The Demon's Lexicon

3 The Hidden Girl

NICK REMEMBERED THE FIRST TIME THE MAGICIANS HAD caught them.

He had always known they were there, a hunting presence like the sound of trumpets and dogs in the undergrowth must be for foxes, but that time was different. It was the difference between knowing they were there and having the dogs upon you, jaws snapping, with no chance to run.

Nick had been eight years old, and Alan eleven. Nothing had seemed serious then. Mum had always been strange, had never liked Nick, but it was Dad’s job to take care of Mum, just like it was Alan’s job to take care of Nick.

There had been a lot of moving, but always to houses that were warm, places with gardens and lots of room. Nick had never worried where his next meal was coming from, and never worried that someone might try to kill them. Nick had known the magicians were hunting them, and Dad had made sure they knew how to fight. It was just that Nick never really believed thoul„e magicians could get past Dad.

Dad could do anything. He could calm Mum in her wildest fits, and he could reassure anyone who ever got suspicious. He looked just like Alan except big, an enormously adult and comforting presence who could carry a tired boy anytime they had to move in the middle of the night. Nick remembered those midnight moves only as moments when he stirred to find his cheek pillowed against Dad’s broad shoulder.

“You’re mine,” Dad used to say. “And I’m going to take care of you.”

Back then wearing the talisman had just been a precaution, like Alan holding his hand when they crossed the road. Nick hated the talisman.

A talisman looked a lot like a dream catcher decorated with bones, which had crystals in the place of beads and salt and spells poured over the weave when they were made. Dad used to buy them both talismans at a stall in the Goblin Market, like a normal father buying his sons toffee apples. Wearing a great big dream catcher struck his eight-year-old self as stupid, and besides that it was uncomfortable.

It was always moving, always burning. It left a faint silvery scar on his chest where it usually rested. Nick understood what that meant now. He took after his mother. He wasn’t happy about it.

At the time it was simply a nuisance. Nick was forever leaving it on his bedside table or by the sink in the bathroom, and Alan was forever finding it and bothering him to keep it on.

The talisman was in the backseat of the car on the night Dad carried Nick right into a trap.

The magicians had got there first. They had laid a circle around the family’s new house that flared into the three points of a triangle once they’d all passed the threshold. Three equilateral points, like the Bermuda Triangle. The sign for death.

Dad had put Nick carefully down as they all looked at each other and knew what this meant. To break the circle would mean death. They were caught as neatly as animals in a snare, with no chance to run, and the magicians would be able to come and collect them without a fight.

Dad had not made a fuss at all. Nick had watched uncomprehendingly as his father walked across the floor and knelt down in front of Alan.

“You’ll look after your mother and your brother. You’ll do whatever you have to do. Swear to me.”

Alan whispered, “I swear.”

“That’s my boy,” Dad had said, and kissed Alan once, on the forehead. He took him by the shoulders and looked at him for another moment, and then he rose to his feet and ran at the circle.

His family stood and watched him burn as he crossed the magicians’ line, collapsing in on himself like a hot coal stabbed by a poker. There was nothing left of him after a moment but ashes and emptiness.

Dad was the one who gave them a chance to run, but Alan was the one who got them out. He grabbed Mum’s hand and asked Nick if he had his talisman. Nick remembered exactly how he had felt in that moment: empty of all words, hardly able to understand Alan’s question. He’d shaken his head, and Alan had paused and then tugged the talisman over his own head.

“Take mine.”

The magicians were lying in wait. Their demons were ready. The air had been thick with them: attacking birds, ice underfoot, licks of flame like whips leaping at them from empty air. Fire passed right through Mum’s wild black hair, and she sobbed and clutched at her talisman in gratitude.

Fire hit Alan’s leg and he cried out; he had to lean on Nick to get to the car, and tears had poured down his cheeks as he told Mum what to do and where to drive. They drove to Scotland, not even pausing to sleep, and it was not until days later that Alan decided it was safe to go to a hospital. By then infection had set in, and the muscles were damaged.

Nick never took his stupid talisman off again, no matter how uncomfortable it was.

It was only Alan and Nick from then on. Mum hardly counted.

It had been eight years. They had been running ever since, hardly able to keep themselves fed, hardly able to escape when they were cornered. It had been eight years and Alan, that idiot, had not learned that he should never give away his talisman again.

Alan fled upstairs to Mum the instant Mae and Jamie were gone, mumbling something about feeding her and meaning that he was a complete coward. Nick couldn’t follow Alan up to Mum. She’d be upset for days if Nick actually went into her room. When she had her bad days, she needed the security of knowing that if she stayed in her room, she wouldn’t have to see him.

They had some time to move out, at least. The magicians had lost one of their number and must have used up a lot of power with those ravens and the mist so soon afterward. Still, Nick knew he should stay inside tonight, stay close just in case of another attack.

Instead he went out and did exercises. He had to practice long hours with the sword, making sure he could move as if it were another, somewhat sharper limb — and besides, the kind of mood he was in, he was almost hoping the magicians would attack him. Let them try.

The night wind swept cool along his bare arms as he lunged and feinted, trying to stab shadows through the heart. The few teachers he’d had told him it was all about the moves, but Nick always had to imagine an opponent: someone he could hurt and whom he wanted to hurt badly. In order to really practice, he had to make a more deadly enemy than he’d ever faced out of the air. He had to be better than anyone he could imagine.

Especially since his stupid crippled brother was apparently determined to throw his life away.

Nick fought the air and thought about the night Dad had died. He only headed back to the house when it was past four in the morning, shrugging his shirt back on as he went. The material was chilled and damp from lying on the grass, wet with a night’s dewfall, and it stuck to his sweat-slick skin.

He came inside to find Alan frying eggs.

“Do you remember Mrs. Gilman, our neighbor from three houses ago?” Alan asked. “She used to watch you practicing the sword with binoculars. I never told you. I’m sorry.”

Nick laid his sword down on the draining board with a metallic clink.

“Why did you do it?”

“Well, Nicholas, she was over sixty. I thought you’d be a little disturbed.”

Nick said nothing. He stared at Alan, jaw set, and let silence stretch from him to his brother as if it was a red carpet he was unrolling for Alan to talk on.

“Look, they needed help and we were the only ones who could give it,” Alan said rapidly. “I can buy another talisman from the Market people tomorrow. I thought I’d just give Mae mine and replace it—”

“Stop lying to me.”

The scrape of the spatula in the pan faltered. Nick crossed his arms over his chest and waited.

“I don’t know what you m—”

“It was the boy who had the problem. You gave the girl the talisman. Don’t try to pretend that you didn’t want to give her something. Don’t pretend you didn’t want to impress her with how magically attentive to her needs you could be.”

The tips of Alan’s ears were violently red.

“Maybe you’re right,” he admitted.

“I’m right.”

Alan hesitated, then set his thin shoulders. “I wanted to impress her, but I wanted to help them too. The talisman will protect her. If I wanted her to — to like me as well, what does it matter?”

Alan looked tired in the remorseless yellow light of the kitchen. He should be asleep, not up frying eggs and worrying.

“I don’t see why it matters if she likes you or not.”

Girls were an old subject of argument between them. Alan sighed, and Nick stared out the window, where the shadows of night were paling slightly, preparing for dawn.

“Don’t — I know you’re worried,” Alan said. “Don’t be. How many people with first marks have we seen? How many first marks have you removed? How is this different?”

Nick turned his gaze from the window to Alan.

“This is different,” he said. “This is you.”

Alan looked terribly pleased for a moment, and Nick realized that his brother had taken this as one of the ridiculous, sappy things Alan was used to saying all the time. Nick had only meant what he’d said. It had never been his brother before.

Thankfully Alan did not make a fuss about it. He could believe Nick had said any stupid thing he wanted, so long as there were no scenes.

All he said was, “Here, have your dinfast. Then we can start packing.”

“Dinfast,” Nick repeated.

“Dinner and breakfast!” Alan said triumphantly. “Like brunch.”

Nick subjected him to a long, judgmental stare. “There’s something very wrong with you,” he said at last. “I thought you should know.”

Undaunted or perhaps just unsurprised by this news, Alan began to do the dishes. He pushed Nick’s sword away with sudsy fingers to make room for a wet frying pan.

“Where do you fancy living next?”

“London,” said Nick, because he thought that Alan would like it.

Alan looked pleased, and he saw he’d guessed right.

“London, then. We’ll find a better house, one with a kitchen window that’s not all smashed, and we’ll go to the museums. Then come May we can go to the Goblin Market and find someone to dance—”

“I’ll dance,” Nick said.

The comfortable clink and splash of the washing-up stopped. Alan had gone rather still.

“You don’t have to. Someone else can do it. You told me you never wanted to dance again.”

For all that Alan was so fond of talking, for all that he could bang on endlessly about nothing for hours, he didn’t actually seem to understand words. Nick had said everything quite clearly. He had never intended to go into the circle again, never intended to dance for the demons again. As far as he was concerned, the marked ones could go to someone else for help.

Only this time the marked one was Alan, and it was different.

“I’ll dance,” he repeated. Alan smiled his embarrassing touched smile, and Nick rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to any museums, though.”

It was late when Nick woke, full sunlight pressing against the restraining curtains. He only woke when he did because of a noise below that sounded ominously like someone dropping every one of their pots and pans.

Nick found a clean shirt with all due haste, and came down the stairs still buttoning his jeans.

“Give me that,” he ordered.

“Oh, but young sir, the doctor said I could go back to heavy lifting if I was real careful of my poor old heart,” Alan croaked.

Nick forcibly removed the box of cooking equipment from his brother’s thin arms. “Go pack up your books.”

It was a luxury to have time to move out of a house. Whenever Alan had to leave his books behind he got wistful, and when they moved in a hurry they always had to spend their first paycheck on plates and blankets instead of the heating bill. Nick liked the peace of physical exertion, being useful and not having to think; liked the heft of big boxes in his arms and the sun on the back of his neck as he pushed the final box into the car boot. The air felt like it had rained sometime this morning, and the sky was washed a lighter shade of blue than normal. Nick turned back to the house, cracking his neck, and let one thought form in his mind: They were going to London, and they might have at least a couple of months before all the freakish madness caught up with them.

No sooner had he thought this than a thunder of feet on the tarmac behind him made him spin, going for the knife sheath in the small of his back.

Framed against the pale sky, rushing toward him in a flurry of open flannel shirts and the chiming of about four necklaces apiece, came the odd couple from last night.

Nick let go of his knife, though not without a moment’s reluctance, and fixed them with a cold look that was usually effective. They did not run in the opposite direction, but Nick leaned his forearms on the roof of the car and maintained a baleful gaze, just in case they decided to reconsider.

Mae’s eyes scanned the filled car and Nick’s disheveled appearance, and realization swept over her face. “You’re running away!”

“You’re an investigative genius,” Nick said.

She scowled at him, small face twisted into an incongruous expression of fury. It struck Nick as funny that this short, pink-haired girl would obviously have loved to be tall and imposing and have her fury strike fear into people’s hearts.

“What about us?” she demanded. “We don’t have anyone else to help us!”

“So? I don’t care.”

Mae seemed momentarily floored, her righteous outrage lost in uncertainty. She glanced at Jamie, who was standing about doing his impression (Nick had to concede it was good) of a wounded deer. She reached out a hand to clasp his shoulder.

“You know what’s going to happen to Jamie,” she said in a low voice, scraping on her pain. “How can you just leave us?”

“Why shouldn’t I? People die all over the world, and I doubt you lose sleep over them. What’s so special about you? Why should I want to help you? You two invaded my home and got my brother marked!”

Nick set his teeth lightly into his lip. He’d come close to raising his voice. His arms were tensed, his hands clenched with the longing to reach for a knife or a sword, his insides knotted with the urge for action. He wished sometimes that he could feel angry without feeling the urge to kill, but he never had.

It was different for Alan. He’d asked his brother once what he felt when he was angry since Alan never wanted to kill people — though sometimes he had to — and Alan had looked upset and described feeling indignation and annoyance and a hundred things all at once that he said added up to anger.

Alan was too soft. All Nick felt was the violent desire to cut down whoever was in his way.

“Come on, Mae,” Jamie said, his quiet voice a shock. “I told you he’d be too angry to help us. We’ll find some other way.” He glanced at Nick, eyes sliding apprehensively from him to the safer sight of the car. “I’m sorry about your brother. We didn’t mean for him to get hurt.”

“Doesn’t matter what you meant,” Nick pointed out.

He’d be on edge until Alan’s mark was gone. He didn’t need these people bothering him as well.

Jamie reached up to take his sister’s hand that rested on his shoulder, twining her fingers around his and trying to use it to tug her away. He backed up a step and then stopped, like a boat caught short at the end of its rope. Mae stood firm, her eyes boring into Nick.

“Get lost,” Nick said, enunciating each word as if she was a bit slow. “There’s no help for you here.”

That was when Alan came outside, blinking slightly in the bright light. His quickly checked smile at the sight of Mae made Nick feel unwell.

“Hi, Alan,” Jamie said in a small voice. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes, of course. There’s no need to worry about me, I’ll be right as rain in no time,” Alan assured him, smile fading as he looked at Jamie. This was just how Alan had looked at the sick kitten he’d taken home so it could grow up big and strong and able to bite Nick.

Jamie offered him a little smile as if to call Alan’s back. “You’ll get it fixed at the — Goblin Market thing.”

Mae and Jamie’s faces suddenly changed, as if a shadow had fallen over them. Nick turned to see that shadow was actually Mum’s dark form at Alan’s shoulder, moving slowly forward until the cold light touched her face.

Mum walked past Alan, her hand lingering on his sleeve for an instant as she went by. Her black flag of hair streamed behind her as she went, as if it wanted to cling to the shadows. When she stopped in the middle of the yard, her hair fell with a weighted swish like heavy curtains around her face. Nick kept his eyes turned to her so he would not have to look at Mae and Jamie. It was always the same, the way people’s eyes moved from Mum’s face to Nick’s, while their expressions moved from recognition to silent horror.

Nick’s mother had a face that kept all secrets but one. Her broad, slanted cheekbones made her look catlike, and her wide mouth was constantly moving and always formed a shape at odds with her expression. She was tall, and her black hair made her look even paler than she was. She looked like Mae might have wanted to look, if Mum had not looked insane. The full mouth kept shifting with the spasms of a tic. Past the protection of hooded eyelids that seemed pulled down by heavy lashes, her eyes were icy blue and seemed always fixed on someone who was not there.

Except for the color of his eyes, Nick looked exactly like her. He hated it when people saw her. They could never look at Nick again without associating him with madness.

“We’re leaving again,” she said flatly. “I don’t know why we bother. He’ll find us.”

Nick wished he could look away from her. He wished that he could leave her. He wished that Alan would agree to leave her.

Mum smiled dreamily, the rest of her face frozen and expressionless. She said, “He’s not the kind of man who fails.”

Alan limped forward to stand beside her in the uncut grass of their front yard, and reached for her hand. Nick didn’t see how he could bear to touch her. “Olivia,” said Alan, voice low, “don’t. Let’s get in the car.”

She turned and pressed her fingers against the curve of his cheek, gazing at him but not quite meeting his eyes.

“You’re a sweet boy,” she whispered. “You’re my sweet boy, but you’ve got it all wrong.”

Mae cleared her throat, pulling absently at one of her necklaces. The movement almost drew Nick’s eyes to the tangle of talismans and chains around his mother’s neck, but he stopped his instinctive glance. These two knew enough about his family already. They didn’t need to see him looking at Mum’s charms.

He looked at Alan instead, expecting to find steadiness there, expecting sanity and familiarity.

He saw fear.

He saw Alan draw his gun out in the open, out in their front garden where anyone could see. Nick didn’t hesitate. He drew his sword and held that sharp, glittering barrier between his brother and the rest of the world, and then he looked around to see what was threatening them.

She was coming down the road toward them, her high heels clicking on the cement. She looked to be in her forties, with a sleek brown bob and large earrings that caught the sun, shining perfect circles with a knife in the center of each one.

The knives danced jauntily in their circles as she turned and smiled at them.

“Hello, boys. How are you today?”

Nick strode toward her, Alan a pace behind him. He wheeled behind the woman, and after a moment Alan came to stand in front of her. She swung around, briefly teetering on her heels, unable to keep them both in her range of vision and unsure who to focus on.

Nick claimed her full attention by stepping in to her as if they were about to dance. She stopped, facing him, then looked down to see that he was holding each end of his sword and pressing the length of the blade lightly against her stomach. He gazed down at her and smiled a little.

“All the better for seeing you.”

There were as many types of magic user in this world as there were colors in white light. On one end of the spectrum were the magicians, and on the other end was the Goblin Market.

There were a lot of people who wanted more power than the Market offered, and who didn’t quite have the stomach for feeding their own kind to demons. There were the necromancers and the messengers, the pied pipers and the soul tasters, and a dozen others, and Market people trusted none of them.

They trusted the messengers least of all. Every messenger wore the sign of a knife through a circle. It was a sign from the magicians. It meant that the messenger was attached to a Circle of magicians, and if you crossed the messenger, you crossed the Circle.

The knife more or less indicated how things would go from there.

Messengers were closely associated with magicians. They carried information back and forth between Circles, and between magicians and the outside world, and in return they were paid with demons’ magic. Magic bought in blood.

As far as Nick was concerned, they were magicians without the guts.

Over the messenger’s shoulder he saw Mae and Jamie, looking alarmed by the sudden appearance of weapons and a stranger. He saw Mum standing by the car, her face a complete blank.

The messenger smiled, a small, wary smile like a concerned parent watching her child. She looked far more like a mother than Mum. Possibly Nick should hire her for his next parent-teacher meeting.

“You’re looking very grown-up, Nick.”

“It’s true, I’m entering on manhood,” Nick said. “You’re a stylish, sophisticated, ever so slightly evil woman of the world. Do you think we could make it work?”

She looked much less like a mother when her smile went sharp like that. “Probably not.”

Nick adjusted his grip on the sword, held it at the precise point where her ribs ended. “Pity.”

Alan interrupted, his face grave and his gun at the small of her back. “What’s your message?”

“Oh yes,” said the messenger. “That.”

She twisted lightly around, ending up with Nick’s sword against her spine and Alan’s gun against her stomach. Nick met Alan’s eyes over her shoulder and watched for any signal.

The messenger’s voice was calm. “Black Arthur says that now’s the time. He wants it back.”

In the silence there was a small, sharp sound. Alan had released the safety catch.

Nick could only see the back of her head, but the messenger sounded like she was smiling. “You can give it to me now, or Black Arthur can come and take it.”

There was very little in Nick’s life that stayed around long enough to be familiar. There had been a statue in one place, a building in another, but taking his whole life into account, Alan’s face was the only reliable landmark he had.

He had never seen Alan look like this before.

“Let me ask you this,” Alan said, his voice dangerous and shaky at once, like a knife held in a trembling hand. “What d’you think would be the best message to send Black Arthur? Maybe I should let you go back and tell him that he can come and try? He’s been chasing us for years. What makes him think he can catch us now?”

The woman tilted her face toward Alan’s, as if they were going to kiss.

“He’s serious now,” she murmured, sounding as if she was about to laugh. “Hadn’t you noticed, Alan? We did send you a sign.”

Alan went perfectly, terribly white.

The demon’s mark. Nick heard his own voice saying, They can track you once that first mark is made.

“Sweet Alan, so devoted, so much trouble. We won’t be chasing after you blind now, will we? Wherever your little family goes, you’ll lead us right to them.”

Nick could see the gun shaking in Alan’s hand now, in tight, terrified spasms. “Last night we put a magician in the river,” Alan said, his voice low and intense as if he was making a promise. “Maybe we should send you to join him.”

“You know the rules,” the woman whispered. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

Nick interrupted, leaning down to speak in her ear. “Do they say, ‘Don’t cut the messenger in half with your great big sword’?”

Alan’s eyes narrowed. He stepped back and said, “Let her go, Nick.”

Nick stepped back too, but he did not sheathe his sword. He held it ready, just in case, and the sun danced along the steel and turned it into a dazzling line of light. He could barely see the messenger’ Cssee, s small, polite smile.

“What shall I tell Black Arthur?” she asked.

Even Alan’s lips were white. “Tell Black Arthur that no matter what I have to do, I’ll make him regret sending that message,” he said. “Now go.”

The messenger looked from Alan’s white face to Nick’s dark smile, and went. She turned sharply on her heels, balance perfect again, and walked away. Her step was measured and unhurried, her head held high, as if she were walking away from a successful board meeting.

Alan looked as if he was going to collapse or kill somebody.

The two strangers in their world were staring at his pale face and the gun still in his hand. Nick looked at Alan’s eyes, sheathed his sword, and strode toward the intruders. Jamie flinched as he came.

“If you’ll excuse us,” he said, his voice on the edge of a snarl. “We’ve just had some bad news.”

Mae did not back down a step. Under other circumstances that might have impressed him, but just now all he wanted to do was get his brother away from the curious stares of strangers and take that look off his face, and her stubbornness simply infuriated him.

“Who’s Black Arthur?” she asked.

“None of your business,” Nick barked.

“It is my business,” Mae snapped. “It sounds like he’s the person you’re running from, and once you’re gone, who will be left to help Jamie?”

Her voice trembled on Jamie’s name, and of course that made Alan look up, soft touch that he was. His face was still a nasty gray-white color, but he looked a little more like himself.

“Mae,” he said, and his voice was kind again, “I told you. There’s nothing any of us can do to help Jamie. I’m sorry.”

Mae surprised Nick again. Instead of bursting into loud fury, her mouth worked for a trembling terrible moment, and he thought she was going to cry. “I’d take his place,” she said, her voice rough. “Can I do that? Is there a way?”

The second surprise was Jamie, speaking in a tone of command. “I wouldn’t let you!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Nick told them. “There’s no way.”

He wanted fiercely to be on the road, to leave Exeter and everyone in it behind them.

“If I could help you, I would,” Alan said helplessly, as he had last night. “I swear I would.”

Mae’s eyes narrowed, reminding Nick of a woman at a stall, trying to make a shrewd bargain. “You’re going to the Goblin Market to get help. Can’t we go there too?”

“No,” said Nick.

Alan hesitated. “I don’t think anyone there can help you.”

Mae pushed her advantage. “There might be someone, though. There might be some way you don’t know about. It’s a chance, isn’t it? Please, Alan. Please let us come.”

There was a long moment where Mae stared at Alan, and Nick stared at his clenched fists.

“All right,” Alan agreed at last. “If”—and a note of bashfulness crept into his businesslike voice—“if you’ll give me your number, I can — I’ll call you. Once I find out where the Market is being held next month.”

Compared to the demon mark and the early move, compared to the magician’s message, seeing Alan embarrassing himself over yet another girl should not have mattered.

It did, though. It was so pointless, they were leaving, but Alan could still stand with their crazy mother in the yard and their crazy life packed up in their car, all of it in plain sight, and hope.

“So you’re getting your way,” Nick said, hearing his voice slice through the silence, like the sword he’d wanted to use on that woman. He was furious and he wanted someone to pay, he wanted to hurt someone, and Mae was there. It wasn’t fair, but what was? “I’d hate to disappoint you,” he went on. “What else did you want to know? Oh yes, Black Arthur.”

He threw the name like a missile at his mother, standing in the middle of the garden with her black hair blowing around her face. She had not moved since the messenger appeared, and her expression had not changed. She had simply watched the whole thing, watched Alan, like a ghost watching something that could not possibly concern her.

As he bore down on her, her expression did change. Her lip curled.

“It’s a romantic story, really,” he said harshly, staring down at her. “He was the man our mother loved. She was one of his magicians, and she fed people to the demons on his orders. He drove her mad, and drove her into Dad’s arms. She ran from Black Arthur bearing a powerful charm, and since then every magician in England has been hunting us for it.”

He grabbed a fistful of the chains around her neck, and she turned her face away. They had been like this for as long as Nick could remember. He could not forgive her for the lives they had led, for Dad’s death. He could not forget the look on Alan’s face, and that was her fault as well.

He leaned toward his mother and whispered, “And now it seems that he wants it back.”

Which wouldn’t have been a problem, except that if someone took away the charm, Mum would die.

Nick’d had his moments of thinking even that wouldn’t be so terrible. She had been a magician, after all. If she was gone, he and Alan could have normal lives. If anyone at the Goblin Market had known the truth about her, they would have said she deserved death.

This was not one of those moments. If the thought of her dying made Alan look like that, she had to live.

Nick stood with his mother’s chains, heavy and cold, in his hands. They were both breathing hard.

When Alan spoke, he sounded tired. “The Goblin Market will be held on the first of May. Will I give you two a call?”

They made muted noises of agreement. Even Mae seemed cowed at this point, though it was Jamie who gave Alan his number. Alan looked a bit crestfallen but accepted it, and at least after that they were finally rid of the interlopers.

Nick left to get the last boxes while Jamie was still writing down his number, and by the time he emerged from the house they were gone. Nick went around the car so he and Mum would not have to come within a yard of each other.

He looked at Alan, who was standing gazing into the open boot of their car, at something in one of the boxes. When he noticed Nick looking, he smiled a small, strained smile.

“I think that’s it,” Alan said. “Come on. Looking forward to London?”

They swung into the car. Nick let Alan have first shift. He was the better driver, but he was only sixteen and it would be a year before it was actually legal for him to drive. It was better to get out of Exeter, where some people knew that, before Nick had his turn.

“Well,” Nick said as Alan gave him a stern look over the top of his glasses and Nick rolled his eyes and buckled his seat belt. “Let’s examine the events of the past twenty-four hours in Exeter. Ravens in the kitchen, snakes in the living room, demon marks on you, magicians sending us stupid messages, and at the end of it all you got the boy’s telephone number.”

Alan tilted his head as he considered this and then laughed. Nick leaned his forehead against the car window, and the engine purred soothingly to him.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Alan suggested.

After an hour on the M5, Alan’s leg started to ache, and they switched places. There was never much conversation while driving because of Mum, so Nick looked straight ahead and Alan stared out at the rolling green ground, going for miles on both sides of the road. Nick glanced over at him a few times, wondering if that message was bothering him or if the demon mark was hurting him.

“You all right?” he said eventually.

Alan took a moment to answer. When he turned, Nick saw that half his wavy hair was sticking up from being pressed against the damp window.

“Yeah,” he said. Nick’s amusement was cut short when Alan went on, “I was thinking about Mae and Jamie. It’s just — they both seem so great, and we know what’s going to happen to them. It’s terrible, that’s all. I hate it.”

Nick frowned out at the road. “Why do you care? You barely know them.”

“I know them well enough to feel sorry for them,” Alan said. “Anyone would. I mean, don’t you feel bad for them? A little?”

He looked at Nick with a testing, expectant air. Nick didn’t know what to say.

He felt angry with them. If it hadn’t been for them, Alan would not be marked. Nick did not think that expressing this would go over well, though.

“I don’t feel anything for them.”

That answer made Alan look so unhappy that Nick almost wished he had told him about the anger. Alan said nothing, though; he only turned back to the window, biting his lip.

Nick glanced in the rearview mirror to check on the distance between them and the car behind, and caught his mother’s reflected eyes. In the mirror they looked even colder than usual, as if she was staring at him from under ice. Her lips were drawn tight over her teeth, giving her beautiful face the appearance of a skull that still had eyes to stare. She looked at him as if she hated him, but she always did that.

Nick bared his teeth at her in a silent snarl and turned away from the mirror.

Alan read out the directions Merris Cromwell had given him as Nick tried to work around the London lunch hour traffic. Nick didn’t like Merris much, but since Alan had helped her at the Goblin Market last October, they’d never had to crash in shelters or hostels while they looked for a place to stay. Nick wasn’t sure if she had contacts everywhere or if problems simply slunk away in the face of her formidable efficiency.

If the Market had been a magicians’ Circle, blasphemous though the idea might be, Merris would have been the Circle’s leader.

She was connected even though nobody knew where she came from, rich even though nobody knew where she got her money. Nick thought she might be the only person in the Market hiding as many secrets as they were.

Nick looked at a map and took a detour by Westminster so Alan could get a preview of the doubtful delights he would soon enjoy. They passed the square-spiked silhouette of Westminster Abbey, and stone saints peered down at them while Alan began to tell himself interesting historical facts, because Nick didn’t care. The spire of Big Ben and the curve of the Circle went by in a smooth line, and as Nick turned the car into less traffic-choked channels, Alan gave a happy sigh and started talking about dinosaur exhibits in the Natural History Museum.

“I’ve changed my mind,” said Nick. “The demons can have you.”

He was glad that Alan seemed so pleased. Nick had not really remembered London, and looking around it now, with old and new buildings jostling each other at every turn and no street empty, he was feeling a distinct sense of foreboding.

Demons liked cities. Cities meant victims, and London was teeming with bodies for the taking. Nick thought he might have made the wrong decision choosing this place, but it was too late now.

Camden town opened up into a broad gray road, with a small cinema on one side, some restaurants and a gray building that said AMERICAN METHODIST CHURCH in large metal letters outside. A fine drizzle started as they drove up one of the narrow side streets and stopped in front of their new home.

The drab brown front of the house made it look as if it had been built from rusty spare parts. Someone always put lace curtains in the windows of dreary houses, and Nick was unsurprised to see the curtains making their attempts in every window of this place. There was a china garden gnome on the doorstep, wearing a desperate, crazy smile.

“It’s not so bad,” Alan said.

“You never take me nice places anymore, baby,” said Nick, and was mildly gratified by Alan’s ring of laughter, like a living bell that had been caught by surprise when it was struck.

When he got out, he opened Mum’s door without thinking, and she shuddered away from Cred

“Olivia,” he coaxed. “We’re here. We’re home.”

“For now,” Nick muttered, going over to the boot and getting out the first box of Alan’s books.

He hefted it in his arms and put the box down only to retrieve the keys. Someone had carelessly put a dark closet where the hall should have been, but the staircase was broad and, more importantly, had a sturdy-looking wooden banister for Alan to lean on. When he got up the stairs he saw there were three bedrooms, which was always good news. Nick allocated the bedroom farthest away from the other two to Mum, and when he went into the other rooms, he saw there was a bookcase built into the wall of one. That room clearly had to be Alan’s. Nick put the box down and palmed the knife from his boot to cut the packing tape. He began to shove books on the shelves. It might be a few minutes before Alan got Mum calmed down.

Nick was putting down the last book in the first row when it fell.

There was a white flutter from the yellowed pages of an old book, and then, on the tired-looking carpet, lay a picture of a girl.

The girl looked older than Nick, in her late teens or perhaps twenties, with curly blond hair and a bright smile. She was wearing a loose, flowing shirt, in the kind of retro style Alan’s girls often affected, and she looked as if someone had just told her a joke.

It occurred to Nick that this picture was what Alan had been thinking of when he was standing gazing into their car boot. As soon as he was alone he’d gone straight to it, as if being near to it — even if he couldn’t see it — was his only possible source of comfort.

He hadn’t come to Nick.

Alan was sentimental enough to keep pictures. The couple of girls who’d actually been his girlfriends had been awarded a place of pride in his wallet. He had a school picture of Nick and the picture of Mum and Dad on their wedding day framed by his bedside.

It was keeping a secret from Nick that was different. He’d kept only one secret from Nick before: the letters he used to rise early for and collect from the postbox. Nick rose even earlier to cut them up, and eventually they had stopped coming.

Nick wondered if this was a picture of the letter girl. He picked it up and looked her over more closely, but he couldn’t see anything special about her. The letters had been more than a year ago. Why should Alan still keep her picture? He flipped it over and looked at the back. TONY’S PHOTOS was printed there in gray, but over that in a black sprawl was the name “Marie.”

Nick heard Alan’s limping step up the stairs in plenty of time to put the photograph back where he had found it, and when his brother came into the room, he saw Alan look at the shelf in alarm.

There was no innocent explanation, then.

Alan had not forgotten that the picture was in the book. He had not bought a book with a picture already inside it. He had deliberately hidden this girl, this Marie, away from him.

Nick remembered the girl’s smiling face and scowled, staring at the floor. He felt intensely uncomfortable. It seemed wrong that this girl should matter to Alan, when Nick didn’t even know who she was. What was so important about her, that he had to hide her from his own brother?

Nick planned to find out.

That night Nick slept on the kitchen floor in their new home. The cork tiles were curling up at the edges like pieces of old bread, rough against his stomach when his T-shirt rode up, and he hadn’t brought down a pillow because he didn’t want to be comfortable. He dozed uneasily, feeling like a guard dog unable to rest because he had to be on the alert for dangers outside.

But it wasn’t anything outside that he was waiting for.

He was in one of the dark places between sleep and simply having your eyes shut when he heard the sound of the front door clicking softly open. His body moved before he thought: He crossed the hall in two swift strides, fast and soft as a predator. He always found it easier to hunt than think.

When he launched himself at Alan, he did think: He remembered to strike on Alan’s left side. They went tumbling into the grass of the front yard, and Nick landed crouched beside his brother. He’d been careful not to hurt Alan’s leg, not to even touch it, and now he felt so angry he wished he’d done it after all.

“You’re not leaving,” he snarled.

Alan lay flat on his back, looking up at the sky. The full moon caught his glasses and made the edges flash brief silver. “If they can track me,” he began, “it’s not safe—”

Nick laughed harshly. “When have we ever been safe?”

How safe would Alan be, he wanted to demand, by himself and with a demon’s mark? Maybe he would be all right; Alan could take care of himself, but Nick wasn’t about to take that chance. Nick wasn’t about to let him go.

Nick was breathing fast and his vision was blurred a little, turning the edges of the night hazy and pale. He felt as if he’d been exercising too hard. He was just angry at the thought that Alan could leave, so easily, for any reason at all.

Alan sighed and sat up, drawing his good leg up to his chest and linking an arm around it. Nick knew this look from the days when Mum had her screaming fits, or when a teacher wanted to talk about Nick’s reading. Alan looked tired and unhappy, and the expression fit on his face too comfortably, as if he was used to feeling that way and didn’t let it affect him too much. He was too busy being concerned about what other people might feel.

“Nick,” he said gently, “it isn’t that I want to go. It wouldn’t be for very long. Just until the next Goblin Market, just so that you and Olivia would be safe.”

Mum was the one the magicians were after, the one they’d always been after. Mum was the one who’d caused all this, and in spite of everything, Mum was the one Alan was worried sick about.

“I’ll leave her,” Nick said.

The night seemed very still suddenly. Nick stayed crouched and watchful, waiting for Alan to make any movement, willing him to give in. Alan shut his eyes and swallowed, looking so disappointed in Nick and so scared. For their mother.

“I swear I will,” Nick said, voice low, threatening and promising, meaning every word. “If you go, I’ll leave her. I’ll come find you. What do you think would happen to her if we both left?”

Nick didn’t lie. He’d seen Alan lie to people his whole life and every time he opened a book he saw words twist across pages, their meaning slipping away from him. Words were treacherous enough without him telling lies.

When he said something, he knew Alan would believe it.

Alan opened his eyes and looked at Nick. His eyes were bleak.

“All right, Nick,” he whispered. “I won’t go.”

Nick spoke with difficulty. “All right.”

He grabbed the bag Alan had been carrying, climbed to his feet, and went to the door without casting another look at his brother still sitting in the grass. He was tired, and he didn’t want to think anymore about Alan trying to leave.

When he dropped the bag into Alan’s room, he saw his brother had left a note on his pillow.

Nick sat on Alan’s bed and tried to read it. He needed to concentrate to read, and his mind was all over the place, thoughts wild and tangled, and the words went wild and tangled too. They looked like nothing but inky thorns spreading across the blank white page.

He caught one sentence, which was I’m going to a place where I know I will be welcome.

It made him remember the picture of that girl and look across the room. There was only one gap to be seen in the crowded bookshelves. Alan had planned to leave him, but he’d meant to take the book and the hidden picture wherever he went.

Nick stared at the letter and felt that sharp urge to hurt something again. He palmed a knife and cut it up, once, twice, three times until the words were gone and the letter was nothing but tattered white fragments.

A slight noise made Nick lift his head. He saw Alan hesitating in the doorway. He couldn’t read his face any more than he could those words. He wondered how long Alan had been standing there, watching Nick slice up his good-bye letter.

They looked at each other without speaking, and in the silence Nick wondered if Alan had told him another lie: if he’d wanted to go to that girl. If he did want to leave, after all.

Alan cleared his throat. “You were right. I was being stupid.”

“No kidding,” Nick said roughly.

“I panicked when that message came,” Alan explained, leaning heavily against the door frame. “I couldn’t help it. I don’t want to be a danger to you, and I don’t know what to do. But if they tried this, they’ll try something else. Running away won’t solve anything. I have to think of a plan. I have to do something to settle this once and for all.”

Alan’s voice gathered determination as he spoke. If he thought he was going to change Black Arthur’s mind then he was dreaming, but it was familiar and soothing for Nick to see his brother ready to plan their way out of every situation.

Alan picked C%">is up the bag Nick had carried upstairs, and Nick crossed the room to take it from him.

“Give me that. I’ll put your stuff away.”

“Thank you,” Alan said, smiling at him. He reached out and took the book with the hidden picture from a side pocket, smoothing his fingers — born musician’s hands, Dad had always said, long fingers that touched everything lightly — with absent affection over the cover. “I’ll take this. I’m reading it.”

He limped over to his bed, still holding the book. Nick was quiet, methodically putting away all the clothes and weapons Alan had packed, erasing any trace of the fact that Alan had meant to leave.

“I’m sorry about this,” Alan said softly, surprising him. “I won’t let you down again.”

Nick didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what Alan was talking about; it was ridiculous. Alan didn’t let him down. He’d never once done that.

“Stop being stupid.”

Nick glanced over at his brother. Alan was looking serious and a little sad, standing beside the bed with the pieces of his letter scattered around his feet and his fingers tracing restless patterns over the cover of that book.

“Yeah,” Alan said, and smiled at him with an obvious effort. “I’ll try.”