The words were cut deep into the surface of the table, deeper than they needed to be, as if Alan was desperate to show how much he meant what he had written.
I love you. Don’t come after me.
13
Dark My Light
I’M GOING AFTER HIM,” NICK SAID.
It made Sin blink and shook her out of paralysis into movement. She wasn’t certain how long she had been standing there, shivering and staring at the blood and words.
She moved forward a step and found her body had betrayed her, making her wobble. “We don’t know where he is.”
Nick stood up, pushing his chair back violently.
“I know where Gerald is. And I’m going to gut him slowly until he tells me what he did with my brother.”
Sin looked up at his black eyes.
“All right,” she said. “We’ll go together.”
She left before he could argue with her, running back to the room and shoving on her shoes, grabbing up her knives. She got one look at the dented pillow where Alan had slept beside her that night and had to swallow down terror and panic, but she didn’t let herself falter. She ran right back out to the sofa, where she shook Mae awake.
“Wha—,” Mae said, her eyes still blurry with sleep. Sin felt a moment of envy that Mae didn’t know, and pity because she was going to tell her.
“Alan’s gone,” she said. “Nick and I are going to get him. Please will you stay with Lydie and Toby?”
Mae was awake in an instant, reality doing the job of cold water, her whole face changing. A slight crazed look about her eyes suggested she would much rather deal with a whole band of killer magicians than two kids, but she nodded at once.
“Of course,” she said, and squared her shoulders.
“Thanks,” Sin told her, and ran. In the hallway she ran right into the solid wall of Nick’s back. “I’m coming with you,” she reminded him furiously.
Nick didn’t say anything, but he let her follow in his wake as he slammed through the door along the wire-mesh corridor and down the cold stairwell. He was moving fast, but Sin could do that too.
They found themselves out in the chill of an autumn morning, shivering by the side of the road and looking at the empty space where Alan and Nick’s car had been. Sin glanced at Nick.
“Can you just—send yourself there?”
“No,” Nick snarled. “Because my stupid brother convinced me to give up the best part of my power for nothing.”
He wheeled, a furious but contained movement like an animal in a cage, and stalked down the street.
Sin followed. “Are we stealing a car?”
It seemed like a good idea to her, but she hoped Nick knew how to do it. She suspected he did.
Over his shoulder, Nick said, “I’ve got another car.”
The car was parked a few streets away. Sin would never have picked it out as Nick’s. It was a sleek silver thing, gleaming like the surface of a polished gun and expensive-looking.
At any other time, Sin would have had questions. Now she slid into the passenger seat as soon as Nick turned the key in the door. The black leather of the seat slid beneath her jeans, butter-soft and sinking, and Sin’s guess was that this was an old car lovingly restored.
She remembered seeing a car this color in Nick’s garden this summer, but she would never have thought he could do so much with it in such a short time.
She hoped it went fast.
The engine purred into life, and she found that it did. Nick, grim-faced behind the wheel, seemed to be taking street corners very personally. Sin gripped the dashboard and waited, watching the city pass by in a blur until they reached the river.
Then all there was to do was follow the Thames through the Bankside until they found the magicians’ boat.
Sin was on the riverside, and she wasn’t driving. She watched the river with such intensity that her eyes burned.
“There!” she said, and pointed.
Nick followed the progress of the boat down the river, and at the first opportunity he took a sharp left onto London Bridge. Car tires screeched around them, horns blaring and wheels spinning, and Nick stopped their car by driving it into the bridge railing.
Sin was braced against the dashboard already. She lowered her head and tried to absorb the impact as it slammed through her body, then shoved open the car door and staggered out. On one side of her was Tower Bridge, framed golden against the light, and on the other was the glittering far-off city and the hundred sparkling red eyes of the OXO tower. They swam in front of her eyes.
She stood still for a moment, staring straight in front of her, trying to will the dizziness away. Between massed rows of box-shaped office buildings with box-shaped windows there was another building, almost hidden. The piece of it she could make out looked like a white door surrounded with light. Sin focused on it until she could see properly again.
Then she turned to Nick and found him standing on the bridge railing.
He jumped.
Sin rushed to the rail and saw the boat passing in the river below, saw its pristine whiteness marred by the dark shape of Nick landing on the deck. In the wake of the boat as it moved were two white lines cut into the black water, ripples spreading to form bird’s wings, like a swallow leaving as winter came. In a moment the boat would be gone.
Sin vaulted onto the broad steel strip that lay on top of the marble rail and dived like a swimmer.
She landed like an acrobat, like a dancer was taught to land, in a ball, rolling off the impact and ending the roll on her feet.
On her feet, on the deck of the Queen’s Corsair, where the whole Circle was waiting for them. And they had no plan, neither of them even knew how to make a plan, all they had was this driving rage and the need to find Alan, to save him at any cost.
Nick had landed like a cat on his feet, braced, and Sin didn’t like to think about how much that must have hurt. His only concession to the pain was standing still for a few seconds.
Then he was moving again, going for the door, and Sin followed him. The hell with plans.
Down the flight of stairs they went, and into the corridor, where they met their first magician.
It was the gray-haired woman, Laura.
Sin knew something was very wrong, so wrong she could not even put it together in her head, when Laura stepped aside for Nick and Sin with a smile.
Nick stormed on without a sign he had noticed, but Sin had noticed. They passed Helen next, and she stood to one side with her head bowed. Not one magician tried to stop them on their way or even seemed surprised to see them.
When Sin glanced back over her shoulder, she saw the magicians they had passed were following them at a distance, in procession like mourners following a hearse.
Nick did not look back. He just strode on, apparently oblivious to everything, down the corridors and the steps until he reached the glass doors of the ballroom. He shoved both open, and they broke with a crash like music and thunder.
Inside the ballroom was most of the Aventurine Circle, all except for the magicians following in Nick and Sin’s footsteps, and Jamie. Seb was there, and the look on his face made Sin go even colder.
All the other magicians were tense, almost standing to attention. Gerald was chatting to a couple of still and silent magicians as if he was attending a soiree.
He turned after a moment, a well-mannered host recognizing two new guests. He nodded at them, tall but basically unthreatening-looking, his voice mild and pleasant.
“Cynthia Davies? I never expected to see you here again, but—out of the frying pan, straight back into the frying pan, as the saying doesn’t go. Of course you’re welcome. And Nick. Always a pleasure.” Gerald smiled. It was a genuinely nice smile. “I admit I was expecting you.”
Nick drew in a breath. Even that sounded like a snarl.
Sin discovered she’d stepped back from him, as if his fury was a black aura pushing people away without their conscious will.
“Whe
re is he?” Nick asked. Hearing his voice was terrible, the sounds mangled and flat, like the sound of an animal being flayed alive and still roaring for blood. “Where is he?”
The other magicians drew back. Gerald’s smile did not even flicker.
“The thing is,” he said conversationally, “I can’t let the other Circles think the Market can run around assassinating magicians without consequences, can I?”
Oh God. Gerald had given Mae a gun for more reasons than one.
He knew the entire Circle would believe Alan had killed Celeste. He’d framed someone he knew he could publicly, terribly punish any time he wanted, and thus win over Celeste’s supporters.
Sin whispered, “What have you done to him?”
Nick’s voice rose, something between a howl and a whine. “Where is he?”
“Come now,” Gerald said. “Since you let him be tortured instead of performing the very simple tasks we requested, I didn’t think it would be too much of a blow.”
“What are you talking about?” Nick demanded. “Where is he?”
“Nick didn’t know,” Sin said. “Alan told him you hadn’t made any demands yet. Alan didn’t want him to know.”
She wondered dully what Gerald had done with the body.
She was sure he’d killed Alan slowly.
“We lied to you,” Sin told Nick. “Gerald asked for things. Alan told him you wouldn’t do them.”
Nick laughed, a horrible cracking sound. “I would have—I would have done anything.”
Gerald looked briefly disconcerted, but a second later he was smiling again. “Now you’ll do anything because I tell you to,” he said gently. “Alan was of no further use to me. And this was so much fun. I can’t wait until you see.”
“See?” Sin asked.
Gerald nodded toward the double doors that led into the dining hall. Nick did not spare him another glance. He wheeled and went for the doors.
Sin followed him, forcing every step. She couldn’t not look, and yet she knew that whatever lay beyond those doors, she did not want to see.
Nick threw them open. The sound rang out through the ship.
The dining hall was cleared of its table and chairs, cleared of everything. It was just an empty room, with the morning sun casting gold rays on the wooden floor.
There was something glittering in the middle of that bare floor.
Alan was standing at one of the windows, the sunlight turning his hair more gold than red.
Everything was very still and quiet in the room, nothing but the sound of them all breathing. Sin slowly realized what the metal thing on the floor was: It was Alan’s glasses, broken and twisted out of shape.
Alan turned slowly from the window to face them.
Of course, it wasn’t Alan anymore.
The sunlight was warm on the face she loved, lingering on planes and angles, brightly caught in the curls of his hair.
Sunlight could not touch the flat black of his eyes, cold openings into another world.
The world slipped away from Sin, lost a second time. She was terribly cold in that sunlit room, shaking with it, and there was no-one to put his arms around her now. The room was filled with the demon’s silence.
That thing worse than death, that thing every dancer feared worst of all, the word never spoken, meaning lost and lost forever.
Possession.
Sin heard something break the silence and realized it was her, her ragged breaths turning into gasps. She put her shaking fingers to her lips, trying to cut off the sounds, and found streams of tears running down her face. She pressed her hand hard against her mouth and tried to stop crying.
The demon in Alan smiled.
14
Pouring Away the Ocean
SIN FORCED HERSELF TO STOP CRYING. SHE CHOKED BACK THE frantic sounds that wanted to erupt from her. They hit the back of her throat hard and burned on the way down.
She couldn’t stop looking at the demon, though, and she still had not the faintest desperate idea what to do.
When Nick moved, she realized she had been braced for him to move all along, body tensed to cope with whatever Nick was about to do while her eyes were fixed on Alan. She didn’t know what horror Nick was about to unleash, what storm of fury was about to descend on all their heads. Her survival depended on being prepared and reacting fast.
She was not prepared for Nick to turn around and leave.
She tore her eyes away from Alan’s face, which was the same face and yet so different, still and smooth as a mask with that faint horrible smile superimposed on it, like an obscenity scrawled on a gravestone.
Nick was already walking through the ballroom, magicians scattering out of his way. He didn’t seem to notice them at all.
Not until Gerald stepped in his path.
“I think we need to talk.”
“No,” Nick said indifferently. “I think we’re done.”
He looked up at the rafter Sin had crawled along two nights ago, and the big chandelier that looked like an expensive ice sculpture.
It burst into flames.
Nick raked his eyes along the walls, and lines of fire scored burning claw marks everywhere he looked.
It took an instant for the ballroom to become an inferno, the roaring and hissing of the flames drowning the magicians’ screams.
“How dare you?” Gerald demanded, his voice ringing with command. “Stop!”
Nick hesitated, his whole body vibrating like a bowstring pulled too tight. Then Jamie came running through the burning doors. His eyes were shining mirrors that reflected the flames.
“Nick,” he said. “I swear I didn’t know he was going to do it.”
Gerald’s face darkened. “I don’t find the demon’s hurt feelings of much interest. He’s going to repair the damage he did to my boat.”
“No, he’s not,” Jamie returned. “I have first claim on the demon. He can go.”
He looked up at Nick, his body strained and his face imploring, as if Nick would allow a magician to comfort him, as if he could betray Nick and then still act like he cared about him.
He was spun around by Gerald’s voice, cracking like a whip and crackling with magic. “I am your leader!”
“I don’t care,” Jamie said, and shoved Gerald with magic glowing in his hands.
Gerald rocked back, eyes incredulous and furious. His expression said that Jamie would pay for this moment of defiance.
Jamie said, “Leave him alone!”
Nick’s eyes slid over the struggling magicians as if he didn’t know either of them, and cared less. Then he turned and walked calmly away through the flames.
Sin could chase Nick or stay in a nest of magicians that was on fire. She went after Nick.
She was running up the stairs to the deck when the boat lurched sideways and hit a wall. She grabbed for the banister and caught herself before slamming face-first on the steps, almost yanking her arms out of their sockets. Then she was on her feet again and running for the deck. There was smoke rising all around her, still thick on the deck, and the crackling was everywhere, like a thousand demons laughing at her.
She chased Nick through the smoke and fire to the wall he’d wrecked the boat against. There were steps here, too, and she ran up a few of them before she realized why the smoke and fire had seemed like the whole world.
The river was burning. Winding under Tower Bridge like a crimson ribbon, lighting up the London Eye as if it was a wheel of torment in hell.
“That’s running water,” Sin whispered in a voice destroyed by sobbing and smoke.
“I don’t know how the body bore being on the water that long,” Nick said. “I can cope much better than the others can. I don’t have anyone fighting inside. The magicians must have transported it there specially, because they knew I’d come to them first thing. They wanted me to see.”
Sin ran up the steps and drew level with him. He wasn’t running. He was walking casually by the riverside as the flames raged and people
screamed in the streets.
“I mean, how are you doing this?”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “I don’t see why they bothered,” he said flatly.
The heavens above them were roiling and dark with storm clouds, the smoke from the burning river rising like ghosts into the sky. Sin could hear the shriek of ambulances and the wail of fire engines, and she wondered how many people had been added to the list of Nick Ryves’s victims.
She didn’t know if this was a demon’s version of adrenaline, performing impossible acts under the influence of panic or grief, or if she was seeing Nick go mad.
Sin was keeping pace with Nick, but she thought of Jamie and Seb, and she looked back at the boat.
She did not see it, because when she looked all she saw was the shape standing behind her wreathed in the smoke, against the scarlet glow of the river and the black clouds.
Sin drew in one shuddering breath.
“Nick. He’s behind us.”
“Of course. It wouldn’t want to stay on the boat for long,” Nick said dispassionately.
Sin looked back, as unable to help herself as anyone who had loved and lost and been offered the chance to see their loved ones again, no matter what the consequences. People always looked back in hell.
The demon returned her gaze, standing under an unlit lamppost. He’d been much closer when she looked an instant before.
“Nick,” Sin said in an urgent whisper, and looked around again.
The demon was standing directly behind her, his face near enough to hers to kiss. The burning river was reflected in both his eyes, turned into trails of blood in two black mirrors.
Sin swallowed down a scream and forced herself to look away. She felt the demon’s presence like a cold shadow on her back.
“Nick, he’s following us.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Nick said.
“Yes, it does! Listen to me—”
Nick stopped and looked at her, and he had demon’s eyes too, blood on blackness. Sin stopped cold.
“Shut up,” said Nick. “Or I’ll kill you. Nothing matters now.”
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