Fangirl

know.” Baz waved his white-tipped wand in the air. “Presto chango.”
    “A changing spell? What are you trying to do?”
    “I’m experimenting.”
    “Didn’t you say I should do more research before barreling forward into danger?”
    “That was before I’d stared at this damnable rabbit for half the night.” Baz flicked his wand. “Before and after.”
    “ Before and after only works on living things,” Simon said.
    “Experimenting. Cock-a-doodle-doo. ” Nothing happened.
    “Why didn’t you stay asleep?” Simon asked. “You look like you haven’t slept since first year. You’re pale as a ghost.”
    “Ghosts aren’t pale, they’re translucent. And pardon me if I don’t feel like snuggling up with you in the room where my mother was murdered.”
    Simon grimaced and cast his eyes down. “Sorry,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
    “Stop the bleeding presses,” Baz said, and waved his wand at the rabbit again. “Please.”
    Baz gulped. Simon thought he might be crying, and turned away to give him some space.
    “Snow … are you absolutely sure there was nothing more in that letter?”
    Simon heard a heavy rustling above them. He looked up to see the giant, luminous animal stirring in its sleep. Baz was stumbling to his feet. Simon stood, too, and stepped back, taking Baz’s arm. “Careful,” Baz hissed, jerking away from Simon and away from the fireplace behind them.
    “Vampire,” Levi said smugly. “Flammable.” Levi’s eyes were closed now and his head was tipped against the wall. Cath looked at him for a moment. He opened an eye and nudged her leg with his knee. She hadn’t thought she was sitting that close.
    Above them, the rabbit seemed to take on dimension and heft. It stretched its back legs against the sky and twitched its nose. Its ears quivered to attention.
    “Are we supposed to catch it?” Baz asked. “Talk to it? Sing it a nice, magical song?”
    “I don’t know, ” Simon said. “I was awaiting further instructions.”
    The rabbit opened one boulder-sized, pink eye.
    “Here’s an instruction—do you have your sword?”
    “Yes,” Simon said.
    “Unsheathe it.”
    “But it’s the Moon Rabbit…,” Simon argued. “It’s famous.”
    The rabbit turned its head from the ceiling (on closer inspection, its eyes were more red than pink) and opened its mouth—to yawn, Simon hoped—revealing incisors like fangs, like long white knives.
    “Sword, Snow. Now.” Baz was already holding his wand in the air like he was about to start conducting a symphony. He really was grandiose sometimes.
    Simon held his right hand over his hip and whispered the incantation the Mage had taught him. “In justice. In courage. In defense of the weak. In the face of the mighty. Through magic and wisdom and good.”
    He felt the hilt materialize in his hand. It wouldn’t always come, the Mage had warned him; the blade had a mind of its own. If Simon called it in the wrong situation, even in ignorance, the Sword of Mages wouldn’t answer.
    The hare reached with its forepaw almost timidly toward the floor of the nursery—then fell from the ceiling in a graceful lump, like a pet rabbit shuffling off a sofa.
    “Don’t strike,” Simon said. “We still don’t know its intentions.… What are your intentions? ” he shouted. It was a magic rabbit—perhaps it could talk.
    The rabbit cocked its head, as if in answer, and shrieked at the empty spot in the sky.
    “We’re not here to hurt you,” Simon said. “Just … calm down.”
    “Crowley, Snow, are you going to ask it to heel next?”
    “Well, we’ve got to do something. ”
    “I think we should run.”
    The rabbit was crouching between them and the door. Simon reached for his wand with his left hand. “Calm down, Please! ” he shouted, trying the powerful word again. The rabbit sent a stream of angry spittle in his direction.
    “Yes, all right,” Simon said to Baz, “we run. On the count of three.”
    Baz had already made a break for the door. The rabbit screeched at him but wouldn’t turn its back on Simon. It swiped at Simon’s legs with a deadly-looking claw.
    He managed to jump clear, but the hare immediately aimed at him from the other direction. When it cuffed him on the head, Simon wondered if Baz would even bother to bring back help. It probably wouldn’t matter; no one would ever get here in time. Simon swung his sword at the rabbit, slicing it, and it pulled back its paw as if it’d caught