Chapter Three

Simon

He's been gone for three hours. If I hadn't been scared before, I certainly would be now. And I am. Even if he lied and he went hunting, he would have been back an hour ago.

Baz

I should have known.

Simon

Penny calls me back.

I've changed out of my pyjamas, into the football shirt and jeans Baz bought me a few weeks after his Leavers ball. It's almost three in the morning, and all the lights in our fourth-floor flat are on. I'm lighting up the night for him.

"There're all sorts of articles about the spell," Penny says. I have to say, it's a lot better to hear her voice over the phone, rather than through the mouth of a dog. "But nothing on how to break it."

"Nothing?"

"There's only half an hour until it wears off."

I look at the clock. Then back at the phone on the bed. "He could be anywhere. He could be-" I try not to think of the time over Christmas break, where he pulled his car off the road into the forest and set the trees aflame.

"Don't think about it," Penny says, helpfully.

"Something's wrong with him!"

She sighs. "Don't you think you're being a little bit dramatic?"

"What?"

"Simon. He-"

"What?"

Her voice is ragged. "He walked out on you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Maybe he just needed a break."

"He's breaking up with me?"

"No. No. I mean, I don't think so. He loves you. You know he does."

I think about waking up in Baz's arms. I think about kissing him in the forest. I think about the time he pulled me against him and told me that we matched.

"A break," I say.

"Yeah. A break."

"Oh."

She sounds tired. I can hear Micah, murmuring to her in the background. "You're not perfect," she says. "You hated each other for seven years. That doesn't just go away."

Baz

I should have known he wouldn't forget.

Simon

Twenty minutes.

I hung up on Penny after she said we weren't perfect. Now I'm sitting on the steps, which is as far as the Drop it will let me go. The wind blows straight through my Manchester United jersey.

She's right though, isn't she? Maybe we do just need a break. Maybe that's all this is. Just Baz getting fed up with our ordinary lives.

I chew my fingernail and wish for one of Watford's sour cherry scones. It's probably awful to have that on my mind when Baz is missing, but I have the feeling he'd laugh if he knew. If he knew. Which he doesn't. Since he's taking a break. From me.

Crowley. He should have told me that that was what he wanted.

Baz

I was just looking for a little adventure. A way to feel alive again.

Simon

Three-fifteen on the dot. The spell breaks, and I'm off.

I hurtle through London, checking all his usual haunts. The pub near the Thames. The park next to 33rd. At four o'clock, I ask the sleep-deprived Normal barista in the Starbucks where he works if she's seen him.

"Basil," she says. "Huh. He's the tall bloke, right? Slicked-back hair? Crazy pale?"

"That's him."

"Just when he filled Dylan's shift yesterday. Sorry."

When I've scanned everywhere that means something to him, I drive back to the flat and park clumsily by the curb. Penny's been ringing nonstop for the last thirty minutes, but I just throw my phone in the passenger seat and put my head down on the steering wheel.

Where is he?

And then I'm sitting upright, clutching at my keys, my phone, anything to keep me grounded. Because no no no no no. He couldn't have. He couldn't have.

Only Baz could be so stupid.