“Really. You think she’s up to party.”
“You know what I mean…” I kiss him again quickly. “I’ve never kissed you in the library. Think of all the places we could have kissed if we’d figured this out sooner.”
He looks up at my forehead, threading one hand into my hair. His grey eyes are enormous. “If you’d figured it out sooner…”
I could argue with him, tease him, return his serve. But I don’t want to. I push him back against a bookshelf and kiss him some more. My hands are on his waist. I can feel his skin, cool through his cotton shirt.
Baz is wearing another long-sleeved button-down. （I don’t think the heat ever bothers him, even when the sun does.） This one’s got brown and blue stripes, but when you get close, you see that the blue stripes are flowers. His trousers are nice, too—inky blue. He said he dressed up for Lady Ruth, but I think he just likes to dress up. I think he likes to look like he’s going somewhere important.
I push my chest against his. The shelf behind him creaks.
How much kissing would there have been? If I’d figured it out sooner?
In the library, on the Great Lawn. In our room …
Christ. Baz in our room, his hair slicked back, his tie perfectly knotted— hating me. （But not really hating me. Not only hating me.） He puts his other hand in my hair, too, like he’s trying to hold me steady.
Every time I push my face forward, the back of his head knocks books off the shelf behind him.
How many walls could I have shoved him up against? How many empty corners could we have found?
This was our place. Watford. Ours like no one else’s. Maybe that sounds arrogant, but it’s true. His, because his mother died here. Mine, because it was mine to protect.
His mouth opens for me …
（I don’t understand what this is. Why people do it. Why we stoke fires in each other. What are we burning?）
The shelf creaks again. I rub my cock into his hip.
How many walls? How many hallways?
What else would I have figured out, if I’d got to this sooner?
Baz turns his face away and unhooks Lady Ruth’s glasses from his ears.
“I’m sorry,” I pant.
He looks confused. The spring on one side is caught in his hair. “For what?”
I shrug. I don’t know. I hug him closer. My arms are crossed in the small of his back. “Breaking your nose. In fourth year.”
He laughs. “Oh. Well. You should be sorry about that.”
I lean forward and bite his nose, right at the crooked part.
“Crowley, Snow—don’t break it again!”
I let go of his nose. And look in his normal-sized eyes. “I’m sorry…” I shake my head. “That I didn’t figure it out sooner. I—I would have liked to have had you for a friend here.”
He sets the reading glasses on the shelf next to him and puts his hands in my hair again, smoothing my curls down and watching them bounce back.
I think Baz would have liked it, too—to have me, here, on his side—but he says, “It was probably meant to happen like it did.”
“Do you believe in that?” I ask. “Fate?”
He shrugs. His back is still against a shelf. My weight is still against him.
“Not exactly. But it’s hard to argue with the timing. My mother’s ghost, the Mage’s plan … My father says that some things—that some people—are written.”
“Like Smith-Richards?”
Baz’s eyes go hard, and he shoves at my shoulder. “Not like Smith-Richards.” He steps forward, pushing me some more. “Make way, Snow. We need to get to the bottom of this nonsense.”
I step aside.
Baz puts the glasses back on and gets his wand out. He stands in front of the wall where The Magickal Record is shelved. “Fine-tooth comb—
Smith!”
The entire wall of bound volumes starts trembling.
“Oh fuck,” Baz says. He grabs my arm and pulls me back, just as a hundred books shake themselves off the shelves.
When the dust clears—not a figure of speech—there are less than a dozen volumes still on the wall.
“It is a common name…” I say.
Baz just sighs.
49
BAZ
We could have used Bunce’s input—and her wand—but we’re making progress. I’d initially planned to get a broader picture of the Smith family.
But narrowing the search to “Smith-Richards” gives us a much smaller stack of books to sort through: just two.