He doesn’t answer me. It sounds like he’s pacing. I can hear his wings snapping open and closed.
“It’s enough,” he finally grumbles.
“What is,” I whisper.
“The fact that you love me. It does make me happy.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he sighs. “It doesn’t fix everything. I still don’t know who’s looking back at me in the mirror. But . . . it makes me happy.”
“You sound ecstatic, Snow.”
He laughs.
There’s a creaking noise, like he’s sitting down—on his mattress or the new sofa. “I want to tell you that I’m sorry I lied to you,” he says. “But then I think about you walking into the Chapel and getting that spell cast at you. That curse.”
“Why would Smith-Richards have cast a spell on me that would immediately make me more powerful?”
“I don’t know—to hurt you. He’s a fucked-up person!”
“You’ll get no argument there,” I say. “But you can’t lie to me every time there’s trouble. You can’t sideline me from every battle.”
“Are you expecting lots of battles in the future?”
“You may have forgotten who you are, Snow, but I haven’t.”
Simon sighs. He sounds tired. “You said we could set this aside until you come back.”
“You brought it up.”
“I know. I’m sorry. About that, anyway. Are . . . Are you still coming back?”
“Simon. . .” I know he’s damaged and insecure, but he keeps questioning the one thing I know for certain. It’s insulting. “I’ll always come back,” I say.
He’s quiet. I can hear him breathing. I can hear the three dots hovering over his head.
“Me, too,” he whispers.
82
BAZ
I hunt before I leave Oxford. (Two more rabbits, a fox.) Then my father drives me to the station.
He doesn’t say anything in the car, and I don’t expect him to.
It’s an hour on the train to London. When I get there, I go to Fiona’s flat first. I let myself in. “Fiona?”
There’s no answer. I suppose I could leave her a note . . .
“She went to get breakfast,” someone says.
Nico is standing in the door to my aunt’s bedroom, looking like he just threw on jeans and a T-shirt—and looking thoroughly displeased to be speaking to me.
“You could wait for her,” he says.
“I live here.”
