She might have been telling the truth. Or she might have been trying to depose the Mage.

And that’s the problem with all the Pitches and their allies—it’s impossible to tell when they’re up to something and when they’re just being people.

There’ve been years when I thought maybe I could figure out their plan if I just paid enough attention to Baz. (Fifth year.) And years when I decided that living with him was painful enough, that I couldn’t keep tabs on him, as well. (Last year.)

In the early days, there wasn’t any strategy or decision. Just the two of us scuffling in the halls and kicking the shit out of each other two or three times a year.

I used to beg the Mage for a new roommate, but that’s not how it works. The Crucible cast Baz and me together on the very first day of school.

All the first years are cast that way. The Mage builds a fire in the courtyard, the upper years help, and the littluns stand in a circle around it. The Mage sets the Crucible—it’s an actual crucible, maybe the oldest thing at Watford—in the middle of the fire and says the incantation; then everyone waits for the iron inside to melt.

It’s the strangest feeling when the magic starts to work on you. I was worried that it wouldn’t work on me—because I was an outsider. All the other kids started moving towards each other, and I still didn’t feel anything. I thought about faking it, but I didn’t want to get caught and booted out.

And then I did feel the magic, like a hook in my stomach.

I stumbled forward and looked around, and Baz was walking towards me. Looking so cool. Like he was coming my way because he wanted to, not because there was a mystical magnet in his gut.

The magic doesn’t stop until you and your new roommate shake hands—I held my hand out to Baz immediately. But he just stood there for as long as he could stand it. I don’t know how he resisted the pull; I felt like my intestines were going to burst out and wrap around him.

“Snow,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, waggling my hand. “Here.”

“The Mage’s Heir.”

I nodded, but I didn’t even know what that meant back then. The Mage made me his heir so I’d have a place at Watford. That’s also why I have his sword. It’s a historic weapon—it used to be given to the Mage’s Heir, back when the title of Mage was passed through families instead of appointed by the Coven.

The Mage gave me a wand, too—bone with wooden handle, it was his father’s—so I’d have my own magickal instrument. You have to have magic in you, and a way to get it out of you; that’s the basic requirement for Watford and the basic requirement to be a magician. Every magician inherits some family artefact. Baz has a wand, like me; all the Pitches are wandworkers. But Penny has a ring. And Gareth has a belt buckle. (It’s really inconvenient—he has to thrust his pelvis forward whenever he wants to cast a spell. He seems to think it’s cheeky, but no one else does.)

Penelope thinks my hand-me-down wand is part of the reason my spellwork is such shit—my wand isn’t bound to me by blood. It doesn’t know what to do with me. After seven years in the World of Mages, I still reach for my sword first; I know it’ll come when I call. My wand comes, but then, half the time, it plays dead.

The first time I asked the Mage for a new roommate was a few months after Baz and I started living together. The Mage wouldn’t hear of it—though he knew who Baz was, and knew better than I did that the Pitches are snakes and traitors.

“Being matched with your roommate is a sacred tradition at Watford,” he said. His voice was gentle but firm. “The Crucible cast you together, Simon. You’re to watch out for each other, to know each other as well as brothers.”

“Yeah, but, sir…” I was sitting in that giant leather chair up in his office, the one with three horns attached to the top. “The Crucible must have made a mistake. My roommate’s a complete wanker. He might even be evil. Last week, someone spelled my laptop closed, and I know it was him. He was practically cackling.”

The Mage just sat on his desk, stroking his beard. “The Crucible cast you together, Simon. You’re meant to watch out for him.”

He kept giving me the same answer until I gave up asking. He even said no the time there was proof that Baz had tried to feed me to a chimera.

Baz admitted it, then argued that the fact that he’d failed was punishment enough. And the Mage agreed with him!

Sometimes the Mage doesn’t make any sense to me.…

It was only in the last few years that I realized the Mage makes me stay with Baz to keep Baz under his thumb. Which means, I hope—I think—that the Mage trusts me. He thinks I’m up for the job.

I decide to take a shower and shave while Baz is still gone. I only nick myself twice, which is better than usual. When I get out, wearing flannel pyjama bottoms and a towel around my neck, Baz is by his bed, unpacking his schoolbag.

His head whips up, and his face is all twisted. He looks like I’ve already laid into him.

“What are you doing?” he snarls through his teeth.

“Taking a shower. What’s your problem?”

“You,” he says, throwing his bag down. “Always you.”

“Hello, Baz. Welcome back.”

He looks away from me. “Where’s your necklace?” His voice is low.

“My what?”

I can’t see his whole face, but it looks like his jaw is working.

“Your cross.”

My hand flies to my throat and then to the cuts on my chin. My cross. I took it off weeks ago.

I hurry over to my bed and dig it out, but I don’t put it on. Instead I walk around Baz and stand in his space until he has to look at me. He does. His teeth are clenched, and his head is tipped back and to the side, like he’s just waiting for me to make the first move.

I hold the cross out with both hands. I want him to acknowledge what it is, what it means. Then I lift it up over my head and let it settle gently around my neck. My eyes are locked on Baz’s, and he doesn’t look away, though his nostrils flare.

When the cross is around my neck again, his eyelids dip, and he squares his shoulders.

“Where have you been?” I ask.

His eyes flick back up to mine. “None. Of your. Business.”

I feel my magic surge and try to shove it down. “You look like shit, you know.”

He looks even worse now that I can see him up close. There’s a grey film over him—even over his eyes, which are always grey.

Baz’s eyes are usually the kind of grey that happens when you mix dark blue and dark green together. Deep-water grey. Today they’re the colour of wet pavement.

He huffs a laugh. “Thank you, Snow. You’re looking rough and weedy yourself.”

I am, and it’s his fault. How was I supposed to eat and sleep, knowing he was out there, plotting against me? And now he’s here, and if he’s not going to tell me anything useful, I might as well throttle him for putting me through it.

Or … I could do my homework.

I’ll just do my homework.

I try. I sit at my desk, and Baz sits on his bed. And eventually he leaves without saying anything, and I know that he’s going down to the Catacombs to hunt rats. Or to the Wood to hunt squirrels.

And I know that once he killed and drained a merwolf, but I don’t know why—its body washed up onto the edge of the moat. (I hate the merwolves almost as much as Baz does. They’re not intelligent, I don’t think, but they’re still evil.)

I go to bed after Baz leaves, but I don’t go to sleep. He’s only been back a day, and I already feel like I need to know where he is at every moment. It’s fifth year all over again.

When he finally does come back to our room, smelling like dust and decay, I close my eyes.

That’s when I remember about his mum.

32

BAZ

I almost went up to the Mage’s office tonight.