Baz has turned to the back of the book, and he’s poring over a big class picture, squinting.
Underneath the picture, someone has taped in a few snapshots. “Look,” I say, pointing at a photo of a girl sitting against a tree—the yew tree. She’s got mad dark hair with a blond streak, and she’s grinning with her nose crunched up and her tongue between her teeth. There’s a rawboned boy sitting next to her with his arm slung around her shoulders. “Ebb,” I say. Because the straight blond hair is the same. And the cliff’s-edge cheekbones. But I’ve never seen Ebb looking so cocksure of herself—and I can’t imagine her smirking like that. Under the picture, someone’s written Me and Nickels, and dotted the i with a heart.
“Fiona!” Baz says, snapping the book closed.
I take it from him and open it again, settling down on the floor and leaning against the bed. There are a few pages for each year Fiona was in school—with big class photos and blank pages where you can put other pictures and certificates. It’s not hard to spot Fiona in each posed class photo—that white streak must be natural—and then to find Ebb and Nicodemus, always standing next to each other, looking almost exactly alike, but completely different. Ebb looks like Ebb, gentle and unsure, in every picture. Nicodemus looks like he’s about to hatch a plan. Even as a first year.
I find another snapshot of Nicodemus and Baz’s aunt, this time posing in old-fashioned costumes. “Did you know Watford used to have a drama society?” I ask.
“Watford had a lot of things before the Mage.” Baz takes the book from me and puts it back on the shelf. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Now? To bed. Tomorrow? London.”
I must be tired, because neither of those statements makes sense to me.
“Come on,” Baz says. “I’ll show you to your room.”
*
My room turns out to be the creepiest one yet:
There’s a dragon painted on the archway around the door, and its face is charmed to glow and follow you in the dark.
Plus there’s something under the bed.
I don’t know exactly what, but it moans and clicks and makes the bedposts shake. I end up at Baz’s door, telling him I’m going back to Watford.
“What?” He’s half asleep when he comes to the door. And flushed—he must have gone hunting after I went to bed. Or maybe they keep kennels for him on the grounds.
“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.