“I’m leaving,” I say. “That room is haunted.”
“The whole house is haunted, I told you.”
“I’m leaving.”
“Come on, Snow, you can sleep on my couch. The wraiths don’t hang out in here.”
“Why not?”
“I creep them out.”
“You creep me out,” I mutter, and he throws one of his pillows into my face. (It smells like him.)
I realize, as I’m settling in on his couch, that I don’t mean it. About him creeping me out.
I used to mean it. I usually do.
But he’s the most familiar thing in this house, and I fall asleep better, listening to Baz breathe, than I have since winter break started.
56
FIONA
All right, Natasha, I know I shouldn’t have told him anything.
You wouldn’t have done.
Swans right into my flat, looking for trouble. Being trouble, every bloody moment he’s alive.
“Tell me about Nicodemus,” he says, like he already knows everything he needs to.
He knows he’s my favourite; that’s the problem. He would be, even if you’d had a litter of pups. Cocky as Mick Jagger, that one. And smart as a horsewhip.
“Who’s been talking to you about Nicodemus?” I ask.
He sits at my grotty little table and starts drinking my tea, dunking the last of my lavender shortbread in it. “Nobody,” he says. Liar. “I’ve just heard that he’s like me.”
“A scheming brat?
“You know what I mean, Fiona.”
“Nice suit, Basil, where are you headed?”
“Dancing.”
He’s all kitted out in his finest. Spencer Hart, if I’m not wrong. Like he’s here to collect his BAFTA.
I sit across from him. “He’s nothing like you,” I say.
“You should have told me,” he says. “That I wasn’t the only one.”
“He chose it. He crossed over.”
“What does it matter whether I chose it, Fiona? The result is the same.”
“Not hardly,” I tell him. “He left our world. Left. Said he was going to evolve.”
He said he was going to be more than magic.
“You’re powerful enough now, Nicky.”
“What do we say about ‘enough,’ Miss Pitch?”
His school tie tucked into his jacket pocket. That cruel, cool smile.
“He betrayed us, Basil.” I feel the old anger—the old everything—rising up in my throat.
“And he was stricken,” my nephew says.
“Because he was a betrayer,” I say.
“Because he was a vampire,” Baz says, and I can’t help it—that word still makes me recoil.
It wasn’t supposed to be me, Natasha. Telling this boy how to make his way in the world. I’m no good at this. Look at me. Thirty-seven years old, rolling my own joints in my dressing gown, eating bikkies for breakfast whenever I manage to get up—I’m a disgrace.
What would you say to him if you were here?
No … Never mind. I know what you’d say—and you’re wrong.
That’s one way I’ve bettered you. I was weak enough to give your son a chance. And look at him now—he may be dead, but he isn’t lost. He’s dark as pitch and sharp as a blade, and he’s full of your magic. He’s a bonfire. He’d make you proud, Tasha.
“You’re not going to be stricken, Basil,” I tell him. “Is that what this is about? No one knows about you, and even if they find out—which they won’t—they’ll know we can’t spare you. The Families are finally ready to strike back at the Mage. It’s all happening.”
He licks his bottom lip and looks out my little window. The sun’s still out, and I know it bothers him, even if he won’t complain. I unhook the curtain, and my kitchen falls into shadow.
“Is he still alive?” Baz asks. “Nicodemus?”
“I think so. In a matter of speaking. I haven’t heard any different.”
“Would you have heard?”
There’s a pack of fags on the table. I light one with my wand and take a few good drags, tapping the ash out on my saucer. “You know that the Families use my London connections.…”
“What does that mean, Fiona?”
“I talk to people here who no one else wants to. Undesirables. I’m not worried about getting my hands dirty now and then.”
Then, sister, he cocks one of your eyebrows at me.
I spit out some smoke. “Pfft. Not like that, you perv.”
“So Nicodemus is an undesirable,” he says.
“We’re not permitted to talk about him. It’s mage law.”
“Would you cut me off so easily?”
“Oh, fuck, Baz, you know I wouldn’t. What are you on about?”
“I can’t help but be curious.” He leans towards me over the table. “Is he alive? Does he hunt? Has he aged? Has he Turned anyone?”
“Nicodemus Petty doesn’t have any answers for you, boyo.” I’m jabbing my cigarette at him, so I put it out before I accidentally torch him. “He’s a two-bit gangster—a third-tier thug in a Guy Ritchie movie. He thought he was going to be the über-mage, but he ended up shooting dice in the back room of some vampire bar in Covent Garden. He threw his whole life away, and hurt everyone who loved him—and there’s nothing you can learn from him, Basil. Other than how to be a shitty vampire.”