The Demon's Covenant

15

Lady Errant

Mae woke from uneasy, demon-haunted sleep to the sound of a crash. She rolled out of bed and ran out onto the landing, and then stopped dead at the sight of Jamie panting and leaning against the stair rail.

Nick was sitting on the top step. He was breathing hard too, chest rising and falling fast under a thin gray T-shirt. He leaned his wrists against his knees and looked over at Mae.

That made Jamie look too. He smiled at her, which showed they were all right unless Jamie was offended by Seb’s actual presence, and made Mae grin back.

“Mae, he made me go out for a run,” Jamie called out. “Tell him I don’t run!”

“Jamie and I are lilies of the field. We toil not, neither do we jog,” Mae informed Nick.

She came over and slipped her arm around Jamie’s waist. He leaned heavily on her, sweaty cheek against hers, and made a piteous whimpering noise.

“Turns out he does run,” Nick drawled. “Given an incentive. And he wouldn’t be so out of breath if he hadn’t kept shrieking.”

“That was not a shriek,” Jamie said with dignity. “It was a husky masculine cry of terror.”

“Maybe you should start with something a little more soothing,” said Mae, patting Jamie’s back.

“Yes, soothing,” Jamie said gratefully. “Less knives. More Yogilates!”

The doorbell rang. Mae went to change into jeans, as Jamie was apparently now a wreck of a man and couldn’t answer the door. She peeked out the window and saw who it was before she came down the stairs and let Seb in.

“I thought maybe you could use a lift to school,” Seb said, car keys in hand. He almost dropped them at the sight of Nick and Jamie. “Hey,” he said warily. “What’s going on?”

“Nick is spotting me during my new exercise regimen,” Jamie announced, giving Seb the evil eye. “I wish to be more toned. And attractive. To men.”

Seb went a slow, horrified red.

Nick laughed, and Mae bit back a smile so he wouldn’t feel they were ganging up on him.

She was glad to see him. When she’d looked out the window, she’d known it was him and not Nick this time, and not just because Nick was already on her stairs. The memory of both of them was fresh with her, the way they stood, their exact heights. Seb looked totally different from Nick. He looked normal and lovely and like he couldn’t break her heart, and besides that, she hated walking to school.

“C’mon, let’s go,” she told him.

She opened the door to a beautiful summer morning, drenched in light.

Behind her, Nick said, “Might see you later.”

Today Nick said his first word: “chair.”

I have not written in this journal for some time. I didn’t like the thought of leaving Alan this record of misery.

Today is different from all other days. Nick said his first word today, his voice harsh, croaking like a raven rather than a child.

But he understood what he was saying. He said more than one word. Alan pointed to me and he said, “Dad.”

That stunned me more than the miracle, more than the demon with words in its mouth.

If I thought of him as anyone’s child, I thought of him as Arthur’s. But of course Nick has not seen Arthur for four years, of course Alan has been by his side all this time whispering words to him, telling him how the world is.

Alan has been sure that Nick is his brother, and that makes me his father.

The demon’s father.

I don’t feel like his father, but I cannot call him “it” anymore. I cannot forget the rush of happiness that came over me when I heard him talking and felt for the first time that there could be hope.

If he talks, if he can be that close to human, then I might have a real purpose at last.

I picked Nick up for the first time today. He’s getting far too heavy for Alan to carry. And Alan looked so happy when I did it.

I had to put him down after a few moments. Not because he was heavy, but because I could not bear to have those eyes and that still mask of a child’s face so close to mine. I do not know how Alan can bear it.

Alan’s so young. He didn’t know enough about babies to know what one should look like, and he’s used to Nick by now. Perhaps Nick looks human to him.

This evening before bedtime I saw Nick sitting by Alan as he usually does, an upside-down book held in his lap.

“Shall I read to you, Nick?” I asked, and I took the creature up again and put him in my lap. He tried to wriggle away as he always does with Alan, but I held him firmly, and he stopped struggling after a moment. Resting against my chest, he felt small and warm, like a real child. I concentrated on the story, kept my voice steady and even, and as I read, “The king of all wild things said … ,” Nick’s head dropped into the crook of my elbow and he was asleep.

I was not quite sure what to do next, and then I saw my son. He’d dropped his book and was standing looking at me and his brother. The look of hope and fear on his face made me want to throw the demon away, reach out and hold him close.

Instead I drew my fingers through Nick’s thick black hair. It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t so bad. Nick stirred but did not wake, and Alan smiled, tremulous but so happy.

“Come here, my darling,” I said, then reached out with my free hand and drew him to me. He came willingly, nestling into me as he has not since he was very small. “This is just the beginning,” I told him. “We have to think very carefully about what to do next.”

If a demon can be taught to be human, then I will have done something terribly important with my life.

I think that I started writing this as a way to keep my son, who has barred doors against me and always looks for another face first, who has not been all mine since he was four years old. I wanted him to have this after my death, because I had failed him in life so completely.

Now I have an idea of what I can do for him.

I held my son close and began to whisper plans, keeping the demon safe and warm in the circle of my arm.

Mae shut the book.

Nick had come into her music room after school, hurled the copybook at her feet, and moved to the window, fixing her with an expectant look. She’d promised to help him, so she had opened the book and hoped that Daniel Ryves wouldn’t try to murder or leave Nick this time.

She hadn’t thought it might help.

Nick wasn’t at the window like a guard standing braced for an attack anymore. He was sitting on the window seat with a look of serious attention on his face. A lock of hair had fallen into his eyes, a slash of curving black that made Mae’s fingers lift to touch it, even though he was across the room.

“He used to carry me when we were moving,” he said. “Dad. So I wouldn’t—wouldn’t wake up.”

It came out cool, just a statement of fact. Nick looked away afterward, though, the angle of his jaw tight, and Mae thought it might be time to change the subject.

“What do you know about marks?” she asked.

Nick started and stared at her, eyes suddenly wide.

“What do you mean?”

Mae raised her eyebrows. “I was thinking about this mark that’s giving Gerald all his power, about the magician’s sigils and the three different demon’s marks.”

“There’s only one demon’s mark,” Nick interrupted.

He was looking at her again and leaning back against the window glass, arms crossed over his chest. Mae would’ve thought that Nick might look less out of place in the music room, which she and Jamie had messed around in and danced through and used as their playroom for years, but he didn’t. His eyes glittered a little too coldly in the lights of the chandelier, his clothes were worn and dark in the bright white room, and whichever way she looked at him, he was either a boy who didn’t fit into her home or a demon who didn’t fit into her world.

She wanted to reach out and brush back that lock of hair, all the same.

“No, you know, first there’s the first-tier mark, the doorway, and then there’s the second-tier mark, the triangle, and then the third-tier mark, the eye. That’s what I mean.”

“They’re all part of one mark,” Nick told her. “Just one. The magicians don’t let us into this world with enough power to make our mark, so we have to work up to possession by stages. But I could do it. That’s why Anzu and Liannan are so angry with me. I could put the full mark on anyone I wanted, and let a demon slide in.”

“So demons have only one mark,” Mae said. “But now magicians have two. It seems a bit much for Gerald to have invented a whole new one. I think it makes more sense for him to have modified one of the existing marks. What does the magician’s sigil do?”

“Lets you drain power from your Circle’s circle of stones.”

“And the demon’s mark lets you possess someone.”

“Doesn’t just do that,” Nick said. “Anzu marked Alan and Jamie, didn’t he? Couldn’t possess them both.”

It had never occurred to Mae before that of course Anzu, the Obsidian Circle’s pet demon, would have been the one to mark Jamie. She made a face at the thought.

“So what was his plan?”

“Possess one,” said Nick. “Save the other for later. The full demon’s mark, it forms a channel between humans and demons, so you can possess them, or just control them. That way you can have slaves as well as bodies to possess once the one you’re possessing breaks down. Anzu and me, we once had bodies in this desert kingdom. We had an agreement: We marked an army of slaves for the king so long as we got bodies for seven years.”

“Really,” Mae said. “Slaves. What happened next?”

“He didn’t keep his part of the bargain,” said Nick. “So we called up a storm and buried the kingdom under the sand. It’s probably still there now. We buried it deep.”

“I meant what happened to the slaves,” Mae clarified. She thought she did a good job of keeping her voice even.

“Oh, they died too,” Nick said. He sounded as indifferent as ever, but he kept his eyes on her and watched for her response. She thought he might be feeling a bit wary.

“You could have let them go.”

“No,” Nick answered. “What I mark is mine. It’s the same way for magicians. A magician takes a sigil to show he belongs to his Circle. When we’re going through magicians, the magicians’ blood can ransom a mark. A mark can be transferred. But there’s no way to make a mark cost nothing. A mark always costs someone everything.”

“So if Gerald had invented a mark to make humans obey him …” Mae said.

“Wouldn’t give him any more power, would it?” Nick asked. “Most humans don’t have magic.”

Mae nodded. It was the magician’s sigil Gerald had modified, then, it had to be. But exactly how he’d changed it, there was no way to know. Until they knew, how could they fight him?

Gerald had been able to knock Nick flat, and he was after Jamie. She didn’t know what to do.

“Do you think you can beat Gerald?” she asked quietly.

Nick’s face did not change, but the chandeliers above them rang out like wind chimes with the breeze picking up.

“I know I can,” he said. Mae looked into his eyes and tried to find something reassuring there, something she could rely on, but they were full of sliding shadows. “Don’t,” Nick added abruptly. “Don’t be scared about Jamie. They can’t have him. He’s my friend.”

Mae took a deep breath, feeling lighter in the chest area. She did believe that, even though it hadn’t occurred to her when Nick offered to be friends. She wondered why she hadn’t realized that Nick meant it, as he meant everything he said. Jamie was under his protection forever. Jamie was safe, if Nick could make him so.

“I know that,” she told him, and smiled.

“When you talked about demons’ marks, I thought you knew something else,” Nick said, and looked away.

She didn’t even realize she’d risen until she was halfway across the floor, and by then she wasn’t stopping until she reached the window seat. He had to tilt his head backward against the glass to look up at her.

“Nick, what do you mean?”

“I don’t want to possess anyone,” Nick said softly, eyes shining like ink. “So I didn’t think I’d want to mark a human. But the marks don’t just mean possession. They mean being mine. They mean I can watch, and guard, and none of the others can touch, and I could—”

“Control someone,” Mae said. “Make them your slave.”

Nick blinked slowly, eyelashes sweeping the top of his cheekbones. “That too.”

He was devastatingly beautiful, Mae thought, and “devastating” was the word: She could see storms and cities burning in his eyes.

“I didn’t think I’d want to mark a human,” he said. “But I do.”

“Alan,” Mae whispered.

“Yes,” Nick whispered back. “And you.”

Mae went still, torn between the impulse that said the demon’s eye was on her, that she should run, and the impulse to move closer. Nick had never said anything to indicate she mattered to him before.

“Oh,” she said.

“And Jamie,” Nick continued.

“Oh,” she said, in a very different way. “Well. Thanks for my part in the compliment. Naturally I’d love to be watched and controlled, but I think I may be washing my hair that day.”

Nick grinned. “Yeah, all right.”

He looked more relaxed, Mae noticed. He was pleased about that book, she thought, pleased by the idea of the past and his father reading to him, his brother happy.

“I think we can get by without that,” she said. “Even if I, as the bombshell of the group, have to take one for the team and go seduce Gerald’s secrets out of him.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Nick told her. “I’m clearly the bombshell of the group.”

Mae laughed and held out her hand.

“What?” Nick demanded warily. “I’m not sure I’m ready for more hand-holding.”

“What?” Mae echoed back at him. “Another lesson for you, Nick: When you want to make a human happy, do something they enjoy with them. Besides, I’m having a moment of probably soon-to-be-destroyed optimism about the future. Don’t worry. It probably won’t last.”

She ran to put in a CD she liked that was a little bit rock and a little bit blues, and then she went over and grasped Nick’s hands in hers, pulling him to his feet.

Her confidence was checked by the way he just looked down at her, as if waiting for the human to explain her strange customs. She opened her hands and his slipped out of hers, down by his sides.

Mae’s skin was prickling with sudden shame. She wanted to run away so he would stop looking at her, slam as many doors as she could between herself and his eyes, and she wanted to somehow carry this off so he thought nothing was wrong.

“Come on,” she said, her voice going too high to be really light. “You know how to dance, don’t you?”

He reached for her waist and then slid his big hands down along her body, fingers curling around her belt. His ring was a cold shock on the strip of skin between her shirt and her jeans.

“Yeah,” Nick said, his voice curling in the air like smoke from a raging fire, filling her lungs and making it hard to breathe. “I know how to dance.”

Mae looked up at him and saw nothing she could read: lowered eyelids and the line of his mouth. She put her hands up anyway, catching at his shoulders and the rhythm. Her hands curved around the fragile barrier of his T-shirt, grasping the worn cotton as if it was all that was holding her up. Her knuckles pressed tight against the swell of his shoulders, feeling his muscles shift as he moved with her.

She dipped down with him a little, his hips touching hers, stepped back and then up against him again. Her breath hitched every time he stepped in to her, a warm scrape in the back of her throat, and she wished desperately that she could stop it, but she couldn’t. He must be hearing it, every time.

When they neared a wall, she almost blundered backward into it, not expecting it, barely aware of things like walls, for God’s sake. He palmed her hip, the hollow of his hand pressing down against her hipbone, and turned her easily, swinging her against him.

Mae’s death grip on his shirt went loose, fingers curling up of what seemed to be their own volition to touch his neck, and that was a mistake. Nick started slightly, his cut-short hair prickling under her fingertips, and then she completely lost her mind, because she suddenly had both hands in his hair and was pulling his head down to catch the part of his lips, his tiny indrawn breath.

His mouth brushed hers for an instant, and then strong hands grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back at arm’s length, hard.

“No,” said Nick.

Just that, short and brutal. He let her go and walked back to the window.

Mae’s first impulse was to die of shame, but she realized after a hot, stomach-clenching moment that this was probably impractical.

“Right, sorry,” she said, forcing her voice to sound entirely unmoved. She’d just been carried away by the music. It was no big thing. “I get it.”

She paused and knew for a sinking moment that Nick wasn’t going to respond, and she could think of absolutely nothing to say, and the best she could hope for was that he would just leave in total silence so she could work on her dying-of-shame plan. Then Jamie, her beautiful, beautiful, timely brother, opened the door and looked rather surprised.

“Nick!” he said, smiling. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” Mae lied promptly. “Where have you been?”

“Oh, I think we know where he’s been,” Nick said in a dark voice from the window.

Mae hadn’t even thought about where he’d been until that moment, when she looked into his sunny, open face and saw magicians written on it, as if Gerald had already set his mark there.

“I suppose you wouldn’t believe I was signing us both up for Yogilates.”

Nick’s silence was answer enough.

“Would you like me to read you a couple of chapters?” Jamie offered, brightening further at the thought of homework rather than knives. “We can’t practice self-defense now—what a shame! Because it’s too dark.”

“Knife work at night is something you’re going to have to learn,” said Nick. “You have to train your eye to catch the glint of metal in the dark.”

There was a horrified pause.

“Seriously,” Jamie said. “I think Yogilates is my calling.”

Nick laughed and moved toward Jamie in a few quick strides. His glance over his shoulder at Mae said he was leaving this situation and they would never speak of it again.

“Okay, you can read one chapter. And you can stop talking about Yogilates.”

“Oh, but”—Jamie’s eyes flickered to Mae—“I could come down here with the book,” he suggested. “I could do a dramatic reading!”

“I’m good for dramatic reading just now,” Mae told him, and waggled her fingers in clear dismissal. Nick shepherded Jamie out of the door.

Mae went over to her armchair and tried very hard not to relive the last few minutes of the dance.

She clutched her hair in her hands, remembered grasping Nick’s soft hair in handfuls, and let go, nails biting into her palms instead.

She didn’t know what was wrong with her. She’d made passes and been shut down before. That happened when you had a tendency to take a chance rather than wait for guys to make their move. It didn’t matter, not at all.

It had just been a stupid thing to do. That was what had her tied in knots. She wasn’t usually stupid.

Nick had already made it very clear he wasn’t interested.

So she’d leap at Seb next time she felt leaping urges, Mae told herself firmly, and went downstairs to make herself some coffee. She had gone through half a pot and had Dorothy Parker’s Here Lies propped up on the table in front of her when she heard Annabel’s heels going off like gunshots in the hall.

“Hello,” her mother said, going for the fridge. Mae waved her coffee cup in greeting and watched as Annabel drew out a packet of lettuce leaves that had turned brown and dispirited. “Oh dear,” she said. “Thai food all right by you?”

“I’ll be honest: I wasn’t going to eat salad either way.”

Annabel nodded with just a hint of pain. She and Mae had gone back and forth on this a thousand times, and Mae had made it extremely clear that she cared more about eating cheese sandwiches today than being skinny when she was forty. “Is James home? I’ll ask him what he wants.”

“Yeah. Um, he has a friend from school with him. They’re studying.”

Mae realized what an enormous tactical error that had been when she saw her mother’s face light up.

“A friend?” she asked. “Jamie?”

“Yeah,” said Mae, getting up very quickly and almost spilling her coffee in the process. “Look, maybe you shouldn’t—”

“A girl or a boy?” Annabel asked, and went for the stairs.

She was much too fast for a woman in six-inch heels, Mae thought, and dashed after her.

“A boy,” she called after Annabel’s swiftly ascending back, stricken with horror at the very idea of her mother opening Jamie’s bedroom door expecting a studious young lady, possibly in a blouse and spectacles, and finding Nick Ryves.

“He must stay for dinner,” Annabel said with determination, doing a wickedly fast turn on the landing and heading for the second set of stairs. “I’m so glad that James is getting on better at school. I couldn’t think what to do. He said he didn’t want to move schools.”

“I didn’t know you wanted him to change schools!” Mae shouted after her. Annabel was outside Jamie’s door now, and Mae wasn’t going to reach her in time. Disaster was inevitable. “How do you move so fast?”

“All my shoes are designer,” Annabel informed her. “Quality always tells,” she added as she opened the door.

“‘There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well,’” Jamie read out, doing what Mae thought was supposed to be an upper-class Victorian lady’s voice. He sounded as if someone was choking him to death with bonnet ribbons.

He was sitting on the window seat, feet up on a chair.

Nick was sitting on Jamie’s bed. Only the lamp in Jamie’s room was on, a yellow pool of light stopping short at Nick’s feet, throwing tiny yellow shards of light into the dark hollows of his eyes. He was turning his magic knife over and over in his hands, the rough carvings glinting in the light.

“Mavis and I were wondering if your friend wanted to stay for dinner,” Annabel said in a voice that lacked all conviction, but also belonged to a woman so dismayed she had no idea what else to offer.

Nick lifted an eyebrow. “Mavis?”

“Shut up,” Mae told him.

“All right,” said Nick. “Mavis.”

Annabel was going to do damage to her manicure, hanging on to the doorknob like that. Jamie got up from the window seat and went and stood between Nick and Annabel, hovering a little uncertainly but with clear protective intent.

“Sure, Mum,” he said. “Everyone likes food. Um, so where’s the menu?”

Annabel kept sneaking peeks at Nick over Jamie’s shoulder, as if to verify the full horror of the situation. Nick did not look especially surprised that someone’s mother was clearly appalled by him.

“Yes,” Annabel said, her voice distant because she was obviously trying to place herself in an alternate universe, one where her son did not entertain knife-wielding delinquents in his bedroom. “I’ll go find it. The menu. So we can choose what to eat.”

She turned away and, very carefully, closed the door behind her. Then she began to descend the stairs. Despite the high-quality designer shoes, she was tottering a little.

“You two must get these tastes from your father,” she said as Mae drew level with her. “I was never in the least drawn to the dangerous type. Even in college!”

“Dad dated dangerous guys in college?” Mae asked. “I had no idea.”

“You know what I meant!”

“Also,” said Mae, “I think you have a firm grip on the wrong end of the stick. Nick and Jamie are just friends.”

“Oh, please,” said Annabel. “Boys like this Nick aren’t just friends with anyone.”

They reached the bottom of the stairs, and Annabel went to the hall table, sliding out the drawer where they kept the menus.

“I think the Thai menu’s stuck up on the fridge,” Mae said. “And Nick’s my friend too.”

Her mother gave her a shocked look and went to the fridge, sliding the Thai menu out from under the ladybird-shaped magnets that Jamie had bought once in an attempt to make their kitchen look more cheerful.

Nick and Jamie came downstairs while she was looking at the noodles list.

“So I’m leaving,” Nick announced.

“No, you should stay. Mum, tell him,” said Jamie, and Annabel made a noncommittal gesture that could have meant anything between Certainly and Get off my property before I call the police.

“You guys don’t have any food in the house, you’re ordering in, it’s a pain to have to order for me, too,” Nick said. “I’m leaving.” He paused and added slowly, as if remembering something Alan had taught him long ago, “Thanks for having me.”

“You’re quite welcome,” Annabel said automatically.

“We’ve got plenty of food in the house,” said Mae. “It’s just none of us can cook and our housekeeper leaves early Mondays and Tuesdays. We order takeout half of the days in the week. You wouldn’t be a pain. Stay.”

“Oh,” Jamie offered in a bright voice. “I could cook some—”

“No!” Mae, Annabel, and Nick all exclaimed as one.

Annabel gave Nick a slightly startled look. He was too busy giving Jamie a forbidding look to notice.

“Look, I am getting better,” Jamie argued.

“I saw you put rice in a toaster once,” said Mae. “I was there when you made that tin of beans explode.”

“It was faulty,” Jamie protested, his eyes shifty. “I am sure of this.”

Nick took a short breath, as if coming to a decision, and took the three steps down to their kitchen in one bound. Annabel craned her neck in order to look up at him in alarm, and Nick looked back down at her, eyes narrowing into dark slits. He reached out, hands strong on the wasp waist of her business skirt, and pushed her onto a stool as if she was a child.

“Are you people helpless?” he asked. “Sit down. I’ll make you something to eat.”

Jamie came over and sat at the kitchen counter on a stool beside hers.

“Nick cooks quite well, Mum,” he assured her.

Nick started to look in the fridge and take out things like peppers and onions, and Mae drifted over to the kitchen counter so they were all sitting in a row observing Nick perform the mysterious ritual of preparing food.

“I cook better than you,” Nick corrected absently. “I think monkeys can probably be taught to cook better than you.”

“I’d like to have a monkey that cooked for me,” said Jamie. “I would pay him in bananas. His name would be Alphonse.”

“I agree, that would be awesome,” Mae said. “People would come for dinner just to see the monkey chef.”

“You’re raving,” Nick said, defrosting chicken in the microwave. Mae was a bit impressed with how he seemed to look at the appliance and instantly comprehend its mysteries, when she’d been heating up ready-made meals for years by a method of pressing random buttons and hoping. “I know that’s the only way Jamie communicates with people, but I expected better of you, Mavis.”

“We’re cutting out the whole Mavis thing right now, Nick,” Mae said warningly.

“How many bananas would be good payment for a monkey?” Jamie wanted to know. “I would want to pay Alphonse a fair wage.”

Jamie kept talking, the way he did, and Mae batted back ideas about the monkey chef. Nick threw in an occasional withering remark that did not wither Jamie in the slightest. Annabel propped her chin in her hand and watched Nick, looking suddenly thoughtful, and then surprised everyone by saying that if they were studying, Nick was welcome to stay the night.

Things got awkward again when they were sitting down to dinner. Nick’s face was impassive, of course, but his shoulders were set a little combatively. He was obviously used to eating in a kitchen at a slightly shaky table, and not in a dining room with low lights gleaming on a mahogany table so polished it looked like their plates were suspended on the surface of a dark lake.

Mae should not have grabbed some plates when Annabel said they had a guest and were going to eat in the dining room, but she’d thought it seemed like a good sign.

Now here they were, and Nick might as well have been wearing a T-shirt that said NOT SUITED TO POLITE COMPANY. It wasn’t a huge surprise that he was no good at making conversation.

“So you’re in class with James,” Annabel remarked, bright and brittle as cut glass. “Are there any particular classes that are your favorites? I know James enjoys science.”

“No,” said Nick.

“In science you are allowed to blow things up,” Jamie said wistfully. “Sometimes.”

He seemed a little squashed by how badly things were going. Mae wished she could think of some way to make things go better, but really she knew the best-case scenario was just to get through this. There was not a single thing that Nick and Annabel could possibly have in common.

“And what are your interests and hobbies, Nicholas?” Annabel asked faintly, sounding like a cross between a television interviewer and a hostage.

Nick considered this for a minute, and then said, “I like swords.”

Annabel leaned over her plate and asked, her voice changing, “You fence?”

“Not exactly,” Nick drawled. “I’m more freestyle.”

“I used to take fencing classes in school,” Annabel told him, eyes bright. “I won some trophies. I wasn’t bad, if I do say so myself. I was in a fencing club for my first couple of years in college, but Roger was a tennis fanatic, and I couldn’t keep up both sports. I’ve always rather regretted it.”

“I knew a fencing master once,” Nick told her. “He did proper tournaments and things. My dad used to bring me to see him at the—every month for a while, when I was a kid.”

“I thought everything in the trophy case was for tennis,” Mae said, startled.

“Well,” her mother said, and smiled the smile she shared with Jamie, which was crooked and less dignified than Annabel usually liked to be. “Your father certainly didn’t win any fencing trophies. He was a bit hopeless at it, to tell you the truth.”

Nick was leaning back in his chair by this point, one hand behind his head and tugging at his hair in thought. He seemed to have forgotten he didn’t feel like he belonged here.

“I have a couple of swords about as light as fencing foils in my car,” he said eventually. “If you’d like to show me what you can do.”

He glanced at Mae, and she remembered telling him that if he wanted to make a human happy, he should do something they would enjoy.

“Oh, well,” said Annabel, a little flustered, in a clear prelude to refusal, and then she put down her napkin by her empty plate. “Why not?”

That was how they all ended up in the nighttime garden, where the lights turned on in response to movement in certain places and thus kept flickering on and off at crucial moments. Mae huddled beside Jamie on the garden steps because the night air was cool, and unlike Nick, who had just taken off his shirt and thrown it to the ground, she wasn’t exercising.

“Foul!” yelled Jamie, who seemed extremely happy not to be the one facing a blade. “Distracting technique! Put your shirt back on right now.”

“Yeah,” Mae said, nudging him. “Maybe it’s distracting for you. I kind of hope Mum doesn’t feel the same.”

“Oh, please,” Jamie scoffed. “That whole tall, dark, and whatever thing isn’t even my style. He couldn’t distract me if he tried.”

Annabel had looked somewhat shocked when Nick pulled his shirt over his head, but her face smoothed out into its usual calm expression after a second. She was weighing the sword in her hand.

Nick looked down at her, his bare shoulders white in the darkness, his own sword dangling carelessly from his fingers.

“Okay, maybe he’s distracted me for a minute or two,” Jamie admitted. “Here and there. Now and then.”

“Am I too distracting?” Nick asked their mother, sounding amused. “By the way, you should probably remove those stupid shoes.”

“Unlike you, young man, I do not intend to take anything off at all,” Annabel retorted, and thrust.

Nick parried and the match was on, their swords ringing out like Christmas bells, the sounds of blades meeting almost musical. The flickering garden lights were green-tinted, so the brightness that flooded the scene on and off was like underwater light, making shadows flow strangely. The carefully pruned bushes, black and vivid green and then black again, formed new and weird shapes behind Nick and Mae’s mother. Their swords looked like bright ribbons.

“Stab him, Mum!” Jamie encouraged, laughing, and Mae laughed too. Annabel wasn’t bad at all; Mae had learned that much from watching Nick practice the sword in a garden for hours and hours, day after day. He was responding to her rather than just blocking her, making her his partner in a game.

Of course, it was a game. It wasn’t a challenge for Nick, handling his sword lightly and dancing away from engaging with her. It wasn’t a matter of life or death for either of them, not for her mother chasing him, laughing and breathless. Not for the demon who nobody could have expected to enjoy something like this, playing with someone clearly not in his league, having a game in a summer garden.

“Your form is terribly undisciplined,” Annabel told him, and lunged again, higher this time.

Nick ducked and came up laughing. “But it does work,” he pointed out softly, and fell back as she went for him one more time.

The garden lights went out and the night was clear all the same, as if the black sky was a stage curtain held pinned up by the brilliant points of stars.

Nick stood against it, sword flashing and tracing silver patterns against the dark.

For a moment he seemed like an ink-and-paper drawing of a villain, with pitiless black holes where eyes should have been. Then he laughed again and his face changed: He did not look human, but he did look young. He looked like someone who could be hurt.

Alan might think he was going to betray Nick, but Mae wasn’t going to let it happen.

Mae looked at Nick and thought, I’m going to save you.