“What? Why?” Sin demanded.
Alan gestured at her. It was usually something she liked, seeing him talk with his hands, but right now she could think of about a hundred things she’d rather he be doing with his hands.
“I realize after tonight you probably think you owe me even more than you did before, but I’ve tried to explain to you that it’s not like that. I don’t want you to do anything because you owe me. I also realize that I just sent you rather a mixed message and as I’ve said, I apologize. I’m disgusted with myself. I shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t even have been tempted, and I’m so terribly—I’m so sorry.”
“Wait, what?” Sin asked. “You think this is about owing you? My God, that’s insulting. I’m a Market girl. You don’t think I know better than to keep making the same offer over and over again?”
Alan seemed at a loss for words. Sin felt delighted and calm. So that was why, then. She looked up at him, looking so worried and trying to do the right thing. His hair was ruffled crazily.
“And here I thought you were supposed to be so smart,” Sin said. She tugged him down sharply; he wasn’t actively resisting anymore, so she managed it. Then she let go of his shirt and laid her palms on either side of his face, smiling up at him. “Fool,” she whispered. “I love you.”
Alan jerked back. Sin was left with empty hands.
His body had actually recoiled, as if she’d shot him. His chest was rising and falling hard.
“What is it now?” Sin asked, and heard her voice waver. She almost hated him for doing this to her again, for being able to make her so happy and taking it away. “You don’t have to say it back, you know. I realize the idea is new to you. Just—turn it over in your mind. See what you think.”
His mouth curled into a sneer, too much like an expression that belonged on Nick’s face, and Sin thought, Raised with a demon. She felt hollow inside.
“See what I think?” Alan repeated, his voice cold. “I think it’s ridiculous!”
Sin pulled her robe tighter at her throat. “Okay,” she said. “I think I’m done here.”
“About when did this great romance start?” Alan inquired. “Was all that looking as if you wanted to get sick every time you saw me walk some sort of clever cover? What do I have to do to get you to stop, smash my kneecap with a hammer? I bet that would do it.”
“I wouldn’t bother,” Sin said. “I thought we were past this. Do I have to remind you that until five minutes ago you assumed I’d throw myself at someone a hundred times as if I was merchandise that could be used to settle a debt?”
“You were the one who leaned in to kiss me and told me how very grateful you were in the same breath,” Alan said. He had the absolute gall to look distraught, as if it was his heart being thrown aside as if it was rubbish. “Tell me, what else was I supposed to think?”
She had said that. She tried to put herself back into that skin, only a few weeks ago, tried to feel what she had felt before her heart had changed.
“I wasn’t offering love then,” she said, and he flinched at the word. “I don’t offer that as payment for anything. But that doesn’t matter. You’ve already made up your mind about me. What you want is someone like Mae to love you, someone normal and white and perfect. You see me as something the real people come and watch as if they’re at the zoo, and the idea of me having feelings is ridiculous!”
“Yes,” said Alan. “The idea of you having feelings for me is ridiculous.”
They stood staring at each other across a moonlit foot of space, both of them standing in shadows and the square of light under the skylight between them.
So there it was, the truth laid out between two liars at last. He thought she was too shallow to love anyone. He’d kissed her because he thought so little of her, thought she was a toy. He was just like everyone else: He believed the role.
“Something else you always thought about me was that I was stupid,” Sin said at last, her voice shaking. “Well, you were right. I can’t believe how stupid I’ve just been.”
It was cowardly to use the kids as a shield, but just for that moment she didn’t care. She ran into the room where they were sleeping and curled up by their bed, burying her face in the sofa cushion she’d slept on the night before so she could cry into it and be sure no-one would hear.
In the morning Alan was gone. Sin couldn’t spend time worrying whether he had just gone to work early or if this meant she should clear out before he came back. She had to get Toby to his new day care, and Lydie and herself to school.
The Tube had delays on the Northern Line, and that meant once she had delivered the kids she was late for school. She got off at her station hurrying, her hair floating in a static mass around her head from the shoving fight she’d had through the crowded carriage.
She was really not in the mood to meet Mae outside.
Mae’s hair was shining and straight. Her T-shirt reading I’M NO MODEL LADY—I’M THE REAL THING, unlike Sin’s charity shop uniform, fit her perfectly. And Sin was tired of trying to be above all that.
“What do you want now?”
Mae recoiled at her tone. “I was just wondering when you were coming back to the Market,” she said frostily.
“What?” Sin asked. “Are you graciously inclined to allow me back in? Might want to deal with being a tourist leading the Market before you make any rash decisions.”
“What?” Mae asked. “Wait.”
Sin didn’t have time to wait, but she stopped in the middle of the street all the same, the early-morning traffic of London buzzing all around them, and watched Mae’s brown eyes go wide.
“Sin,” Mae asked carefully, “do you have Celeste’s pearl? Because I don’t.”
“I saw you—,” Sin began, and remembered how dark it had been, in the storm. She’d seen Mae so close, and seen Celeste’s throat bare. She’d just assumed.
Mae nodded. “I thought you had it. And obviously, you thought I did.”
Mae’s subdued manner the night before suddenly made more sense.
She still looked subdued, actually, and hurt on top of that.
“Would you hate me?” she asked suddenly. “If I had it?”
Sin looked her over, shining hair to expensive sneakers, and back to her eyes. “Yeah,” she said, and then smiled. “But not for that long.”
Mae’s dimple flashed out in return. “Good to know. Not that either of us is likely to get the pearl anytime soon.”
“You sound like you think you know where it is,” Sin said slowly.
“Who was the one person on that deck we can’t trust?” Mae asked. “I don’t want to think it—but it would make sense for Seb to take the pearl. He could use it as proof he’s on the magicians’ side if his loyalty is called into question. He’d be able to show he kept the pearl safe.”
Sin thought about Jamie the magician, who had put Nick in the Circle’s hands, who looked as if he had pearls for eyes. She thought of Nick the demon, and Alan the liar. Alan who worked for his own agenda, and did not care how cruel he might be.
Who was the one person on that deck we can’t trust?
She wasn’t sure it was that simple. But Mae’s argument did make sense.
“Could be,” she said finally. “I’m late for school.”
If Mae was right, even if she wasn’t, the pearl was as far out of their reach as it had ever been. Exactly as far, if it was with a magician, aboard a boat.
Neither of them had an invitation there now. Mae becoming a messenger, consorting with the magicians, firing that gun—it hadn’t got her the pearl. Sin could be sorry for her.
She wasn’t sorry that Mae wasn’t leader yet.
Sin didn’t have a terribly convincing cover story worked out. She mumbled about a family emergency and wished she’d thought to call the school earlier. The headmistress had given both her hair and her baggy uniform a look that nicely combined disapproval, distaste, and disbelief.
It was Sin’s own fault. She was
all off balance, and her performance was substandard at best. She got through it somehow and went to class.
They were studying a book about a woman who was all angsty about her husband’s dead wife. So far Sin liked the dead wife best, though because she was a girl and the most interesting character, Sin had dark suspicions she might turn out to be evil.
She did not air her suspicions. She kept her head down, hoping questions about the Gothic tradition would not hit it.
She needed to pay attention and catch up, but she could not keep her mind off the question of the pearl. If Mae was right and Seb had it, the person with the best chance of getting it from him was Mae’s brother. Sin had to act first.
She tried to think of anything she could possibly do, and tried not to think of anything else.
Mae becoming a messenge There was a knock at the classroom door. Sin jolted out of her reverie so hard she almost knocked her book off the desk; only her fast reflexes saved it.
Ms. Black walked over to the door and opened it.
“Hello,” said Alan, and as soon as that gentle, courteous voice hit Sin’s ear she hurt her neck looking around. Alan was wearing a suit jacket and had his hands clasped, a particularly solemn and responsible look on his face. He seemed older somehow. “I’m a social worker the hospital assigned to the Davies family?”
“Oh,” said Ms. Black, and shot a quick, guilty look at Sin.
“You heard about the incident?” Alan asked, as if quietly grateful to have a fellow adult who understood the situation and could sympathize with him. “I’m sorry to disrupt your class—”
“Oh, no,” Ms. Black said. “Not at all.”
Alan gave her a grave smile. “I’m afraid I must ask if I can take Cynthia Davies away from her studies. There are some forms at the hospital that require her signature. Routine, of course, but without them…”
“I understand completely,” Ms. Black said.
Sin shoved all her books into her new bag at once and was rising to her feet before Alan murmured, “Thank you.”
There was a little park a few streets away from Toby’s day care. Sin told Alan to drive there. They could talk, and she would be close enough to get Toby even if the talk went wrong.
They didn’t speak much on the way. Sin leaned her forehead against the car window and hushed feelings of excitement trying to clamor within her. She’d been happy too soon last night.
The park was basically a bit of grass and trees fenced around, but at this time of day it was deserted, and that was good enough. They sat on a rise of grass between trees and a path. Alan was a little awkward sitting down. Sin forced herself to watch and keep her face impassive.
When they were sitting down, Alan turned to her. “I’m sorry for being such a jerk.”
They were not touching, and Sin lowered her head so she wasn’t looking at him. “Okay.”
“I’m really sorry,” Alan said. “I can’t—I can barely believe I acted that way. I’ve thought about someone saying that to me for years. I had it planned out in my head. Which is pathetic, I know. It went a hundred different ways.”
Sin bowed her head. “It was just never me saying it.”
“Well—no,” Alan said.
Sin laughed past an obstruction in her throat. “Oh, keep going,” she said. “You’re doing so well.”
“I never imagined you,” Alan said quietly. “My imagination’s not that good. I never thought that was possible. Even when I started to want it.”
Sin raised her head. “Just so you know? First time you’ve made that clear.”
“Right,” Alan said. He looked pale, and Sin realized she could finally, tentatively, start to be happy again. “I’m really messing this up, then.”
“Yes,” Sin told him.
“I’m not very good at human emotions,” Alan said. “I know that’s creepy. I have an aunt and cousins, and a few months ago I tried to get back in touch with them. I thought we could have a blissful family reunion, and it didn’t—it didn’t quite work out that way. I keep thinking of human love as something from the picture books my mother used to read to me, something fixed in pastel colors. Something sure.”
“Something perfect?” Sin asked. “Like Mae?”
Alan looked startled. “But I told you how it was with Mae. I told you I lied to her, and I couldn’t make myself stop, and I couldn’t make myself be sorry enough.”
“Here is a tip for you about romance,” Sin said. “If you tell a girl another girl is perfect, that’s the bit the first girl tends to focus on. Also, telling a girl another girl is perfect is really dumb.”
“Thank you,” Alan said. “I need all the help I can get.” He paused. “Also, Mae is not perfect.”
Sin looked up at him from under her eyelashes. “And me?”
“I don’t lie to you,” Alan said. “I lie with you.”
Sin stopped looking up at him from under her eyelashes and burst out laughing.
Alan went red. “So I’ve just realized how that came out. Uh.”
Sin laughed and laughed. She had to cover her face with her hand and laugh into her palm, leaning into Alan a little.
“Oh, Alan Ryves,” she said. “You’re such a fantastic liar. You are the smoothest con man of them all. Who could resist that silver tongue?”
Alan laughed and leaned closer, his shoulder solid and warm against hers. “I was all set to grovel,” he told her. “But now I’ve lost my concentration.” He paused. “I really am sorry,” he continued softly. “I might be messed up, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I want—I want to be as good to you as I know how.”
“I’d like that,” Sin said, in a low voice. “I want to be good to you as well. Your leg—”
Alan flinched so that their shoulders were no longer touching. “You don’t have to say anything about it. You were right, things have changed. I was wrong to bring it up.”
“No,” Sin said. “You were wrong to bring it up like that, but all the things we were yelling about are big. They matter. So I want to say: It’s a big deal, but it’s not a bad thing. And it’s not ever going to be a deal breaker.”
She took a deep breath and stared at her knees, her legs swimming in the gray flannel skirt. She wanted for the conversation to be over. She wanted to be as good to him as she knew how. But she’d had enough of misunderstandings.
“Do you see any deal breakers for you here?” she asked. “In the long term? Because I was thinking about—the long term.”
She looked up at Alan, lifting her chin and being the princess of the Market, not afraid to look anyone in the eyes. Alan had gone still.
Then, slowly, he smiled. It was like the smile he’d given her at the Goblin Market, the time she’d thrown him the fever blossom. It was better this time: It was just the two of them, and the knowledge that all the parts they played would be seen through.
“I don’t have deal breakers,” Alan said. “I look on tempests, and am never shaken.”
“Shakespeare?”
His eyes brightened. “You know the poem?”
“No,” said Sin. “I know your quoting voice.”
“Oh,” Alan murmured. He leaned forward. Sin leaned forward too.
She smiled at him, their faces so close he probably couldn’t see the smile. “I’m not like other girls,” she whispered, and she thought he could hear the smile in her voice. “You can’t just have me for a Shakespeare quotation. I thought you were meant to be a charming devil.”
“It’s true,” Alan said. “I am quite the wordsmith.”
“So?” Sin slid his glasses off and threw them gently onto the grass, and then leaned closer.
“There are so many reasons I want to be with you,” Alan said. “But I know the most important one.”
She leaned her forehead against his. “Yeah?”
“You being brave and beautiful and smart is nice, obviously,” Alan said thoughtfully. “But it’s not important. Not compared to the future we have together in a life o
f crime.”
“You make a good point.”
“Conning people out of their savings,” Alan said. “Forgery. Blackmail. Selling real estate on Mars. We could have it all. You with me, Bambi?”
Sin pushed him back on the grass and leaned over him, her hair falling on each side of his face. The whole world was small and quiet, the sun filtering through her hair in gold and red.
“Clive, I was with you from ‘I’m a social worker.’”
She laughed down at him. He rose on one elbow and caught her mouth and kissed her, slow and warm as sunshine, and Sin could be happy. Nobody was going to take this away.
When they left the park to pick up Toby, Alan held her hand. Sin could move with any partner, and she focused so she did not outmatch his step. An elderly lady with a terrier gave them a second look, because they were obviously together. Sin just smiled at her, and after a moment, the old woman smiled back. They passed on.
Alan charmed the day-care supervisor, of course. Sin rolled her eyes at him behind the supervisor’s back.
“I’m naturally charming,” he told her in the car. “I can’t help that.”
“I don’t have your way with words,” Sin said. “So I’m just going to go with a quick response. Ha!”
Both times they got out of the car, when they stopped for Lydie and when they got home, Alan reached for her hand. Sin rested against his side despite the difficulty of balancing Toby and measuring her step with Alan’s: She liked being there. The contact made everything seem real.
It also made things clear to Nick and Mae, who were both in the flat. Mae’s eyebrows went up, and then she grinned.
Nick’s eyes narrowed.
Neither of them said anything, because Mae was occasionally tactful and Nick was always Nick. Sin changed into a T-shirt and jeans, Alan made dinner, and everyone discussed how to get the pearl back.
“I’ll kill Seb and take it from his body,” Nick suggested.
“Your plan is always killing, Nicholas,” Alan said. “It worries me. I want you to have many goals. What if he didn’t take it?”
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