Nick shrugged.
“What if he did take it, and hid it?” Alan pursued.
“What are you going to do with the pearl, if you do get it from Seb?” Sin asked, on an impulse.
Nick looked at her steadily. “I’m going to give it to Mae.”
So there was yet another way for Mae to win. Sin met Nick’s eyes and wondered if he was bothered by the new development of her and Alan, or if this was just Nick being himself. It was hard to differentiate between Nick being deliberately offensive and his everyday personality.
She did think there was something tense about the line of his shoulders that wasn’t usual.
“I don’t want to win because you just hand the prize to me,” Mae said, outraged.
“Fine,” Nick said. “Then I see only one fair way for you to settle this. You girls will have to wrestle.”
Mae and Sin glanced at each other. Sin grinned. “Fine by me. I’d win.”
“I don’t know,” Nick drawled. “She’s tiny, but she’s bad-tempered. Plus, she comes up with strategies. I suggest one that involves oil.”
“Thank you, Nick. If you insist on being no help at all you can do it quietly,” Mae told him.
“I think you’re very helpful, Nick,” Lydie put in worshipfully.
Mae smirked and turned back to the map of the boat she’d sketched out with a little input from all of them, and which she had accidentally got a bit of ketchup on.
Sin had caught Mae’s look of doubt at Alan when the leadership of the Market came up. She’d also noticed that Alan didn’t say anything.
There was no way to tell from the map where someone might choose to hide a pearl, and no way for Nick to go back right now. Gerald had told Jamie to get rid of him. The Aventurine Circle was in upheaval, and the last thing they needed around was a demon.
Until they had another use for him. Until they had someone else to kill.
That didn’t stop everyone from talking about it until Toby was passed out with his head on the table, and Sin had to get up and put him and Lydie to bed. It took a few stories to get Lydie down, and when she came out into the hall she saw through the open door Mae sitting on the sofa watching TV and Nick sharpening knives at the window. The was no Alan in sight.
Which meant Alan was probably alone in his room. Sin figured he might want some company.
“So, Alan and Sin,” Nick said.
On the other hand, Alan probably had a book. He could wait for just a little while. Sin drew closer to the door.
Mae lifted the remote and clicked off the television, easing backward with one arm along the sofa back and her head tilted to look at Nick from a new angle.
“What about them? How are you feeling?”
“You know I don’t like it when you ask me such personal questions, Mavis,” Nick said. “Be a lady.”
Mae made an unladylike gesture. Nick had his head bent over the whetstone and knife in his hands, his hair falling in his eyes, but he must have caught the gesture reflected in the glass of the window. He gave a half smile.
“Does it bother you?” Mae asked.
“Bother me?” Nick repeated slowly, as if he was speaking in a foreign language. Sin supposed he always was. “I didn’t expect it,” he said finally. “And I usually do expect that kind of thing. It’s strange. If she’s using my brother, I’ll make her sorry.”
“Sin wouldn’t do something like that,” Mae said.
“Is Sin really your big concern?” Nick inquired. “What about Alan? I always thought you two would—I thought he liked you.”
“Not enough,” Mae answered softly. “And I didn’t like him enough either. We’ve both known that for a while. The only one who kept insisting that it was going to happen was you.”
Nick did not look up from sharpening his knife, and this time he didn’t smile, either.
“Because you wanted to give me to Alan as a reward or something equally horrible,” Mae said.
“Maybe I thought you’d be a good reward.”
There was a long pause.
“This is me staring at you in disbelief,” Mae said eventually. “Just so you know.”
“Don’t talk to me about what I know. You know about how humans feel about each other. Alan knows better than I do, anyway. I get that I don’t know. I know that I don’t know. I wanted something good for both of you. I wanted you to be happy.”
“Well, you got it wrong,” Mae said, her voice growing more gentle. “But that’s pretty normal for humans, too.”
“Everyone in this world does seem to spend all their time getting it wrong.” Nick stopped and tested the sharpness of the knife with his thumb. “Everyone in my world too.”
“We get things right in this world,” Mae said. “Every now and then. You get things right.”
“Every now and then,” Nick responded, almost under his breath. He laid the whetstone down on the windowsill. “Why would Alan go for Sin?” he asked, and outrage spiked hot in Sin’s chest. She wanted to fly into the room and hit Nick until he was bloody, until she realized exactly how furious and bewildered Nick sounded. “Alan doesn’t even like new people.”
Sin couldn’t see Mae’s face, but she saw her hand clench on the sofa cushions, in a movement that looked partly like frustration and partly like prayer, as if she was imploring the sofa gods for patience.
“Sin’s hardly a new person.”
“It’s new for her to be this close,” Nick argued.
“You don’t think Alan likes for people to be close? He obviously likes Sin to be close. And Alan likes new people just fine,” she told Nick. “He liked me and Jamie from the first minute, and he’d known us a few days when he let us move in. He wants people to be close. The minute you found out he had other family, he dragged you off to Durham and tried to bond with people he barely knew.”
Nick stood up. His face was not quite as expressionless as usual; there was a hard edge to his mouth, of anger or just possibly distress.
“What are you saying about Alan?” he demanded. “That he wants people to be close too much? Is Sin going to hurt him?”
“I trust Sin. And I’m not saying anything about Alan. I’m talking about you, and this thing you do.”
Nick took a step toward the sofa, not as if he wanted to be closer to Mae but as if he was advancing on her.
“What do you mean?”
“I remember reading your father’s diary,” Mae said. “I remember how you said that Alan didn’t like being left alone, when what you meant was that you didn’t want to leave him. It’s okay if new people upset you, if you’re wary about them getting close to you or your brother. Don’t shove what makes you uncomfortable onto Alan. They’re your feelings, and once you admit that, you can deal with them.”
Nick was still for a moment, considering.
Then he said, “All right.”
Sin could not see Mae blink, but she knew body language. The way Mae’s head was suddenly held, frozen for a fraction of a second, meant that Sin would have bet a week’s rent that a blink had happened.
Apparently the demon was not always this amenable during his lessons about emotions. Color Sin shocked.
“I remember things too,” Nick said. “I remember when you and Jamie were living with us, when Alan had a demon’s mark, and I wasn’t talking to him.”
“You were so unhappy.” Mae did not sound as if she was reminiscing, but as if she was giving Nick information.
Nick came a few steps closer, no longer advancing like an enemy, but prowling forward just the same.
“Once I woke up and Alan was screaming from the dreams demons were sending him. I went to him, but you were already there. Do you remember that?”
“Not really,” Mae answered. “I tried to do whatever I could.”
“You were comforting him, and I thought—I thought that after his mark was taken off, he wouldn’t want to go to Durham. I thought he would want to stay with you. But he didn’t want to. He went back to the people he t
hought could be his family, the people he was surer of.”
Nick reached the sofa, going on one knee in the sofa cushions, one hand on the sofa back where Mae’s arm lay. He was arched over her, his back a curve, hair in his eyes and his eyes utterly intent.
“So tell me, Mavis,” he murmured. “Who wanted to be with you?”
He reached out and touched her face, turning it toward his. Mae turned her face up to his, the ceiling lights touching her profile with gold. For a moment Sin thought, Good for them, and that maybe tonight, for just this one night, everyone in this little home could be happy.
Before their lips met, Mae turned her face away.
“Nick,” she said in a low voice. “Don’t.”
Nick went tense all over. The bow of his back, with his face bent toward Mae, suddenly looked a great deal more sinister. “Why not?”
Mae tilted her face up again, this time defiantly. She did not move out of Nick’s shadow. “Leaving aside the fact that I actually do have more pride than to let you say, ‘Oh well, I might as well have her’ the moment it seems like Alan doesn’t want me after all, as if I have no choice in the matter, as if I’d put up with being passed around like a parcel—”
“That isn’t how it is,” Nick snarled. “Just because I was trying not to stand in the way—”
“Leaving that aside,” Mae said, powering on determinedly over Nick’s voice until he shut up, “there’s the mark. And that makes the idea that I have no choice in the matter far too close to the truth.”
Nick glared down at her. “You asked me to put that mark on you!”
“I know I did,” Mae said, her tone level.
“Don’t lie to me.” Nick’s voice was suddenly loud, suddenly so angry that it struck Sin it went right through being an order and crashed into becoming a plea. “You wanted me before the mark. I know you did.”
“I know I did too,” Mae said again, in just the same way, and then her voice went softer. “But feelings change.”
Nick stared down at her, eyes boring into her face. “No,” he murmured, his voice low and sure. “You still want me.”
“What does it matter?” Mae asked bleakly. “I don’t know how my feelings would have changed without the mark. I trust you not to use the mark against me deliberately, but we don’t know how much the mark affects me without either of us knowing it. We do know it makes me want to please you, to do what you want. I can’t risk becoming some sort of satellite to you. I don’t want to lose bits of myself. I want you, but I don’t want to be yours. I want to be mine. And what about you? What do you want?”
Nick drew his hand away from her face as if her skin had burned him. “I don’t understand.”
“Sure you do,” Mae said. “You can’t just reach out and snag the parcel as it goes by. This is the human world, and I’m a human. I know that you’re not one. But I need you to say something to me. I need to know.”
“What use is it?” Nick demanded. “Since apparently I’m being punished for doing what you wanted.”
Mae launched herself up from the sofa. Nick had to stand up in a hurry, or she would have head-butted him in the face. He swung away from the sofa, looking like a caged animal about to start pacing, and Mae crossed her arms over her chest. There was a sheen of tears making her dark eyes gleam.
“It’s not about punishing you,” Mae said furiously. “It’s not about you at all. It’s about me, it’s about staying myself. But if I’m able to get the pearl, well, then maybe I’ll want to hear what you have to say to me.”
Nick went still. He had not considered the pearl this way before, Sin thought, and she thought too that he might be surprised Mae had.
“So what you need is the pearl.”
“What I want,” Mae said, “is for you to come to me after I get the pearl, and tell me what you want. And if you don’t want anything enough to try and put it into words—”
She shrugged in a jerky movement and went for the door. Sin flattened herself against Alan’s bedroom door, about to slide in, but she heard Mae’s last words loud and clear.
“Well then, Nick. Don’t bother.”
Once she had slipped into Alan’s room, she leaned back against the closed door and gave him a smile.
“So your brother disapproves of me.”
“Of course,” Alan said, looking up from his book and smiling at the sight of her. “You’re obviously going to break my heart.”
It didn’t sound entirely like a joke, and Sin didn’t know what to say, so she went over to the bed and kissed him. Alan pulled her down close, his hand at the back of her neck. After a few minutes Sin drew back so she could climb onto the bed. She got in on the left side, his good side, and whispered into his ear, “Obviously, that is my plan.”
“It’s just clear to everyone I don’t deserve you,” Alan said. “But don’t worry about it. I’m going to lie and scheme and kill to keep you anyway.”
“That’s all right then,” Sin said. She drew her mouth along the line of his jaw. “Why don’t you close your book?”
Alan did not do so. “It’s very interesting.”
Sin smiled against his skin. “So am I.”
“The most interesting girl I know,” Alan murmured.
She’d heard that before, with “beautiful” instead of “interesting.” She liked it better this way.
She wasn’t crazy about the way Alan pulled away from her a little and looked at her seriously.
“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” he started, which was a beginning that never ended well. “And I want to be honest with you.”
“You don’t have to be,” Sin said. “If you lie, I’ll know what you mean.”
Alan reached out and touched her face, and looked at her as if she was a kaleidoscope, showing all her different colors, and he liked them all.
“I’m being terribly selfish right now,” he said in a low voice. “Cynthia. You know I’m as good as marked for dead.”
Sin’s hands curled into fists, her nails cutting into her palms and stinging, the way tears stung when you refused to let them fall.
“I know,” she said.
“The Circle’s a mess right now,” Alan continued. “But it won’t be a mess forever. They’ll find a way to use Gerald’s mark on me. Or they’ll just kill me.”
“We’ll get it off,” Sin said.
“We’ll try,” he returned. “But that’s the thing. I don’t want to act like I only have a few days to live. I want to act like I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want to go anywhere. I want us to take our time.”
“Oh, just great,” Sin said. She kissed him again to show him that he could wait around being romantic all he wanted. She would still be there. “You’ll be sorry when I move out.”
“You’re still—?”
“‘Let’s not rush things, Cynthia,’” Sin said in an imitation of Alan’s voice. “‘Let’s just move in together.’ Yes, I’m moving out. You can come over and cook me dinner now and then, though.”
“Sounds fair.”
Sin settled lower down, against the rise of the pillows. “For now you can read to me.”
“I’d like that,” said Alan.
He sat up a little to rearrange the pillows, then pulled them flat rather than pushing them against the headboard, Sin’s head sliding down on them. Alan leaned over her and kissed her, arched over her, one hand running along her ribs, fingers trailing warm over her thin T-shirt. Sin’s breath came short as the kiss went deep and it didn’t matter, breathing seemed like a faraway irrelevance compared to shivering under Alan’s mouth.
“I would, you know,” Alan murmured into the kiss.
Sin gave a soft interrogative sound, which was as good as he was getting right now.
“Lie,” Alan answered, kissing her again.
“Scheme,” he added after a moment into her ear, and kissed the place at the edge of her jaw. Sin arched up underneath him, and his fingers touched the slice of skin between her shirt and
jeans.
“And kill,” he whispered against her mouth, and kissed her breathless again.
“That’s good to know,” Sin told him when she had to break away, her heart drumming in her ears. She turned her head to the side, saw Alan’s free hand still holding his book, and started to laugh softly, looking up at him. “You’re keeping your place.”
“Of course. I’m going to read to you.” Alan smiled down at her. “In a minute.”
After quite a lot longer than a minute, he did. Sin put her arm around his stomach and rested her cheek against his shoulder and listened to him. He’d chosen something he thought she would like.
She did like it. She was simply happy, in a way she hadn’t been in a year and more, in a shining, certain way. She hid her smile against his shoulder and went to sleep.
When she woke up in the early morning, she was cold because she was lying on top of the covers and she was alone.
Sin stretched and rose from the bed, straightening her wrinkled clothes and yawning as she padded out into the hall. She saw Mae in the sitting room, curled up on the sofa in a ball and fast asleep. She hadn’t left after all.
Sin was smiling as she opened the kitchen door.
Nick was sitting on one of the chairs, hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging empty in front of him. Something about the way he was sitting made Sin think he had been there for a while.
But not all that long. The blood on the table and on one of the other chairs, sprayed over the floor, was not quite dry yet.
There were two knives on the table. Sin knew them, had seen Alan throwing them once at the Goblin Market. Nick must know them too.
They were Alan’s knives.
She could see very clearly what had happened. She wished she couldn’t. She wished she could just stand there in the doorway and shake and demand to know what was going on.
But she knew, as well as Nick did.
When the mark that could torture him or kill him or do anything to him that Gerald of the Aventurine Circle wanted had made Alan get up and go God knew where, Alan had forced himself into the kitchen.
To stop himself from leaving, to delay himself just a moment, he’d put a knife through his hand and held himself pinned to the table for the time he needed to leave them a message.
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