“That’s everyone,” he says. “That’s eating.”
“It’s death,” I say, refusing to raise my voice, “because when you’re hungry, you can’t stop thinking about eating other people.”
Snow sits back. His mouth is open—because no one ever taught him to close it. He pushes at his bottom lip with his tongue. I think about licking blood from it.
“It’s death,” I say, looking back down at my book, “because you look at other people, living people, and they seem really far away. They seem like something else. The way that birds seem like something else. And they’re full of something you don’t have. You could take it from them, but it still won’t be yours. They’re full, and … you’re hungry. You’re not alive. You’re just hungry.”
“You have to be alive to be hungry,” Snow says. “You have to be alive to change.”
“Maybe you should write a book about vampires,” I say.
“Maybe I should. Apparently, I’m the world’s leading expert.”
When I look up, Snow’s staring right at me.
I can feel the cross around his neck, like static in my salivary glands, but it’s never been less discouraging. I could knock him over right now. (Kiss him? Kill him? Improvise?) “You should ask your parents,” Snow says.
“Whether I’m alive?” Fuck. I didn’t mean to say it like that. To concede, even a little.
Snow closes his mouth. Swallows. That’s where I’d bite him, right in the throat.
“I meant,” he says, “you should ask them if they remember Nicodemus. Maybe they know where he is.”
“I’m not asking my parents about the only magician to run off to join the vampires. Are you a complete moron?”
“Oh,” he says. “I guess I didn’t think about it that way.”
“You didn’t think—” I say. And then—“Oh. Oh, oh, oh.”
SIMON
Baz is running up the steps again, so I’m running behind him. We haven’t seen anyone else since dinner. This house is so big, it could absorb a mob and still seem empty.
We’re in a different wing now. Another long hallway. Baz stops in front of a door and starts casting disarming spells. “So predictably paranoid,” he mutters.
“What’re we doing?” I ask.
“Looking for Nicodemus.”
“You think he might live here?”
“No,” he says. “But—”
The door opens, and we’re in another creepy goth bedroom. This one is like Goth Through the Ages, because on top of the gargoyles, there are posters of ’80s and ’90s rock stars wearing lots of black eyeliner. And somebody’s even written Never Mind the Bollocks in yellow spray paint on one wall, ruining the antique black-and-white wallpaper.
“Whose room is this?” I ask.
Baz is crouching next to a bookshelf. “My aunt Fiona’s.”
I step back into the doorway. “What are we doing here?”
“Looking for something…” A second later, he pulls out a big purple scrapbook with Remember the Magic embossed on the front in gold. “Aha!” he says. “I’m pretty sure Fiona went to school with Ebb. I’ve heard her talk about her. Disparagingly, I promise you. She never mentioned Ebb’s brother, though.…”
Baz is flipping through the pages. I crouch down next to him. “What is that?”
“It’s a memory book,” he says. “They used to give them out at Watford before the Mage took over. At your leavers ball. It’s got class pictures from every year and little stories.…” He holds the book open to a page full of photos. It makes me wish I had something like it—I don’t have any pictures of myself or my friends. Agatha has a few, I think.