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BazAs I approach the gates at Watford, I throw a heavy glare at the school’s motto, etched into the iron crossbar. “Magic separates us from the world. Let nothing separate us from each other.” I scoff out loud, knowing there’s no one nearby to hear me.“Except fucking vampirism. That’ll bloody separate us from each other, won’t it?”I arrived at Watford a week before everyone else for my fifth year. I needed some extra time to myself before everyone else arrived. Apparently fifteen was the magic age in which my latent vampirism decided to come out to play. I may have been bitten when I was still in the nursery, but it’s only now that I’ve started to feel the true effects. It’s only now I can feel the hunger.It came upon me over the summer, while I was home, thank Crowley. Father and Daphne knew, somehow, even though they never said. They stocked the grounds with deer and squirrels, and looked the other way when I slipped out at night.It wasn’t going to be that easy at Watford.The Wavering Wood isn’t the pre-stocked private hunting wonderland that my family’s estate is. I feel watched all the time, and that will not do. No one can know I’ve become just like one of the monsters that killed my mother. I don’t even want to know it. My stomach rumbles and I can feel my teeth lengthen, reminding me that I’ll never be able to deny it to myself again.I rush through the gates and speedwalk my way straight to Mummers House and into my room. It’s early enough that no one is really around, but I cannot be seen running. Running leads to questions and I’m not yet prepared to field any questions. I need to make a plan.**SimonBaz isn’t in the room when I arrive, which is fine with me. I’ve been looking forward to everything about being back at Watford all summer, and he’s the only thing that could possibly disturb this feeling. I change into my uniform immediately, to complete the transition from Simon Snow, orphan-in-a-care-home to Simon Snow, student of Watford. I am home.After I put what little I own away in the dorm, I wander off to find Penny. It’s almost dinner, and I’ve been missing everything about Watford food. I can almost taste the roast beef and buttered carrots and I close my eyes for a split second, imagining the smells. This is probably why I find myself clipping someone as I cross onto the lawn.“Watch it Snow,” grits out a familiar voice.Baz.“Why weren’t you watching where you were going?” I bite back. “There’s a whole massive lawn here; I’m not even on the walk. You to good to make way?”“Yes, that’s it Snow. I can’t be bothered to move for the likes of you. It can’t possibly be your fault that you’re literally walking into me with your eyes shut.”He’s already past me and into Mummer’s House before I manage to drum up a comeback. It’s too late to use it, so I just growl. Welcome back, asshole.Later, when I’m back in the room, it occurs to me that Baz was walking away from the dining hall, and I never saw him there. He’s missing from our room as well, but that’s not all that odd. We both avoid the room when the other is home. It’s become an unspoken routine. But hours pass, and he’s still not back. I fall asleep on edge, because he could be stomping back in any second.Not that Baz every really stomps anywhere, but. Still.As it turns out, he managed to come in sometime during the night without waking me, because he’s in the ensuite when I wake up the next morning. I can hear the shower.I’m irritated that I didn’t know where he was all night. I’m doubly irritated that I even care.“Where were you last night?” I ask angrily, before I even have a chance to think.“Not your business, Snow,” he answers lazily, just as unmindfully. Telling me to mind my own business is probably an automatic response for him at this point.I bite my lip, wrestling with the desire to know, trying to figure out why it bothers me so much that he wasn’t in his bed while I fell asleep in mine. We’re enemies; he’s legitimately tried to kill me. Why do I care what he was up to? Unless it was precisely for that reason . . .“Are you planning something, Baz? Going to try and off me again? You skulking about, making a plan with the Old Families? That it?”“Crowley, Snow, you’ve got all the subtlety of a dragon in a china shop. What do you think I’ll answer? ‘You’ve caught me. Yes, I have a plan.’”**BazThe plan, of course, is to hunt rats in the Catacombs when I can, hunt other things in the Wood when I have to, and hunt merwolves in the lake when it absolutely cannot be avoided. It’s going to be tricky, and Snow’s going to be a problem, but when was it ever otherwise?I mentally pat myself on the back for getting this figured out before he arrived. I should have known though, that he wouldn’t be able to ignore my late nights. He’s like a dog with a chew toy, unable to stop. Just . . . gnawing and tearing me into submission.Instead of interrogating me again, however, he just starts following me. This is new. I’m used to ignoring, wrestling, even occasionally trying to kill each other (as long as we’re not in our room), but this quiet stalking is something entirely different. It’s disconcerting.It’s especially frustrating because having him around all of the time, just on the edge of my vision, is bringing feelings to the fore that I thought I had punched down. I’ve known I was queer for as long as I can remember. I’ve known I was attracted to Snow since second year. But it’s impossible. So I’ve always tried to ignore it, wrestle it down, kill it.It’s incredibly hard to do when he’s always . . . just . . . there.He’s there during classes, of course, and during meals. He’s there when I go to bed and when I wake. But those things aren’t new. What’s new is the way he watches me during football practice, and follows wherever I’m going afterward. He happens to walk by when I’m sitting on the lawn with Dev and Niall. He stalks the hall where I take my violin lessons; I’ve seen him out of the corner of my eye when I leave. He waits for me to leave the dining hall after dinner too. I’ve observed him sitting with empty dishes in front of him for half an hour, then dash up and out when I decide to leave. He’s been following me to the chapel after dinner, but so far I’ve given him the slip before I make it to the Catacombs. I don’t know how long it’ll be before he figures out where I’m going. And what I’m doing.It’s annoying . . . but also strangely warming. This attention. It burns.**SimonBaz is the worst.I didn’t know it was possible, but I think Baz is being meaner to me than ever. I know I’m in his space all the time, but I have to know what he’s doing. If the Old Families have given him some kind of assignment to take me out, I need to know about it.The other day, I followed him to the Wood and he caught me skulking about. “What the hell are you doing here Snow? Can’t get enough of my company?”“Whatever, Baz. I’m just trying to make sure you’re not up to something evil.”“What exactly did you think I could get up to in the Wood? Am I amassing an army of dryads? Because they’re so vicious and warlike? You’re a moron, Snow.”I grit my teeth and dig my nails into my hands. I’d lost my words again.“I mean, I knew you were a shit student, but you know, I thought that was just because you’re normal-born and a rubbish mage. I didn’t think you were actually stupid too.”I could feel the magic rising in me to meet the bait. Stop it, I told myself, stop stop stop “Stop it!” I yelled at him, and a wave of heat blew off of me into the air as I tried to vent away from him. He wasn’t actually guilty of anything other than being a prat so far.And that’s when the chimera came.That must have been what Baz was up to? I think he was calling the beast in the Wood to lead me to it later, and I messed up his plan. In any case, it started attacking both of us, so I’d say his plan was messed up either way.“Run! Snow, run!” He grabbed my hand and yanked me between two trees. The chimera took off after us. There was no way we could turn and face it. Not even The Mage is powerful enough to fight a chimera alone.It ended up cornering us in a thick copse. Baz tried to get me to go off right in that moment, but it doesn’t work that way. I never choose to go off. It just happens.“Fucking unleash, Snow! Do it now!”“I can’t just turn it on.”“Try.”“I can’t, damn it.” Instead, I tried waving the Sword of Mages at it, but it wasn’t corporeal. The Sword was no help at all.Baz just kept shooting spells at the chimera, Fly away home, and Shoo fly, don’t bother me, but nothing worked. Not until he just dug back into telling me how stupid and useless I was until I went off again, and could aim it at the chimera instead of into the air. The heat wave knocked us right out and we woke up some time later in a blackened pit. The chimera was gone, and Baz was yelling at me for singeing off his eyebrows.But he looked perfect. The tosser.**BazUgh, Snow. Why is he so . . . Snow? The most powerful mage ever, the fucking Chosen One, and he can’t even bring forth his own power to fight a fucking chimera?It felt good to provoke him into going off, though. Satisfying. And watching him fireball the chimera was fucking impressive. Not that I’ll ever tell him that. He knocked himself out. I just sat there in the smoking pit, thankful that he had aimed well away from me and my flammable self, watching him breathe and tracing the smears of smoke and ash on his body. With my eyes. I swear. There was no touching.But Crowley, did I want to.I hate feeling this way. But I kind of enjoy it too. The push and the pull. The exquisite pain of hating him, wanting him, and hating him for wanting him.We ended up having a fistfight at the top of a staircase, and I just couldn’t stop having a go at him, just to be allowed to touch him. I got a lucky punch in, and he ended up falling all the way down the stairs. In that moment, I felt both exhilaration at besting him, and deep regret for hurting him.What the hell is wrong with me?**SimonPenny is getting very annoyed with me. I know this obsession about what Baz is up to frustrates her, but I just can’t stop. He’s evil. He’s tried to kill me before. Why doesn’t anyone else see it?She’s stopped accompanying me when I follow Baz after dinner. She’s banned any discussion of Baz at all. She doesn’t want to hear about my suspicions, or about the evidence I’ve been gathering. She doesn’t want to hear that I think he’s hatching a new plot to hurt or kill me, and she definitely doesn’t want to hear about my most recent theory.I think Baz is a vampire.He’s different this year. He’s always stalked about, but now he does it when no one’s watching as well. And the late nights . . .I’ve been trying to find out where he goes at night, but I haven’t been able to track him. I follow him all the way into the Catacombs and he just . . . disappears. It’s not natural.Not to mention the fact that I never see him eat anything. Or the freaky way he looks just like a vampire. I mean, I suppose he could be taking the piss with his hair and his . . . face, but the thing is, when he comes back late at night he never turns a light on, and he never so much as stubs his toe on a bedframe.One of these nights. One of these nights I’ll make him confess. One of these nights I’ll be able to prove what he is.**BazIt’s getting to be entirely too much for me. Snow’s eyes on me all the time. The only time I have to myself it seems is the shower . . . and the Catacombs. Both places hold shame, but for entirely different reasons.Snow looks at me as if I were a monster, and he’s not entirely wrong. But when he stares at me, I can stare back with an intensity I never would have attempted before. We used to avoid eye contact, but now our eyes attract each other like the opposite sides of a pair of magnets. It’s a hate-filled gaze, at least from one direction, but it’s better than nothing.Let him believe that I’m trying to glare daggers through his heart. I prefer that to letting him know that I’m memorizing the pattern of his moles.There’s one, just on the side of his jaw, that I imagine licking when I’m in the shower later, attempting to sadly wank away these feelings. It doesn’t work. So, instead, one night, I let him find me in the Catacombs.I was sitting in the corner of the Children’s Tomb, drinking cheap whiskey from a flask and thinking that they were the lucky ones. If I had died instead of being turned, that day when the vampires attacked the nursery, I could be resting here instead of . . . this.Simon approaches not at all slowly or quietly. He stumbles in like the uncoordinated adolescent he is, Sword of Mages drawn as if he’s expecting something to leap out at him in the dark. I could do that for him, but I prefer to deny expectations. Also, I’m a little unsteady from the whiskey.Instead I sit there, quietly, and brush some nonexistent dust off my knee. “Now what, Snow?”“Now you tell me what you’re up to,” he insists. As if this were all a game, and he’s won, and the knowledge is his prize. I can’t help laughing that he thinks it’s that simple.I wave my hand around the room, at the bones of the children who died at Watford. “They died in a plague, you know.”Snow looks confused, as if I’ve changed the topic entirely. I haven’t, but he doesn’t know that.“Is that why you’re here? To track down a plague?”I stare at him, stunned by the simplicity of his brain. He’s not stupid, not exactly. It’s just that he only ever thinks in one dimension. It doesn’t ever occur to him that the world and the motivations of those around him are infinitely more complex than he can perceive. It’s strangely attractive. I wish I could live in his world.“Magic couldn’t help them, Snow.” I can’t tell him exactly what’s happening, but nothing I’m saying is untrue. Magic couldn’t help them, and it can’t help me either. “There weren’t any words that had enough power, the right kind of power.”Snow is getting angrier, I can see it. I don’t actually want to set him off this time, but it might happen anyway if I don’t defuse him. I’m not sure I have the mental focus I need to have this conversation now. Some of this is going to be the whiskey talking, I know it. “What are you doing here?” he demands again.I start singing the nursery plague rhyme. All the wrong words spill out of me. “Ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies. . .” “Answer me, Baz.”“ Ashes, ashes . . .”Snow slashes at a pile of bones in frustration at me, knocking the skulls of dead Watford students into a disrespectful, disorganized mess on the ground. Immediately I whip out my wand and sort them out. ”As you were!”I turn to him and spit out, “Show some respect Snow. It’s not them you want to hurt. What do you want from me?”“I want to know what you’re up to.”“This is what I’m up to. Sitting with the bones of students. And teachers. Everyone who dies at Watford is entombed here.”“So?”He’s so simple. If he had half a brain in his head, he’d put two and two together and come up with “Baz is dead. Baz is a vampire. Baz has basically just confessed his second most secret shame.”But no.“Look Snow,” I finally get up, looming over him now that we’re both standing. “You’ve been following me, looking for me. And now you’ve found me. It’s not my fault if you still haven’t found what you’re looking for.”Snow’s gaze settles on me, grim now instead of angry. “I know what you are, you know.”Does he? Does he know all of it? To which secret shame does he refer?“Your roommate?” I answer facetiously. That one’s a shame, but it’s not secret.Snow squeezes the hilt of his sword and shakes his head.I take one step closer to him, within striking distance now, and breathe whiskey fumes into his face. “Tell me.”His jaw twitches as if it is cemented shut with the truth it holds back.“Tell me, Snow,” I repeat. “What am I?” A vampire in love with you. Which thing do you know that I am? Because I am both.He growls and raises the Sword of Mages, finally pointing it at me. “Vampire!” he yells.I start giggling in relief. This truth I can deflect. The other one, I wouldn’t have been able to deny. “Really? You think I’m a vampire? Well, Aleister Crowley, what are you going to do about that? I slip my flask back out and take a sip. Let the fact that I’m drinking give him any excuse he needs for my uncharacteristic behavior tonight. I’m so tired of this charade.Snow’s sword drops a little. Pity. I rather enjoy the idea of him threatening me with a phallic object in this moment.“Mmmm . . . stake through the heart?” I offer, still thinking phallically. “Beheading would work, I suppose. Though you’d have to keep my head separate from my body, and even then my body won’t stop until it finds my head . . . Better use fire, Snow. It’s the only way to be sure.”I’m still close enough to breathe into his face and I hold his eyes with mine. This isn’t the secret I feared that he would find out, not anymore, so it’s easy to lie. I stare him down, daring him to make a move. Kill me or kiss me, in this moment I don’t care which.“Do something, Snow. Save the day. Or the night, rather. Quick, before I . . . Hmm, what horrible, villainous thing shall I do? It’s too late for everyone down here, of course. There’s only you to hurt. And I don’t think I’m in the mood to suck your blood right now. I might accidentally Turn you, and then I’d be stuck with your pious face forever.” This is another total lie, of course. The idea of tasting Snow’s blood almost derails me entirely in that instant, and being tied to him forever is both enticing and terrifying. I take another swig from the flask to steady myself. “I don’t think undeath would improve you, Snow. It would just ruin your complexion.” That part is absolutely true. As a vampire, Snow would lose his sunkissed glow. What a pity that would be. I giggle and then sigh, closing my eyes.Snow steps back, dropping his sword, breaking the tension. “I don’t have to do anything. I know what you are. Now I just have to wait for you to make a mistake.”I don’t even bother to open my eyes. I don’t know what I wanted him to do in that moment. Well, I know what I wanted, but I would be insane to expect or even hope for Simon Snow to suddenly drop his sword and snog me in one of these moments of tension. Instead, he backs off, unable to follow through with either the kissing or the killing. “That’s your plan? Really, Snow? Wait for me to kill someone? You’re the worst Chosen One who’s ever been chosen.”“Fuck off,” he retorts weakly. Our confrontation is already over, and he knows it. He gave up, and nothing is really going to change. He turns to leave.“If I’d known it was this easy to get rid of you, I would've let you catch up with me weeks ago!” No, I wouldn’t. I’ve enjoyed this too much, twisted monster that I am. As I hear him go, I start singing “Ring Around the Rosy” again. “Ashes, ashes . . . we all fall down.”Simon Snow is going to be the death of me, and I’ll welcome it when it comes. It’s all I can think about now. Nothing else matters.