The Demon’s Surrender

She could stay at the Market with Toby. He’d keep Lydie until they could get something figured out.

All it would take was Sin convincing the Market that she would abandon Lydie. In front of her sister.

No, no, not in a thousand years, even though she loved him for trying, not in the light or the darkness, not for any reason. Lydie could not be allowed to doubt, ever.

“She’s mine,” Sin repeated.

Alan lied more easily than he told the truth, but she was a performer: She knew there was always a choice between lies and truth, that it was a balancing act. Alan might not know what was too important to lie about. She did.

Carl looked away, at the ground. Elka covered her mouth with the back of her hand. None of them spoke up when Phyllis stepped forward.

She said, “You are not welcome back here. Not ever.”

Sin had banished Alan from the Market like this, three months ago.

She looked at Mae, who was biting her lip and still looking angry. Sin could tell them all about Mae’s messenger’s earrings, about Mae’s demon’s mark. She knew she could create enough uncertainty to get Mae banished too.

“My brother’s a magician,” Mae said, before Sin could say a word. “If she has to leave, I’ll leave too.”

But that would leave the Market with no-one.

“Phyllis is right. Your brother’s gone,” Sin told Mae. “I’m keeping my sister.”

Sin bowed her head, turning to the urgent grasp of Lydie’s hands. She bent down and scooped her up. Lydie wasn’t so heavy, and her thin arms went around Sin’s neck so tight Sin thought she could have hung on all by herself.

Sin turned her back on the Market and leaned her cheek against Lydie’s hair, looking out at the spread of London at night, thousands of lights like the glittering points of knives.

Alan spoke again, quietly this time and not trying to persuade anyone. His voice was still lovely.

“You can come home with us.”

7

Lie to Me

ALAN AND NICK WERE LIVING IN A BLOCK OF FLATS IN WILLESDEN. Nobody was speaking in the car as they drove, and the kids fell asleep on either side of Sin. Sin felt tired enough to fall asleep herself, but she had to think.

The Tube station at Willesden Green was only six streets away. She could still get Lydie to school. Thank God Lydie and Toby were both dressed warmly. Sin curled up to sit on her cold feet and tried to calculate how long the money Dad had given her would last. She was going to have to buy shoes.

By the time they parked, it had started raining.

“Nick,” Alan said in a meaningful tone.

“I can carry you,” Nick told Sin flatly.

Sin raised her eyebrows, making sure they both caught her expression in the mirror. “I’d rather walk.”

She shook Lydie, not too hard, so Lydie was just wakeful enough to stumble along with Sin’s hand on her back and not enough to start panicking. She left Toby zonked out and drooling on her shirt.

Nick strode on ahead, possibly not thrilled by Alan offering their home as a refuge to three strays.

“We won’t stay long,” Sin told Alan in a hushed voice.

Alan, bereft of any current opportunity to help someone, had already got out his keys. He was looking at them and not at her, so Sin looked away at the reflections of streetlights glinting on the wet pavement.

“You can stay as long as you like.”

His voice was as warm and certain as it had been on the hill, just for her, but when she glanced up he was still looking at his keys.

“The kids can have my bed,” Nick offered, his voice abrupt. Sin would have thought he was being kind if he had not added pointedly to Alan, making it clear where his concerns lay: “You sleep in yours.”

“Of course,” Sin said, before Alan could respond. “Thank you.”

Lydie blinked in the fluorescent lights of the hall and the lift, looking bleary and lost. Sin shifted Toby so she could offer Lydie her hand, and her sister grabbed onto it, small fingers tugging Sin insistently down with every step, as if Sin was a balloon that might float away from her.

Alan lived up on the top floor. There was a walkway to their door, with a wire mesh instead of a fourth wall. The wind and rain blew through it at them, and the cement beneath Sin’s feet was rough and wet.

When Alan opened the door and flicked on the light, the wooden floors looked yellow as butter. There were battered cardboard boxes full of books in the narrow hallway and beyond that a little kitchen with crumbs on the counter. Sin was profoundly and deeply thankful for this, a roof over her head, somewhere like a home where Lydie and Toby could feel safe.

“Shall I show you your new room?” Alan asked Lydie, offering her his hand, his voice back to being persuasive now, small and tender as Lydie’s clinging fingers.

He held the door of Nick’s room open for them and Lydie went in eagerly, her whole small body aimed like a missile for the rumpled blankets and sheets of the bed. She hit it face-first.

The bed was too narrow for three, and Toby and Lydie needed sleep. Sin tucked them up, murmuring reassurances she was almost certain they were too sleepy to hear. She touched their heads, safe together on one pillow, Lydie’s fine blond hair and the warm round shape of Toby’s scalp beneath his curls. She didn’t let herself do anything else that might wake them up, just rose and slid out of the door to see if she could rob a couch cushion.

Alan and Nick were in the kitchen. Nick was leaning against the kitchen sink, his arms crossed, and Alan was cleaning off the counter.

“—cannot believe you said that,” Alan said.

“It’s simple,” Nick told him, sounding bored. “You’re crippled. So you sleep in a bed.”

“It was still very—” Alan glanced up from the counter. Color rose to his cheeks in a flash flood of embarrassment. “Hello, Cynthia.”

“Hello, Alan,” Sin said. “Hello, Nick.”

Nick did not look fazed in the slightest. “I was just telling Alan—”

Sin raised her eyebrows. “I heard.”

“And as I was telling Nick,” Alan said, “I’m fine.”

“Nick is right—,” Sin started.

Then she stopped as she saw a change pass over Alan’s face, like the dark shadow of something coming just below the surface of still waters.

“Okay then,” Alan said, a touch too lightly. “If you’re both so keen on me sleeping in my own bed, I guess I’ll go do that now. We have an early start in the morning—Lydie’s school is pretty far off.”

He had obviously done this before, lied and taken himself out of Nick’s sight. He’d obviously got away with this before.

It was Sin’s fault he didn’t get away with it this time.

She said nothing, just stood there and tried to cope with the realization that Alan was going to be tortured in the next room, and she could not even go to him lest his brother find out it was happening.

Alan moved past her.

Faster than even she could move, Nick was blocking the door.

“Why does Sin look like that?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”

“Nick,” Alan said, his voice fraying like a rope about to snap. “Get out of my way.”

Nick filled the doorway edge to edge.

“No.”

“Nick,” Alan said. Then he screamed between his teeth, a strangled terrible sound, and fell forward on his face.

Sin lunged and grabbed one of his arms, slowing his fall so he did not land as hard as she’d feared he would.

Alan did not seem to notice the impact as he fell. He gave another low cry, trying to curl in on himself and failing to do even that, his body shuddering out of his control.

Sin slid to her knees, dragging Alan’s head and shoulders into her lap. The floor was hard wood; she could at least stop him hurting himself. Alan gave another low scream, cut off as if he was strangling himself.

“Shh,” Sin said helplessly. “You’re all right. I’ve got you. I’m right here.”

As if that would matter to Alan, but she could think of nothing else to say.

There was movement in her peripheral vision. She looked up into the drowning black of the demon’s eyes.

“What is happening to him?” Nick demanded.

Alan let out another awful choked sound, shaking so hard it was difficult for Sin to keep hold of him. Nick recoiled as if someone had hit him, someone strong enough to make him feel it.

“What—,” he ground out.

“Shut up,” Sin told him. “I need to help Alan.”

“Help him, then!” Nick’s voice was becoming almost impossible to understand, as if someone was using the wrong instruments to play a familiar song, and the melody was coming out fractured and strange. “What can I do? There has to be something I can do!”

“I’m just going to be there for him,” Sin said. “And you’re just going to shut up.”

Alan moaned, the sound ragged and terrible. Nick was silent.

“Shh,” Sin said again. She stroked his hair and felt Alan’s hand clasp her wrist, his skin fever-hot. He made another cutoff sound, and she realized what he was doing, in the midst of agony.

He was trying not to wake the children.

Sin wanted to cry. Instead she held fast to her control, and to him.

It went on, and on, and on. She had the thought that she would never have let anybody else comfort one of her family, that she would have reached out, and wondered if the demon cared too little to do even that much.

She looked at Nick again, over Alan’s head.

He was crouched on the floor and trembling in sharp bursts, like a whipped dog. She saw his hand, reaching out across the floor toward Alan, then forming a fist and hitting the floor instead.

He did not seem to notice he was bruising his hand, any more than he noticed her looking at him. His devouring demon’s eyes were fixed on Alan.

He might care, then, Sin thought. In his way. But he wasn’t human, and his way wouldn’t do Alan much good.

“I’m here,” she told Alan, again and again. “I’m here.”

It might be a comfort to know someone human was here for him, at last.

Her knees were aching by the time Alan finally went limp and boneless in her arms. For a moment the thought that his heart could have simply given out, that he could have just died, sent sick fear coursing through her, and then he tried weakly to sit up.

Sin helped him, her arm around his shoulders, and Nick acted, grabbing hold of both Alan’s arms and almost throwing him into one of the chairs by their small round kitchen table.

“Now,” Nick said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Sin slipped in, eel-swift, to block Alan from Nick’s view. “Leave him alone. Have you no pity?”

Nick put a hand to Sin’s throat, forcing her head back. The demon’s attention was on her now, his eyes glittering.

“Don’t stand between me and my brother,” he said softly. “And no.”

“Don’t touch her,” Alan commanded, his voice thin and hoarse.

Nick released Sin’s throat and stepped back, until he was behind the counter, as if he did not trust himself not to lash out unless there was a barrier in his way.

Sin didn’t trust him either.

“She knows what’s going on,” Nick observed. “Obviously. How many people know? Why did you lie to me? Why do you always lie?”

“It’s in my nature,” Alan said in a low voice, and then more clearly: “I didn’t want you to get upset. There was no point in telling you.”

“No point?” Nick echoed.

“No,” said Alan. “There’s nothing you can do. It’s just Gerald demonstrating his power over me. He wants you to be upset, so when he comes to you with demands, you’ll do what he wants.”

Alan had decided not to mention that there had already been demands, Sin noticed. She turned toward Alan, joining him in this conspiracy almost without a thought. She bowed her head as if she was fussing over him, making sure Nick could not see her face.

Her eyes and Alan’s met in perfect understanding.

In his nature, indeed.

“And you didn’t think I should know this,” Nick said.

“I didn’t feel like giving him the satisfaction,” Alan returned.

“He was trying to keep it from everyone,” Sin added. “I happened to see him have another attack, the day I was teaching him archery up on the hill. If I’d thought it would do you any good to know, I would have told you.”

Perfectly true, as far as it went.

She looked up to see if Nick was buying it. He was standing with his arms braced on the counter and his head bowed.

“What are we going to do?” he asked, and then louder, his voice furious: “What’s the plan?”

“Oh, well,” Alan said, his voice gentle and tired. “That’s the problem. There isn’t one.”

“What do you mean, there isn’t one?”

“Think about it, Nick,” said Alan. “I can’t make a plan. If there was a plan, I couldn’t know it. Gerald could torture it out of me anytime he liked.”

Nick’s shoulders bunched as his brother spoke. His head stayed bowed.

“What are we meant to do then?” he snarled. “Just sit and wait until he comes with his demands? Or until he pushes you too far and kills you?”

“The second would be preferable,” Alan said. “I won’t have you a magician’s slave.”

“Why not?” Nick demanded. “What does it matter? I was one before.”

“That was before you were mine,” Alan said. His voice was steadier now. “Nick, if I do die. If it happens, I hope it won’t, but if it does, it’s all right. I’ll feel all right about it if I can leave you safe behind, with Mae and Jamie. It will be like leaving behind a life’s work. Do you know something? I remember snatches of things before you came, bits and pieces about my mother. But as far back as I can think in a straight line, from that point of my life to this, there’s you, and wanting to take care of you. That’s what I remember. It’s all right.”

Nick did look up then.

“I remember my life, before you,” he said, his voice chilly and distant. “Don’t make me live like that again.”

“Nick,” Alan said.

“Nick,” Nick repeated viciously. “What was that, in the beginning, but some baby name you used because you heard Olivia call me Hnikarr. A demon’s name in a child’s mouth. Until you turned it into the biggest lie you ever told. Nicholas Ryves. As if there was such a person. As if I was a person. Who do you think I’ll be, when you die?”

“I think you’ll be Nicholas Ryves,” said Alan. “You made that lie true for me. You’ve answered to the name, every time I called. I know who you are.”

“Do you know what I am?”

Demon, thought Sin, but she did not say it. Even Alan did not speak, just shook his head and waited.

“I can’t make a plan,” Nick said slowly. “I can’t save anyone. All I can do is kill. I’m a weapon. And if I can’t be your weapon, I’ll be someone else’s.”

“What are you going to do?” Sin asked.

Nick tilted his chin, baring his throat to Alan for a moment, as if that was a response.

“Be careful,” Alan murmured, as if it was.

“You’re one to talk,” Nick said. “For nine minutes tonight, I thought you were dead already.”

He sounded perfectly calm about that, but he had counted the minutes. Sin couldn’t quite put the two things together, not in a way that made any sense.

Nick turned his eyes to her, blank but still demanding, like staring into an abyss that stared back. Sin met his gaze, refusing to let him read anything from her face again, and his eyes bored into her for a moment.

Then he turned away. He left the kitchen, and a second later, the door of the flat slammed shut.

Alan got out his phone and called Mae.

“I think,” he said, “you might want to expect a guest fairly soon. Let me know if your aunt Edith sees him and calls the cops. I’ll come bail him out eventually. Yes, Cynthia and the kids are safe here.”

He raised an eyebrow at Sin. She shook her head.

“She’s already asleep,” Alan said without missing a beat. “Yeah, it’s been a long night. I’ll let her know you want to talk to her.”

He turned the phone off.

“What do you think Nick’s going to do?” Sin asked.

“I don’t know,” Alan answered. “I’m trying not to think about it. If I don’t know, I can’t tell Gerald. Besides, it’s only fair for Nick to have some secrets, considering my—entire life.”

“Yes,” said Sin, thinking of how she’d thought the demon might lash out, even at Alan, the way Nick’s hand had felt at her throat. “You’re certainly the problem child.”

She sagged against the kitchen table. Alan could see through any show she might put on. There was a certain freedom in knowing that, in simply stopping.

She was so tired.

“You really should take my bed,” Alan said. He gave her a beautiful, plausible smile. “You’ve had quite a night of it. You need your sleep.”

Sin didn’t mention what Alan had gone through tonight. Instead she backed away from the table, going for the sitting room and the sofa there, and paused at the kitchen door to say, “I do need my sleep. That’s why I don’t want an angry demonic alarm clock going off at me.”

“I can handle Nick,” Alan told her.

“No doubt,” Sin said. “I can handle the floor.”

Alan got up and limped over to her. The limp wasn’t usually so obvious, but then, he must be even more tired than she was. Sin looked away so she wouldn’t have to see it, closing her eyes and leaning her head against the door frame.

When she opened her eyes, she saw that had been the wrong thing to do. There were faint bitter lines around Alan’s mouth.

“Some horrible things have happened to you tonight,” he said in a level voice. “I’d just like for you to have a bed.”

“And what about what happened to you?” Sin asked. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You don’t think that counts, because it’s you.”

She stopped leaning and backed away from him, through the door into the other bedroom. She crooked her finger at him and summoned up a smile. “We can share. I don’t mind.”

She moved backward without a glance behind her. She might not have the Market anymore, but she was still dancer enough to move gracefully, no matter where she was. She backed up without missing a beat until the backs of her knees hit the bed, and then she sat.

When she looked up, Alan was standing in the doorway.

“I do mind,” he said.

“Right,” Sin said, and her fragile calm broke like a rope snapping beneath her feet. “I wasn’t offering anything more than sleep, you know.”

Alan went scarlet to his eyebrows. “I didn’t think you were.”

“I wasn’t,” Sin snarled, and she leaned her head in her hands. She wanted to cry, but her eyes felt like hot hollows in her face. She hadn’t cried in a long time.

She heard Alan crossing the room, never able to be light on his feet. He sat down on the bed beside her and touched her arm, just brushing it with his fingertips, as if he didn’t want to presume.

“Cynthia,” he said. “Okay.”

“I wasn’t,” Sin insisted, and was almost sure she was telling the truth: She was so tired, and she might want comfort, but that was no way to get it. She ground the heels of her hands against her closed eyes until they hurt.

“Cynthia,” Alan repeated, putting so much effort into his beautiful voice that it cracked, the whole façade cracked, neither of them quite good enough at their roles to make them true. “It’s okay.”

“What’s okay?” Sin demanded. “Nothing’s okay. I let the Market down. I should have known that since getting to you wasn’t working, they would come after us. I should have worked it out!”

“I should have—,” Alan began, but she interrupted him fiercely.

“They’re my people,” she said. “Not yours. I was the one who knew Lydie had magic, and I should have protected her. I was meant to be a leader, I was meant to take care of her, and I failed!”

She still could not cry, but she was shaking suddenly, hard, bone-jarring shaking, her whole body betraying her. Alan took hold of her elbow carefully, always gentle, and Sin turned to him blindly and locked her arm around his neck. She buried her face in his collarbone, gritted her teeth, and shook and shook.

“Cynthia,” Alan murmured, and rocked her for a little while, stroked her hair. She could feel it going electric with static, curls rising up to wrap around his fingers. She wished she could tie him down somewhere, keep him just like this, just for her. “Cynthia.”

She let him go and leaned back, stretching onto his pillow. She kept hold of his arm, pulling him toward her. “Come here,” she said. “Lie to me.”

Alan lay down beside her, a little awkward pulling up his bad leg onto the bed. His hand in her hair wasn’t awkward, anything but, fingers slow and light as the rays of the moon on her skin, drawing a curl back from her cheek. She reached up and took off his glasses, snapping the earpieces closed with her teeth, and smiled at him as she slid them onto the bedside table.

He was gorgeous by moonlight, hair and skin turned a hazy golden color, his eyes starlit-night blue and so sweet, so deep, pools you could drop your heart into and lose it forever.

“Cynthia,” he murmured, fingers still brushing her cheek, making her shiver. “I’m not lying.”

Sin closed her eyes and tucked her cheek into the curve of his neck and against his pillow.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Just like that.”

8

Burning Wishes

SIN WOKE WARM AND SAFE, THE MORNING SO EARLY THAT THE rays of light falling across the bed just seemed like paler shadows. She had a hand curled around the front of Alan’s shirt, anchoring him close beside her. The blankets were heaped over her, Alan’s breath was slow and regular against her hair, and Sin felt no inclination to move whatsoever.

She tugged Alan a little closer. He made a drowsy inquiring sound.

Sin gave a sleepy hum in response.

Her hum wavered and died away in her throat when Alan’s fingers brushed her ribs. She hadn’t really registered before that her shirt had ridden up, but she did now.

Alan’s hand slid along her side, moving smooth and sure from cloth to skin. His gun-calloused fingers lingered at the hollow above her hip, and Sin realized that Alan had definitely woken up with a girl in his bed before.

She rolled a little toward him easy as a cat being stroked, and at that point Alan woke up all the way, yelped, and fell out of bed.

Sin would’ve laughed, except for the small stifled sound Alan made when he hit the ground.

She levered herself up on her elbows and said sharply, “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Alan bit out, white around the lips, and she hated his stupid leg for ruining something that should have been ridiculous and warm. If it hadn’t been for that, they would both have laughed; if it hadn’t been for that, she would have noticed him before, the same way the other girls who had been in this bed must have.

“Your leg,” she began. “Is it—”

“Cynthia, leave it!” Alan snapped.

There was something furious and humiliated about the tight line of his mouth. If she had been another girl, someone who hated his leg less, he wouldn’t have been this embarrassed.

He grabbed at the bedpost with unnecessary force and hauled himself gracelessly to his feet. Sin closed her eyes, imagining how it would be if she knew her body was guaranteed to fail her.

“I apologize,” Alan told her stiffly.

Sin blinked her eyes open. “What?”

Alan was staring with great interest at the wall. “I didn’t know it was you,” he said. “Well, I did know it was you, but I was half-asleep, and—”

Sin blinked again as the fact that he was being a gentleman about not quite groping her sank in. She began to smile.

“That’s all right,” she said, and rolled back on the pillows, making a space. She glanced up at him through her fallen hair and asked, amused and inviting, “Are you getting back in?”

“Ah,” Alan said. “No. I have translations to do. And you—” He reached out then, not for her but for the blanket, which he pulled up over her shoulder. “Cynthia,” he said. “Just rest.”

Rejection number one hundred and fourteen—but who was counting—should have stung more, but his voice and the way he drew up the blanket were gentle, and she could stand to get more sleep.

Sin cuddled in under the covers. She was asleep again almost immediately. She stirred automatically every now and then, her hand reaching for the kids, but as soon as she surfaced from sleep she knew things were taken care of for now. For now, she could rest.

Every time she woke she glanced over at the little desk by the window, where Alan sat with an old scroll and a sheet of notepaper, occasionally scribbling something. His face in the morning light was serious and absorbed. The sound of the pencil on paper was like a whisper, shushing her back to sleep.

The last time she woke up, her eyes snapped open to the sound of Toby fussing.

Alan was standing up, hip propped against the desk, the baby in his arms.

“Shh,” he said, commanding and coaxing at once, his voice very low. “Shh. Let your sister sleep a little longer.”

Toby stared at him, mouth working doubtfully for a moment, then decided to grab for Alan’s glasses and laugh. Alan echoed the laugh back at him, the sound turning into music and the sunlight pushing warm gold fingers through Alan’s red hair.

It was a revelation.

Alan mattered. He meant something to her, and that meant he could hurt her. Considering the evidence so far, it meant he was going to hurt her.

This was another terrible problem, on top of all the others.

She had no idea what she was going to do, but she could sleep for just a little longer.

She hadn’t slept like this in more than a year.

She woke up with the demon hanging over her, blank eyes on her face.

Sin whipped a fist around hard, aiming for his stomach. He grabbed her wrist, and she twisted and sat up in bed. “What do you want, Nick?”

“Mavis on the phone for you,” he said, and dropped his mobile phone on her pillow.

“Mavis?” Sin asked.

“Definitely not,” said Mae. “Smack Nick around a little for me, would you?”

“Anything for a friend.”

“So I was wondering what shoe size you are.”

Sin rose from the bed, unwrapping the sheets from around herself as she did so. She realized only when she saw Nick’s raised brows that she’d unwound them slowly, with a little dramatic gesture. She raised her eyebrows back at him and turned her back.

“I don’t understand.”

“Look, all your stuff got burned to ashes last night,” Mae said. “I’ve got a ton of clothes and things I’m going to bring over. Also I’m going to buy you some shoes.”

“I don’t want charity,” Sin said flatly.

“It’s practicality,” Mae volleyed back. “We’re allies, right? Allies need to be able to leave the house. For that you need shoes. So tell me your shoe size, because I’m financially irresponsible and if you don’t I’ll buy a whole bunch of different size shoes.”

“Mae—”

“I’m in the shop,” Mae said. “I’m getting ready to waste the world’s shoe resources!”

Sin told Mae her shoe size and hung up. She was going to have to work out a way to pay back Mae as well.

She turned back to Nick.

“Thank you for the phone,” she said. “And for letting us stay.”

“Alan’s letting you stay,” Nick said.

“Okay,” Sin said. “Why aren’t you at school?”

“Why aren’t you at school?” Nick echoed.

“Uh, my uniform burned up. When my home exploded into flames.”

“So did mine,” said Nick. “When I tossed a lighter into my wardrobe. Tragic, really.”

Sin rubbed the center of her forehead. “Where are Toby and Lydie?”

“Alan has the baby, and he brought the girl to school. He went by to pick up Mae and they’re coming back here to make some sort of plan.”

“What sort of plan?” Sin asked apprehensively.

“I don’t know, I’m not any good at plans,” Nick said. “Well, I’ve got a stage one: Kill some people. After that you’ve lost me.”

“Stage two, kill some more people?” Sin asked. “Stage three’s a bit of a mystery to me as well.”

There had always been Merris to think of strategies and long-term goals. There had always been things Sin had to deal with immediately: She’d never really thought about making plans. She liked to act.

But where was Merris, and what was she supposed to do now?

Mae could make plans. But Sin loved the Market more. She knew she loved it more, and that meant she should be able to do something.

“I’m going to go practice the sword,” Nick said. “Since stages one and two are all I can manage, I’d better get them right.”

“There’s somewhere we can practice?”

“Roof garden.”

“Give me a second,” said Sin. “Can I use your phone again?”

Nick shrugged and made for the door. He only paused to say, “See you on the roof.”

Sin sat on the bed in her sports bra and jeans, and made calls to all the pipers, potion-makers, and occult bookshops in London that she knew.

She’d always looked down on dancers who danced outside the Goblin Market. They had no partners, no fever fruit, nothing to safeguard people outside the circles if the dancers got possessed, and nothing to offer the demons when they came.

Sometimes demons took their lives. Sometimes they would be satisfied with hurting the dancer, sharing one of their bad memories, tasting human pain and trying to plant a doubt or a desire in them so one day the demon could persuade them into possession.

It was a terrible gamble.

The money was good, though. Sin had always thought dancers who went it alone were greedy.

Maybe they were just desperate.

One woman asked her if she was sure, her voice trembling slightly. Sin told her she was quite sure.

She might not know how to plan. But she could act.

She had to sit for a minute after she made the last call, her arm linked around her knee. She tried not to think.

The phone went off in her hand. She answered it automatically.

“Nick?” said a strange man’s voice.

“Who is this?” Sin demanded.

The line went dead.

There was a roof garden on top of Nick and Alan’s building. A roof garden where they grew cigarette butts and concrete.

Sin bounded up the couple of steps to where Nick stood outlined against the chilly steel blue sky. He’d pulled off his shirt and thrown it on the ground; Sin noticed the flex of muscles in his arms and chest as he feinted, lunged, and withdrew. They’d lost a good dancer there.

They’d lost a better one with her. Sin cast off her own shirt and began to warm up wearing jeans and her sports bra, doing some shoulder rolls and ankle circles, and then started on hip flexes. With her knee on the floor and her arms over her head, she pushed her hips forward and counted heartbeats.

When she switched to a calf stretch, Nick tapped her on the back of her knee with his sword. Sin glanced at the talisman, glinting and swinging from his bare chest, and up to the challenging curl of his mouth.

She grinned back and he swung, and Sin bent over backward on her palms to avoid the blade. It cut through the air, the edge skimming an inch above the line of her hips. Sin rolled away as Nick’s sword lifted, and then dodged as he swung. She went weaving around the silver blur of his blade, rolling over and under it, capturing it in the arch of her arms and leaping over the bright barrier.

“Stop dancing around,” Nick said, baring his teeth at her.

She let her arms dip low, crossed at the wrist, as the blade flashed forward. She caught the blade just above the hilt, just before the point touched her stomach.

She grinned back at him. “I never do.”

They disengaged and she spun away: He lifted the sword and she swung out from it, her fingertips on the blade as if it was her partner’s hand. The cold air felt good against her hot skin now, and her muscles were all singing to her.

Nick advanced on her, bringing his sword up and around. Sin did a split and sprang back to her feet when the sword had already passed her. She retreated a step, and the inside of Nick’s arm hit the small of her back.

He stopped and looked down at her, as if he had only just noticed she had turned his sword practice into their dance.

There was a flash above them, almost like a spotlight. Standing out against a pale empty sky, with not a cloud or a murmur of thunder, was a brilliant silent stitch of lightning.

They both stood staring at it for a moment, their faces lifted.

“Did my phone ring while you had it?” Nick asked.

Sin said, “Yes.”

“I have to go,” Nick told her. He disengaged and went for the steps down to his flat, sheathing his sword as he went.

He left Sin with his shirt at her feet and her head tipped back to stare at the sky.

Only a magician could send a sign like that.

She was still staring when Nick’s phone went off in her back pocket.

Sin answered warily, waiting for magicians, and got a reminder that she had plenty of problems that were all her own.

The woman at the occult bookshop, the one with the worried voice who’d asked her if she was quite sure, had clients lined up for her already.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said.

Sin said, “I’m on my way.”

She met Mae and Alan coming into the flat.

Mae frowned. “Is this no-shirts festival day?”

“Every day with Nick is no-shirts festival day,” Alan said absently, but he was frowning too. “Where are you going?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Sin said. “If you could look after the kids for just a few hours, I’d really appreciate it. This is important.”

“Of course,” Alan said. “But what’s going on? Do you want one of us to come with you?”

Sin smiled, bright and swift as light glancing off water. She knew how to fake confidence until she could make it true. “I hope you’re not suggesting I can’t handle anything on my own.”

She refused to look at him, because he saw too much, and she didn’t want him to see that she was scared. She got changed, kissed Toby, thanked Mae for the clothes, and asked if she could borrow some money to buy a Tube ticket.

She bought a one-way ticket. No sense being wasteful: She might not be coming back.

The bookshop was several streets away from Tottenham Court Road station, not far from the British Museum. There were streets around it with wide sandstone flagstones, filled with sunlight. The sun was almost a winter sun, though, bright but not warm, and as Sin walked up the street she found herself shivering. She had chosen a gauzy white skirt of Mae’s that slipped down her hips a little too much, and a white tank top. She was a performer. She had to look the part.

Customers didn’t want to see a real person, one who could get cold.

Few people were interested in seeing a real person, of course. A boy whistled as she stepped off the pavement and crossed the road to where the bookshop stood, its door painted dull green and lightbulbs glowing in black iron frames through the huge glass window.

“Girl,” he said. He was white and wearing expensive clothes and talking what he obviously imagined was ghetto slang. “You are fine.”

“Boy,” she snapped, “I know.”

She did not spare him another look. In a second she was pushing open the bookshop door, which was heavy against her palms, and moving through the dim and dusty interior of the shop. There was a little cardboard sign that said BARGAINS at the top of some stairs, with an arrow pointing down drawn on it in red marker. The steps down to the cellar were golden yellow wood and looked polished, but they creaked under Sin’s feet and felt very shaky.

In the cellar there were four women. Sin remembered the bookshop owner, a South Indian woman with tired eyes and a green shirt. She was arranging amulets on the floor.

Of the other three women, two were wearing very nice jewelry, and one of the jewelry wearers had salon-sleek highlighted red hair. Well, they had to have money to afford this.

“This is Sin Davies,” the bookshop owner said. Her name was Ana, Sin recalled.

Sin just smiled at them, beautiful, mysterious, and silent. She held out her hand for the chalk.

“I hope the amulets are all right,” Ana said.

“They look fine,” Sin murmured. There was a pack of colored chalks in the woman’s hand. Sin took it gently and selected a sky blue one.

The chalk squeaked and crumbled as Sin set it to the floo-boards. She traced around the amulets, down the lines of communication that translated demons’ silent speech, and the big circle that would keep her and the demon trapped. She did it over and over again. There couldn’t be even the smallest space for the demon to escape.

In the end she was left with a useless nub and sky blue dust all over her hands.

She stood and looked around at Ana and the three women, drawn together like a coven.

No, she told herself. They were an audience. It was time to perform.

Lots of dancers cried and got the shakes the day before a Market night, but nobody ever let the audience guess. Sin lifted her arm, arched above her head as if she was wearing a spangled bodysuit and opening a circus show.

She kept the red slip-ons Mae had bought her, even though she probably could have danced better with them off. For luck.

She stepped into the circle.

The drums of the Goblin Market were her own heartbeat in her ears. The Market was in her blood and bones. It didn’t matter where she was: She could dance a Market night into being.

And the demon would come.

She danced and made the fall of her dark hair the night, the drape of her skirts the drapes on the Market stalls. The swing of her hips and the arch of her back were the dance. Nobody could take this away, and nobody could resist her.

Come buy.

“I call on Anzu the fly-by-night, the bird who brings messages of death, the one who remembers. I call on the one they called Aeolos, ruler of the winds, in Greece; I call on Ulalena of the jungles. I call as my mother called before me: I call and will not be denied. I call on Anzu.”

The dark cloud of her hair veiled her view of the room for a moment after she was done.

When that brief darkness had passed, there was already a light rising. There was a sound between a crackle and a whisper.

Sin felt as if she was standing in the ring on a giant stove, and someone had just turned it on.

The flames rose, flickering and pale. They seemed hotter than the flames at the Market.

The demon rose as if drawn into view by fiery puppet strings. Anzu was trying to mock her and scare her at once, Sin saw. His wings were sheets of living flame, sparks falling from them and turning into feathers.

He was wearing all black, like the dancer boys did at the Goblin Market to contrast with the girls’ bright costumes.

Fire and feathers were raining down on her, and she didn’t have a partner.

Anzu tilted his head, feather patterns shining in his golden hair. She felt all the things she usually did when standing with a demon: the cold malice, the abiding fury. There was something else today, though: a kind of startled curiosity that left her startled in turn.

“What are you doing here?” Anzu asked.

“I’m here for answers,” Sin said in a level voice, and kept her head held high. “As usual. I will not take off my talisman, and I will not break the circle. Other than that, you can name your price.”

“Is that so,” said Anzu. He looked out over the flames at the little wooden cellar, the open books on the tables with their pages curling as if trying to get away from him, and the faces of her three customers. “I don’t think you know what a prize you have bought,” he told them. “This is the princess of the Goblin Market, their heiress, their very best. Throwing her life away for a song.”

The women looked at Sin in a way she did not want. She was meant to be a beautiful tool for them. They weren’t paying her to be a person.

Sin knew the demon was only trying to provoke her, but she could not help her own anger, and the curl of Anzu’s lovely predator’s mouth let her know he could feel it.

“Not for a song,” she informed him. “For a price. What’s yours?”

“Let’s put ourselves on an equal footing, shall we?” Anzu’s smile made it clear how much she was degraded, how far the princess of the Goblin Market had fallen. Sin’s rage burned, and Anzu’s eyes gleamed. “Three true answers in exchange for three true answers. Doesn’t that sound fair?”

“Agreed.”

Merris had always said Sin wasn’t good at looking ahead. Well, let it be so. She chose to act, give the customers what they wanted. She would think about the price later.

The woman with the red salon hair was the first to speak, her voice ringing out, obviously that of a born organizer.

“Does my husband love somebody else?”

Anzu looked over at her face. For a moment his eyes did not reflect otherworldly lights, but the ordinary lamps of this ordinary room; for a moment his gaze was warm.

“No,” said the demon. “But he stopped loving you six years ago.”

The woman’s faint beginning of a smile shattered. Anzu’s savage pleasure coursed through Sin’s veins like poison.

The next woman spoke, the one without jewelry or salon hair. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick.

They saw what happened to everyone else, but they always thought the demon’s answers would be different for them. They never seemed to learn that the truth was always cruel.

“Will they find out what I—what I did?”

The woman’s voice was a thread that had become knotted, a twist in her throat.

“Yes,” Anzu answered. The woman sagged as if she had been dealt far too hard a blow, but that wasn’t enough for Anzu. “But you asked the wrong question,” he continued relentlessly. “Will they find out tomorrow? Will they find out after you die? You’ll never know when.”

He gave her a smile as brilliant as a lit match hitting gasoline. Then his attention swung to the last woman, who had real diamonds at her ears but rather a nice face. She looked uncertain under the demon’s attention, and Sin thought for a moment she might decide to be wise.

As always, desire was stronger than wisdom.

The woman took a deep breath and asked, “Did she forgive me before she died?”

Anzu’s cruel delight washed through Sin, like the cold rush of an ocean wave with knives in it.

“No.”

The last woman began to cry. Anzu turned away from them all, making it clear he was bored. He shook back his hair; a cascade of sparks becoming feathers drifted through the air, like a flurry of golden autumn leaves.

He wasn’t actually all that good at showmanship, Sin thought. He relied far too much on props.

“And now, dancer,” Anzu said, his eyes on her alone. “Now it’s my turn.”

He lifted a hand. He couldn’t touch her, not while she wore her talisman and kept within her lines, but he wanted the shadow of his hand on her, talons curled, a looming threat.

Sin lifted her own hand, fingers curled to mirror his, and made a dance of it. She’d danced with one demon already today. She could dance with this one too. They walked in a circle within a circle, the shadows of their hands touching on the firelit wall.

If she didn’t answer every question with absolute truth, he had the right to kill her.

“What happened to you, to reduce you to this?”

Sin laughed at him. “Nothing reduces me unless I let it.”

“You haven’t answered me.”

“Hold your horses, demon. I will.”

It was none of his business. But it was just possible that, along with wanting to trap her, he was interested. She had been summoning him for years.

“The Market found out that my sister is a—that she has strong magical powers,” Sin said. “Very strong. She couldn’t be allowed to stay. And I couldn’t let her go, not to the magicians. She’s mine. She and my brother stay with me. And they need to eat.”

“The princess in exile,” Anzu said. “That must hurt.”

“Is that a question?” Sin demanded.

Anzu laughed. The flames of the demon’s circle leaped and danced with the joy of hurting her. “No. Don’t be so impatient. I am letting you off easy, you know. When and where did you last see Hnikarr?”

“You’re not letting me off easy,” Sin said. “You just have more to think about than possessing one dancer. Like revenge. I saw him less than an hour ago, at his home. I’m staying with him. We were training together.”

“Is that what the kids are calling it these days,” Anzu mused.

Sin smiled at him scornfully, and Anzu’s mouth twisted, showing nothing but darkness beyond his lips, no more teeth than a bird had in its beak.

“Last question pays for all, falling dancer,” he said. “Are you in love?”

Sin flinched, her hand pulling back on reflex as if they had touched and he had burned her. Anzu lunged at her, but Sin was too well trained to fall for that trick. She stood unmoved and stared into the demon’s eyes, shimmering with light and shadows but ultimately empty.

He was beautiful, a dazzling gold mirage amid the flames, and he conjured a vision of another demon standing just this close to her, shadow-black hair falling into a face like a sculpture and a chill in the air all around them.

Beautiful boys had stood looking into her eyes before. None of them had ever touched her like the sight of someone at the window with her baby brother, trying to make sure she got to rest a little longer.

“Well?” the demon whispered, calling her back from a certain smile in the sunlight to the crackling flames and his bleak eyes.

Sin wrapped her arms around herself.

“Yes,” she whispered back. “I am.”

Anzu grinned. “I thought so.”

The demon was dwindling, the flames of the circle winking out, and Sin said, “It’s not who you think.”

Even Anzu’s wings were going dark, so she could hardly see them against the black of his clothes. The only light left was that of his hungry, watching eyes.

“No?”

“No,” said Sin. “I don’t think demons are very lovable.” Anzu said, “I think you’re right.”

Then he disappeared, down into darkness. All that was left was a chalk circle on the floor, and the echo of his last laugh from the walls.

Ana the bookshop owner counted the money out into Sin’s hand. One of the women stirred, as if she would have liked to protest and say she hadn’t received what she wanted, but she did not speak.

Nick’s phone rang in Sin’s pocket as she was going up the steps, and she answered it.

“Cynthia,” said Alan, and the human world came back in a warm rush, the performance over.

Sin gripped the phone tight. “Hi.”

“Nick said you had the phone. Toby’s sleeping, and Nick and Mae are both here, so I thought I would go buy some books that might help us and collect Lydie from school. Can I pick you up on the way?”

“Yes,” Sin said. She left the shop and sat on the pavement, refusing to let her legs collapse underneath her, making herself sit gracefully, her skirt in a pale pool around her. “I’m outside a bookshop now. Come get me.”

9

My Mother’s Daughter

SIN HAD BEEN WORRIED ALAN WOULD NOTICE SOMETHING WAS wrong. She had not been expecting him to be distracted by his own obvious delight, filled with a kind of hushed awe, like a child ushered into a sweetshop and told he could have anything he wanted if he would be quiet.

“These are real Elizabethan spell books. It was an amazing age for magic, you know.”

Alan ran slow, tender fingertips down one book’s spine. Sin had a little flashback to the morning, and then put herself on notice. She might have had a revelation, and she might even go so far as to admit this behavior was adorable, but she was not prepared to develop a full-on nerd fetish.

She smiled up at him, and was fairly sure she pulled off mysterious rather than besotted.

“You’re not one of those crazed conspiracy nuts who thinks Shakespeare was a magician, are you?”

Alan’s face lit with his smile in return. “Some people might say the theory isn’t crazy but the only way to explain Shakespeare’s extraordinary time management.”

“Some people might be crazy,” Sin said, dancing backward with a volume in hand. “Just a thought!”

She raised her voice a touch too loud, and Ana the bookseller looked up and caught her eye. Sin fell silent and tried not to think about the cellar, where the smell of balefire must still be lingering. She looked back at Alan, wanting his smile, but he was looking at the shelves.

Sin went and sat on the warm radiator in the corner, tucked up behind the shelves on New Age spirituality, and breathed in and out. She wished she could do some actual exercises, but doing the splits in a bookshop was bound to attract attention.

She just sat with her head bowed for a little while, then got up and went to find Alan.

He was standing with his hip propped against the bookshelves, rescuing a book from a high shelf for a tiny brunette with glasses.

“Anything for a woman who likes Poe,” he was saying, which Sin could have done without hearing: She could already tell from his attentive stoop and his smile that he was flirting.

Sin slinked her way to his side with all due haste, and slipped an arm around his waist. “Hi,” she said throatily, tipping her face up to meet Alan’s slightly startled eyes.

“Hi?” he said, as if he had some reservations about the word.

His shoulder was at exactly the right height for her chin, Sin discovered, as she rested it there and beamed at the little brunette.

“Hey, I’m Cynthia,” she said. “You looking for something? You should let us help you!”

The girl got the message and gave a small nod. “No, I think it’s in another section. Thanks anyway.”

She looked a bit disappointed. As well she might: Sin really doubted that any of the other sections had bookish redheads.

“What was that about?”

With anyone else, Sin might have been able to say, “What was what?” and convince him of her innocence. But lies didn’t work on Alan; she knew better than to play a player.

She disengaged from him and kept her eyes downcast, suddenly scared he could see right through her.

“Can’t waste time dilly-dallying,” she said. “We’re on a mission.”

She was extremely grateful when Alan did not pursue the matter. He went back to browsing instead, and it was not long before he was ready to buy his books and go.

That gave her time to think.

He’d been flirting with the little brunette. She’d seen him with Mae, too, recalled with sudden, vivid clarity a time when he’d taken off his talisman and put it in Mae’s hand, the long line of his fingers gently closing Mae’s over the necklace.

He’d never once flirted with Sin.

Why should he, though? The same night he had almost stroked Mae’s hand closed, Sin had spat in his face.

There was an alternative theory, of course. She might not have given him any encouragement back in the day, but she had been throwing herself at him for weeks now.

He’d had plenty of chances to flirt with her. If he’d been at all interested in doing so.

Sin got into the passenger seat of the car, and when he slid into the driving seat she said, “So did you pick up Mae in a bookshop?”

She was so smooth.

She tilted a teasing smile toward him to make it seem more like a friendly question. He smiled faintly back.

“I met Mae in a bookshop,” Alan said. “If that’s what you mean.”

“I just wondered if that was how you rolled. Finding dates in bookshops. New one on me.”

“Well, I do work in a bookshop,” Alan said. His voice was warm and relaxed, a little puzzled, but he hadn’t turned on the engine. Sin wondered if that meant something.

“Time management,” she remarked. “Like Shakespeare.”

“‘We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone,’” Alan said, his voice slightly different, touching the words gently the way his hands touched books. She thought it was a quote. “Well, that,” he continued, his voice back to normal. “And it is an easy way to find girls who read.”

“Right,” Sin said.

Girls who were smart.

“Girls who I’d have something in common with,” Alan went on. “Something to weigh in the balance before they meet Nick.”

That last part wasn’t quite a joke, Sin noticed.

“Not that much in common,” she said. “Since they wouldn’t know about demons, or magic, or the Market. Ever tell any of them?”

“No,” said Alan. “That’s why—that’s why I thought Mae was so perfect.”

Sin looked across the tiny, unbridgeable space in the car between them. Alan had turned his face away.

“She came to us to save her brother,” Alan said. “I could—I could understand that. She found out about everything because of her brother. I didn’t draw her into anything. And I could help her.”

Sin’s voice went sharp. “Oh, so it’s vulnerable women?”

“No,” Alan snapped. “Mae’s not—”

“She’s not,” Sin said. “And you wouldn’t like it if she was. But you, with Nick and that mother of his, with kids? Has anyone ever loved you without needing you?”

The question exploded out of her. Alan didn’t even turn his head.

“My dad,” he said. He drew his wallet out of his pocket and flipped it open.

Sin peered at the photograph tucked into the plastic slip. It was an old picture, with a white curl at one corner. It showed two kids, Alan thin and inquisitive-looking under a mop of hair, a very short Nick, and Daniel Ryves standing braced with his arms over his chest. Sin remembered him a little, a big burly guy with kind eyes. Everyone had liked him.

“He looks like Nick,” Sin said. “I mean, Nick stands like he did.”

Alan slid a single look over to her, but it was enough. She was surprised to see that she’d somehow said the right thing.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, Nick does.”

“And your mother?”

“I couldn’t help her,” Alan said. “She died when I was four. I remember how the world was when she was alive, how normal everything seemed, how warm and safe.”

“So, normal girls.” Sin paused. “And what were you going to do with Mae, after you saved her?”

“I was hoping she would love me,” Alan said.

He was back to staring out the window.

“She didn’t?”

“It wasn’t her,” Alan said. “It was me. Like I said—she was perfect. She’s strong, she can handle anything about this world, she can handle Nick, and I can…I can read people. I can maneuver them. She liked me a little. There was some hope. But instead of being honest with her I lied to her for Nick, without a second thought. She was everything I’d been dreaming about, that I thought I could be happy if I found. She was the girl I could have had a normal relationship with, the girl I should have been able to trust. She was perfect. Which means there’s something wrong with me.”

Sin nodded. “Did you think you were just going to change back?”

To the kid he’d been when he was four years old, like someone in a fairy tale waking up from a long sleep. As if it worked that way.

“I think,” Alan began, and stopped. “I feel as if I made a bargain. When Nick and I were kids. I wanted, so badly, for him to belong enough in the human world. Not to be human, but to be happy, to have people around him be safe and for people to love him. If he doesn’t have a soul, I thought—I wanted to give him mine. I feel as if I did.”

“Do you regret it?” Sin asked. “For Mae?”

Alan stopped looking out of the window. He didn’t look at her, either. He looked straight ahead, and turned the key in the ignition.

She caught the small smile all the same. “No,” he murmured. “But like I said. There’s something wrong with me.”

They peeled away from the pavement, finally leaving that bookshop behind them.

“I think you’re all right,” Sin told him. “I mean, you know, irredeemably messed up, but in a charming way.”

Alan laughed. “Thanks.”

“I’m glad we made friends before my entire life collapsed around my ears, though,” Sin said. “I don’t want to be your latest little kid in danger, or kitten up a tree to be rescued, or whatever. Speaking of which, here’s my half of the money for the books.”

She plucked a ten out of her sports bra and held it out to Alan between two fingers.

Alan almost drove into a wall.

“Watch it, I don’t want to be rescued from a car crash!”

“Where did you get that?”

“Oh, I mugged someone.”

“Cynthia,” Alan said, his voice twanging like a string about to snap. Anyone else would have had to guess or at least have made her confirm what he already knew, but not this boy. “You could have been killed.”

“Nah.” Sin waved her hand. “She was an old lady. Feeble.”

“Seriously,” Alan said.

“Seriously,” she said. “You’re the guy who wants to look after everyone he meets. Don’t tell me I can’t look after my own family. Don’t you dare.”

Alan looked briefly exasperated before he tried to look persuasive and patient.

“I want to help you.”

“And you did,” Sin told him. “And I appreciate it. But I don’t like it. I can’t bear owing someone as much as I owe you, not for long. I’d rather take some chances.”

“Surely I can be concerned that you’ve decided to adopt a job that kills half its practitioners in their first year.”

“Yeah,” Sin said. “Be concerned. Knock yourself out.”

“You ever think that you might be taking on too much, when other people would be happy to share the load?”

“I’m sorry,” said Sin. “Is this the inhabitant of number one, Glass House Lane? Sir, I think you should consider putting down your stone.”

Alan nodded. “You make me think of a play.”

Sin thought that sounded very promising. She seemed to recall that Shakespeare had said a lot of things vaguely along the lines of “We should date.”

“Yeah?”

“Dryden wrote a play called The Indian Emperor, the sequel to The Indian Queen.”

“Oh Alan, this had better not be going to any gross ‘you’re so exotic’ places.”

“No,” Alan said, very fast.

“Good,” Sin told him firmly.

“There’s this bit in it with a princess being threatened by the villain with death or, um, a villainous alternative. And the princess tells him to get lost, of course.” Alan turned the corner cautiously, making their way out of the borough. “She says, ‘My mother’s daughter knows not how to fear.’”

She had been right before. He did have a special voice for quoting.

“Oh,” Sin said.

“When you were standing in front of the Goblin Market,” Alan said, “with your sister behind you, I thought of that line.”

“That sounds like a pretty good play. You have it at home?”

“I do,” Alan admitted. “Why?”

Sin raised her eyebrows. “I thought I might read it.”

“Really?”

He didn’t have to look so surprised. Sin felt uncomfortable and irritated again, felt as she had for years at the mere mention of Alan Ryves.

“I can read, you know,” she snapped. “I’m not stupid.”

“I know that,” Alan snapped back. “I was stupid.”

It was a strange enough admission from him that Sin found herself tilting her head to look at him from a different angle. “Were you?” she murmured. “How?”

“I thought you were exactly what you choose to appear as in a certain context,” Alan said. “I should have known better than that. Me of all people.”

In a certain context. At the Goblin Market.

And then there had been the battlefield, where he saved her brother. There had been the school, where they looked at each other, and because they were playing different parts than they usually did, they both saw that they were playing a part and maybe saw each other for the first time.

No sooner had she seen, but all this had started.

“Why do you keep calling me Cynthia?” Sin demanded. She knew that this was no way to make him come around to seeing her the way she wanted him to, but she couldn’t help it. She wondered if this was how he felt when he got reminded of his leg. “I know you used to do it to annoy me, because you wanted to make it clear you thought it was a dumb name and being a dancer wasn’t something you took seriously. But if things are different now, why do you keep calling me that?”

“Well,” Alan said. “I mean, the Market people who knew you as a kid call you Thea. And they call you Cynthia at school, and Sin for a stage name. Cynthia has all those names in it. Why would I want to pick just one?”

Sin thought back to quite a few guys who had told her solemnly that they wanted to “get to know the real you.” As if they deserved a prize for wanting one color and not a kaleidoscope.

Of course, none of them had been as interesting as this liar.

“Okay, Clive,” she murmured.

“I’m glad we have that sorted out, Bambi.”

They reached Lydie’s school in okay time, though Alan had to park on a bit of pavement broken up by the roots of a tree.

“So you’re not normal,” Sin said. “You want to take on crazy burdens, and you lie all the time, and you think you might not have a soul. You’re terribly strange. And you thought going after normal girls would work out?”

The car was still, but Sin’s side was tipped slightly toward Alan’s. His voice was wary.

“What are you saying, Cynthia?”

“I’m saying, try someone terribly strange.”

Alan glanced at her, and Sin moved as if that was her cue. She unwound from her car seat and toward him, her hand on his shoulder, his face tilted up to hers. His eyes were very wide.

“Try me,” Sin suggested softly, and bent toward him.

Alan turned away an instant before their lips touched, and stared determinedly out the window. “Cynthia,” he said, “we’ve been through this.”

She was frozen, hovering over him for a minute. Then she scrambled back to her own seat and stared out of her own window.

“Right,” she said. The school doors were pushed open by the first rush of kids and Sin repeated herself, woodenly, as if there was a chance he hadn’t heard her before. “Right.”

Sin would have thought she’d be thankful for any distraction, but she wasn’t feeling any significant gratitude about having to get out of the car after twenty minutes of waiting and collect Lydie from the infirmary.

“She had a headache,” the nurse said. “She seems anxious about something.”

Sin got into the back seat with Lydie for the drive home, which was a reprieve, and she and Alan put on a wonderful show for Lydie about their marvelous bookshop adventures all the way there.

Lydie was looking slightly more cheerful as they took the lift up, which meant that of course they could hear Toby screaming through the front door.

Sin put her shoulder to it and pushed it open as soon as Alan’s key turned, running in and grabbing him from Mae’s arms. Toby reached out insistent arms as soon as he saw her, twining around her neck like an octopus assassin who specialized in strangling his victims. He bawled a couple more times in her ear, hoarse barks like a seal, rubbing his snotty face on her neck.

“Oh, thank God you’re here,” Mae said devoutly, collapsing against the wall. Her face was a brighter pink than her hair. “I hate kids. No, Toby, I don’t mean it, please don’t start crying again. They’re fine from a distance. Lovely! I love them. From a distance.”

“He just needs to be changed,” Sin said, bearing him off to do just that.

Behind her, she heard Mae say faintly, “Oh my God.”

When she came out, Toby balanced on her hip and regarding the world beyond her shoulder with a distrustful air, she heard Alan in the sitting room reproving Nick for not helping Mae.

“I tried,” said Nick, who was stretched out on the sofa reading a magazine. He had found a shirt somewhere, Sin noticed. “He cried a lot more when I was in the room. I think babies are like animals. They can sense my demonic aura of evil.”

“I want a demonic aura of evil,” Mae muttered, still looking traumatized.

“Too bad, Mavis, it is all mine,” Nick told her. “So I can’t babysit.”

“It would be irresponsible to leave you with Toby if you upset him,” Alan said thoughtfully.

Nick gave him a brief smile. “That’s why you’re my favorite.”

“But it would be irresponsible not to do something about this demonic aura of evil,” Alan continued, still thoughtful. “I mean, as part of my ongoing quest to acclimatize you to human ways. I think I’m going to offer your services as a dog walker to the neighborhood.”

Nick looked up warily from his magazine.

“You know Mrs. Mitchell doesn’t like to leave the house, Nicholas,” Alan said. “And she has those twin toy poodles. It would be a good deed.”

“I can smite you,” Nick grumbled. “Anytime I like.”

Mae and Alan were the ones who did the best research, so after a quick discussion, Nick and Sin went off to start dinner. It soon emerged that Nick was better at it, so Sin was delegated to chopping vegetables.

Which would have been fine if she hadn’t been afraid of dropping the knife on her baby sister’s head. Toby was settled happily, pretending to read with Alan, but Lydie stayed with Sin, clinging to her skirt. It reminded Sin of the way Lydie had been after Sin had come back from Mezentius House, once Mama was dead.

“Do you want to help me with the cooking?” she asked.

Lydie pressed her face against Sin’s hip. “No,” she said, muffled. “I’m fine here. I don’t want to be any more trouble.”

“Why is she scared now?” Nick asked, sounding bored. He was making white sauce for the lasagna.

“There could be magicians looking for me,” Lydie told him in aggrieved tones.

“I’m a demon,” said Nick. “You’ve heard about me, haven’t you? How I can make someone’s insides boil just by wanting it? Demons are supposed to be humanity’s worst dreams come true.”

“Nick,” Sin said warningly.

“So you don’t have to worry about magicians,” Nick continued calmly. “They’re not scary. Not compared to me. And if they come, I’ll kill them all.”

Sin made a meaningful gesture with her knife so Nick could see it. He shut up.

When Sin had to run to the bathroom for toilet paper to use as kitchen towels, though, Lydie did not follow her and trip her up. Instead she elected to stay in the kitchen. Sin heard her saying in an interested tone, “How many people have you killed?”

Kids.

She came back in time for the educational lecture about dumping bodies. Sin hoped she was not in for another talk with Lydie’s teachers about her marvelous but disturbing imagination.

After dinner it was Mae who saved Sin from having to look at Alan. She suggested that Sin try on all the clothes she’d brought, in case some of them didn’t fit.

Most of them fit pretty well. Sin was vaguely surprised.

Mae, lying on her stomach with Lydie on Alan’s bed playing fashion critics, with a book open and ignored before her, grinned. “They’re mostly my mother’s clothes,” she said and her grin faded. “Annabel was skinny like you.”

Sin smoothed her hands down a white tennis skirt.

“I have money now,” she said. “Are you sure you want to—”

“Yes, of course, like I’m ever going to stop eating and fit into them,” Mae said. “I want you to have them. They look good on you.”

Sin looked at her brown eyes and wondered how rich you had to be, how sure the basics were always coming your way, before you felt comfortable giving without counting the cost and demanding a lot from the world.

Demanding a lot from the world could otherwise be thought of as ambition, which was a pretty desirable quality in a leader. Sin shoved the thought viciously aside.

No matter how far Sin might be from the Goblin Market, she wasn’t going to surrender it to Mae in her head.

Sin pulled another garment out from Mae’s bag and saw it was a deep blue silk robe with the price tag still attached.

“Mae!”

“I happened to see it when I was shoe shopping,” Mae said. “It reminds me of the red robe you used to have. It’s gorgeous, you’re gorgeous, you should have it.”

As if it was that easy.

“Thank you,” Sin said, slipping it on. She climbed onto the bed as Lydie clambered off to investigate the bag.

Mae jostled Sin’s bare leg with her jeans-clad one. “Think nothing of it.”

“Is Merris back yet?” Sin asked, now their heads were close together and they could speak quietly.

She wished she could take it back as soon as she’d said it. Mae would have told her right away if Merris had returned. Sin knew better than this.

She just couldn’t help wanting Merris to come home, in a desperate, pathetic way, as if everything would be okay then. When she knew it wouldn’t change anything.

“No,” Mae said, and stared fixedly down at her open book. “This is about the enchantments laid on magical objects,” she continued after a moment, surging ahead with resolution. “There’s a chapter about breaking spells meant to be unbreakable. Like, for locks, or magical chains, or—”

“Jewelry,” Sin said.

Mae smiled. “Yeah. Celeste Drake’s pearls. The suggestions are to break the thing surrounding it. Like if a magic lock’s on a treasure chest, stove in the top of the chest instead. Or if the magical object’s locked on a person—you can kill them. It should come off then.”

Sin leaned her head against Mae’s. “Ah.”

“That works for me,” Mae told her, voice hard. “It really does.”

Sin kept her head by Mae’s, speaking low and tracing the vein running along the inside of Mae’s arm. “You should know,” she said. “I don’t want to take your revenge away from you. But I will. Getting that pearl could get me back into the Market. It could even get my sister accepted. If I get the chance to take it, I will.”

“Then you have two good reasons to get it,” Mae whispered in her ear. “But I have three.”

They both had the Market to gain. Mae had a mother to avenge and Sin a sister to protect.

Mae’s third reason came to Sin like a dark cloud on the horizon, changing the whole landscape into something dim and menacing.

Of course. Mae was carrying a demon’s mark. She was being watched and controlled.

That pearl, the barrier to the power of demons, meant Mae’s freedom.

“Why’d you ever take that mark?” Sin whispered back. “Did he make you?”

Mae stared at Sin. “How do you know?” she whispered.

Sin shrugged, her shoulder pushing against Mae’s. “Nick told me.”

“Did he?” Mae shut her dark eyes. “It was my idea. I wanted him to. I asked him to. I just wanted to do something. At the time, I was feeling helpless and I had to do something. If I did the wrong thing, it’s up to me to fix it.”

Sin raised her eyebrows, even though Mae could not see her do it. “If you did the wrong thing?”

“Another demon was coming for me,” Mae said. “Anzu.”

Sin’s body was lying alongside Mae’s, so there was no way for Sin to hide the sudden tension that ran all through her muscles. Mae opened her eyes.

“You know him?”

She remembered Anzu’s smile today, as she had told him she did not think demons were lovable. She’d had a moment to collect herself, though, and that was long enough for her to be able to put on a show.

Sin twisted her hair around her finger and gave Mae a jaded smile. “Honey, I know them all.”

“Then you know why, if any demon was going to have their mark on me,” Mae said, “I wanted it to be Nick.”

“You trust him?”

Mae hesitated and drew back to meet Sin’s eyes, her gaze level and serious, to show how much she meant it. “I trust him.”

“Well,” Sin said, her hand still on Mae’s arm, “that makes one of us.”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Mae asked. “No matter how I feel about him, nobody should have that kind of power over me. So I’m going to get the pearl, and nobody will have power over me again.”

“So,” Sin said, and rolled away from Mae, lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling. “Consider me warned.”

Mae left. Sin stayed and watched Lydie play dress-up for a while, making sure she seemed all right, and then she put her clothes back on and returned to the living room, where Mae and Alan were sitting on one sofa together. Sin looked away to see Nick lying on the other sofa, back to his magazine.

“You might help,” Mae told him.

“I wish I could,” Nick drawled. “But I find reading so challenging.”

Mae directed her accusing glare at the magazine.

“I’m really just looking at the pictures,” Nick said, and smirked. “They’re very… absorbing.”

Mae jumped up off her sofa and snatched the magazine from his hands. “Nick, there are children here!”

She spared a moment to actually look at the magazine. Sin was able to see the cover.

It was about cars.

Nick propped one elbow on the back of the couch, pulling at his own hair. He gave Mae a slow smile.

“I know,” he murmured, his voice a dark, conspiratorial whisper. “Scandalous.”

Mae flushed slightly and hit Nick on the head with the magazine.

Sin gestured for Nick to get his legs off the sofa so she could sit down. He scowled and complied, sinking low against the sofa cushions with his magazine.

“Give me back my phone.”

“Sorry,” Sin said, forking it over. “Thanks for it. And thanks for letting us stay another night. We’ll be out of your hair soon.”

“It’s fine,” Nick muttered. “Alan’s always bringing home strays to bother me.”

Mae glared. “Hey.”

“You annoy me less than you used to,” Nick told her, and then after a pause, “Still quite a lot, though.”

“I wish I could say the same,” Mae said. “The annoyance just grows and grows.”

“Toss me a book, Mae, I’ll help,” Sin offered, and Mae turned away from Nick and did so.

After wrestling with Elizabethan spelling for a while, Sin looked over at Nick. Lydie was sitting at his feet, staring intently. Nick was reading his magazine, apparently oblivious of his devoted suitor.

“You said demons are meant to be humanity’s darkest dream come true,” Sin said.

“It’s a theory. Alan tells me them,” Nick said.

“But,” Sin said, “don’t you come from, you know, hell?”

“We’re demons,” Nick told her, glancing up from his magazine. “Not devils. I know exactly as much about hell or heaven or where I come from as you do.”

“But demons don’t die,” Sin said. “So you’ll never know anything else.”

“No.”

“If we go to a better place—”

“Then I can’t follow any of you. I presume I go back to the demon world when this body dies,” Nick said in a soft snarl. “But for now I’m here, and I don’t want anywhere better. Here is fine.”

He looked at the other sofa, then turned back restlessly to his magazine. Sin looked at him and felt almost shocked. It had never occurred to her that Nick could be happy.

Here in a tiny flat, getting white sauce on his leather wrist cuffs, lounging around reading a magazine with his brother and Mae close by. This was what the demon wanted.

Heart enough to make a home for a demon, Sin thought, her eyes straying to Alan again, and she hated herself for the abiding little ache of longing.

She was very flexible, so she could have kicked herself in the head with relative ease, but she doubted it would help.

That night Sin told stories to Toby and Lydie until they were asleep, and slept on the floor by their bed, borrowing a sofa cushion to use as a pillow. The next day Alan had to go to work and Nick had to go to school. Sin spent her time walking with Toby through Willesden, going through charity shops finding clothes for Lydie and Toby and even a uniform for herself, though it was two sizes too large. She bought the cheapest phone she could find.

She spent the afternoon checking out the prices of flats and the cost of day care. She had just enough for a deposit.

When Merris came back, she’d see that Sin had managed without her.

Alan called the house and offered to take a break from work to collect Lydie. Sin turned him down, but said it would be great if he could sit in the house and eat a sandwich or something while Toby took his nap.

“Then I can go get Lydie myself,” Sin finished.

“It’s really no bother,” Alan began.

“And I really want to do it myself,” Sin said.

It hadn’t been a bad day, Sin thought as she walked up the street to Lydie’s school. She’d got a lot done.

She was a bit late, so she wasn’t surprised to see Lydie already outside the school.

She was extremely surprised to see that Lydie was with a tall, dark boy. Every muscle she had went tense.

Then he turned, and she saw his profile.

It was that boy Seb, from the night of the attack. It was a magician.

Sin drew her knife and charged, hitting their linked hands so Seb’s grip broke. Then she wheeled on him.

“Lydie,” she ordered. “Run.”

“Watch out,” said Seb, hands lifting. Her knife was at his throat: She could kill him before he threw magic. She was almost sure.

He didn’t try to throw magic. He wasn’t looking at her.

He was looking over her shoulder, Sin realized, and she spun an instant too late to do anything but see Helen the magician, a burst of white light, and then nothing at all.

10

The Queen’s Corsair

SIN WOKE SLOWLY TO THE SENSATION OF A FLOOR LURCHING beneath her. She was grateful for the feeling. It warned her as she slowly returned to consciousness, and she did not have to open her eyes. She knew exactly where she was.

In the hands of the magicians.

Aboard their boat.

Sin did not allow herself to move, and tried not to let even her breathing change. There was a rug beneath her, soft and possibly fake fur, and both her wrists were secured with a chain. She tested them, easing her hands in tiny increments so it would look like the involuntary movements of sleep, trying to make sure the chains would not even clink.

She could move her hands with relative ease. But she couldn’t get them out.

Her talisman was burning against her skin. Sin paid very little attention to that: In the lair of the magicians, of course there would be magic and demons.

There were other people breathing in the room, at least four people.

Having absorbed all that she could pretending to be unconscious, Sin opened her eyes.

She was lying on a fluffy white rug. The chains on her wrists were twined around a table leg, and the table leg was fastened to the floor.

There was no way to use that to escape, then, but she worked the chains farther up the table leg so she could crouch rather than lie on the rug. She was able to maneuver her hands so they rested on the tabletop, in a futile pretense that she was not chained.

Her prison was a beautiful sitting room, decorated with antique chairs with fragile golden legs, large square mirrors, and small round windows. There were six magicians and one messenger in the room.

Lydie was not there.

Three of the four people sitting on the antique chairs, Sin knew. One was Gerald Lynch, the former leader of the Obsidian Circle, which had joined up with the Aventurine Circle a couple of months ago. He was looking at her when her gaze fell on him, his eyes gray and watchful, but almost as soon as their gazes met he leaned back in his chair and his eyes looked lighter, blue and almost friendly, as if he bore her no ill will and had not a care in the world.

He did not look like a man who missed being in power, or resented his new leader. He looked relaxed, his sandy head tipped back and his legs crossed at the ankles. He looked utterly harmless.

Gerald put on a show better than any other magician Sin had ever seen.

On Gerald’s right sat a gray-haired woman in a twinset and pearls. She looked like nothing so much as a very efficient secretary, death to improper filing personified. Sin didn’t know her name.

On Gerald’s left was Celeste Drake. The leader of the Aventurine Circle was small and fine-boned, a dove of a woman. Until you noticed her clear, cold eyes.

What Sin mostly noticed was the pearl, dull black in the white hollow of her throat.

The safeguard against demons, the leadership of the Goblin Market, was in the room with Sin, and there was no way on earth she could reach it.

Sin spared a glance for the other magicians: Helen was standing up against one wall, looking over at Sin. Their eyes met for a moment, and Sin could not read her expression.

Seb was standing against the other wall, his dark head bowed, and there was a boy at the far end of the room, curled up in a window seat. He was turning over an object in his hands, something that Sin could not quite make out but that kept catching the light.

And then there was the last person in the room, the person Sin had been trying not to see, the way she might avoid the eyes of someone she knew well in an audience, lest they catch her eye and she lose her nerve.

Phyllis, who had run the chimes stall since Sin was born, with her kind smile and her gray hair always getting tangled up with her earrings, who had such a fondness for Alan. Who knew where Lydie went to school.

Phyllis’s hair was getting tangled with circle earrings with knives in them now.

Mae had been right.

There was a spy at the Goblin Market.

She flinched and looked at her hands when Sin looked at her. Sin looked away.

Her survey of the room complete, Sin looked back at Celeste. Celeste smiled at her, the smile sweet and quickly gone as sugar dropped in hot water.

“Welcome aboard the Queen’s Corsair, Cynthia Davies,” she said. “I have good news. We’re going to let you live.”

“That is good news,” said Sin. “Where’s my sister?”

“And we’re going to let you go free,” Celeste continued. “Now you’ve been exiled from the Market, you’re not a threat anymore, are you?”

Sin smiled. “Unchain me and find out.”

Celeste leaned forward in her chair. “You’re not much of anything anymore. But you did protect one of our own. We don’t forget things like that.”

“My sister isn’t one of yours,” Sin snarled. “Where is she?”

“We’ll bring her to you in a moment,” Celeste said. “And when we do, I want you to tell her that she will be staying with us. That this is the best place for her, the only place for her, and you don’t want her to live with you any longer. Tell her she belongs with her own kind.”

Over Celeste’s shoulder Sin saw the boy, Seb, flinch. He didn’t look at Celeste or at Sin, though. He just kept staring at the ground.

For her part, Sin kept staring at the pearl. She did not want to meet those cold eyes.

“We do not usually take in children so young, but considering how gifted she is and how terrible her circumstances are…” Celeste shrugged. “There is absolutely nothing you can give her, is there? Except this. Make the parting easy, and be sure she will be treated well. She’s going to be a great magician. You should be proud.”

Sin’s lip curled. “Maybe she can start killing innocent people before she hits ten. Wouldn’t that be something?”

“If you gave her up to the magicians,” Phyllis said in a low, rapid voice, the voice of a woman making excuses, “then you could come back to the Market.”

“Your concern for the Market is very touching,” Sin murmured back.

“You should do as we ask for her sake,” Celeste continued gently. “But if you don’t see that, you should do it for your own. You should do it for your baby brother. What will happen to him if we kill you?”

Sin spared a moment to be deeply and terribly thankful that she had left Toby safe with Alan.

“I know what will happen to Lydie if I abandon her,” she said. “I won’t do it.”

Celeste’s hand twitched a little, a touch of pale magic glinting on the surface of her pearl. She did not lash out, though. She stood instead, straightening her skirt.

“You’re not important enough to sit around arguing with, Cynthia,” she told her, with a pitying smile. “You can have some time to think about how little this show of bravado will get you. When I come back, if you’re still being stubborn, I’ll give you to the demons. They took your mother, didn’t they? Think about that.”

She headed for the door, making a small gesture, more waving them forward than beckoning, for the others to follow her.

Phyllis was the first to leave, getting out of Sin’s sight as fast as she could.

“You two stay and watch her, okay?” Gerald said. He crossed the room toward the boy in the window seat. “Okay?” he repeated gently.

He reached out a hand to touch the boy’s shoulder; the boy drew away without looking at him.

Gerald reacted so smoothly it seemed like it hadn’t happened, nodding as if he’d received confirmation of his orders and looking at Seb.

Seb nodded almost automatically, then glared at Gerald’s back as Gerald went for the door.

Gerald didn’t catch the look, but the gray-haired woman beside him did.

“He’s not good for much else besides standing guard, is he?” she said, her voice cutting through the air. Seb’s face turned, a red mark rising on his cheek as if she’d slapped him.

“Leave him be, Laura,” Gerald advised as he and the woman—Laura—left the room.

Helen, the magician with the swords, lingered for a moment by the door. She didn’t look undecided. She looked as if she’d never been anything but absolutely decisive in her life.

“I spoke up to save you, dancer,” she said abruptly. “Don’t make a fool of me.”

Then she ducked out of the room. The boat lurched as she crossed the threshold, but she didn’t falter for an instant.

Sin was left with the two magician boys. Which was better odds than she’d had before.

“Looks like it’s you and me, Seb,” she said, and lowered her voice just in case a pretty girl in distress might appeal to him. She could use that. “And you,” she added to the boy in the window seat. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

The boy turned away from the window.

All of Sin’s breath was scythed out of her throat.

He unfolded from the window seat in a leisurely fashion, in slow, deliberate movements, and every movement sent a chill down Sin’s spine, like a ghost drawing a cold finger along the small of her back. He was slight and not tall, but that didn’t matter: It just made her think of elves as they were in the oldest stories, alien and terrible, child thieves and traitors. His eyes were silver coins, whatever color they had once been drowned in shimmering magic, and his face was a perfect blank.

Sin’s sense of dread built, as if the finger tracing her spine had become a claw. The thing between his palms, the thing he was turning over and over as if it was a familiar and favorite toy, was a gleaming-sharp knife. There were carvings on the hilt, and the blade looked too sharp to be real.

Worse than that, as he turned to face her head-on, she saw the demon’s mark set along the sharp line of his jaw. It was a dark and wavering brand, an obscene shadow crawling on the boy’s porcelain-pale skin.

“You don’t remember me?” he asked. “I’m Jamie.”

For a moment Sin could not accept it, her head filled with buzzing like far-off screaming. She did not want to accept it, that this was the sweet, forgettable boy she’d met at a barbecue, that this was Mae’s only family, her beloved brother.

If Mae’s brother could turn into this, what would they do to Lydie?

Whatever expression she had on her face at that moment, it made Jamie laugh softly. He came toward her, tossing the knife from hand to hand. The blade made a whining sound in the air, like a hungry dog.

“Ring any bells?”

“Sure,” Sin said, and did not let herself strain against her bonds, did not try to scramble away, as he drew closer. “Your eyes used to be brown.”

His eyes were shimmering and bright, pools of pure magic. They looked awful. He looked blind.

His mouth formed a crooked smile, something that might have been almost sweet without those eyes and that knife. All the other magicians looked so much more normal, Sin thought, the claw of horror raking up her spine again. What had he done to himself?

He sat at the other end of the table from her, still smiling. There was a tiny dimple on the cheek above the demon’s mark.

“True,” he said, and she almost couldn’t remember what she had been talking about. He looked even more amused, as if he could read her mind. “I’m a whole new man.”

Maybe he could read her mind. She couldn’t know.

Jamie tossed his knife up into the air and then caught it again.

“Imagine your baby sister turning out like me.”

“Oh, I am,” Sin breathed.

“Then you should do the right thing,” Jamie advised. “Think it over. It will all come clear.”

The boat rolled. Sin’s stomach was rolling too, but she didn’t think there was any connection. Jamie checked his watch.

“How long are the two of us expected to stay here watching a chained-up girl with no powers?” he asked in a bored voice.

The question brought Seb’s bowed head up for the first time.

“I don’t know,” he answered. He seemed to be choosing his words with difficulty. “But I’m—I’m glad they did. I want to talk to you.”

“I got that from all the knocking on and waiting outside my door,” Jamie drawled. “Here is some information about me you may not know. When I want to talk to people? I give them subtle hints like opening the door.”

He slid the blade on his knife closed and put it in his pocket. Then he slid closer down the table, toward Sin and away from Seb.

Even though Seb had had his head bowed and his eyes determinedly fixed on the floor while Celeste and Gerald were in the room, Sin had received the impression that he was terribly, guiltily aware of her the entire time.

Neither of the boys seemed aware of her now.

Seb was looking at Jamie, green eyes intense, like a man on a mission. Jamie just looked bored.

“I’ve been thinking a lot, since we came here,” Seb went on. “Now that all the things that used to matter—school and stuff—they don’t matter anymore. Everything’s changed.”

“I know,” Jamie said in a serious voice. “At school, you were the one with all the power, and you made my life miserable. And now I’m the one with the power, and you want to be friends. Isn’t it funny how that works?”

“That’s not it,” Seb burst out, and bit his lip.

“That’s not it? You don’t want to be friends?”

Seb hesitated. Jamie laughed.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t care about how tortured you are about killing or your pathetic lack of power or anything else going through your mind. You may have finally worked out what you want, but I don’t care about that, either. Because I don’t care about you.”

Given Seb’s rapt attention, drinking in those terrible white eyes, Sin could work out what he wanted too.

So the beautiful prisoner-in-distress routine was unlikely to work, then. Just hell.

Careful not to let her chains rattle, Sin drew closer to Jamie.

“I know that,” Seb said. “But—”

“Would you care for some advice?” Jamie asked, his voice full of mock pity. “There is a reason following someone around and drawing little pictures”—he sneered at the word, and Seb flushed a painful red—“is so very unappealing. You lose sight of the fact that the object you’re viewing from afar is a person.”

“I know you’re a person!”

“You don’t know anything about me. In fact, I sort of doubt you know anything.”

“I know some things about you,” Seb said. “I could get to know more. You could get to know me.”

“Tempting!” Jamie exclaimed. “No, wait, that’s not the word I mean. What’s the opposite of that?”

Normally, it wouldn’t have taken Sin so long to notice someone’s body language. But there had been the knife to distract her, those awful eyes, and the demon’s mark.

Jamie’s thin shoulders were hunched up, his fingers always on the curl toward fists. Every muscle he had looked tense.

“I realize I don’t deserve a chance,” Seb said. “But I wanted to say—I wanted you to know that I want one.”

Jamie blinked, which was the first not entirely negative reaction he’d had. Sin was horrified witnessing the whole scene: She didn’t want to think about magicians having painful crushes, or feeling anything. They were the enemy. She didn’t want to see this.

She was grateful for how distracted they were, though. She could reach out and touch Jamie.

Seb looked away, obviously embarrassed, as if he hadn’t meant to reveal that much desperation.

“Why should I care what you want?” Jamie asked eventually.

“Well, you and Gerald don’t seem to be getting on so well lately,” Seb said awkwardly. “I thought—you might want someone who would be on your side.”

The way Jamie was standing changed in a way that might have meant there would have been a change in his eyes, if they had still looked like human eyes.

“What do you mean by that?” Jamie asked in a soft voice.

“Well,” Seb said again, awkward and hopeless. “If you felt like I do—no, I don’t mean that. I mean, if you’re lonely here.”

“And you were doing so well, too,” Jamie said. “I don’t care about being lonely. But you’re right. I’m not getting along with Gerald. I don’t like it when people tell me what to do, and the whole Aventurine Circle seems to have an opinion on how I should behave. I could use an ally.”

Sin saw the wariness in Seb’s eyes, but he took a step forward all the same.

“What do you mean by an ally?”

“I mean someone who will support everything I do,” Jamie answered, with a faint, unpleasant smile, “and do everything I say.”

Seb took another step forward. Jamie stood. The knife in his pocket, which Sin had just managed to get her hand on and draw out a few crucial inches, tumbled neatly into her palm.

Jamie didn’t seem to notice. He reached out his hand and Seb hesitated, then jerkily offered his hand in return.

“Then it’s settled,” Jamie said, still smiling that smile. His fingers slid over the inside of Seb’s wrist. Seb shivered, and Jamie’s nasty smile spread. “Sweetheart.”

There were steps outside the door. One was someone in heels, Sin thought. Seb jerked away at the sound, as if he’d been caught doing something indecent. Jamie didn’t seem to care.

“Here it is,” Celeste’s voice said.

Sin couldn’t see her, because she was standing behind Nick.

He stood at the door like death waiting to be invited in, all in black. It made his face look white as a skull.

“You’re late,” Jamie snapped. He clicked his fingers, and Nick walked slowly, reluctantly, forward over the tilting floor.

Sin realized this wasn’t Nick’s ordinary pallor. He was a demon in a human body: Being trapped in a vessel over running water was like being slowly tortured for someone possessed. There was no way he would be here willingly.

He was here, though, and coming like a dog to heel.

When he reached Jamie he went down in a crouch by the table. His eyes flickered over Sin, not even seeming to register her.

Jamie reached out and twisted the cord of Nick’s talisman around his fingers. Sin saw the leather bite deep into the side of Nick’s neck.

“Don’t be late again,” Jamie commanded softly. “Or I won’t let you go back. Understand?”

Jamie’s hold on the talisman forced Nick’s head back, his face tilted up to Jamie’s. The strange light of Jamie’s eyes shone reflected in Nick’s blank black gaze.

Nick lowered his eyelids and nodded.

“Turns out when a demon marks a magician,” Celeste said from the door, her voice rich with satisfaction, like a cat in the process of drinking the cream, “it doesn’t give the demon any power over the magician at all. Rather the opposite, in fact. Isn’t it marvelous?”

It couldn’t be true, Sin thought. If Gerald had control over Nick already, he wouldn’t have bothered torturing Alan.

“Marvelous for me,” Jamie agreed, his tone as silky as hers. “Since he’s mine, and I don’t feel like letting the rest of the Circle enjoy any of his magic. I guess you shouldn’t have killed my mother.”

“Jamie, do we have to go through this again?” Celeste sounded impatient. “Helen has apologized. And she was only a human.”

“I know, I know,” Jamie drawled. “But it’s the little things. Don’t you agree?”

“Make sure it behaves at the party tonight,” Celeste ordered. She turned on her heel and left.

Jamie let go of Nick’s talisman and leaned back along the table, putting his weight on his hands behind him.

“You heard my fearless leader, Hnikarr,” he said. “This party is going to be her little show of strength to the other Circles. I want you to stay in the ballroom like everyone else, so I can show you off. And I want you to be on your best behavior. No more magically throwing people down the stairs. That is naughty.”

“I understand,” Nick grated out, as if he was having difficulty speaking at all, or as if he was too sick to talk much.

Sin felt sick too, sick at the thought that this was how magicians treated their friends. She wanted to do something, to hurl the knife she had just stolen at Jamie’s head, but she couldn’t do a thing to help Nick, and if she tried she would only make sure she couldn’t help herself.

“Atta boy,” Jamie said encouragingly. “That’s what I like to hear. See how nice the world can be, when one of us is just the obedient slave of the other?”

Nick said nothing, but his lip curled in a soundless snarl.

Jamie smiled at him brightly, then got up. “Well, come on,” he said. “We have to get ready for the party.”

Nick uncoiled from the floor and rose, passing Jamie and making silently for the door. The boat lurched a little again, and Nick had to catch himself against the wall.

He had not acknowledged Sin’s presence in any way.

“You coming?” Jamie asked Seb.

Seb was looking at the floor again, but when Jamie stopped in front of the other boy, Seb lifted his eyes slowly to Jamie’s face.

“We’re supposed to guard her.”

“She’s chained up,” Jamie reminded him. He reached out and touched Seb’s arm.

Sin couldn’t see Jamie’s face, but she could see Seb’s. They could all hear the breath he drew in and could not let go.

“I thought,” said Jamie, “you were going to do what I wanted from now on.”

When Jamie left the room, Seb went after him.

Sin unclenched her fist around what she had been terrified for ten minutes one of them would see, or Jamie would miss. The magician’s knife gleamed safe in her palm.

She handled it with care, and let out a deep sigh of relief as the blade cut through the chains attaching her to the table leg with as much ease as if they were string. Then she unwound the chain from around her wrists and the table and stretched it out on the floor. She chose her spot and cut the length of chain exactly in two.

Then she wrapped the ends of her two new chains around both wrists, leaving them dangling so she could strike out in either direction at any time. She sheathed the blade and tucked it in her jeans pocket.

She was a dancer, so she made it to the door without more than the softest jangle of chains. She stepped outside to begin the hunt through the magicians’ lair for her sister.

11

End the Party with a Bang

SIN WALKED THE CORRIDORS WITH A SOFT TREAD, TRYING TO map out the enemy’s terrain. The boat had not looked this big from the outside. That might be magic, and it might just be perception.

Magic or not, it was a pretty fancy boat. There was nice furniture in every room Sin peeked into, smooth wood everywhere, sometimes bare, sometimes painted white. She would not have known she was on a boat if it had not been for the rocking on the water and the curves to the corners in the rooms. She went by a window once and saw the Thames, the buildings of London not so far away.

Far enough.

She went down two broad, shallow steps and saw glass doors leading into a vast dim room. She didn’t think a boat, however magically enhanced, could have more than one room like this one. It was clearly the ballroom.

She went inside. There were spindly white chairs arranged around the edges of the room, and when Sin looked up she saw rafters. She went through another set of double doors, these ones wood instead of glass, and saw a smaller room with the same high ceiling. There was a long table set for dinner, lilies in tall vases hanging their heads above china and crystal glasses.

An alarm began ringing through the boat.

Sin moved fast but not too fast, keeping her walk smooth so the chains would not rattle. She went through the door on the other side of the dining room, up some narrow steps into a dark corridor. She stopped outside four doors and heard voices or movement, then at a fifth door she heard nothing.

She pushed open the door and found Seb with his head in his hands.

Seb jumped to his feet. He and Sin stood staring at each other.

“Get in here,” Seb said in a level voice. “And shut the door.”

Sin stepped inside and shut the door. His room was small, just a bed, a little wardrobe, and a desk with a green sketchbook on it.

If Sin struck out with one of her chains now, it would be very hard for Seb to dodge. She was pretty sure she could knock him unconscious in less than two minutes.

“We could break the window,” Seb said, locking his door with shaking hands. “And you could jump in the river.”

“What would your new boyfriend think of you helping me escape?” Sin inquired.

Seb turned back to her, his mouth twisting. “He doesn’t have to know.”

“I’m not leaving my sister.”

“They’re not going to hurt her,” Seb told her in a low, strained voice. “They’re going to hurt you! I don’t want to see anyone else hurt. You have to go.”

“They’re not going to hurt her?” Sin asked. “Like they haven’t hurt you?”

Seb was silent.

“Do you have any family?”

Seb cleared his throat, a painful sound. “No.”

“If you did have a family,” Sin said, “if you had someone who loved you better than life, and who wanted more than anything to keep you safe, would you want to be left here?”

She heard steps coming down the corridor.

There was a wavering smile on Seb’s face, an expression that he seemed to be wearing because he did not know how else to respond. “There’s no-one who loves me,” he said. “Get in the wardrobe.”

Sin climbed in, folding herself up small over a tangle of socks and shoes, and Seb shut the wardrobe doors firmly after her. She was in a tiny black box, the only light the yellow line where the wardrobe doors met. She could still see Seb.

He sat back down on the bed and put his head back down in his hands.

He wasn’t a good actor at all. Sin could see his shoulders shaking, his whole body caught in a fine, continuous tremor. This wasn’t a boy used to the extremities of life and death, even if he was a magician.

She tensed her legs for a spring, and drew the magic knife out of her pocket.

“Sebastian,” Celeste’s voice said sharply from the door. “The girl—”

She stopped. Seb looked up from his hands.

“I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “What?”

There was silence. Then Sin heard a click of heels as Celeste walked over to Seb, and a flash of blond hair and black skirt as she sat on the bed beside him.

“You shouldn’t have left that room,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Seb said again, very stiffly, and Sin began to think this might work. If he seemed terrified and guilty all the time, he didn’t have to act. “It was—Jamie asked me if I wanted to talk.”

“I see,” Celeste said. “Sebastian, you’re going to have to give that up.”

Seb went deep red and traumatized-looking, as if someone had dipped him in tomato sauce and was about to continue with other strange forms of torture. Sin thought he might actually have forgotten he was hiding a fugitive in his wardrobe.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered into his chest.

“We’re very glad to have James in the Circle,” Celeste said. “He’s very talented, and I do hope he will become an asset to our side, but he’s obviously extremely volatile. And I wouldn’t describe him as a team player. It’s not all about having the power, you know. It’s about going the distance. I wasn’t the most talented magician of my generation. But I cultivated relationships, and I did not burn out. Don’t worry about your magic, Seb. Focus on your commitment to the Circle.”

Sin wished Celeste was not being kind. She would have bet Seb didn’t get a lot of that.

She didn’t want to think about the chances of Seb deciding to commit to the Circle and open the wardrobe doors.

“James is a very troubled young man,” Celeste said. “I hope he can learn to rein himself in, but I’ve seen a lot of gifted young magicians fall from grace. I wouldn’t want to see you go down with him.”

Seb still looked overcome with horror and shame at being spoken to like this, as if he could not deal with the fact that she knew, but he looked up at her last words.

“You don’t know him. He’s really good,” Seb said. “He was always such a good guy. I was pretty awful to him. A bunch of us were, but it was my fault. He had the power to hit back at us, but he never did. That’s what he’s like.”

The leader of the magicians put a hand on Seb’s shoulder.

“And then he got tested,” Celeste said. “And you see what he’s like now. Maybe you’ll be the special one in the end, Sebastian. I think you could be, but you have to try harder. You can’t do things like leaving that girl unguarded.”

And then she drew her hand away, giving him just a taste of approval with a promise of more later, if he could manage to deserve it. Sin saw Seb’s eyes skid to his wardrobe, and she clutched her knife.

“I could guard the—the little girl,” Seb volunteered hesitantly. “Where is she?”

“You can help us find the missing girl,” Celeste told him, sounding annoyed. “The party’s about to start, and I want everything in order.”

“What if she’s gone into the river?” Seb asked. “That’s what I would have done.”

Celeste stood up and moved out of view. After a moment, Seb rose to join her. Sin heard Celeste’s voice, clear and cold, as their footsteps echoed down the corridor.

“Then you will have to think of another way to make up for your failure.”

Sin did not dare move while the magicians searched the ship for her. If she ventured out, she was bound to betray herself.

Of course, staying where she was, she had plenty of time to think about how Seb might betray her.

She stayed put despite her doubts about how long his courage would last and despite her longing to act. This was her best chance, and that meant it was Lydie’s best chance as well.

She counted the seconds as if she was doing exercises and had to hold herself in position, so her mind would not play tricks with time. She lost count a few times, but she knew she waited in the dark for well over an hour before the noises outside dulled and centralized, concentrated at a spot a little way away.

Sin assumed they were getting ready for their party. The question was, would they want Lydie there or not? Would a scared child be a trophy or an embarrassment?

She wished Alan were here, or Mae, someone who could make a plan.

The only thing Sin could think to do was go look.

So she pushed the door cautiously open with her foot, gradually so it did not creak, listening for every sound. She slid out of the wardrobe like an eel, magic knife at the ready.

She missed her throwing knives so much.

The corridor was empty. Sin slipped along it and down the stairs, then waited with her hand hovering over the door, her other hand clasping the knife, and her breath snared painfully in her throat.

There was no sound directly beyond the door. Sin just touched it with her palm, and the door slid open a little, then a little more.

Beyond the door was the dining room with no lights on, the dimness illuminated only by the glow of lights at the top of the far wall.

The ballroom and the dining room had obviously been one vast room recently transformed into two. The wall that divided them was built only so far. The large wooden rafters ran along the vaulted ceilings of both rooms without a break.

There was a supper laid out on the table now, tiny sandwiches in rows like soldiers and jellies gleaming like jewels. Sin eyed the chairs pushed neatly in under the table; their carved wooden backs looked sturdy enough.

Sin closed the blade on her knife and tucked it securely under the wire of her bra. She could not risk it falling out of a pocket.

She charged forward, taking a running leap at the chair and then launching herself from the top of the chair back, somersaulting into the air. Behind her the chair rocked on two legs before falling back on all four.

Her hair flipped into her face, air rushing around her but none in her lungs, every burning molecule of her aware that if she fell, the crash would bring the magicians in the next room running.

The backs of her knees hit the rafter. She latched on and swung like a pendulum until she could get a grip on it with her hands, then grasped the wood and pulled her weight up until she was lying flat against the rafter. She found herself breathing a little hard.

There was no time to be lying around, though. She turned, her body almost tipping off the slender beam and the world swimming crazily in her vision for a minute, until she was on her front. Then, facedown, nose pressed hard against the wood and her fingertips lightly curved around the edges, she began to wriggle her way down the rafter into the other room.

Chandelier lights refracted in her vision, brilliant and blinding for a moment. Heat and noise rushed up toward her like a blow. Sin swallowed, closed her eyes, and held on for a moment.

When she opened her eyes she could see, though blurry yellow afterimages danced in front of her, like the mocking stars around a concussed cartoon character’s head. She began to slide slowly along the banister again.

The scene below her was like a play seen from terrible seats, with hot, glaring spotlights in Sin’s eyes and a riot of color and activity below. For a moment the people below her looked like splashes of paint on a palette, all mingling together in a vivid blur.

Then the colors coalesced into shapes. She could make out the magicians of the Aventurine Circle. They were all, as far as she could see, wearing white. There was Helen, bright and straight as a blade in a white silk suit, and the woman called Laura in a simple white dress.

Celeste Drake, wrapped around and around in ivory gauze, was making the rounds with Gerald behind her. They nodded at and shook hands with everyone they saw, engaging them in brief rounds of conversation. They did it very well, Sin thought. One of them always managed to make the magician they were talking to laugh.

At no point did Celeste and Gerald ever touch. The first Market after Mama was dead and Sin was back from Mezentius House, Merris had taken her around and showed her to everyone as the heir apparent. Sin hadn’t done half as well as Gerald was doing now, but the whole time Merris had kept her hand on Sin’s arm, steady and sure, anchoring her.

Seb was leaning against a wall, shoulders hunched beneath his white T-shirt. He looked ready to run if someone spoke to him.

Sitting on one of the fragile chairs as if it was a throne was Jamie, surveying the company with the scorn of a spoiled young prince and the eyes of a mad soothsayer. His gleaming white clothes matched that bright opaline gaze. The only dark things about him were the demon’s mark crawling on his jaw and the demon crouching at his feet.

Nick was in position to spring for throats, and looked as if he would have liked to. He was wearing the battered black clothes he’d been wearing earlier, but the effect was good, like the black pearl at Celeste’s white throat.

Sin had to admire Celeste’s showmanship. The Aventurine Circle stood out radiantly against all the other magicians, an army with a weapon in plain sight.

Their weapon, the Rottweiler at the spoiled young prince’s feet, was glaring people away. Jamie was the only magician who did not have to make nice with the members of other Circles.

Occasionally he grabbed a handful of Nick’s black hair and yanked his head back to address a few words to him. Sin saw the strained line of Nick’s throat and the curl of his mouth when his head went back. He never answered Jamie.

They sat alone until the door of the ballroom opened and Mae walked in.

She was in white too, a shimmering dress tight as a bandage with her shoulders rising bare from the wrapped material, and wavering slightly in some of the highest heels Sin had ever seen. They seemed to be made entirely of glass and silver threads.

Mae pulled it off the same way she pulled off her pink hair, brushed now into shining perfection, looking ridiculous, appealing, and dignified all at once.

Mae’s faith in herself was as towering as those heels, and so she could walk into a nest of magicians not even able to run.

Oh, you brave dumb tourist, Sin said to her silently.

Now she had two girls to get out of here.

When Mae reached Jamie, she went and stood by the side of his chair like a sentinel.

Sin’s fingers bit into the edge of the rafter, splinters sinking into her skin. Mae couldn’t fake much. She certainly wasn’t faking this, the way even her face bent toward Jamie’s was loving, her neck a protective arch above him.

What if it was real? Sin thought with a sickening lurch. It felt for a moment like she was going to fall off the rafter, even though she hadn’t moved. What if she’d left the Market, no matter how temporarily, in the hands of a traitor?

Mae loved Jamie, she could see that much. If it was Lydie, so affected and addicted by magic, Sin didn’t know what she would do.

She couldn’t even really think about it. When she tried, the idea turned into a nightmare, a black cloud she could not hold on to or deal with but that diffused itself around her mind and made everything dark.

People approached Jamie then; they approached him through Mae. Mae smiled and shook hands, held brief conversations. She was acting in a way Sin could only describe as sophisticated.

Sin guessed it was a trick Mae had learned from her mother or a formidable headmistress or someone else in her rich world. She wished she could learn how to do it, and doubted she could pull it off. The best acts needed conviction behind them.

After yet another person had left, Jamie leaned back farther in his chair and said something to Mae. Mae hesitated for a moment, then slowly left Jamie’s side, one hand clinging to the chair back, as if it was the only thing keeping her afloat and it was being inexorably drawn out of her reach.

She clenched her hand into a fist when she finally let go, and offered her other hand to Nick. Nick glanced up at her and then stood, very slowly.

Once he was standing he loomed over Mae, tall, dark, and sinister like a villain in a pantomime about to crush an innocent, but he seemed like a villain who had forgotten his cue. He just stood there, and his complete lack of action looked almost like helplessness.

Mae stuck her hand out farther, persistently. When Nick turned his own hand palm up, moving as slowly as if he was a robot with rusting joints, Mae laid her fingers across his palm. He used her hand to draw her body in close against his.

Moving gradually into the center of the room, they started to dance. Mae’s skyscraper heels at least made her closer to Nick’s height than she usually was, so she could meet his eyes comfortably.

Sin couldn’t see either of their faces, but there was a solemn atmosphere about the moment, the song playing fainter than any of the other songs before. Nick’s hand was at Mae’s gleaming white waist, and her hand was gripping the shoulder of his black T-shirt.

The assembled magicians were staring.

Jamie stopped slouching and got up, slipping easily through the crowd.

Sin decided it was about time for her to go as well. There were a lot of people here, but none of them were Lydie.

She squirmed slowly back along the rafter, creeping backward rather than forward. She had a moment where she misjudged, not seeing where she was going, and found her leg sticking out into space. She pulled it back slowly, reanchoring herself and refusing to panic, then risked a glance down.

Apparently none of the magicians had been looking up just then.

Reaching the other room was such a relief, the dimness and relative quiet like being submerged in cool water after the hot lights and having to watch dozens of people act out a hundred strange scenes. Sin let her eyes shut for just a moment, and breathed out.

When she opened her eyes, she saw someone moving in the darkness below.

Adrenaline chased chills up her spine, straightening it and preparing her for action. The person below was wearing a long garment with a hood. She couldn’t tell if they were male or female, but Sin could get the jump on them, and that was all that mattered.

Then she caught the movement beneath the cloak, the very slight tell.

Sin let go of the rafter and stretched out an arm, wrapping just enough of the chain round her wrist around the rafter. She launched herself into space, the chain reaching its limit and her feet hitting the chair back at the same time so the impact was shared.

Sin unwound her chain carefully and leaped lightly onto the ground. She barely made a sound, only a very faint jingle, like faraway bells.

He turned.

“What are you doing here, Alan?” Sin asked softly.

Alan pushed the hood back, curly hair ruffled and looking almost black in the dim lights.

“Rescuing you?” he suggested with a small wry smile.

“I appreciate the thought,” Sin said, smiling back.

“I’m lying,” Alan told her.

Sin raised her eyebrows. “I’m shocked.”

“I came to bring you these,” said Alan. He drew out two long knives, one in each hand. “I know candy and flowers are traditional, but…”

“I’ll call them candy and flowers,” Sin said. She took one in her right hand; it was a beautiful weight. “This one’s Candy.”

“Nick sent me a text message saying they’ve got Lydie in a cabin away from the main living quarters, the first door across the deck.”

“Nick,” Sin said, tensing. “Alan, do you know—”

Over Alan’s shoulder she saw a flicker of movement, and the magician at the door, backing away. There was no time to think, so she didn’t. She already had the knife in her hand.

Sin threw. The magician caught her knife in the throat and crumpled.

She and Alan went toward the door and stood together at the foot of the stairs. Sin bent and pulled her new knife out of the body. Alan picked the end of his cloak up from the floor and offered it to her. Sin accepted the swathe of material and cleaned the blade carefully.

“Nice cloak. Where’d you get it?”

“There was a magician in this stylish thing,” Alan said. “And now he’s in the river. I imagine he could use some company.”

Sin nodded. “You dump the body. I’ll get Lydie.”

“Meet you on the deck?”

He stood in the doorway, regarding the body with serious attention. He spoke casually, his mind obviously already on getting rid of the magician, trusting her to do her part.

She knew where Lydie was. She couldn’t wait to go get her.

She did pause for a moment before she headed up the stairs. She rested her hands against Alan’s shoulders, met his eyes steadily, and kissed him on the cheek.

“Thanks for coming,” she said.

Then she ran up the stairs to find her sister.

Sin just kept going up, chasing through corridors and up stairs, until she opened a door and found herself on the deck. The wash of cool night air was sweet on her face, the lights of the city bright against the deep, dark blue of the sky.

Across the deck a door swung open. Jamie emerged, holding Lydie’s hand. Lydie was stumbling and obviously scared, her fair hair tossing in the wind.

Sin threw one of her knives at Jamie. The magician lifted his free hand and the knife went clattering onto the deck, as if some invisible fist had struck it down in midflight.

Jamie thrust Lydie in front of himself. His unearthly eyes blazed over her little sister’s head.

Sin did not throw her other knife. She advanced on Jamie, shaking the chain out from around her right wrist. The end of the chain hit the deck with a rattle.

“Wait,” Jamie said.

“No,” Sin told him, and lunged. The chain spun through the air and Jamie dodged backward: It only caught him a glancing blow on the head.

Jamie gasped aloud, the sound trembling with pain, and Sin whirled to hit him again before he could retaliate.

The invisible hand of magic caught her chain and held it suspended in midair, like a curtain between them.

“Stop,” Jamie said, his voice still shaky. “Now.”

Sin was very close. She could duck under the hanging chain and stab him. She moved fast enough that she was pretty sure his magic wouldn’t stop her in time.

But he’d used his magic to stop the chain, not hit out at her.

“Why should I?” she snapped.

“I fought for the Market once.”

“And now you’re part of the Aventurine Circle, and you treat one of our allies like a dog.”

Jamie flinched at the reference to Nick, and Sin followed up on that advantage.

“He told me you were his friend,” she said, moving forward. He stepped back, but she saw his fingers tighten on Lydie’s shoulder, and that only made her more furious. “And you’re using him as a power source.”

“What else do you want me to do?”

“Uh,” Sin suggested, “not use him?”

“I haven’t taken the Aventurine Circle sigil, which lets you get the stored power from their circle of stones. Gerald has a new mark that allows all the magicians to exchange power between them, and I haven’t taken that either. Using Nick was absolutely the only way I could avoid taking the marks. Having him, and more power than anyone else, is the only reason they let me stay.”

“And why do you want to stay?” Sin inquired.

Jamie looked down at Lydie’s head. “To help.”

“Forgive me if I think you might have another motive,” Sin said. “I can see you’re brimful of magic right now. Everyone at the Market knows how magicians kill more, the longer they’re in a circle. The appetite grows by what it feeds on—the craving gets worse and worse. If you were safe, if the circles were gone, would you give up all the magic the demon gives you? Could you give it up?”

Jamie kept looking at Lydie, and not into Sin’s eyes, but he did answer her.

Low and soft, he said: “No.”

At least he sounded ashamed.

“So you’d rather enslave a friend than give up power,” said Sin. “And you expect me to believe you want to help?”

“I came and sat down beside you with a magic knife in the pocket nearest to you,” Jamie said. “Either I want to help you, or I’m kind of dumb.”

Sin hesitated. “I don’t know you that well. You could be all kinds of dumb. What I know for sure about you is that you’re a magician. Power runs through your veins, more essential than blood. You can’t tell me you could give it up.”

“No,” Jamie answered, his voice stronger this time. “I can’t.”

“Nick trusted you, and you’re using him,” Sin said. “Maybe you hate the other magicians. But power obviously comes first with you. So I can’t trust you.”

“That’s true,” Jamie said. “But you can pick up your knife. I hope you will take that as the goodwill gesture it is, and not the chance to chop my head off, which… it also is.”

Sin walked across the deck to her other knife. She scooped it up in one movement and wheeled back around to Jamie.

With both knives in her hands she felt calm again, the sound of them slicing air like a lullaby in the dark. She held her arms crossed, poised to kill anything that hurt her family.

She allowed herself to look at Lydie.

Lydie was being brave, taking short, panting breaths but not crying. She stared at Sin silently, her eyes huge, and Sin nodded at her and saw she was being held quite gently, and quite far away from Jamie. As if she was a peace offering, and not a shield.

Sin tucked one of her knives into the belt of her jeans, so she had one hand free.

“I’ll give you your magic knife for my sister.”

“Done,” said Jamie. He took his hands off Lydie’s shoulders and flung them up to catch the knife Sin hurled, at the same second Lydie threw herself at Sin.

Sin checked Lydie’s rush and pushed her sister behind her. “Stay calm,” she said. “I’ve got you.”

She kept her gaze steady on Jamie, who was holding the knife tight in one hand without opening it.

“Thank you,” Jamie said. “It’s my lucky charm. I don’t mean that in a serial killer way.”

“You have a lucky knife, but you don’t mean that in a serial killer way?”

“That’s right,” said Jamie, with a little smile. “I’m harmless, I promise.”

She didn’t believe he was harmless for a second.

Since she had got to know Alan better, she had been thinking about different sorts of acts.

This boy, with his hunched-in shoulders, his flood of so many words it was hard to pay attention to any of them, he was camouflaging himself.

Since he’d been living a normal life while secretly a magician up until a couple of months ago, camouflaging himself must be second nature to him.

“Whose side are you on?” Sin asked directly.

“My own,” Jamie said. “And my sister’s. I promised her I would help you.”

“And how do you intend to help me?”

Jamie grinned at her. “Like this,” he said, and made a sweeping gesture.

The whole boat rocked with the wave that went shuddering through the river.

“Jamie, you might want to think about taking it down a notch,” Alan said. Sin saw him from the corner of her eye, gripping the door frame so he didn’t fall down.

“Everyone’s a critic,” Jamie muttered. He repeated the gesture, this time in miniature.

The river moved, nudging the boat gently but inexorably toward one of the riverside walls. There was a flight of shallow, slimy stone steps set in the wall. They were the most beautiful things Sin had ever seen.

Jamie’s forehead was creased with concentration, his hands moving in short, careful gestures as if he was embroidering some priceless silk.

The boat edged forward, and forward, and then finally reached the steps. There was a small crunching sound as the boat rocked against them.

“I’ll hold it,” Jamie said. “You can go.”

Sin ran forward to the rail of the deck, Lydie’s feet pounding beside hers. She heard Alan limping after them.

She heard Celeste Drake’s voice from the doorway Alan had just left.

“Leaving so soon?”

Sin spun and threw her knife. Or she meant to. It did not even leave her hand, staying rigidly in place as if she had stuck it in a block of ice rather than throwing it through the air.

There were three men behind Celeste, Sin saw, and then recounted. There was one man she didn’t know, and there was Seb, who might or might not be on Celeste’s side, and shoving viciously past them both was Nick.

“Come here,” Jamie commanded, beckoning.

“I am trying,” Nick snarled, and the magician Sin didn’t know went for Nick with his hands full of black light.

“Hey!” said Jamie, and made a gesture that sent the man reeling back a step. Nick closed in on him hungrily.

Celeste snapped a look over at Seb, who shrank back, then at Sin with her knives and Alan with his gun out. She had both her hands raised, palm up. On anyone but a magician, the gesture would have looked like surrender.

On a magician, it was a threat.

“Go ahead,” Celeste said. “Shoot me. Stab me. If you’re both quite sure I won’t have time to hit that child before you do.”

Sin did not look away from Celeste’s hands. She could not afford to.

Now they had turned, Lydie was in front of her, pressing with the urgency of terror against her legs. Sin saw Celeste’s eyes narrow, measuring the distance between them.

In a far-off way, she noted the sounds of Jamie and Nick fighting the magician. There was the sound of a sky turning savage above them, a grumble rising too fast into a snarl.

Nobody could use magic in the Aventurine Circle’s territory but them. Except that Jamie was part of the Circle, and Nick was Jamie’s.

Despite this, Sin knew that Celeste, and the man fighting Nick and Jamie, were both wearing the magician’s mark Gerald had invented, the one that let magicians channel the power of all the magicians in their Circle who wore the mark. And Celeste would have been formidable on her own.

Sin felt Alan tense beside her. They both knew a shot was their best chance, but if Celeste was enchanted to withstand a shot, there would not be any other chances.

There was a short, sharp crack.

Celeste staggered forward. Sin seized the moment to grab Lydie and shove her over the side, onto the steps. Lydie’s hand closed on the chain round Sin’s wrist for a moment, clinging.

“Lydie, go!” Sin yelled, and twisted back around.

In the doorway stood Mae, holding a gun in both hands. She was wavering slightly in her high, high heels.

Celeste Drake had not been enchanted to withstand gunshots.

She lay sprawled on the deck. The gauze of her long dress fluttered in the rising wind, a pure white shroud with a dark red stain marring it at the center.

The storm rose so fast it was like an eclipse. For a moment Sin could not see, but she stumbled forward anyway, fumbling in the dark. She went down on her hands and knees on the deck where she guessed Celeste’s body lay.

Lightning flashed. Mae was looking down at Sin, her face all shadows and pallor, as if she instead of Celeste had died and become a ghost.

Sin’s gaze dropped to Celeste, to the hollow of her throat where the falling rain had already begun to pool. Her throat was bare. The pearl was gone.

Mae had won, then.

“C’mon,” Nick said, his own opponent dead behind him. He gave Mae a solid push, and she almost stumbled and fell onto Celeste’s body. Nick dragged her past Sin and Celeste to the side of the boat, then let go of her so he could help Alan over.

Mae tried to climb over after him by herself and started cursing.

“Stupid dress, stupid shoes—”

“You’re stupid,” said Nick, and scooped her up bodily in his arms. He held her over the rail and Alan grabbed her hands and pulled her onto the steps to safety. “Now you,” Nick said.

Jamie leaned against the ship rail. “No.”

“Oh my God, you’re both stupid,” Nick snarled. “Do you want to die? Because if you stay, you will.”

Alan limped to the top of the steps as fast as he could and Sin saw Lydie, a tiny figure against the dark-torn sky, come rushing to him.

That was what snapped Sin out of her paralysis. Too late.

She had scarcely uncurled from beside Celeste’s body when they all heard, clear even accompanied by the sound of the storm, a lot of footsteps coming up the steps.

Jamie’s eyes met his sister’s. For a moment Sin thought that would be it, that they would all just run.

“We’ll see,” said Jamie, and lifted his hand.

The boat was torn away from the side of the wall as if Jamie had ripped a piece of paper off a notebook. Sin made an enraged sound, Mae and Alan and her sister suddenly just black dots almost disappearing against the gray sky, almost entirely lost to her.

“Don’t—,” she began, advancing on Jamie, and he spun toward her with his eyes blazing white.

Blackness blasted her vision as she was knocked off her feet and across the deck, rolling and hitting the other side of the boat. The door opened. There was a shallow shelf on this side of the boat, with rope coiled upon it. Sin rolled under it.

She would be half-hidden by its shadow. Unless someone looked too closely.

As a dozen magicians burst on the scene, though, it was clear that at least for now all their attention was focused on Celeste’s body.

The sword-wielding magician called Helen went down on her knees beside Celeste. It gave Sin a strange feeling to watch the woman touch Celeste’s hair, as pale a blond as her own. She wondered if they had been related, sharing that as well as a Circle.

Some of the magicians looked truly grief-stricken and horrified. There were others, not just magicians but messengers, among whom Sin spotted Phyllis, who simply looked scared.

Gerald stood at Celeste’s feet, his head bowed and his hands clasped for a moment. When he looked up, Sin could read nothing on his face.

“Jamie,” he said, his voice as unruffled as his expression, mild and calm. “Perhaps you can explain this to me?”

“The Market people came for the girl and her sister. We were attacked and overpowered,” Jamie said flatly.

The storm had quieted into a dark muttering in the sky, which seemed muffled by the blanket of clouds that made the whole world dim. The glow of Jamie’s magic gaze seemed like the only light in the world, and that light was a terrible one.

“Perhaps you can explain this to me in some way I might believe,” Gerald suggested, his voice even softer than before.

“It happened like I said,” Jamie insisted. “They came. And Celeste died.”

“And you, with the demon’s power, you couldn’t do a thing to stop it?”

Gerald almost smiled.

Jamie said, “Maybe I could have.”

That shocked Gerald, Sin noticed, sending a jolt through him that seeing Celeste dead hadn’t. Now Jamie was the only one who looked calm, standing on the deck with a ring of people around him whose murmurs were turning louder and fiercer than the dying storm.

“She let my mother die,” Jamie continued. “She wasn’t my leader. You are.”

“Is that so?” Gerald asked. “And how am I supposed to trust you, if you would stand aside and let one of our own die?”

The sky was so thickly overcast, everyone’s skin looked gray. Gerald took a step forward.

He loomed over Jamie, his shadow falling over Jamie’s face and quenching the glittering light of his eyes. The boat lurched on the river, and Sin felt cold hit her skin. She twisted around and saw trails of dark water snaking across the rail, over her own body, toward where Gerald stood.

“Where’s Celeste’s pearl?”

“I don’t know,” Jamie whispered.

“You let a fellow magician be killed. You let the symbol of the Aventurine Circle be stolen. You realize that I should execute you.”

Four glistening black lines of river water crawled their way up Gerald’s trouser leg, trailing from his shoulder to his right hand. The water wrapped around Gerald’s fingers, which he lifted to Jamie’s face.

“I could drown you in an inch of water,” Gerald said.

Threads of water touched Jamie’s face, sealing his mouth like a transparent gag. He glanced around for support, and then water crisscrossed behind his neck and held him in place.

“He isn’t lying,” Seb said. “Everything happened just like he said. He couldn’t have saved Celeste. Neither of us knows where the pearl went.”

Nick stepped up behind Jamie, and the water dissolved into silver smoke.

Gerald’s hand stayed uplifted, wreathed in the smoke.

“It was a risk, taking you into the Circle at all,” he said. “Now a magician is dead. Give me a reason to trust you.”

When Jamie spoke he was gasping for breath a little, his face wet as if he had been crying.

“We were friends once, weren’t we?”

A flicker crossed Gerald’s face, like the flicker of lightning behind dark clouds, not illuminating or changing anything.

“I thought so,” he said, and he sounded a little sorry.

“Doesn’t that mean anything?”

Gerald shook his head regretfully. “Not enough, Jamie.”

“Well,” Jamie said, “it means something to me. I don’t want to leave the Circle, and I don’t want to fight you. So how about I make you an offer?”

“What’s the offer?”

“What means most to you, Gerald,” Jamie murmured. “Power. What if I offer you my demon?”

Nick was suddenly the center of attention.

The storm was dying away, but there was rain falling now. Nick had his arms crossed over his chest, shoulders bunched defensively under the wet material of his shirt.

“Jamie,” he said, in a tight voice, “I’d prefer if you didn’t.”

“Nick,” Jamie said, “I really am sorry.”

Gerald, alone of the magicians, was still looking at Jamie. “You mean it?”

“Forgive me for Celeste,” Jamie said. “Trust me again. And we have a deal.”

“Jamie!” Nick snarled.

Jamie rubbed a shaking hand across his wet, pale face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But you’re not like me. What is it that they say, that demons are made of fire and humans are made of earth? Magicians are made of need. We’re born human and we become something else, like earth turning into sand without rain. We become something that needs power. You can’t understand, because you’re not like me. But they are.”

His brilliantly shining gaze cut through the murk, swinging from Nick back to Gerald.

“I want you to give him your mark.”

Nick strode forward and Sin was certain, almost certain, that he was about to commit violence rather than obey anyone. Gerald glanced at Jamie and either decided to trust him or decided he could not pass up the opportunity to have the power obviously flooding through Jamie’s body.

He held firm, hand still uplifted, but making no move to halt Nick’s rush.

Nick stopped and grabbed Gerald’s arm. His teeth were bared in a snarl. Sin had seldom seen expressions marked clearly on Nick’s face, but this one was clear. He badly wanted to kill Gerald.

He wrenched up Gerald’s arm and pressed his mouth against the inside of his wrist.

Gerald convulsed, making a thin, agonized sound that made Sin think that Nick had ripped open the veins of Gerald’s wrist with his teeth. She could only see the bow of Gerald’s back, arched taut in pain, and Nick’s blank black eyes over Gerald’s wrist.

When Nick let go of Gerald, the magician fell to his knees. The other magicians were drawing back from him, a murmur of distress and unease rising. Only one moved forward: Seb, coming to stand at Jamie’s shoulder.

Jamie looked at Seb, looked at Gerald kneeling on the ship deck, and smiled.

Sin’s last moment of hope died as she saw Gerald climb to his feet and meet Jamie’s gaze with his own eyes turned fierce silver, brimming with magic.

He raised his hand and a bolt of lightning sliced through the sky, wrapping around the silver ring on his finger and shimmering with contained light.

“I think the Aventurine Circle can learn to follow this symbol instead,” he said, his voice echoing, trembling on the point of laughter.

The magicians in white all kneeled even as he spoke, and Gerald turned to Nick.

“Hnikarr,” he said. “I have a little test for you.”

“The power isn’t enough?” Nick snapped.

“Nothing’s ever enough,” Gerald told him. “Kill her.”

Sin flattened her body against the deck as if she could escape being seen, and then realized that it had not been her Gerald was speaking of at all.

He was pointing at Phyllis.

She stood there in a growing circle of space as magicians and messengers alike scattered away from her. She looked suddenly very alone, her shoulders bent more than usual under the burden of fear.

“This woman’s worthless as a spy,” Gerald said. “She might have handed us a magician, but her first loyalty is to the Goblin Market. Now she finally has a use. I want to see you kill her on my orders.”

Phyllis had handed over Lydie to the Aventurine Circle.

But she had done it to get Sin back to the Goblin Market. Sin had known Phyllis all her life.

Nick had known Phyllis since he was five years old.

Sin had thought that no magician could have so complete a dominion over a demon, had thought that some of it at least must be Nick choosing to ally himself with Jamie, had thought she didn’t know what in order to prevent herself being overcome by despair and fear.

Despair and fear came just the same, crashing through all the fragile barriers Sin could put in their way.

She could not see Phyllis’s face, only Nick’s, and it told her nothing.

“Do it slowly,” said Gerald.

Nick lifted a hand, and Phyllis started to cry.

He did it slowly.

When it was done, Phyllis was a crumpled heap on the deck. Sin’s bones were aching from being curled up so tight on the slick wet boards, the freezing press of her knives imprinted on her palms. The magicians had gone in to celebrate further, Gerald and Jamie walking in brilliant-eyed accord, Seb close by Jamie’s side. The only things left on deck besides Sin were the demon and the dead.

Nick watched as Sin rolled out from her hiding place beneath the shelf. He did not speak to her.

She did not know what to say to him, who had been made the Aventurine Circle’s slave, who had been betrayed by his friend, who had just killed someone without pity or flinching. There was blood in Phyllis’s bedraggled gray hair, but none on Nick’s hands.

They just waited together as the boat drifted slowly to the side of the river, until they reached the steps up to the street.

As they left the Queen’s Corsair, rain was still falling, through the darkness, into Celeste Drake’s open eyes.

12

Look on Tempests

TOBY AND LYDIE WERE SLEEPING BY THE TIME NICK AND SIN got back. Sin lay down on the bed for a while with her arms wrapped tight around Lydie, just the same.

Then she got into the shower. Her wrists were sore from the weight of the chains, and the muscles in her back were screaming. Being drenched in cold water after performing acrobatics hadn’t been particularly good for them.

The shower had amazing water pressure, though, and the hot points of water drummed relief into her skin. She emerged feeling a little better, drying off and leaving her hair a damp knot at the back of her neck. She slipped into the blue robe Mae had bought her, the silk cool against her heated skin, and was grateful for that little comfort.

When she entered the living room she saw Nick must have told them already. There was a pall hanging over the whole group. Alan looked white and strained, so close to ill Sin wondered if it was bad for his leg to be out in the rain. She didn’t know, and she didn’t know how to ask.

Mae was shivering, her naked shoulders covered in gooseflesh, in long continuous shudders, as if she had not stopped shaking since they came inside.

Nick was at the window, watching them both.

“I don’t think you quite realize what you’ve done,” Alan was saying to Mae as Sin paused on the threshold.

“I did something I had to do,” Mae told him, lifting her chin. “I’ll take the consequences.”

“Like you took the gun?” Alan inquired. “And I don’t need to ask who gave it to you. Do you remember when Gerald’s first leader was alive, someone he didn’t like any more than he liked Celeste? I came in shooting, and the magicians panicked. Gerald didn’t panic. He didn’t create light, either, didn’t try to calm anyone down or offer advice. He lay down on the floor and let things happen until Arthur was dead, just as he wanted. All the members of Gerald’s original Circle were enchanted to withstand gunfire. He knew you had a grudge, he gave you a weapon that couldn’t harm anybody who was on his side, and he did the same thing he’s done before. He let things happen until Celeste was dead, until everything was just as he wanted. You gave him just what he wanted.”

“You think I don’t know that? He gave me just what I wanted,” Mae told Alan fiercely. “He gave me a clear shot at Celeste. I took it. I’m not sorry. I wanted revenge, and I wanted to hurt the Circle. I did, even if Gerald doesn’t realize it yet. The Market can’t depend on its leader anymore; well, neither can our enemies. We’re on equal ground again.”

Alan put his hand up to his forehead, trying to press worry lines away. “And you didn’t think of mentioning any of this reasoning to us? You didn’t think that taking a gun from Gerald Lynch was worth a mention?”

“A funny thing happens when you don’t trust people with your plans, Alan,” Mae said distantly. “They don’t trust you with theirs, either. If you came to me for help, I would do anything I could to help you. If it came down to it, I would die for you. But I have absolutely no obligation to be honest with you. We both know that.”

“Yeah,” Alan said, sounding quieter suddenly, even though his voice had not been loud before. “We do. I’m sorry, Mae.”

“You just wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing,” Mae said dryly. “Well. I mostly sort of do. Trust me.”

Alan said, “I try.”

He got up from the sofa, moving awkwardly enough that Sin could see how tired he was. Of course, he would have been the one to put the children to bed when they got home.

She slipped silently backward into the shadows, letting him go to his bedroom without having to deal with yet another person he felt he was duty bound to help out.

When the door of Alan’s bedroom swung gently shut, Sin stepped back into the living room.

Mae and Nick both had their backs to her. Mae had turned her chair slightly, and Nick had come to sit at the foot of her chair, as she’d seen Nick sit at the foot of Jamie’s and Alan’s. It seemed to be a thing with him.

“I’d ask how you’re feeling,” Nick said. “Except I’m scared you might tell me. And terrified you might cry.”

“I’m not going to cry.”

“I’m overcome with relief.”

Mae took off her chandelier earrings, which she placed in a glittering heap on the arm of her chair. She kicked off her high heels and curled up in the chair, as if Nick’s cool voice was a comfort to her, as if she could relax now.

So nobody was going to be making any plans tonight. Like Sin, nobody had the faintest idea what to do next, and everyone was tired.

“I’m okay,” Mae told Nick. “I didn’t like doing it. I thought maybe I would, this time, but I’m never going to like doing it. And that’s sort of a relief. Because if I hated it, even this time when I thought I wanted revenge, I’m always going to hate it. And that will make me look for other ways to get things done.”

“The killing way usually works for me,” said Nick.

“Because it’s the easy way,” Mae said. “And it gets easier every time you do it, which is the scariest part. I’m not going to plan an assassination again. But I felt like this had to be done. I learned from it, and I wanted it to be me who did it.”

Nick did not respond, which Sin personally would not have found consoling at all.

“Do you remember,” Mae asked, “what you said to me, the first time I killed someone?”

“Ah, the sweet rose-colored memories of our youth,” Nick drawled. “Good times, good times.”

Mae snickered. There was another long silence.

“Well done,” Nick said eventually.

Mae leaned her head back against her chair. “Thanks.”

Well, whatever worked for Mae. Sin went to lie down and hold her sister for a little longer. She had Lydie back safe. That was the only bright spot of her night so far.

Nick’s bed was not made for three. Sin, balanced on the edge and determined not to disturb Lydie or Toby, couldn’t manage more than an uneasy doze that was broken by hearing voices in the hall. Specifically, Alan’s voice.

“Where are you going, Nick?”

“My new master gave a whistle,” Nick answered curtly.

Sin got up quietly and walked to the door, opening it in time to see Alan’s stricken face.

Mae grabbed Nick’s wrist, and Sin noticed that Mae looked pretty stricken as well.

Sin thought for a bitter moment that Mae didn’t need to be so very upset, not when she’d got her revenge, got the pearl and thus got the Market, not when Alan thought she was so perfect.

“Take care of Jamie. No matter what he’s done. Please.”

“Do I have a choice?” Nick asked. “Personally, I was considering tipping him over the side of the boat and hoping there was a lost shark in the water below.”

“Nick, swear to me.”

Nick backed away from the stark, desperate emotion on Mae’s face. She didn’t let go of his wrist, though, keeping her gaze fixed on him as if she could hypnotize him into doing her will through sheer persistence.

“I swear,” Nick said abruptly, and Mae let go.

Nick went for the door and slammed it after him.

Mae’s determinedly set shoulders slumped a little. “I’d better get home. Can I borrow a jacket? I left my coat with the magicians.”

“Sure,” Alan said gently, and ushered her into his room, presumably to select one.

The door slamming had made too much noise. Sin spun at the sound of stirring from the bed and saw Lydie, her hair rumpled and her eyes unfocused.

“Hey, baby girl,” Sin whispered, going over to the bed and sitting on the edge so she could ease Lydie back against the pillows. “Hey.”

“Sin,” Lydie murmured. “I’m sorry.”

Sin tucked Lydie’s hair behind her ear. “None of this was your fault.”

“None of it was your fault either,” Lydie whispered back.

“Yeah, I know,” Sin said, and kept stroking her hair. She spoke clearly, so Lydie would understand, so that she would know Sin could never resent her for any of this. “And I’m not sorry. Here we are together, right? I’m not sorry about anything. It could’ve been much worse.”

A hot drink was in order, Sin thought once Lydie was asleep again. She went into the kitchen and found Alan sitting at the table. The only illumination the room offered was the moon shining through the skylight.

“Coffee?” she asked.

He glanced up at her and smiled. It was a really lousy effort. “Yeah.”

Sin turned on the kettle and occupied herself getting cups and going on an epic teaspoon quest. For once Alan seemed to have nothing to say, no enthusiastic digression about books or questions about her feelings.

Sin had no idea what to say either. She made the coffee, the chiming of the teaspoon in their cups the only sound in that dark kitchen.

“Here,” she said, offering the cup over his shoulder.

This time when he glanced up at her, he didn’t even try to smile. He looked so lost that Sin moved instinctively, putting his cup down on the table and touching his hair.

Alan went very still, as if he was stunned that anyone might reach out and comfort him. Then he shuddered, a fraction of the tension going out of his shoulders, and pressed his face hard against the inside of her wrist.

It lasted for only a moment, and then he lifted his head, pulling away. Sin turned to the counter and picked up her own cup of coffee.

She was making for the door when she heard the sound of the chair being pushed back.

“Cynthia,” Alan said.

Apparently Sin was a glutton for punishment, because she turned around. They stood together, Alan leaning against the kitchen wall, and Sin might really have to speak to someone about these masochistic urges, because she found herself taking the one step closer necessary to touch him.

Alan put his arm around her neck immediately, drawing her in. Sin put her head down, resting her forehead against his collarbone to avoid any further acts of madness. He smelled familiar and comforting, like steel and gun oil. He stroked her knotted hair.

“I was really worried about you,” Alan whispered in her ear.

Sin was startled enough to look up. It was a terrible mistake. Alan was very close, glasses catching glints of silver in the moonlight, eyes troubled behind them. It would be easy to pull his head down an inch closer.

“Yeah?” Sin asked roughly.

She held her body taut. She could control it: She was a dancer. She wasn’t going to shake, and she was not going to make a fool of herself again.

Alan’s hand stroking her hair went still. His fingers curled around the nape of her neck. He closed his eyes and kissed her.

At the first touch of his mouth Sin dropped her coffee cup, hearing it break and not caring, and slid both her arms around his neck. He kissed her and kissed her again, mouth warm, curls sliding through her fingers, body pressed against hers. She kept losing track of her hands, but she knew where his were, one at the small of her back keeping her close. She was so happy, warm all at once and filled with delight, and he kissed her soft and deep and slow, then pressed a light kiss on the side of her smile.

They stumbled into the kitchen table.

“Oh my God, are you all right?” Sin asked, breaking the kiss. Alan nodded, and Sin slid onto the table to eliminate that problem and drew him back by her grip on his shirt. “Thank God for that,” she murmured, and kissed him again.

“Wait,” Alan said, and tried to step back.

This proved impossible when Sin did not let go of his shirt.

Alan looked down at her and said, “I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right,” Sin said patiently. “I think I can be persuaded to forgive you if you come back here right now.”

“No,” Alan told her. “I’m sorry. I’m—I’m really sorry. I apologize. That was very wrong of me.”

“What? Why?” Sin demanded.

Alan gestured at her. It was usually something she liked, seeing him talk with his hands, but right now she could think of about a hundred things she’d rather he be doing with his hands.

“I realize after tonight you probably think you owe me even more than you did before, but I’ve tried to explain to you that it’s not like that. I don’t want you to do anything because you owe me. I also realize that I just sent you rather a mixed message and as I’ve said, I apologize. I’m disgusted with myself. I shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t even have been tempted, and I’m so terribly—I’m so sorry.”

“Wait, what?” Sin asked. “You think this is about owing you? My God, that’s insulting. I’m a Market girl. You don’t think I know better than to keep making the same offer over and over again?”

Alan seemed at a loss for words. Sin felt delighted and calm. So that was why, then. She looked up at him, looking so worried and trying to do the right thing. His hair was ruffled crazily.

“And here I thought you were supposed to be so smart,” Sin said. She tugged him down sharply; he wasn’t actively resisting anymore, so she managed it. Then she let go of his shirt and laid her palms on either side of his face, smiling up at him. “Fool,” she whispered. “I love you.”

Alan jerked back. Sin was left with empty hands.

His body had actually recoiled, as if she’d shot him. His chest was rising and falling hard.

“What is it now?” Sin asked, and heard her voice waver. She almost hated him for doing this to her again, for being able to make her so happy and taking it away. “You don’t have to say it back, you know. I realize the idea is new to you. Just—turn it over in your mind. See what you think.”

His mouth curled into a sneer, too much like an expression that belonged on Nick’s face, and Sin thought, Raised with a demon. She felt hollow inside.

“See what I think?” Alan repeated, his voice cold. “I think it’s ridiculous!”

Sin pulled her robe tighter at her throat. “Okay,” she said. “I think I’m done here.”

“About when did this great romance start?” Alan inquired. “Was all that looking as if you wanted to get sick every time you saw me walk some sort of clever cover? What do I have to do to get you to stop, smash my kneecap with a hammer? I bet that would do it.”

“I wouldn’t bother,” Sin said. “I thought we were past this. Do I have to remind you that until five minutes ago you assumed I’d throw myself at someone a hundred times as if I was merchandise that could be used to settle a debt?”

“You were the one who leaned in to kiss me and told me how very grateful you were in the same breath,” Alan said. He had the absolute gall to look distraught, as if it was his heart being thrown aside as if it was rubbish. “Tell me, what else was I supposed to think?”

She had said that. She tried to put herself back into that skin, only a few weeks ago, tried to feel what she had felt before her heart had changed.

“I wasn’t offering love then,” she said, and he flinched at the word. “I don’t offer that as payment for anything. But that doesn’t matter. You’ve already made up your mind about me. What you want is someone like Mae to love you, someone normal and white and perfect. You see me as something the real people come and watch as if they’re at the zoo, and the idea of me having feelings is ridiculous!”

“Yes,” said Alan. “The idea of you having feelings for me is ridiculous.”

They stood staring at each other across a moonlit foot of space, both of them standing in shadows and the square of light under the skylight between them.

So there it was, the truth laid out between two liars at last. He thought she was too shallow to love anyone. He’d kissed her because he thought so little of her, thought she was a toy. He was just like everyone else: He believed the role.

“Something else you always thought about me was that I was stupid,” Sin said at last, her voice shaking. “Well, you were right. I can’t believe how stupid I’ve just been.”

It was cowardly to use the kids as a shield, but just for that moment she didn’t care. She ran into the room where they were sleeping and curled up by their bed, burying her face in the sofa cushion she’d slept on the night before so she could cry into it and be sure no-one would hear.

In the morning Alan was gone. Sin couldn’t spend time worrying whether he had just gone to work early or if this meant she should clear out before he came back. She had to get Toby to his new day care, and Lydie and herself to school.

The Tube had delays on the Northern Line, and that meant once she had delivered the kids she was late for school. She got off at her station hurrying, her hair floating in a static mass around her head from the shoving fight she’d had through the crowded carriage.

She was really not in the mood to meet Mae outside.

Mae’s hair was shining and straight. Her T-shirt reading I’M NO MODEL LADY—I’M THE REAL THING, unlike Sin’s charity shop uniform, fit her perfectly. And Sin was tired of trying to be above all that.

“What do you want now?”

Mae recoiled at her tone. “I was just wondering when you were coming back to the Market,” she said frostily.

“What?” Sin asked. “Are you graciously inclined to allow me back in? Might want to deal with being a tourist leading the Market before you make any rash decisions.”

“What?” Mae asked. “Wait.”

Sin didn’t have time to wait, but she stopped in the middle of the street all the same, the early-morning traffic of London buzzing all around them, and watched Mae’s brown eyes go wide.

“Sin,” Mae asked carefully, “do you have Celeste’s pearl? Because I don’t.”

“I saw you—,” Sin began, and remembered how dark it had been, in the storm. She’d seen Mae so close, and seen Celeste’s throat bare. She’d just assumed.

Mae nodded. “I thought you had it. And obviously, you thought I did.”

Mae’s subdued manner the night before suddenly made more sense.

She still looked subdued, actually, and hurt on top of that.

“Would you hate me?” she asked suddenly. “If I had it?”

Sin looked her over, shining hair to expensive sneakers, and back to her eyes. “Yeah,” she said, and then smiled. “But not for that long.”

Mae’s dimple flashed out in return. “Good to know. Not that either of us is likely to get the pearl anytime soon.”

“You sound like you think you know where it is,” Sin said slowly.

“Who was the one person on that deck we can’t trust?” Mae asked. “I don’t want to think it—but it would make sense for Seb to take the pearl. He could use it as proof he’s on the magicians’ side if his loyalty is called into question. He’d be able to show he kept the pearl safe.”

Sin thought about Jamie the magician, who had put Nick in the Circle’s hands, who looked as if he had pearls for eyes. She thought of Nick the demon, and Alan the liar. Alan who worked for his own agenda, and did not care how cruel he might be.

Who was the one person on that deck we can’t trust?

She wasn’t sure it was that simple. But Mae’s argument did make sense.

“Could be,” she said finally. “I’m late for school.”

If Mae was right, even if she wasn’t, the pearl was as far out of their reach as it had ever been. Exactly as far, if it was with a magician, aboard a boat.

Neither of them had an invitation there now. Mae becoming a messenger, consorting with the magicians, firing that gun—it hadn’t got her the pearl. Sin could be sorry for her.

She wasn’t sorry that Mae wasn’t leader yet.

Sin didn’t have a terribly convincing cover story worked out. She mumbled about a family emergency and wished she’d thought to call the school earlier. The headmistress had given both her hair and her baggy uniform a look that nicely combined disapproval, distaste, and disbelief.

It was Sin’s own fault. She was all off balance, and her performance was substandard at best. She got through it somehow and went to class.

They were studying a book about a woman who was all angsty about her husband’s dead wife. So far Sin liked the dead wife best, though because she was a girl and the most interesting character, Sin had dark suspicions she might turn out to be evil.

She did not air her suspicions. She kept her head down, hoping questions about the Gothic tradition would not hit it.

She needed to pay attention and catch up, but she could not keep her mind off the question of the pearl. If Mae was right and Seb had it, the person with the best chance of getting it from him was Mae’s brother. Sin had to act first.

She tried to think of anything she could possibly do, and tried not to think of anything else.

Mae becoming a messenge There was a knock at the classroom door. Sin jolted out of her reverie so hard she almost knocked her book off the desk; only her fast reflexes saved it.

Ms. Black walked over to the door and opened it.

“Hello,” said Alan, and as soon as that gentle, courteous voice hit Sin’s ear she hurt her neck looking around. Alan was wearing a suit jacket and had his hands clasped, a particularly solemn and responsible look on his face. He seemed older somehow. “I’m a social worker the hospital assigned to the Davies family?”

“Oh,” said Ms. Black, and shot a quick, guilty look at Sin.

“You heard about the incident?” Alan asked, as if quietly grateful to have a fellow adult who understood the situation and could sympathize with him. “I’m sorry to disrupt your class—”

“Oh, no,” Ms. Black said. “Not at all.”

Alan gave her a grave smile. “I’m afraid I must ask if I can take Cynthia Davies away from her studies. There are some forms at the hospital that require her signature. Routine, of course, but without them…”

“I understand completely,” Ms. Black said.

Sin shoved all her books into her new bag at once and was rising to her feet before Alan murmured, “Thank you.”

There was a little park a few streets away from Toby’s day care. Sin told Alan to drive there. They could talk, and she would be close enough to get Toby even if the talk went wrong.

They didn’t speak much on the way. Sin leaned her forehead against the car window and hushed feelings of excitement trying to clamor within her. She’d been happy too soon last night.

The park was basically a bit of grass and trees fenced around, but at this time of day it was deserted, and that was good enough. They sat on a rise of grass between trees and a path. Alan was a little awkward sitting down. Sin forced herself to watch and keep her face impassive.

When they were sitting down, Alan turned to her. “I’m sorry for being such a jerk.”

They were not touching, and Sin lowered her head so she wasn’t looking at him. “Okay.”

“I’m really sorry,” Alan said. “I can’t—I can barely believe I acted that way. I’ve thought about someone saying that to me for years. I had it planned out in my head. Which is pathetic, I know. It went a hundred different ways.”

Sin bowed her head. “It was just never me saying it.”

“Well—no,” Alan said.

Sin laughed past an obstruction in her throat. “Oh, keep going,” she said. “You’re doing so well.”

“I never imagined you,” Alan said quietly. “My imagination’s not that good. I never thought that was possible. Even when I started to want it.”

Sin raised her head. “Just so you know? First time you’ve made that clear.”

“Right,” Alan said. He looked pale, and Sin realized she could finally, tentatively, start to be happy again. “I’m really messing this up, then.”

“Yes,” Sin told him.

“I’m not very good at human emotions,” Alan said. “I know that’s creepy. I have an aunt and cousins, and a few months ago I tried to get back in touch with them. I thought we could have a blissful family reunion, and it didn’t—it didn’t quite work out that way. I keep thinking of human love as something from the picture books my mother used to read to me, something fixed in pastel colors. Something sure.”

“Something perfect?” Sin asked. “Like Mae?”

Alan looked startled. “But I told you how it was with Mae. I told you I lied to her, and I couldn’t make myself stop, and I couldn’t make myself be sorry enough.”

“Here is a tip for you about romance,” Sin said. “If you tell a girl another girl is perfect, that’s the bit the first girl tends to focus on. Also, telling a girl another girl is perfect is really dumb.”

“Thank you,” Alan said. “I need all the help I can get.” He paused. “Also, Mae is not perfect.”

Sin looked up at him from under her eyelashes. “And me?”

“I don’t lie to you,” Alan said. “I lie with you.”

Sin stopped looking up at him from under her eyelashes and burst out laughing.

Alan went red. “So I’ve just realized how that came out. Uh.”

Sin laughed and laughed. She had to cover her face with her hand and laugh into her palm, leaning into Alan a little.

“Oh, Alan Ryves,” she said. “You’re such a fantastic liar. You are the smoothest con man of them all. Who could resist that silver tongue?”

Alan laughed and leaned closer, his shoulder solid and warm against hers. “I was all set to grovel,” he told her. “But now I’ve lost my concentration.” He paused. “I really am sorry,” he continued softly. “I might be messed up, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I want—I want to be as good to you as I know how.”

“I’d like that,” Sin said, in a low voice. “I want to be good to you as well. Your leg—”

Alan flinched so that their shoulders were no longer touching. “You don’t have to say anything about it. You were right, things have changed. I was wrong to bring it up.”

“No,” Sin said. “You were wrong to bring it up like that, but all the things we were yelling about are big. They matter. So I want to say: It’s a big deal, but it’s not a bad thing. And it’s not ever going to be a deal breaker.”

She took a deep breath and stared at her knees, her legs swimming in the gray flannel skirt. She wanted for the conversation to be over. She wanted to be as good to him as she knew how. But she’d had enough of misunderstandings.

“Do you see any deal breakers for you here?” she asked. “In the long term? Because I was thinking about—the long term.”

She looked up at Alan, lifting her chin and being the princess of the Market, not afraid to look anyone in the eyes. Alan had gone still.

Then, slowly, he smiled. It was like the smile he’d given her at the Goblin Market, the time she’d thrown him the fever blossom. It was better this time: It was just the two of them, and the knowledge that all the parts they played would be seen through.

“I don’t have deal breakers,” Alan said. “I look on tempests, and am never shaken.”

“Shakespeare?”

His eyes brightened. “You know the poem?”

“No,” said Sin. “I know your quoting voice.”

“Oh,” Alan murmured. He leaned forward. Sin leaned forward too.

She smiled at him, their faces so close he probably couldn’t see the smile. “I’m not like other girls,” she whispered, and she thought he could hear the smile in her voice. “You can’t just have me for a Shakespeare quotation. I thought you were meant to be a charming devil.”

“It’s true,” Alan said. “I am quite the wordsmith.”

“So?” Sin slid his glasses off and threw them gently onto the grass, and then leaned closer.

“There are so many reasons I want to be with you,” Alan said. “But I know the most important one.”

She leaned her forehead against his. “Yeah?”

“You being brave and beautiful and smart is nice, obviously,” Alan said thoughtfully. “But it’s not important. Not compared to the future we have together in a life of crime.”

“You make a good point.”

“Conning people out of their savings,” Alan said. “Forgery. Blackmail. Selling real estate on Mars. We could have it all. You with me, Bambi?”

Sin pushed him back on the grass and leaned over him, her hair falling on each side of his face. The whole world was small and quiet, the sun filtering through her hair in gold and red.

“Clive, I was with you from ‘I’m a social worker.’”

She laughed down at him. He rose on one elbow and caught her mouth and kissed her, slow and warm as sunshine, and Sin could be happy. Nobody was going to take this away.

When they left the park to pick up Toby, Alan held her hand. Sin could move with any partner, and she focused so she did not outmatch his step. An elderly lady with a terrier gave them a second look, because they were obviously together. Sin just smiled at her, and after a moment, the old woman smiled back. They passed on.

Alan charmed the day-care supervisor, of course. Sin rolled her eyes at him behind the supervisor’s back.

“I’m naturally charming,” he told her in the car. “I can’t help that.”

“I don’t have your way with words,” Sin said. “So I’m just going to go with a quick response. Ha!”

Both times they got out of the car, when they stopped for Lydie and when they got home, Alan reached for her hand. Sin rested against his side despite the difficulty of balancing Toby and measuring her step with Alan’s: She liked being there. The contact made everything seem real.

It also made things clear to Nick and Mae, who were both in the flat. Mae’s eyebrows went up, and then she grinned.

Nick’s eyes narrowed.

Neither of them said anything, because Mae was occasionally tactful and Nick was always Nick. Sin changed into a T-shirt and jeans, Alan made dinner, and everyone discussed how to get the pearl back.

“I’ll kill Seb and take it from his body,” Nick suggested.

“Your plan is always killing, Nicholas,” Alan said. “It worries me. I want you to have many goals. What if he didn’t take it?”

Nick shrugged.

“What if he did take it, and hid it?” Alan pursued.

“What are you going to do with the pearl, if you do get it from Seb?” Sin asked, on an impulse.

Nick looked at her steadily. “I’m going to give it to Mae.”

So there was yet another way for Mae to win. Sin met Nick’s eyes and wondered if he was bothered by the new development of her and Alan, or if this was just Nick being himself. It was hard to differentiate between Nick being deliberately offensive and his everyday personality.

She did think there was something tense about the line of his shoulders that wasn’t usual.

“I don’t want to win because you just hand the prize to me,” Mae said, outraged.

“Fine,” Nick said. “Then I see only one fair way for you to settle this. You girls will have to wrestle.”

Mae and Sin glanced at each other. Sin grinned. “Fine by me. I’d win.”

“I don’t know,” Nick drawled. “She’s tiny, but she’s bad-tempered. Plus, she comes up with strategies. I suggest one that involves oil.”

“Thank you, Nick. If you insist on being no help at all you can do it quietly,” Mae told him.

“I think you’re very helpful, Nick,” Lydie put in worshipfully.

Mae smirked and turned back to the map of the boat she’d sketched out with a little input from all of them, and which she had accidentally got a bit of ketchup on.

Sin had caught Mae’s look of doubt at Alan when the leadership of the Market came up. She’d also noticed that Alan didn’t say anything.

There was no way to tell from the map where someone might choose to hide a pearl, and no way for Nick to go back right now. Gerald had told Jamie to get rid of him. The Aventurine Circle was in upheaval, and the last thing they needed around was a demon.

Until they had another use for him. Until they had someone else to kill.

That didn’t stop everyone from talking about it until Toby was passed out with his head on the table, and Sin had to get up and put him and Lydie to bed. It took a few stories to get Lydie down, and when she came out into the hall she saw through the open door Mae sitting on the sofa watching TV and Nick sharpening knives at the window. The was no Alan in sight.

Which meant Alan was probably alone in his room. Sin figured he might want some company.

“So, Alan and Sin,” Nick said.

On the other hand, Alan probably had a book. He could wait for just a little while. Sin drew closer to the door.

Mae lifted the remote and clicked off the television, easing backward with one arm along the sofa back and her head tilted to look at Nick from a new angle.

“What about them? How are you feeling?”

“You know I don’t like it when you ask me such personal questions, Mavis,” Nick said. “Be a lady.”

Mae made an unladylike gesture. Nick had his head bent over the whetstone and knife in his hands, his hair falling in his eyes, but he must have caught the gesture reflected in the glass of the window. He gave a half smile.

“Does it bother you?” Mae asked.

“Bother me?” Nick repeated slowly, as if he was speaking in a foreign language. Sin supposed he always was. “I didn’t expect it,” he said finally. “And I usually do expect that kind of thing. It’s strange. If she’s using my brother, I’ll make her sorry.”

“Sin wouldn’t do something like that,” Mae said.

“Is Sin really your big concern?” Nick inquired. “What about Alan? I always thought you two would—I thought he liked you.”

“Not enough,” Mae answered softly. “And I didn’t like him enough either. We’ve both known that for a while. The only one who kept insisting that it was going to happen was you.”

Nick did not look up from sharpening his knife, and this time he didn’t smile, either.

“Because you wanted to give me to Alan as a reward or something equally horrible,” Mae said.

“Maybe I thought you’d be a good reward.”

There was a long pause.

“This is me staring at you in disbelief,” Mae said eventually. “Just so you know.”

“Don’t talk to me about what I know. You know about how humans feel about each other. Alan knows better than I do, anyway. I get that I don’t know. I know that I don’t know. I wanted something good for both of you. I wanted you to be happy.”

“Well, you got it wrong,” Mae said, her voice growing more gentle. “But that’s pretty normal for humans, too.”

“Everyone in this world does seem to spend all their time getting it wrong.” Nick stopped and tested the sharpness of the knife with his thumb. “Everyone in my world too.”

“We get things right in this world,” Mae said. “Every now and then. You get things right.”

“Every now and then,” Nick responded, almost under his breath. He laid the whetstone down on the windowsill. “Why would Alan go for Sin?” he asked, and outrage spiked hot in Sin’s chest. She wanted to fly into the room and hit Nick until he was bloody, until she realized exactly how furious and bewildered Nick sounded. “Alan doesn’t even like new people.”

Sin couldn’t see Mae’s face, but she saw her hand clench on the sofa cushions, in a movement that looked partly like frustration and partly like prayer, as if she was imploring the sofa gods for patience.

“Sin’s hardly a new person.”

“It’s new for her to be this close,” Nick argued.

“You don’t think Alan likes for people to be close? He obviously likes Sin to be close. And Alan likes new people just fine,” she told Nick. “He liked me and Jamie from the first minute, and he’d known us a few days when he let us move in. He wants people to be close. The minute you found out he had other family, he dragged you off to Durham and tried to bond with people he barely knew.”

Nick stood up. His face was not quite as expressionless as usual; there was a hard edge to his mouth, of anger or just possibly distress.

“What are you saying about Alan?” he demanded. “That he wants people to be close too much? Is Sin going to hurt him?”

“I trust Sin. And I’m not saying anything about Alan. I’m talking about you, and this thing you do.”

Nick took a step toward the sofa, not as if he wanted to be closer to Mae but as if he was advancing on her.

“What do you mean?”

“I remember reading your father’s diary,” Mae said. “I remember how you said that Alan didn’t like being left alone, when what you meant was that you didn’t want to leave him. It’s okay if new people upset you, if you’re wary about them getting close to you or your brother. Don’t shove what makes you uncomfortable onto Alan. They’re your feelings, and once you admit that, you can deal with them.”

Nick was still for a moment, considering.

Then he said, “All right.”

Sin could not see Mae blink, but she knew body language. The way Mae’s head was suddenly held, frozen for a fraction of a second, meant that Sin would have bet a week’s rent that a blink had happened.

Apparently the demon was not always this amenable during his lessons about emotions. Color Sin shocked.

“I remember things too,” Nick said. “I remember when you and Jamie were living with us, when Alan had a demon’s mark, and I wasn’t talking to him.”

“You were so unhappy.” Mae did not sound as if she was reminiscing, but as if she was giving Nick information.

Nick came a few steps closer, no longer advancing like an enemy, but prowling forward just the same.

“Once I woke up and Alan was screaming from the dreams demons were sending him. I went to him, but you were already there. Do you remember that?”

“Not really,” Mae answered. “I tried to do whatever I could.”

“You were comforting him, and I thought—I thought that after his mark was taken off, he wouldn’t want to go to Durham. I thought he would want to stay with you. But he didn’t want to. He went back to the people he thought could be his family, the people he was surer of.”

Nick reached the sofa, going on one knee in the sofa cushions, one hand on the sofa back where Mae’s arm lay. He was arched over her, his back a curve, hair in his eyes and his eyes utterly intent.

“So tell me, Mavis,” he murmured. “Who wanted to be with you?”

He reached out and touched her face, turning it toward his. Mae turned her face up to his, the ceiling lights touching her profile with gold. For a moment Sin thought, Good for them, and that maybe tonight, for just this one night, everyone in this little home could be happy.

Before their lips met, Mae turned her face away.

“Nick,” she said in a low voice. “Don’t.”

Nick went tense all over. The bow of his back, with his face bent toward Mae, suddenly looked a great deal more sinister. “Why not?”

Mae tilted her face up again, this time defiantly. She did not move out of Nick’s shadow. “Leaving aside the fact that I actually do have more pride than to let you say, ‘Oh well, I might as well have her’ the moment it seems like Alan doesn’t want me after all, as if I have no choice in the matter, as if I’d put up with being passed around like a parcel—”

“That isn’t how it is,” Nick snarled. “Just because I was trying not to stand in the way—”

“Leaving that aside,” Mae said, powering on determinedly over Nick’s voice until he shut up, “there’s the mark. And that makes the idea that I have no choice in the matter far too close to the truth.”

Nick glared down at her. “You asked me to put that mark on you!”

“I know I did,” Mae said, her tone level.

“Don’t lie to me.” Nick’s voice was suddenly loud, suddenly so angry that it struck Sin it went right through being an order and crashed into becoming a plea. “You wanted me before the mark. I know you did.”

“I know I did too,” Mae said again, in just the same way, and then her voice went softer. “But feelings change.”

Nick stared down at her, eyes boring into her face. “No,” he murmured, his voice low and sure. “You still want me.”

“What does it matter?” Mae asked bleakly. “I don’t know how my feelings would have changed without the mark. I trust you not to use the mark against me deliberately, but we don’t know how much the mark affects me without either of us knowing it. We do know it makes me want to please you, to do what you want. I can’t risk becoming some sort of satellite to you. I don’t want to lose bits of myself. I want you, but I don’t want to be yours. I want to be mine. And what about you? What do you want?”

Nick drew his hand away from her face as if her skin had burned him. “I don’t understand.”

“Sure you do,” Mae said. “You can’t just reach out and snag the parcel as it goes by. This is the human world, and I’m a human. I know that you’re not one. But I need you to say something to me. I need to know.”

“What use is it?” Nick demanded. “Since apparently I’m being punished for doing what you wanted.”

Mae launched herself up from the sofa. Nick had to stand up in a hurry, or she would have head-butted him in the face. He swung away from the sofa, looking like a caged animal about to start pacing, and Mae crossed her arms over her chest. There was a sheen of tears making her dark eyes gleam.

“It’s not about punishing you,” Mae said furiously. “It’s not about you at all. It’s about me, it’s about staying myself. But if I’m able to get the pearl, well, then maybe I’ll want to hear what you have to say to me.”

Nick went still. He had not considered the pearl this way before, Sin thought, and she thought too that he might be surprised Mae had.

“So what you need is the pearl.”

“What I want,” Mae said, “is for you to come to me after I get the pearl, and tell me what you want. And if you don’t want anything enough to try and put it into words—”

She shrugged in a jerky movement and went for the door. Sin flattened herself against Alan’s bedroom door, about to slide in, but she heard Mae’s last words loud and clear.

“Well then, Nick. Don’t bother.”

Once she had slipped into Alan’s room, she leaned back against the closed door and gave him a smile.

“So your brother disapproves of me.”

“Of course,” Alan said, looking up from his book and smiling at the sight of her. “You’re obviously going to break my heart.”

It didn’t sound entirely like a joke, and Sin didn’t know what to say, so she went over to the bed and kissed him. Alan pulled her down close, his hand at the back of her neck. After a few minutes Sin drew back so she could climb onto the bed. She got in on the left side, his good side, and whispered into his ear, “Obviously, that is my plan.”

“It’s just clear to everyone I don’t deserve you,” Alan said. “But don’t worry about it. I’m going to lie and scheme and kill to keep you anyway.”

“That’s all right then,” Sin said. She drew her mouth along the line of his jaw. “Why don’t you close your book?”

Alan did not do so. “It’s very interesting.”

Sin smiled against his skin. “So am I.”

“The most interesting girl I know,” Alan murmured.

She’d heard that before, with “beautiful” instead of “interesting.” She liked it better this way.

She wasn’t crazy about the way Alan pulled away from her a little and looked at her seriously.

“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” he started, which was a beginning that never ended well. “And I want to be honest with you.”

“You don’t have to be,” Sin said. “If you lie, I’ll know what you mean.”

Alan reached out and touched her face, and looked at her as if she was a kaleidoscope, showing all her different colors, and he liked them all.

“I’m being terribly selfish right now,” he said in a low voice. “Cynthia. You know I’m as good as marked for dead.”

Sin’s hands curled into fists, her nails cutting into her palms and stinging, the way tears stung when you refused to let them fall.

“I know,” she said.

“The Circle’s a mess right now,” Alan continued. “But it won’t be a mess forever. They’ll find a way to use Gerald’s mark on me. Or they’ll just kill me.”

“We’ll get it off,” Sin said.

“We’ll try,” he returned. “But that’s the thing. I don’t want to act like I only have a few days to live. I want to act like I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want to go anywhere. I want us to take our time.”

“Oh, just great,” Sin said. She kissed him again to show him that he could wait around being romantic all he wanted. She would still be there. “You’ll be sorry when I move out.”

“You’re still—?”

“‘Let’s not rush things, Cynthia,’” Sin said in an imitation of Alan’s voice. “‘Let’s just move in together.’ Yes, I’m moving out. You can come over and cook me dinner now and then, though.”

“Sounds fair.”

Sin settled lower down, against the rise of the pillows. “For now you can read to me.”

“I’d like that,” said Alan.

He sat up a little to rearrange the pillows, then pulled them flat rather than pushing them against the headboard, Sin’s head sliding down on them. Alan leaned over her and kissed her, arched over her, one hand running along her ribs, fingers trailing warm over her thin T-shirt. Sin’s breath came short as the kiss went deep and it didn’t matter, breathing seemed like a faraway irrelevance compared to shivering under Alan’s mouth.

“I would, you know,” Alan murmured into the kiss.

Sin gave a soft interrogative sound, which was as good as he was getting right now.

“Lie,” Alan answered, kissing her again.

“Scheme,” he added after a moment into her ear, and kissed the place at the edge of her jaw. Sin arched up underneath him, and his fingers touched the slice of skin between her shirt and jeans.

“And kill,” he whispered against her mouth, and kissed her breathless again.

“That’s good to know,” Sin told him when she had to break away, her heart drumming in her ears. She turned her head to the side, saw Alan’s free hand still holding his book, and started to laugh softly, looking up at him. “You’re keeping your place.”