His arm was around her, hard muscle against the small of her back, and she hid her face in the strong curve of his shoulder. The worn material of his T-shirt was soft under her cheek, and she could smell him, clean skin and hair, cotton, and the sharp smell of steel. She felt her heart catch in her chest and then, as if to make up for faltering, it started to race.
Nick stroked her hair with those cool, sure fingers, and murmured to her that everything was all right. His hand lingered for a moment at the fine, short hair at the nape of her neck, and she shivered. She was pressed up close against his chest and knew he felt the long, slow tremor run through her body. He went still.
Mae lifted her head from his shoulder, cupped his face in her free hand, and kissed him. He kissed her back without hesitation, warm and careful and thorough, tongue curling in her mouth. She let herself fall backward against the pillows. She tugged him down.
The sheets were tangling around her bare legs, and his jeans were rough against them. He let her have control of the kiss, his lips moving lazy and sweet against hers, his fingers still stroking her neck: the nape, the sides, then resting his knuckles against the hollow of her throat. He kept murmuring to her, low, caressing words. Everything was so warm.
All along her body she felt chills following in the wake of his hands. He lifted her shirt and stroked along her spine, lifted the cord of her talisman and moved his mouth from hers to kiss her jaw, her chin, and the side of her neck where the talisman lay. He whispered to her that she should take it off.
She whispered back that she would. Then she glanced down at him and saw him smile.
That slow, malicious smile wasn’t Nick’s.
Mae felt the tug of the talisman lifting under her hands, catching at her hair, and for an instant felt a flash of burning pain where the talisman still rested against her skin.
She shoved him back and saw that under his hooded lids, his lowered lashes, his eyes were not black. They were cold and colorless as ice.
Mae screamed and woke herself up.
There was a moment when she felt profound relief and nothing else. Then she realized that she was lying on top of the covers and the window was open. A bleakly cold wind was rushing through it into her room, and the talisman against her chest was burning hot. She grabbed at it and looked down at what she held in her palm: saw what had been crystals, feathers, and bone transformed into a charred and twisted ruin.
Mae clenched the talisman in her fist and scrabbled with her other hand on her bedside table. When her fingers brushed over what she wanted, she grabbed her phone and pressed a couple of keys, then waited with desperate impatience until the ring was cut off by a voice.
“What?”
“Nick,” she said breathlessly, and she hated the begging sound of her voice, but she begged anyway. “Nick, it’s an emergency, please—”
There was a disturbance in the air around her; she recognized that moment just before you turn around when you realize there is someone else in the room. She also knew there could not possibly be anyone else in the room.
She turned around, and Nick was standing at the foot of her bed.
“What?” he said again, his voice curt and crackling and not some dream whisper that was only in her head, and yet he looked so much the same that she found herself struck speechless and hugging her knees to her chest like a child.
“Close the window,” she ordered at last, and felt better just because she was giving an order. Nick raised an eyebrow and shut the window.
The room was still icy and smelled of smoke, but at least the howl of the wind was trapped outside. Mae kept hugging her legs. She didn’t feel any warmer.
Nick looked down at her. “So there’s an emergency in your bedroom,” he said slowly. “Well, I can’t say it’s the worst line I’ve ever heard.”
Mae snorted and felt steadier, steady enough to get out, “It was Anzu.”
Nick tensed. “Sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure!” Mae exclaimed. “He was here, and he almost got my talisman off, and it’s all burned, and he had eyes like—”
She choked the words off because she couldn’t bear hearing herself sound like this, this helpless scared thing. She was furious at how easy she’d made it for that demon, how willing she’d been to open that damn window for no good reason.
Nick looked down at her, his eyes opaque as the night outside her window, with no way to know what was hidden in the darkness.
“What do you want me to do?”
Mae had the sudden, terribly vivid memory of Nick putting his arms around her in the demon dream. The thought of him being affectionate was so bizarre, so unlikely: She couldn’t imagine how Anzu had come up with it. She couldn’t think why it had worked.
Her hands were shaking. She recalled the exact sensation of leaning her cheek against Nick’s shoulder—and here Nick was, real, and the idea of asking him for comfort was absolutely unthinkable. He would not even understand why she might ask, and she would be humiliated.
“What do I—there was a demon in my bed,” she cried, and then registered what she’d just said and shut her eyes in horror. “Nick. I was terrified.”
She opened her eyes in time to see him turn away from her in a movement that looked almost violent.
“I can—I can see that,” he snapped. “I don’t know why you called me. What do you expect me to do? I don’t understand what you want!”
Mae didn’t understand herself. She’d just dived for the phone without thinking. She’d wanted help and she’d called him. He was right to ask her what the hell she thought she was doing.
She looked away, past him to her dressing table cluttered with CDs and the debris of discarded makeup, and thought about her room filled with broken glass and cold air, about the demons outside her window every night.
And then she realized she knew what she was doing.
Mae lifted her chin and said, “Let me explain it to you.”
Nick looked at her for another unreadable moment, and then nodded and sat down—not on her bed but in her chair, ignoring the fact that it was draped with clothes and piled with books. Mae wished she was dressed; she thought she could sound much more authoritative if she wasn’t wearing a floppy purple nightshirt.
“I’m the weak link, aren’t I?” she said. “Gerald wants Jamie’s ties to the human world broken, and that’s me. Gerald wants to attack you and Alan, and—and Alan would care if I was possessed. Possibly he thinks you would mind if I was too.”
“Possibly,” said Nick.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mae lied. “We need to—we need to think this through. I’m the one with no magic and no idea about this world. I’m the one they targeted, and I’m the one they’ll keep targeting. What we need is a plan. What we need”—she uncurled and leaned over, bracing herself on one hand, toward Nick—“what we need is to make marking me impossible.”
She was prepared for an argument, but not for the sudden fury in Nick’s face. “No.”
“You said you wanted to do it,” Mae reminded him. “So do it. You can mark me, and then no other demon will be able to touch me. I’ll be safe.”
Nick made a sound, halfway between a laugh and a snarl. He rose to his feet in one too-fluid, too-easy motion, and Mae felt the tremble of unease in her stomach that she always felt when he moved like that. He paced the room, three steps from the window to the chair and back, and then he put one knee up on the bed.
His lip curled from his teeth in a silent snarl. “Do you know what having a demon mark means?”
“It’s not like you’d possess me—”
“But I could,” he said, lingering on every word, as if he delighted in saying each one. “Anytime, I could. I could do a lot more than that. I put a third-tier mark on you and I could reach inside your mind anytime. I could make you think anything I wanted.” He leaned down, voice going even softer and more disturbing. “I could make you do anything I wanted,” he whispered. “And you think that you’d be safe?”
>
“Safer than if it was Anzu, yes,” Mae said sharply, and shoved him hard.
Or that was the intention. He caught her wrists in strong hands, and when she hissed between her teeth, his grip did not ease. He was trying to hurt her.
He was trying to scare her.
“Do you know what getting a mark is like?” he demanded. “You know that demons use emotions to break your control.” He bared his teeth, too close to her face. “To take control. Do you want me to tell you what it feels like?”
He leaned in even closer, her wrists trapped against his chest, and he hissed in her ear. His voice sounded less human than it ever had, clotted nightmare sounds that did not strike the ear like human speech but somehow formed into words. It made her insides coil up with dread.
“I’ll hurt you,” he said, breath hot against her skin. “I’ll scare you. And I’ll really like it.”
The last time he’d been this close, he’d smiled a terrible smile and there had been burning pain. She’d screamed then. Panic twisted inside her, and she wanted to scream now.
That hadn’t really been Nick, though. This was.
“And you’re warning me,” she pointed out, unable to stop her voice shaking but trying to pretend it didn’t matter. “You’re trying to protect me. I appreciate that; that’s why I trust you to do this. I’ve thought it through and I want you to mark me, I’m telling you to mark me, because that is the best way to keep me safe.”
“You’re right,” Nick said in that growling, nightmare voice. His cheek brushed hers, and she turned her face a little into the touch, feeling scared and dizzy and a little crazed. The corner of his mouth touched hers. “I am warning you.”
“And I’m telling you,” said Mae, and this was bargaining, she knew how to do this. Nick wasn’t going to win this fight. “I’m helping you with being human. I haven’t told Alan. This is how you help me.”
Nick’s mouth was suddenly in a thin straight line, his big shoulders bunched, and she saw his fingers curl as if they wanted to be around the hilt of his sword. He looked overcome with rage.
For a moment she didn’t understand what she had said, and then she realized and opened her mouth to tell him that wasn’t what she’d meant: that if he didn’t do it, she would tell Alan.
“I wouldn’t—” Mae began, and then voice and breath were both jolted out of her.
Nick dealt her a clean, swift blow, shoved her right off the bed and into the wall. He held her there with his arm hard against her throat, cutting off half her air supply. She was trapped between the wall and his body; he’d moved after her without giving her a second’s chance to escape, and she struggled suddenly, wild and hopeless.
Her back was flat against the wall, her breath rising in a trapped whine from her throat. He had her wrists in a brutal grip and her legs trapped between his, his free hand at her hip. She could feel the cold metal of his ring biting into the flesh, through the material of her nightshirt. She couldn’t get away.
His eyes gleamed like ink in the low light, filling her vision.
“I tried to tell you,” he said, low in his throat. “You can’t trust me. And you are not safe.”
He bent his head down and put his mouth to her collarbone, and she screamed.
It felt like he’d bitten her, but he hadn’t. There were no teeth, just his mouth on her skin and wrenching, savage pain spreading from that point of contact. It felt like he was burning her somehow, branding her, and she howled at him that she’d changed her mind and she wanted to stop, tried with all her strength to twist away and was completely unable to move an inch.
The pain was blinding: She couldn’t see, it pulsed through her in waves, and each wave shuddered through her whole body, each wave was worse than the last. And the pain still wasn’t as bad as the wild animal panic. She knew now why animals chewed off their legs to get out of traps. She would have done anything to escape.
And it wasn’t all pain. It wasn’t all fear. And she was helpless against that, too.
It stopped before she blacked out, but only just. It stopped, and he did not move for a moment, just rested with his mouth warm on her skin. Her breath was sobbing in her throat, and her throat was raw.
Nick stepped away from her and released her wrists, and even that movement seemed violent and alarming. He stood by the window, across the room from her, and all she could see was his unmoved and perfect profile.
“I’m—sorry,” he said. “That’s the way it is. That’s what I am. I don’t know how to make it any different.”
Mae was covered in cold sweat, feeling it slide all over her skin as she trembled. Now that she could move away from the wall, she felt that she wouldn’t be able to, that her own legs would not be able to support her.
“I asked you to do it,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I chose to do it. That makes a difference.”
Nick laughed. It was a terrible sound.
“Enough of one?” he asked, and she was silent.
He shook his head after a moment, then looked at her again, and she could see him come to a decision: He’d done what he could, done what she’d asked for.
He wasn’t going to offer her comfort, and she wasn’t sure she wanted it. She wasn’t sure she’d let him come near her.
She wasn’t sure she wouldn’t.
She did not get the opportunity to find out, because he nodded, then disappeared like smoke.
Mae walked a few unsteady steps and collapsed on her bed, her shaking hand going up and finding the spot on her collarbone where his mouth had been, where his mark was now. She could feel something there, a difference in the quality of her skin, as if it was newly healed from a wound or the lingering scar from a burn.
She couldn’t look in the mirror, didn’t want to see either the mark or her own face. She wondered what in God’s name she had done.
17
Playing and Losing
The next morning Mae was still not sure what she had done, but she was sure she couldn’t change it. She settled on being intensely thankful it was Saturday and went down to the kitchen for a pot of coffee. One cup wasn’t going to cut it.
She met Jamie on the stairs, looking pale and woebegone, and she clutched the neck of her robe closed instead of reaching for him.
He reached for her instead, his hand cupping her elbow.
“You’re right, I’m an idiot,” he said against her cheek.
“I’m always right,” Mae told him, instead of telling him that the idiocy seemed to be genetic. She gave him a kiss, lips barely brushing the edge of his jaw, and said, “How are you feeling?”
“So, so bad,” Jamie confessed, and then the doorbell rang.
Mae opened the door and found Seb on the doorstep.
“So, so much worse,” Jamie said, his voice floating down from the top of the stairs.
“Hey,” said Mae, ignoring her drunkard brother and hoping that Seb liked the just-rolled-out-of-bed look, since she was more concerned with finding coffee than a hairbrush.
“Hey,” said Seb. “How’s Jamie doing?”
“How are you doing, Jamie?” Mae asked in pointed tones, which subtly indicated that Seb was being very polite and Jamie had better acknowledge that or face sisterly retribution.
“Oh God, Mae,” Jamie said in a hollow voice, descending the stairs. “I will never drink again. I’m only seeing in black and white. My arms feel all floppy, like flightless wings. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I looked like a very sad penguin.”
Seb made a sound that was almost a laugh.
“You know what,” Jamie said to him. “I’m having a bad day. So if you don’t mind, I was thinking that today I would pretend you don’t exist.”
“There is no use even trying to have a civil conversation with you!” Seb said, his voice rising.
Jamie winced. “You’re very loud for someone who doesn’t exist.”
Mae gave him a look. “You’re very rude to guests in our home, Jamie. I suggest you try
being nicer, and as you may recall, I’m always right.”
The bargain was pretty much laid on the table. Give Seb a chance, and Mae would forget about Jamie doubting her. Jamie’s mouth quirked appreciatively, and he shrugged.
“I’ll do a deal with you, McFarlane,” he said. “You can exist. And you can even have coffee. But if you raise your voice or make any sudden movements, I shall die. And that’ll show you.”
Seb shrugged in return, hiding how pleased he was pretty badly. “Fair enough.”
Mae turned away and toward coffee, hiding a smile. She’d been pretty sure her bargain would work. She’d told Seb as much last night: Jamie just wasn’t very good at being angry. He lost his grip on it somehow.
That definitely wasn’t genetic.
“You again?” Seb asked, his voice suddenly harsh.
Mae spun on the kitchen steps, hand going involuntarily up to the neck of her robe again, as if she was some shamed Victorian maiden. Nick was on the step, not looking at her or even bothering to acknowledge Seb’s existence.
“You ready?” he asked Jamie.
“Ready?” Jamie echoed. “Yes, yes, I am ready. I am ready to drink a lot of liquids and lie on the sofa moaning faintly all day long. That is what I am ready for. I cannot engage in physical activity of any sort or my head will fall right off. Is that what you want, Nick? Because if so, I find that hurtful.”
“You’ll feel better when you start running.”
Nick looked wound too tight. Mae wondered why he had even come here, and then it occurred to her that it was just possible he wanted Jamie—that he was disturbed by what had happened last night, and in search of company and comfort. Demons weren’t supposed to need those things, but Nick had been wrapped in watchful love for fifteen years, been the audience to what Daniel Ryves had described as Alan’s “years-long one-way conversation” until he had finally started talking back.
Now there was something badly wrong between him and his brother, and he’d chosen Jamie, with the same warmth and the same ridiculous sense of humor and capacity to talk for hours, and he was coming to get him.
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