“Well, it’s got a lot harder, hasn’t it?” Baz says. “That’s one thing we can give your Mage—this school’s as tight as a drum. He’d hide Watford behind the Veil if he could.”
“Have there beenanyvampire attacks since then?”
Baz shrugs. “I don’t think vampires normally attack magicians. My father says they’re like bears.”
They.
“How?” I ask.
“Well, they hunt where it’s easiest for them, among the Normals, and they don’t attack magicians unless they’re starving or rabid. It’s too much fuss.”
“What else does your father tell you about vampires?”
Baz’s voice is ice: “The subject rarely comes up.”
“Well, I’m just saying”—I square my shoulders and speak deliberately—“it would help in this specific situation if weknewhow vampires worked.”
His lip curls. “Pretty sure they drink blood and turn into bats, Snow.”
“I meant culturally, all right?”
“Right, you’re a fiend for culture.”
“Do you want my help or not?”
He sighs and writesVampires: Food for thoughton the board.
I shove the last bite of roll into my mouth. “Can vampires really turn into bats?”
“Why don’t you ask one. Moving on: What else do we know?”
I get off the bed and wipe my hands on my trousers, then take a bound copy ofThe Recordoff my desk. “I looked up the coverage of the attack—” I open the book to the right place and hold it out to him. His mother’s official portrait takes up half the page. There’s also a photo of the nursery, burned and blackened, and the headline:
VAMPIRES IN THE NURSERY
Natasha Grimm-Pitch dies defending Watford from dark creatures.
Are any of our children safe?
“I’ve never seen this,” Baz says, taking the book. He sits in my chair and starts reading the story out loud:
“The attack took place only days before the autumn term began. Imagine the carnage that would have occurred on a typical Watford day…
“Mistress Mary, the nursery manager, said that one of the beasts attacked Grimm-Pitch from behind, clamping its fangs onto her neck after she neatly decapitated another who was threatening her very own son. ‘She was like Fury herself,’ Mary said. ‘Like something out of a film. The monster bit her, and she choked out aTyger, tyger, burning bright—then they both went up in flames…’”
Baz stops reading. He looks rattled. “I didn’t know that,” he says, more to the book than to me. “I didn’t know she’d been bitten.”
“What’s ‘Tiger, tiger’—?” I stop. I don’t trust myself to say new spells out loud.
“It’s an immolating spell,” he says. “It was popular with assassins… and spurned lovers.”
“So she killed herself? Intentionally?”
He closes his eyes, and his head hangs forward over the book. I feel like I should do something to comfort him, but there’s no way to be comforted by your worst enemy.
Except… Hell, I’mnothis worst enemy, am I? Hell and horrors.
I’m still standing next to him, and I bump my hand against his shoulder—sort of a comforting bump—and reach for the book. I pick up reading out loud where he left off:
