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.”
“You’re not.”
“Haven’t you been trying to prove I’m a monster since we were kids? Crowley, you have your proof now. Go tell the Mage—tell everyone you were right!” His face is dancing with firelight. I feel the heat at my back. “I’m a vampire, Snow! Are you happy?”
“You’re not,” I say, and I don’t know why I say it, and I don’t know why I’m crying all of a sudden.
Baz looks surprised. And irritated. “What?”
“You’ve never even bitten anyone,” I say.
“Fuck. Off.”
“No!”
He drops his head in his arms again. “Seriously. Go. This fire isn’t for you.”
I grab his wrists and pull. “That’s right,” I say, “it can’t be. You always said you’d make sure there was an audience when you finished me off.” I pull on him. “Come on.”
Baz doesn’t fight me, just slumps forward. A cloud of sparks settles near him, and I growl at them, blowing them out.
I lift up his chin. “Baz.”
“Go away, Snow.”
“You’re not a monster,” I say. His face is cold as a corpse in my hand. “I was wrong. All those years. You’re a bully. And a snob. And a complete arsehole. But you’re not one of them.”
Baz tries to jerk his face away, but I hold it fast. He opens his eyes, and they’re pools of grey and black and pain. I can’t stand it. I growl again. The fire blows back.
“This is what I deserve,” he says.
I shake my head. “Well, it isn’t what I deserve.”
“Then go.”
I see the fire flickering in his eyes, which means it must be all around us.
“I won’t,” I say. “I’ve never turned my back on you. And I’m not starting now.”
61
BAZ