“No, Snow. I don’t have a death wish. I wish I did—it would make everything easier.”
“Please stop talking like that.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment. And then he turns to me, abruptly. “Is that why you kissed me? To keep me from killing myself?”
I shake my head. “Not exactly. I mean, I did want to keep you from killing yourself.”
“Why, then?” he asks.
“Why did I kiss you?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess I wanted to,” I say, shrugging.
“Since when?”
I shrug again, and it pisses him off. He wedges another log into the fire.
“Did you want me to?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “Why would I want that? Why would that thought even occur to me? ‘Hey, you know what would fix this miserable situation with the vampires and my mother and the war and the decline of magic? Snogging my halfwit roommate. The one who will probably fuck my life for good someday. That’s a plan.’”
“You don’t have to be such a prat,” I say. “We’re on the same side here.”
“For the moment,” Baz says. “You’ll help me find out who killed my mother, I’ll kill whoever it is, and then you’ll make sure I get thrown in a tower for it. You’ve already won—as soon as you tell the Mage I’m a vampire, he’ll pull out my fangs and snap my wand. I’ll end up in Covent Garden, licking Nicodemus’s heels. And that’s if I’m lucky.”
Does Baz really think I’d do that? Now? “Those vampires were in awe of you,” I say. “They wanted to put a crown on your head.”
“Are you suggesting I cross over?”
“No. I’m just saying, you were amazing today.”
“You’re not listening to me at all, are you?”
“I am,” I say. “But you’re wrong. Nothing’s going back to normal after this. How could it?”
“Because we’re friends now?”
“Because we’re more than that.”
Baz picks up a poker and jabs at the fire. “One kiss, and you think the world is upside down.”
“Two kisses,” I say. And I take him by the back of his neck.
BAZ
I don’t know what time it is.
The darkness has changed colour in the room, like the sun is sneaking up on us. We’re lying on our backs next to the fire, what’s left of it, holding hands.
Snow sighs and squeezes my hand—and when I yelp, he frowns and holds it up between us: There’s a cross-shaped burn on my palm from when I yanked his necklace off last night. (His cross is on the other side of the room now; Snow took care of it himself this time.)
He brings my palm to his mouth and kisses it.
“I didn’t think you were gay,” I say. Quietly.
He shrugs. Half of Snow’s sentences are shrugs.
“What does that mean?” I whisper.
“I don’t know,” he says, closing his eyes. “I guess I’ve never thought much about what I am. I’ve got a lot on my plate.”
That makes me laugh. A juvenile snorty laugh. Snow starts laughing with me. “A lot on your plate?” I repeat.
“Are you gay?” he asks, looking over at me, still laughing.
“Yeah,” I say. “Completely.”
“So you do this all the time?”
I roll my eyes. “No.”
“Then how do you know you’re gay?”
“I just do. How do you not know?”
“Dunno,” he says. He laces his fingers in mine and holds my hand loosely. “I try not to think.”
“About being gay?”
“About anything. I make lists of things not to think about.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he says, “it hurts to think about things that you can’t have or help. S’better not to think about it.”
I rub my thumb back and forth on the back of his hand. “Am I on your list?”
He laughs again and shakes his head; his hair brushes against mine. “Fat chance.” He sounds sleepy. “Trying not to think about you … S’like trying not to think about an elephant that’s standing on my chest.”
I think about that.
About Snow thinking about me.
I grin. “I can’t decide whether that’s a compliment.…”
“Me neither,” he says.
“So you don’t think,” I say.
“S’pointless.”
I raise myself up on one elbow and look down on him. “I don’t understand you. You’re the most powerful magician alive—who’s ever lived, probably. You can have anything you want. How is it pointless for you to think about that?”
Snow pushes up on both elbows and lets his head fall in my direction. “Because it doesn’t matter. In the end, I just do what’s expected of me. When the Humdrum comes after me, I fight him. When he sends dragons, I kill them. When you trick me into meeting a chimera, I go off. I