Wayward Son (Simon Snow, #2)(65)

When the last one has trailed in, Penny steps into the doorway and casts one of her favourite spells—“There’s nothing to see here!”—out into the hall. She closes the door and locks it.

The birds have settled on the bed. And the lamp. And the headboard. Baz plucks a parrot from the chandelier and twists its neck like it’s a bottle of lager. He starts drinking it then and there.

“For snake’s sake, Basil.” Penny’s swatting birds off the bed. “Do it over the bath.”

Baz stumbles drunkenly into the bathroom. I’ve never seen him feed so messily. (I’ve rarely seen him feed at all, and never up close.) He leans over the bath, and I try to help him out of his fancy jacket. I know he won’t want it ruined. “Here,” I say, twisting him a bit. “You’re getting blood on it.” Once I have the jacket off, I start on his pink shirt.

Baz takes a long pull on the bird, then drops it in the bath, letting me unbutton him. “Go away,” he says. “I don’t want you to see.”

“Too late for that, mate.”

He has blood smeared on his bottom lip. There’s another bird flapping around the bathroom (which was already a mirrored black nightmare, before the blood and the birds). Baz grabs it out of the air, and thwacks it against the sink. “Stop,” he says. “Stop watching.”

“Fine,” I say, turning. “I’ll round up the rest.”

Shepard and I catch them—mostly in pillowcases and towels—while Penny hides under the duvet. (I might genuinely laugh about that part later.) Baz drains every bird. The bath is a mass grave.

I stand in the doorway when he’s done. He’s facing the carnage, leaning against a wall, his bare back swelling with each breath.

“Better?” I ask.

“Better,” he says. “Sorry.”

“I can help you clean up—”

“No. I’ll spell them. Thank you. Just … give me a moment?”

I do as he asks, closing the door.

“Clean up these feathers,” Penny says. “I’m ordering room service.”





47





BAZ


This …

Is a new low.

I spell the birds away. Then the blood. And draw myself a bath.

I reheat the water twice just to avoid facing anyone. They’ve all seen me now. Even the Normal. Sucking down tropical birds. More like a mongoose than a man. At least real vampires look cool when they feed on people.

I know that now. I watched Lamb. (Is that his real name?) I watched him, and I didn’t interfere. (My mother had that view once; she set herself on fire to stop it.)

I watched him drink from a man’s neck, and I did nothing. Is that man a vampire now? What have I become?

Lamb talked to me about vampires for hours tonight, and I lapped up every word. To be honest—part of me wishes he were here right now, still talking.

I mean, I wouldn’t want him here right now. Not in my current, undressed situation. Not that Lamb seems interested in me in that way—and not that I’m interested in him! I’m not attracted to vampires. Crowley.

I hold my breath and let my head sink beneath the bathwater.

There’s a no-nonsense rap on the door. Bunce. “Come on out, Baz. The food’s here.”



* * *



I didn’t bring fresh clothes into the bathroom, so I put my suit back on. (The shirt was ruined. I burned it.)

Bunce is sitting on one end of the bed with half a dozen covered dishes laid out in front of her. The Normal is sitting at the other end. Snow has pulled two leather chairs over. I take the empty one, and he hands me a small, open bottle of Coke.

Penelope starts uncovering the dishes: tiny cheeseburgers, fried chicken strips, mashed potatoes and gravy. I reach for a plate with steak and chips. My fangs are already dropping. (Because the humiliation never ends.)

Bunce hands me some cutlery wrapped in a cloth napkin and gives me a stern look. “Just eat, Baz. It’s been a long day in a series of long days, and we’ve all already seen it all.”

I sigh and fish my dead mobile out of my pocket. “How much did you hear?”

Bunce takes the phone and plugs it into a charger. “Enough to write a book called Vampires of the West.”

“The last thing we heard was you ordering a strawberry milkshake,” Shepard offers. “Then you cut out.”

“We did not hear you ask about the Next Blood.…” Simon says, studying his miniature cheeseburger. He opens his mouth and shoves it in whole.

“I kept waiting for an opening,” I say. My extra teeth make me sound like a 12-year-old with braces. I set the steak plate back down on the bed. “I wanted him to trust me.”

“Did he?” Bunce asks.

I feel like a fool. “No. He kept trying to get me to drink … someone. They treat this street like a twenty-four-hour buffet. And I kept saying, ‘No, no, thank you’—well, you heard me. It felt exceedingly rude to say no to the blood and the alcohol. Everything started to get blurry. When we left the ice-cream shop, he grabbed a Normal and pulled us both into a shadow, demanding that I drink with him—it was a test, I think.”

Snow swallows fiercely. “He killed someone? Right in front of you?”