for danielle,

and disclaimed.

BAZ

Sometimes I think about Simon Snow. I let him into my head bit by bit: first, the feeling of my hands over him, tangled in his hair, molded into his palm, fingers brushing his tawny skin in circles, eyes scouring his back, counting for moles. Then, I remember our kisses. The one in the flaming wood that began everything, the one that lasted through the night, then the one while dancing, then the one when both of our smiles are showing through and it's only the sound of teeth clicking on teeth, and then… and then the one that burned everything away.

And then, I'm crying because I meant to block that last one out, but it came rushing to the surface too quickly, and it smothered everything else.

And now I can't see.

And I miss him.

I miss him so much I want to die.

I mean, I never really expected the "once upon a time—happily every after" thing. I figured that if the "Chosen One" stuff didn't really work out for Simon, then the fairy tale ending wouldn't either. But I never expected this, either. Whatever you call this, anyway.

Emptiness?

I don't know.

.

"Baz—Baz?" says Simon. "I… I talked to Agatha today."

I'm reading a book (it's truly enticing, really), so I only roll my eyes without looking up. "Good God. What for?"

"I really don't know." He sits down beside me and worms his hand into mine. "I just… I haven't heard from her in a while, so I thought, you know. I wanted to see where she was."

"Where is she, then? At the bottom of some snake pit?"

"No. She's in California."

I look up from my book momentarily, finger marking my place. "California?"

Simon bobs his head. "Apparently she has a bunch of Normal friends, and she sounds really happy, except, maybe, she drinks a bit too much. Anyway, I asked her how she was and why in the world she would abandon her magic, and you know what she said?"

I squeeze his hand gently. "No, Snow. You're the one who talked to her, remember?"

He bites down on his lips and furrows his eyebrows so deeply that they almost touch, which is his usual reaction whenever I call him Snow.

"Right," he says. "Right. Well, she told me she had escaped. She'd never felt freer in her life, she said. She was doing what Lucy had done."

"Well, who's Lucy?" I say impatiently. Honestly, it takes forever to wrangle some story out of Simon.

"Her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel."

"What?"

"Well, she did name her dog Lucy, but she named it after some girl who ran away from the magickal world," Simon explains.

"Now, why would anyone want to do that?" I ask. "Other than Agatha, of course."

Simon shrugs. "I asked her about that, and she told me that Lucy used to be the Mage's girlfriend."

Now we're getting somewhere. "The Mage had a girlfriend?" I say, astounded.

"Apparently," says Simon.

"Why'd she leave?"

"Agatha said…" He takes a breath and starts again, "Agatha said that she was pregnant with the Mage's child, so she ran away to hide them both."

"Lucy? Or Agatha?"

"Lucy."

I start to laugh; I can't help it. "Ha! No one likes the Mage, not even his girlfriend. Imagine that: Somewhere, some Normal kid in the world—actually, probably in California—is walking around, not knowing that the most disgustingly radical mage ever to exist in this world was his father. And his mother…" And then, I realize what all this means, and I shoot to my feet, gripping Simon's hands as tightly as I can. The book falls to the floor. I've lost my place. "No, no, no, no, no, Simon!"

"Yes," he says simply. His eyes are forlorn.

"That's not what this means!" I yell at him.

"Then tell me what it does mean, because I can't think of anything else." His voice is strangely croaky and deafening. I've never seen him like this before. For a moment, I think that he'll explode, but then I remember—

"Agatha could be wrong," I tell him fiercely; I almost say the words with magic, but that would be adding grease to the fire. "Agatha is wrong. Who did she hear that from?"

"Penny's mum." Simon looks down at our hands. "She and Lucy were friends at Watford."

"No," I say again because there is nothing else to say. "No. This doesn't change anything."

"This changes everything, Baz," Simon says, "and you know it. I'm not the Chosen One. I never was. I'm just a Normal that the Mage used as Tupperware for his lunch."

"Simon. Simon," I say his name as tenderly as I can, moving my hands up his arms, to his shoulders, and back down again. "Simon Snow. You are not a Tupperware container, and you know it. You're not even five trillion Tupperware containers—you're more than that. And you know you have more in you than the Mage's lunch."

"Except I don't now, do I?" His eyes suddenly blaze, and he slings my hands away. He stands and he towers. "I have nothing. I am nothing. I'm not even a mage!"

"You are a mage, Simon." My hands are flying, touching him, holding every part of him. I don't want to let him go. "You will always be a mage."

"Last time I checked, you had to have magic to be a mage."

"You do have magic! You have a tail and wings!"

"Yes, and some people have three eyes and seven fingers!"

"That's not the same thing!"

"It is if they're all equally useless!"

"Simon—"

"I can't even fly!"

(It's true; his magic let him fly, the wings were for show.)

"Simon—"

"I shouldn't even be here. I shouldn't be with you, Baz. What's your father going to say when he finds out? What's Fiona going to say?"

"We're not going to tell them, obviously!"

"They'll find out somehow. They always do."

"Simon—"

"Your gates don't open for me! The Watford gates don't open for me! Our old dorm room didn't open for me—"

"That's silly. Different people live there now."

"I'm sick of trying! I'm sick of waiting! I'm sick of being pitied and hushed like a little child! And you're the worst, Baz—"

I kiss him. It's really the only way to get him to shut up. It's messy, this kiss is. It's all tongue and teeth, and Simon is still trying to talk. I think about spelling him silent, but I just push him down onto the sofa instead. He groans under me, still trying to struggle. I stick my tongue further into his mouth, and he gradually goes limp, relenting. And then, I do something terribly wrong.

Maybe I'm just thinking of the time we sat on my bed at our room in Mummer's House and Simon fed me his magic and showed me the stars, because I let some of my magic slip (I don't know if it's an accident or if I meant to; time spent with Simon Snow often passes like a dream, and time spent kissing Simon Snow is even more uncertain). And Simon feels it, no doubt. It's probably a shock, or a burn, or something equally betraying, but it shoots down the line of my body like a flame to gasoline, and it feels good, honestly, and I can feel him, his magic, for a split second, clinging to mine.

And then, Simon throws me off of him. He's breathing hard. I'm breathing hard, and it's awhile before either of us can speak.

Simon manages it first: "What was that?" he snarls.

"I didn't mean to do that. It was an accident, I swear!"

"No. You tried to give me some of your magic. I felt it."

"I didn't mean to. It just… slipped out."

"When are you going to stop feeling sorry for me?"

"Never!" But that's the wrong thing to say, and I know it as soon as it comes out of my mouth.

He growls and whirls away, standing up, his tail lashing me in the cheek.

"Simon!" I shout.

He storms away, out of the house to the driveway where he's parked his car.

"Simon!" I start running after him.

He starts running. He makes it to his car and jams the keys to the ignition. It starts fitfully, and it roars away in a spray of dust and smoke.

"Simon!" I yell, my voice cracking. But it's no use.

I sprint to the garage. My father owns a bunch of cars, but I can't find the keys to a single one. By the time I drive out to the dirt road leading to the city, Simon's out of sight. And I lose him.

"But he'll be back," I mutter to myself. I'm not crying. I'm really not crying. "He'll come back."

.

SIMON

I think about going back all the time. Well, not actually going back to his family's summer house and finding him sitting in the living room with a book, acting like things haven't changed. I think about that moment quite a bit. But I think about Baz a lot more. I talk to him sometimes, in my head.

How's the weather today?

Oh, every day is dreary when you're not around.

They're mostly stuff like that, and sometimes stuff like this:

Simon Snow, I'm going to turn you into a vampire, and then you'll never have to worry about not having magic ever again because who needs magic when you can be immortal and with superspeed and superstrength?

Baz, that's invaluably sweet.

Anytime, Snow. Anytime you want.

But I know he won't actually turn me, no matter how much he might mention it if we were still together. Because turning me into a vampire would mean turning himself into one, too. And I can't do that to him.

Since I went away, I've been working as a janitor at an elementary school. (Not a magickal school, of course. The only magickal school in England is Watford.) I have an excuse to wear baggy clothes now, at least, so I can hide my tail and wings easily. It's all incredibly Normal and predictable. The only thing I didn't like about magic was that it was so damn unpredictable—at least mine was.

That's absurd, Simon, Baz would say. There are janitors everywhere. There are janitors at Watford.

It's not that bad of a job, really. When most people think of janitors they imagine a poor soul who has to clean up a kid's shit or throw-up, no doubt. But it's mostly mops and citrus air freshener. And it's lonely, but I can handle lonely.

I've also started writing children's stories under the name Ida Bunkins. They're about magic, if you couldn't guess, but it's magic in a world where everyone has magic, so no one looks at you weird if you can't cast a spell. The main character's named Ben, and he's got a magic lute he uses to chase away the Rapscallions (which are like the Humdrums of that world). He's the only magician left who can play magical music, and his lute is the only magical instrument left in the world. It makes him special, I guess.

Anyway, my publishers tell me the stories bring in quite a bit of dough, and I do my own illustrations, so that saves them the effort, too. I don't know what Baz would say if he read one of them — if there was ever a chance of him picking one up, which there probably isn't. I wonder if he could tell that I was the one writing them.

Are these invitations to your pity party, Snow?

No, Baz. They're just children's stories.

Stories my ass. This is you whining about magic. Who needs fucking magic, anyway?

I do. I need magic to come back.

Fuck magic. You can come back whenever you want. You can come back now.

I don't think I will.

Why not?

Penelope helps me think of ideas. She's the only magician now who I (sometimes) talk to, even though she's moved to America. I tried to credit her as co-author once, but she found out and got her name taken off the book behind my back. So now I just dedicate every story to her. I write things like "for the girl who wore horn-rimmed glasses" (Penelope has contacts now) and "for the girl who taught me my first spell" and "for the girl who always knows what will happen next." Cheesy stuff like that.

But even with the dedications, I doubt Baz would recognize the books as mine. That is, assuming he ever reads them in the first place.

I miss Baz.