A/N: Well, here's the next chapter! This is definitely not one of my best stories but I'll attempt to make it good. This one's longer, for that, I'm glad.


It was storming outside when Simon woke up. Wind whipped at the walls and rain pounded into the glass of the window.

Simon sat up quickly as thunder rumbled. He was about to say something when he realized that Baz wasn't there. He wouldn't have stayed up all night, would he?

When he got to the dining hall, Simon looked around and frowned when he realized that Baz wasn't there either.

"What's wrong, Simon?"

He jumped as Penelope came up behind him and turned to look at her. "Have you seen Baz?"

"No."

Okay, he thought, looking around again. That's weird.

He and Baz never really went to breakfast together… but that was mostly because Baz was an early riser so he was already there with his cronies by the time Simon was up. If he wasn't at breakfast and not in their room, then there were very few other places that Simon could think of where Baz might be hanging out. No one had class at the moment, Simon could see most of his cronies eating already, so… where was he?

The real reason that Simon was worried was because Baz had seemed awfully into finding the hares, if he had gone looking for them by himself… that could end very badly.

Penelope had been staring at him while he thought about this and finally spoke up. "Did something happen?"

You could say that, Simon thought. "I just haven't seen him in a while." Wow Simon, wait to sound sound like a freaky stalker!

Agatha came up beside Penny. "What's up, guys?"

"Simon has an obsession with Baz, again," Penelope snorted. "Let me guess... He's up to

something!"

Simon rolled his eyes. Was he that predictable? "No. I'm just looking for him. I think we're starting to become friends."

Agatha and Penelope burst into a mad fit of laughter. They literally had to hold onto each other to stay standing.

"You... and Baz. Friends? You have got to be kidding me," Penelope laughed and Simon frowned at her, eyes narrowed.

"It could happen!"

"He spelled your laptop closed."

"So? We were new roommates. It's, like, the law to pick on each other when you're new."

"He steals all your aero bars."

"Again with the roommate law! And how do you even know about that?"

"And I know for a fact that he's tried to kill you more than once."

"Half of those could be accidents."

But probably less than half...

Penelope sighed and shook her head. "Listen, Simon. I don't know what's going on, but I'm sure Baz is fine. Probably plotting something as we speak."

Before Simon could say anything else, Agatha spoke up.

"Hey, have either of you seen Elspeth?"

Simon looked at her. "No. Why?"

"I have to ask her a few things about Canis. Test coming up." Agatha looked around the room. "She doesn't appear to be here... Neither does Rhys for that matter... or Dev, or Therese, or Hyperion."

"First of all," said Simon. "Ter-what and Hyper-who?"

"Baz's older cousins. Therese Vulpecula Pitch and Hyperion Cygnus Pitch."

Simon blinked. "Oh, now that I know their full names that totally rings a bell!"

Agatha rolled her eyes. "They're Baz's older cousins. Therese is a seventh year, and Hyperion and Draconis are eighth years."

Simon knew Draconis Scorpius Pitch but they hadn't really talked much, he'd seemed too much like Baz.

"Second of all, doesn't it seem weird that they're all missing?" Simon raised his eyebrows at them.

Penelope narrowed her eyes. "I guess so... You don't think anything's wrong, do you?"

"I don't know," Simon muttered. But I plan to find out.

# # #

Simon couldn't search outside while it was storming so he went back to his room to look for any clues that might tell him where Baz had gone. It was almost two in the afternoon and there still wasn't a sign of him.

When Simon opened the door he jumped back in surprise as a spider fell down in front of his face. It was just hanging there as if it were perfectly normal to fall in front of people's faces and scare the daylights out of them.

Simon scowled at it. He almost wished it could understand him, then he would tell it how it was, in fact, quite impolite to fall on people's faces. Maybe he'd add a speech about how unnecessary it was to have so many legs and eyes while he was at it.

The spider was about as big as his palm, counting the legs, so Simon was a bit twitchy about going near it. Something about the thought of getting close to an eight-legged, eight-eyed creature just made people in general want to squirm.

It was completely jet black from what he could see, though, he suspected it had a red mark on the other side of it. They couldn't have any black widows running around in their room so he took off his shoe and smacked it up against the wall with a satisfying crunch!

Its guts splattered all over the wall and Simon made a blech! noise. He wiped his shoe off and put it back on, glancing around the room to make sure there weren't anymore spiders lurking about.

When he saw there were none, he started to clean off the spider webs from his desk, lamps, and window. There appeared to be more than what he had seen last night but now that he had killed the spider who'd spun them, it probably wouldn't be a problem anymore.

As Simon finished cleaning, something caught his attention. A soft noise was coming through the walls.

"The itsy bitsy spider went up the waterspout... Down came the rain and washed the spider out..."

Simon tried to pinpoint where the voice was coming from but when he turned around it stopped. It was so sudden that Simon almost thought he had imagined it.

Almost.

"Is... someone there?" he called softly.

Nothing.

"Hello?" Simon carefully started towards the door, careful not to step on anything.

"Up came the sun and dried up all the rain..."

Simon froze. Planting his foot down quickly.

"The itsy bitsy spider went up-"

Crunch!

Simon jumped back as he felt something crush under his foot and looked down. It was another spider. Brown, this time. But at least as big as his hand spread out on a table.

The hair on the back of his neck tickled and Simon slapped his hand against it, expecting to feel the body of a spider crawling across his shoulders.

Nothing. He could only feel his cool skin and the fabric of his shirt against his hand.

Simon shivered and hurried out of the room. His skin was prickling with the thought of having spiders climbing on him.

He knew what Baz would say: "Toughen up, Snow! It's just a spider. You're the Mage's heir for Crowley's sake!"

Where was Baz? It had been almost an entire day since he'd seen him, covered in blood and running away into the shadows...

Simon's footsteps were echoing along the halls. Nobody seemed to be around for some reason... Most of them would probably be in class.

A soft sound came from behind him and Simon spun around, he was already raising his hand up to summon his sword. Something was there... in the shadows. Just sitting there, crouching, waiting.

"Who's there?" Simon growled, taking a step toward it. "Penny?"

No answer.

"Baz?"

The thing-whatever it was-lunged forward and Simon yelped as everything went black.


A/N: Alright, hope you're liking it so far. I'm enjoying myself with the writing, but I always like writing.