Carry On

I haul myself to the Weeping Tower, and skip the spiral staircase to take the staff elevator up to the very top.

I walk past the door to the headmaster’s rooms. When my mother was headmistress, I lived with her here. I was just a toddler. Father would come in most weekends, and we’d all go back to the house in Hampshire every summer.

My mother used to let me play in her office while she worked. She’d come get me from the nursery, and I’d spread my Lego bricks out on her rug.

When I get to the headmaster’s office, the door opens easily for me—the Mage never took down the wards my mother cast to let me in. I can get in his rooms, too. (I snuck in once and found myself puking in his toilet.) Fiona would have me inspecting his chambers every night, but I’ve told her we have to save that trick until we really need it. Until we can use it. And not just to leave steaming bags of shit in his bed.

“Furthermore, Fiona, I’m not shitting in a bag.”

“I’ll do the shitting, you knob; it can be my shit.”

My stomach clenches when I walk into the office. When I see my mother’s desk. It’s dark in here—the curtains are drawn—so I light a fire in my palm and hold it out in front of me.

It terrifies my stepmother when I do this. “Basilton, don’t. You’re flammable.”

But bringing fire is as easy for me as breathing; it hardly takes any magic, and I always feel utterly in control. I can make it twist through my fingers like a snake. “Just like Natasha,” my father always says. “He’s got more fire than a demon.”

(Though Father did draw a hard line when he caught me smoking cigarettes in the carriage house. “For Crowley’s sake, Baz, you are flammable.”)

The headmaster’s office looks exactly the same as it did when I played here. You’d think the Mage would have thrown all my mother’s things out and hung up Che Guevara posters—but he didn’t.

There’s dust on his chair. On my mother’s chair. And thick dust on the computer keyboard—I don’t think he even uses it. He’s not the sitting, typing type, the Mage. He’s always stalking around or swinging a sword, or doing something to justify his Robin Hood costume.

I open his top drawer with my wand. Nothing here … Dried-up office supplies. A phone charger.

My mother kept tea in this drawer, and mint Aero bars and clove drops. I lean in to see if I can smell them—I can smell things other people can’t. (I can smell things no people can.) (Because I’m not a person.)

The drawer smells like wood and leather. The room smells like leather and steel and the forest, like the Mage himself. I open the other drawers with my hand. There aren’t any booby traps. There’s nothing personal at all. I’m not even sure what to take for Fiona. A book, maybe.

I hold my flame up to the bookshelves and think about blowing, just setting the whole room on fire. But then I notice that the books are all out of order. Obviously out of order. Stacked, instead of set on their shelves—some of them lying in piles on the floor. I feel like putting them back, sorting them by subject the way my mother used to. (I was always allowed to touch her books. I was allowed to read any book, as long as I put it back in its place and promised to ask if something confused or frightened me.)

Maybe I should take advantage of the fact that the books are out of order: No one will notice if one goes missing—or several. I reach for one with a dragon embossed on the spine; the dragon’s mouth is open, and fire spews out forming the title: Flames and Blazes—The Art of Burning.

A shaft of light widens on the shelf before me, and I jerk around, sending the book sailing, pages flapping. Something flies out as the book hits the floor.

Snow is standing in the doorway. “What are you doing here?” he demands. His blade is already out.

I’ve seen that sword in action enough, you’d think I’d be terrified—but instead it’s reassuring. I’ve dealt with this, with Snow, before.

I must truly be exhausted, because I tell him the truth: “Looking for one of my mother’s books.”

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” he says, both hands on his sword.

I hold my light higher and step away from the shelves. “I’m not hurting anything. I just want a book.”

“Why?” He looks down at the book lying between us and rushes forward, abandoning his stance to beat me to it. I lean back against the shelves and swing one ankle over the other. Snow’s crouching over the book. He probably thinks it’s a clue, the thing that will blow my conspiracy wide open.

He stands again, staring at a small piece of paper in his hand. He looks upset. “Here,” he says softly, holding it out to me. “I’m … sorry.”

I take the paper, a photograph, and he watches me. I’m tempted to shove it in my pocket and look at it later, but curiosity gets the best of me, and I hold it up.…

It’s me.

Down in the crèche, I think. (Watford used to have a staff nursery and day school; it’s where the vampires struck.)

I’m just a baby in this photo. Three or four years old, wearing soft grey dungarees with bloomer bottoms, and white leather boots. My skin is the shocking thing: a stark reddish gold against my white collared shirt and white socks. I’m smiling at the camera, and someone’s holding my fingers—

I recognize my mother’s wedding ring. I recognize her thick, rough hand.

And then I can remember her hand. Resting on my leg when she wanted me to be still. Holding her wand precisely in the air. Slipping into her desk drawer to get a sweet and popping it into her mouth.

“Your hands are scratchy,” I’d say when she cupped one around my cheek.

“They’re fire-holders’ hands,” she’d say. “Flame throwers’.”

My mother’s hands scuffing my cheek. Tucking my hair behind my ears.

My mother’s hands held aloft—setting the air of the nursery on fire while a chalk-ski

“Baz…,” Snow says. He’s picked up the book and is holding it out to me.

I take it.

“I need to tell you something,” he says.

“What?” Since when do Snow and I have anything to tell each other?

“I need to talk to you.”

I raise my chin. “Talk, then.”

“Not here.” He sheathes his blade. “We’re not supposed to be here, and … what I have to tell you is sort of private.”

For a moment—not even a moment, a split second—I imagine him saying, “The truth is, I’m desperately attracted to you.” And then I imagine myself spitting in his face. And then I imagine licking it off his cheek and kissing him. (Because I’m disturbed. Ask anyone.)

I “Make a wish!” the flame out of my hand, tuck the photo into the book, and the book under my arm. “Lucky for us,” I say, “we have our own suite at the top of a turret. Private enough for you?”

He nods, embarrassed, and gestures for me to walk ahead of him. “Just come on,” he says.

I do.

39

SIMON

I’d just caught my enemy red-handed, breaking into the Mage’s office. I could have got him expelled for this. Finally.

And instead I gave him the thing he came to steal, then asked him if we could have some alone time—all because of a baby picture.

But the look on Baz’s face in that picture … Smiling just because he was happy, with cheeks like red apples.

And the look on his face when he saw it. Like someone blew a horn and all his walls crumbled.

We walk back to our room, and it’s awkward; we don’t have any experience walking with each other, even though we’re usually headed in the same direction. We keep our distance on the stairs, then move even farther away as we cross the courtyards. I keep wanting to get my sword back out.

Baz has worked himself up to a full-on strop by the time we get to our room. He slams the door shut behind us, sets the book on his bed, then crosses his arms. “Fine, Snow. We’re alone. Whatever you have to say—say it.”