Simon focused again on the rabbit. Maybe there was something hidden in it. Maybe if he squinted. Or if he looked at it in a mirror. Agatha had a magic mirror; it would tell you if something was amiss. Like if you had spinach in your teeth or something hanging from your nose. When Simon looked at it, it always asked him who he was kidding. “It’s just jealous,” Agatha would say. “It thinks I give you too much attention.”
“It was my choice,” Baz said, breaking the silence. “I didn’t want to go home for Christmas.” He leaned back onto the floor, an arm’s length from Simon. When Simon glanced over, Baz was staring up at the painted stars.
“Were you here?” Simon asked, watching the light from the fire play across Baz’s strong features. His nose was all wrong, Simon had always thought. It started too high, with a soft bump between Baz’s eyebrows. If Simon looked at Baz’s face for too long, he always wanted to reach up and tug his nose down. Not that that would work. It was just a feeling.
“Was I here when?” Baz asked.
“When they attacked your mother.”
“They attacked the nursery,” Baz said, as if he were explaining it to the moon. “Vampires can’t have children, you know—they have to turn them. They thought if they turned magical children, they’d be twice as dangerous.”
They would be, Simon thought, his stomach flopping fearfully. Vampires were already nearly invulnerable; a vampire who could do magic …
“My mother came to protect us.”
“To protect you,” Simon said.
“She threw fire at the vampires,” Baz said. “They went up like flash paper.”
“How did she die?”
“There were just too many of them.” He was still talking to the sky, but his eyes were closed.
“Did the vampires turn any of the children?”
“Yes.” It was like a puff of smoke escaping from Baz’s lips.
Simon didn’t know what to say. He thought it might be worse, in a way, to have had a mother, a powerful, loving mother, and then to lose her—than to grow up like Simon had. With nothing.
He knew what happened next in Baz’s story: After the headmaster, Baz’s mother, was killed, the Mage took over. The school changed; it had to. They weren’t just students now. They were warriors. Of course the nursery had closed. When you came to Watford, you left your childhood behind.
All right for Simon. He had nothing to lose.
But for Baz …
He lost his mother, Simon thought, and he got me instead. In a hiccup of tenderness or perhaps pity, Simon reached for Baz’s hand, fully expecting Baz to yank his arm from its socket.
But Baz’s hand was cold and limp. When Simon looked closer, he realized that the other boy was asleep.
The door flew open then, and for once, Cath thought, Reagan’s timing was perfect. Cath closed her laptop, to let Levi know she was done reading.
“Hey,” Reagan said. “Oh, hey. Christmas cups. Did you bring me a gingerbread latte?”
Cath looked down guiltily at her cup.
“I brought you an eggnog latte,” Levi said, holding it out. “And I’ve been keeping it warm in my mouth.”
“Eggnog.” Reagan wrinkled her nose, but she took it. “What are you doing here so early?”
“I thought we could study before the party,” Levi said.
“Jacob Have I Loved?”
He nodded.
“You’re reading Jacob Have I Loved?” Cath asked. “That’s a kids’ book.”
“Young adult literature,” he said. “It’s a great class.”
Reagan was shoving clothes in her bag. “I’m taking a shower at your place,” she said. “I’m so goddamn sick of public showers.”
Levi scooted forward on Cath’s bed and leaned an elbow on her desk. “So is that how Baz became a vampire? When the nursery was attacked?”
Cath wished he wouldn’t talk about this in front of Reagan. “You mean, for real?”
“I mean in the books.”
“There is no nursery in the books,” Cath said.
“But in your version, that’s how it happens.”
“Just in this story. Every story is a little different.”
“And other people have their versions, too?”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “There’re all these fans, and we’re all doing something different.”
“Are you the only one who writes about Baz and Simon falling in love?”
Cath laughed. “Uh, no. The entire Internet writes about Baz and Simon. If you go to Google and type in ‘Baz and Simon,’ the first search it suggests is ‘Baz and Simon in love.’”
“How many people do this?”
“Write Simon-slash-Baz? Or write Simon Snow fanfiction?”
“Write fanfiction.”
“God, I don’t know. Thousands and thousands.”
“So, if you didn’t want the books to be over, you could just keep reading Simon Snow stories forever online.…”
“Exactly,” Cath said earnestly. She’d thought Levi must be judging her, but he got it. “If you fall in love with the World of Mages, you can just keep on living there.”
“I wouldn’t call that living,” Reagan said.
“It was a metaphor,” Levi said gently.
“I’m ready,” Reagan said. “Are you coming, Cath?”
Cath smiled tightly and shook her head.
“Are you sure?” Levi asked, lifting himself off her bed. “We could come back for you later.”
“Nah, that’s okay. See you tomorrow.”
As soon as they left, Cath headed down to eat dinner by herself.