smells like her. Like blood and chocolate and kitchen herbs. I’ll snap at her about it tomorrow.

Snow has showered, the room is humid from it, but our papers and dinner things are still scattered on the table and the floor. It’s like having two slovenly roommates.

The chalkboard is in order, though, completely filled with Bunce’s tight-fisted handwriting and pushed against the wall.

I take my jacket off and spell it clean, hanging it in my wardrobe. My tie’s tucked in the pocket. I pull it out and loop it around the hanger.

I ate my sandwich down in the basement, washing it down with a few rats. I need to go hunting in the Wood again; the rats are getting few and far between in the Catacombs, even though I try not to take the females.

It’s a pain to hunt in the Wood. I have to do it during the day because the Mage brings the drawbridge up at dusk, and I can’t Float like a butterfly over the moat every night like I did today; I don’t have the magic.

I look over my shoulder at Snow—a long, blanketed lump on his bed.

He has the magic.

He could do anything.

I’m still humming with his magic, and it’s been hours since he pulled his hand away. He’s thrown spells at me before, but this was different. This was like being struck by benevolent lightning. I felt scorched clean. Bottomless …

No, that’s not right, not bottomless. Centreless. Like I was bigger on the inside. Like I could cast any spell—back up any promise.

At first it was as if Snow was giving magic to me. Sending it to me. But then the magic was just there. It was mine, in that moment, everything that was his.

All right. I have to stop thinking about it like this. Like it was a gift. Snow would never have opened himself up to me if there hadn’t been a dragon overhead.…

I wonder if I could take the magic from him if I tried, but the thought turns my stomach.

I change in the bathroom and brush my teeth, and when I come out, I see that Snow is sitting up in his bed.

“Baz?”

“What.” I sit on my own bed, on top of the covers.

“I … can you come here?”

“No.”

“I can come over there, then.”

I cross my legs and arms. “You may not.”

Snow huffs, exasperated. Good, I think.

“Just. Come here,” he says. “Okay? I have to try something.”

“Can you even hear how ridiculous you sound?”

He gets up. It’s dark in our room, but the moon is out, and I can always see him better than he sees me. He’s wearing grey flannel pyjama bottoms, school-issued, and his gold cross. His skin is as grey as mine in this light, and shining like a pearl.

“You can’t sit on my bed,” I say as he sits on my bed. “And neither can Bunce. My bed reeks of intensity and brownies.”

“Here,” he says, holding out his hand.

“What do you want from me, Snow?”

“Nothing,” he says. And he means it, the actual bastard. “We have to try again.”

“Why?”

“So that we know that it wasn’t a fluke,” he says.

“It was a fluke. You were fighting a dragon, and I was helping you—it was a fluke squared.”

“Merlin, Baz, don’t you want to know?”

“Whether I can tap into you like a generator?”

“It wasn’t like that,” he says. “I let you do it.”

“Are you going to let me do it again?”

“No.”

“Then it doesn’t matter if it was a fluke!”

Snow’s still sitting on my bed. “All right,” he says. “Maybe.”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe I’d do it again,” he says. “If it were a situation like today—if there were lives at risk, and this might be a solution, an option other than, you know, going off.”

“What if I turned it against you?”

“My magic?”

“Yes,” I say. “What if I took your magic, cast it against you, and settled Baz versus Simon, once and for all.”

Snow’s mouth is hanging slightly open. His tongue shines black in the dark. “Why are you such a villain?” He sounds disgusted. “Why have you already thought of that?”

“I thought of it when I was still rhyming at the dragon,” I say. “Didn’t you?”

“No.”

“This is why I’m going to beat you,” I say.

“We’re on a truce,” Snow says.

“I can still think antagonistically. I’m thinking violent thoughts at you constantly.”

He grabs my hand. I want to pull it away, but I don’t want to look scared—and also I don’t want to pull it away. Bloody Snow. I’m thinking violent thoughts at him right now.

“I’m going to try now,” he says.

“Fine.”

“Should you be casting a spell?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “This is your experiment.”

“Don’t, then,” he says. “Not right away. But tell me if it hurts.”

“It didn’t hurt before,” I mutter.

“It didn’t?”

“No.”

“What did it feel like?”

“Stop talking about feelings,” I say, shaking his hand. “Hit me. Or charge me. Whatever it is you want to do.”

Snow licks his bottom lip and closes his eyes halfway. Is this how he looked this afternoon? Crowley.