Fangirl

shadows.
    “Hungry?” Simon asked.
    Baz started laughing.

    The sun hadn’t quite broken the horizon yet, and no one was about in the kitchens. Simon found bread and cheese and apples, and tossed them onto a platter. It seemed strange to sit alone in the empty dining hall, so he and Baz sat on the kitchen flagstones instead, leaning back against a wall of cabinets.
    “Let’s get this over with,” Baz said, biting into a green apple, obviously trying to seem casual. “Are you going to tell the Mage about me?”
    “He already thinks you’re a nasty git,” Simon said.
    “Yes,” Baz said quietly, “but this is worse, and you know it. You know what he’ll have to do.”
    Turn Baz over to the Coven.
    It would mean certain imprisonment, perhaps death. Simon had been trying for six years to get Baz expelled, but he’d never wanted to see him staked.
    Still … Baz was a vampire—a vampire, damn it. A monster. And he was already Simon’s enemy.
    “A monster, ” Levi repeated. He raised one hand to unclip Cath’s hair. Her glasses were stuck there and fell sideways onto her arm. Levi picked them up and tossed them onto his bed. “Your hair’s still wet,” he said, shaking it out with one hand.
    Simon looked at Baz and tried again to summon the proper amount of horror. All he could manage was some weary dismay. “When did it happen?” he asked.
    “I already told you,” Baz said. “We’ve just left the scene of the crime.”
    “You were bitten in the nursery? As a child? Why didn’t anyone notice?”
    “My mother was dead. My father swooped in and swept me back to the estate. I think he might have suspected.… We’ve never talked about it.”
    “Didn’t he notice when you started drinking people’s blood?”
    “I don’t, ” Baz snapped imperiously. “And besides, the … thirst doesn’t manifest itself right away. It comes on during adolescence.”
    “Like acne?”
    “Speak for yourself, Snow.”
    “When did it come on for you?”
    “This summer,” Baz said, looking down.
    “And you haven’t—”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    Baz turned on him. “Are you kidding me? Vampires murdered my mother. And if I’m found out, I’ll lose everything.… My wand. My family. Possibly my life. I’m a magician. I’m not—” He gestured toward his throat and his face. “ — this.”
    Simon wondered if he and Baz had ever been so close, had ever allowed each other to sit this close, in all their years of living together. Baz’s shoulder was nearly touching his own, and Simon could see every tiny bump and shadow on Baz’s admittedly very clear skin. Every line of his lips, every flare of blue in his grey eyes.
    “How are you staying alive?” Simon asked.
    “I manage, thanks.”
    “Not well,” Simon said. “You look like hell.”
    Baz smirked. “Again, thank you, Snow. You’re a comfort.”
    “I don’t mean now,” Simon said. “You look great now.” Baz raised one eyebrow and lowered the other. “But lately…,” Simon pressed on, “you just seem like you’re fading away. Have you been … drinking  … anything?”
    “I do what I can,” Baz said, dropping his apple core onto the plate. “You don’t want to know the details.”
    “I do,” Simon argued. “Look, as your roommate, I have a vested interest in you not wandering around in a bloodlust.”
    Levi’s hand was still in Cath’s hair. She felt him lift it up, felt his mouth on the back of her neck. His other arm pulled her tight against him. Cath concentrated on her phone. It had been so long since she’d written this story, she couldn’t quite remember how it ended.
    “I’d never bite you,” Baz said, locking on to Simon’s eyes.
    “That’s good,” Simon said. “I’m glad you still plan to kill me the old-fashioned way—but you have to admit that this is hard on you.”
    “Of course it’s hard on me.” He threw a hand in the air in what Simon recognized as a very Baz-like gesture. “I’ve got the thirst of the ancients, and I’m surrounded by useless bags of blood all day.”
    “And all night,” Simon said softly.
    Baz shook his head and looked away again. “I said I’d never hurt you,” he muttered.
    “Then let me help.” Simon moved just an inch, so their shoulders were touching. Even through his T-shirt and through Baz’s cotton button-down, he could feel that Baz wasn’t freezing anymore. He was warm. He seemed healthy again.
    “Why do you want to help?” Baz asked,