The usual form the mist took was a rat. Once, though, Nick had been forced to try and stab a large spider. He hoped it would be something big this time; he could use some action. Thursday night had been ruined, his house had been invaded, but he could be calm about this. All he had to do was kill.
The two amateurs were up on the chairs, moving and making a racket. Alan, who knew better, stood perfectly still and never distracted Nick by stirring or speaking at all. Nick stalked around the perimeter of the room. He caught the shimmer of mist gathering and forming a shape the instant before it happened.
He would’ve had it, but he was not expecting something as long and twisty as a snake. There was just the mist and then suddenly it was there, a thin black stripe against the carpet, moving faster than Nick did, striking faster than Nick did. Nick was only a second behind it.
He sprang forward and brought the sword down hard.
He cut the snake in two bloody halves an instant after it had sunk its fangs into Alan’s leg.
For a moment he was not worried at all. Then he saw the expression on Alan’s face, and he remembered his brother saying, Mae has her talisman, and I can get you one as well.
Nick had not thought to wonder where Mae had got hers. He had not noticed the absence of the telltale bulge under Alan’s shirt.
“You’re wearing it,” Nick breathed, turning his eyes to Mae.
She put her hand to her throat, silent for once. She was smart to stay quiet. There was blood pounding in Nick’s ears. There was blood sliding down his sword. Alan knelt, quite calmly, and rolled up the leg of his jeans. Nick saw the mark, saw two red lines just above his ankle, saw the doorway of the demons on his brother.
This had never happened before.
“Nick, calm down,” Alan said, his own voice unacceptably calm. “It’s only a first-tier mark. We’ll take care of it. We’ll go to the Goblin Market and have it removed.”
Nick’s arm ached with the effort of not swinging his sword, not bringing it down anywhere, on anyone. His whole body felt run by cold rage, as if rage was flowing in his veins and the chill was stinging him into action.
“Shut up!” He wheeled on Mae and Jamie. “Get out,” he suggested. “Or get hurt. It’s your choice.”
His teeth ached, he was gritting them so hard, and Mae and Jamie scrambled away from him over the furniture. He had to lower the sword then, because the only target left was Alan.
Nick drew in a deep breath and threw his sword against the wall. It struck plaster with the ring of steel, and he shut his eyes at the sound.
“You gave your talisman away,” he said, hunting for words. He didn’t want to speak, but he had to; he could do nothing else, because what he wanted to do was hit Alan.
He paced, desperate and silent as an animal. Finally he found words, and threw them at his brother.
“I can’t believe you were so stupid. Not again!”
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, mu
mbling 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.
<
br /> 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.
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