The Demon's Covenant

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  “I can’t justify it,” Alan answered.

  Gerald smiled. “You did it because you loved him, and you wanted to save him from Arthur. I can understand that. He couldn’t, though. If you told him how you felt, he wouldn’t even know what you meant. He’s not human.”

  “I know that,” Alan said between his teeth.

  “He’s a danger to all of us.”

  “I know that.”

  “He killed a couple of people by mistake. It’s only a matter of time before something worse happens, and it will be your fault.”

  “I know that!” Alan shouted at him.

  Gerald leaned back, loose and easy, still smiling.

  “Then please,” he said, “let me help. I have a plan to save us all. Including Nick.”

  Alan moved then, his warm weight against Mae’s side gone. He took the chair in between Mae and Gerald, his shoulder blocking Mae’s view of half of Gerald’s face. She could make out only one eye and the end of a smile.

  “I’m listening,” said Alan.

  “I could do it,” Gerald said. “I could call up another demon and bind Nick’s powers. I could make him as human as he can be, and you can keep your brother. Only he’d never agree to having his power stolen from him, would he? So I need your help. He’ll trust you. I need you to lead him somewhere deserted and trap him in a summoning circle for me.”

  “Oh, you need Alan to betray Nick and then you’ll steal Nick’s powers and kill them both,” said Mae. “Great idea. Hey, can I come? I’ll bring a picnic lunch if you promise not to let blood get on the sandwiches.”

  “She makes a good point,” Alan observed, speaking more slowly than Mae would’ve liked. “How could I trust you?”

  “How could I trust you?” Gerald asked. “You can get your demon to kill me anytime you want. I’m trusting you because we both have a lot to gain by making this bargain.”

  “I’d have a lot to lose, as well.”

  “Would you?” asked Gerald. “Nothing that you won’t lose anyway, if you fail to keep the demon in check. Which you know you will.”

  He leaned forward a little so he was totally obscured from Mae’s view.

  “I know what you’re afraid of, Alan,” Gerald told him quietly. “But how many people have to die before you risk him hating you?”

  Mae made up her mind and got to her feet.

  “All right,” she said. “You can leave now.”

  She could see Gerald’s face clearly now, lifted to hers and vaguely startled. She reached out, grabbed his hand, and hauled him to his feet. When his fingers curled automatically around hers, all the magic lights went out.

  “I’d say you outstayed your welcome, but you never actually got a welcome, did you?”

  She used her grip on Gerald’s hand to tow him away from the table. She felt perfectly prepared to get behind him and shove his horrible magic self every step of the way to the front door, but then Gerald decided it was too much trouble or that he’d said all he wanted to say. He pulled his hand away and made for the door.

  He stopped on the threshold and said, “Alan.”

  Alan was still sitting down in the middle of that shadowy kitchen, head bowed over the table. “Mae’s right. You should go.”

  There was a pause. Mae looked defiantly at Gerald, Alan looked away, and Gerald looked like he was trying to find a way to make the winning move.

  “In two worlds, he is the most dangerous thing alive,” Gerald said at last. “And you made him. I’ll be in touch.”

  The kitchen door swung closed, and a moment later Mae heard the sound of the front door closing too, imagined a brief flare of magical light as Gerald went humming down the road, congratulating himself on a job well done, and left them here in the dark.

  “Alan,” said Mae, kneeling on the floor by his chair and thus getting a look at his shadowed face. “Don’t listen to him. He’s lying to you.”

  “He’s not lying,” Alan said. “Nick killed those people.”

  “Sorry,” said Nick from the door, his voice toneless. “Am I interrupting something?”

  He flipped the switch, and the kitchen filled with ordinary, non-magical light. Mae thought of Gerald saying that Nick would never think to use his magic for something beautiful or kind, and then reminded herself fiercely that Gerald was an idiot. Nick would think using his magic that way was crazy, and he’d be right. There was a perfectly good light switch.

  Nick leaned against the door frame, arms folded.

  “Heard the magician leave,” he observed. “He had me down in five minutes. He shouldn’t have been able to do that. He had ten times the power today than he did outside the graveyard.”

  Alan leaned back in his chair. His expression was suddenly thoughtful, now that Nick could see it: Nick hadn’t seen what he’d looked like before, hunched over in the dark.

  “Looks like Gerald really has invented a different kind of mark,” he said. “I wonder how much stronger he is now.”

  “I wonder how we’re going to deal with it,” Nick said sharply.

  “I don’t know yet,” said Alan. “But I will.”

  Nick nodded, seeming to accept that this was settled and Alan would be learning all the secrets of the murderous magicians’ Circle anytime now. Mae steeled herself for the inevitable questions about what Gerald had wanted, and what Alan had said to him in return, and why that had left Alan and Mae talking about murder in the dark.

  Nick said, “You’re going to be late for the Goblin Market.”

  “He’s right, we should really go,” said Alan.

  Mae had wanted to do her hair, put on some kind of outfit, worry about what she looked like, as if the Goblin Market was some weird mix of a job interview and a boy she liked. Now there was no time and she didn’t care. She didn’t care about magicians and the bargains they offered, either. For a shining second all she could see were lanterns strung from bough to bough and magic for sale.

  “I’m going to work,” said Nick. “Got the evening shift.”

  He turned away, and Alan turned in his chair toward him in a sudden, violent movement. “Nick.”

  Nick glanced over his shoulder.

  “In two worlds,” said Alan quietly, “there is nothing I love half as much as you.”

  There was an expression on Nick’s face now. He went still, his fingers white around the edge of the door.

  He didn’t look at Alan, who was leaning back in his chair, watching him. He held the door, as if he would bolt if he wasn’t hanging on to something, and stared at the floor.

  Gerald’s voice echoed in Mae’s ears as if he was still there. If you told him how you felt, he wouldn’t even know what you meant.

  Every line of Nick’s body was tense with the desire to leave, and for a moment Mae was sure he would, that he’d just turn without a word and go.

  “Sometimes,” Nick said, still looking at the floor, his voice rough and shocking in the silence. “Sometimes I want to be human for you.”

  “But usually not,” said Alan. It wasn’t even a question.

  “No,” Nick said. “Usually not.”

  He turned away, closing the door behind him.

  9

  Come Buy

  Mae hadn’t really thought about the fact that the Goblin Market was held in a different place every month. It made sense to her that a secret gathering would be held in a different place every month, but still the image of people dancing in a wood filled with fairy lights had stayed with her. She’d thought it would be more or less the same.

  On the hour-long drive to Cornwall, Alan explained that they were holding this Goblin Market on the sea-bound cliffs of Tintagel Castle.

  “Is this a castle like Cranmore Castle was a castle?” Mae asked, referring to the green hill, once a fort and nothing like a castle, that had been near the woods of the last Market.

  “No—it’s a castle like a proper castle,” Alan said. “Mostly.”

  “Oh, mostly?”

  “Well, a
lot of the castle has fallen into the sea,” said Alan. “But it’s very impressive apart from that.”

  Mae laughed, and Alan laughed with her, teeth flashing white in the dark. He looked happy, recovered from the emotion that had made his face drawn and desperate in the shadowed kitchen. It didn’t take much to make Alan happy; he was used to living on crumbs.

  It made her feel terribly sorry for him, but she couldn’t really understand it. She was pretty comfortable with wanting a lot from life.

  “So if a storm comes, we could all be blown out to sea with what’s left of the castle,” she said lightly, and then stopped and cursed her own stupidity as they both thought of storms.

  “It’s the first weekend in June,” Alan said after a moment, his smile dimmed but his voice still trying to be light. “I don’t expect storms.”

  Mae looked away from the loss of Alan’s smile to the open night road, the tarmac briefly white in the car’s headlights and then fading to black in the side mirrors.

  “Gerald said there was a storm in Durham,” she said. “Wasn’t that where—where your family lived?”

  Alan’s family: his aunt—the sister of Alan’s long-dead mother—and her children. The aunt Alan had written to in secret. The family Nick had not known existed, because he’d thought Olivia was Alan’s mother, because he’d thought that he and Alan were really brothers.

  He had taken the revelation that they were not actually related extremely badly.

  “Yeah,” Alan said, rough and short as his brother for once.

  “And the storm that was going on in the background when I called you,” said Mae carefully. “That was due to—”

  “It was my fault.”

  When she glanced at Alan, she saw his jaw was tight.

  “I shouldn’t have gone there.”

  He looked over at Mae suddenly, just a glance, soft and gentle as if he’d reached out and touched her, or as if he wanted to.

  “We should have come back to Exeter with you guys.”

  “I’m glad you’re here now,” said Mae, which was true. “So this place is meant to be where King Arthur was conceived,” she said to change the subject, since if she knew anything about Alan, she knew it would make him happy to go on about history and legends. “That’s really nobody’s business but the queen’s.”

  “Think the king might’ve been slightly interested as well,” said Alan. Mae made a dismissive gesture, and Alan laughed.

  “Also, there’s the problem that probably none of it happened. At least, not here.”

  “Well, maybe and maybe not,” said Alan, and looked immediately enthusiastic. “During excavations in 1998 a stone was discovered onsite with the word ‘Artognou’ on it, which could mean ‘descendant of Arthur.’ It’s interesting how people want to believe; words have so many different meanings.”

  “It’d be more interesting if it was one of the druidesses,” Mae said.

  Alan had read Malory, and Mae had read Marion Zimmer Bradley. They were able to talk about King Arthur until they turned right for Boscastle and Alan paused in his mini-lecture on seventh-century Britain to check the signpost. When he chose what Mae hoped was the right narrow country road lost in pitch blackness, she clenched her fists and tried to be patient as Alan parked his car somewhere high up in the hills that definitely wasn’t a car park. She climbed out and they walked together, crossing a bridge to Tintagel Island and going farther uphill with every step, until they came to an open gate.

  “This gate’s meant to be locked, isn’t it?”

  “Sure,” Alan said, with an unexpectedly wicked smile. “Meant to be.”

  He gestured in a courtly manner, and Mae rolled her eyes at him and went through the gate first.

  Then she gazed up at the mountain beyond the gates, slate balanced in a haphazard, tilting pile as if a giant child had stacked stones into something that was meant to be a tower. Except it wasn’t a tower; it was just a towering heap. One that they would have to climb.

  Mae looked up and up at the jagged gray crest of the mountain, like a black crown inscribed on the twilight sky.

  She opened her mouth to say she wasn’t really very athletic, but then remembered Alan’s lame leg and shut it. She began to climb the wooden steps that wound up to the cliffs.

  She’d danced at clubs and raves until five in the morning, even if she did walk through relay races in gym class. She should have been able to climb steps. Only dancing was euphoric, made her feel dizzy and delighted, keenly conscious of where to put her feet but not truly aware of their weight.

  Her feet felt like dumbbells she was lifting with every step now, and there were hot lancing pains in the backs of her thighs. Behind her she could hear Alan. He was not panting as much as she was, but every second step he drew in a tightly controlled breath, snatching back a moan just before it escaped into the air.

  Alan didn’t like being asked if he was all right.

  “I’ve been giving some thought to the importance of Arthurian legends and historical sites,” Mae announced to the night wind. “And I’ve come to the conclusion: Sod them.”

  Alan laughed a little, shaky and hurting. Mae was very sure that he hadn’t told Nick they were holding the Goblin Market on top of a mountain this month.

  They were only halfway up the mountain. She should really suggest to Alan that they turn back and go home, that this wasn’t worth it. Only Alan wouldn’t go, and besides that … guiltily, horribly, in spite of the fact that Alan was in pain every step, Mae wanted to go to the Market more than anything.

  They followed the steps in a steep curve around the mountain, dirt on worn wood crunching under Mae’s shoes, the wind turning her hair into whips that cut across her face.

  She was just staring at her feet, dragging up one after another, when she came to a door in the dark.

  It was curved like a chapel door, but the wood in front of her was rough and unpolished, ghost gray in the moonlight. She put her hand to it, and it felt cool and smooth as pearl, worn down by years of sea breezes.

  The door swung open and revealed a fairy-tale castle.

  It looked like someone had been planting stars. The castle was in shreds, flagstone floors tiny islands in a sea of stones and wild grass, but clusters of lights were nestled on the castle floor and the earth of the cliffs alike, lanterns strung from the crumbling battlements.

  There were so many lights they cast a shimmering haze over everything, bathing the ruins in a pale glow. Mae walked, hardly aware that she was walking, through Tintagel Castle over stones washed in brightness.

  There were stalls nestled around the castle the way the lights were, not in rows but in odd spots, as if the stalls had grown there or alighted on random places like birds. There was one stall with ringing chimes that was set halfway up a ruined wall, so the customers had to climb sliding pieces of slate to get to it. There were more stalls set in the grassy hollows among the stones and nestled into the corners of the walls. One woman had actually turned a ruined wall into her stall, brightly colored jars arranged on the jagged, protruding shards of stone.

  All through the fragments of a lost castle lit by magic moved the people of the Goblin Market. There was a man hanging up knives alongside wind chimes, which made dangerous and beautiful music as they rang together in the sea breeze. There was a boy who looked about twelve stirring something in a cauldron with a rich-smelling cloud hanging over it, and bark cups ranged along his stall.

  There was a toddler who had just walked into Mae’s knee.

  “Whoa,” said Mae, who had nothing against toddlers but didn’t know any personally and wasn’t that interested in the whole sticky children business.

  The toddler, who had golden curls and wide blue eyes and looked like he had recently been eating grass, charged into her knee again, as if sheer willpower could remove this obstacle from his path. He looked mildly bewildered when he bounced off.

  “That’s Toby,” said Alan’s voice behind her, making her jump. She’d al
most forgotten he was there. “He’s the baby of the Davies family. And he’s a pest.”

  Alan supported this statement by saying every word in a delighted, caressing voice that made even Mae turn to him and Toby laugh. He wasn’t looking at Mae but at the child, a smile making his narrow face shine like the ruined castle.

  “He’s always escaping from his crib and making his sister worry herself sick. Aren’t you, you little fiend?”

  Toby beamed with the wide, somewhat crazy grin kids got, and lifted his arms to be picked up. Alan did so at once, the baby cradled carefully in the crook of one elbow, his head bowed down over the smaller head.

  “You really like children, huh,” Mae said, mystified but charmed as well. There was no denying that Alan with a kid was about as adorable as a basket of kittens wearing tiny kitten bonnets, and it also meant that she wasn’t going to have to mind Toby.

  It occurred to her that this might be why women went for men who were good with kids: It meant they wouldn’t have to be.

  “Hmm? Oh, they’re all right,” said Alan, obviously besotted.

  The baby squirmed, and Alan knelt with some difficulty so he could let him down and still keep him safe in the circle of one arm. Toby made a grab for something shining up Alan’s sleeve: Alan produced the knife for him and flipped it, making sure the hilt caught the fairy lights and keeping the blade always trapped between his deft fingers, away from the child’s small reaching hands.

  “There, Toby,” he said. He flipped the knife again and smiled, and Toby laughed, either for the knife or the smile. “I remember Nick at this age,” Alan continued, his voice gentle as his free hand stroked the child’s hair.

  Mae looked down at Toby’s small, bright face. The lights of the Goblin Market danced in his fuzzy curls and seemed to create light, gold irradiating his hair like a hazy halo. It was hard to think of Nick as anything like this.

  “Was he cute?” she asked doubtfully.