Fangirl (17 page)

“That was a trick question.” Simon turned back to the mosaic.

“What are you looking for!” Baz demanded again, snarling through his teeth like an animal.

This was something Simon
had
learned about Baz in six years: He could turn from peevish to dangerous in half a heartbeat.

But Simon still hadn’t learned not to rise to the bait. “Rabbits!” he blurted out. “I’m looking for rabbits.”

“Rabbits?” Baz looked confused, caught mid-snarl.

“Six white hares.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know!” Simon shouted. “I just am. I got a letter. There are six white hares on school grounds, and they lead to something—”

“To what?”

“I. Don’t.
Know.
Something dangerous.”

“And I don’t suppose,” Baz said, leaning against the pole, resting his forehead on the wood, “that you know who sent it.”

“No.”

“It could be a trap.”

“There’s only one way to find out.” Simon wished he could stand and face Baz without tipping the boat; he hated the way Baz was talking down to him.

“You really think that,” Baz scoffed, “don’t you? You really think that the
only way
to sort out whether something is dangerous it to barrel right into it.”

“What else would you suggest?”

“You could ask your precious Mage, for starters. You could run it past your swotty friend. Her brain is so enormous, it pushes her ears out like a monkey’s—maybe she could shed some light.”

Simon yanked on Baz’s cloak and made him lose his balance. “Don’t talk about Penelope like that.”

The punt wobbled, and Baz recovered his cool stance. “Have you talked to her? Have you talked to anyone?”

“No,” Simon said.

“Six hares, is it?”

“Yes.”

“How many have you found so far?”

“Four.”

“So you’ve got the one in the cathedral and the one on the drawbridge—”

“You know about the hare on the drawbridge?” Simon sat back, startled. “That took me three weeks to find.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Baz said. “You’re not very observant. Do you even know my
first
name?” He started pushing them through the water again—pushing them toward the dock, Simon hoped.

“It’s … it begins with a
T.
”

“It’s Tyrannus,” Baz said. “Honestly. So the cathedral, the drawbridge, and the nursery—”

Simon clambered to his feet, pulling himself up by Baz’s cloak. The punt bobbed. “The nursery?”

Baz lowered an eyebrow. “Of course.”

This close, Simon could see the purple bruises under Baz’s eyes, the web of dark blood vessels in his eyelids. “Show me.”

Baz shrugged—practically shuddered—away from Simon and out of the boat. Simon jerked forward and grabbed a post on the dock to keep the boat from floating away.

“Come on,” Baz said.

Cath realized that she’d started doing Simon and Baz’s voices—at least doing the version of their voices that she heard in her head. She glanced over at Levi to see if he’d noticed. He was holding his cup with both hands against his chest and resting his chin on top, like it was keeping him warm. His eyes were open but unfocused. He looked like a little kid watching TV.

Cath turned back to her computer before he caught her watching him.

It took longer to put the boat away than it had to get it out, and by the time it was tied up, Simon’s hands were wet and freezing.

They hurried back into the fortress, side by side, both of them pushing their fists into their pockets.

Baz was taller, but their strides matched exactly.

Simon wondered whether they’d ever walked like this before. In six years—six years of always walking in the same direction—had they ever once fallen into step?

“Here,” Baz said, catching Simon’s arm and stopping at a closed door. Simon would have walked right past this door. He must have a thousand times—it was on the main floor, near the professors’ offices.

Baz tried the handle. It was locked. He pulled his wand out of his pocket and started murmuring. The door came open suddenly, almost as if the knob were reaching for Baz’s pale hand.

“How did you do that?” Simon asked.

Baz just sneered and strode forward. Simon followed. The room was dark, but he could see that it was a place for children. There were toys and pillows, and train tracks that wound around the room in every direction.

“What is this place?”

“It’s the nursery,” Baz said in a hushed voice. As if children might be sleeping in the room right now.

“Why does Watford need a nursery?”

“It doesn’t,” Baz said. “Not anymore. It’s too dangerous here now for children. But this used to be the place where the faculty brought their children while they worked. And other magical children could come, too, if they wanted to get an early start on their development.”

“Did you come here?”

“Yes, from the time I was born.”

“Your parents must have thought you needed a lot of extra help.”

“My mother was the headmaster, you idiot.”

Simon turned to look at Baz, but he couldn’t quite see the other boy’s face in the dark. “I didn’t know that.”

He could hear Baz roll his eyes. “Shocking.”

“But I’ve met your mother.”

“You’ve met my stepmother,” Baz said. He stood very still.

Simon matched his stillness. “The last headmaster,” he said, watching Baz’s profile. “Before the Mage came, the one who was killed by vampires.”

Baz’s head fell forward like it was weighted with stones. “Come on. The hare is this way.”

The next room was wide and round. Cribs lined the walls on each side, with small, low futons placed in a circle in the middle. At the far end was a huge fireplace—half as tall as the high, curved ceiling. Baz whispered into his hand and sent a ball of fire blazing through the grate. He whispered again, twisting his hand in the air, and the blue flames turned orange and hot. The room came to life a bit around them.

Baz walked toward the fireplace, holding his hands up to the heat. Simon followed.

“There it is,” Baz said.

“Where?” Simon looked into the fire.

“Above you.”

Simon looked up, then turned back to face the room. On the ceiling above him was a richly painted mural of the night sky. The sky was deep blue and dominated by the moon—a white rabbit curled tightly in on itself, eyes pressed closed, fat and full and fast asleep.

Simon walked out into the middle of the room, his chin raised high. “The fifth hare…,” he whispered. “The Moon Rabbit.”

“Now what?” Baz asked, just behind him.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,
now what
?”

“I don’t know,” Simon said.

“Well, what did you do when you found the others?”

“Nothing. I just found them. The letter just said to find them.”

Baz brought his hands to his face and growled, dropping into a frustrated heap on the floor. “Is this how you and your dream team normally operate? It’s no wonder it’s always so easy to get in your way.”

“But not so easy to stop us, I’ve noticed.”

“Oh, shut up,” Baz said, his face hidden in his knees. “Just—no more. No more of your drippy voice until you’ve got something worth saying. It’s like a drill you’re cranking between my eyes.”

Simon sat down on the floor near Baz, near the fire, looking up at the sleeping rabbit. When his neck started to cramp, he leaned back on the rug.

“I slept in a room like this,” Simon said. “In the orphanage. Nowhere near this nice. There was no fireplace. No Moon Rabbit. But we all slept together like this, in one room.”

“Crowley, Snow, was that when you joined the cast of
Annie
?”

“There are still places like that. Orphanages. You wouldn’t know.”

“Quite right,” Baz said. “My mother didn’t
choose
to leave me.”

“If your family is so grand, why are you celebrating Christmas with me?”

“I wouldn’t call this a celebration.”

Simon focused again on the rabbit. Maybe there was something hidden in it. Maybe if he squinted. Or if he looked at it in a mirror. Agatha had a magic mirror; it would tell you if something was amiss. Like if you had spinach in your teeth or something hanging from your nose. When Simon looked at it, it always asked him who he was kidding. “It’s just jealous,” Agatha would say. “It thinks I give you too much attention.”

“It was my choice,” Baz said, breaking the silence. “I didn’t want to go home for Christmas.” He leaned back onto the floor, an arm’s length from Simon. When Simon glanced over, Baz was staring up at the painted stars.

“Were you here?” Simon asked, watching the light from the fire play across Baz’s strong features. His nose was all wrong, Simon had always thought. It started too high, with a soft bump between Baz’s eyebrows. If Simon looked at Baz’s face for too long, he always wanted to reach up and tug his nose down. Not that that would work. It was just a feeling.

“Was I here
when
?” Baz asked.

“When they attacked your mother.”

“They attacked the nursery,” Baz said, as if he were explaining it to the moon. “Vampires can’t have children, you know—they have to turn them. They thought if they turned magical children, they’d be twice as dangerous.”

They would be, Simon thought, his stomach flopping fearfully. Vampires were already nearly invulnerable; a vampire who could do
magic
 …

“My mother came to protect us.”

“To protect
you,
” Simon said.

“She threw fire at the vampires,” Baz said. “They went up like flash paper.”

“How did she die?”

“There were just too many of them.” He was still talking to the sky, but his eyes were closed.

“Did the vampires turn any of the children?”

“Yes.” It was like a puff of smoke escaping from Baz’s lips.

Simon didn’t know what to say. He thought it might be worse, in a way, to have had a mother, a powerful, loving mother, and then to lose her—than to grow up like Simon had. With nothing.

He knew what happened next in Baz’s story: After the headmaster, Baz’s mother, was killed, the Mage took over. The school changed; it had to. They weren’t just students now. They were warriors. Of course the nursery had closed. When you came to Watford, you left your childhood behind.

All right for Simon. He had nothing to lose.

But for Baz …

He lost his mother,
Simon thought,
and he got me instead.
In a hiccup of tenderness or perhaps pity, Simon reached for Baz’s hand, fully expecting Baz to yank his arm from its socket.

But Baz’s hand was cold and limp. When Simon looked closer, he realized that the other boy was asleep.

The door flew open then, and for once, Cath thought, Reagan’s timing was perfect. Cath closed her laptop, to let Levi know she was done reading.

“Hey,” Reagan said. “Oh,
hey.
Christmas cups. Did you bring me a gingerbread latte?”

Cath looked down guiltily at her cup.

“I brought you an eggnog latte,” Levi said, holding it out. “And I’ve been keeping it warm in my mouth.”

“Eggnog.” Reagan wrinkled her nose, but she took it. “What are you doing here so early?”

“I thought we could study before the party,” Levi said.

“
Jacob Have I Loved
?”

He nodded.

“You’re reading
Jacob Have I Loved
?” Cath asked. “That’s a kids’ book.”

“Young adult literature,” he said. “It’s a great class.”

Reagan was shoving clothes in her bag. “I’m taking a shower at your place,” she said. “I’m so goddamn sick of public showers.”

Levi scooted forward on Cath’s bed and leaned an elbow on her desk. “So is that how Baz became a vampire? When the nursery was attacked?”

Cath wished he wouldn’t talk about this in front of Reagan. “You mean, for real?”

“I mean in the books.”

“There is no nursery in the books,” Cath said.

“But in your version, that’s how it happens.”

“Just in this story. Every story is a little different.”

“And other people have their versions, too?”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “There’re all these fans, and we’re all doing something different.”

“Are you the only one who writes about Baz and Simon falling in love?”

Cath laughed. “Uh, no. The entire Internet writes about Baz and Simon. If you go to Google and type in ‘Baz and Simon,’ the first search it suggests is ‘Baz and Simon in love.’”

“How many people do this?”

“Write Simon-slash-Baz? Or write Simon Snow fanfiction?”

“Write fanfiction.”

“God, I don’t know. Thousands and thousands.”

“So, if you didn’t want the books to be over, you could just keep reading Simon Snow stories forever online.…”

“Exactly,” Cath said earnestly. She’d thought Levi must be judging her, but he got it. “If you fall in love with the World of Mages, you can just keep on living there.”

“I wouldn’t call that living,” Reagan said.

“It was a metaphor,” Levi said gently.

“I’m ready,” Reagan said. “Are you coming, Cath?”

Cath smiled tightly and shook her head.

“Are you sure?” Levi asked, lifting himself off her bed. “We could come back for you later.”

“Nah, that’s okay. See you tomorrow.”

As soon as they left, Cath headed down to eat dinner by herself.

“Maybe I’m not supposed to have a wand. Maybe I’m supposed to have a ring like you. Or a … a wrist thingy like mangy old Elspeth.”

“Oh, Simon.” Penelope frowned. “You shouldn’t call her that. She can’t help her fur—her father was the Witch King of Canus.”

“No, I know, I just…”

“It’s easier for the rest of us,” she said, soothing. “Magicians’ instruments stay in families. They’re passed from generation to generation.”

“Right,” he said, “just like magic. It doesn’t make sense, Penelope—my parents
must
have been magicians.”

He’d tried to talk to her about this before, and that time it had made her look just as sad.

“Simon … they couldn’t have been. Magicians would never abandon their own child. Never. Magic is too precious.”