Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

When Mordelia was four, she used to have nightmares about the Humdrum.

I didn’t know about it. Malcolm and Daphne never talked about it, except to sometimes reference her difficulty sleeping. I didn’t know what was upsetting her until I was staying at the manor one night and her cries woke me up.

Our rooms at the manor are just across from each other, and panic flared through me as I tried to get out of my oversized bed as quickly as I could, nearly tripping on my tangle of blankets. When I reached her room, she was sitting up in bed, her dragon night light flickering shadows through the room, and she was crying. Her loud sobs had settled down, but she was hiccuping fiercely, tears streaming down her puffy face.

“What’s this?” I’d asked, sitting on the edge of her pink comforter. She threw herself into my arms immediately, and the force of it almost knocked me backward. “Hey, come on little punk, what happened?”

“I had a nightmare,” she whispered into my t-shirt. “The… the Humdrum came and it ate father and it ate mum and then it ate you.”

“The Humdrum doesn’t eat people, it steals magic,” I said immediately, before realising that blunt reasoning wasn’t necessarily the best tactic here. I pulled her tiny body away and sat back further on the bed, trying to collect my thoughts.

“Why are you scared of the Humdrum?”

“Mum and father are scared of it,” she whispered. “Everyone is scared of it. And… and they said it tried to eat you. At school.” She hiccuped again. “What if it eats you and then it comes and eats me?”

“The Humdrum isn’t going to eat you or your magic,” I said calmly. “The Humdrum only wants one person, and it’s not you, or me. I promise you, we’re very safe.” It was a lie. Some days it felt like no one was safe.

“Who does it want?” she whispered, her eyes wide.

“It wants a friend of mine,” I said, as honest as I could. It felt like a lie at the time; the idea of Snow and I being friends. “But luckily, he’s very good at magic.” Another lie. “And the Humdrum won’t eat him. In fact, sometime soon, he’s going to eat the Humdrum. You would not believe how much he can eat, I’m very confident that he’s up for the job.”

“What about you?” she whispered. “What if it eats you? What if it eats you to get to your friend?”

“I’m very good at magic too,” I told her. “Don’t worry. If the Humdrum comes after me, I’ll kick its arse.”

She’d giggled and sniffled, and then settled back into her bed.

“You’ll kick its arse,” she’d responded, and I nodded, smiling.

“I will. Just don’t say that to Daphne and father, alright?” She’d scrunched up her face and nodded seriously, then yawned.

“Can you…” she trailed off, looking suddenly embarrassed. “Can you put my music on for me?”

“Absolutely,” I’d told her. “Good thinking. The Humdrum hates music. It has awful taste.”

She’d laughed again and I had put on her music and she’d slowly drifted off to sleep, but not before whispering — more to herself than me, I think — “you’ll kick its arse.”

I’m not kicking its arse.

In fact, I’m fairly sure that everything I told Mordelia that night was a lie. I’m not beating the Humdrum, and neither is Simon, and I think it actually may eat me.

Or at least eat away my magic and my humanity.

My fangs won’t retract.

The Humdrum is here and Snow is screaming and I’m terrified because I can’t get my fangs to retract, and all I can do is stare at the pulse of Snow’s neck. My magic is gone, which I expected, but the sucking feeling is eating me alive from the inside out.

I’m living in a nightmare.

The Humdrum is right there, wearing Snow’s face, laughing and bouncing that red fucking ball, and every piece of me feels like it’s being pulled apart.

“Why do you look like me?” Snow screams at the Humdrum.

“I am you. Well,” the Humdrum pauses, tilts its head and shrugs, and the movement is so Simon it hurts. “I’m what you left over. Like a little brother. Wouldn’t that be cool, to have a brother? Someone to hang out with.”

“What do you mean, ‘what I left over’?” Snow snarls. “Stop wearing my face!”

The Humdrum scrunches its (stolen?) face up.

“Don’t be such a tosser,” the Humdrum says. He sounds petulant, like Mordelia when I’m annoying her. Like he’s talking to his big brother. “You get everything. I’m just trying to have some fun.”

My teeth are on edge and I’m coming apart at the seams, but Snow doesn’t notice me. How is he handling this? Isn’t the Humdrum’s presence making him feel like this? But instead he looks content. Angry, but still relatively calm, and he relaxes his stance and crosses his arms and glares down at the Humdrum. He could be mimicking my own stance, except my arms are crossed against my stomach because I’m in pain.

I’m in so much pain.

“What do you mean fun? What are you doing?”

The Humdrum shrugs.

“The same thing you do. I take.” The Humdrum kicks at the dirt. “People are a lot nicer to you about it, though. You got a sword. I just got a dumb nickname.”

Snow is bleeding, and I don’t know how it happened, but my body is attuned to him entirely. My fangs really need to go the fuck away. I clench my eyes closed and try to push back the stabbing pains in my stomach, and I notice I’m bleeding as well. For a fleeting moment I wonder what would happen if I licked the blood off my arm. Would it help with the hunger?

“Why do you take magic?” Snow shouts. How is he so fucking composed? “Why do you make dead spots? Why do you send shit after me?”

“I don’t make the dead spots, you do!” the Humdrum shouts. “And I send things because I’m hungry. You know what I mean! I’m always hungry.” The Humdrum sounds sad. Defeated. Small. “Nothing fills me up.”

“Snow, we need to get out of here,” I mumble, but both Snow and his evil mini-ganger ignore me. I have to look away from Snow, because I can smell his blood, coming off him in waves.

“Hey want to see a trick?” the Humdrum asks, its mood suddenly completely shifted, a shit eating grin on its face that is entirely, 100 per cent Simon. “Pull my finger.”

Snow, startled, reaches for it, and everything inside me screams that this can’t happen. The Humdrum can’t touch him. I won’t let it hurt him. I won’t let it eat him.

I push myself in front of Simon just as the Humdrum reaches out, and when it touches me my body goes cold and adrenaline floods my system. I feel like I’m standing at the edge of a cliff as the wind races at my back. Every nerve is screaming that I’m about to fall off.

“Oh, forget the trick,” the Humdrum says eagerly. “This is cool. I’ve never done this with a person before.” His small hand clamps around my wrist firmly and pushes into me. But it’s not like Simon. This is a cold wave of aching nothing. It feels as though every piece of me, all my magic, all my essence, is getting pulled away, replaced by a gaping chasm of need and hunger.

Hunger. I’m so hungry. My magic is gone and my fangs won’t retract and I can’t remember why it is that I’m holding myself back. Snow is right there, full of blood and magic. He’s there for the taking. Why have I never just taken it? Why haven’t I drained him?

It would be so easy to take his lifeblood and the sparks that are running through it. It felt so good to have his magic in me. I need it. I think I need it, or I’ll waste away to nothing.

“Baz?” Simon says, reaching for me. He’s looking at me now, not the Humdrum. His blue eyes are on me and he’s reaching out for me and I could just take .

With my last ounce of will I shake my head.

“Don’t,” I grit out, holding my free arm out and trying to keep him at bay. “Hungry. Simon, I’m so—your magic, I’m so—” I stare at him in horror, and I start to cry. I can’t control myself. I’m not going to be able to stop myself. “I’m so hungry, and it’s your magic or your blood. I’m so sorry.”

He doesn’t look scared. He just looked understanding, and a sob tears from me.

“Take it,” he says, reaching for me again. “Take it.”

Our hands connect and he opens the tap and his magic floods in to me. But it doesn’t feel good like it did before. It doesn’t feel clean. It’s an instant, blinding relief, followed by a cold crush of disappointment. It’s flowing through me, lighting up my veins, and then being pulled out of me like a receding tide as it flows into the Humdrum.

It’s like a circuit, and I’m caught in the middle. Simon giveth, the Humdrum taketh away.

“This is all I wanted,” The Humrum says, his young face eager and open. “This is all I needed.”

“Simon, he’s taking it, he’s—”

But Simon’s jaw is squared, his shoulders hunched, unmoveable. Something has clicked with him, something I can’t understand, and he shakes his head.

“Let him have it. Let him have all of it.”

The Humdrum tries to reach out and grab my other hand, but Simon reaches him first, holding his tiny freckled wrist and looking past me to the small shade of a boy. He’s flickering. No, we’re flickering, a strobe light effect spinning up between the three of us as the magic courses through me like fire.

“I’m sorry,” Simon says, and I don’t know if he’s talking to me or the Humdrum.

“It’s okay,” the Humdrum and I say at the same time. He’s getting smaller, harder to see, his hold on me no longer tight. If I reached out now I don’t know if I could grasp him.

Suddenly the magic is too hot — too sharp, too prickling, and it’s not just Simon’s magic being pulled from me. It’s mine as well, it’s all of me, it’s parts of Simon. I’m being stretched thin, worn out. I don’t know how much longer I can act as a buffer for his magic. I don’t know how much of us is left. If we keep giving, the Humdrum will keep taking.

“Stop!” I say, almost sobbing through my fangs. “Simon, turn it off, stop. You’re giving too much—”

“I can’t,” he grits out. His eyes are blown wide in terror, the grim determination of the previous moment gone.

“Please,” I beg.

“I can’t.”

I close my eyes and with a guttural shout I reach forward, yanking myself away from the Humdrum’s thin grip and pressing my lips to Simon’s. My fangs are out, pressing against my lip and his and it’s so dangerous, so stupid, but—

The light around us explodes like a sonic boom, and then we are left in a ringing silence.

Snow and I fall to the ground, panting. The Humdrum is gone. The sucking, dry feeling is gone from the air, but my body is hollowed out. I’ve been burnt clean. There’s nothing left of me but hunger and terror and confusion.

“Simon?” I ask, gripping him. My voice punches out like a sob. He looks nearly unconscious. What did I do? What did I almost do? I nearly — “Simon?”

“I’m okay,” he grunts, breathing hard. My breath explodes out of me in a desperate sigh of relief. He’s alive. I didn’t hurt him. “I’m okay. We need to...”

I look around at the field. What do we need to do? We should do something. But I don’t know what that is. Everything is blank. The Humdrum is gone but I still feel nothing.

We should move. I need to feed. We need to — we need to do something. We need to get back. We need to keep going.

“Come on,” I say, bending over and grabbing at his hand. “We need to move. There’s a village, just over—”

He lets me pull him up and nods blankly, and we set off down the hill, unsteadily trying to support each other. We’re both covered in blood. I don’t know how I have any blood to spare, but it’s still leaking from my pores, and Simon’s as well — and pus too, bizarrely, which is for the best because it cuts across the smell of the blood and keeps me from latching on to him.

But I can’t think about that. I can’t think about that moment, that split second when I almost wasn’t able to control myself.

He has my hand in a death grip, even though it makes walking difficult, and I’m not for a moment going to tell him to stop.

I don’t know how long it takes us to get down the hill and back to the village. It’s growing dark and has started to mist, which only smears the blood in sticky tracks across our skin instead of properly clearing it off.

“Rabbit,” Snow says suddenly, pulling us up short.

“What?”

“Rabbit,” he repeats, pointing at a lazy brown bunny sniffing nearby. “Drink.”

I want to argue with him, but I can’t. I’m too exhausted, too in shock, and so I lurch forward, grabbing the small creature. I break its neck, then bury my fangs into it and drain it dry. Snow watches me, his face completely blank as I feed. The blood eases the throbbing in my head enough that I can focus slightly and think.

Action. We need a plan.

“Train,” I say, gesturing toward the tracks running past the field we’re standing in. “We need to get to the train station.”

“We need to wash this blood off,” Snow says. “Do you think you could cast a spell?”

I shake my head.

“I’m dry. You?”

He’s silent, so uncharacteristically silent as he shakes his head.

“I... I am too. I can’t... I can’t feel my magic. I’ve never gone dry before, I don’t—”

He’s panicking, I can tell. His words are getting faster and his breath is quickening, and I need him calm. No thinking. One thing at a time. I pull him to me.

“Train,” I say again, and he nods, puts his hand in mine, and we set off again, still silent. As we go, Snow eases his grip on my hand, but I don’t. I can’t let him go. If I let him go I feel like I may drift away and turn to nothing in the dark field we’re traipsing through.

When we get to town it’s dark enough that no one notices we’re covered in blood, and we duck into the first toilet we see.

Snow stands patiently while I use a brown paper towel to clean blood off of his face, and then he does the same for me. His motions are gentle, but slightly disconnected. He’s going through the motions. He stares past me when I turn to keep washing myself, and the blankness in him terrifies me. What if the Humdrum took too much? What if it took him?

What if the Humdrum ate him?

“I don’t have any money,” I say suddenly, stopping in the middle of scrubbing my arms up to my elbows.

“I’ll take care of it,” Snow rasps, pushing back from the sink and exiting the toilet. Small relief fills me. At least some of him is still there. He’s just on autopilot. I watch him go, then turn back to the mirror.

My fangs have gone down, but I’m still hungry. It’s a manageable hungry though, not like before.

And I look like shit. Snow and I have matching purple bags under our eyes, and my skin feels both dried out and greasy. My hair is a wreck, poofing around my head in thick, curly waves.

But I don’t look like I’ve been through much of a battle.

I guess it’s because I haven’t, not really. I don’t know what that was.

I don’t really know how to process this.

I fix my tie to the best of my abilities and leave the toilet. Snow is leaning against the railing across from me, flipping through a leather money clip. He pulls several notes out, then dumps the clip and the credit cards in the rubbish bin next to him.

“Found us money for tickets,” he says. I don’t ask how.

We buy tickets from an automated machine and then collapse on a bench to wait for our train. Snow hands me my ticket and as I put it in my pocket, I feel the hard shape of my mobile and Snow’s iPod.

“Oh,” I say, pulling my phone out dumbly. “I have a phone.”

We both stare at it for a long moment, as if we’ve forgotten what it’s meant to do.

“We should tell someone what happened,” he says. I nod. “We should... get back to school. Tell the Mage. They should know. He should know we—”

“Simon,” I interrupt. “We defeated the Humdrum.”

He turns to stare at me.

“We defeated the Humdrum.”

I crack into a wide smile, one tinged with hysteria.

“Fuck the Mage. We’re going to London. We’re going to get cleaned up and eat something and go to sleep and the Mage and everyone can wait because we defeated the fucking Humdrum.”

“Can we do that?” His face scrunches up in alarm.

“I think you can do pretty much anything you want now.”

He turns away from me and stares out across the train station. There’s still blood smeared on his ear.

“Let’s go to London then.”

***

We fall into silence as we wait for the train, and then board it just as quietly, taking two seats in the back. Snow takes the window and I take the aisle, and I send Wellbelove a quick text saying Snow and I are alright, we had a run in with the Humdrum, we’ll be at my flat, and then I turn my phone off. I don’t know how long it will be before she gets my text, but I don’t have it in me to have a conversation.

I pull out Snow’s iPod and hand it to him, and he takes it silently, unwrapping the headphones and offering me one earbud. When I put it in, Snow hits play.

The Beatles washes over us — Hey Jude — and I close my eyes, but I don’t sleep. I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep. I’m still tingling, still on fire. When I close my eyes the lights are still strobing.

Snow leans against me, gently at first, his head resting on my shoulder, and the relief of having him here almost breaks me. The rocking motion of the train pushes him gently against me, and finally I adjust, shifting in my seat so he can nod off against my chest, and I keep our hands clasped.

I don’t know how he’s able to sleep. I’m exhausted, but on fire. The enormity of what just happened is starting to hit me, and my thoughts start to circling in time with the scraping of the train tracks. We killed the Humdrum. I channeled Simon’s magic. I nearly drained Simon. We killed the Humdrum.

Snow sleeps through the entire three hour trip. He nods off twenty minutes after we leave Burnley and doesn’t wake until we pull into London Euston and I shake him. He blinks and smiles up at me for a moment, disoriented, and I can see the moment that his memory catches up. His light flickers, and my breath catches.

Fiona and I live just a few streets down, so it’s a short walk. It’s full on night when we get there, and I push open our gate to reveal the dark windows of our home.

I didn’t stop to think about whether Fiona would be home or not, but the flat is quiet and when I unlock the door using the key Fiona hides behind the miniature gargoyle, no one returns my hello.

Snow looks ready to drop. I feel ready to drop. The initial burst of energy that saw us down the hill and to the village and onto the train is gone, and both of us are running on energy we no longer have. It’s a miracle we’ve made it this far.

“Shower, then food, then sleep,” I say, and Snow just nods, kicks off his trainers by the door and follows me to my room. It’s not the circumstance I thought I’d be in when Snow first saw my childhood bathroom. But then again, I suppose life never works out the way we want it to when we’re thirteen.

I collect towels and turn on the shower and Simon waits, a silent husk of a boy, as the water warms up.

“Towels there, I’ll leave clothes for you on the bed,” I tell him, and he startles at my voice, his eyes wide, and reaches out.

“I don’t—” he starts, then closes his mouth and starts again. “I—”

I wait for him to find his words.

He looks at the floor of the bathroom and whispers when he does.

“I can’t feel my magic and I don’t know what’s happening and I’m scared.”

I close my eyes against the feelings trying to press into me. One thing at a time. I’m still in survival mode. No time to feel.

“Arms up,” I whisper, and he complies without argument, allowing me to strip his bloody jumper and school shirt off. He kicks off his trousers of his own accord, and then climbs into the shower, still wearing his boxers.

I take a deep breath, peel off my own shirt and trousers, and follow him in. He doesn’t even question it, just leans his head against my chest for a long moment as the warm water rushes over us. My arms are too heavy to even come up and hold him.

Finally he finds energy from somewhere and uncorks the shampoo, dumps it on his head, and scrubs it in fiercely. Before I have time to argue, he squirts another handful onto my head and rubs at my scalp with rough, large hands. In the back of my mind I realise that this isn’t the first time that Snow has washed my hair for me, and that afternoon with the skanks in our bathroom at Watford feels like it happened in a different lifetime.

I can’t focus on how we manage to get rinsed. It’s like time stopped in the shower, frozen in the middle of Snow’s bare skin and the steam of the water and the swirling blood going down the drain. All I remember is leaning against him and his arms around me. And crying. It’s ridiculous. I don’t cry. Simon is the crier.

I don’t even know what I’m crying about; whether it’s exhaustion or relief of shock. But his arms tighten around me and he lets me heave empty sobs into his shoulder, and I hear him sniffle as well, and his body shakes against me. I don’t know why he’s crying either. I guess it’s just the thing to do.

Once out, I pull on a pair of old joggers and a Watford sweatshirt, and Snow takes a pair of my boxers and a hoodie. His curls are still wet enough to cause small dark patches of damp on the grey fabric.

“I need to eat,” I say, looking up from watching Snow put on a pair of my socks. He nods. I’m relieved that neither of us are able to speak about emotions and feelings. Apparently our crying jag in the shower was enough to get us through, and now we’re back to shutting it out. It’s a relief that we’re functioning on the same level right now, just pushing ourselves through basic survival.

He pads behind me quietly as we head into the kitchen, and he pulls himself up on the counter to watch me rummage through the fridge. I hand him a J2O and then return to my hunt for blood.

I’m lucky — it’s close enough to the end of school that Fiona has already stocked the fridge with blood for me, so I pull out one of the containers and put it in the microwave. Normally I’d heat it with my magic, but I’m dry. That’s not happening tonight.

We watch the ceramic mug containing my dinner swirl round and round the microwave, and then it comes to a stop and the machine beeps loudly through the empty flat. When I open the microwave door, the dim yellow shine is the only light in the dark kitchen.

I take out the mug and drain it in three gulps. Just your regular teenage vampire having a midnight snack.

“Do you want something?” I ask him, wiping my mouth and dropping the mug in the sink. It’s the first thing I’ve said since before we showered. He shakes his head. I should be more worried by this — Simon Snow losing his appetite has to be a symptom of death. But that’s a problem for tomorrow Baz.

“Come on then,” I say, heading back to my room. He hops down from the counter and follows me like a dog.

When we get to my room, Snow goes straight to the bed and collapses on top of it, laying on his back to stare up at the ceiling.

Suddenly all the energy that I’ve been missing comes back to me, and the idea of laying down in the silence feels unbearable. I cross to my bookshelf and open up my record player, then dig through my records untIl I find what I’m looking for. I pull it out of the sleeve, put it on, and drop the needle exactly where I know the song I want starts.

The thin rasping sound of the record relaxes me enough to turn around, climb on the bed, and crawl over to Snow.

I lay on my back next to him, shoulder to shoulder, and we listen to the music.

I, I will be king

And you, you will be queen

Though nothing, will drive them away

We can beat them, just for one day

“We defeated the Humdrum,” he says quietly. I hum.

“That was unexpected, yes.”

“Everything I’ve done has been in preparation of beating him and it just... happened. It actually happened.”

I let his words wash over me for a moment and consider them as best as I can. What’s the protocol for moving on when you’ve completed the task you’ve spent your entire life preparing for? What do you do when you’re a Chosen One who has served his purpose?

“I don’t think things like this usually happen like they do in the movies, with some dramatic showdown in the final act,” I say quietly. “I think it just… happens.”

Though nothing, will keep us together

We could steal time, just for one day

“What do I do now?” he whispers, rolling over to his side to look at me. I roll onto mine as well to face him. I can see his freckles in the dim light of the room, and I reach out and hold his hand.

“We sleep,” I tell him, stroking my thumb over his knuckles. “We let the World of Mages fuck off for one night and we stay here with just us and we sleep.”

Snow closes his eyes and nods, then rests his head against my shoulder.

“We defeated the Humdrum,” he whispers, and I bring my arm around him.

“You defeated the Humdrum,” I respond. “Now sleep, love.”

We can be heroes, just for one day

We can be us, just for one day

I reach down and pull the blanket up over us so we’re tucked in and warm, and I bury my face in Simon’s hair, and listen to David Bowie, and try to not think about what comes next.

***

What comes next is yelling. Lots of it.

I wake to a dark room. The record has shut off and Snow is curled up in a tight ball next to me, his feet tangled in mine, his fist clenched in my shirt. There are voices outside my room, muffled at first, but clearer as sleep leaves me.

“You are not coming in this fucking house.”

Fiona. Clearly Fiona.

“I can and I will. If Simon is—”

“You can’t just force your way in where you want. This flat is not Coven property and you have no right—”

“Miss Pitch, I think you’ll find I have every right—”

I get up from the bed slowly, careful to not wake Simon, and slip out the door. The living room light is on and when I pass through the kitchen I can see and hear the whole argument better.

Fiona and Malcolm are stood on one side of the door, fuming, while the Mage and a very awkward looking Dr. Wellbelove are on the other.

“Please keep your voices down, Snow is asleep,” I say. My voice is hoarse and raspy, but all four adults jump and turn to look at me. Fiona breaks first, flying toward me and putting her hands on my shoulders as she looks me over.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“What happened? Did you really — is it done?”

I swallow, despite my dry mouth, and nod.

“As far as we can tell, yes.”

“Where’s Simon?” The Mage cuts in. During the distraction he’s gained ground and managed to enter the flat, Dr. Wellbelove behind him.

“He’s sleeping,” I repeat. “It took a lot out of us, of him especially.”

“Is he hurt?” Dr. Wellbelove asks.

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

“Why did you leave school?” the Mage demands. “How did you get here?”

“The Humdrum pulled us out. We were in the Wood and then suddenly we were in Lancashire. Snow recognised it. The Humdrum was there and — it was corporeal. You could touch it.”

“What did it look like?”

I pause. I don’t want them to know. The pieces are starting to click together in my own head, it’ll be no time before they realise it too, and if they know—

“Me. It looked like an eleven year old me.”

Everyone turns to stare at Simon, who has just emerged from the kitchen, blinking and bleary eyed. He still has his hood up, his curls smashed down by sleep, and he’s completely unconcerned that he’s standing in front of everyone in my boxers.

He looks at me and smiles with half his face, then turns back to the adults. His body is rigid. He’s holding himself in his fighting stance.

“He said all this stuff about being nothing, about being left over, and then he grabbed Baz, and Baz—”

“Distracted him,” I cut in. “I distracted him and then Simon went off. Blew him up. Strobing lights and everything and then he was gone.”

Snow looks at me curiously, and I try to communicate for him to trust me. Please, please just trust me.

“Yeah,” Snow says slowly. “Yeah. That’s…what happened.”

“This is unexpected,” the Mage says. His eyes are wide, and he shakes his head. He doesn’t seem to know how to process the news that the biggest threat to the world got handled while he was off screen. “You’ve done very well, Simon. Very well. I wish you had called me though.”

“Students aren’t allowed mobile phones, sir,” I say dryly, and the Mage flashes me a look that could kill.

“Come on Simon, we’ve a long drive back to Watford. We’ll talk in the car, and then I’ll take you back to London myself tomorrow.”

“London?” Snow asks.

“Well, yes,” the Mage answers. “Term is over. I’ve already arranged for you to go to a home in London this summer. There’s so much for us to talk about though. Have you eaten? We’ll stop for food on the way.”

“He’s not going back into a care home,” I snarl, stepping sideways and slightly in front of him for the second time today.

“Son, this isn’t your choice. Arrangements have been made already,” the Mage says, his voice tight. He’s being painfully polite to me, and I don’t know if it’s because there are other people around, or because I just helped defeat the Humdrum and he knows he has to be.

“The boy isn’t going anywhere, Llewelyn,” Fiona says, her voice sharp. The Mage turns to stare at her, incredulous. Dr. Wellbelove and Malcolm look excruciatingly awkward.

“I don’t see how that is your business.”

“He just killed the fucking Humdrum, he’s not going back to juvie,” Fiona snarls, and all the love I hold for my crazy, mean aunt swells tenfold. She’s doing this for me, and me alone. “He can stay here for the summer.”

The Mage looks nearly purple.

“With all due respect, why would Simon stay here? You and your family have never been kind to him — have actively worked against him, and you want me to grant you guardianship of him?”

“Can’t I stay at Watford? Or with someone else?” Snow asks, his voice cracking slightly. He’s stepped forward to put a hand on my arm, and I don’t think it’s for support — I think he’s trying to hold me back in case I try to lunge forward and kill his father figure.

“Simon can stay with us,” Dr. Wellbelove says suddenly, and everyone turns to stare at him. I think we had all forgotten he was there. “Really,” he continues. “Diana and I think of him as a son already. We love having him. And he shouldn’t have to go back there. You’ve always said you send him away for his safety, but if the Humdrum is gone…”

The Mage rubs at his moustache.

“That’s true,” he says slowly. “I suppose I’ve lived so long being concerned for his safety…” he smiles and I try to repress a snort. Like this man has ever been concerned for Simon’s safety. “But things are different now. I can hardly believe…” he laughs quietly to himself. “Yes. Yes, John, that’s fine. Simon can go with you for the summer.”

Snow’s eyes are huge, like he can barely believe what’s happening, but Dr. Wellbelove just nods.

“I’ll take him back with me tonight, then. I’ll have Agatha pack up his belongings for him.”

The Mage nods, looking slightly overwhelmed. I can actually kind of relate.

“Yes. Yes. I’ll be by tomorrow, to talk to Simon further. Come along Simon, I’ll walk you two out.”

Simon looks at me, his eyes huge, and I feel the same. It’s so much, so suddenly. The Humdrum gone. Simon not going back into care. And now he’s leaving for the summer, for an entire summer, and he’s about to walk out the door without me getting to say goodbye to him, or see how he’s feeling, or—

“Wait,” I say quickly. “Snow might want trousers.”

Everyone suddenly looks down and notices that Snow is standing there in a pair of my old patterned boxers, and then everyone immediately looks away, embarrassed. My father’s face turns a bright pink. Simon reaches a similar shade.

“Oh, er, right. Yeah. Just one second,” he says, turning around and heading back toward my room. I follow him quickly and edge past him to my door.

“Are you okay?” I ask quietly, pulling open my dresser. He moves to stand next to me, crowding into my side in the way he always does when he’s slightly nervous.

“Yeah, I just… can’t believe it. A summer not at a care home.”

“We’ll be able to talk,” I say quickly, digging through my trousers. “Wellbelove will let you use her phone.”

“We may even be able to see each other,” he whispers, and my heart thuds rapidly.

“Are you sure you’re okay? If you don’t want to leave, I can start a fight. Fiona will back me up.”

He exhales a large huff of air and smiles into my shoulder.

“No. No, I’m okay.” He looks up. “Why did you lie? About what happened?”

“I’ll explain later,” I whisper, pulling out a pair of football trackies. “Just… go with it? I’ll call you. Tomorrow.”

He nods and pulls the trackies on quickly as I turn to the closet and pull out a pair of old trainers.

“Thanks,” he says, shoving his hands into the pockets of my hoodie and looking up at me. It’s almost unbearable to see him like this; in my room, in my clothes, still sleepy, bronze curls glinting off the dim light from the kitchen. It’s almost unbearable how much I love him, and now he’s leaving. Everything is happening so quickly. I feel like I’m spiraling, panic building up in my chest. I don’t want him to leave. He’s holding me together.

“It’ll be okay,” he says suddenly. “I’ll be okay.”

He grabs my shirt and pulls me in, kissing me quickly and roughly. He’s pouring everything he has left into it, and the force and desperation of it catch me by surprise. Almost as soon as I bring my hand up to cup his cheek, he breaks off and steps back.

“I’ve got to go,” he breathes. “I’ll call you. Or come see you. Or something. We’ll be okay. I promise.”

I nod, not quite ready to speak, and he leaves my room and heads back through the kitchen. After a moment I follow him, emerging back into the living room just to see him and Dr. Wellbelove and the Mage heading down the hallway, Fiona behind them. The Jack Russell Terrier look she had previously reserved for Snow has now been trained on the Mage.

“You’re sure you’re not hurt?” Malcolm asks, breaking the silence in the room, and I tear my eyes from Snow to shake my head. Malcolm swallows thickly and runs his hands over his thighs, then crosses the room and grabs my shoulder with a firm grasp.

“I’m so proud of you,” he says quietly, and something large begins to travel up my throat.

“It was Snow,” I say, clearing my throat. “It was all him.”

“The Humdrum is gone. This changes everything,” Malcolm says quietly, as the sound of the door closing echoes through the flat. Simon is gone, and so is the Mage. My first chore of the summer will be disinfecting everything.

“Not everything.”

***

“I’m going to the shop. Please do not blow anything up, and I swear to Circe if that fucking ferret is in my room when I get back, I’ll have your heads.”

Dev, Niall and I look up from the kitchen table in mock innocence, pretending for all the world like we haven’t been sneaking Merlin into Fiona’s bedroom all summer.

With everything that happened, I’d actually forgotten about him. Apparently when Niall and Wellbelove went to pack up our belongings to send home, they’d gotten into a fight over who was taking Merlin.

Niall lost.

I’d foolishly thought he could probably just exist happily in my room for the duration of the summer hols, but then one day I woke up to Fiona cursing and the wildly, frenzied grunts of “Charles Hollow! Charles Hollow!” and I knew the proverbial snake cat was out of the bag.

She’s been spiffing about it, all things considered. Sometimes she and Merlin sit in the garden to smoke and drink coffee together, but that’s only when she thinks I’m not awake.

The rest of the time — like now — she keeps up this charade of hating him.

Niall raises his teacup in a salute to Fiona, who is still scowling from the doorway, and Dev nods politely.

“I fucking hate teenagers,” she mumbles, barely audible over the sound of the Dead Milkmen, then grabs her purse and sunglasses and slams out the door.

“So why are we being gathered?” Dev asks again. He’s wearing sunglasses as well, due to the fact that he and Niall apparently had a party with Fiona last night which involved a bottle of whisky. I was on the phone with Snow, however, so I had my silence spell up and missed it all.

I’m not particularly put out by it. I got to listen to Simon simultaneously try to fall asleep and watch 8 out of 10 Cats. It’s stupid and overly sentimental and I would never admit it to anyone, but part of the only reason I’ve been able to breathe and function this summer is because every night I get to talk to Snow before I go to sleep.

“They’ll be here any moment, I’ll go over it then,” I say, reaching across for another piece of bacon. Dev looks put out, but he won’t be for long. There’s loads more bacon in the oven. I know better than to be unprepared.

There’s two knocks at the front door and then it swings open, my guests not waiting to be invited in. They know the drill by now.

“There’s nothing wrong with liking pink,” Wellbelove is saying from the other room. Bunce’s harsh laughter greets her words.

“No, but it’s just so predictable, don’t you think?”

“Is that a bad thing? Am I supposed to like purple instead and feel edgy about it?”

Snow appears in the doorway, his hands in his pockets and a harassed look on his face. He’s already kicked off his shoes by the front door, and he pulls off his cap and puts it on the counter. He’s sweaty and his face is flushed from the heat and he looks incredible.

“They’ve been fighting since we picked Penny up,” he says by way of greeting, crossing the room quickly. For a brief moment I think he’s heading to me, and I angle my chair slightly to greet him, but instead he goes past me without a word and walks straight into my room, returning a moment later with Merlin.

“There’s bacon in the stove,” I tell him, extremely offended that he picked the rat over me. I should have known better, though. He’s never affectionate in front of large groups of people. You would think that killing the Humdrum would give us permission to not give a fuck what people think about us, but mostly it’s just provided us with more car privileges.

Snow puts Merlin down on the counter and heads to the stove, squeezing my shoulder as he passes with one freckled hand. He’s gotten more tan this summer than usual, and his hair (which he hasn’t shaved off) has lightened from being in the sun. He’s been going along to all of Wellbelove’s equestrian shows and working as her personal stable boy. I’ve tagged along to a handful, but honestly, I’m just not very horsey.

If You Love Someone Set Them On Fire comes on and Dev puts his head on the table.

“Skip,” he groans. Snow turns around and frowns.

“No, don’t skip. This is Baz’s song.”

Dev, Niall and I turn and look at him, and he goes slightly pink. Precious.

“I just meant…you know. Fire. And… you know. Remember that time you set me on fire?”

Niall looks thoroughly nonplussed, and Dev looks deeply disturbed, but I just smile sharply at Snow.

“Can we please get on with it?” Dev moans. Niall pats him on the knee sympathetically and turns around in his chair to grab the coffee pot in order to refill Dev’s cup. Snow has stationed himself at the counter and is currently making an alarming number of bacon rolls.

“On with what?” Bunce asks, appearing in the doorway, Wellbelove in tow. Bunce is in a frighteningly purple sundress that matches her hair, while Wellbelove is in pink — pink shorts, white shirt with pink lettering, pink heart sunglasses on top of her head and a pink denim jacket.

“Bunce. Ags,” I say, nodding. I grin as Wellbelove pops the collar of her jacket. “A vision as always.”

“Yes, yes, beautiful, radiant, please, can we get on with it, everyone is here,” Dev grouches.

“Don’t mind him, he’s being a cock today,” Niall says, accepting a bacon roll from Snow.

“I’ve got a cracking migraine, it’s hot outside, and we’ve been summoned for some mysterious reason. Forgive me for not being thrilled. I’m on the verge of vomit.”

Bunce, Snow and Wellbelove take their seats — Snow sits at the table, Wellbelove perches on the window ledge, and Bunce pulls herself up onto the counter.

“I’m not hungover, but I am curious what’s going on,” Bunce agrees, fiddling with her large purple ring. Snow looks at me in a clear indication to get on with it, and I nod, standing up.

“Oh Crowley, there’s a presentation and everything,” Dev mumbles. Niall kicks him.

“I’ve asked you all here today because it’s time to make our next move in regard to discovering my mother’s killer,” I say. Bunce stops playing with her ring, and Dev slowly removes his sunglasses. “As you all know, we think the Mage may be hiding something incriminating in Wales. The last few months, my father and the other Old Families have been causing problems. Refusing to tithe, small skirmishes, being a general pain.”

“My mum is about up to here with it,” Bunce says, interrupting. “She says we should be focusing on coming together now that the Humdrum is gone, not driving ourselves further apart.”

“A lovely sentiment indeed,” I say, and Bunce glares at me. “But we’re not doing this to cause division. It’s to cause a distraction. Next weekend the Coven will be calling a special meeting over the course of three days, wherein the Mage and his supporters are going to sit down with Malcolm and other Old Family representatives and try to work out a compromise.”

“No one is going to agree to a compromise,” Dev says suddenly. “My dad says that there’s loads more support for the Old Families since you and Snow kicked the Humdrum. Turns out people aren’t as enamoured with the Mage when two teenagers managed to succeed where he kept fucking up.”

“I don’t really care about whether they come to a compromise or not,” I answer dryly. “All I care about is that for three days, the Mage and all his men and supporters will be distracted and busy and nowhere near Machynlleth.”

“You’re not serious,” Bunce says, and Dev nods, already picking up on where this is going.

“This is an awful idea,” he says, nodding. “I’m with Bunce. Don’t do it.”

“I didn’t say not to do it—” Bunce starts, but Wellbelove interrupts.

“Baz, are you sure you want to do this?” she asks quietly, spinning her sunglasses between her fingers. “I mean… everyone is kind of in awe of you right now. You and Simon. If you get caught breaking into the Mage’s house…. This could be really risky, and could end really badly.”

She looks around the kitchen for support, and Niall nods, looking guilty.

“You know I support your revenge, but don’t you… I don’t know. Want a break? It’s our last summer before we finish school,” he says softly. “Not even a month ago you and Snow took down the biggest threat to the World of Mages. Don’t you think you deserve a rest? Some fun?”

My stomach lurches. I didn’t expect everyone to love the idea, but I didn’t expect such a unified wall of objection. This is my mother. They know I’ve been waiting all year to move on the Mage, and this is my chance. But if no one will come with me…

I won’t go by myself.

Once upon a time I might have, but not anymore.

“Snow?” I ask, looking at my boyfriend and carefully removing any trace of emotion or insecurity or disappointment from my face. “What say you? Care for a road trip?”

Snow is silent for a long moment, looking around the kitchen. He has a bacon roll in his mouth, and he chews it painfully slow and then finally swallows and looks at me, making eye contact.

It’s all going to come down to him.

***

It takes four hours to get to Machynlleth, but it looks like it’s going to take us six.

“Fiona is texting you,” Niall says from beside me, gesturing to my phone. “She wants to know where her car is.”

I glance to my left, where Niall is sat in the passenger seat of Fiona’s MG, reading out directions and handling music. Snow, Wellbelove, Bunce and Dev are all squashed into the farce of a backseat, and we keep having to stop and cast “the more the merrier!” in order to make room for them all — or at least to trick them into being fine with the clown car arrangements.

Snow had been in the front when we started (because I wanted him there and because he’s the bulkiest) but it quickly became clear that he was useless at navigating, so he was shunted aside in favour of Niall.

“Tell her it has been requisitioned for the revolution,” I tell Niall, and he snorts and taps out a message. The playlist we’ve been listening to comes to an end, and Niall rushes to start a new one. Children of the Revolution begins playing, and Dev boos loudly from the backseat.

“You’re not funny,” he jeers. “Put on something new.”

The song pauses, and Mr. Brightside comes on.

“I walked right into that,” Dev mutters. I can hear the sound of shifting from the backseat and I know that Dev is trying to make himself become one with the window.

“Mate, please stop moving, you’re hitting my bladder,” Snow grunts quietly.

“Crowley, I love this song,” Bunce exclaims, and Niall turns around in his seat to smile widely at her, already singing through the first chorus.

“But it’s just the price I pay, destiny is calling me!” Snow, Bunce, Wellbelove and Niall shout at the same time, and I bite down a grin as I glance in the rearview mirror to see Dev closing his eyes and looking murderous.

“Open up my eager eyes,” I join in.

“Cuz I’m Mr. Brightside,” Dev groans sadly.

I catch Snow’s eye in the mirror. He’s grinning widely.

I haven’t thanked him for backing me up on my decision to go to Wales. We’re only doing this because of him. When everyone else waffled and tried to talk me out of it, he was the one who had swallowed his food, sat up straight, and told our friends that he was going to Wales with me, and anyone who wanted to come was welcome.

Part of me thinks he’s only doing this for me, and not because of the Mage. The rebellious bits of him — the bits that were hurting and angry and ready to believe the Mage is evil — have been soothed over a bit since the Humdrum showdown. Not being shoved back into care accounted for a lot of it, as well as the excessive amount of time and attention the Mage has been lavishing on him this summer. Every Friday he shows up at the Wellbelove’s at noon on the dot and takes Snow for a long lunch somewhere nearby. I don’t know what they talk about — Snow says it’s nothing really, just going back over the (sanitised and largely fake) Humdrum story, and a lot of discussion about politics and what he should do next.

Apparently the Mage is trying to push him into working for the Coven as a curse breaker, which is one of the funniest thing I’ve ever heard, considering that Snow has none of the patience or delicacy required to break curses.

That, and the magic thing.

I look at him again in the mirror, my good mood quickly turning to worry, but he still looks happy, belting along to the song.

When he left my house after the Humdrum, scared and drained, he couldn’t feel his magic at all. And he’s still struggling. He was completely tapped out, and it’s taking it’s time coming back. He can still cast — small spells, easy things, first year things. He has better control on them now, too, and my theory is that it’s because his raw current of power isn’t getting in the way.

But it’s nothing compared to what he used to have. He couldn’t go off if he wanted to. He hasn’t been leaking magic. His magic is small, like an ember he needs to blow on, but he’s scared of stoking the flame.

He’s scared of getting his magic back fully, and scared of living without it, and I don’t know how to help him, because I think this might be the best thing to ever happen to him. But now no one knows what to do with him. No one seems to know how to treat him, now that he’s fulfilled his mission, but lost his secret weapon.

“Kelly, give me the music,” Bunce shouts from the backseat. “You’ve had it for hours.”

“Please no Led Zeppelin,” Wellbelove moans. “Or Fleetwood Mac!”

“You love Stevie,” Bunce retorts, sounding wounded.

There’s a tap on my shoulder as Snow leans up between the front seats.

“Any chance we can have a bathroom break?” he asks me quietly, still smiling.

“No,” I respond. “We’re almost there, you can hold it.”

“But Baz—”

“But nothing, I am not pulling this car over again.”

He opens his mouth to retort, but Bunce has put a new song on, and he shuts up and sits back as the chords to I’m Gonna Be start up.

“Why do none of you share my taste in music?” Dev grouses, but he’s almost completely drowned out by the force of Bunce and Wellbelove’s singing.

“I don’t know this song,” Snow says, deflated.

“Hush and enjoy it,” Bunce scolds, and I glance at Niall and laugh.

“So do you know where his house is?” Niall asks.

“Nope. My plan is to seek out the dead spot and canvas the area from there.”

“Crowley, that’s going to take all day if we — and I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more!” Niall says, interrupting himself mid-sentence to join Bunce and Wellbelove on the chorus. Dev is singing under his breath, and Snow is humming along, gently drumming the beat into my shoulder.

Despite what we’re heading off to do... this is oddly fun.

“Oh! Basil! Look!” Bunce says, popping up beside me and pointing to a sign with local attractions. “Can we?”

“We’re not here to sight see,” I say, keeping my eyes on the road.

“Oh come on, Basil. I’ve always wanted to go. It won’t kill you.”

Snow’s head pops up next to her.

“Yeah, Basil,” he says, grinning. His face is so close to mine that I can feel his breath on my cheek. “It won’t kill you.”

I sigh, flip on my indicator, and get into the proper lane. The car goes up in cheers.

***

Bunce takes us through the musical highlights of the Spice Girls, Kylie Minogue, and The Cranberries in the time it takes us to merge off the motorway and pick our way down winding country lanes. Dev wastes his turn with the music on a pulsing Dizzie Rascal song that everyone but Wellbelove cocks up the lyrics to, and we continue steadily around narrow lanes and past green pastures and finally up a steep mountain road. We follow the muddy lane, going up and up and through a dense wood until we finally find ourselves in a narrow, fieldstone wall-lined lane leading to a small cottage.

I pull to the side of the lane and cut the engine just outside of the gate, and everyone spills out of the car.

I follow them out and stretch my back from side to side, swiveling to take in the view.

We’re on the side of the mountain, the valley stretched out below us, and it’s truly beautiful. Rolling hills and far away cottages, the picture of absolute tranquility.

Wellbelove turns to watch the sheep, while Snow tries to sneakily find a tree to piss behind, and Dev and Niall ramble over to inspect the sign on the front of the gate that reads ‘Bron-Yr-Aur Cottage: Private Residence.’

I pull myself up onto the bonnet of the MG, and a moment later Bunce joins me.

“Worth the visit?” I ask. She’s got her wild purple hair pulled up into a top knot, and she has her pensive face on.

“I didn’t know it was a private residence,” she responds. “For some reason I thought it would be open to the public.” She pauses. “Some of the best Led Zeppelin songs were written in that cottage.Over the Hills and Far Away is my favourite song of all time, and it was written there, and now some family is just… going about their lives and getting the kids ready for school and existing amongst that legacy.”

“Ramble On is my favourite Zeppelin song,” I offer. Bunce gives me a steady look and then scoffs.

“Of course it is. Of course it is.”

“I didn’t know you were so passionate about music,” I tease, shifting to put my elbows on my knees and look more closely at the cottage. Small, made of grey fieldstone with a bright blue door. Utterly unimpressive looking. Bunce shrugs.

“Some of us don’t need to be so outwardly sentimental about things.”

There’s a shriek from the other side of the car, and we look over to see Snow laughing as Wellbelove throws grass at him. On the wall just beyond, Niall and Dev are sat close together, their heads pressed close as Dev says something emphatically, gesturing with his hands, and Niall just watches him with a slow smile, and I find myself mimicking it.

“What can I say? I’m a sentimental bastard.”

Bunce stares at me again, and then a wide grin breaks out across her face, and, to my immense surprise, she ducks her head to knock it briefly against my shoulder. I’m not fluent in Bunce like Simon is, but I think this means we just became friends.

“Are you scared of what we might find?” Bunce asks, popping this unexpected and warm little moment of friendship.

“Vaguely,” I respond, which feels too close to the truth for comfort. “Are you?”

“Incredibly,” she responds with a sigh.

“So you believe me, then? That the Mage is up to something?”

Bunce rests her hands on the red bonnet behind her and leans back.

“I don’t know what I believe, to be honest. But something doesn’t seem right about any of this. With the Mage, and his books, and the Humdrum, and Simon….”

“What about Simon?”

Bunce glances behind us to ensure that Snow and Wellbelove are still distracted, and then leans in.

“What happened with his magic, with the Humdrum? How he gave it to it? And now he’s drained?”

“It’ll come back,” I say defensively, even though I don’t know for sure. No one does.

Bunce chews on her bottom lip and glances at Snow again.

“I don’t know if it will. What if…” she leans in even closer, and a strand of purple hair brushes my cheek. “What if what he gave the Humdrum was excess? Just some freak reserve that he happened to have. And now that it’s gone, now that he got rid of it in a controlled fashion — thanks you to, by the way — what if what he has now is just… his magic? His normal, intended magic.”

“Let’s just say you’re right, and he burnt off the excess,” I respond, lowering my voice. “There wouldn’t be anything left. Snow is Normal. He wouldn’t have intended magic.”

“If he were Normal, yes,” Bunce says. Her eyes finish the rest of the sentence for her, and I sit back heavily on my hands.

“You think he’s a real mage. You think his parents were mages.”

“I think it’s possible. No one knows where he came from.”

“But who would his parents even be?” I ask, suddenly alarmed. “Magical children don’t just go missing.”

“They do if no one knew they existed to begin with,” Bunce quips, then looks away.

“What do you know?” I hiss, leaning in and narrowing my eyes.

“Nothing,” she says quickly, her eyes wide. “Really and truly, I don’t know anything. This is pure speculation.”

“And what does Snow think of your theory?”

“He doesn’t,” Bunce says, looking guilty. “He doesn’t want to talk about the Humdrum or his magic, and I’m not pressing it.”

“I don’t think he wants it back,” I say, feeling slightly like I’m breaking his trust, even though he’s never said anything about it. And anyway, this is Bunce. He loves her more than he loves me. “And to be honest, I don’t know if I want it back either.”

Bunce looks at me, surprised.

“You should tell him that.”

“What?”

“You should tell him that,” she says again. “I think part of his refusal to think about it is his worry that if he’s not the all powerful Chosen One, no one will want him still. If he’s just Normal, or an average mage. You should let him know that doesn’t matter to you.”

“You’re revoltingly emotionally aware,” I tell her, and she sighs, nodding.

“I know. Micah is a big communicator, so I’ve gotten very used to talking about feelings. It’s awful.”

“Micah? The scary American? You’re still dating?”

Bunce scrunches up her face and grins at me.

“Scary American? And yes, I am. I was meant to go visit him in Chicago this summer, actually. But what with everything that happened…” she shrugs. “We thought it was for the best that I stay here. He’s going to come visit though for the last three weeks of summer. He’d love to see you.”

“Mutual, I’m sure,” I say dryly. “Maybe let’s keep him away from Niall.”

“I think he and Niall would get on well, actually,” Bunce says with a knowing smile that I absolutely do not like. But before I can question her about it, she hops off the car and stretches.

“Alright you lot, we best get going!” she calls, and our friends slowly begin to amble back over to the car.

***

Having agreed that today is largely shot, we head to Machynlleth proper to seek out food and lodging. It’s a pretty little town, tucked neatly into the green countryside of the Dyfi Valley. Garlands and bunting drape the streets and tourists and locals wander across the grey sandstone. Bunce and Wellbelove set off to find us a place to sleep while the rest of us set out in search of food, and within the hour we find ourselves sitting in the square, eating fish n’ chips and watching the sun set behind the large clocktower that sits proudly in the middle of the square.

Snow is sitting next to me, his knee brushing my thigh as he leans forward to feed his chips to the gaggle of pigeons that have begun to stalk us. He smiles widely at the largest of the lot and holds out a chip, and the bird snaps it out of his hand so fast that he recoils, shaking his fingers.

“Mangy fuck,” he mumbles, and I swell with an overwhelming tide of warmth and love for this ridiculous idiot.

Maybe I wasn’t lying to Bunce. Maybe I am a sentimental bastard.

It’s dark by the time we wander into the bed and breakfast that the girls arranged for us, and we stand in the hallway awkwardly before parting ways.

“Remember, meet up at 7,” I say, and Dev nods.

“Right, right, you’ve said that, mum.”

“That will leave time for breakfast, right?” Snow asks, and Niall snorts loudly.

“Dev won’t let us on the road if he doesn’t eat first,” he says, and Dev and Snow share a look of mutual respect.

“Well, night then,” I say, shifting the weight of my rucksack and letting myself into the room behind me. Snow follows, kicks off his trainers, drops his rucksack, and then looks around.

“Just one bed,” he says.

“Oh no,” I deadpan. “Looks like we’ll have to share.”

He mutters something rude before wandering off toward the en suite.

By the time he’s out of the shower, pink skinned and smelling like old lady lavender, I’m in bed and half asleep. I’ve been trying to focus on my book and stay awake so that we can talk, but I’m fading. Today was exhausting, and inexplicably extremely enjoyable, and the combination of the warmth filling my chest from a day with my friends and the icy dread creeping up from my stomach about what we’re doing tomorrow has my body shutting down as a defence mechanism.

I’ve set my mobile on the bedside table and turned on Spotify to play quietly while I read, and Snow smiles as Lou Reed comes on. Perfect Day. I may have done it on purpose.

“That was nice of you to take the detour for Pen,” Snow yawns as he digs in his rucksack for clean clothes. “She’s a Zeppelin nut.”

“Well, let’s not hold that against her,” I say, watching with interest as he attempts to pull on his pants while still wearing his towel around his waist. It’s a wonderfully uncoordinated effort, and I give him a zero out of ten for execution. Pants on, he drops the towel and turns around to crawl onto the bed, his hair still wet.

“Aren’t you even going to put on a shirt?” I snap. He shakes his head and a cold droplet of water hits my cheek.

“It’s hot out, no need,” he mutters, pulling the blankets up around him and sighing as he nestles down into the hideously uncomfortable bed. His face goes directly into my neck and his arm snakes up around my waist to pull me in, his fingers resting lightly on my hip.

My playlist has started on Pictures of You, and I vaguely think that I should turn it off. Snow doesn’t like The Cure. But my mobile is far away, and Snow is pressed tightly against me, and I’m having difficulty breathing because of this whole situation.

“You’re a savage,” I snap, trying to will my blush down. “Why can’t you wear normal pyjamas like the rest of us?”

His fingers tighten on my hips and he shuffles in closer, until he’s pressed entirely against my back from shoulder to ankle, and I can’t stop the shiver that runs through me. His fingers play with the hem of my shirt and then slowly skate under it. Then they toy with the band of my pyjama pants, hooking under them for a moment, and all the breath leaves my body, because I cannot believe what’s actually happening.

We’ve made out. We’ve fumbled around a bit, but nothing too serious. There were a handful of blissfully steamy make out sessions in our room that got slightly too carried away and ended with us red faced and embarrassed, but what Snow is doing right now is deliberate, calculated, and intent.

“Aren’t you tired?” I ask him, my voice rough.

“Mhhm,” he mumbles against my neck, his warm breath huffing across my skin. I move back against him slightly, and his breath huffs out again.

“Then why aren’t you sleeping?”

His hips come forward slightly and I can feel him pressing against me and my heart thuds through my chest. His fingers dip below my waistband again and then suddenly tug down. My breath stutters.

“Today was really nice,” he says, his voice sleepy and rough and he presses a kiss to my neck. “I don’t want it to end yet.”

I break.

I flip around quickly, bringing my arms up on either side of him and kiss him roughly, messily. A burst of surprised laughter slips out of him and he wraps his arms around me and kisses back, the sides of our faces mashed into the itchy floral pillowcase, our legs tangled together, our hands creeping across each other’s bodies.

“I love the way you smell,” he mumbles when I push him to his back and kiss at his neck, targeting the moles he has there. My hair is fanned out all over his face.

“You smell like an old lady,” I retort, kissing down his collar bone, and he laughs again, a delighted, high pitched giggle of a thing that sends jolts down my spine. It’s only made worse when he reaches up to pull my shirt off over my head and my hair gets entirely displaced, sticking out at messy angles and tangling in front of my eyes, and he dissolves into another burst of laughter when he sees it.

It continues like that. Snow’s messy laughter spilling over and my annoyed huffs mixing with the horrifically loud sounds of our increasingly laboured breathing. I have no idea what I’m doing. He doesn’t either, clearly, but we move against each other desperately and figure it out. Snow laughs through the whole thing, his cheeks pushing up and crinkling his blue eyes, and I stay silent, watching him intently, running my hands through his curls and gripping his upper arms and feeling close to fucking bursting with the reality of my life.

I didn’t expect this to happen. I’ve kind of been slightly terrified of this happening, actually, what with my emotional walls and my fear of hurting him. Ever since the Humdrum, when I almost broke down, I’ve been terrified of hurting him. Terrified that I can’t control myself. Terrified that he’ll be taken away, that he’ll walk away, just like he did after the Humdrum. Terrified that I’ll have to watch him go.

But Snow and his laughter have burst through my fucking walls. I should have known he would. I don’t think I can keep anything from him, or deny him of anything. He trusts me implicitly, and I trust him, and it’s he and I. There’s nothing between us now. We’re in everything together.

When Snow gave me his magic and opened himself up to me and let me draw on his reserves, I thought that I couldn’t love him more than that; that I could never be that close to another person ever again. But lying on the world’s lumpiest bed in a musty bed and breakfast in Wales, surrounded by the smell of lavender and dust, having ridiculous, fumbling, teenage sex with Simon Snow, I realise that this is it. The holy fire of his magic is nothing compared to the dizzy warmth of his laughing embrace.

I don’t know if I’ll ever feel his magic flow through me again, but I know I can have this, whenever I want, for as long as he’ll have me.

The insanity of this rips a bubbling, amazed laugh from me, and Snow leans down to cut it off with a sloppy, gasping kiss.

When the clocktower in the square chimes midnight, he’s snoring and I’m barely moving, my mind still reeling about what just happened and what’s to come. He shifts in his sleep, curling in on himself and I tighten my grip around his waist and pull him closer to me. Wrapping my body around him as best as I can, I imagine myself as the layer of protection between him and the rest of the world.

The final chime echoes through town and I press a small kiss underneath his ear.

“Happy birthday, love.”

***

When we return to the car the next morning, the happy, carefree mood is gone.

Snow, riding shotgun, is doing his level best to be cheery. He’s on music, and he’s doing a good job, but no one feels like singing, and I can tell the edges of his smile are fake. A real one shines through when I take my left hand off the gear shift and place it on his thigh, but it only lasts a minute.

I try to focus on last night in order to push back the anxiety that’s roiling inside me as we grow closer and closer to the dead spot, but not even the memory of Snow’s lips on my skin is enough to calm me. There’s nothing to be done for it now; we must simply keep calm and carry on.

We feel the dead spot immediately. Bunce sucks in a deep breath and Dev grunts in surprise. Niall and Wellbelove shift uncomfortably, and Snow goes stiff as a board.

“Bunce, how large is this spot?” I ask, my tone tense.

“Not very large. Ten acres, maybe.”

I nod and stay on the road we’re on. There can’t be very many cottages down this way; we should find it sooner or later.

“I feel sick,” Bunce whispers.

“I’m with Bunce, this feels awful,” Dev mutters.

“Just close your eyes and sit back,” Niall says gently.

“There,” Snow barks, pointing down a narrow track I barely saw. It’s not even a road, just a path, but there are tyre tracks and it’s worn down.

I pull the car over and cut the engine.

“The MG can’t handle that terrain,” I explain, getting out of the car. “We have to walk.”

Five queasy faces nod back at me.

“If you don’t think you can handle it, you can take the car and leave the dead spot,” I say quietly. “I can call and have you pick me up when I’m done.”

“I’m going with you,” Snow says, crossing the car to squeeze my hand. “You guys can go though.”

“No, we’re coming,” Dev says, and the rest of our friends nod.

“Right then,” I say, taking a deep breath. “Onward to victory.”

The track isn’t very long; a kilometre at best, and it soon winds around the dense crop of trees to reveal a snug little cottage at the base of the hill. The stone has been whitewashed, the door is a cheery green, and there’s a grown over garden out front, just next to the gravelled driveway. Set against the side of the house is an empty chicken coop.

It’s cute. It’s quaint and homey and painfully normal, and nothing at all what I expected the Mage’s house to look like. It’s nice, but it doesn’t exactly look like property one would buy. It’s more like a grandparent’s house that gets passed along.

“This is downright charming,” Dev mutters, his voice too loud in the silent valley.

The house is deserted; the curtains are drawn, the chimney is unlit, the driveway is empty, but I keep glancing around like a horde of Mage’s Men are going to pop out at any moment. The anxiety gets worse as we get to the door.

“How are we going to open it?” Bunce whispers. “We can’t use magic.”

Snow stares at the door for a moment, and then leans over and gently plucks two hairpins from Bunce’s hair. Her curls fall in her eyes and she watches as he straightens them out, then squats down in front of the old brass lock and sets to work.

Between this and his pickpocketing back in Lancashire, Snow is full of surprises.

After what feels like a century, there’s a sharp “click” and Snow exhales, turns the doorknob, and swings the door open with a creak.

“After you,” he grunts, and I step over the threshold.

The inside smells of dust and old wood and stale air, and we survey the small kitchen. Snug. White curtains on the windows, gas hob set up next to a black wood stove. A small table tucked into the corner, balanced on uneven, knobbly pine floors. Dishes still stacked neatly in the washing rack by the sink.

The den is the same. A leather sofa, a floral armchair. Shelves of books — but Normal ones. Nothing magical. A very dusty looking television from the nineties.

“Search down here. I’m going upstairs,” I whisper, pointing toward the solid staircase that leads up to the second level. Bunce and Wellbelove break off and follow me, while Snow and Niall begin pulling books off the shelves downstairs, and Dev pokes around the hall cupboard.

The first door is a bedroom. Sparse. Green bedclothes, side table, vanity pushed against the window. Floral curtains. A black and white photo of a smiling older couple, standing in front of this cottage.

The next room is the study, and that’s where we find it.

The room is stacked floor to ceiling with books and parchment. The shelves are overflowing and bending with the weight, more books are stacked on the floor, and even more crates are piled up so high that the door won’t open fully. We fall on the books immediately.

“The book we stole from the selkies is here,” Bunce whispers, toying with it. Everything from that crate is here, actually.”

I cross the room quickly to where she’s standing and my eyes rove over the books. I see what I’m looking for immediately; four books, familiar spines, in perfect condition. My mother’s books. The ones he confiscated from me and I never got back.

I pick up the books carefully and cradle them under my arms. They’ll be coming home with me.

“Basil, these books...” Bunce starts, peering up over a cracked leather tome. “Some of these books are forbidden. There’s banned words, and blood rites, and a bunch of texts about power binding. And—” she gestures at the far wall, looking overwhelmed. “Those are all about prophecies. One prophecy.”

“Uhm,” Wellbelove says quietly from the corner. She’s looking at something small that she’s just pulled out of a desk. “Do you know… did the Mage have a wife?”

“A wife?” I echo, screwing my face up. “No, I’m fairly certain he didn’t. Why?”

“Then who is this?”

Wellbelove holds up the item in her hand, and Bunce and I walk closer to inspect it. It’s a photo printed on regular photo paper. A red faced, freckled blonde woman smiles up at us out of it, her hair pulled in a messy, sweaty bun at the top of her head. She’s standing in front of the cottage, next to the empty chicken coop, and she’s wearing a men’s rugby jersey.

The jersey is stretched almost to its limit over her round, pregnant belly.

“The date stamp says this was June of 1997,” Bunce whispers.

“She’s almost full term,” I agree.

“Guys…” Wellbelove says, her voice wobbling. “Guys, doesn’t she kind of look like—” There’s a crash downstairs and a string of curses, and then Snow’s voice floating up the stairs.

“Baz? Penny? You need to see this.”

Wellbelove folds the photo and shoves it into her pocket as the three of us go racing out of the room and clambering down the stairs. Dev and Snow are in the living room, surrounded by books. The bookshelf they had been investigating is gone, and instead has spun in on itself to reveal a narrow door, leading to a hidden room.

“Well done, you,” I say, striding forward, and then I freeze when I see what’s in the room beyond.

It’s a workshop. Unsanded wooden benches line the walls and the floor is rough cement. There are strange, dark stains seeped into the floor, and handwritten notes are scribbled and pinned up on the walls.

In the centre of the room are two large terrariums. One reveals a large, jagged spherical shell — no, egg. It was an egg once, I think. It’s a mud brown and roughly the size of a pug, with small edges of it broken off. I can’t see what’s in the terrarium next to it, however, because Niall is standing in front of it, staring down.

“Niall,” I say, going to him. Snow follows me into the room, and everyone else looks on from the doorway. “Niall, what is it?”

Niall turns, his green eyes wide and sad, and reveals the small, dried, decomposing form of a baby dragon.

It’s not freshly dead. It’s been dead for a long time — at least seven years, if I had to hazard a guess. Or maybe, considering the jagged egg next to it, it was never born to begin with.

The dragon is curled in on itself, just like those diagrams of human foetuses. There’s a black and white sonogramme of my future baby brother hanging on Malcolm and Daphne’s fridge right now that looks just like this; curled up, tucked in, asleep.

Small pieces of its tail have been carefully clipped away, and large sections of scales on its stomach are missing. It’s preserved, put on display in a clinical, impersonal manner, like a science experiment. Behind the terrarium, several vials of thick, black liquid are perched.

Prenatal dragon blood.

“This is from first year, isn’t it?” Niall breathes. I nod. I’m fairly sure it is. “This is the dragon egg he stole. This is why that dragon came to Watford, why Snow blew it up, why I—”

He trails off and leans over the terrarium.

“It’s so small.”

His hand comes out to touch it before I have time to shout.

“Don’t touch it!” But he’s already made contact, and gone rigid.

“What’s wrong?” Snow asks, barreling past me to pull Niall away from the dragon. Niall isn’t moving.

“Unborn dragons have natural protective magic,” I explain quickly, watching as my best friend’s face transforms into a mask of horror. “If you touch them without permission, it sends you into a temporary stasis, where you have to relive the worst moment of your life.”

Behind us, Welbelove’s breath catches.

“But we’re in a dead spot. There’s no magic,” Dev says roughly, his voice tinged with panic. He’s pushed past the girls to get to Niall’s side.

“Dragon magic isn’t normal, it’s not magic like we think of it,” Bunce whispers. “It might not react to the dead zone the same way. He could — The Mage could potentially have used it. Like a magical generator.”

All of a sudden Niall snaps out of his spell with a loud gasp, and then he slowly backs out of the workshop, his face horrified. He’s shaking. Everyone follows him back into the living room. One of Dev’s hands comes up to firmly grasp Niall’s arm, and he pulls him closer.

“Mate, it’s okay. Hey, look at me. It’s okay.”

Niall crumbles, shoving his face down into Dev’s hair and bringing his arms up as he’s wracked with small sobs. He’s so much taller than Dev that he nearly folds into himself to do it. Dev’s dark eyes are wide and scared and confused, and he returns the embrace slowly. His arms are almost slack though, and he holds Niall as loosely as possible.

“Come on, we need to get out of here,” he says quietly as we all look on.

Realising that everyone is just standing in the living room watching Niall cry, Dev slowly turns them, so that his body blocks Niall mostly from view and glances up to glare at us. He looks positively murderous as he keeps talking softly into Niall’s ear.

“You’ll feel better away from here. Please come with me?”

Niall nods mutely, and Dev turns to look at me.

“Go,” I say. “We’ll be there in a moment. Wellbelove, Bunce, you go too.”

It’s a testament to the moment that they don’t argue.

Niall pulls himself off Dev and clears his throat, his face red and puffy, and then heads out the door on shaky legs, not looking at anyone. Dev follows. Bunce reaches out to pat Niall’s arm when they pass, but Dev blocks it and nearly growls at her.

“Are they a thing?” Snow whispers to me. A startled, rattled laugh escapes me. I could kiss him right now for focusing on the single most unimportant detail.

“Somehow, no,” I respond, and Snow makes a noise.

“Wonder how long it’ll take Niall to see that Dev is gagging for him.”

“What? No. It’s the opposite.”

“Niall?” Snow asks, scrunching his face in disbelief. “No, it’s clearly Dev. I can’t tell how Niall feels. He really holds himself off, but Dev is stupidly easy to read.”

Oh my god.

It’s the worst and most insane conversation to be having right now, and it’s absolutely what needed, because if Snow weren’t distracting me with teenage gossip, I’d probably be vomiting. I think he’s doing it on purpose as well; he has his body between me and the door, so I can’t see what’s inside.

He has his face on, the face that says he’s not thinking about it. We’re not talking about it. It’s the face from Lancashire, the face that means Simon is now running on basic survival, and he’ll handle the rest later.

I can do that too.

“So…” I say slowly, gesturing behind him. “Do we leave it or bury it?”

Snow’s face is a grim line of determination.

“Bury it.”

***

Snow and I buried the baby dragon in a small clearing behind the house. We picked a spot next to a small pile of rocks that looked deliberately placed, and I shuddered to think of what else the Mage has buried in his back garden.

We wrapped the dragon up in my shirt and Snow carried it carefully outside, putting it and the egg in the ground in silence. He stared at the vials of dragon blood for a long moment before he pulled the cork out and brought it up to his nose and sniffed. His face was hard to read, but recognition flashed there, and I remembered him telling me about the awful black liquid the Mage had him drink last year — the liquid that had made him feverish and ill and plagued him with nightmares.

We buried those as well.

By the time we finished, my white undershirt was sticking to me in the heat, but we went back inside and sealed up the workshop and replaced the books and left the house just as we found it — sans my mother’s books and the remains of a murdered magical beast.

He didn’t speak as we climbed back up the hill to get back to the MG where all our friends were, just sat down in the front seat and took my phone and put on music. No one made any noise until we left the dead spot, when Bunce let out a small sob and Niall released a shaky sigh. The rest of the trip home was almost deafening in its silence

Just outside of London I stop at a Costa petrol station, and everyone flees the car. Everyone except Snow, who stays in his seat and blinks up at me as I cross the car to unscrew the lid to the tank.

“Is it illegal to kill dragons?”

“No,” I whisper. His face darkens.

“Did you find anything upstairs?”

My mind goes directly to the photo in Wellbelove’s pocket, the photo that I was desperate to talk to him about. The photo that has so, so many implications.

“Nothing illegal,” I respond, because I can’t lie to him. Not now. Not after all of this. Not on his birthday.

“And nothing about your mum?”

A pain shoots through me, and I shake my head.

“Just the books he took from me.”

“So we have nothing.”

He’s not looking at me, just staring straight ahead at the petrol pumps.

“We know he had the dragon. And was experimenting. And he had books on banned words and power binding and — and on your prophecy.”

“That seems about normal,” he responds. “He was researching the prophecy. He was trying to find a way to fix my power. All of that can be explained.”

He turns away from me and kicks at the MG’s red passenger door so suddenly that I flinch. The whole car shakes with the impact, and he lets out a loud yell of frustration that startles the man at the pump next to us.

“So we have nothing!” he shouts, pulling at his curls. “All of that is perfectly fucking legal, and we have nothing!” He quiets, his pained eyes boring down on me, and I stand rooted to the spot, aching for him but unable to think of anything to say or do. “How could he do that? How could he — he’s not …. I never thought he…”

He closes his eyes and pulls at his hair again, and the expression he gives me is so fractured that I almost drop the petrol hose and risk sending this whole place up in flames. In the back of my mind, I can’t help but find humour in how backwards everything is. I was the one who broke down after we killed the Humdrum. Now he’s the one breaking down when we take on the Mage.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry he’s not who you thought he was.”

I do mean it. Staggeringly, I do mean it.

“I’m going to talk to the Wellbeloves. And the Bunces. And your dad. And when we get back to school we’re going to…” he shakes his head and grunts in frustration, and I pray he doesn’t kick the car again. “We’ll do something.”

The petrol pump cuts off with a loud clang, and I replace the hose quickly and then cross the car to him.

“Alright, love,” I nod. “We’ll do something.” A sickening thought occurs to me, and I take a breath. “You two have lunches. Can you… will you be able to handle it?”

He shakes his head.

“He said we’d talk more in the school year, once my magic comes back.” His eyes flick toward the ground. “If it doesn’t come back, he’ll… I don’t think he’ll want anything to do with me, not anymore.”

That’s a good thing, in my opinion, but that’s not the point here. The point is that even after everything, even after the anger and the hurt, Snow is still scared of the Mage abandoning him.

“I will,” I blurt out, and his eyes snap up. “He may walk away from you, but I won’t. If the magic doesn’t come back, I don’t care. You’re Simon.”

“I’m the Chosen One,” he says, and I shake my head.

“You are Simon fucking Snow, pain in my ass, scourge of Watford, love of my life. If we take down the Mage, it’s Simon Snow who’s doing it. Not the Chosen One. Got it?”

He looks up at me and his cheeks heat, and he nods.

“Got it,” he mumbles, and then kicks at my ankle with his dirty trainer.

“He’ll know we’ve been there,” he says quickly, like the thought has just occurred to him. “We shouldn’t have moved things. The books. He’ll come for you—”

I shake my head.

“We may not have found proof of crimes, but I think we saw enough sketchy shit that he won’t call me out over some missing books.”

“Just be careful, yeah?” he asks, then grins. “I like having you around.”

I look to the front of the Costa, where our friends are coming back toward us carrying coffee and snacks.

“I like being here.”

***

The summer goes by in a blur.

I see my friends regularly, and Niall stays with me for a few weeks before going on holiday to Italy with the Grimms. Bunce and Snow and Wellbelove wander in and out of Fiona’s and my house. Micah the scary American makes a brief appearance, and I flitter around Niall like a nervous mother hen, which proves completely unnecessary because Niall and Micah end up making the food run together and come back grinning, to my immense confusion.

It’s odd, how easily this strange gaggle of people slots into my life, and Fiona — bless her — doesn’t question it. A section of our unused dining room table has become a depository for all of Bunce’s research and notes, and Fiona doesn’t even snoop.

The problem is, we don’t even know what exactly we’re researching. We just know that something is afoot. We have a large list tacked up to the wall of what we know: the Mage has done something involving power binding and blood rites and dragon blood. He’s obsessed with the Chosen One prophecy. He sent vampires to Watford. He killed my mum. He blamed it on the Humdrum. Snow and I defeated the Humdrum.

And then we’re back to the start.

There’s also the photo. Bunce and I have been dancing around it, neither of us saying what we think, but I know we’re on the same page. Too many things are falling into place. Too many things start to make sense. The woman in the photo. Snow’s missing parents. The Mage’s obsession.

I’m hovering around the edges of the answer, refusing to even fully say it in my head because it seems too improbable, too unfortunate, too upsetting to consider. If I don’t even think it, then it can’t be true. If I don’t even think it, then it won’t open the other doors in my mind, the ones whispering about blood rites and power binding and dragon blood and a pregnant woman no one knows. If I don’t even think it, I don’t have to consider that perhaps the Mage has wronged Simon far, far more than he wronged me.

Neither of us have said anything to Simon, though. I want it to come from me, but I won’t do it with Bunce and Wellbelove around, and they’re almost always around.

Even though I’ve seen Snow all summer, I’m sick to the eye teeth with missing him. I wish I could just pull him into our own world and wrap my arms around him and go back to that small bubble of warmth we had in that awful bed in Wales, before we went to the cottage and everything crumbled.

But he has too much on his mind, and we haven’t had any opportunities to be alone. Fiona, despite being pre-warned, was massively hacked off that I took her car, and so my transportation methods have been drastically reduced.

“I can’t wait to be back at school,” I mutter to him a week before the end of hols. We’re on my sofa, watching TV and trying to ignore Fiona’s escalating, one-sided fight against Merlin.

“I don’t know,” Snow says, shrugging. “It’s going to be weird. Being there, pretending it’s fine. He’s fine. I mean,” he lets out a huff of air. “What am I even going to do with my time without the Humdrum trying to kill me?”

There’s unspoken anxiety there about his magic. The booming, cracking power hasn’t returned, and though he’s getting better at controlling the smaller supply he has, he’s about eight years late in mastering the basics.

“I can think of things for us to do,” I whisper under my breath, trying to distract him from this thought spiral.

Snow’s face flares into a gorgeous pink, and I shift closer to him. He flashes a nervous look at Wellbelove, who is sitting across from us, glued to her phone. She hasn’t noticed anything, but I know Snow is still embarrassed. We’re never affectionate in any way around other people but I haven’t been alone with him since Wales and I’m about to go spare.

“Charles Hollow!” comes Merlin’s growling voice from the kitchen.

“No! No! I told you that you cannot have that carrot, you little shit!”

“Charles Hollow!”

“We should give him back, shouldn’t we?” Snow mumbles, leaning in to press his forehead to my shoulder as he laughs silently. Even this small touch feels like a huge step. Snow hates PDA just as much as I do.

“We could keep him,” I offer. “Just in case I get hungry.”

Snow snorts and Wellbelove looks up from her phone.

“Penny is blowing up my phone about a book. I told her to just text Baz directly, but she doesn’t have his phone number,” she says, flicking a strand of blonde hair over her shoulder. “Why am I the receptionist for this entire friend group?”

“It’s because you’ve got the gams for it, doll,” I deadpan, and Wellbelove glares.

“Sexist,” she snaps, grabbing her bag and standing up, and then poking Snow with her foot. “Sexist, gross men, both of you. Come on Simon, we need to leave now to be home for dinner. Baz, I gave Penny your number.”

“I can tell,” I respond, feeling my phone explode in my pocket. I stand up as well and watch Snow stretch. I really, really cannot wait to get back to our room where we can bicker and pick on each other in private. This is the last time I’ll see him before school, and a panicked, pinched part of me feels uncomfortable letting him out of my sight for the week, like if I don’t have eyes on him he’ll be whisked away before we get to school.

Maybe all the stress of the last half decade has left me with more issues than I thought.

“Baz, I’ll see you at the Club for the shower, right? Simon is going back to school that morning with Penny, and I thought you and I could go back together after the shower?” Wellbelove asks as I walk them out. I nod, and Snow frowns.

“Why can’t I go? I don’t get it.”

“It’s a baby shower for Daphne,” I tell him for the eighth time. “It’s going to be a bunch of women. No men.”

“So why are you going?” he asks. I stare at him.

“Because I am the big brother,” I respond, horrified. Of course I’ll be there. I’ve a new suit and everything. Mordelia, Ophelia, Acantha and I are all wearing green. “I’m family, of course I’ll be there.”

“So why is Ags going? I thought your mums were fighting.”

“Oh, they made up,” Wellbelove says, flitting her hand. “Baz defeated the Humdrum. It would be social suicide for Mum to keep fighting with Daphne, especially not if she wants the Grimms at the Christmas party this year.”

“You know, technically I’m the one who defeated it,” Snow grouches. Wellbelove pats him on the head.

“You’re special too Simon,” she deadpans. “Now come on we really have to go.”

She heads out the door and Snow lingers for a moment and grins shyly up at me. I love it when he gets like this. It’s like all his brash confidence fades the moment he’s left alone to kiss me.

“See you at school,” he says, and I nod, enjoying his blush. “Don’t forget Merlin. And erm, that jumper I left here. And your bluetooth player. Oh, also—”

“Snow, just kiss me and go, before you choke on your rambling.”

“Right,” he says, nonplussed, and leans up and kisses me quickly. I smile against his mouth, my hands still in my trouser pockets, and return the kiss.

“See you at school,” I whisper, and he smiles back — a wide, real smile, one I’ve seen rarely this summer, and then he leaves. I hate seeing him walk out of that door.

Maybe I’ve become too attached to Snow.

My phone buzzes again as the door closes, and I pull out my phone to see a staggering number of messages from Bunce.

PB: Pitch, this is Bunce.

PB: Penelope Bunce. Not my brother.

PB: this is not a weed hookup

PB: anyway I was looking up some of the books we saw at the cottage. My mum didn’t have any of them in her family library but i’m at my grandfather’s right now and he has this locked chest of books

PB: they’re the books that my family uses for all our marriage bonding rites and child bonding rites and such

PB: my parents are really into marriage rites. they’re bound in several different dimensions

PB: anyway

PB: i broke into it and he had some of the same books that the Mage has and I looked through the ones whose titles I recognised

PB: and a lot of them were about conception rites

PB: i don’t know what to think about it, but he had a lot of those books, and with the photo…

PB: well, i think we need to talk to Simon when we get back to school

I stare at my mobile and clench my hand around it, breathing deep, before I reply.

BP: I think you’re right.

BP: We’ll discuss this later.

BP: I’ll see you at school.