“Why? Did Gemma Leslie challenge you to a race?”

Cath jammed the knotted power cord into her bag. “You don’t understand.”

Levi sighed harshly and ran his fingers through his hair. “You’re right. I don’t.”

Cath’s hands were trembling as she pushed them through the arms of her jacket, a thick cable-knit sweater lined with fleece.

“I don’t understand how you could throw this class away twice,” Levi said, frowning and flustered. “I have to fight for every grade I get—I’d kill for a second chance at most of my classes. And you’re just walking away from this assignment because you don’t feel like it, because you’ve got this arbitrary deadline, and it’s all you can see.”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” she said.

“You don’t want to talk at all.”

“You’re right. I don’t have time right now to argue with you.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Levi looked up at her, stricken. Cath fumbled for something else to say, but everything in her reach was wrong. “Maybe I should just stay here tonight.”

His eyes swept over her, more coolly than she would have thought possible. There were two deep lines between his eyebrows.

“Right,” he said, standing up. “See you in nine days.”

He was out the door before she could stutter out, “What?”

Cath wasn’t trying to pick a nine-day fight; she’d just wanted to escape from tonight—she didn’t have time to feel guilty about Fiction-Writing. Even thinking about that stupid story made Cath feel clawed up and open.

She lay down on her bed and started to cry. Her pillow didn’t smell like Levi. It didn’t smell like either of them.

He didn’t understand.

When the last Simon Snow book came out, it was over. Everything. All these years of imagining and reimagining. Gemma T. Leslie would get the last word, and that would be it; everything Cath had built in the last two years would become alternate universe. Officially noncompliant …

The thought made her giggle wetly, pathetically, into her pillow.

As if beating GTL to the punch made any difference.

As if Cath could actually make Baz and Simon live happily ever after just by saying it was so. Sorry, Gemma, I appreciate what you’ve done here, but I think we can all agree that it was supposed to end like this.

It wasn’t a race. Gemma T. Leslie didn’t even know Cath existed. Thank God.

And yet … when Cath closed her eyes, all she could see was Baz and Simon.

All she could hear was them talking in her head. They were hers, the way they’d always been hers. They loved each other because she believed they did. They needed her to fix everything for them. They needed her to carry them through.

Baz and Simon in her head. Levi in her stomach.

Levi somewhere, gone.

In nine days, it would be over. In twelve days, Cath wouldn’t be a freshman anymore. And in fourteen …

God, she was an idiot.

Was she always going to be this stupid? Her whole miserable life?

Cath cried until it felt pointless, then stumbled off the bed to get a drink of water. When she opened her door, Levi was sitting in the hallway, his legs bent in front of him, hunched forward on his knees. He looked up when she stepped out.

“I’m such an idiot,” he said.

Cath fell between his knees and hugged him.

“I can’t believe I said that,” he said. “I can’t even go nine hours without seeing you.”

“No, you’re right,” Cath said. “I’ve been acting crazy. This whole thing is crazy. It isn’t even real.”

“That’s not what I meant—it is real. You have to finish.”

“Yeah,” she said, kissing his chin, trying to remember where she’d left off. “But not today. You were right. There’s time. They’ll wait for me.” She pushed her hands inside his jacket.

He held her by her shoulders. “You do what you have to,” he said. “Just let me be there. For the next two weeks, okay?”

She nodded. Fourteen days. With Levi. And then curtains closed on this year.

“Maybe fighting him isn’t the answer,” Simon said.

“What?” Baz was leaning against a tree, trying to catch his breath. His hair was hanging in slimy tendrils, and his face was smeared with muck and blood. Simon probably looked even worse. “You’re not giving up now,” Baz said, reaching for Simon’s chest and pulling him forward, fiercely, by the buckled straps of his cape. “I won’t let you.”

“I’m not giving up,” Simon said. “I just … Maybe fighting isn’t the answer. It wasn’t the answer with you.”

Baz arched an elegant brow. “Are you going to snog the Humdrum—is that your plan? Because he’s eleven. And he looks just like you. That’s both vain and deviant, Snow, even for you.”

Simon managed a laugh and raised a hand to the back of Baz’s neck, holding him firmly. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I’m done fighting, Baz. If we go on like this, there won’t be anything left to fight for.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

“Cather.”

“Mmmm.”

“Hey. Wake up.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I have to go to work. If we don’t leave soon, I’ll be late.”

Cath opened her eyes. Levi had already showered and put on his gothy Starbucks clothes. He smelled like an actual Irish spring.

“Can I stay?” she asked.

“Here?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll be stuck here all day.”

“I like here. And anyway, I’m just writing.”

He grinned. “Okay—sure. I’ll bring back dinner.… You write all the words,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Give Simon and Baz my best.”

She thought she might go back to sleep, but she couldn’t. She got up and took a shower (now she smelled like Levi), glad not to see anyone else in the hall. At least one of his roommates was home. She could hear music.

Cath climbed back to Levi’s room. It had been warm last night, and they’d fallen asleep with the windows open. But the weather had shifted—it was too cold in here now, especially for someone with wet hair. She grabbed her laptop and crawled under his quilt, doubling it up on top of her; she didn’t want to close the windows.

She pressed the Power button and waited for her computer to wake up. Then she opened a Word document and watched the cursor blink at her—she could see her face in the blank screen. Ten thousand words, and none of them had to be good; only one other person would ever read them. It didn’t even matter where Cath started, as long she finished. She started typing.…

I sat on the back steps.

No …

She sat on the back steps.

Every word felt heavy and hurt, like Cath was chipping them one by one out of her stomach.

A plane flew overhead, and that was wrong, all wrong, and her sister knew it, too, because she squeezed her hand like they’d both disappear if she didn’t.

This wasn’t good, but it was something. Cath could always change it later. That was the beauty in stacking up words—they got cheaper, the more you had of them. It would feel good to come back and cut this when she’d worked her way to something better.

The plane was flying so low, moving so sluggishly through the sky, you’d think it was just choosing the perfect rooftop to land on. They could hear the engine; it sounded closer than the voices shouting inside the house. Her sister reached up like she might touch it. Like she might grab on.

The girl squeezed her sister’s other hand, trying to anchor her to the steps. If you leave, she thought, I’m going with you.

* * *

Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.

Cath fell and fell, leaving a trail of messy words and bad similes behind her. Sometimes her chin was trembling. Sometimes she wiped her eyes on her sweater.

When she took a break, she was starving, and she had to pee so bad, she barely made it down to the third-floor bathroom. She found a protein bar in Levi’s backpack, climbed back into his bed, then kept writing until she heard him running up the stairs.

She closed the laptop before the door opened—and the sight of him smiling made her eyes burn right down to her throat.

* * *

“Stop bouncing,” Wren snapped. “You’re making us look like nerds.”

“Right,” Reagan said. “That’s what’s making us look like nerds. The bouncing.”

Levi smiled down at Cath. “Sorry. The atmosphere is getting to me.” He was wearing her red CARRY ON T-shirt over a long-sleeved black T-shirt, and for some reason, the sight of Baz and Simon facing off across his chest was disturbingly hot.

“S’okay,” she said. The atmosphere was getting to her, too. They’d been waiting in line for more than two hours. The bookstore was playing the Simon Snow movie soundtracks, and there were people everywhere. Cath recognized a few of them from past midnight releases; it was like they were all part of a club that met every couple years.

11:58.

The booksellers started setting out big boxes of books—special boxes, dark blue with gold stars. The manager of the store was wearing a cape and an all-wrong pointed witch’s hat. (Nobody at Watford wore pointy hats.) She stood on a chair and tapped one of the cash registers with a magic wand that looked like something Tinker Bell would carry. Cath rolled her eyes.

“Spare me the theater,” Reagan said. “I’ve got a final tomorrow.”

Levi was bouncing again.

The manager rang up the first person in line with great ceremony, and everyone in the store started applauding. The line jerked forward—and a few minutes later, Cath was there at the register, and the clerk was handing her a book that was at least three inches thick. The dust jacket felt like velvet.

Cath stepped away from the register, trying to get out of the way, clutching the book with both hands. There was an illustration of Simon on the front, holding up the Sword of Mages under a sky full of stars.

“Are you okay?” she heard someone—Levi?—ask. “Hey … are you crying?”

Cath ran her fingers along the cover, over the raised gold type.

Then someone else ran right into her, pushing the book into Cath’s chest. Pushing two books into her chest. Cath looked up just as Wren threw an arm around her.

“They’re both crying,” Cath heard Reagan say. “I can’t even watch.”

Cath freed an arm to wrap around her sister. “I can’t believe it’s really over,” she whispered.

Wren held her tight and shook her head. She really was crying, too. “Don’t be so melodramatic, Cath,” Wren laughed hoarsely. “It’s never over.… It’s Simon.”

Simon stepped toward the Humdrum. He’d never been this close. The heat and the pull were almost too much for him; he felt like the Humdrum would suck his heart through his chest, his thoughts from his head.

“I created you with my hunger,” Simon said. “With my need for magic.”

“With your capacity,” it said.

Simon shrugged, a Herculean effort in the presence and pressure of the Humdrum.

Simon had spent his whole life, well, the last eight years of it, trying to become more powerful, trying to live up to his destiny—trying to become the sort of magician, maybe the only magician, who could defeat the Insidious Humdrum.

And all he’d ever done was stoke the Humdrum’s need.

Simon took the last step forward.

“I’m not hungry anymore.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

It was her last Friday night in Pound Hall.

There was a boy in her room.

In Cath’s bed, taking up way more than his fair share of space, and eating the rest of her peanut butter.

He pulled the spoon out of his mouth. “Did you turn it in?”

“Slid it under her door. I’ll e-mail it, too, just in case.”

“Are you gonna read it to me?”

“Pfft.” Cath got The Eighth Dance out of her bag and dropped it onto the bed. “Priorities,” she said. “Make room.”

Levi scrunched his nose and tried to suck the peanut butter off his teeth.

Cath shoved his shoulder—“Make room”—and he grinned, leaning back against her pillow and patting the bed between his bent legs. She climbed between his knees, and he put his arms around her, pulling her in close. She felt his chin on the back of her head.

“Are you getting peanut butter in my hair?”

“It’s preventative. When I get gum in your hair later, it won’t stick.”

She opened the book and tried to find their place. It was massive. They’d been reading for two days, taking breaks between studying and finals, and they still had four hundred pages left. They had one weekend left together, and Cath was going to read until she ran out of air.

“I can’t believe I haven’t been spoiled yet,” she said.

“I was planning to despoil you later,” Levi said. “But if you want, we can do that first.”

“I had lunch with Wren today, and she almost spoiled me four different times. I don’t dare get on the Internet—people are blabbing all over FanFixx.”

“I made a sign to wear on my apron that says, DON’T TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS TO SIMON SNOW.”

“Maybe I should write that on my forehead,” Cath said.

“I could make that part of the despoiling.…”

“Do you remember where we left off? I dropped the bookmark.”

“Page three nineteen. The Humdrum had turned the merwolves against the school, and they were crawling around, dragging their fins, getting everything wet and gnashing their teeth at little kids, and then Penelope Bunce, the hero of our story, cast a spell that made the clouds rain silver—”