He’s lying on my couch, and I’m sitting at the end, next to his legs. He rolls into the cushions, burying his face. “You don’t get to watch me sleep now,” he says, “just because we’re snogging.”

“Just because we snogged,” I correct him. “And I’m not watching you; I’m trying to figure out how to wake you up without you pulling a sword on me.”

“I’m up,” he says, dragging one of the cushions down over his head.

“Come on. Bunce is on her way.”

He lifts the pillow up. “What? Why?”

“I told her we have new information—she has some, too. We’re having a briefing.”

He sits up. “So she’s just coming here?”

“Yes.”

“To your Gothic mansion?”

“It’s not Gothic; it’s Victorian.”

Snow rubs his hair. “Is this a trap? Are you luring us all here to kill us?” He seems genuinely suspicious.

“How did I lure you? You hitchhiked to my door.”

“After you invited me,” he snaps.

“Yes. You caught me. I’m a villain.” I stand. “I’ll see you in the library when you’ve cleaned up.” I try not to look like I’m stomping away from him—I wait till I leave the room, then stomp down the stairs.

I don’t know what I expected. For Snow to open his eyes and see me there, then pull me into one of his expert kisses and say, “Good morning, darling”?

Simon Snow is never going to call me “darling.”

Though he did just say we were snogging.…

We don’t have a chalkboard in the house, but my stepmother has a giant whiteboard in the kitchen that she uses to keep track of all my siblings’ lessons and sport. I take a photo of it with my mobile, then erase the board and lift it off the wall.

My 7-year-old sister watches me do it. “I’m telling Mum,” she says.

“If you do, I’ll stop up all the chimneys, so Father Christmas can’t get in.”

“There are too many chimneys,” she counters.

“Not for me,” I say. “I’m willing to put the time in.”

“He’ll just come to the door.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Mordelia, Father Christmas never comes to the door. And if he did, I’d tell him he had the wrong house.” I’m carefully manoeuvring the whiteboard through the kitchen door.

“I’m telling Mum!” she shouts after me.

I prop the board up in the library, and I’m making columns—Everything we know and Everything we still don’t—when Snow walks into the room. I ignore him.

“It’s not that I think you’ll betray us,” he says.

I make a noise that I’m afraid sounds a lot like “harrumph.”

Simon hassles his curls with one hand. “It’s just … Well, it’s still weird between us, isn’t it?”

I continue ignoring him.

“I mean … you haven’t said … that things are different now for you. I’ve said that I’m not going to kill you.”

“No, you haven’t,” I say.

“It must have been implied.”

“No.”

“Um, all right.” He clears his throat. “Baz. I’m not going to kill you. I’m not going to fight you at all, am I?”

“Good,” I say, stepping back from the whiteboard and admiring my columns. “That will make things much easier.”

“What things?”

“Crowley, I don’t know. Whatever the Families cook up for me. Probably I’ll be the one they ask to poison your Ribena, now that you trust me. What I can promise, Snow, is to weep over your corpse.”

“Or not,” he says.

“Fine, I’ll weep in privacy when the day arrives.”

“No,” he insists, “I’m serious. Or not.”

I look over my shoulder at him. “What are you trying to say?”

“That we don’t have to fight.”

“You realize that your mentor has raided my house twice this month.”

“Yeah—I mean, no, I didn’t realize that—but the point is, I didn’t raid your house. What if,” he says, stepping closer, “I help you find out who killed your mum, then you help me fight the Humdrum, and we just forget about the rest?”

“‘The rest,’” I say, turning around. “Way to oversimplify a decade of corruption and abuse of power.”

“Are you talking about the Mage?”

“Yes.”

He looks pained. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

“How can I not talk about the Mage when I’m talking to the Mage’s Heir?”

“Is that how you think of me?”

“Isn’t that how you think of yourself? Oh, right. I forgot—you don’t think at all.”

Simon groans and rakes at his hair. “Jesus Christ. Do you ever not go for the lowest blow? Like, do you ever think, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t say the most cruel thing just now?’”

“I’m trying to be efficient.”

He leans against the shelf where I’ve set the whiteboard. “It’s vicious.”

“You should talk, Snow. You always go for the kill shot.”

“When I’m fighting. We’re not fighting.”

“We’re always fighting,” I say, going back to the board.

I’m facing the board; he’s standing next to me, facing the room. He leans towards me a bit, without looking at me, and bumps his arm against mine, ruining the word I’m writing. “Or not,” he says.

I erase the word and start over. I’m working on the Everything we still don’t list. I’m tempted to write: everything important and also: whether Simon Snow is actually gay. And: whether I’ll live forever.

“I’ll help you find out who killed your mother,” he says again, like he’s laying out a plan. “And you’ll help me stop the Humdrum—that’s a shared goal, yeah?—and then we’ll worry about the rest later.”

“Is this how you get what you want? By just repeating it until it comes true?”

“Isn’t that how you cast a spell?”

My chalk hand drops, and I turn to him, exasperated. “Simon—”