“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?”
“It’s a memory book,” he says. “They used to give them out at Watford before the Mage took over. At your leavers ball. It’s got class pictures from every year and little stories.…” He holds the book open to a page full of photos. It makes me wish I had something like it—I don’t have any pictures of myself or my friends. Agatha has a few, I think.
Baz has turned to the back of the book, and he’s poring over a big class picture, squinting.
Underneath the picture, someone has taped in a few snapshots. “Look,” I say, pointing at a photo of a girl sitting against a tree—the yew tree. She’s got mad dark hair with a blond streak, and she’s grinning with her nose crunched up and her tongue between her teeth. There’s a rawboned boy sitting next to her with his arm slung around her shoulders. “Ebb,” I say. Because the straight blond hair is the same. And the cliff’s-edge cheekbones. But I’ve never seen Ebb looking so cocksure of herself—and I can’t imagine her smirking like that. Under the picture, someone’s written Me and Nickels, and dotted the i with a heart.
“Fiona!” Baz says, snapping the book closed.
I take it from him and open it again, settling down on the floor and leaning against the bed. There are a few pages for each year Fiona was in school—with big class photos and blank pages where you can put other pictures and certificates. It’s not hard to spot Fiona in each posed class photo—that white streak must be natural—and then to find Ebb and Nicodemus, always standing next to each other, looking almost exactly alike, but completely different. Ebb looks like Ebb, gentle and unsure, in every picture. Nicodemus looks like he’s about to hatch a plan. Even as a first year.
I find another snapshot of Nicodemus and Baz’s aunt, this time posing in old-fashioned costumes. “Did you know Watford used to have a drama society?” I ask.
“Watford had a lot of things before the Mage.” Baz takes the book from me and puts it back on the shelf. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Now? To bed. Tomorrow? London.”
I must be tired, because neither of those statements makes sense to me.
“Come on,” Baz says. “I’ll show you to your room.”
* * *
My room turns out to be the creepiest one yet:
There’s a dragon painted on the archway around the door, and its face is charmed to glow and follow you in the dark.
Plus there’s something under the bed.
I don’t know exactly what, but it moans and clicks and makes the bedposts shake. I end up at Baz’s door, telling him I’m going back to Watford.
“What?” He’s half asleep when he comes to the door. And flushed—he must have gone hunting after I went to bed. Or maybe they keep kennels for him on the grounds.