“In the dark,” I say. “And hear more. And smell more sharply.”
“To live forever?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think it works like that. But he wouldn’t ever… be sick.”
Snow lowers his eyebrows. “When you look at it that way, why doesn’t everyone cross over?”
“Because it’sdeath,” I say.
“It clearly isn’t.”
“They say your soul dies.”
“That’s tosh,” he says.
“How wouldyouknow, Snow?”
“Observation.”
“Observation,” I say. “You can’tobservea soul.”
“You can over time,” he says. “I think I’d know—”
“It’sdeath,” I say, “because you need to eat life to stay alive.”
“That’s everyone,” he says. “That’s eating.”
“It’s death,” I say, refusing to raise my voice, “because when you’re hungry, you can’t stop thinking about eating other people.”
Snow sits back. His mouth is open—because no one ever taught him to close it. He pushes at his bottom lip with his tongue. I think about licking blood from it.
“It’s death,” I say, looking back down at my book, “because you look at other people, living people, and they seem really far away. They seem like something else. The way that birds seem like something else. And they’re full of something you don’t have. You could take it from them, but it still won’t be yours. They’re full, and… you’re hungry. You’re not alive. You’re just hungry.”
“You have to be alive to be hungry,” Snow says. “You have to be alive to change.”
“Maybeyoushould write a book about vampires,” I say.
“Maybe I should. Apparently, I’m the world’s leading expert.”
When I look up, Snow’s staring right at me.
I can feel the cross around his neck, like static in my salivary glands, but it’s never been less discouraging. I could knock him over right now. (Kiss him? Kill him? Improvise?)
“You should ask your parents,” Snow says.
“Whether I’malive?” Fuck. I didn’t mean to say it like that. To concede, even a little.
Snow closes his mouth. Swallows. That’s where I’d bite him, right in the throat.
“Imeant,” he says, “you should ask them if they remember Nicodemus. Maybe they know where he is.”
“I’m not asking my parents about the only magician to run off to join the vampires. Are you acompletemoron?”
“Oh,” he says. “I guess I didn’t think about it that way.”
“You didn’t think—” I say. And then—“Oh. Oh, oh,oh.”
SIMON
