The Demon's Covenant

11

Caveat Emptor

Mae burst into a breakneck run for the wagon even as the door swung shut, the curtain billowing gently in the night air.

She had a hand on the door and a warning on her lips before it occurred to her that they were two girls alone, and once Gerald’s cover was blown he would have no reason to play nice.

And she was holding a baby. Sin wouldn’t thank her for carrying her little brother directly into the line of fire.

Okay, Mae thought. Back to the Market, alert them all there’s a magician in the wagon with the heir apparent, save Sin, and most important, get someone else to hold the baby.

Before she went, she wanted to check that Sin was all right.

She shifted Toby into the crook of her elbow and reached out with her free hand to twitch the curtain aside just a fraction.

There were lit candles floating in the bowl of rose petals and water.

Sin was standing by her bed, wrapped in red silk with black flowers and thorns stenciled on it. The silk looked fragile enough to tear at a movement, and there was plenty of potential for movement in the curves beneath.

For now she was still, dark red lips curved and dark eyes thoughtful.

All Mae could see of Gerald was his back and a sliver of his face as he tilted his head to look at Sin. His eye was lit by a gold gleam from the candles. “You said you wanted to talk.”

He took a step toward her, and she flowed toward him like a red silk river until she was pressed up against him, hand at the nape of his neck where his sandy hair curled. Gerald’s hand hesitated, wavering in midair, and then settled on her hip.

Sin laughed, her eyelids lowered as if she was sleepy, as if she’d just risen from bed and wanted to crawl right back in.

“Sure,” she murmured, throaty, and slid the red silk robe off both brown shoulders at once.

Then she grasped ivory handles and drew out long knives with the sleek sound of tearing silk. Before Gerald could take a step back, the blades were kissing behind his neck.

Sin said, “Let’s talk.”

Mae felt her lips curve into a grin. There was no need for a rescue mission after all. Apparently Sin had the situation under control.

That was when she felt the hand touch her shoulder.

She refused to let herself scream, clamping her jaw shut and whirling to face whatever was behind her. Her hand was suddenly cradling Toby’s head, her first strange impulse to shield it.

Behind her was Merris Cromwell, standing over her looking surprised and displeased, as if she’d caught Mae trespassing in her garden.

“There’s a magician in there,” Mae said, low.

“Cynthia has already notified me and lured the magician away from the Market,” Merris replied in her normal voice. “Why you feel torturing a magician might be appropriate entertainment for a toddler, I cannot imagine.”

“I did not know—”

“Well, now you do,” Merris said. “Could you perhaps remove the child from the vicinity before—”

The door to the wagon banged open, Gerald stumbling as Sin pushed him out and then followed close behind him, her knives at his back. She was striding easily until she saw Mae.

“What’s Toby doing here?”

Gerald’s eyes flashed to Mae’s face and then to the child in her arms. He had obviously absorbed something from the sudden tightness of Sin’s tone. He looked thoughtful.

“He was wandering,” said Mae. “I thought I should bring him back to you. Sorry to interrupt.”

“Yeah,” Sin said, kicking Gerald in the back of his knees so they buckled and he went down hard onto them in the dirt. “It’s a very special night.”

“Sin,” Gerald asked, “do you know who you are serving?” He jerked his head toward where Merris Cromwell stood with her face like a carving in stone. “Do you know who she is, the cold mistress of Mezentius House? Do you know what that means?”

Mae couldn’t help but remember the scream of that woman in Merris’s institute, being tortured by a demon that was living inside her husband and destroying him from the inside out. Merris made the relatives of the possessed people pay to have them restrained, and pay extra to stay with them and watch them die slowly.

Judging from what Mae had seen of Mezentius House, she made them pay a lot.

Sin grabbed a fistful of Gerald’s sandy hair and held her long knives clasped in one fist, both blades sharp against Gerald’s throat.

“I lived a month last summer in that house,” she said, soft. “My mother died there. I know who I serve.”

Gerald looked in Merris’s direction, ignoring the knives that shifted dangerously as he moved.

“I’d like to offer you an opportunity,” he said. “Send them all away, and we can talk. I have some things to say that you might find interesting.”

“If he continues to talk like a door-to-door salesman,” Merris said to Sin, “cut his throat.”

Sin smiled. “With pleasure.”

Merris’s voice had been deep and measured, completely without emotion as far as Mae could see, but Sin’s glance upward was at once fond and pleased, as if she had just been praised by an adored teacher.

“You trust her,” Gerald said. “That’s nice. Be nicer if she trusted you, of course.”

“Shut your mouth,” Sin snapped.

Gerald did no such thing. “Did she tell you when the pain started, Sin?” he asked, voice soft and impossible to stop as the wind blowing in from the sea. “Did she tell you what the doctors said? Do you know how sick she is?”

It might not have worked, if Sin hadn’t been looking at Merris.

Mae, watching Sin and Gerald, did not see Merris’s face, but she saw the change that swept over Sin’s.

Gerald struck.

He seized the moment of indecision and broke backward, rising to his feet and into Sin’s body. He knocked her off her feet and whirled on her, magic streaming from his palms in two bursts of light.

She made a small, choked sound and hit the ground hard.

“Well,” said Gerald, wheeling on Merris, his hands still blazing with power. “I imagine you’ll be willing to talk now.”

Mae was holding Toby so hard he was whimpering softly in her ear. She looked desperately at Merris.

Merris was smiling.

Gerald collapsed on the ground with a knife in his back.

“You always say you want to talk,” Alan said, walking out of the shadows of the hills with a new throwing knife already in hand. “And then you attack people. It doesn’t make me feel very chatty.”

From the night-dark grass, Gerald let out a low groan and then twisted, raising himself up on one hand. He pulled out the knife and let it drop, bloody, to the ground.

“I might point out that she was the one who pulled her weapons on me,” he said.

Alan stopped by Sin where she lay in a tangle of torn silk gone gray in the moonlight, mouth pulled tight in agony but trying to sit up. He offered her his free hand; she glared up at him and shook her head. Alan shrugged and limped forward to Gerald.

“You invaded our market for purposes of your own,” Alan told Gerald. “You did not ask permission. You trespassed, and you thought you could do so without fear of retribution because you’re stronger than we are.”

“I am stronger than you are,” said Gerald. “I took down your precious brother, didn’t I? You have no idea what I can do to you.”

He rose slowly to his feet, slivers of magic glinting through his fingers as if he was running gold coins through his hands and they were catching the light. There was a snick as Alan popped his left wrist sheath and suddenly had knives in both hands, and one of them lifted to Gerald’s throat.

Gerald laughed. “And a knife won’t stop me.”

Mae didn’t see Sin move. The first thing she saw was Sin standing pressed up against Gerald’s back and lacing her knives with Alan’s, until it looked like Gerald was wearing a sharp-edged and gleaming collar that caught moonlight and drove him to his knees, held him afraid to move.

The first thing she heard was Sin saying in Gerald’s ear, “How many knives will? Because we have a selection.”

Alan looked into Sin’s eyes and gave a small nod.

“Deal with one of us and the other one cuts your throat,” he said. He looked like a young priest, serious and well-meaning, and then he flicked his wrist casually and Gerald’s head was pushed back against Sin’s knives. “If you want to strike, be very sure you’re fast enough. Or maybe you can tell us what the hell you meant about Merris.”

“What have you done to her?” Sin demanded.

“I didn’t do a thing,” Gerald said. “It’s just one of those things that happen … that come creeping into your body like an intruder, like a mindless demon. Bone cancer. Too advanced for any of your small magics. I guess you could try having Alan’s demon cure it: His magic’s about as subtle as a battering ram, and the disease is bound up with every bone, threaded throughout every part of her body. At least when he shattered her into a thousand pieces, it would be quick.”

“No demon is going to lay a hand on her!”

“Then she’ll die slowly,” said Gerald. “You ready to lose her? Ready to lead the Market?”

When Sin spoke, it was not to Gerald.

“Is it true?”

“Yes,” Merris said distantly.

Mae couldn’t look at Merris. It was almost too much to look at Sin.

“Why,” said Sin, and her voice trembled, “why did you not tell me?”

The knives in her hands trembled too, and Alan’s voice lashed out in a command. “Hold fast!”

“Don’t you dare give me orders, you filthy traitor,” Sin snarled, her dark eyes narrowing. Her knives did not tremble again.

There was something rising in Gerald, like the wind rising as it came in from the sea and sent chills rushing down Mae’s neck.

Toby began to cry, a long, thin, despairing sound. Mae rocked him and pleaded with him quietly, desperately afraid that he was going to distract Sin at exactly the wrong moment.

There were flashes of magic running through all of Gerald’s skin now, not just his hands: like veins of gold in rock, like the sun’s rays painted faint across the sky.

“Listen to me, Merris,” said Gerald, turning his face to her as magic’s shining fingers stroked up his jaw. “You don’t have to die. I can save you.”

“Can you?” asked Merris, her voice very calm. “And what would you want in return?”

There were sparks of golden magic bursting from Gerald’s lips. The words kept spilling out too.

“A truce. The Market isn’t getting anywhere fighting magicians. Don’t pretend that the good fight is what you care about either. The Goblin Market is a business, and I have no quarrel with that. Stop selling talismans to tourists, stop taking off their marks, and I’ll make it worth your while: There could be magic in your market that you don’t dream of now. All I want is to remove a nuisance from my life.”

“And all I want is to remove some of your important appendages,” Sin panted. “Is that wrong?”

She and Alan were both breathing hard, their knives taking on some of Gerald’s luminescence and apparently trying to bend backward in their hands. Gerald made a single gesture, palm up, and for a moment the very air around him was flooded with gold. The knives flew out of their hands. Sin and Alan were both knocked onto their backs.

The child in Mae’s arms screamed. Merris Cromwell moved forward to meet Gerald.

“Think it over,” Gerald told her, smiling. “You know where to find me.”

Sin was on her feet already, dancer-swift. She paused as she passed Alan and then gave him her hand. He took it, gritted his teeth, and hauled himself up with her help. Mae saw his shoulders set and his refusal to flinch.

They fell on Gerald like wolves, bringing him down at Merris’s feet. Gerald struck out with a fistful of magic, and Alan made a hoarse sound. Sin put a knee in Gerald’s stomach and leaned down hard, her knife pointed at his throat. Her robe was red ribbons attached to her neck and wrist, streaming out like blood-colored banners. Beneath was a white shift, streaked with blood and dirt, rising and falling fast as she panted out, “I’m tired of you,” and brought the knife down for what Mae recognized as a killing blow.

Gerald threw magic at her chest, and Sin fell back with a scorched smell in the air. Mae started forward.

“Mae, no,” Sin yelled. “Toby—”

Mae halted her charge and hung on to the howling child hard to stop herself from just putting him down and running in anyhow.

Gerald was on his feet again. So was Alan, a knife in hand and then in Gerald’s shoulder.

“He’s mine, Ryves,” Sin grated, staggering up.

Alan’s eyes narrowed. “I’m willing to share.”

“I didn’t want to have to do this,” Gerald told them quietly.

The cold note in his voice had Mae turning from him even as he lifted his hand. She started running away with her back to him, shielding the baby.

Something hit Mae from behind. She went tumbling to the ground, trying to guard Toby, and found Sin on top of her with her hair come loose and streaming around Mae’s face.

“Shh, sweetheart, my darling, it’s okay,” said Sin, and Toby unclenched his fat, clinging fists from Mae’s shirt and turned between them, bawling and snotty, to grab at Sin. Sin detached herself from Mae, sitting on the ground with her arms around her brother.

Better her than me, Mae thought, and clambered to her feet to see what was happening.

Alan had another knife in hand, driving in toward Gerald’s gut. Gerald sent a bolt of magic from his fingertips to Alan’s bad leg, and Alan gave a low scream and hit the ground.

Sin swore, shoved Toby at Mae—oh, not again—and ran back to them. Mae followed her even as Toby’s wailing started up again in her ear.

Merris Cromwell had a large ceremonial knife in her hand. Mae slackened her pace a fraction, relieved, and then saw Merris step back, lowering the knife.

Gerald said one last thing to Merris that Mae could not catch, and turned and ran.

Alan seized up one of his throwing knives from where it lay on the grass.

Merris shouted, “Don’t kill him!”

Alan threw and missed. Gerald disappeared over the crest of the hill. Sin came flying back to where Alan stood, seized him by the arm, and shouted up into his face, “Why didn’t you get him?”

“Merris said not to kill him,” Alan snapped. “Throwing knives only have so much range, and guns don’t work, so—”

“So why didn’t you run after him?” Sin demanded, every inch the princess of the Goblin Market.

Alan’s voice in response was a low snarl. “And how do you suggest I do that?”

Mae’s step slowed. She didn’t want to be there. She didn’t want to see Alan’s face as it looked right now, white and somehow wiped clean, caught in a moment of pure, furious despair.

“I—” Sin said, and stopped. She let her hand fall from Alan’s arm.

“Don’t worry, Cynthia,” said Alan, looking down at her. “I take it as a compliment, really. It’s the first time you’ve ever forgotten for a moment about my leg.”

He didn’t sound as if he was taking it as a compliment. He sounded tired and bitter.

Mae reached them, and she smiled at Alan a little desperately. He transferred his attention to her entirely, smiling back, and Sin turned away and snatched Toby out of Mae’s arms as she went.

The absence of the baby was an enormous relief. Mae’s face must have made that very clear, because Alan actually looked amused.

“Don’t tell me,” he said. “This is just how you pictured the night going.”

With Gerald gone, the alliance against the magician was lost. Sin was at Merris’s side, Toby cradled to her chest. Merris and Sin were staring at Alan, both of them dark and dignified for a moment, looking alike even though they looked nothing alike. In the space between them and Alan, the grass was stained with blood.

“There’s nothing else I can do?” Alan asked.

Merris said, “You’ve done enough.”

They drove back from Cornwall with the sun rising slowly in a cloud-pale dawn sky, the roads gray and empty before them. Mae was so tired she kept finding herself napping with her face against the window of the car door, and she had no idea how Alan was managing to drive.

In between the bursts of power napping, she tried to stay awake and keep Alan company. She was too tired to be at all tactful.

“So how come you and Sin hate each other?” she asked as Alan turned the car left at Alphington Junction.

Alan gave a soft, startled laugh, hands light on the wheel. He didn’t look tired, but the lines at the corners of his eyes were deeper than they should have been. “We don’t hate each other,” he said. “We’re just too different. If the Goblin Market was one of the American high schools you see in the movies, she’d be the head cheerleader and I’d be the captain of the chess club.”

“Good at chess, are you?” Mae asked.

“Not bad,” said Alan. “You play?”

“Oh, every now and then.”

“We should have a game sometime,” said Alan, his voice so mild the dark thought occurred to Mae that sometime soon she might get beaten at chess, something that hadn’t happened since she was eight years old.

“We should,” she agreed. “Seemed a bit worse than the eternal rivalry of the chess club and the cheerleaders, though.”

“Well,” said Alan, “dancers don’t like seeing people even stumble. I get it, I do: Stella—Sin’s mother—I saw her fall. I’ve seen a lot of dancers fall. I know why Cynthia reacts the way she does to me. She can’t help it. But I can’t help it either. When a girl shudders every time I walk by, it doesn’t make me particularly well disposed toward her.” Alan shrugged, eyes still on the road. “Some people are just destined never to get on. I don’t hate her. I just don’t like her. It’s not a big deal.”

“I don’t imagine Sin gets that a lot,” Mae commented.

“What?”

“Boys not liking her,” said Mae. “She’s kind of amazing. And beautiful.”

She spoke almost absently, forehead pressed against the glass as she tried hard not to sleep. There was morning mist obscuring the fields on either side of the road, so dense and white it looked like there were mutant sheep lurking on all sides.

It was possible she was overtired.

“You’re just as beautiful as she is,” said Alan. That was a flat-out lie, like so much of what Alan said. Like so much of what Alan said, it sounded true. “And you read,” he added.

“Uh, hot,” said Mae, feeling quite a bit more awake.

“Well,” said Alan, faint color in his cheeks, “I think so.”

She wasn’t the only one in the car feeling tense. There was a slight defensive posture to his shoulders now, as if admitting any sort of honest emotion, even something as simple as liking girls who read, was bound to get him hurt.

Mae remembered Nick, obviously desperate to leave the moment Alan told him how he felt. She could see how lying might make Alan feel more comfortable.

She made the decision to defuse this conversation, since they were stuck in the car together for the next three-quarters of an hour. She did not want to be forced to leap out into the morning and face the mutant sheep if things got awkward.

“I’d rather be amazing than beautiful.”

“I think you are,” Alan began, a warm flush spreading along the tops of his cheekbones, and Mae was struck and saddened all at once by how different he was now than he had been with Liannan.

She had to wonder whether it was just that he had a crush on her, or if he was simply more comfortable with demons.

“You wait,” she told him. “You have no idea of how awesome I can be. Next time someone else is holding the baby.”

Alan laughed. “You did look a little…” He waved one hand expressively above the steering wheel. “As if someone had given you a sack of potatoes that might explode.”

“‘What a way with words you have, Alan Ryves,’ our heroine said with deep bitterness. You had the easy job: All you had to do was throw knives and menace a magician.”

“I like to think of myself as throwing knives with deadly precision,” Alan told her, a laugh still caught in his voice. “And I was hardly menacing him.”

“C’mon, you and Sin totally had him for a minute there. Two minutes, even.”

“I wish we had,” Alan said, serious again. “He could have killed us both anytime he liked. He didn’t. He wanted to say his piece, and he said it, and then he left. What we did was irrelevant. Well—we might have annoyed him a bit.”

“I imagine so,” Mae said dryly. “Since you stabbed him twice.”

“Yeah,” said Alan in a soft voice, eyes on the misty road ahead. “That made me think he may have come in good faith.”

“So when he asked Merris to let him kill a lot of people, he really meant it?”

“Well, yes,” Alan said calmly. “And when he asked me to help strip Nick’s powers. He might mean to keep his end of the bargain.”

Mae stared. “That’s a pretty big chance to take!”

“I know.”

There was no sound for a while but the car jolting along the road toward morning. There seemed to be very little Mae could say, aside from the one thing she was afraid to voice.

She wasn’t a coward. She said it anyway.

“Alan. You’re not actually considering it, are you?”

Alan said nothing. He said nothing for so long that Mae stopped waiting for him to speak.

She leaned her head back against the car window, vision blurring between the brightness lent to the world by fever fruit and her own exhaustion. There was a cold place somewhere under her ribs, but she told herself Alan was tired too. He didn’t mean it.

Alan’s voice was so low and measured, almost musical, that it was like a lullaby. Then what he was actually saying began to seep through the mist enveloping her mind.

“Even if it all worked out, if Nick obeys all the stupid human rules I want him to follow, someday I’ll die. And he won’t. He could keep the body alive forever or do without one. And he could get lonely and invite his demon friends in out of the cold. He could lose every word he ever learned. He’s lived a thousand different lives and forgotten them. He could forget this one. There are so many ways for something to go wrong that in the end one of them will. A lot of people will die. And it will be my fault.”

Mae was awake now. Chill morning air was filtering in from the outside even through the closed car window, slipping slivers of cold down her neck.

“I was the one who put my brother ahead of the whole world,” Alan said softly. His voice was still beautiful, even though it was so bleak. “I had no right to make that decision. I wasn’t acting in some sort of thoughtless desperation. I thought. I chose. Two innocent people are dead already, and I had absolutely no right!”

“You had your reasons.”

Mae remembered the magicians of the Obsidian Circle and that terrible man, Arthur, gathered around the circle where Nick had stood trapped and snarling, like witches around a cauldron with a child in it. Someone Alan loved had been in danger. Mae had done something similar with the magician she’d killed for Jamie. She’d wanted to kill someone for him, she’d planned it, and she’d seized the chance when she had it, and then she had discovered she could not move on. Decisions like that cast long shadows; darkened your whole future, as far as you could see.

She knew how it lingered in memory, the blood on your hands.

“No reason could be good enough,” said Alan, his voice breaking on the words.

They drove through the mist in silence.

When they pulled up outside Alan and Nick’s house, Mae thought for a moment that somebody had left a light on.

Mae hadn’t brought her house key, and Jamie was in no mood to let her in if she threw pebbles at his window. What Annabel would say if Mae rang the doorbell at half past five in the morning didn’t bear thinking about, so Alan had volunteered his bed.

“I will be taking the sofa,” Mae said mid-yawn. Alan reached over and undid her seat belt, and she batted at him feebly, yawning again. “I am prepared to fight you for it.”

That was when Alan leaned forward, squinting through the windshield. Mae’s eyes followed his line of vision, and they both noticed the light.

Nobody had accidentally left the lights on, Mae realized after a moment of staring. The lamp set in the window was shining with a peculiar brightness, sending out brilliant yellow rays like searchlights. Its glow was cut into four sections by black iron.

“That’s a—” Alan began.

“Beacon lamp,” Mae finished.

“Lights the path back you have to follow,” Alan said, as if he was quoting. “Calls your wanderer home.” He shook his head, mouth curving a little, and then swung out of the car, hand on the door helping him do it smoothly. “Nick had a few objections to me going to the Goblin Market,” he said as he came around to her side.

Mae foiled his chivalrous intentions by opening her door herself and leaping out. Alan shrugged, smiled at her, and went to the door, sorting his keys and still talking, very casual, head bent over the keys as if he thought he could possibly hide how pleased he was.

“He shouldn’t be wasting a beacon lamp like that, though,” he said, opening the door to let her in. “I’ll have a word with him about it. They’re expensive. It was silly.”

“Sure it was,” said Mae, and Alan shot her a look over his glasses, warm and a little embarrassed.

The light from the beacon lamp was coming from the sitting room now, filtering through a door left ajar into the little hall. Alan pushed open the door gently, and once it was fully open Mae understood why.

Nick was asleep on the sofa, one elbow pillowing his head, long legs hooked over one of the sofa arms. That couldn’t have been comfortable.

Alan limped into the room.

“Hey,” he said quietly. “Hey, wake up. We’re home.”

Nick’s eyes snapped open and he said, “I’m awake, I’m up,” in a clear voice, then turned his face into his arm a little, eyelashes sweeping his cheeks and casting shadows on his pale face.

“No, you’re not,” Alan told his brother, voice pitched low and sweet with no intention of waking him. He reached out and brushed black locks carefully back from Nick’s brow, a gesture Nick would in no way have allowed when awake.

Even in sleep it made Nick shift uneasily, the gray T-shirt twisted around his torso climbing, baring the sharp angle of his hips and the flat of his stomach where a black leather band was fastened, the hilt of a knife pressed against his skin.

“Does he, uh, generally sleep armed?” Mae asked, and then saw Nick stir and shut her mouth. She put a foot over the threshold, testing, and his head came up a little. She withdrew.

Alan glanced back at her. “We both do.”

Mae didn’t want to wake Nick, so she stayed quiet. Alan stood there looking down at Nick, fingers poised a fraction of an inch from his sleeping face.

Nick did not make any of the usual noises of someone sleeping, no snores or sighs, not a murmur. He did not even sleep like a human being.

Alan made a small, worn sound that was not quite a sigh and limped away to put out the beacon lamp.

Mae went to the kitchen to get herself a glass of water. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was until she poured the water down her throat, feeling it splash cold and lovely onto her parched tongue. She leaned against the counter and hung on to her glass, fingers sliding in the condensation.

“Hey.”

She twisted her head around to see Alan at the kitchen door. He still looked a little pleased about Nick’s beacon lamp, faint warmth lingering in his eyes and his smile.

“Hey.”

“So I don’t mind taking Nick’s bed,” said Mae. “Then we can both get some sleep.”

“Yeah, well, about that,” Alan said, rubbing his eyes. “Sunday means time and a half, so I kind of have to be at work by seven. Nick’s bed or my bed: ladies’ choice. I’m going to make some coffee.”

He went and turned on the kettle, getting down his cup and some instant coffee. Annabel had a coffee grinder at home that was the only thing in the kitchen she and Mae knew how to use. Annabel wouldn’t allow instant coffee in the house.

“So,” Mae said slowly as the kettle puffed hot bursts of mist at them, “you’re going to do a day’s work on no sleep, and Nick was worried that someone was going to hurt you. You had to climb up a stupid mountain with your bad leg. And you knew how the Goblin Market would react when they saw you. Why on earth did you want to go?”

Alan stirred his coffee and bit back a laugh.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked. “I thought it would please you.”

“Um,” said Mae, turning her water glass around in her hands. “So you took me somewhere that you really didn’t want to go and you knew you wouldn’t enjoy, and you had a terrible time. You know, that’s a lot of guys’ definition of a date.”

There was a window across from the sink and the countertops covered with a stick-on sheet that gave the glass a frosted look. The sticker was peeling away from one edge, but the dawn light still came through fuzzy, touching Alan’s curly hair with blurry gold fingers.

A corner of Alan’s mouth came up.

“My definition of a date includes the girl agreeing to go on one with me,” he said. “Don’t worry about it, Mae.”

He moved past the counter, cup angled so there was no chance of spilling it on her, and Mae thought about Sin laughing and saying that Alan wasn’t exactly the type to make a girl’s heart start racing, about how pleased Alan had been by something as simple as a light in the window calling him home. He looked so tired, and the happiness was already slipping off his face as if it did not belong there.

“Aside from that small detail,” Mae told him slowly, “I think it was a pretty good date. You definitely deserve a kiss on the doorstep. Or, you know. Wherever.”

She said the words on an impulse born of fever fruit and sympathy, and then she was panicking. It wasn’t that she had any objection to kissing Alan, but she wanted to be fair. She didn’t know if this was fair.

She did know that she liked the way happiness flooded back into his face, eyes on hers suddenly, warm and private, as if he was about to lean over to her and whisper the best secret he knew in her ear.

“Just one,” she told him. “There’s that other guy. I said I’d give him a chance. But I’d like to—to see.”

“I understand,” Alan said, soft. He still looked so happy.

Mae put her glass down, though it seemed to want to cling to her suddenly sweaty hands. The kitchen was full of shadows, but Alan was close enough to see clearly. She tipped her face up to his.

He put his hands on either side of her, holding on to the counter and holding her bracketed between his arms, apparently so he could survey her at his leisure. He was all lit up.

“Ah,” Mae said, hesitating. She reached out and curled her fingers around the blue shirt Alan had unbuttoned, knuckles resting against the warmth of the T-shirt and chest beneath, and smiled. “Are you waiting for anything in particular?”

“Oh,” Alan said softly, in a response to her “Ah.” He moved in a little closer to her, being surprisingly tall again. There was just a fraction of space between them now. “No,” he continued, sliding off his glasses and pushing them away down the counter.

He looked different without them, younger, the slow flush rising in his cheeks very plain. He bent his head down, the warmth of his mouth and body touching hers even though he wasn’t touching her, not quite.

He lifted a hand to her face, not even touching that, fingers playing about a centimeter from her jaw.

“I like to take my time,” he murmured, words a whisper in the tiny space between them. “I want to get it just right.”

Then he kissed her, slow and thorough, his mouth capturing hers and his body suddenly pressed all along hers, and she grasped at his shirt collar and a moment later his hair, fingers closing around the curls. His mouth moved against hers, soft and catching every broken breath she let out. She felt the shape of his small, warm smile pressed against hers, the edge of his teeth light on her lower lip, and his tongue sliding inside her mouth.

Mae found herself making a little choked sound and pulling his head down to hers, trying to bring him closer. Suddenly she was flat on her back on the kitchen counter, one leg wrapped around Alan’s good leg, one of Alan’s hands cradling the back of her head as he kept kissing her, exploratory, his lips lingering over hers even as his breath came harsh in her ears.

She was pulling his shirt off his shoulders when he drew back, mouth a bitten-red line and eyes bright, and pushed himself off from the counter to lean against the kitchen wall about a foot away.

“Just one, you said,” he reminded her.

Mae sat up. “Um,” she said, and laughed. “Wow.”

Alan laughed with her, cheeks stained pink, and moved around her to snag his glasses and his cup of coffee. When he slid them back on he looked more like the usual Alan, even though his hair was still mussed and his mouth still red.

“Thanks. Well. Nerdy guys try harder, you see,” he explained. “The other guys, they’re so busy with sports and actually getting more girls, but nerdy guys have time to think about it.”

“And to learn how to throw knives with deadly precision.”

“And that, obviously,” Alan said, nodding. He rubbed the back of his neck, glancing down to the floor and back up at her. “You should go get some rest. I’m going to try and wake Nick with coffee, tell him about what happened with Gerald.”

“Okay,” said Mae.

She made no move to get off the kitchen counter while Alan went to the kitchen door, opened it, and then hesitated on the threshold. “Mae.”

“Yes?”

He smiled at her, gradual and pleased. “You’re pretty wow yourself.”

He left, closing the door behind him. Mae took a minute to admire the kitchen ceiling and get her breath back before she went up to bed.