Nick slid the phone into his pocket and came to a decision. He’d go to Alan and tell him everything. Nick had been hiding things too, but he’d tell Alan that he knew about Marie and what he’d done to find out more. Alan would understand that the secrets and lies had to stop.
He wasn’t in the bathroom where Nick had left him. Nick frowned and began to retrace their steps, going slowly back toward where they’d left Mae and Jamie. He was only halfway down the corridor when he was caught and held by the sound of his brother’s voice behind a door.
“I knew he’d be sick,” Alan said. “That didn’t matter.”
Nick had been about to open the door, and now he found himself staring at it instead.
“It seems a lot of things haven’t mattered to you,” said the voice of Merris Cromwell.
There was a small pause, and Alan replied, “I don’t regret anything I’ve done.”
Alan had been set on coming here, and Nick had been set on following him. He would have done it no matter what, but the thought that Alan had cold-bloodedly accepted that Nick would be ill made him feel an uneasy shift in his stomach, as if he was still sick. He couldn’t connect the image of his brother Alan — who’d raised him, packed his school lunches, and used to sit on the edge of Nick’s bed like a small, ferociously patient owl, waiting for him to fall asleep — with the dispassionate voice behind the door.
“You may not regret it, but the Market will resent it,” Merris Cromwell said, her voice low and cold. “If we had known, we would never have let you come among us. You’ll never be welcome there again.”
Alan had told Merris about Mum. Nick should have felt something about that, but he didn’t. He felt nothing. He stood in the cold, echoing corridor unable to make sense of anything.
“Do you think I care?” Alan demanded. “Can you help me or not?”
“I can’t help you, and I’m glad I can’t,” Merris said icily. “Don’t look to the Market for help from now on. Everyone’s hand will be turned against you. You’re on your own.”
Nick heard Alan make a sound he recognized, a soft, shaky breath; hurt but pulling himself together. “I thought I would be. I know what I have to do, then. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Merris said. “Don’t do this.” There was a real note of pain in her voice suddenly, as if she’d thought she knew Alan, as if she’d believed in Alan like Nick had. “Take my advice, Alan. Nobody ever needs to know about this. Hand it over to the magicians. Walk away.”
It was good advice, Market advice. Nobody from the Market would have shielded a magician, or been suicidal enough to openly defy a Circle. Nick wished Alan would take it. If he’d just give up on Mum and give away the charm, Mum would die — but she’d been a magician, and she deserved to die. With the threat of a whole Circle after them lifted, he could protect Alan. They could get that mark off.
But apparently he didn’t know Alan any more than Merris did.
“Take my advice, Merris,” Alan said in a voice twice as cold as hers. “Don’t ever suggest anything like that to me again.”
Merris’ voice was a low hiss. “Get out of my house.”
“No,” said Alan. “First I want you to arrange somewhere else for us to live.”
“And why should I do that?”
“Because I still have contacts in the Market,” Alan told her. “You may spread your stories about me, and some will believe you, but I’m the sweet, studious boy that everybody likes. You’re the mystery. Nobody knows where you get your money from, and I don’t think many people will approve of you leeching money from the helpless victims of magicians and using it to gain power in our Market. Because that’s the way I’ll spin it, Merris. And people will believe me. I can make people trust me; you should know that. Even you did.”
“Believe me, I’m regretting it now.” Merris’s voice snapped into her usual tones, cool and bargaining. “A house is the price of your silence? So be it. You and yours will be out of my home by morning. And you’d better keep your part of the bargain, or I’ll have you killed.”
“Done,” said Alan, in the exact same tone. Then his voice softened. “I’m sorry I have to do this.”
There was no hint of yielding in Merris’s voice. “You don’t have to do this. You should give it up.”
“I’m sorry,” Alan said, his voice kind but firm, “but I’ve already done this and I’ll do a lot worse. I will not give up. And if you can’t help me, Merris, then get the hell out of my way.”
Under any other circumstances, Nick would have found it funny: his brother blackmailing Merris of the Market and not turning a hair. He would’ve approved. Only now it was more proof of what Mum meant to Alan.
Mum and Marie, the girl in the picture. Alan wouldn’t tell him his plans for saving Mum, and he hadn’t even told him that Marie existed. Alan wouldn’t tell him anything, but that didn’t matter. Nick could find out the truth on his own.
He walked away from the door, back toward Mae and Jamie, and as he did so he took out his phone and rang the last listed call.
The same woman’s voice answered, breathless and anxious. “Hello?”
“Can I come and see you?” he asked abruptly. “I know where Alan is. I’ll tell you all about him. Give me your address.”
Alan’s blackmail must have been very successful indeed, since Merris not only found them a new home in London but provided them with her own boat back and gave Nick herbs to make him sleep through the voyage.
“Such concern for me,” Nick said on the dock. His voice was meant to be bitter, but it simply sounded cold. “I’m touched.”
The others were standing in a little knot, trying to keep warm by staying close. It was not yet dawn, and the sea air hit Nick’s face like a series of slaps with icy hands.
Alan was holding Mum’s hand. She still looked groggy from whatever Merris had given her, and she stood leaning against Alan, the billowing black veil of her hair caught by the wind, flying and settling over them both. Alan was watching Nick, his face to all appearances honestly puzzled and hurt.
Nick was standing as far away from the others as he could without actually standing in the sea.
“There’s a bedroom you can sleep in,” Alan offered, his voice tentative. “I’ll sit with you in case you need help.”
“I don’t need your help,” said Nick curtly. He looked away from Alan and Mum, and his eyes settled on another face.
The sight and smell of the sea was already making him feel a little ill, that and the dread of being completely and humiliatingly helpless again curdling in his stomach. The sound of the wind was like the freezing shout of a hundred angry ghosts. Looking at his family only made him feel worse.
Looking at Mae made him feel a little steadier. She had her face tipped up to study his, determined dark eyes and a stubborn mouth. The way she looked was familiar to him by now, and the better he knew her, the better she looked. He smiled at her, a slow, deliberate smile that made an answering smile curve her lips.
“I’d rather have Mae nurse me,” he drawled.
Even if he hadn’t been able to see her, he would have heard the smile in her voice. “Yeah, all right.”
That was when Merris’s skipper, Philip, a man with the close-clipped hair and charcoal-colored suit of a businessman and the worn teeth and yellow tongue of a necromancer, gestured them aboard. The herbs Merris had given Nick were already making him feel a little dizzy, but that was almost a relief; his dread of coming aboard and his fury at Alan both felt distant, wrapped up safe until he could deal with them.
Soon he would be back on land and he would know all Alan’s secrets. For now he could only stagger down the steps to reach the bedroom below deck, his hand fumbling at the doorknob. The room was circular at one end, the bed white and plain with cuffs at each corner.
So this was how they transported the possessed. Nick went and lay back on the bed, thankful that he did not have to keep his feet any longer. He stared up at the wooden ceiling a
nd heard Mae come in and shut the door.
“You don’t need to use the restraints,” Nick told the ceiling. “I’ll be good.”
Mae laughed. “But I was planning to do terrible things to you once I had you at my mercy.”
“Oh,” said Nick. “In that case, go right ahead.”
“No, you’ve spoiled the moment now.”
“Yeah,” Nick muttered. “I do that a lot.”
So many girls had started off looking at him all shiny-eyed and breathless, and then they’d all been disillusioned. Most had ended up scared. Mae had already been around longer than any of those girls, and she didn’t scare easily, but of course it wasn’t like that between them.
“Nick,” Mae said, and hesitated.
It was rare enough for her to hesitate that Nick was intrigued. He levered himself up on his elbows and looked at her. She had her back up against the door, her pink hair mussed by the wind and her cheeks flushed. Which could have been another effect of the wind.
“I was wondering,” Mae continued. “That girl at the Market. Sin. Are you going out with her?”
“No,” said Nick. He didn’t really have much else to say, but Mae was staring at the floor and looking embarrassed, so he went on. “I’ve never really gone out with anyone.”
It had never particularly bothered him either. A night or two with a girl, and then having her go away and the next one come along: it had always seemed like an all-right way to do things.
Nick was surprised that she’d asked; not by the directness of it, because that was her style, but he was surprised that she’d wanted to know.
Since she had, it must mean — he was pretty sure that it did mean — that she preferred Nick. And if she really did…
Mae’s eyebrows had come up. She was smiling a bit.
“Oh really,” she said, her voice amused and incredulous. “A complete innocent, are you?”
“Definitely,” Nick assured her, letting his voice slide low. “You can try corrupting me if you like.”
Mae dimpled. “It’s no fun if you’re asking for it.”
“No, no,” Nick drawled. “Release me, you monster. Your wicked ways shock me to my soul. And yet I find you strangely attractive.”
The boat purred into life, lurching away from the dock and swaying between one wave and the next. Nick shut his eyes in a brief flash of nausea.
“I feel I should warn you,” he said after a moment. “I may be about to get sick or pass out.”
“Uh,” said Mae. “Sexy.”
Funnily enough, it was this exciting news that peeled her off the door Nick had been starting to think she was glued to. She came to stand by the bed, pulling her iPod out of her pocket and fiddling with it, unwinding the earphones coiled around it.
“Maybe what you need is a distraction,” she began.
On impulse Nick reached up and pulled her down to the bed. Mae made a startled sound, half breath and half laugh, and he rolled her over and under him easily, using his strength the way girls sometimes liked him to.
He looked down at her, then leaned in close, feeling her shiver at his breath on her ear, and murmured, “Maybe.”
The morning sunlight was turning the cotton sheets into hot gold; he saw the flash in her eyes under suddenly heavy eyelids and smiled down at her. He was braced over her, his arms supporting his weight, and a sway of the ship and a breath lifted her hips against his. Her breath turned into a shiver, traveling slowly along the length of her body, and she lifted her hands and ran her palms along the tense swell of his arms.
He probably shouldn’t be doing this. Alan liked her, and he might be angry with Alan now but he wouldn’t be angry forever. Alan was his brother, and he shouldn’t be doing this, but Alan had let him get sick and Mae preferred him.
It was all warm, white and gold and that absurd pink, the curves of her and the rumpled lines of the sheets, all blending and blurring together because he was starting to slip out of consciousness.
Mae pushed him gently backward onto the pillows, and he went, throwing an arm over his eyes.
“I’d hate for you to get the wrong idea about me,” he said. “Under normal circumstances, I swear, I would have copped a feel.”
“I was about to suggest that some music might be in order anyway,” said Mae, valiantly pretending that she was not out of breath, her voice warm and trembling as she had been under him a moment ago.
She put one of the iPod earpieces in his ear, and the other presumably in her own, and settled back down on the pillows. The boat rocked them gently back and forth in a way that Nick might have found soothing if he hadn’t felt so ill, and he fought to stay awake as he heard music that sounded in a faint faraway fashion like the drums of the Goblin Market.
“That’s kind of nice.”
“Maybe we can go listen to them sometime,” Mae murmured.
“Maybe,” said Nick.
Mae was a warm weight that tilted him slightly to her side of the bed, possibly less because of her weight than because that was where he wanted to be. The sunlight painted dusty gold streaks against the blackness before Nick’s closed eyes, and the drums beat in a rhythm with his heart. Mae had one foot tucked under his leg, and as he finally lost consciousness he felt her hand lightly pushing back a strand of his hair. It was pointless, but like the music, it was kind of nice.
The last thing he wondered was whether this counted as her asking him out.
11
Answers
THE STREET IN DURHAM WHERE MARIE’S SISTER LIVED felt familiar to Nick. He was aware that he’d never been to Durham before. He didn’t recognize the city, but as he pulled his battered car in line with the shining clean vehicles at the pavement edge, it occurred to him that he knew the street.
It reminded him of Mae and Jamie’s house, of the houses belonging to school friends or girlfriends whose names Nick did not now recall. There were neatly tended gardens, fresh paint on the doors, and a general sense of well-being about the whole area. Here, suggested the blooming flowerbeds, people were comfortable, families were secure, and above all, children were sheltered.
Nick knew it was an illusion. These people hurt each other as much as all families did, and if magic ever invaded their lives, they would be helpless.
Maybe it was an illusion Alan wanted, though. This place was certainly a contrast to the shabby house Merris had found for them yesterday, close to their old house so they could hunt any magicians whom Gerald might direct there. It was squeezed between a Chinese takeaway, bearing a broken sign with letters that sizzled and flickered, and a derelict house, its boarded windows staring and blank as dead eyes.
Alan must have wanted more than the girl. He must have wanted a home like this. Nick looked at the house in the same way that he would have sized up an enemy. Then, instead of attacking, he went up to that brightly painted door and leaned heavily on the bell.
If it had not been for her anxious eyes, Nick would not have thought this was the right woman. Natasha Walsh was blond, thin in an attenuated way, and much older than he had expected her to be.
“Are you — who are you?” she asked.
Nick said curtly, “Nicholas Ryves,” and was amazed to see this slim, pastel-cardiganed housewife blossom into a tentative welcome.
“Oh, you’re one of Daniel’s family! Do come in. Please.”
Nick stepped into a hall, carpeted brown with great pink flowers, and wondered what Alan had told this woman about Dad.
“So you — you said you knew something about Alan,” the stranger said, twisting her hands together.
“You said you saw him last Christmas.”
She pushed open a door and led him into a little sitting room, with cream silk fittings and picture frames glinting brightly on every surface. Nick hovered in the middle of the room, feeling like a clumsy animal who should not be allowed in here, and who would break something in a moment.
“Yes,” she answered. “He spent Christmas here with us. It was so lovely
— we were so happy to have him. He played with the kids. They loved him.” She tilted up her chin, almost defiantly, as if to face pain. “We all loved him, and then he stopped answering my letters.”
He did not stop answering your letters, Nick thought. I threw them away. He thought you had stopped caring.
Alan had come away to this place. He’d left him. He’d wanted to leave him.
Nick didn’t even know how to feel about this. It was like the fact that Alan had made him sick. His mind kept shying violently away from the idea and the unfocused pain it promised. It was better to be angry. He hated this woman, hated this whole family. They were weak and stupid and they couldn’t have his brother and that was all there was to it. He didn’t need to feel anything else.
He felt a treacherous twinge at the thought of Alan with kids. Alan loved kids. He’d pick them up and a soft, wondering expression would come over his face. No wonder Marie had been such a temptation, with a home like this.
Natasha turned a beseeching face to his. “Do you know Alan?”
“Yeah,” Nick said curtly. “He’s my brother.”
She stared at him for a long moment and then said, quite simply, as if anybody should know it was the truth, “Alan doesn’t have a brother.”
The little room felt suddenly cold, frozen in its horrible cream and silver, like a wedding cake left in the freezer. Nick found his voice, and it sounded a long way away.
“He may not have mentioned me,” he answered, putting a stone wall of denial between himself and the possibility that Alan had lied about him, had wished him out of existence, “but I’ve been his brother all my life.”
“Do you mean you’re his stepbrother?” Natasha Walsh offered, looking perplexed.
People doubting his relationship to Alan was nothing new, but on top of everything else it seemed like an insult he could not bear.
“No, his real brother,” Nick growled.
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