Any Way the Wind Blows (Simon Snow, #3)(35)

“Please, Simon. I’m sorry I brought this up.”

He drops his hand. “All I really know is that nothing I’ve experienced so far compares to you. Maybe that makes me gay.” He swallows. “Or maybe that just makes me yours.”

We’re standing a foot away from each other. I’m covered in blood, and I’m holding two medium-sized dead rats and a very sharp knife. “I want to kiss you,” I say.

“I always want to kiss you, Baz.” He steps closer. “I always have.”

“Don’t.”

“I don’t care if I get the plague. You can Turn me into a vampire to cure me.”

“Don’t test me, Snow.”

He takes another step towards me. I take a step back.

“I’m going to finish these rats,” I say. “And then we’re going back to the flat, and I’m going to brush my teeth.”

Simon looks down at the rats, then back at my mouth. “Can I watch you finish ’em?”

I close my eyes. “Fine.”

“Ha! I knew you’d say yes in the end.”

As if I could ever deny him.





20

SIMON

I can’t believe I’m sitting in Baz’s bed.

I can’t believe he let me hunt with him.

I can’t believe I’m still here.

I’ve said at least a dozen things in the last ten hours that I thought would kill me—that I would have rather died than try to put into words. Yet here I am. And there he is. Well, he’s in the shower again. But he’s coming out. He gave me clean clothes to sleep in. He told me to make myself another sandwich.

I found Bourbon biscuits in the kitchen. I’m dipping them directly into a bottle of milk.

“My aunt really is going to kill you now,” Baz says.

I look up. He’s standing in the bathroom door, wearing cotton pyjama bottoms and a fresh T-shirt. His hair is wet, he must have washed it again. I’d never seen him as bloody as he was tonight; his gloves were still sticky, even after he cast a cleaning spell on them. He said he isn’t going to take me hunting anymore, but I know he was just saying it. I want to go with him every night. Maybe I like hunting. I’ve always wanted my own longbow.

“Should I not be eating these biscuits?” I ask. There are two in my mouth.

“Too late now. I’ll buy more tomorrow.” He arches an eyebrow at me.

“Do you want my help with the shirt?” Baz gave me a clean T-shirt, but I left it on the dresser.

“If it’s all the same to you”—I shrug one shoulder and twitch my wing —“it’s easier to sleep without one.”

Baz nods and licks his bottom lip. “Yeah, it’s … all the same to me.”

He shuts the bathroom door and comes to the bed, getting in next to me. I make room for him. His skin has pinkened up again. Still pale and grey—but a pinker grey. Rat blood looks good on him.

“Are you getting crumbs in my bed, Snow?”

“I’m the worst,” I say. “I don’t even notice them. You don’t mind sleeping some more?”

“No,” Baz says, reaching for the milk bottle. “I’m knackered.” He takes a drink. I watch him swallow. I like it. I like him. His everything.

I dig out the last biscuit, then hold it out to him. He smiles softly, taking it.

I put my arm around him. “This okay?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Pretty much always.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, Snow. There’s no use denying it.”

“That’s…” I tighten my arm around him. I get my wing around him, too. I like having four arms to hold him. “It’s good. It’s better already, isn’t it?”

“Better than what?” he asks. (I think he knows the answers to half the questions he asks me. He just likes to make me talk.) “Yesterday,” I say.

“Everything is better than yesterday,” he says. “Yesterday was the nadir.”

“It feels so long ago.”

Baz sets down the milk. He brushes some crumbs off the duvet. I slink back in his bed, leaving my arm and wing open. His pillows are so fluffy.

They probably cost a fortune. He glances at me, then away. I bring my other wing around to herd him in—he lets me. I pull him down to me, and he lays his head on my shoulder. I like this. It makes him seem shorter than me.

Baz sets his hand on my chest. I don’t think he’s ever touched me here, bare, when we weren’t fooling around, or trying to. Maybe he’s trying to …

“I like your chest,” he says.

“That’s because you remember what I looked like before I got fat.”

“Nonsense, Snow. You’re not fat.”

I bloody well am. But, as Baz would say, it’s not my biggest problem.

“You used to get so thin over the summers…” He traces his fingertips over my heart.

I shiver and cover his hand with mine, stopping him. “I could never keep up with the magic.”

He looks up at me.

I try to explain: “I think the magic took a lot out of me. It was always there, even when I wasn’t using it. They didn’t starve me in the care homes, but it wasn’t pot roast and all the scones you could eat. I’d come back to Watford so hungry, I could hardly think. One year, I went straight to the dining hall, and sat there eating from lunch to dinner.”