“I’m sorry,” she gasped out softly. “My brother—I couldn’t—”
Sin’s face was so stern it seemed medieval, like the old bridge or the church behind her, like an ebony carving over the black silk of her shirt. A bow and a quiver of arrows were strapped to her back.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said with despair cold as stone, and Mae looked past her to see the market square.
The square of Huntingdon town was more like a lopsided triangle, hemmed in by the church on one side and a vast domed building that had to be the town hall on the other. It was paved with herringbone bricks that looked deep red in the darkening evening and scarlet in the floodlights surrounding a sculpture of a thoughtful soldier.
Dead center of the red triangle was a magicians’ circle, already shimmering with power.
Nick was inside it with his black head bowed, his shoulders tense, as if he wanted to spring in a thousand different directions at once and could not move. He was already trapped, already betrayed.
She was too late.
The Obsidian Circle was massed behind the statue, in front of the town hall. Through the floodlights and the shimmer of magic, Mae could make out Gerald’s and Laura’s faces; every magician was watching the demon with glittering eyes, waiting for his downfall.
Even Seb at the back looked flushed and excited, carried away with victory.
Alan and Merris Cromwell, standing on opposite sides of the magicians’ circle from each other and far away from Gerald and his followers, did not look victorious.
Mae, clinging to the black bars of the church fence as if they were the bars of her prison, could not see Merris’s face. Alan was farther away but lit by the white glow of magic; he looked intent. The floodlights were streaming brightness behind him, and he was casting a long shadow.
From his shimmering trap, from the crackling heart of magic, Nick was staring at his brother.
“Liannan,” Gerald said softly, the only voice in that nighttime square. “Liannan, we have caught a traitor for you. Come bind him. Wrap him in thorns. Give him a heart and shatter it like ice. Show him what you do to those who turn against their own kind!”
Liannan came like light, magic forming her shape against the night as if she had been written in by stars. It hurt to look at her, and then the dazzle dimmed so that Mae could make out the red of her hair, which seemed today to be blending with shadows, like blood in night waters, and the cruel curve of her mouth.
It still hurt to look at her.
“Look at you,” Liannan whispered, sliding her hands up Nick’s arms to his shoulders in an embrace that drew blood. “My darling. What a fool you are.”
Nick did not even look at her.
She put her mouth to his ear and said with a delighted laugh, “How you’re going to suffer.”
Liannan stepped away from Nick and surveyed him like a warlord of old might have looked over some beautiful bleeding captive, with appreciation for her prize and her own prowess in winning it.
“You want to be Nicholas Ryves?” she asked. “So be it.”
She lifted one of her knife-sharp hands. Light came bright and sharp from her upraised hand, like tame lightning, and it crawled up Nick’s body and wound him in chains.
The chains had jagged edges, like the shapes of lightning bolts Mae had seen in pictures, hurled down from above by angry ancient gods. Nick was bleeding from a dozen places and his breath was coming in sharp, controlled pants that said he was in pain.
His eyes were still fastened on Alan. There was no warmth in those eyes, no capacity for forgiveness or understanding.
That inhuman gaze never wavered.
“I bind you to this body, Nicholas Ryves, to live within its limits and die its death,” said Liannan, and a whip of lightning curled around Nick’s neck as she laughed. “However soon that death may come.”
She was almost dancing around Nick, slowly, bone-white feet flashing below a swinging skirt. She stopped dancing for a moment to stand on her tiptoes and speak in Nick’s ear again.
“You are at my mercy,” she told him. “And you know exactly how much I have of that.”
Then she turned away from him and began to walk along the periphery of the circle, hair streaming. She was looking at Alan as she passed him, at Merris, at the magicians.
“I bind your powers to the exact limits agreed on in our bargain,” she declared, and Nick’s lightning chains flickered out like candles, leaving him bloody in the dark. “Now,” Liannan said, lifting her chin, “I want out of this circle. I have kept our bargain, and I want my reward.”
Gerald raised a hand, and the boundaries of the circle, the ghosts of the stones that formed the true obsidian circle, vanished. The magic began to recede like the tide.
“You have kept our bargain,” he told her carelessly, his eyes on Nick. “And you will be rewarded. You’ll get a body for this.”
Liannan gave him a wolf’s grin.
“Oh, I hope so,” she said. “But I wasn’t talking to you.”
The magic was dwindling and Liannan with it, her bright, cruel beauty paling like a ghost about to disappear at dawn.
“One thousand nights of life,” she said, closing her eyes and reaching out her hand.
“One thousand days of life,” said Merris Cromwell. She reached into the dying heart of magic and grasped Liannan’s hand. The demon’s icicle fingers stabbed straight through, coming out the other side of Merris’s palm like bloody prisms showing a thousand different shades of scarlet.
Merris screamed. And Liannan vanished, melting away into shadows from the feet up, the last thing to disappear the icicles piercing Merris’s hand, leaving behind only a third-tier demon’s mark in the hollow of her palm.
Merris’s spine arched as if it was breaking and being reformed, her hair flying out in what seemed to be a sudden wind. It settled back over her shoulders shot with red. Like blood in night waters.
When she lifted her face, her eyes were black.
Beside Mae in the darkness, Sin made a small sound and buried her face in her hands.
“You haven’t answered me,” Liannan remarked in a torn, crackling version of Merris Cromwell’s voice. “Have I kept our bargain?”
She looked straight across the darkness where the circle had been, past Nick.
“You have kept our bargain perfectly,” Alan told her. “How do you like your reward?”
Liannan laughed at the look on the magicians’ faces. She lifted her arms like a dancer, enjoying the new body, taking steps that looked like a dancer’s steps.
Merris’s body looked less like Merris’s body every passing moment, the face growing young and smooth around those night-dark eyes. Liannan unwrapped the shawl from around her shoulders, and Mae noticed for the first time as its crimson folds fluttered to the ground that it was not held in place by Merris’s talisman brooch.
“The magicians were offering me bodies I would not have to share,” she said, drawing closer to Nick. “But I don’t mean to complain. I trust you’ll be grateful, Hnikarr.”
“Sharing with Merris means the body lasts,” Alan said, smiling at her nerve. Liannan laughed delightedly back at him. “And there are other benefits to a willing host. How do you like the voice?”
“Maybe I’ll learn to sing,” Liannan in Merris said, already dancing.
She circled Nick, her hand outstretched but not quite touching Nick’s bloody arm as she went by. Her fingers looked longer than they should have in the floodlights, casting a pale shadow like the ghosts of her icicles, and then she went to stand before Alan.
“What can I say?” she asked him, watching him as if he was some amazing new game.
Alan kept smiling at her. “Whatever you like.”
“Alan Ryves, it was a pleasure doing business with you,” Liannan told him. “Feel like making another bargain with me so that I’ll help you fight? I wouldn’t ask for much. Just a little, little thing. Nothing you couldn’t spare.”
The magicia
ns all went tense. Gerald glanced back at them, warning, and none of them moved or spoke a word.
“I think I’ve made enough bargains with you,” Alan said.
“You may live to regret that,” Liannan told him, and she put long, ice-pale hands on Alan’s arms, leaned up, and kissed him. She looked at him as if she was fond of him and added, still smiling, “Then again, you may not live.”
Alan just nodded. Liannan whirled away, black and crimson dress flaring with her mingled hair, shadows and blood, back to Nick.
“I told you I’d be on your side if I got an offer,” she said. “A warning, though. Anzu won’t be happy. Be careful. He knows how to hurt you. He knows you almost as well as I do.”
“And you know me so well,” said Nick, speaking for the first time. His voice was low and rough. It sounded far less human than hers.
“I think so,” Liannan whispered. “Come away with me. There’s a wood outside, and a town full of people to play with. Come be mine again.”
“No,” said Nick. “I have these people to deal with first.”
He looked at Alan again, cold and intent, his attention like a single-minded avalanche, impossible to escape or survive.
Liannan just laughed at him, carefree and unchained. “Come be mine later, then,” she said, and spun away.
She came straight for the side street where they were crouching. Mae felt Sin flinch and lean against her for sheer animal comfort, both of them staring at Liannan with huge, terrified eyes as she went by. Liannan cast them an amused look, obviously highly entertained by Sin’s horror and pain, and blew a kiss as she passed.
She was gone. There was only one demon left standing in the market square.
“Liannan seems to feel she got a fair price in your little bargain,” Nick said to Alan, his voice terribly quiet.
He advanced on Alan like a predator, prowling with his eyes empty of anything but hunger.
“Later,” said Alan quietly.
“No,” Nick snarled.
He stopped in front of Alan, close enough to cut his throat. His stare was a challenge now, his voice out of control, ragged at the edges, consumed with fury.
“We discussed this last night. I’m a demon,” Nick murmured to his brother. “And that means my cooperation comes at a price. I want it. Now.”
Alan shut his eyes, as if he did not want to see the blow coming. “All right.”
Nick, don’t, Mae thought, curled up tight between Sin and her mother, limbs frozen, heart going far too fast. Oh Nick, please don’t.
Nick slid to his knees.
The magicians were moving now, puzzled and muttering. Even Gerald looked uneasy, confused and lost. Nick curled his hand around the back of Alan’s knee. There was a moment of stillness, as if everything had been paused so the world could change.
Then Nick was on his feet, moving fast and light as a cat in the night, barely seen before he appeared where wanted to be, which was beside his brother.
Alan moved to align himself with Nick and face the magicians. He moved smoothly with his weight on both legs, without a trace of pain.
“That was your price?” Gerald demanded, more bewildered than angry. “That was what you wanted, in exchange for all your power? What good is—”
Nick interrupted him by snapping his fingers. The shadows lingering around the edges of the floodlights in the square writhed and took shape at the demon’s command, became two wavering creatures made of darkness, shadow panthers that came slinking into the light and winding around the brothers’ legs.
I bind your powers to the exact limits agreed on in our bargain, Liannan had said.
The bargain she had made with Alan, when Mae had called her up and left them alone together. Not Gerald.
The bargain Alan had told Nick about last night, after Mae had left.
Nick smiled a demon’s smile, slow and ravenous. “Who said anything about all my power?”
21
Bitter Fruit
Mae saw the exact moment that fury crashed through Gerald’s patience and shattered it. He lifted a hand, and wind went blasting in Nick and Alan’s direction. The other magicians took their cues from him and the murmurs of spell casting were suddenly all around, half the circle drawing back for what Mae guessed was a spot of demon summoning, the other half advancing with magic in their hands. Nick and Alan drew their weapons.
“Now,” said Mae, and grabbed Sin’s shoulder for emphasis. “Go alert your archers. Tell the rest of them to come out in the open.”
Sin’s voice sounded faint and stunned, but there was a smile in it. “If you go out,” she said, “they’ll follow you.”
Mae blinked. “Right.” She stood up and dusted off her jeans, looking helplessly at Jamie and Annabel, who stood up with her. “Right, then,” Mae said, and strode out into the market square.
Emerging from their places on the side streets at the other two points of the triangle came the Goblin Market: the woman who sold wind chimes, the man at the knife stall who’d tackled a customer, the necklace-selling pied piper with the gleaming dark eyes. The piper wasn’t holding up a trinket made of human bones this time, though. He was holding a bow and arrow, which he loosed into the midst of the magicians.
That was another signal, apparently. From the black fence surrounding the church, the gardens and towering trees, and the very roof of the church itself, there was suddenly a rain of arrows.
The magicians erupted into a counterattack. A small storm front was rising in front of them like a force field, and in the storm were crows croaking wildly to one another and being tossed about in the wind like leaves. From the center of the Obsidian Circle there sprang a wolf.
Mae took out her knife, which was seeming a bit inadequate just now, and braced herself for the onslaught.
One of the shadow creatures at Nick’s feet leaped for the wolf. Alan shot a crow.
The Ryves brothers moved to join the forces of the Goblin Market.
It took Mae a minute to realize that the three newcomers were being guarded: that she, Jamie, and Annabel were being pushed to the back of the fray.
It made sense. All Mae had was a knife, and Jamie didn’t even have that.
There was a flurry of snarls and yelps under their feet, then in the jostling, fighting crowd Mae suddenly saw faces that couldn’t have possibly been there, her father and her friends from school, and Jamie called out, “Mum, Mae, they’re illusions, don’t pay attention to them,” and Annabel struck out at one leering magician’s face only to find her sword went clean through him and was parried by Nick.
“All of you, get behind me right now!”
“No, they need me,” Mae argued.
“They needed you to make a plan,” said Nick. “They may have even needed you to lead them into this square. But they do not need you to be at the front of a fight, because you don’t know how to fight and you’ll just get in everybody’s way!”
He slashed at a crow and connected, bringing it down in a mess of blood and feathers. A pale girl with no eyes rushed for Mae, but Jamie raised his hand and she dissolved into the wind with a sound like a sigh.
Nick raised a hand and the storm died around them, so they could see four people—then five, and then six—coming at them from the narrowest side street, to the right of the town hall.
Only they weren’t people, Mae saw in a burst of magic light behind them. They were demons, eyes like black jewels shining and perfect in ruined faces. The bodies they were using were dead.
“Surprise zombies,” Jamie said faintly. “Fantastic.”
“Not really a party until someone brings the surprise zombies,” said Nick, and charged them.
The bodies moved too slowly to be much of a challenge, Mae saw, bile rising in her throat as Nick hacked his way through them, too fast for their fumbling, grasping hands to touch him, sword slicing through dead flesh and dark fluids. She saw Annabel go in after him; her impeccably behaved mother with a sword in hand and her blond hair falling w
ild about her shoulders, cutting down the dead.
Mae felt violently proud and violently ill at the same time.
Nick spun and beheaded the body Annabel was fighting, flashing her a savage, gleeful smile. Annabel gave him a nod.
Nick lunged in, sword just to Annabel’s left, inches away from her side, sinking the blade into a dead body and carving its stomach out. He whirled away from the pieces of the dead that were now littering the square and performed a tight circle around Mae, Jamie, and Annabel, protective but restless as well, looking for his next challenge.
The arrows had stopped hailing in from overhead; Mae thought that the Market might have run out. She couldn’t see how many magicians were down, but judging by the chaos all around them, it wasn’t many.
“Alan could probably have organized this better,” she said.
Nick flicked her a look. “Alan couldn’t have organized this at all,” he said. “Who would’ve trusted him? He’s not a leader any more than I am. You two did fine.”
“Illusion,” Jamie’s voice said behind them. “Illusion, illusion, disgusting illusion, eurgh.”
Mae found herself smiling. Praise meant a lot more when the guy couldn’t lie to you. “I’d like to see you being a war leader.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Nick. “My battle cry would be ‘For blood, vengeance, and my undeniable good looks!’”
“I’ve heard worse,” Mae said, and heard worse: heard the scream of insects, a high buzzing that made her think of plagues of locusts, of the fury of gods.
The magicians weren’t gods, though, and these weren’t locusts. They weren’t any kind of insects Mae had ever seen before, more like nightmares of insects thought up by someone who had never seen any but had heard horror stories, flying spidery things with bristles and too-big red eyes.
“How was your summer?” Jamie asked nobody in particular. “Well, I was eaten by insects from hell, and it was all downhill from there.”
Nick lunged and reeled Jamie in by his shirt collar, hand on the back of his neck, and Jamie made a face and shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, there was a curving shimmer of silver in the brown irises, like the reflection of a scythe.
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