“What?” He scowls up at me.

“I said, send a message if—”

“You’re not leaving now.”

“I told you everything I know.”

“Snow, you came in on the last train, then you walked for an hour. You haven’t eaten all day, and your hair’s still wet—you’re not going anywhere tonight.”

“Well, I can’t stay here.”

“You haven’t burst into flames yet.”

“Baz, listen—”

He cuts me off with a hand. “No.”

55

BAZ

Snow was a wreck at dinner.

Which I might have enjoyed if I wasn’t so desperate for him to stay.

Everything on his plate seemed to confuse him, and he alternated between staring at his food miserably and vacuuming it up because he was clearly ravenous.

Daphne went out of her way to make him feel comfortable, and the children just stared at him. Even they’ve heard of the Mage’s Heir.

Father seems to think I have some dark plan at work. (I guess I do have a dark plan, but this time it has nothing to do with disabling Snow.) He—Father—pulled me aside after dinner and asked if I wanted him to call in the Families for assistance.

“No,” I said. “Please don’t. Snow’s just here for a school project.”

Father practically winked.

I’ve thought about telling him. That Mother came back for me. But what if he asks why she didn’t come back to him? What if he takes it to the Families? They’d never understand why I was working with Snow and Bunce. And right now, Snow and Bunce seem like the best allies I could have. They’re relentless once they set their minds to something. Completely trustworthy, with no sense of self-preservation. I’ve watched these two uncover plots and beat back monsters time and again.

Snow is still eating dinner. Daphne keeps offering extra helpings, out of politeness, and Snow keeps accepting them.

I’ve never actually sat at a table with Snow before. I let myself watch him, and let myself enjoy it, at least for a few minutes. I keep doing that, since this all started—indulging myself. (What’s that they say about having dessert first if you’re on the Titanic?)

Snow’s table manners are atrocious—it’s like watching a wild dog eat. A wild dog you’d like to slip the tongue.

After dinner, we go to the library and I show him what I’ve found on vampires. He keeps moving away from me, and I pretend not to notice. We should probably call Bunce and see what she thinks of all this—I’ll suggest it tomorrow.

There’s nothing in our library about any Nicodemus. I’ve already searched, but I do it again. I stand at the door and cast, “Fine-tooth comb—Nicodemus Petty!” None of the books come flying out of the shelves.

We do find a few mentions of the Petty family, so we read those. They’re an old East End family, and a big one, and every few generations, they turn out a powerhouse like Ebb. If Snow hadn’t come along, Ebb might be the most powerful magician in our world—and to think she wastes it all on goats and moping.

“Do you think it would have made it into The Record?” Snow asks. “When Nicodemus crossed over?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe not. They probably wanted to keep it hush-hush, and it doesn’t seem like he hurt anybody.”

“What’s the point of becoming a vampire,” Snow says, “if you’re not planning to hurt anybody?”

“What’s the point of becoming a vampire?” I ask.

“You tell me.”

I swallow my temper and then swallow it again, and keep looking through a book.

Snow sits down across from me at the small table, pulling up a quilted chair. “No,” he says. “I’m being serious. Why would Nicodemus have done it?”

“You’re asking me to pose a theory?”

He nods.

“To become stronger,” I say. “Physically.”

“How much stronger?” Snow asks.

I shrug. “You’d have to ask him. I wouldn’t know how to compare.” Because I don’t remember being normal.

“What else?” he asks.

“To enhance himself … his senses.”

“Like, to see better?”

“In the dark,” I say. “And hear more. And smell more sharply.”

“To live forever?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think it works like that. But he wouldn’t ever … be sick.”

Snow lowers his eyebrows. “When you look at it that way, why doesn’t everyone cross over?”

“Because it’s death,” I say.

“It clearly isn’t.”

“They say your soul dies.”

“That’s tosh,” he says.

“How would you know, Snow?”

“Observation.”

“Observation,” I say. “You can’t observe a soul.”

“You can over time,” he says. “I think I’d know—”

“It’s death,” I say, “because you need to eat life to stay alive.”

“That’s everyone,” he says. “That’s eating.”

“It’s death,” I say, refusing to raise my voice, “because when you’re hungry, you can’t stop thinking about eating other people.”

Snow sits back. His mouth is open—because no one ever taught him to close it. He pushes at his bottom lip with his tongue. I think about licking blood from it.

“It’s death,” I say, looking back down at my book, “because you look at other people, living people, and they seem really far away. They seem like something else. The way that birds seem like something else. And they’re full of something you don’t have. You could take it from them, but it still won’t be yours. They’re full, and … you’re hungry. You’re not alive. You’re just hungry.”

“You have to be alive to be hungry,” Snow says. “You have to be alive to change.”

“Maybe you should write a book about vampires,” I say.

“Maybe I should. Apparently, I’m the world’s leading expert.”

When I look up, Snow’s staring right at me.

I can feel the cross around his neck, like static in my salivary glands, but it’s never been less discouraging. I could knock him over right now. (Kiss him? Kill him? Improvise?)

“You should ask your parents,” Snow says.

“Whether I’m alive?” Fuck. I didn’t mean to say it like that. To concede, even a little.

Snow closes his mouth. Swallows. That’s where I’d bite him, right in the throat.

“I meant,” he says, “you should ask them if they remember Nicodemus. Maybe they know where he is.”

“I’m not asking my parents about the only magician to run off to join the vampires. Are you a complete moron?”

“Oh,” he says. “I guess I didn’t think about it that way.”

“You didn’t think—” I say. And then—“Oh. Oh, oh, oh.”

SIMON

Baz is running up the steps again, so I’m running behind him. We haven’t seen anyone else since dinner. This house is so big, it could absorb a mob and still seem empty.

We’re in a different wing now. Another long hallway. Baz stops in front of a door and starts casting disarming spells. “So predictably paranoid,” he mutters.

“What’re we doing?” I ask.

“Looking for Nicodemus.”

“You think he might live here?”

“No,” he says. “But—”

The door opens, and we’re in another creepy goth bedroom. This one is like Goth Through the Ages, because on top of the gargoyles, there are posters of ’80s and ’90s rock stars wearing lots of black eyeliner. And somebody’s even written Never Mind the Bollocks in yellow spray paint on one wall, ruining the antique black-and-white wallpaper.

“Whose room is this?” I ask.

Baz is crouching next to a bookshelf. “My aunt Fiona’s.”

I step back into the doorway. “What are we doing here?”

“Looking for something…” A second later, he pulls out a big purple scrapbook with Remember the Magic embossed on the front in gold. “Aha!” he says. “I’m pretty sure Fiona went to school with Ebb. I’ve heard her talk about her. Disparagingly, I promise you. She never mentioned Ebb’s brother, though.…”

Baz is flipping through the pages. I crouch down next to him. “What is that?”