Carry On (50 page)

And I find it hard to say, honestly.

It's hard for us … to talk … sometimes. Lately. I don't blame him. Life hasn't exactly kept its promises to Simon Snow. Sometimes I think I should pick fights with him, just to restore his equilibrium.

Anyway. I don't think he'd want to be here.

My mother gave the speech at her leavers day. It's in the school archives—I found it, and I'm going to read from it today. It's about magic, the gift of magic. And the responsibility.

And it's about Watford. Why my mother loved it. She made this list of everything she'd miss. Like, the sour cherry scones and Elocution lessons, and the clover out on the Great Lawn.

I can't say that I loved Watford like my mother did.

This was always the place that was taken from her. And the place where she was taken from me. It was like going to school in occupied territory.

Still—I knew I was coming back for my last term, even without Penny and Simon. I wasn't going to be the first Pitch in recorded history to drop out of Watford.

*   *   *

The speeches are in the White Chapel. The stained glass has been repaired.

My aunt Fiona's sitting in the front row. She whoops when I'm introduced, and I can see my father wince.

Fiona's as cheerful lately as I've ever seen her. She didn't know what to do with herself after the Mage died. I think she wanted to kill him again. (And again.) Then the Coven made her a vampire hunter, and everything turned around. She's on some secret task force now and working undercover in Prague half the time. I'm moving into her flat when I leave school. My parents wanted me to go to Oxford with them—they're living there, in our hunting lodge—but I couldn't be that far from Simon. My father still isn't ready to admit I have a boyfriend, and it would be too exhausting, living in a place where I have to pretend I'm not a vampire
or
hopelessly queer.

By the end of my speech, Fiona's weeping and honking her nose into a handkerchief. My father isn't crying, but he's too choked up to properly speak to me after the ceremony. Just keeps clapping me on the back and saying, “Good man.”

“Come on, Basil,” Fiona says. “I'll take you back to Chelsea and get you sozzled. Top shelf only.”

“I can't,” I say. “Leavers ball tonight. I told the headmistress I'd be there.”

“Can't pass up a chance to see yourself in a suit, can you.”

“I suppose not.”

“Ah, well. I'll get you sozzled tomorrow, then. I'll come back for you at teatime. Watch out for numpties.”

That's Fiona's standard farewell for me now. I hate it.

*   *   *

There are a few hours before the ball, so I take a quick walk in the hills behind the walls and gather a bouquet of yellow-eyed grass and irises, then head back across the drawbridge and into the now empty Chapel.

I make my way down into the Catacombs without bothering to light a torch. It's been years since I've got lost down here.

I'm not in a hurry, so I stop to drain every rat I find on the way. This school is going to be infested when I leave.

My mother's tomb is inside Le Tombeau des Enfants. It's a stone doorway in a tunnel lined with skulls, marked by a bronze placard.

I would have been buried here with her, if I'd died that day. I mean, died properly.

I sit by the door—there's no handle or lock, it's a piece of stone wedged into the wall—and set down the flowers.

“Some of this will be familiar to you,” I say, getting out my speech. “But I've added a few flourishes of my own.”

A rat watches me from the corner. I decide to ignore it.

When I get to the end of the speech, my head falls back against the stone. “I know you can't hear me,” I say after a minute or two. “I know you're not here.…

“You came back, and I missed you. And then I did the thing you wanted me to do, so you probably won't ever come back again.”

I close my eyes.

“But—I just wanted to tell you that I'm going to carry on. As I am.

“No matter how much I think about it, I don't think there's any scenario where you'd want me—where you'd
allow
me—to go on like this.

“But I think it's what you would do in my circumstances. It seems like you never gave up. Ever.”

I exhale roughly and stand up.

Then I turn towards the door and bow my head. I speak softly, so that none of the other bones can hear:

“I know I usually come down here to tell you I'm sorry. But I think today I want to tell you that I'm going to be all right.

“Don't let me be one of the things that keeps you from peace, Mother. I'm all right.”

I wait for a few moments, just … just in case. Then climb out of the Catacombs, brushing the dust from my trousers.

*   *   *

It's an especially grim leavers ball. The few friends I have left at Watford are here with dates—or avoiding me. Dev and Niall haven't quite forgiven me for befriending Simon. Dev said I wasted their entire childhood plotting against him.

“Oh, what else were you going to do with your childhood?” I asked.

Dev didn't bother answering.

I end up standing next to the punchbowl, talking to Headmistress Bunce about Latin prefixes. It's a fascinating subject, but I don't feel like I needed to put on a black tie for it.

I think Professor Bunce is sad that Penelope's not here. I consider consoling her with the fact that Penelope probably would've skipped the ball even if she'd stayed in school, but the headmistress is already wandering off to the other side of the courtyard to check her e-mail.

“I was hoping there'd be sandwiches,” someone mumbles.

I ignore him because I'm not at Watford to make friends or small talk, especially on my way out.

“Or at least cake.”

I turn around and see Simon Snow standing on the other side of the punch table. Wearing a suit and tie, with his hair properly parted and slicked to one side.

He shouldn't have been able to sneak up on me like that, but he smells different these days—like something sweet and brown. No more green fire and brimstone.

“How's the party?” he asks.

“Funereal,” I say. “How'd you get here?”

“Flew.”

My jaw drops, and he laughs.

“No,” he says. “Penny drove me. She let me off at the gates.”

“Where're your wings?”

“Still there. Just invisible. Someone's already tripped over my tail.”

“I've told you to tuck it in.”

“It makes my trousers fit funny.”

I laugh.

“Don't laugh at me,” he says.

“When will I ever laugh, then?”

Snow rolls his eyes, then cuts them nervously to the side. Towards the White Chapel.

“You don't have to be here,” I say.

“No,” he says quickly. “I do.” He clears his throat. “I don't want you to leave without me.”

*   *   *

Simon Snow can't dance.

The tail isn't helping. I take the end in my left hand and wrap it around my wrist, holding it against his lower back.

“We don't have to do this,” I'd said when we walked out to the stone patio where people were dancing. “No one has to know.”

“Know what?” Snow asked softly. “That I'm obsessed with you? That horse left the barn a long time ago.”

I press my left hand, still holding his tail, into his back and take his hand with my right. He lifts his left hand in the air, then drops it like he doesn't know what to do with it.

“Put it on my shoulder,” I say. He does. I raise an eyebrow at him. “Didn't Wellbelove ever teach you to dance?”

“She tried,” he says. “She said I was hopeless.”

“From the mouths of babes,” I say.

At least the song isn't hopeless. It's Nick Cave. “Into My Arms.” One of Fiona's favourites. It's so slow, we barely have to move.

Snow's wearing an expensive suit. Black trousers, black waistcoat and tie, and a rich velvet jacket—deep blue with black lapels. It must be Dr. Wellbelove's. It's snug at the shoulders, but I can't see where Snow's wings are hidden. Someone has spelled him neat and tidy.

I stand with my own shoulders squared. Everyone is looking at us—

Everyone dancing. Everyone standing around the courtyard, drinking punch. Coach Mac and the Minotaur and Miss Possibelf, all standing with their punch glasses stalled on the way to their lips.

“They'll know,” I say. “They'll talk about it.”

“What?” He's a million miles away. He's always a million miles away lately.

“They'll know that we're gay.”

“There go my job prospects,” Simon says flatly. “What will my family say?”

I'm not sure where the joke is.

He looks at my face and huffs, exasperated. “Baz, you're actually, literally the only thing I have to lose. So as long as doing gay stuff in public doesn't make you hate me, I don't really care.”

“We're just dancing,” I say. “That's hardly gay stuff.”

“Dancing's well gay,” he says. “Even when it isn't two blokes.”

I frown at him. “You have Bunce.”

“To dance with?”

“No. You have Bunce to lose.”

His face falls.

I tug him closer. “No. I meant, you have more than just me. You have Bunce, too.”

“She'll move to America.”

“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe not. And, anyway, not immediately. And beyond that—America's not amnesia. She'll still be your friend. Bunce only has two and a half friends; I don't think she'll drop you.”

Snow starts to say something, then shakes his head once and looks down at his feet. A few curls escape onto his forehead.

“What?” I say, squeezing his hand. I've become very familiar with his hands. Dating Simon Snow hasn't been the erotic gropefest I'd always imagined—so far, it's a lot of sitting in silence and thousand-yard stares—but we do hold hands almost all the time. Snow's like a child who's afraid of getting lost in the market.

He squeezes my hand back, but doesn't lift his head.

I decide not to push him. He's here. Against all odds. Wearing a tie, dancing. That's all something.

I start to let my head rest against his—and he jerks his head up, just missing my nose. I pull my torso back. “Crowley, Snow!”

His face is red. “It's just—” He presses on my shoulder.

“It's just what?”

“You guys don't have to do this.”

“Do what?”

He squints and grits his teeth. The fairy lights strung across the courtyard catch in his hair. “Just—you—it's not—”

“Use your words, Simon.”

“You don't have to do this, you and Penny. I'm not. I'm not like you. I was never—I'm a hoax.”

“That's not true.”

“Baz. I'm not a mage.”

“You lost your power,” I argue. “You sacrificed it.”

His tail whips out of my hand. It tends to slash around when he's upset. “I don't think it was ever mine,” he says. “I don't know how the Mage did it, but you and Penny were right all along—magicians don't give up their children. I'm a Normal.”

“Snow.”

“I was bad at magic because I wasn't supposed to have any! The gates wouldn't even open for me tonight. Penny had to let me in.”

A couple is drifting closer to us, clearly listening—Keris and her damnable pixie. I sneer, and they drift away.

Snow's crushing my hand and shoulder. I let him, even though I'm much stronger than he is. “
Simon
. Stop. You're talking nonsense.”

“Am I? You and Penny care more about magic than anyone in the World of Mages. That's what you saw in me—
power
—and it's gone. It was never me.”

“It was!” I say. “You were the most powerful mage who's ever walked. That was real.”

“I was a sorry excuse for a mage, how many times did you tell me so?”

“I said that because I was jealous!”

“Well, there's nothing to be jealous of now!”

I let go of him. “Why are you saying all this?”

Simon clenches his fists, hunching in on himself, like a bull. “Because I'm tired of
waiting
.”

“For what?”

“For all of you to stop feeling sorry for me!”

“I'll never stop feeling sorry for you!” It's true. He lost his magic. It will never stop breaking my heart.

“But I don't want that either!” he says through his teeth. “I don't belong with you anymore.”

“Wrong,” I say. I take his hand again and put my arm back around him. “The Crucible drew us together.”

“The Crucible?”

“I was eleven years old, and I'd lost my mother, and my soul, and the Crucible gave me you.”

“It made us roommates,” he says.

I shake my head. “We were always more.”

“We were enemies.”

“You were the centre of my universe,” I say. “Everything else spun around you.”

“Because of what I was, Baz. Because of my magic.”

“No.”
I'm nearly as frustrated as he is. “Yes. I mean, Crowley, Snow—
yes,
that was part of it. Looking at you was like looking directly into the sun.”

“I'll never be that again.”

“No. And thank magic.” I sigh forcefully. “The way you were before … Simon Snow, there wasn't a day when I believed we'd both live through it.”

“Through what?”

“
Life.
You were the sun, and I was crashing into you. I'd wake up every morning and think, ‘This will end in flames.'”

“I did set your forest on fire—”

“But that wasn't the end.”

“Baz.” His face crumples, in sorrow now—not anger. “I can't keep up with you. I'm a Normal.”