“Was it. The Humdrum,” Baz says again.
Nicodemus shakes his head, still smiling. “It was one of you,” he says. “But his name isn’t worth my life. Maybe you’ll kill me if I don’t tell—but I’ll die for certain if I do.”
Baz rests the fag between his lips and slips his wand out his sleeve into his palm. “I could make you tell.”
“That would be illegal,” Nicodemus says. He’s right. Compulsion spells are forbidden.
“And dangerous,” he says. Right again.
“What would the Coven do if you cast a forbidden spell, Tyrannus Basilton?” Nicodemus smirks. “Do you think they would be forgiving of one such as you?”
“I should kill you right here,” Baz says, his chest pushing forward. “I don’t think anyone would stop me. Or miss you.”
I put my hand on Baz’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”
“He hasn’t told us anything,” Baz hisses at me.
“I’ve told you enough,” Nicodemus says.
“Come on,” I say, pulling Baz back.
“Yeah, go now,” Nicodemus says to Baz. “Go with your mate. You’ll find your way back here someday.”
Baz tosses his cigarette onto the pool table, and Nicodemus jumps back, losing his composure for the first time. He flails out for his drink and pours it over the fag. Baz is already striding away.
I look at Nicodemus. “Your sister misses you,” I say.
Then I turn back to Baz and shuffle to catch up. He waits for me at the top of the stairs. (You’d think I was his best friend—I guess that’s what he wants them to think.) Then he’s cool as ice, cutting through the room upstairs to the door.
When we get outside, nighttime London is so bright, it hurts my eyes.
We find the car, his father’s Jaguar, and Baz has it started before I’ve even opened the passenger door. As soon as I’m inside, he jerks out of the parking spot and guns it, driving as fast as he can down the busy street. He rides up on a taxi, then wrenches the car into the next lane.
“Hey,” I say.
“Shut up, Snow.”
“Look—”
“Shut up!” He says it with magic, but he’s not holding his wand, so it doesn’t go anywhere. Then he grabs his wand, and I thinks he’s going to curse me, but instead he points it at a bus. “Make way for the king!” The bus changes lanes, but there’s another car just ahead of it. Baz points at it and casts the spell again. It’s a stupid waste of magic.
“You’re gonna keel over before we get out of the West End.”
He ignores me, points his wand ahead of him, and hits the gas. The next time he casts the spell, I put my hand on his biceps and push some magic into him. “Make way!” he says. The cars ahead of him cut to the left and the right. It’s like the whole road is parting for him—I’ve never seen anything like it.
I’ve never felt anything like it.
I close my eyes at every red light and wish for green. Baz pushes the pedal into the floor.
We’re flying.
* * *
The magic holds as long as I touch Baz’s arm.
I feel clean.
I feel like a current.
I don’t know how Baz feels. His face is stone, and when we get out of London, tears start to fall from his eyes. He doesn’t wipe them or blink them away, so they streak down his cheeks and cling to his jaw.
Once we’re in the countryside, he doesn’t need my magic to clear the way anymore, and I let go of him. He keeps turning onto smaller and smaller roads until we’re driving along some woods, gravel kicking up beneath us and banging on the bottom of the car.
Baz pulls off the road suddenly and hits the brakes, fishtailing halfway into a ditch, then gets out of the car like he’s just parallel-parked it, and walks towards the trees.
I open my door and start to follow him, then go back to turn off the car and grab the keys. I run along his footprints in the snow, past the tree line, until I lose his trail in the darkness.
“Baz!” I shout. “Baz!”
I keep moving, nearly tripping on a branch. Then I do trip. “Baz!” I see a blaze of light—fire—ahead of me, deeper in the trees.
“Fuck off, Snow!” I hear him yell.
I run towards the light and his voice. “Baz?”
There’s another shot of fire. It catches on a branch and takes hold—illuminating Baz, sitting under the tree, his head in his arms.
“What are you doing?” I say. “Put it out.”
He doesn’t answer me. He’s shaking.
“Baz, it’s all right. We’ll just get the name from someone else. This isn’t over. We’re going to do what your mother asked us to.”
He swings his wand and practically howls, spraying fire all around us. “This is what my mother would want for me, you idiot.”
I drop to my knees in front of him. “What are you even talking about?”
He sneers at me, baring his teeth—all of them. His canines are as sharp as a wolf’s. “My mother died killing vampires,” he says. “And when they bit her, she killed herself. It’s the last thing she did. If she knew what I am … She would never have let me live.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “She loved you. She called you her ‘rosebud boy.’”
“She loved what I was!” he shouts. “I’m not that boy anymore. I’m one of them now.”