The Demon's Covenant

17

Playing and Losing

The next morning Mae was still not sure what she had done, but she was sure she couldn’t change it. She settled on being intensely thankful it was Saturday and went down to the kitchen for a pot of coffee. One cup wasn’t going to cut it.

She met Jamie on the stairs, looking pale and woebegone, and she clutched the neck of her robe closed instead of reaching for him.

He reached for her instead, his hand cupping her elbow.

“You’re right, I’m an idiot,” he said against her cheek.

“I’m always right,” Mae told him, instead of telling him that the idiocy seemed to be genetic. She gave him a kiss, lips barely brushing the edge of his jaw, and said, “How are you feeling?”

“So, so bad,” Jamie confessed, and then the doorbell rang.

Mae opened the door and found Seb on the doorstep.

“So, so much worse,” Jamie said, his voice floating down from the top of the stairs.

“Hey,” said Mae, ignoring her drunkard brother and hoping that Seb liked the just-rolled-out-of-bed look, since she was more concerned with finding coffee than a hairbrush.

“Hey,” said Seb. “How’s Jamie doing?”

“How are you doing, Jamie?” Mae asked in pointed tones, which subtly indicated that Seb was being very polite and Jamie had better acknowledge that or face sisterly retribution.

“Oh God, Mae,” Jamie said in a hollow voice, descending the stairs. “I will never drink again. I’m only seeing in black and white. My arms feel all floppy, like flightless wings. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I looked like a very sad penguin.”

Seb made a sound that was almost a laugh.

“You know what,” Jamie said to him. “I’m having a bad day. So if you don’t mind, I was thinking that today I would pretend you don’t exist.”

“There is no use even trying to have a civil conversation with you!” Seb said, his voice rising.

Jamie winced. “You’re very loud for someone who doesn’t exist.”

Mae gave him a look. “You’re very rude to guests in our home, Jamie. I suggest you try being nicer, and as you may recall, I’m always right.”

The bargain was pretty much laid on the table. Give Seb a chance, and Mae would forget about Jamie doubting her. Jamie’s mouth quirked appreciatively, and he shrugged.

“I’ll do a deal with you, McFarlane,” he said. “You can exist. And you can even have coffee. But if you raise your voice or make any sudden movements, I shall die. And that’ll show you.”

Seb shrugged in return, hiding how pleased he was pretty badly. “Fair enough.”

Mae turned away and toward coffee, hiding a smile. She’d been pretty sure her bargain would work. She’d told Seb as much last night: Jamie just wasn’t very good at being angry. He lost his grip on it somehow.

That definitely wasn’t genetic.

“You again?” Seb asked, his voice suddenly harsh.

Mae spun on the kitchen steps, hand going involuntarily up to the neck of her robe again, as if she was some shamed Victorian maiden. Nick was on the step, not looking at her or even bothering to acknowledge Seb’s existence.

“You ready?” he asked Jamie.

“Ready?” Jamie echoed. “Yes, yes, I am ready. I am ready to drink a lot of liquids and lie on the sofa moaning faintly all day long. That is what I am ready for. I cannot engage in physical activity of any sort or my head will fall right off. Is that what you want, Nick? Because if so, I find that hurtful.”

“You’ll feel better when you start running.”

Nick looked wound too tight. Mae wondered why he had even come here, and then it occurred to her that it was just possible he wanted Jamie—that he was disturbed by what had happened last night, and in search of company and comfort. Demons weren’t supposed to need those things, but Nick had been wrapped in watchful love for fifteen years, been the audience to what Daniel Ryves had described as Alan’s “years-long one-way conversation” until he had finally started talking back.

Now there was something badly wrong between him and his brother, and he’d chosen Jamie, with the same warmth and the same ridiculous sense of humor and capacity to talk for hours, and he was coming to get him.

Or possibly torturing Jamie cheered Nick up.

“But we were going to bring my old guitar over to Alan so we could see him play it and stuff,” Jamie said with deep cunning. “We need the car for that.”

“Didn’t bring the car,” Nick told him.

“You should go fetch it,” Jamie urged. “I’ll wait here. I won’t move. Why would I move? My head might fall off.”

“Seb and I can bring the guitar over later,” Mae offered.

“Good,” said Nick abruptly, and reached out for Jamie’s arm. Jamie was too busy giving Mae a betrayed look to be vigilant, so Nick grabbed him without much difficulty and pulled him out the door.

Nick had his hand on the door, no doubt to slam it, when Annabel came downstairs.

Mae was aware that her mother owned pajamas. She’d seen them neatly folded in her wardrobe, but Annabel never emerged from her room unless she was fully dressed and fully made up.

Today was no exception. Annabel was in crisp tennis whites, swinging her racket, with her hair in a shimmering ponytail that made the very idea of wisps seem like a horrible dream.

“Mum, help me,” Jamie said beseechingly. “I don’t want to go for a run.”

“Good morning, Mavis, James,” Annabel caroled out. “Lovely to see you again, Nick.”

Nick inclined his head and almost smiled. Annabel looked at Seb, a faint curl of her lips indicating vast polite distaste.

“One of Mavis’s young men, I presume.”

Seb looked overwhelmed by the unfairness of the world.

Annabel visibly dismissed the painful thought of Seb’s existence from her mind. “Enjoy your run, boys.”

“Mum!” Jamie wailed.

“Exercise is good for you,” she said serenely. She sailed past Mae on her search for coffee, and Nick shut the door.

Seb was left standing in the hall. “I think,” he said, “I kind of hate Nick Ryves.”

“Coffee?” Mae asked.

Mae amused herself by watching her mother’s dismay until she felt mean about tormenting Seb, so she finished her coffee and ran upstairs to get dressed and get the guitar. She did it in less than five minutes, but Seb’s pale face when she returned suggested that the moment Mae’d gone up, her mother had whipped out the thumbscrews.

“Sorry about her,” said Mae, going out with Seb into the sunshine, which was a warm yellow splash on their high walls. “She’s kind of like a high-powered modern White Witch. It’s always office hours, and never casual Friday.”

She thought of Annabel going up the stairs quick as a cat in her teetering high heels and grinned slightly. Seb caught her smile and reflected it back to her.

“It’s fine,” he said. “She’s just worried about you. She thinks I’m like all the other boys you’ve dated.”

“But you know you’re something special,” Mae teased.

Seb’s smile twisted a little, rueful and something else besides. “I know I’m different.”

Mae thought of Nick wielding a sword by night and Alan throwing knives on the cliffs with Goblin Market music behind him. Seb had no idea how different some of the boys she knew were.

Not that she was dating either of them.

Mae felt disloyal having had that thought, itchy and uncomfortable about it in a way that started at the tingling spot just below her collarbone. She reached up and touched it lightly, fingers slipping under the high-necked blouse she’d dug up from the bottom of her wardrobe.

She drew her hand away and grabbed Seb’s, a lifeline into a world where choices were easier. He took a breath as if he was startled, and she laced their fingers together, deciding to ignore his hesitance for now.

“So what do you want to do?” she asked.

Seb’s hand was warm in hers. The sun made the pale gravel in her driveway a blinding white path full of promise.

“We should drop off the guitar to Ryves’s place,” Seb suggested, and the dazzle in Mae’s eyes seemed to dim slightly.

She wanted to yell at Seb. Didn’t he know that she had to be away from Nick for a while, because apparently whenever she saw him her brain turned off and she did stupid and insane things? And she couldn’t be stupid and insane when she had to save him.

She didn’t yell at Seb. There was a mark burning on her skin that felt as if a channel had been opened between her and the demon who had marked her, as if there was something connecting them that was almost like a dry river bed, burning and aching for a rush of magic or the thrill of contact.

She didn’t say anything. She wanted to see Nick badly.

Mae had shoved that thought into a box in her mind and slammed the lid on it by the time they were there. Seb seemed relaxed, happy, and at ease with her once they were in the car. The trapped heat made the car luxurious and not oppressive, warmth from the car door seeping through Mae’s thin blouse and an air conditioner blowing light on her knees. She was glad she’d chosen a skirt for once, glad the next week of school would be the last, and glad Seb was there. He was living proof that she could be normal and not seduced by magic, that she could have both worlds.

The garden gate on the side of Alan and Nick’s house was open. When Seb and Mae walked in, they saw that Nick had wheeled a car out of the garage and was cleaning it.

It was silvery in a way that looked more like steel and shaped in a way that made Mae think of the cars her father’s friends bought instead of or just before leaving their wives, but it was old and missing a door. Clearly this was Nick’s one true love, the Aston Martin Vanquish. Nick was washing it, shirt off and a bucket of water beside him. Jamie was sitting cross-legged in the grass with a paperback folded open on his lap, looking less ashen and disheveled than earlier, and Alan was fiddling with an ancient rusty barbecue.

“Are you going to tell him or will I?” Jamie asked Nick.

“Tell me what?” Alan’s voice was wary.

Jamie smiled as if he was oblivious to the tension in the air. “Yesterday there was an English quiz,” he said proudly. “And Nick got a B minus.”

“Yeah?” said Alan, stilling and then smiling a beautiful, slow-blossoming smile. Jamie beamed. Nick looked indifferent, but it was less convincing than usual. “Well done.”

Mae hung back, not really wanting to interrupt and spoil the moment, but of course Seb had no idea and walked right into the garden. Jamie noticed him, and the glow of his pleasure faded a little, then brightened when he noticed the guitar in Seb’s hand.

“Hey.”

“Hey, Jamie,” Seb said in return, and gave Alan a brief, slightly embarrassed nod. “Hi—we came over to drop off the guitar. I’m Seb McFarlane. I’m Mae’s, ah …”

“Gentleman caller,” Mae filled in.

“Hi,” said Alan, straightening up. The sun was so hot that even Alan had abandoned his usual button-up shirts and was wearing a T-shirt, which made it obvious his shoulders and arms were strong and muscled in a way that did not exactly suggest a mild-mannered bookshop employee. “What’s with the guitar?”

He smiled at Mae and Seb both, in his usual friendly way, but he didn’t give Mae a special look or smile like he usually did. Mae wondered if that meant things were going to be awkward between them.

“Well, I took guitar lessons once,” Jamie explained, “but then after, um, you know, two lessons, I sort of lost interest and wandered off.” He frowned slightly. “I don’t think I have the soul of a musician. But I have this guitar! And Nick said you played the guitar. So I thought I could bring it over here and you would play it. Having a musical accompaniment to barbecue is important to me.”

Once Jamie had finished his spiel on how he was clearly not giving Alan a present, he blinked hopefully at him. Alan’s mouth curved into a smile.

“I guess I can play you a few songs,” he said, and limped up to Seb, taking the guitar. “You two want to stay around for barbecue and its important musical accompaniment?”

“Well,” Mae said, and stopped.

Nick had not even looked at her, had not looked up from washing the car. She was painfully aware of him, though. Every move he made was echoed by a twinge in her mark, as if it was a second heart beating only for him.

She should probably go.

“Sure,” Seb said, and sat down on the grass by Jamie. “Thanks.”

That was that, then. Mae went and sat with Seb and Jamie. She wanted to use them as her talismans, as if being near them meant she was guarded from all magic.

Alan went to fetch Jamie a glass of water. He’d apparently been keeping Jamie hydrated for a while.

“My reading voice needs care,” Jamie said. “It has nothing to do with my clever consumption of eleven thousand drinks last night.”

“I want water too,” said Nick. “I’m hot.”

“Here’s some water,” Alan told him, coming from the kitchen carrying Jamie’s glass. He took a sponge out of Nick’s bucket and squeezing it so the water flooded into Nick’s hair and down his back.

The water slid from the nape of his neck, where the black locks lay like inky scrawls against the white skin, and down the curved arch of his spine, droplets chasing one another down the smooth expanse of his back. Nick made a small sound of satisfaction, then resumed washing the car, sponge moving in steady strokes, ring catching the light so brightly it hurt Mae’s eyes.

It hurt the same way when Nick glanced over his bare shoulder at her, and then away.

Alan just laughed at Nick and went back to fiddling with the barbecue.

Mae collapsed back on the hot grass, tired of herself and the situations she kept throwing herself into. Seb got out his sketchbook, and Jamie started to read again as Alan began cooking lunch.

Jamie’s voice, talking about dancing and reading and love in a more decorous time, became a gentle rhythm to the warm air and the deep blue sky. Mae had almost fallen asleep when he cut off, sounding surprised.

“Is that a picture of me?”

“Yeah,” Seb said, guarded.

“It’s really good,” Jamie told him, easy as if he’d never hated him. Jamie was ridiculously generous with his feelings, all offenses pardoned with no trace of resentment left, all loves absolute.

Now he thought he loved Gerald. Mae had no idea how to deal with that.

“Yeah?” Seb said the same word in a very different tone, this one startled and pleased.

“Next do Nick,” Jamie suggested. “He’s barely wearing any clothes. That’s artistic.”

“Don’t volunteer my body without running it by me first,” Nick drawled.

“I don’t want to draw Nick,” Seb snapped.

“But I guess I’ll do it for art,” Nick continued calmly. “I’m told I have the body of a god.”

“A Greek god, or one of those gods with the horse heads or elephant’s legs coming out of their chests?” Alan asked. “Next time someone tells you that, ask them to specify.”

The smell of meat and smoke drifted to Mae and made her sit up, rising from the crushed grass. “All right, I’m awake. Feed me.”

Seb got up and started to hand around plates, though Mae noticed that Nick had to get his own. He abandoned the car and came to sit on the grass as far away from Seb as he could manage, hair drying tufty and falling damp into his eyes. Jamie looked mildly ill at the sight of food but also anxious not to insult Alan’s cooking, so he pushed it sneakily toward Nick whenever Alan happened to glance away.

Alan turned his head just in time to see Nick eating calmly off Jamie’s plate.

“Oh no, Nick,” Jamie said in tones of supremely unconvincing shock. “How could you? When my back was turned for one moment. And my food was so delicious.”

Alan reached out to smack Nick in the side of the head and Nick ducked, still eating. Mae was looking at them, glad that they seemed easy together for once, and she saw their faces change.

It was strange. For a moment they looked alike, eyes narrowed and lower lips drawn in, appreciative.

Then Alan smiled ruefully to himself and turned his head, Nick got to his feet, and Mae looked across to see what they’d been looking at.

Through the garden gates came Sin, like a reminder they could never really escape the magical world, a vision of beauty and danger that made Mae recall why she didn’t really want to.

She looked more normal than Mae had ever seen her, but she still moved like a dancer in jeans and a scarlet string top, a bright red bandanna caught in her flying hair. She was all vivid color, and for a moment Mae was just dazzled by how spectacular she was.

At the next moment she registered that Sin’s mouth was set in a straight red line.

“Sin?” Nick asked, and he definitely sounded pleased.

“Alan?” said Sin.

“Uh, no,” Nick told her.

Sin raked him with a dismissive dark glance and then looked away, her jaw tightening. “Alan?” she repeated. “I’ve been sent to deliver a message to you from Merris of the Market. Alone.”

Alan rose to his feet, lurching a little as he did so, and Sin looked away as if she’d seen something obscene, but she followed him into the kitchen.

And it occurred to Mae that Sin was exactly the right person to help her.

She stood and went for the kitchen door, where she halted and watched.

Alan and Sin were arguing in hushed, tense whispers, Sin’s back against the kitchen counter as if she felt the need to have her back to something in case a fight began. Alan was holding on to the counter, with his fingers gone white.

“Are you going to deliver the message, or did you just come here to accuse me of lying to Merris?”

“You did lie to Merris!”

“I lie to everyone,” Alan said softly. “It’s nothing personal.”

Sin looked furious and helpless for a moment, lips parted, and then nothing but furious again.

“Merris says she’ll do it. First of July. Huntingdon Market Square. There will be nobody there to stop you doing what needs doing. And I don’t even know what that means,” Sin went on, her voice suddenly sharp. “All I know is that you and Merris are making a bargain with the magicians, and I hate it more than I can say.”

“Well,” said Alan, “you’re not the leader yet.”

“We haven’t sold any talismans,” Sin said, her voice a little unsteady. “We haven’t given any advice. People are dying at the hands of demons, and we are doing nothing to stop it. I follow Merris’s orders, but if I didn’t? I’d carve your treacherous heart out of your chest.”

Alan’s voice didn’t change. It remained quiet and reasonable. “You’d try.”

Sin made a disgusted noise. “I think we’re done here.”

She pushed off the kitchen counter, and Alan grabbed her wrist. She stared up at him in outrage, every inch the princess of the Market assaulted by a commoner.

Alan said, “Stay.”

“What?” Sin exclaimed, sounding equal parts stunned and amused. “Because you enjoy my company so much?”

“Ah, no,” Alan said. “You and Nick were pretty friendly before all this, weren’t you?”

Sin put her hand behind her back, fingers curled over a slight bulge beneath her shirt where Mae was prepared to bet she kept her knife.

“What are you trying to say?”

“Go out and be nice to him. He doesn’t often like people. I don’t want him hurt.”

Sin’s mouth fell open. “Hurt? The demon? Oh my God, you’re crazy. You’re actually crazy.”

“I’ll pay you,” said Alan.

“I’m listening,” said Sin.

“Six-thousand-year-old Sumerian translation. It’s a full ritual, too, so the going rate will be higher.”

Sin’s eyes widened, but she was a Market girl. Mae wasn’t surprised to see that her face and voice betrayed nothing more. “Done,” she said briskly, and then a thought seemed to occur to her. She smiled, the curve of her lips cynical and not happy. “So you want me to play nice with the demon, do you?” Her stance shifted, ever so subtly. Suddenly the curves of her body were on offer, as was the curve of her red mouth when she said, low, “And you, traitor? How do you want me to treat you?”

Alan laughed. Sin looked outraged.

“Really, Cynthia.” He gave her a look over his glasses. “Your usual barely concealed contempt will be fine.”

“It’s Sin,” Sin snarled.

“Want to do another deal?” Alan asked. “Watch me walk across a room without flinching, and I’ll call you whatever you like.”

Sin bit her lip. “Get me that translation. I want to be paid in advance.”

Alan nodded and made his way across the kitchen. Sin leaned against the counter with her back deliberately to him, so she wouldn’t have to see him walk.

That meant she saw Mae standing at the door. She gave her a slight smile and pushed herself up so she was sitting on the counter, one slim leg kicking out at a cabinet. “Hear anything interesting?”

“I think so,” Mae said slowly. “Merris is incapacitating the Market and allying with the magicians.”

Sin looked angry for a moment, then sighed and let her tense shoulders relax. Mae crossed the room to Sin and leaned against the counter, close enough that Sin’s bare shoulder was pressed warm against Mae’s blouse.

“Gerald of the Obsidian Circle wants Alan to trap Nick on Market night and strip him of his powers,” Mae said. “One blow and he gets rid of the greatest threat they have. Nobody can stand up to him then. Merris isn’t even trying to stand up to him now. How long do you think the Market will survive?”

“The other choice is that Merris dies,” Sin said, her voice a thread.

Mae closed her eyes. “I know. I’m really sorry. But you told me you loved the Market.”

“What can I do?” Sin demanded.

Mae could hear Alan’s step outside the door and only had time to say, “Something,” before he came in. He looked mildly startled to see her but approached Sin anyway, handing her a folded piece of paper and a tablet wrapped in cloth. Sin opened the paper and scanned it with an expert’s eye.

“All I have to do is pretend to like your demon?”

“Putting on a show is kind of your specialty, isn’t it?”

“I thought it was yours,” Sin said, level. “You had us all fooled.”

“True. I know all the acts people put on,” Alan told her absently, fetching a plastic bottle of lemonade out of the fridge as he spoke. “So you’d better make your act good.”

He left, swinging the bottle in his hand. Sin looked very annoyed as she swung her little black bag off her shoulder and onto the counter and stuffed the tablet and the translation inside. Mae felt a little ill watching an ancient artifact being handled like Monday’s homework, but she stopped herself from snatching it away.

Instead she said, “Can we talk?”

Sin looked up, her eyes narrowed. “Later,” she promised, low and thrilling, the voice she used at the Market. “Right now I have a show to put on.”

She left her bag on the counter and walked out into the sunlight. Even her hair seemed to be moving differently, swinging jauntily around her slim shoulders. She headed straight for Nick.

Mae watched from the door and felt the mark burn hot under her blouse.

“Now I have the boring part of the afternoon done with,” Sin said, without even sparing Alan a glance, “I thought I might stick around. See if there’s anything exciting going on.”

Nick leaned back on his elbows, looking more relaxed as well as slightly predatory.

“What did you have in mind?”

Sin offered him her hand and he took it, thumb moving deliberately over the inside of her wrist, and let her pull him to his feet. She did not wait a moment before she stepped in and kissed him on his curling mouth.

“Surprise me,” she suggested.

Then she sat down gracefully beside Jamie and gave him a smile. Jamie gave her a look of wholehearted admiration.

“You should draw her,” he advised Seb, having clearly decided Seb had a use after all.

“If you like,” Sin allowed, brushing her hair back. It was glinting brown and red in the sunlight, enough glowing tones to show it was dark instead of black.

Seb looked pleased to show off his artistic skills, shifting his notebook to one knee and starting to sketch, lead whispering against the smooth paper. Mae noticed that he didn’t seem all that impressed by Sin, which was kind of nice after the way Alan’s and Nick’s eyes had followed her entrance.

While Seb was drawing, Sin wandered over and sat on Nick’s Vanquish, pulling Mae over to put her hair in tiny pink braids. Nick regarded them both with amusement.

“You said I was never even allowed touch the car,” Jamie grumbled.

“Well, get that good-looking and I’ll let you do anything you want,” Nick told him. “Also, stop moaning or I’ll remember that today I want to start you on sword practice.”

“Sword practice?” Sin echoed. “I wouldn’t mind seeing that.”

“Nick fences,” Mae informed Seb. “The little white outfit and the metal beehive helmet? He wears those.”

Seb looked deeply amused.

“Do you know Nick from ballet?” he asked Sin.

“Er,” Sin said. “What?”

Mae wasn’t any good at putting on a show, but she knew how to smooth over a situation when she had to.

“I’ve seen Sin dance,” she put in tactfully. “She’s fantastic.”

“Yeah, plus I look fabulous in tights,” Sin said, catching on. “Not as good as Nick, though.”

“Naturally,” Nick drawled. “I’ll go get the swords.”

“Cut it out, Nick,” Alan snapped from the depths of his deck chair and his book, and when Nick’s back stiffened, Alan directed a meaningful glance toward Seb. “Now’s not the time.”

Alan’s tone was perhaps a little bit too sharp. Nick’s eyes narrowed.

“Has it ever occurred to you,” he said softly, “that I get very tired of playing nice?”

There was something dark in the air between them now. Mae glanced at Seb warily, and found him looking a little pale.

“Yes, actually, it has,” Alan returned. “What are you going to do about it?”

“This.”

Nick wheeled on Alan, who dropped his book and suddenly had his gun out. Nick’s magical knife flashed in the summer sun: a thin blinding line of light that dazzled Mae one moment and grazed Alan’s arm the next. The gun fell out of Alan’s hand and to the grass with a thump; three drops of blood fell on its gleaming surface.

Nick moved into Alan’s space as Alan stood, knife coming around in a shining circle, and then he froze. Alan held the dagger from up his sleeve against Nick’s throat, forcing Nick’s head back until Nick gradually lowered his knife. Alan smiled a small, tender smile.

“Oh, baby brother,” he said. “Too slow.”

He tucked the dagger back into his sleeve, neat and precise, and Nick stepped away from him.

“See?” Nick said, touching the graze along his throat, ring flashing in the sun the same way his knife had. “We don’t have to play nice.”

The look Nick shot Seb was a challenge, daring him to make something of the sudden appearance of weapons at a barbecue.

“You want someone to play with, I’ll play,” Sin said, finishing Mae’s braids. Mae pushed off the side of the car and saw Sin reach behind her back again, fingers closing around the hilt of her knife.

“I can’t wait to see you two dance,” Mae said brightly.

Sin let go of her knife with a sigh. “We could do that.”

Nick threw the old guitar into Alan’s hands, then went over and tipped Sin backward in his arms so the ends of her hair brushed the grass, and as she started to laugh, Alan started to sing.

Mae had known he had a beautiful voice, but she had not heard it low and sweet on a summer afternoon, wrapped up in the sound of long-still guitar strings turning into living music under his hands.

Only the thinnest glittering sliver of sunlight could be seen between Nick’s hips and Sin’s. The burning of Mae’s mark was actually making her feel sick.

She slid her arm around Seb’s waist and shut her eyes, face pressed into his shoulder.

“Come into the kitchen a moment,” she whispered.

He came with her slowly, the grass slithering warm around her bare ankles, her fingers linked with his. When he closed the door behind them, she stepped up close to him in the cool, shadowy kitchen and kissed him on the mouth. He stood there, and she stepped back, watching him, suddenly uncertain.

“Do you not—” she began.

“No,” Seb said. “Yes. I’m sorry. Come here.”

He curled a hand around her shoulder, careful, as if he was scared to touch her. His eyes looked darker than usual, the green lights drowned, and for a moment she felt like she was looking up at someone completely different.

She could hear Jamie singing off-key, the exuberant noise mingled with the sweet, pure sound of Alan’s voice. Her bare feet were sticking to the cork tile. Seb’s face was very close to hers.

He tilted her face up just so, his fingers trembling against her jaw.

“Your eyes are …” Seb said, stumbling over the words, his breath faltering and warm against her cheek. “They’re just—beautiful.” He leaned in closer. “I’ve wanted to tell you that for years.”

He shut his eyes, leaned in, and kissed her like he meant it, soft and a little hesitant but focused. She’d had kisses before that felt like questions. This kiss felt like Seb was begging her for something, and she tried to give it to him.

“Whoops, sorry, can I just get some ice from the freezer?” Jamie asked, and Seb and Mae parted.

“I think I left my sketchbook in the grass,” Seb said hastily, and exited.

“Thanks very much,” said Mae.

“I said I was sorry,” Jamie said from the freezer, not at all repentantly. “So, that girl from the Market, she seems to like Nick,” he said with enthusiasm. “I think he needs cheering up. Well, maybe. With Nick it’s kind of difficult to tell.”

Mae smiled and nodded and pressed her palm protectively over the demon’s mark. Her mark wanted her to do what Nick wanted, whatever that was, to be close to him. This was the way demons possessed you. They made you want to give in.

If there had ever been a possibility of her being with Nick—and of course there hadn’t been, Nick had made that perfectly clear—it was gone now. She could never be sure if she wanted to be with him or if the mark was drawing her to him. She could never let herself be controlled like that.

When Mae and Jamie came out, everyone appeared to have taken advantage of their absence in order to pick fights.

“If you can sing like that, why did you never sing for the Market?” Sin demanded.

Alan was keeping his place in the book with a finger. “For the dancers?” he asked coolly. “I’ll pass.”

“I just don’t like you, that’s all,” Seb snapped. Seb and Nick were standing near the car. Mae hoped that Seb hadn’t tried to touch it.

“I don’t think so,” said Nick. “I think you’re so jealous of me you can’t stand it.”

Mae acted fast.

“Seb doesn’t need to be jealous of anyone,” she said, twining her fingers with his and pulling him backward with her and toward Alan. “Hey, how about another song?”

Alan obeyed, plucking out a low, gradual song, the kind you didn’t dance to. Mae lay back in the grass and let the sun wash over her face and travel warm down her body, putting in comments as everyone talked, long pauses drifting in between the conversations.

At one point she levered herself up on her elbows and saw Nick sitting on the ground beside Alan’s chair, long legs stretched out and laughing at something Alan was saying. Alan reached out and did not ruffle his hair, but traced the air above it without touching him. That seemed to be an acceptable compromise.

Alan looked happy. He loved Nick, Mae was certain of that, and so surely, surely he wouldn’t betray him.

The sun was low in the sky, light flowing over the clouds like melted butter, when Sin rose and brushed the grass off her jeans. “I’d better get going,” she said. “I can’t leave Trish with the kids all day.”

“Come back anytime,” Nick said lazily, head against the arm of Alan’s chair.

“Oh, I might just,” said Sin, sparkling at him. She raised an eyebrow at Alan. “Good?”

“Great,” Alan said, his mouth curving.

Sin shrugged and walked toward the kitchen door to fetch her bag. Mae jumped up and mumbled something about ice as she ran to follow Sin.

When she opened the door, she saw Sin with her bag open, hesitating at the kitchen counter. Mae saw the tablet and the paper inside, Sin’s fingers a fraction of an inch away from them.

Sin shook her head and closed the bag again.

“Thinking of leaving them?” Mae asked from the door.

Sin jumped. “I’m not going to. I have kids to feed.”

“It matters that you thought about it,” said Mae.

“Why? He won’t know.”

“I will,” Mae told her. “And you will. What do you think of Alan and Nick now?”

“As how?”

“As an alternative to being ruled by magicians,” Mae said. “You told me you loved the Market, and we could be friends because I loved the Market too. Are you going to let the Market be ruined?”

“Do you have a plan to stop it?”

“Yeah,” Mae said. “Actually, I do. Alan’s going to lure Nick to what Nick will think is a Market night, and he’ll trap him in a magicians’ circle and strip away his powers. How do you think Nick will react to that?”

Sin sucked her breath in through her teeth. “Kill him.”

Mae had only been thinking that Nick would never forgive him. That he might kill Alan had not occurred to her, but Sin’s flat certainty made her go cold.

“We can’t let that happen.”

Sin hesitated. “What’s your plan?”

“Are there people in the Market who would follow you without stopping to consult with Merris?”

Sin looked as if not consulting Merris was a foreign concept to her.

“You could start with Matthias the piper,” Mae suggested, and Sin looked suddenly thoughtful. “I’ll warn Nick. Then, instead of being trapped, he’ll work with the Market people. We can all deal with the magicians together.”

“Kill them, you mean.”

Mae took a deep breath and thought of the magician she’d killed for Jamie, thought of the bloody knife she’d washed and kept in a drawer she never opened. Then she thought of why she’d done it, and whether the nightmares were worth it.

“Yes,” she said steadily. “That’s what I mean.”

Nick and Jamie would both be safe, and Alan and Merris would not be able to make choices that would ruin them.

Sin gave a tiny nod. “I just wanted to be sure you knew that.”

She tapped her fingers against the top of the kitchen counter, and then fished her phone out of her jeans pocket and tossed it at Mae. Mae caught it neatly.

“Put your number in it,” Sin said. “I’ll ask some people. And I’ll let you know if we have a plan.”

Mae remembered Jessica the messenger, and that she had known how Mae danced at the Goblin Market. A tourist could have talked. Or there might be a spy at the Market. “Be careful who you talk to.” Sin nodded as if that went without saying.

Sin’s phone was plain and cheap. Mae thought of her own phone, which slid open and was tiny, shiny, and covered in stickers with slogans and castles and cupcakes on them. Sin loved Merris. She had no mother.

She was risking so much more than Mae was.

“Thank you,” Mae said.

She keyed in her number and then threw the phone back to Sin, who caught it and smiled, one of those beautiful showpiece smiles, as if she was throwing Mae a red flower.

“Don’t thank me,” she said. “Just keep your part of the bargain.”

When Mae went back into the garden, she found Jamie curled up like a cat in the grass.

“I think I would like to go to sleep,” he said.

“Come on,” Seb said, sliding his sketchbook into his pocket and offering Jamie a hand up. “I’ll take you home.”

They drove home in companionable silence, the engine humming and the sun shining through the windows. The air had turned amber and slow as honey, and Seb was humming as he drove. Jamie was lying down in the backseat, his breath slow and regular, and Mae half shut her eyes against the sunlight, her lashes cutting up the world into shadows and gold.

Seb pulled up outside their house, wheels crunching on the gravel, and he reached out and touched her hand.

“Mae,” he said, and she looked down at his tanned arms with the shirtsleeves rolled up and went still. “I wish every day could be like today.”

“Hold off on the making out until I’m out of the car,” Jamie said hastily, diving for the car door.

They did not kiss. Mae sat staring at him.

Word on the street is that Gerald’s invented a whole different kind of mark, Jessica the messenger had said. Thorned snakes, eating their own tails.

You’ll find the answer on the body of a boy you know quite well, Liannan had said, and laughed.

Now she knew why Seb always wore long sleeves.

The mark that meant the wearer was a magician, and one of Gerald’s, was burnt black against the pale flesh inside Seb’s elbow.