“I know what you are,” I snarled.
His eyes locked onto mine. “Your roommate?”
I shook my head and squeezed the hilt of my sword.
Baz stepped into my reach. “Tell me,” he spat.
I couldn’t.
“Tell me, Snow.” He stepped even closer. “What am I?”
I growled again and raised the blade an inch. “Vampire!” I shouted. He must have felt the force of my breath on his face.
He started giggling. “Really? You think I’m a vampire? Well, Aleister Crowley, what are you going to do about that?”
He slipped a flask out of his jacket and took a swig. I didn’t know that he’d been drinking—my sword dipped. I tried to remind myself to stay battle ready, and pulled it up again.
“Stake through the heart?” he asked, falling back into the corner and resting an arm on a pile of skulls. “Beheading, perhaps? That only works if you keep my head separate from my body, and even then I could still walk; my body won’t stop until it finds my head.… Better go with fire, Snow, it’s the only solution.”
I wanted to just slice him in two. Right then and there. Fucking finally.
But I kept thinking of Penelope. “How do you know he’s a vampire, Simon? Have you seen him drink blood? Has he threatened you? Has he tried to put you in his thrall?”
Maybe he had. Maybe that’s why I’d been following Baz around for six months.
And now I had him.
“Do something,” he teased. “Save the day, Snow. Or the night. Quick, before I … Hmm … what horrible thing shall I do? It’s too late for everyone down here—there’s just you to hurt, isn’t there? And I don’t think I’m in the mood to suck your blood. What if I accidentally Turned you? Then I’d be stuck with your pious face forever.” Baz shook his head and took another pull at his flask. “I don’t think undeath would improve you, Snow. It would just ruin your complexion.” He giggled again. Mirthlessly. And closed his eyes like he was exhausted.
He probably was. I was. We’d been playing cat and mouse in the Catacombs every night for weeks.
I dropped my sword but kept it unsheathed, then stepped out of my stance. “I don’t have to do anything,” I said. “I know what you are. Now I just have to wait for you to make a mistake.”
He winced without opening his eyes. “Really, Snow? That’s your plan? Wait for me to kill someone? You’re the worst Chosen One who’s ever been chosen.”
“Fuck off,” I said. Which always means I’ve lost an argument. I started backing out of the tomb. I needed to talk this through with Penelope; I needed to regroup.
“If I’d known it was this easy to get rid of you,” Baz called after me, “I would’ve let you catch up with me weeks ago!”
I headed for the surface, hoping that he couldn’t turn into a bat and fly after me. (Penny said that was a myth. But still.)
I could hear him singing, even after I’d been walking for ten minutes. “Ashes, ashes—we all fall down.”
* * *
I haven’t been back to the Catacombs since that night.…
I wait until I’m fairly sure everyone is in bed, hopefully asleep—then I sneak down to the White Chapel.
Two busts guard the secret door in the Poets Corner—the most famous of the modern mage poets, Carroll and Seuss. I’ve got some nylon rope, and I tie one end around Theodor’s neck.
The door itself, a panel in the wall, is always locked, and there isn’t any key. But all you have to do to open it is possess a genuine desire to enter. Most people simply don’t.
The door swings open for me. And closed behind me. The air is immediately colder. I light a wall torch and choose my first path.
Down in the winding tunnels of the Catacombs, I use every revealing spell I know, and every finding spell. (“Come out, come out, wherever you are! It’s show time! Scooby-Dooby-Doo, where are you!”) I call for Baz by his full name—that makes a spell harder to resist.
Magic words are tricky. Sometimes to reveal something hidden, you have to use the language of the time it was stashed away. And sometimes an old phrase stops working when the rest of the world is sick of saying it.
I’ve never been good with words.
That’s partly why I’m such a useless magician.
“Words are very powerful,” Miss Possibelf said during our first Magic Words lesson. No one else was paying attention; she wasn’t saying anything they didn’t already know. But I was trying to commit it all to memory.
“And they become more powerful,” she went on, “the more that they’re said and read and written, in specific, consistent combinations.
“The key to casting a spell is tapping into that power. Not just saying the words, but summoning their meaning.”
Which means you have to have a good vocabulary to do magic. And you have to be able to think on your feet. And be brave enough to speak up. And have an ear for a solid turn of phrase.
And you have to actually understand what you’re saying—how the words translate into magic.
You can’t just wave your wand and repeat whatever you’ve heard somebody saying down on the street corner; that’s a good way to accidentally separate someone from their bollocks.
None of it comes naturally to me. Words. Language. Speaking.
I don’t remember when I learned to talk, but I know they tried to send me to specialists. Apparently, that can happen to kids in care, or kids with parents who never talk to them—they just don’t learn how.