Carry On

I could take on some of them with my sword, but probably not all.

I could go off. And then, who knows what would happen?

Baz starts walking. The clothes are less posh down here. Are these the down-on-their-luck vampires? How do vampires get down on their luck? Even though we’re in the basement, everything and everyone is clean. I don’t know what I was expecting. Bloodstains? Blood cocktails? It looks like most people down here are drinking gin. I see bottles of Bombay Sapphire on the tables. Someone makes eye contact with me and holds it, so I let my magic come to my skin—I just think about it overflowing. He looks away.

We’re so deep into the cavern now, I’ve lost track of where the door is. Baz pulls on someone’s sleeve—a man almost twice his size. “Nicodemus,” Baz says, still not asking questions. The man flicks his head behind him, and Baz lets go.

We walk on, till we get to a row of pool tables.

Baz stops. He pulls a pack of fags from inside his jacket, then lights one with his wand. Everyone standing at the table jolts back. Baz takes a deep breath—the end of the cigarette glows red—and blows the smoke out over the table.

I didn’t know he smoked.

“Nicodemus,” Baz says, still puffing out smoke.

Then I see him—Ebb. A rougher, rangier Ebb. With his blond hair slicked back. He’s wearing a suit, too, but it looks cheap, and there are popped stitches on the sleeve.

He smiles at Baz and eyes him up and down. “Well … look at you. Aren’t you living the dream.”

Baz inhales again, then languidly meets Nicodemus’s stare. “My name is Tyra

“Of course you are, Mr. Pitch.” Nicodemus is practically whispering. “Of course you are.”

Nicodemus grins again, and I see the gaps in his smile; his eyeteeth are missing. His tongue is pushing at one of the holes.

The other men who were at the table with him have backed away, leaving the three of us alone now in the dark.

“What do you want from me?” Nicodemus asks.

“I want to know who killed my mother.”

“You know who killed her.” His tongue pushes into the gap, worrying his gum. “Everyone knows. And everyone knows what your mother did to them who were there.”

Baz brings the cigarette up to his mouth, breathes in, then drops his hand, flicking ashes on the floor. “Tell me the rest,” he says. “Tell me who was responsible.”

Nicodemus laughs. “Or what? Are you going to bite me?” He glances down at the cigarette. “Am I supposed to think you’re your mother’s son? Going to set us all alight? You haven’t killed yourself yet, Mr. Pitch. I don’t think you’ll choose today.”

Baz looks around the room. Like he’s thinking about how many vampires he could take with him.

“Tell him the rest,” I snarl. “Or I’ll kill you.”

Nicodemus looks over Baz’s shoulder at me, and his grin sours. “You think you’re so invincible,” he says. “With all your power. Like nothing can beat you.”

“Nothing has yet,” I say.

He laughs again. It’s nothing like Ebb’s laugh—Nicodemus laughs like nothing matters; Ebb laughs like everything does.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll tell you. Some of it.” He lays his cue on the table. “Vampires can’t just walk into Watford. We can’t go anywhere uninvited. Except home. Someone came to me—a few weeks before the raid—wanting me to broker a deal. That’s what I do to get by. Make deals, introduce people. Not a lot of work out there for a vampire who can’t bite nor a magician without a wand.”

His tongue slides compulsively between his teeth. “The pay was good,” he says. “But I said no. My sister lives at Watford. I’d never send death to her door, not unless she wanted it.” He turns his jack-o’-lantern smile on Baz again. “I wonder if you were part of the plan, Mr. Pitch. Hard to believe the magicians have allowed it.… Why do they keep allowing it? What are they hoping to do with you?”

“Who was it?” Baz says. I don’t think he’s blinked since we walked in here. “Who came to you? Was it the Humdrum?”

“The Humdrum? Yeah, it was the bogeyman, Mr. Pitch. It was the monster under your bed.”

“Was it. The Humdrum,” Baz says again.

Nicodemus shakes his head, still smiling. “It was one of you,” he says. “But his name isn’t worth my life. Maybe you’ll kill me if I don’t tell—but I’ll die for certain if I do.”

Baz rests the fag between his lips and slips his wand out his sleeve into his palm. “I could make you tell.”

“That would be illegal,” Nicodemus says. He’s right. Compulsion spells are forbidden.

“And dangerous,” he says. Right again.

“What would the Coven do if you cast a forbidden spell, Tyra

“I should kill you right here,” Baz says, his chest pushing forward. “I don’t think anyone would stop me. Or miss you.”

I put my hand on Baz’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“He hasn’t told us anything,” Baz hisses at me.

“I’ve told you enough,” Nicodemus says.

“Come on,” I say, pulling Baz back.

“Yeah, go now,” Nicodemus says to Baz. “Go with your mate. You’ll find your way back here someday.”

Baz tosses his cigarette onto the pool table, and Nicodemus jumps back, losing his composure for the first time. He flails out for his drink and pours it over the fag. Baz is already striding away.

I look at Nicodemus. “Your sister misses you,” I say.

Then I turn back to Baz and shuffle to catch up. He waits for me at the top of the stairs. (You’d think I was his best friend—I guess that’s what he wants them to think.) Then he’s cool as ice, cutting through the room upstairs to the door.

When we get outside, nighttime London is so bright, it hurts my eyes.

We find the car, his father’s Jaguar, and Baz has it started before I’ve even opened the passenger door. As soon as I’m inside, he jerks out of the parking spot and guns it, driving as fast as he can down the busy street. He rides up on a taxi, then wrenches the car into the next lane.

“Hey,” I say.

“Shut up, Snow.”

“Look—”

“Shut up!” He says it with magic, but he’s not holding his wand, so it doesn’t go anywhere. Then he grabs his wand, and I thinks he’s going to curse me, but instead he points it at a bus. “Make way for the king!” The bus changes lanes, but there’s another car just ahead of it. Baz points at it and casts the spell again. It’s a stupid waste of magic.

“You’re go

He ignores me, points his wand ahead of him, and hits the gas. The next time he casts the spell, I put my hand on his biceps and push some magic into him. “Make way!” he says. The cars ahead of him cut to the left and the right. It’s like the whole road is parting for him—I’ve never seen anything like it.

I’ve never felt anything like it.

I close my eyes at every red light and wish for green. Baz pushes the pedal into the floor.

We’re flying.

*   *   *

The magic holds as long as I touch Baz’s arm.

I feel clean.

I feel like a current.

I don’t know how Baz feels. His face is stone, and when we get out of London, tears start to fall from his eyes. He doesn’t wipe them or blink them away, so they streak down his cheeks and cling to his jaw.

Once we’re in the countryside, he doesn’t need my magic to clear the way anymore, and I let go of him. He keeps turning onto smaller and smaller roads until we’re driving along some woods, gravel kicking up beneath us and banging on the bottom of the car.

Baz pulls off the road suddenly and hits the brakes, fishtailing halfway into a ditch, then gets out of the car like he’s just parallel-parked it, and walks towards the trees.

I open my door and start to follow him, then go back to turn off the car and grab the keys. I run along his footprints in the snow, past the tree line, until I lose his trail in the darkness.