The Demon's Lexicon

10 The House of Mezentius

THEY WERE ALL IN THE CAR FIVE MINUTES LATER, abandoning everything that would not fit into the couple of old schoolbags they had in the boot. Nick had secured his new favorite sword at his belt, and Alan had slipped his family pictures, and the book with the hidden picture inside, into one of the bags.

“What’s that?” Nick had said, perversely wanting to see Alan lie to him.

“Just something I’m reading,” Alan answered with a wry, plausible smile. Nick was suddenly reminded of Gerald the magician and had to turn away.

Now Camden was passing them by so fast that streets and lights had turned into a multicolored river, flashing yellow and orange over a smooth stream of gray.

Nick turned the car south toward the M3, hearing a clank as he moved into fourth. He’d have to see to the car sometime, though it was unlikely they would have time for mechanics in the near future.

It would take about two hours to get to Southampton if they were lucky with traffic, and then they could take the ferry to the Isle of Wight.

Nick was still thinking about the traffic when Alan said in a soft voice, “Nick, you get horribly seasick.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nick said.

He didn’t remember ever being vuo; on a boat. Running from magicians did not leave a lot of time for sailing the high seas, but the idea sounded implausible. Nick was never sick, and even if he had been, they were hardly going to change their plans because of a tiny thing like seasickness. He wasn’t letting Alan go off on his own.

“We took you on a boat once when you were little, and it was—” Alan bit his lip. “You coughed up blood. I thought you were going to die.”

“I didn’t,” Nick pointed out. “And if I was little, I imagine I’ve grown out of it by now.” He glanced over at Alan, whose profile was tense and unhappy. If Alan was so concerned about him, he thought, he might try telling him the truth once in a while instead of wasting time protecting him from boats.

Mae, Jamie, and Mum were silent in the backseat. After about an hour along the M3 and into the gathering night, Nick glanced in the mirror and saw Mum looking at him, her gaze steady and cold.

Alan seemed so ready to die to save her. Nick couldn’t understand it, and he wasn’t about to let it happen.

The ferry at Southampton’s second terminal was a huge white and red edifice, more like a tin house floating on the water than a boat. There seemed to be a jolly cloud painted on one side, as if they were all off on a day trip to the beach.

There were very few other passengers at this time of night. They waited until everyone else was aboard; nobody was in the mood to deal with strangers, Nick least of all. He strode onboard last, lagging behind even Alan’s limping step, and walked toward the railing at the side of the ferry as the whistle blew. He lifted his face to the cold wind and hoped everyone would understand that he wanted to be left alone.

The boat lurched as it set off. Nick felt his stomach tilt with it, and a moment of dizziness passed over him, a disoriented feeling similar to that of standing up too fast and having all the blood rush to your head. He deliberately did not look at the gray expanse of water, leaning heavily against the railing and clenching his hand hard around it. He squeezed the metal so tightly his knuckles went white and his fingers ached, and he concentrated on the pain. Having a focus cleared his head.

He felt the plunge of the hull against the waves in the pit of his stomach. He tried to count the waves but they kept coming, a succession of waves battering the boat, the whole sea nothing but currents under relentless currents.

Mae left Mum’s side to come and stand in front of Nick. Her face wavered in front of his eyes, bobbing as if she was underwater.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “We’ve only been moving for a minute and the sea’s calm, but you’ve gone all green. Do you want to go below deck, or…maybe you’d like a basin?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Nick said roughly, and tried to let go of the railing. His hands felt oddly numb, as if they did not belong to him, and then the boat creaked over another wave and he staggered, almost going down on his knees. Consciousness seemed to be sliding across the deck and away from him.

Alan turned, as if that was a cue he’d been waiting for, and moved toward Nick. The way he limped did not synchronize with the way the boat rocked, and for a moment Alan seemed like the only still point in a world full of endless sickening motion. Nick tried to hold on. Soon Alan could get to him and tell him what was happening.

The world was moving so much it was blurring into a meaningless mess of color and sound. There was a moment of small centralized pain, someone’s fingernails digging into Nick’s skin, and someone’s voice, high, saying: “Alan, Jamie! Quick—”

The world fell away as if the boat had tipped over and left them in the crashing darkness of the sea. There was nothing but darkness and confusion for a long moment, until Nick realized he was lying on the deck and retching, as if he had really been underwater and he had to cough up water to live. He did not taste water in his mouth, only the sharp bitterness of bile.

Bitterness only lasted an instant, though. Nick was used to being in complete command of his body, being strong and able to use all his strength. It was odd now, he thought in a drifting sort of way, to feel so helpless, to be so disconnected from his body. He was only sure that he had a body because of a strange pain that seemed part of the disconnection and because he was so cold.

“Nick,” said Alan’s voice, compelling and comforting at once.

Slowly, through the chill, Nick felt his hand held tight in Alan’s, his cheek pressed against the rough denim covering Alan’s knee. He became aware of his head as his own, a distinct shape, because of his brother’s hand stroking his hair.

“Nick,” Alan said again. “It’s all right, Nick.”

It was all right. Nick thought about this and decided that what Alan said was true. He’d never been helpless before, not since he could remember, but now he was and everything was all right. He didn’t normally let people touch him, but he could not stop it now. He did not have to speak, he was not able to move, all he could do was lie there and have his brother hold him, hunched over and shielding him from the world. His brother’s hand was light in his hair, his arm circling Nick’s shoulders as well as he could, and his voice in Nick’s ear was a warm soothing lifeline in the midst of the cold hissing of all the currents in the sea.

“Hold on, Nick. It’s only twenty minutes until we get there. Just hold on.”

Nick tried to do what Alan wanted and hold on to his brother’s hand, but he couldn’t feel his fingers properly. He looked, though, and Alan was still holding Nick’s hand, so perhaps that would be enough to make Alan happy. Nick vomited again, too cold and far away to care. He pressed his forehead against the inside of his brother’s wrist and let the drowning darkness pull him down again.

When he was next aware of anything, it was of being in a car that was jolting to a stop. His vision was hazy and he looked around desperately, as if by jerking his head hard enough he could make himself see, but then he realized that Alan was still holding his hand.

“Alan,” he mumbled, and the orange light of a streetlamp caught Alan’s glasses. The flash dimmed and Nick saw Alan’s face bending over him in the flickering shadows. “Where are we?”

“We’re in a taxi going from West Cowes to Carisbrooke village,” Alan answered softly, as if he was talking nonsense words to a child he was very fond of. “We’re going to Merris’s house. How are you feeling?”

“As if my body doesn’t belong to me,” Nick said.

“I’m sorry for bringing you onto that boat.”

Nick levered himself up on one elbow. “Not your fault. You warned me, I just didn’t think I was pathetic enough to collapse because of a little queasiness.”

“You’re an idiot,” said Alan, relaxing enough to smile at him. “But you’re not pathetic.”

There was a flicker of movement in the corner of Nick’s eye. He looked around sharply, dropping Alan’s hand, and saw Jamie and Mae sitting on the flip-down leather seats opposite them. He realized properly for the first time that they really were in a cab. He looked beyond the clouded glass to see the tired profile of the cab driver and the black fall of Mum’s hair in the passenger seat.

“How are you feeling, Nick?” Jamie inquired, shifting uneasily on his seat. He and Mae looked rather alike just now, both staring at him with wide, frightened eyes. He recognized with a shock the fact that they both looked worried.

“Can you walk?” asked Mae, being more practical. “We’re here.”

He nodded, and Mae opened the car door. Nick got out, straightened, and did not know what was keeping him up. When he looked down, it was his legs and feet as usual.

There was a high stone wall in front of them and an ornate gate. The stones in the wall glittered with mica. The iron of the gate was shaped into trees and snakes and women. The whole purpose of the walls and gate seemed to be decoration, but this was simply a distraction from the fact that the walls were very high and there were wicked-looking spikes on the gate. There was jagged glass gleaming on top of the walls, almost hidden by the leaves of trees behind them. It reminded Nick of Liannan, with her curtain of hair and sharp teeth.

He had to lean against the cab. He should not have stood up so soon; he tried to move and Alan was beside him. Nick must have been sagging, because he was eye level with the first button on Alan’s shirt.

“Mae, help me,” Alan ordered, and Mae was suddenly at Nick’s side.

Nick dimly approved of Alan’s choice. Mae was certainly better able to bear his weight than Jamie, and as for Mum, who was taller and stronger than either of them, she would not have touched Nick no matter who asked. Then his head lolled forward, his neck feeling like a thick tube of spaghetti. He was not going to be sick again; he just wanted to lie down until he remembered how to work his own body.

“Jamie,” Alan said, his voice soothing for Nick’s benefit, even though he was speaking to someone else. “Go and press the intercom button. Say ‘My name is one.’”

“One?” Jamie asked, blinking. “One what?”

“Jamie! Nick is going to fall over!”

“Right. I’m sorry,” said Jamie, shaking his head and stepping backward, almost walking into the tree and turning to scurry toward the gate. Nick heard his voice, seeming much farther away than it should have, saying that his name was one.< { wary div height="0 %">

The gate swung open stiffly, as if it did not open often. Beyond was a garden with trees weighed down by their late-May green burdens, and crazy paving that stretched on until it was lost from view.

They went slowly down the garden path, Nick’s awareness of what was going on ebbing and fading with every step. The garden was a wild tangle that had clearly been left to decay for years; briars formed nightmare patterns against Nick’s eyelids as his eyes closed. Alan’s voice cut across his consciousness, saying his name, and Nick opened his eyes again with an effort.

In front of them now was a large white house, rising above them like a sheer white cliff. It was so large that it seemed to demand decoration, the decency of pillars and balconies, but here behind the gates there was no such pretense. There was only the severe white building, stretching up five floors. Above the large door were letters raised in gold.

The words swam before Nick’s eyes, gleaming fish that wanted to escape and would not form a coherent pattern, and then they stilled. Nick could feel his body now and it felt heavy, so heavy that he could not hold himself up.

The gold letters stayed for a moment, pinned up against the blackness, when his eyelids dropped and he fell forward.

THE HOUSE OF MEZENTIUS, the shining words read, and below that: THEIR NAME IS LEGION.

Nick woke in darkness to the sound of screams.

The darkness he solved by reaching out and turning on the lamp on the table beside his bed, but the screams were different. He sat up, noting with relief that his muscles and sinews now remembered they were his and obeyed him. He slipped out of the tangled embrace of sheets to have a look around. The room had a high ceiling, and little scalloped bits at the corners of said ceiling. His bed was big, with a carved oak headboard.

The screams were faint. Nick judged that they were muffled by thick walls, rather than all that far away.

The heavy door, also polished oak, slid open. Nick reached for a sword that was not there and was glad to see Alan. He was also glad to see that Alan had his sword.

Alan smiled, laugh lines leaping out from the corners of his eyes. “I see you’re feeling better.” He threw Nick a little heap of fabric, which Nick unfolded and saw was a shirt, the crisp buttoned kind you should wear with a suit. He was about to refuse it when he glanced down at his T-shirt and saw that it was stained with vomit and blood. He didn’t want to know if he’d hacked up blood. He just changed shirts.

Once he had done so, he gestured around at the room. “All this is very posh.”

“It’s Merris Cromwell’s house.”

Nick supposed that made sense. Everybody knew Merris had money, even though he hadn’t known she had this much.

“Where are the others?”

Alan looked pleased that he’d asked. “Nearby. Mum’s asleep, Merris gave her something to calm her down, but the others are wondering how you are. We’ve all been put in the north wing, so we’re pretty close to {ret dogether. Do you want to go see them?”

Nick shrugged, and Alan led the way. The north wing seemed to be mostly corridors so wide they almost qualified as rooms, the walls sleek and white and the wooden floors all dark from years and polish. They found Mae and Jamie in a room reminiscent of Nick’s, with the same solemn-looking bed and crenulated ceiling. Jamie was sitting cross-legged on the bed, and Mae was pacing across a fluffy white rug that looked like a decapitated polar bear.

“We should go check on him,” she said as Nick opened the door.

Jamie nodded in his direction. “I think he’s probably all right.”

Mae looked around and did not blush. Nick liked that, the way she felt no need to pretend either indifference or exaggerated concern. She just nodded at him.

He was not used to big houses like this. He was used to small, shabby houses and flats, places with so few rooms and such thin walls that he always knew where Alan was. Now he was in wide open spaces under vaulted ceilings, and he was noticing too many things about this girl. The strangeness of it all made him feel irritated and uncomfortable. He slouched against the wall and looked deliberately through Mae. After a few moments she moved away from the coldness of his fixed gaze, toward Alan.

It didn’t make Nick feel any better. He felt restless suddenly, and as he tuned out the others’ voices and wished for something to do, he registered again the sound that had woken him. Coming to him through heavy doors and solid walls, through all the expensive privacy of this house, were faint but unmistakable screams.

It was obvious that the rest of them couldn’t hear it. He should probably tell Alan.

“There is someone being tortured in this house.”

Alan gave a guilty start, and it was clear to Nick that he at least already knew.

“That’s not entirely true,” he said hastily.

“Tortured?” exclaimed Jamie.

Nick shrugged. “Sounds like that to me.”

“Alan,” Mae said, in a tone of command rather than appeal. “Where are we?”

Alan looked defeated already, as if some terrible fate was rushing upon them, something as impossible to reason with or escape from as a storm spilling darkness across the sky.

“This is the House of Mezentius,” he said.

“That’s what it said above the door,” Nick agreed. “Who’s Mezentius?”

Alan seemed to be having trouble with the words. “He was an Etruscan king in a legend,” he said slowly. “He had living people bound face-to-face with dead bodies and left to starve.”

“He sounds a charming host,” said Nick. “I thought you said this was Merris Cromwell’s house.”

“Merris runs the house,” Alan answered in a low voice. “It’s her job to organize everything here, to keep everything…contained.”

“Well she’s not doing a very good job, is she?” Jamie exclaimed. “If there’s someone being tortured in here.”

“That person’s here of their own free will,” Alan told him.

His eyes looked more bruised and sad with every word dragged out of him, and Nick felt the impulse to silence all the questions that were hurting his brother. He’d always trusted Alan to know best, trusted that Alan would sooner or later tell Nick everything he needed to know. He thought of that hidden picture, though, and about him letting that magician go. There were some things Alan never said anything about. He wondered what secret Alan was hiding this time.

He kept quiet, and let Mae and Jamie keep pushing for answers.

“Do you know the person who’s screaming?”

“Why would someone come here to be tortured?”

Mae demanded, “Can’t you just show us what’s going on?”

Alan looked almost gray. “I can,” he said. “But you don’t want to see. I swear, you don’t want to see.”

There was another slight movement of unease in Nick’s gut. He could still shut them both up.

He hesitated a second too long and gave Mae the chance to make up her own mind.

“Let me decide that for myself. I want to see.”

Alan walked down the staircase heavily, as if he was carrying a large burden that he did not expect to be able to put down for some time. Mae walked with a firm step beside him, Jamie was hanging back, and Nick became more and more convinced that he did not like this place.

The staircase was wide, a gleaming marble flight of the kind that women swept down in the sappy movies Alan liked. Only instead of leading to a ballroom, it ended in a hall with the same dark polished floors and severe white walls as the corridors in the north wing. Nick kept trying to work out why this place jarred on him so much, and then he got it. The north wing with its four-poster beds and fancy ceilings was a disguise, and this house was as much of a facade as the decorative gate outside.

This was not a stately home. This place was an institution.

The screaming was getting closer.

After a moment’s analysis, Nick decided that it was just one person screaming. It was a woman, and she sounded young, or at least not old. The hall opened into more corridors as they went along, and Nick was amazed that he had not realized before how clinical the corridors were, perfectly upkept, with no pictures or even creaking old radiators to lend them personality. They passed a few simple wooden doors, but Alan kept going, and their little group silently followed him.

Everyone could hear the screams now.

They turned a corner in the winding passageways, and the screams suddenly had a definite location. They were coming from a large metal door down the corridor, on the left. There were no other curves remaining in the corridor, and Nick saw it stretching on into dimness. Glinting at intervals in the dimness were other metallic doors, armored so they bulged out of their door frames, looking forbidding and utterly out of place.

As they drew level with the first metallic door, the screaming stopped.

The scream was cut off so abruptly Nick thought that the person screaming must have died. There was a small window in the door, though, wire forming tiny squares inside two sheets of glass, and when they peered inside they saw no dead bodies.

There were two people in the room. There was a woman kneeling on the floor, and there was a man chained to a wall.

Nick’s first reaction was disbelief. This house might be an institution, but it was clearly civilized and organized. It seemed unbelievable that these quiet corridors could lead to dungeons.

Then he looked at the prisoner properly.

At first sight he was a normal man. His face was deeply lined and his body was stooped in his chains, so he looked old even though most of his hair was brown. He wore old clothes, and a beard covered most of his face.

As they all stood staring, the man’s flat black eyes darted toward the window in the door. His expression did not change.

His eyes did. They bulged in his eye sockets, bulged until they seemed to bulge out of his eye sockets, and then Nick realized they were not bulging at all. The man’s eyes had seemed almost like normal eyes at first, but now the pupils expanded as if someone had tipped ink into two saucers and filled them from edge to edge with shiny black.

The black ovals that had been his eyes were lifting themselves out of his eye sockets, showing little legs, and in the space of a few seconds there was a fat black beetle emerging from each socket. They crawled down the man’s face like tears.

Jamie screamed, the sound shuddering into a moan, and there was movement in the corner of Nick’s eye that suggested he and Mae were clinging to each other. At Nick’s side he could feel Alan trembling. Nick was distantly aware that he should be shocked himself, but he’d seen a lot of things in his life worse than this. He kept watching with calm interest, and the man’s face sharpened as if he was a dog who had caught a scent. There was a long moment where Nick was sure that somehow the man could see him.

The man winked, his wrinkled eyelid flicking over the raw hollow of his eye socket. Nick hesitated for a second, and then winked back.

One of the fat black beetles reached the man’s chin and dropped into the kneeling woman’s hair. She looked up and shook the beetle onto the floor with a convulsive tremor, but aside from that initial movement of automatic disgust, she did not seem surprised. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, with thick chestnut hair and brimming eyes. Nick wondered what had made her scream.

“I see you’ve met Ruth and Thomas,” said Merris Cromwell, her voice ringing clear and calm against the corridor walls. She spoke as if she was introducing people at a cocktail party.

“Met Ruth and—? What the hell is wrong with that man?” Jamie demanded, his voice unusually ferocious. He strode toward Merris, and Nick noticed that his shoulders were shaking. He imagined from the way Jamie was behaving that he already knew what was wrong with the man and was doing his best not to believe what he knew.

Merris walked down the corridor as if she could not see Jamie, and at the last moment before a collision was inevitable Jamie stepped aside. “Let me see,” she said. “Mute, with no trace of his former personality remaining, and with the ability to manipulate anything in the natural world, including his own body. I shall take a wild leap and say that he’s possessed.”

Jamie’s body snapped back as if he had been punched. “Possessed.” He jerked his head toward all the other metal doors, glinting along the corridor until the light was not sufficient enough for them to see and the doors went on in darkness. “Are you saying that behind every door there’s someone—”

“Unless one of them has died since yesterday.” Merris’s wide gray eyes moved past Jamie and looked over them all. She obviously saw something in one of their faces that irritated her, because her lip curled and she demanded in her turn, “Have none of you ever given a moment’s thought to what happens to the possessed?”

None of them had an answer for her. Merris waited for a moment so they could all be fully aware of that and went on.

“A mute, magically powerful creature replaces an ordinary person overnight. You can’t imagine that passes unnoticed. If the possessed has a family, they soon notice the change. They’re horrified, and they have nobody to help them. Except us.”

She smiled. “We have these new magical circles specifically designed to confine a demon who has acquired a human body. We have containment facilities. If people come to us with tales of possessed friends and relatives, we do not talk about mental illness and we do not disbelieve in the demon’s power. Mezentius House is the only place these desperate people can turn, and of course, we obey the businesslike laws of supply and demand. They pay well for our help.”

“They’re people in trouble!” Jamie cried, wiping his mouth as if he’d eaten something bad and could not rub away the taste.

Nick thought suddenly of what that magician Gerald had said, that the Market was funded with blood money. This was why everyone obeyed Merris Cromwell. This money was what helped the Market people — helped them — find houses and transfer to new schools and jobs quickly.

The money was paid by the families of people who’d been possessed, like Jamie might be. Like Alan might be. He wondered what Sin would think of this.

Merris raised her eyebrows. “So are the people who go to hospitals, and they have to pay. There are a lot of hospitals. There is only one Mezentius House.”

Thoughts of Alan aside, it did not sound unreasonable to Nick. Those who dealt in magic had their own private economy, and Merris had worked out how to manipulate it in her favor. There was just one thing he didn’t understand.

He cleared his throat. “Why don’t you kill them all?”

“The relatives seem curiously reluctant to have the possessed killed. Particularly once I explain to them that their loved one is inside somewhere, unable to regain control of their body. Their friends and family want them controlled but not harmed. They pray for miracles. Sometimes they insist on staying with them, hoping to ease their pain.” Merris shrugged. “That costs extra.”

“The magical circles you keep the possessed in,” Alan said with what appeared to be scientific interest. “How different are they from normal magicians’ circles? Can you command a demon in them? Could you summon one?”

“I cannot imagine why we would want to. We have quite enough to do with the demons we have. I consider keeping them confined the most important part,” said Merris dryly. “Since you came all this way to insist on answers, I have a few diagrams I can show you that detail how our circles work.”

“I’d appreciate that,” said Alan.

“They’re very basic,” Merris said. “You can’t summon a demon into them. We haven’t even worked out a way to make communication lines work for them. Almost the only thing we can do is keep them trapped.”

“What if a dancer was involved?” Alan asked, frowning. “Speaking purely academically, of course.”

Nick wondered if Alan had some sort of plan for trapping the demons the magicians sent after them. It didn’t sound like it would work.

Mae and Jamie were still staring into the cell with horrified fascination, and after a moment, Mae spoke.

“Does a miracle ever happen? I mean, if you have them trapped — does the demon ever leave?”

“No demon ever leaves,” Merris said. “No matter what happens to them, they prefer our world to theirs. But people keep hoping, right until the end.”

She nodded casually to the window in the metal door. They all watched, as if the window was a television and the scene had been designed for them to see, while chestnut-haired Ruth climbed stiffly to her feet. She put her hand to Thomas’s face, and Thomas — did not blink, exactly. His eyes flickered as if he had multiple eyelids, like a cat, and when his eyes were open they were normal eyes again. He watched the woman with his flat gaze and under his eyes a cut opened on her cheek. She moaned and held her hand to her face, and he looked at her arm. Another gash opened there, as if his traveling eyes were knives.

“Don’t worry,” Merris told them. “The demon’s using all the magic he can think of to make her let him out, but he won’t damage her permanently. He knows she’s the only one who will feed him.”

Moving like an old woman, Ruth replaced her hand against the possessed Thomas’s face. She stroked his cheek briefly, and Nick saw her lips move, though he could not make out what she was saying. It had never occurred to Nick before that communication lines could not be drawn for a demon possessing a human. He’d known that possessed people did not speak. Now, watching the possessed body watch the woman with reptilian blankness, he realized that the demon really could not understand.

The woman kept talking, even though it was pointless. Nick thought he made out the word ‘love’ when she spoke, but he could have been wrong.

Mae said, trying and failing to repress a tremor in her voice, “Is she his daughter?”

“Oh no, my dear,” Merris said absently. “The man’s young. His body’s tearing itself apart trying to fight the demon; he didn’t look like this a week ago. She’s his wife.”

The demon who looked like Thomas smiled at his wife, and then his tongue darted out and caught the other beetle that had once been his eye. It made a soft, sickening sound between his teeth. The woman gagged, and he kept grinning.

“He’s just trying to scare her,” said Merris, her voice still clinical and uninterested. “A demon will try to manipulate a human any way it can. Don’t worry. She knows better than to be fooled.”

Ruth put a hand to her own mouth and started to cry.

Nick rather expected Jamie to turn and bolt, but it was Alan who did so.

One moment he was by Nick’s side, still and quiet as he was when he was upset and turning in on himself, but in control. The next he was limping as fast as he could down the corridor, back in the direction they had come, away from the metal doors hiding the demons.

Nick should have looked at Alan; he should have made sure he wasn’t upset. Alan could usually handle himself, but this was different. Alan was carrying a second-tier mark. Alan was thinking of his future.

Nick considered waiting for Mae to offer to go after him. That would please Alan, he thought, but Mae did not offer. Nick glanced at her and saw her standing close by Jamie, feet planted apart as if she was going to wrestle someone, looking furiously concerned. She did not want to leave her brother.

That was fine by Nick. He didn’t want to leave his brother either.

“Don’t come after us,” he said curtly, and spun around and after Alan.

Mae would probably be better at comforting Alan than he would. Jamie would probably be better at it. Nick did not have the slightest idea what to do, but Alan was his brother and no one else’s, and he would think of something.

He found Alan in a bathroom, stooped over the sink and looking like he was going to be sick. The water was running, and Alan was splashing his face frantically. He looked up and saw Nick at the mirror. Nick looked at his own stone-faced reflection and Alan’s almost frightened eyes.

“Alan,” he said, his voice rough.

Alan closed his eyes. “What?”

Nick advanced cautiously, wishing this was as simple as creeping up on someone to kill them. “You okay?”

He wondered if other people ever realized how stupid half the things they said were. Alan was shaking and scared and obviously not okay, but Nick had to ask because that was what you asked, and no matter how stupid the usual words sounded, Nick had no words of his own to offer.

“I might be okay,” said Alan, who told lies.

He looked down again, into the basin of the sink and away from their reflections. There were dark circles under Alan’s eyes, Nick saw in the cold, uncompromising picture the mirror gave him, and deep lines around his mouth. He was so much paler than he had been even a week ago. It made Nick think of the demon they’d left behind, in a body that had looked young last week.

“Don’t,” he said, and cleared his throat. “You don’t need to worry.” He had to drag every word out. “It won’t happen to you. I won’t let it.”

“That’s not why,” Alan said, but his shoulders relaxed.

This encouraged Nick to go over to him, but once he was there he could only hang uselessly over his brother. Alan was the one who was good at this stuff, who was always hair ruffling or shoulder patting. Gestures like that did not come naturally to Nick, any more than comforting words did.

“Sure it’s not,” Nick said, trying hard to make his voice gentle. It cracked and came out sounding harsh.

He sat on the floor with his back against the wall, and after a moment Alan gave a sigh that was either tired or resigned. Nick kept his head bowed as Alan’s hand settled on his neck, palm gun-callused, and rested there.

Nick had never seen the point of just touching people, but if this made Alan feel better, he supposed it wasn’t so bad.

“Why did we come here?” he asked.

“I wanted to see the possessed patients,” Alan answered, his voice low. “But I didn’t want you to see them. I didn’t want any of you to see.”

“It’s all right,” Nick said, trying to be comforting. “They didn’t bother me.”

He glanced up at Alan, and Alan did not look comforted. He looked as if he was exhausted and in pain.

Nick felt a sharp pang of frustration, like when he’d been younger and teachers had asked him to read aloud or girls had expected some sort of gesture from him, but a thousand times worse because this was his brother and it mattered.

“I’ll protect you,” he said at last, awkwardly. He felt stupid saying it; Alan already knew that he would.

Alan looked a little steadier, all the same. “I’m counting on it.”

“Good,” said Nick. “You’ll be okay. I’ll protect you. Don’t — don’t be upset anymore.”

Alan made a soft sound, trembling between a breath and a laugh. “I’m not upset.”

“You liar,” Nick mumbled.

Alan stroked his hair just once, and then drew his hand away. “I’m okay now,” he said. “Really.”

It sounded true, sounded like something Nick could believe. He remembered feeling peaceful on the boat, just trusting Alan, and it seemed like something he could do again.

Nick’s phone rang. He cursed and half rose in order to fish it out of his jeans, and then looked blankly at the number that appeared on the screen.

“Who the…?” He shrugged and made to cut them off.

“Probably one of your many admirers,” Alan said. “Go ahead, answer it. I’m all right, I promise. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Nick had been busy lately. He didn’t remember giving his number out to any girls, but if Alan wanted a moment, he should have it. Nick scrambled to his feet, lingered for an instant wondering if he should say anything, and ended up just nodding at his brother. Alan smiled at Nick as he went out the door, and he answered the phone in a good mood. Whoever the girl was, he’d pretend to remember her.

“Hey,” he said easily.

There was a brief pause, and then a sharp inhale, and a woman’s voice. “Hello,” she said. “Is this the person who put Marie’s picture in the paper?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

Nick spoke automatically, so she wouldn’t go away before he had a chance to think.

“My name is Natasha Walsh,” the woman said. “Marie was my sister.”

“She’s dead?” Nick rapped out.

He felt nothing but satisfaction at the thought. She was dead then, that smiling blond girl, and if she was dead she could not lay claim to his brother. He had what he wanted. He almost hung up on her then.

The woman spoke an instant before he did. “Look,” she said, and then her words tumbled out, so fast they all rolled together. “Is this about Alan? Is he all right? I haven’t seen him since last Christmas.”

The way she talked about Alan sounded personal. Nobody whom Nick had never heard of before in his life should be able to talk about his brother like that.

“Last Christmas,” Nick repeated.

So Nick’s half suspicion had been true: Alan had gone away and left them for that dead girl. He’d lied about having to do a translation; he’d left Nick in a cold, dark house that felt abandoned, with Mum rocking upstairs. Nick wanted to know why he’d done it. He wanted to know exactly what this girl had been to Alan.

He put a hand to the back of his neck, his own grip stronger and rougher than Alan’s, and thought about trusting his brother.

“Look,” he said abruptly. “This isn’t a good time. Can I—I’ll call you back.”

He turned the phone off before she could speak again. Then he weighed it, small and stupid-looking in his big hand. He didn’t know why he even had a phone, he thought; he never wanted to call anybody.

He did know why, of course. Alan had given him the phone, and he’d kept it because he knew it made Alan feel better to know that he could get in touch with Nick whenever he wanted and check that he was safe.

Nick slid the phone into his pocket and came to a decision. He’d go to Alan and tell him everything. Nick had been hiding things too, but he’d tell Alan that he knew about Marie and what he’d done to find out more. Alan would understand that the secrets and lies had to stop.

He wasn’t in the bathroom where Nick had left him. Nick frowned and began to retrace their steps, going slowly back toward where they’d left Mae and Jamie. He was only halfway down the corridor when he was caught and held by the sound of his brother’s voice behind a door.

“I knew he’d be sick,” Alan said. “That didn’t matter.”

Nick had been about to open the door, and now he found himself staring at it instead.

“It seems a lot of things haven’t mattered to you,” said the voice of Merris Cromwell.

There was a small pause, and Alan replied, “I don’t regret anything I’ve done.”

Alan had been set on coming here, and Nick had been set on following him. He would have done it no matter what, but the thought that Alan had cold-bloodedly accepted that Nick would be ill made him feel an uneasy shift in his stomach, as if he was still sick. He couldn’t connect the image of his brother Alan — who’d raised him, packed his school lunches, and used to sit on the edge of Nick’s bed like a small, ferociously patient owl, waiting for him to fall asleep — with the dispassionate voice behind the door.

“You may not regret it, but the Market will resent it,” Merris Cromwell said, her voice low and cold. “If we had known, we would never have let you come among us. You’ll never be welcome there again.”

Alan had told Merris about Mum. Nick should have felt something about that, but he didn’t. He felt nothing. He stood in the cold, echoing corridor unable to make sense of anything.

“Do you think I care?” Alan demanded. “Can you help me or not?”

“I can’t help you, and I’m glad I can’t,” Merris said icily. “Don’t look to the Market for help from now on. Everyone’s hand will be turned against you. You’re on your own.”

Nick heard Alan make a sound he recognized, a soft, shaky breath; hurt but pulling himself together. “I thought I would be. I know what I have to do, then. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Merris said. “Don’t do this.” There was a real note of pain in her voice suddenly, as if she’d thought she knew Alan, as if she’d believed in Alan like Nick had. “Take my advice, Alan. Nobody ever needs to know about this. Hand it over to the magicians. Walk away.”

It was good advice, Market advice. Nobody from the Market would have shielded a magician, or been suicidal enough to openly defy a Circle. Nick wished Alan would take it. If he’d just give up on Mum and give away the charm, Mum would die — but she’d been a magician, and she deserved to die. With the threat of a whole Circle after them lifted, he could protect Alan. They could get that mark off.

But apparently he didn’t know Alan any more than Merris did.

“Take my advice, Merris,” Alan said in a voice twice as cold as hers. “Don’t ever suggest anything like that to me again.”

Merris’ voice was a low hiss. “Get out of my house.”

“No,” said Alan. “First I want you to arrange somewhere else for us to live.”

“And why should I do that?”

“Because I still have contacts in the Market,” Alan told her. “You may spread your stories about me, and some will believe you, but I’m the sweet, studious boy that everybody likes. You’re the mystery. Nobody knows where you get your money from, and I don’t think many people will approve of you leeching money from the helpless victims of magicians and using it to gain power in our Market. Because that’s the way I’ll spin it, Merris. And people will believe me. I can make people trust me; you should know that. Even you did.”

“Believe me, I’m regretting it now.” Merris’s voice snapped into her usual tones, cool and bargaining. “A house is the price of your silence? So be it. You and yours will be out of my home by morning. And you’d better keep your part of the bargain, or I’ll have you killed.”

“Done,” said Alan, in the exact same tone. Then his voice softened. “I’m sorry I have to do this.”

There was no hint of yielding in Merris’s voice. “You don’t have to do this. You should give it up.”

“I’m sorry,” Alan said, his voice kind but firm, “but I’ve already done this and I’ll do a lot worse. I will not give up. And if you can’t help me, Merris, then get the hell out of my way.”

Under any other circumstances, Nick would have found it funny: his brother blackmailing Merris of the Market and not turning a hair. He would’ve approved. Only now it was more proof of what Mum meant to Alan.

Mum and Marie, the girl in the picture. Alan wouldn’t tell him his plans for saving Mum, and he hadn’t even told him that Marie existed. Alan wouldn’t tell him anything, but that didn’t matter. Nick could find out the truth on his own.

He walked away from the door, back toward Mae and Jamie, and as he did so he took out his phone and rang the last listed call.

The same woman’s voice answered, breathless and anxious. “Hello?”

“Can I come and see you?” he asked abruptly. “I know where Alan is. I’ll tell you all about him. Give me your address.”

Alan’s blackmail must have been very successful indeed, since Merris not only found them a new home in London but provided them with her own boat back and gave Nick herbs to make him sleep through the voyage.

“Such concern for me,” Nick said on the dock. His voice was meant to be bitter, but it simply sounded cold. “I’m touched.”

The others were standing in a little knot, trying to keep warm by staying close. It was not yet dawn, and the sea air hit Nick’s face like a series of slaps with icy hands.

Alan was holding Mum’s hand. She still looked groggy from whatever Merris had given her, and she stood leaning against Alan, the billowing black veil of her hair caught by the wind, flying and settling over them both. Alan was watching Nick, his face to all appearances honestly puzzled and hurt.

Nick was standing as far away from the others as he could without actually standing in the sea.

“There’s a bedroom you can sleep in,” Alan offered, his voice tentative. “I’ll sit with you in case you need help.”

“I don’t need your help,” said Nick curtly. He looked away from Alan and Mum, and his eyes settled on another face.

The sight and smell of the sea was already making him feel a little ill, that and the dread of being completely and humiliatingly helpless again curdling in his stomach. The sound of the wind was like the freezing shout of a hundred angry ghosts. Looking at his family only made him feel worse.

Looking at Mae made him feel a little steadier. She had her face tipped up to study his, determined dark eyes and a stubborn mouth. The way she looked was familiar to him by now, and the better he knew her, the better she looked. He smiled at her, a slow, deliberate smile that made an answering smile curve her lips.

“I’d rather have Mae nurse me,” he drawled.

Even if he hadn’t been able to see her, he would have heard the smile in her voice. “Yeah, all right.”

That was when Merris’s skipper, Philip, a man with the close-clipped hair and charcoal-colored suit of a businessman and the worn teeth and yellow tongue of a necromancer, gestured them aboard. The herbs Merris had given Nick were already making him feel a little dizzy, but that was almost a relief; his dread of coming aboard and his fury at Alan both felt distant, wrapped up safe until he could deal with them.

Soon he would be back on land and he would know all Alan’s secrets. For now he could only stagger down the steps to reach the bedroom below deck, his hand fumbling at the doorknob. The room was circular at one end, the bed white and plain with cuffs at each corner.

So this was how they transported the possessed. Nick went and lay back on the bed, thankful that he did not have to keep his feet any longer. He stared up at the wooden ceiling and heard Mae come in and shut the door.

“You don’t need to use the restraints,” Nick told the ceiling. “I’ll be good.”

Mae laughed. “But I was planning to do terrible things to you once I had you at my mercy.”

“Oh,” said Nick. “In that case, go right ahead.”

“No, you’ve spoiled the moment now.”

“Yeah,” Nick muttered. “I do that a lot.”

So many girls had started off looking at him all shiny-eyed and breathless, and then they’d all been disillusioned. Most had ended up scared. Mae had already been around longer than any of those girls, and she didn’t scare easily, but of course it wasn’t like that between them.

“Nick,” Mae said, and hesitated.

It was rare enough for her to hesitate that Nick was intrigued. He levered himself up on his elbows and looked at her. She had her back up against the door, her pink hair mussed by the wind and her cheeks flushed. Which could have been another effect of the wind.

“I was wondering,” Mae continued. “That girl at the Market. Sin. Are you going out with her?”

“No,” said Nick. He didn’t really have much else to say, but Mae was staring at the floor and looking embarrassed, so he went on. “I’ve never really gone out with anyone.”

It had never particularly bothered him either. A night or two with a girl, and then having her go away and the next one come along: it had always seemed like an all-right way to do things.

Nick was surprised that she’d asked; not by the directness of it, because that was her style, but he was surprised that she’d wanted to know.

Since she had, it must mean — he was pretty sure that it did mean — that she preferred Nick. And if she really did…

Mae’s eyebrows had come up. She was smiling a bit.

“Oh really,” she said, her voice amused and incredulous. “A complete innocent, are you?”

“Definitely,” Nick assured her, letting his voice slide low. “You can try corrupting me if you like.”

Mae dimpled. “It’s no fun if you’re asking for it.”

“No, no,” Nick drawled. “Release me, you monster. Your wicked ways shock me to my soul. And yet I find you strangely attractive.”

The boat purred into life, lurching away from the dock and swaying between one wave and the next. Nick shut his eyes in a brief flash of nausea.

“I feel I should warn you,” he said after a moment. “I may be about to get sick or pass out.”

“Uh,” said Mae. “Sexy.”

Funnily enough, it was this exciting news that peeled her off the door Nick had been starting to think she was glued to. She came to stand by the bed, pulling her iPod out of her pocket and fiddling with it, unwinding the earphones coiled around it.

“Maybe what you need is a distraction,” she began.

On impulse Nick reached up and pulled her down to the bed. Mae made a startled sound, half breath and half laugh, and he rolled her over and under him easily, using his strength the way girls sometimes liked him to.

He looked down at her, then leaned in close, feeling her shiver at his breath on her ear, and murmured, “Maybe.”

The morning sunlight was turning the cotton sheets into hot gold; he saw the flash in her eyes under suddenly heavy eyelids and smiled down at her. He was braced over her, his arms supporting his weight, and a sway of the ship and a breath lifted her hips against his. Her breath turned into a shiver, traveling slowly along the length of her body, and she lifted her hands and ran her palms along the tense swell of his arms.

He probably shouldn’t be doing this. Alan liked her, and he might be angry with Alan now but he wouldn’t be angry forever. Alan was his brother, and he shouldn’t be doing this, but Alan had let him get sick and Mae preferred him.

It was all warm, white and gold and that absurd pink, the curves of her and the rumpled lines of the sheets, all blending and blurring together because he was starting to slip out of consciousness.

Mae pushed him gently backward onto the pillows, and he went, throwing an arm over his eyes.

“I’d hate for you to get the wrong idea about me,” he said. “Under normal circumstances, I swear, I would have copped a feel.”

“I was about to suggest that some music might be in order anyway,” said Mae, valiantly pretending that she was not out of breath, her voice warm and trembling as she had been under him a moment ago.

She put one of the iPod earpieces in his ear, and the other presumably in her own, and settled back down on the pillows. The boat rocked them gently back and forth in a way that Nick might have found soothing if he hadn’t felt so ill, and he fought to stay awake as he heard music that sounded in a faint faraway fashion like the drums of the Goblin Market.

“That’s kind of nice.”

“Maybe we can go listen to them sometime,” Mae murmured.

“Maybe,” said Nick.

Mae was a warm weight that tilted him slightly to her side of the bed, possibly less because of her weight than because that was where he wanted to be. The sunlight painted dusty gold streaks against the blackness before Nick’s closed eyes, and the drums beat in a rhythm with his heart. Mae had one foot tucked under his leg, and as he finally lost consciousness he felt her hand lightly pushing back a strand of his hair. It was pointless, but like the music, it was kind of nice.

The last thing he wondered was whether this counted as her asking him out.