Dev didn’t bother answering.
I end up standing next to the punchbowl, talking to Headmistress Bunce about Latin prefixes. It’s a fascinating subject, but I don’t feel like I needed to put on a black tie for it.
I think Professor Bunce is sad that Penelope’s not here. I consider consoling her with the fact that Penelope probably would’ve skipped the ball even if she’d stayed in school, but the headmistress is already wandering off to the other side of the courtyard to check her e-mail.
“I was hoping there’d be sandwiches,” someone mumbles.
I ignore him because I’m not at Watford to make friends or small talk, especially on my way out.
“Or at least cake.”
I turn around and see Simon Snow standing on the other side of the punch table. Wearing a suit and tie, with his hair properly parted and slicked to one side.
He shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on me like that, but he smells different these days—like something sweet and brown. No more green fire and brimstone.
“How’s the party?” he asks.
“Funereal,” I say. “How’d you get here?”
“Flew.”
My jaw drops, and he laughs.
“No,” he says. “Penny drove me. She let me off at the gates.”
“Where’re your wings?”
“Still there. Just invisible. Someone’s already tripped over my tail.”
“I’ve told you to tuck it in.”
“It makes my trousers fit funny.”
I laugh.
“Don’t laugh at me,” he says.
“When will I ever laugh, then?”
Snow rolls his eyes, then cuts them nervously to the side. Towards the White Chapel.
“You don’t have to be here,” I say.
“No,” he says quickly. “I do.” He clears his throat. “I don’t want you to leave without me.”
*
Simon Snow can’t dance.
The tail isn’t helping. I take the end in my left hand and wrap it around my wrist, holding it against his lower back.
“We don’t have to do this,” I’d said when we walked out to the stone patio where people were dancing. “No one has to know.”
“Know what?” Snow asked softly. “That I’m obsessed with you? That horse left the barn a long time ago.”
I press my left hand, still holding his tail, into his back and take his hand with my right. He lifts his left hand in the air, then drops it like he doesn’t know what to do with it.
“Put it on my shoulder,” I say. He does. I raise an eyebrow at him. “Didn’t Wellbelove ever teach you to dance?”
“She tried,” he says. “She said I was hopeless.”
“From the mouths of babes,” I say.
At least the song isn’t hopeless. It’s Nick Cave. “Into My Arms.” One of Fiona’s favourites. It’s so slow, we barely have to move.
Snow’s wearing an expensive suit. Black trousers, black waistcoat and tie, and a rich velvet jacket—deep blue with black lapels. It must be Dr. Wellbelove’s. It’s snug at the shoulders, but I can’t see where Snow’s wings are hidden. Someone has spelled him neat and tidy.
I stand with my own shoulders squared. Everyone is looking at us— Everyone dancing. Everyone standing around the courtyard, drinking punch. Coach Mac and the Minotaur and Miss Possibelf, all standing with their punch glasses stalled on the way to their lips.
“They’ll know,” I say. “They’ll talk about it.”
“What?” He’s a million miles away. He’s always a million miles away lately.
“They’ll know that we’re gay.”
“There go my job prospects,” Simon says flatly. “What will my family say?”
I’m not sure where the joke is.
He looks at my face and huffs, exasperated. “Baz, you’re actually, literally the only thing I have to lose. So as long as doing gay stuff in public doesn’t make you hate me, I don’t really care.”
“We’re just dancing,” I say. “That’s hardly gay stuff.”
“Dancing’s well gay,” he says. “Even when it isn’t two blokes.”
I frown at him. “You have Bunce.”
“To dance with?”
“No. You have Bunce to lose.”