Carry On

He jerks his head up. “Baz.”

“I’m trying to imagine what you’re doing at my door.… Did you roll down a very steep hill and land here?”

“Baz…,” he says again. And I wait for him to get it out. “You’re—you’re wearing jeans.”

I tilt my head. “I am. And you’re wearing half the countryside.”

“I had to walk from the road.”

“Did you?”

“The taxi driver was afraid to come down your drive. He thinks your house is haunted.”

“It is.”

He swallows. Snow has the longest neck and the showiest swallow I’ve ever seen. His chin juts out and his Adam’s apple catches—it’s a whole scene.

“Well,” I say, pointedly lifting my eyebrows. “It was good of you to stop by—”

Snow lets out a stymied growl and steps forward, off the rug, then steps back. “I came to talk to you.”

I nod. “All right.”

“It’s…”

“All right,” I say again, this time cutting him some slack. I don’t actually want him to get so frustrated that he leaves. (I never want Snow to leave.) “But you can’t come in the house like that. How did you even get like that?”

“I told you. I walked from the main road.”

“You could have cast a spell to stay clean.”

He frowns at me. Snow never casts spells on himself—or anyone else—if he can help it. I slip my wand out my cuff and point it at him. He flinches but doesn’t tell me to stop. I “Clean as a whistle!” his boots. The mud whirls off, and I open the front door, sweeping the mess outside with my wand.

When I close the door, Snow is taking off his sodden coat. He’s wearing his school trousers and red jumper, and his legs and hair are still wet. I lift my wand again. “I’m fine,” he says, stopping me.

“You’ll have to take off your boots,” I say. “They’re still dripping.”

He crouches to unlace them, wet wool trousers straining ridiculously over his thighs.…

And then Simon Snow is standing in my foyer in his red-stockinged feet.

All the blood I’ve got in me rises to my ears and cheeks.

“Come on, Snow. Let’s … talk.”

54

SIMON

I follow Baz from one giant room to the other. His house isn’t a castle, I don’t think, but near enough.

We walk through a dining room that looks like something off Downton Abbey, and there’s a woman at the table, working on a flash silver laptop.

She clears her throat, and Baz stops to introduce me. “Mother, you remember my roommate, Simon Snow.”

She must have already recognized me, but she still looks shocked, which reminds me to ask myself what the bleeding hell I think I’m doing here. In the House of fucking Pitch.

Which I should have thought through on the train, or in the taxi, or even walking the five miles from the main road to Baz’s front door.

I never think.

“Snow,” Baz says. “You’ve met my stepmother, Daphne Grimm.”

“It’s nice to see you, Mrs. Grimm,” I say.

She’s still looking shocked. “And you, Mr. Snow. Are you here on official business?”

I don’t know what she means; I never have official business.

Baz is shaking his head, trying to cut off whatever that look is on her face. “He’s just here to visit, Mother. We have a project we’re working on together—a school project. And you don’t have to call him that. You can just call him Simon.”

“You don’t call me Simon,” I mumble.

“We’ll be up in my room,” Baz says, ignoring me.

His stepmum clears her throat. “I’ll send for you when dinner’s ready.”

“Thank you,” Baz says, and he’s on the move again, leading me up a staircase so grand, there are statues built into it—naked women holding circles of light. I can’t tell if they’re electric light or magickal, but it makes sense to have lights built into your stairs when everything in your house is either dark wood or dark red, and the windows are so far away that the middle of the house feels like the bottom of the ocean.

I try to keep up with him. I still can’t believe he’s wearing jeans. I guess he wouldn’t wear his uniform when he’s not at school, but I’d always imagined Baz lounging around in suits and waistcoats—with, like, silk scarves hanging around his neck.

I mean … they do look like really expensive jeans. Dark. And snug from his waist to his ankles without looking tight.

I wonder for a moment if he’s leading me into a trap. He didn’t know I was coming, but don’t houses like this just come with built-in traps? He’s probably going to pull a black-tasselled cord and drop me into the dungeon—as soon as I finish telling him what I know.

We get to a long hallway, and Baz opens a tall arched door into a bedroom. His bedroom.

It’s another vampire joke: The walls have red fabric panels, and his bed is monstrous and decorated with gargoyles. (There are gargoyles. On his bed.)

He shuts the door behind me and sits on a chest at the foot of the bed. There are gargoyles on that, too.

“All right, Snow,” he says, “what the hell are you doing here?”

“You invited me,” I say. So lame. So eternally lame.

“Is that why you’re here? For Christmas?”