He was going to kill somebody.
“Stop this,” she said through clenched teeth, and slid her hands to his shoulders.
She tried to shake them, but he was stone under her hands, as if he was right and nothing about him was human at all.
Nick said, low and almost amused, “No.”
“Don’t you think you’re being a little—” Mae began, and then Nick touched her. His palm hit her throat, strong fingers around her neck, then his hand slid around to the nape of her neck, tilting her head back.
“Don’t you think you should be a little concerned, Mae?” he asked. “You with your lovely demon’s mark. I’m done playing human. Just imagine what I could do to you.”
The rain wasn’t in her eyes anymore. Nick was leaning over her instead, water slipping from his hair, breath coming in slow, shuddering pants. There was something watchful and terrible in his eyes.
The whole city could burn.
He was standing too close because he wanted her to be scared. He was waiting for her to run or to surrender.
She didn’t plan on doing either one.
Mae stepped forward and caught his hand, and Nick started and made to pull away. She hung on, tangling their wet, cold fingers together, not letting him make them any demon terrifying any human. She knew him, had heard his true name, read his father’s diary, held his hand before. They knew each other.
He stopped trying to pull away and just looked down at her.
Mae sucked in a breath of stormy air.
Then she reached up to curl her fingers tight into the soaked material of Nick’s T-shirt.
“Okay,” she whispered. “I’m imagining a few things.”
Nick made a gasping, hurt sound and leaned in, his face half sliding and half scraping against hers, catching a little where he needed to shave, starting a slow, warm, prickling feeling crawling down her rib cage. Then his mouth caught hers, her lips parting, remembering the precise feel of his mouth against hers, and every nerve ending she had felt touched with lightning.
The whole city could burn, and for a moment she didn’t care.
She was kissing Nick, he was kissing her, it was Nick again at last. Mae’s back hit the wet roof tiles and she pulled him down with her, hands knotted in his wet hair, his mouth hot and demanding on hers, lips curling the way she remembered them. She’d memorized his mouth.
“Shhh,” she said, frantic, between kisses. “Nick. It’s all right.”
It was so different from the first time. She’d been concerned about him then, too, but it hadn’t been this wild, intangible thing, she hadn’t felt her heart beating like a frenzied bird trapped in her chest.
“Shhh,” she said against the corner of his mouth, and ran a hand up along the center of his chest, flat muscle under soaked cotton. Her fingers caught on the talisman and the scar beneath it.
He almost smiled, though the smiled twisted in on itself and disappeared. “Mavis,” he said, his voice scraping away from the edge, and she told herself she didn’t like it.
He was calmer now, she thought, and he might listen. She should pull back, deal with him calmly, be in control.
He kissed her again, sharing a shuddering breath from his open mouth to hers, his body pressing her down against the storm-washed roof tiles, and Mae kissed him back. She was burning hot in the middle of a storm, so hot she was shaking with it.
“Shhh,” she said, nosing blindly along his cheek, kissing the sharp corner of his jaw and then sliding her mouth down the pale rain-slick line of his throat.
He didn’t make sounds like other boys did, so she had to pay attention to every little detail in the small lightning-soaked space between them. She bit down on the curve where his neck sloped into his collarbone, tasting the warm rainwater pooled there and the cool skin beneath, and felt him tense above her.
“Come here,” he ordered, and she pressed her lips against his throat and smiled.
Nick peeled the wet material of her shirt away from her skin, fingers sliding under the collar, and ran the shocking-cold metal of his ring along her mark. Mae arched up into him, and he caught her mouth and the small sound she made, his teeth running along the line of her lower lip.
“I have a—” Mae whispered into the slow, hot kiss, drunk on Nick all around her. She was tempted to thump her head against the roof tile in a desperate effort to clear it, but instead she kissed Nick some more. “I—oh God—I have a plan.”
Her plan had not been to push the drenched cotton of his shirt up so she could run a hand up his ribs, skating over the leather band where he kept a knife hidden, but it was happening anyway. Nick was sitting up a little, she was levering herself up on her elbows to help him, to strip his shirt off so she could have wet smooth skin under her hands.
“This is becoming a habit of yours, Nick,” Alan’s voice said coldly from the skylight, and they both froze.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” Alan continued, and disappeared down the ladder before Mae had even registered the expression on his face, though she could tell from the tone of his voice that it couldn’t have been good.
Mae swore between gritted teeth, and Nick bolted backward, lunging away from her and toward the skylight. She pressed her forehead against the heel of her hand and cursed herself silently and at length. She was so stupid, how had she done this, and after what Alan had said to her on the high street. How he must feel now.
She scrambled to her feet and went for the ladder, making her way shakily down it, legs not working particularly well, as she heard Nick thundering down the attic stairs.
“Alan!” he shouted, but there was no answer back, not even a shout.
Mae was stumbling down the stairs to the hall when Nick caught Alan in the kitchen, the door open and the fluorescent lights on. Alan was standing beside the kettle, which he’d switched on. He looked pale and determinedly casual.
Nick had hold of the kitchen counter. The way he was gripping it and the fact that he was disheveled and soaked to the skin combined to form the impression of a drowning man.
“Alan,” he said, “I want to talk.”
Mae was at the foot of the stairs now, making her way slowly to the kitchen door. She wasn’t sure if she could help by getting involved. She couldn’t leave the explaining to Nick, but she couldn’t blame Alan if he did not want to look at her right now.
Apparently Alan didn’t want to look at his brother, either. He was staring down at his empty cup.
“You do?” he asked Nick, his voice clipped. “Well, that’s new and different for us. What do you want to say?”
Nick looked at him, eyes glittering under his wet fall of hair. Every muscle in his body looked tense, and Mae remembered what she had told Nick, realized how much he might hate Alan at this moment, and waited with her mouth gone dry to hear what Nick had to say.
Low and cold, Nick said, “Betray me.”
Alan’s head snapped up. “What?”
“Betray me,” Nick said again, still in that terrible toneless demon’s voice, hands clenching on the kitchen counter so hard Mae thought it would break. “Turn me over to the magicians, take the magic, do whatever you think you need to do, I do not care. But don’t leave.”
She’d had it all wrong, Mae thought, feeling numb all over. She’d known Nick was afraid of something, learning fear the way she’d described it: feeling paralyzed even though you know you have to act, because you’re sure that if you even move, the most terrible thing you can think of will happen.
She just hadn’t understood.
From the look on Alan’s face, he hadn’t understood either.
“Oh, Nick,” he said in a soft, amazed voice. “No.”
He limped the few steps toward his brother, then reached out. A shiver ran all the way through Nick, as if he was a spooked animal about to bolt, but he didn’t bolt. Alan’s hand settled on the back of his brother’s neck, and Nick bowed his head a little more and let him do it.
“No, no, no,” Alan said in hi
s beautiful voice, turning it into a lullaby, soothing and sweet. “Nick. I would never leave.”
Mae had no place being there right now, so she closed the kitchen door softly and walked home.
Outside it was still dark, but the tattered storm clouds were curling around one another almost gently, the storm calmed, the sky full of possibility.
The rain had stopped.
20
The Demon’s Price
Mae woke on the day of the Goblin Market to the sound of her phone ringing by her ear. It was Sin, freaking out about cover for her people. Mae sat up in bed, grabbed her laptop, and got some maps of Huntingdon Market Square up onscreen.
“Look, Sin,” she said. “Think. The square’s in the middle of town. There are houses on every side of it! Well, one side’s a church, but you take my point. There is absolutely no chance that the magicians won’t be shielding themselves. Trust me, I saw the Aventurine Circle do this on the Millennium Bridge. They’ll be giving us cover. All we have to do is use it.”
“And if they decide to take it down?”
“They’d expose themselves as well as us,” said Mae. “It’s going to be fine.”
“It’s not,” Sin told her quietly. “People are going to die. I think it’s worth it, to eliminate the magicians. You’re not Market, though. Not yet. Can you handle people dying because of your plan?”
Mae rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand, fuzzy morning vision coalescing to St. Leonard’s fragile Gothic spire outside her window, stretching up into a clear blue sky.
“I don’t know,” she said quietly, and shut her eyes. “I guess we’ll have to see.”
Sin was silent for a moment. Then she abruptly switched topics. “The demon’s agreed to the plan?”
“Yes,” Mae said automatically, because if she even hesitated, Sin would know something was wrong and call the whole thing off.
Then she actually had to think about it. Nick had definitely not agreed, but she had told him and he hadn’t said no, he’d just had the Nick equivalent of a nervous breakdown with the weather. He’d seemed amenable after that, but that might have just been because Nick was generally agreeable with people trying to pull all his clothes off.
He’d told Alan to betray him, but he didn’t want Alan to do it. Mae thought of the way Alan had looked at Nick after Nick told him. She thought the odds were pretty good that Alan didn’t want to do it either.
There was a very good possibility that Nick had told Alan about her plan, and they were both on her side now.
She might want to check before she bet people’s lives on it, though.
“So there’s a fence on one side of this marketplace?” Sin asked. “Do you think it’ll be a good size to put my archers behind?”
“Uh, archers?” Mae said. She wondered if this was a secret second stage to their plan. Step one: Defeat evil. Step two: Enact Robin Hood play.
“Guns don’t always work,” Sin reminded her patiently. “Bow and arrow’s better than any throwing dagger. You can pick off magicians at your leisure.”
“Can you shoot a bow?” Mae inquired, curious and a little thrilled at the notion.
“Yeah,” said Sin. “But I like my knives better. I’m not much for leisure.”
“I’d like a lesson someday.”
“If we win this one,” Sin said, “you can have anything you want. You’ll be down here by seven, right?”
“At the latest. See you then.”
Cambridgeshire was four hours away, and it was after eleven now. She had to call Nick. Mae hung up on Sin and keyed in the N to get Nick’s number from her contacts list right away.
Nick had his phone turned off.
Alan had his turned off as well.
Mae scrambled out of bed and ran to her wardrobe so she could get dressed and get to Nick’s house. The mirrored door covered in her stickers presented her with a wild-eyed girl whose pink hair looked like a rosebush gone rogue.
Well, she could brush her hair after the battle. She found jeans and a Dorothy Parker T-shirt that said MIGHT AS WELL LIVE and went down the stairs, hopping on first one foot and then the other as she tied her laces.
She stopped mid-hop when she heard her mother’s voice coming from the parlor.
“James, I don’t have all day,” Annabel said irritably. “In fact, I didn’t even have this lunch hour. I had to put off a round of golf with Elizabeth, and who knows when she’ll be able to fit me into her schedule next?”
“Okay, Mum,” Jamie said. “But—but I had to tell you this now. I have a schedule too.”
“Elizabeth is a judge. They tend to have less time on their hands than the average teenage boy. You aren’t even in summer school, despite the fact that I left several excellent brochures in your room. And on the hall table. And beside the fridge.”
“Maybe I’m not the average teenage boy,” said Jamie, very quiet, and Mae turned and ran back up the stairs into the parlor.
Annabel looked up from her seat. She was sitting with a glass of ice water in her hand, and she gave Mae a glance that took in her hair, her T-shirt, and the obvious fact that she’d just rolled out of bed, and then gave her a small smile that was probably against her better judgment.
“Good morning, Mavis.”
“Jamie, don’t do it,” said Mae.
“Did anything weird ever happen around me when I was a baby?” Jamie asked. “Stuff breaking. Things flying through the air.”
“There was that one nanny who had episodes,” Annabel admitted. “But after two months we let her go, James, and you were only three. I doubt you were traumatized by the experience.”
Jamie took a deep breath and said, “I wasn’t traumatized. I was responsible.”
“Jamie, don’t do this,” Mae begged him. “Not today.”
“Mae, you don’t get to choose,” said Jamie, not even looking at her. “I need to know that Gerald’s wrong. I need to know that she—that she won’t—”
He was standing against the mantelpiece, back straight and thin against it, like a soldier who expected to be shot. Mae couldn’t argue with him anymore. She could only go to the mantelpiece so she was standing with him, because somebody had to be standing with him. He had to know she was with him, always.
“I love you,” Jamie told Annabel. “I’ll always love you. No matter what.”
Annabel went suddenly vivid red in both cheeks, as if she had been slapped, but she said nothing.
“Didn’t you ever wonder if—if there was something different about me?”
“Didn’t we already have this talk when you were thirteen?” Annabel asked, sounding a little helpless. “I told you not to worry about it. Sometimes I do wish you would use less hair product.”
“Mum, please,” Jamie said desperately.
“James, I do not know what you want!”
Jamie looked across the room at his mother, his face white and strained. He looked like a gambler betting money he did not have.
“I want you not to hate me because I can do this,” he said, and lifted a hand.
Annabel’s water glass went flying out of her hand. The sunlight streaming through their gauze-curtained windows hit the glass and made the ice sparkle. Jamie gestured and the glass spun around in midair, glinting and lovely for a moment, such a simple thing, and Mae saw Jamie’s face lighten, saw him glow with the belief that magic could be beautiful.
“Is this some kind of trick?” Annabel asked, her voice very cold, each word distinct, as if she was cutting her sentences apart with ruthlessly wielded silverware.
“No,” Jamie said. “It’s magic. I can do magic.”
“James, is this a joke? I find it tasteless in the extreme.”
Annabel’s voice wavered as she looked at the glass and registered the extremely obvious lack of wires or pulleys. The hand she had been using to hold the glass finally seemed to accept that it was gone, and tightened into a fist.
“What else do you want me to do?” Jamie asked, and t
he glass fell to the carpet, not breaking but spilling ice. He raised a hand to the mirror over the mantel and it broke in half, a fault line fracturing the reflected room and putting Jamie and his mother on two different sides.
That was what made Annabel jump to her feet. She was unsteady for a moment, as if the heels she was always comfortable in had suddenly failed her.
“Stop it!”
“Tell me, Mum,” Jamie demanded, his voice going uneven. “How do you feel about me now?”
The curtains were moving, twitching back and forth on the curtain rod like live snakes. The mirror was fracturing into glittering crazy-paving, about to fall to pieces.
“I said stop it!” Annabel ordered. “Stop behaving like a circus freak!”
Everything went still.
“Well,” said Jamie, cool as his mother had ever been. “I guess you answered that question.”
Annabel walked briskly back to her chair and picked up her briefcase, her hands fumbling a little to close the catch.
“I have had enough of this nonsense, James,” she said, straightening up. She still looked shaky on her heels, but her face was pale and resolved. She and Jamie suddenly looked very alike. “I won’t—we can discuss your punishment later. I don’t know—I need to get back to work. I never want to see you do anything like that again!”
“Like what, Mother?”
Annabel’s mouth quivered for a moment and then set. “I wonder if Elizabeth might still be up for golf,” she said. “I am sick of wasting my time here.”
“Annabel,” Mae said. “Please, Annabel—”
Annabel looked scared, as if she thought Mae might start breaking things with her mind as well. She ran out the door and across the landing, heading down the stairs and back to her uncomplicated life, where things like this did not happen.
Mae felt frozen until the sound of Annabel’s car engine broke her trance and made her run again, down the stairs, to make her go back to Jamie, to make her take it back.
The car was already going down the driveway, so Mae ran after it and thumped it. Annabel did not look behind her. As far as Mae could see, her mother did not even check the side mirror. The car just accelerated, Annabel was that desperate to escape her kids and all their weirdness. Mae lost her head and tried to run after it, to chase her and catch her and keep her.
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