“Hmm,” said Anzu. “That’s interesting.”
Alan’s voice was clipped. “Explain.”
“Oh—it’s nothing,” Anzu said. “Only that your mark”—he nodded to Alan—“and the young thing’s mark were made by the same Circle. The Obsidian Circle. And they were made by the same demon.”
“What does that mean?” Alan demanded.
“A small thing,” Anzu told him. “It means that if you agreed, I could transfer one of the young thing’s marks onto you instead. That would mean you would both be bearing a second-tier mark, which still means death for someone. If you caught and sacrificed two magicians of the Obsidian Circle, then you would both live. It is the only chance the boy has, but it would be a terrible risk for you to take.” Anzu waved a careless hand, fingers blending into the flame. Nick could almost see talons. “Forget I mentioned it.”
“Wait,” said Alan.
Nick had kissed the speaking charm and given his voice into Alan’s keeping a hundred times, and he had never missed his voice. It was almost peaceful, having no words, having Alan speak for them both, but now Nick had something to say. It felt as if smoke had got caught in his throat, or the lack of words was scorching him. He moved his mouth, moved his tongue with a painful effort, and found his whole body empty of words when he needed them most.
Mae had words. She looked at Alan and she said simply, “Please.”
Nick knew that while he was within the circle, Anzu could feel a little of what he felt. Even though Nick could not speak, even though he knew that his own face rarely betrayed much emotion, Anzu looked at Nick as Mae spoke and Nick was sure Anzu knew everything Nick could not say. In turn, Nick thought he could feel just a touch of the demon’s malicious delight.
No, Nick thought, his whole body thrumming with that single word. He wanted to shout it. No.
Alan cleared his throat and said, “All right.”
Still looking at Nick, still grinning, Anzu reached out one of those hands that blurred into talons, and with a talon he stabbed Alan three times as deep as he could.
He drew the second mark, which meant death, onto the skin of Nick’s brother.
6
The Hunt Begins
AS SOON AS THE BALEFIRE DIED AND THE DEMON WENT down in smoke, Nick broke out of the circle in one stride. He was beside Alan in another step, one fist clenched in Alan’s shirt and one closing around the speaking charm. He ripped the charm violently from Alan’s neck and took a savage satisfaction in seeing the thin red line spring up on Alan’s skin when the chain broke.
He stamped on the shell and felt as if he had bitten his tongue and blood was filling his mouth, slipping down his throat. Only instead of blood, it was his voice.
Now that he could speak, he found he had nothing to say. It was done.
Nick shoved Alan away, sending him stumbling back into the ash and the broken pattern of the demon’s circle. Alan was easy to throw off balance. If Nick had thrown him back with any more force, he would have fallen, and if he’d fallen, Nick might have kicked him when he was down.
A crowd of people had gathered to watch the dance, and now they were all gaping like the idiots they were. Even those idiots were not stupid enough to get in Nick’s way. He stormed forward, and they scattered in all directions before him. He plunged into the depths of the wood, away from the noise and lights of the Goblin Market into a raging darkness. Branches caught in the night wind whipped at him, twigs raking his face.
There was a sharp burn in the corner of one eye and a trail of heat down his cheek. Of course, it was blood.
Nick wiped at his eye and saw the lurid smear of blood on his knuckles, red even in the darkness. He wanted every trace of the fever fruit burned out of his system. The fruit made even this dark wood too bright. It made the wind and shadows into whispers and lurking thorns.
He turned at every sound, wanting to lash out at something, but nobody was stupid enough to follow him. He was surprised when he heard the unmistakable sound behind him, a sound not of wind or branches but of a step, and he realized that somebody had been stupid enough to follow him, after all.
He wheeled around and it was not Alan.
It was Mae, coming toward him with her eyes wide and her whole face luminous with emotion. At first Nick thought she was just happy. She had every reason to be happy, after all, since Nick’s stupid brother had removed her stupid brother from immediate danger by risking himself.
Then he remembered the fever fruit.
Mae’s eyes were a little too wide, her pupils dilated. Nick remembered how the world was after that first taste, how everything was magnified and glowing, every color breaking in on you like light, and every thought like a revelation.
“What do you want?” Nick snapped.
Mae’s lips were slightly parted and quivering. She licked them, and with that fevered sharpness Nick saw the place on her mouth where her tongue had rubbed away the lip gloss.
She came closer, put out her hand, and pushed Nick against a tree. Her lips quivered again, and she spoke.
“I want,” said Mae, offering up her mouth. “Oh, I want…”
She lifted her free hand to pull Nick’s head down, fingers knotted in his hair. Nick remembered, with a vividness born of the fever fruit, the curve of Mae’s hips dancing. He could want her.
Alan wanted her too. This would hurt Alan, and after Alan’s little stunt Nick liked the idea of hurting him.
Nick seldom said no to a girl, and he had never done so in circumstances like these, with the lights of the Goblin Market glimpsed like far-off lightning behind her and her trembling mouth an inch from his.
Nick touched her for the first time.
He took hold of her shoulders and pushed her away. Then he leaned forward and whispered into her ear.
“You’d want anyone right now.”
He let his lips touch her ear and when he drew back, she did not look angry, only dazed and uncomprehending.
He left her. He did not want to run, because that would have looked like fear or some other ridiculous thing, so he loped through the woods, going easily, knowing that when he walked fast no girl and no crippled idiot could catch him. He held his hands clenched in fists, but he did not hit out at any thorns.
When black night was touched with the cold, unfriendly blue of coming morning, Nick went back.
The Goblin Market was in the process of being packed away. The remnants of the stalls stood forlorn as their owners stored their wares in boxes, and the few customers left lingered uneasily around the debris of magic.
The others were standing in the center of the clearing, near a fortune-telling stall. Jamie was looking uneasily around and saw him at once. Mae was leaning against Alan, cheek pressed against his shoulder. As Nick came toward them, she made a determined effort to twine herself around Alan and turned her face up to his.
It seemed that, indeed, anyone would do.
Alan stooped and gave her a soft kiss, light, but enough to show her she was not being rejected.
“No, Mae, I really can’t. It would be taking advantage,” Alan was saying.
The fortune-teller picked this unfortunate moment to lean over her stall and pluck at Nick’s sleeve.
Her crystal ball, left out in forlorn hope, stared up at Nick as if the woman had a huge third eye cupped between her palms. In the crystal depths, luminous points of green spiked like a tiny forest; above the green, streams of iridescent blue were looped like ribbons.
“See the future, young sir?” the old woman croaked theatrically. Merris Cromwell would have coldly recommended a cough drop.
The tightly interwoven blues and greens darkened. The impression Nick received was that of a shadow falling over a lake, a silhouette that grew more distinct, moving from a shadow into the lines of a face.
It was just his own face, his darkly reflected eyes staring out of the crystal.
Nick picked up the crystal in one hand and hurled it with vicious force at the nearest t
ree. The crash made Mae and Alan jump and look around. Nick caught their movement from the corner of his eye, but mostly he was staring at the glittering shards.
“I think I’ve seen enough,” he said.
They dropped Mae and Jamie home, Alan giving strict instructions for Mae to be put to bed and kept there. Jamie made solemn promises and held Mae’s hand tight with the air of an anxious nanny.
“You don’t need to worry,” he said, leaning into Alan’s open window. “And, er, Alan?” he added. “Thanks.”
He gave Alan a quick kiss on the cheek, and then disappeared through the gate with a struggling Mae in tow. It was rather a fancy gate, loops and swirls wrought in iron creating a picture Nick couldn’t quite make out. Through the intricate pattern he glimpsed an ivy-covered house, large and white, looming in the still-dark sky like a big expensive iceberg. The windows in the upper floors cast yellow light on the big garden and the tennis court.
These two had everything. They could have left Nick’s brother alone.
Nick crossed his arms over his chest and said stonily, “Quite a night you’re having.”
Alan said, “I’m not talking to you while you still have the fever fruit in your system.”
Not talking was fine by Nick. He stared out the window as Alan drove.
Usually the journeys back from the Goblin Market were all right no matter how long they were. It was not like moving; it was just the two of them without Mum. Alan played classical or country music and talked for ages about whatever his latest craze was, from vintage comics to philosophy. It was all just insane ranting to Nick, but he didn’t mind hearing it, and he always bullied Alan into letting Nick drive most of the way home.
This time there was silence. Nick did not offer to drive at all. He measured exactly where the halfway point was and when it came, he did not speak. Let Alan tell him to drive. Let Alan take care of himself for a change. Nick glanced over at Alan and saw his jaw set. He was not going to ask Nick for help; he was too proud to ask for anything that was not offered willingly.
Nick was viciously glad. It was Alan’s own fault. Let him suffer.
They continued to drive in silence, except for the tiny hitches of breath that began to rise helplessly in Alan’s throat. Nick listened to every stifled sound of pain.
Alan would never have let Nick hurt himself, no matter how angry with Nick he might have been. Nick knew that, but that was the difference between them. Nick was a jerk, and Alan was a suicidal fool.
The car drove into a lurid yellow morning, the terrible toxic color of leaden clouds filtering pale, sickly sunlight. There was a fine, continuous rain falling. Nick stared out at the wash of water down the glass and wondered if other people got as angry as he did. He’d seen Alan angry, but he’d never discovered in Alan’s eyes any savage urge for blood. He wished he wanted to yell at Alan or slam doors, wanted to do anything but lash out with extreme violence. He sat, fists clenched, too aware of the new sword at his belt and the knife against the small of his back.
When they pulled up outside their house and the purr of the car engine stilled, Alan let his leg relax and breathed out a sigh of pure relief. For a moment there was complete quiet.
Then Alan said, “While you were gone, I talked to Merris. She said she wouldn’t be able to help us with Black Arthur, but—I don’t know. I’ve heard stories about the experiments she does in her house. She won’t talk about them. What we need is an excuse to get into Merris’s house.”
That was just like Nick’s stupid brother, still worrying about Mum when he was the one in danger. What Nick needed was to get both marks off Alan, and that would be almost impossible.
“We need to kill a magician,” Nick snarled.
Dad had been killed by the magicians. They had spent their whole life running from the magicians, and now they had to seek them out.
“We’ve killed magicians before,” said Alan.
“When they came for us,” Nick snapped. “They live in magicians’ Circles. If we try to deliberately find one, we’ll find a nest of them. They have demons, they have magic, and they outnumber us.”
These were the facts. Alan knew them, and it maddened Nick to have to enumerate them. He did not add the next fact, which was that Alan was probably going to die.
“It’s a chance,” Alan said. “Jamie didn’t have a chance before. Now we both do.”
“Why should he expect you to die for him?” Nick demanded. “What would I do with Mum if you were dead?”
“I didn’t realize,” Alan said slowly, looking a little pale, “that your concern was so entirely practical.”
Nick stared at the dashboard. Alan was choosing now, of all times, to talk nonsense. Nick was in no mood for it.
“You weren’t being noble,” he informed Alan after a moment. “You didn’t want to give anyone a chance. Don’t lie to me. Don’t tell me it had nothing to do with that girl!”
Before Alan could tell him anything, Nick had wrenched open the door. He leaped out and slammed it shut behind him. He ran as he hadn’t run through the wood at Tiverton, as if he were being chased, down the gray side streets of south London.
He ran to the new garage he was working at. Nick found comfort in machines that were either working or broken, and if broken could be either fixed or destroyed. He found the garage as still as a graveyard, cars in various stages of repair like sad metallic specters.
Nick kicked a box of tools and sent wrenches and spanners flying out onto the cement. He wanted to overturn a car, and he felt sure he could. He was so angry he wanted to kill.
A car, winched up as high as it would go, collapsed with a crash behind him. Nick spun and drew his sword as a loose wheel rolled into the wall, and he noticed for the first time that the lock on the garage door was broken. Somebody or something had smashed it.
Nick was suddenly happy. He hoped this was an attack, that here at last was something he knew how to deal with. He turned in a slow circle, watching for a flicker of movement, for the slightest sound. Another car fell with a thunderous crash as soon as his back was turned.
“Got you,” Nick said, turning on the sound with his sword already arcing through the air. All he saw was a lick of flame leaping under the bonnet of the car.
It was a demon. It had to be. The crash had not been enough to start a fire and besides, Nick’s talisman was a prickling, harshly humming weight against his chest. There was a demon, somewhere close, and it would not show itself so he could kill it!
He thought for a moment that he needed to go warn Alan so they could all start packing, but then he remembered. They were chasing demons now. If there were magicians here, they had to stay and hunt them.
He should really go, he realized. He didn’t need to be caught and laid off for setting fires.
“So,” he said to the dying flame and the empty room, “I’ll get you later.”
He did not feel like going home, so he took a walk, and then returned to work, where everyone was wondering who the mystery vandals were. Nick nodded to all the theories, and then popped a car bonnet and got down to work. He worked grimly and silently, two shifts, until it was dark and someone told him to get out and enjoy what was left of his night.
Nick just nodded a final time and left. He went home at last and got into bed without seeing anyone. Sleep, black and consuming, swallowed him whole.
He woke late as usual and came downstairs to find Alan playing with a piece of toast. He looked pale and worn as an old bone, after only one night with a second-tier mark. There were violet shadows under his eyes, and he did not look up from his plate as Nick approached. Nick could usually sneak up on anyone but Alan. He went over to lean his forearms on the back of Alan’s chair and frowned at the back of Alan’s neck.
“Don’t,” he said, and saw Alan jump at the unexpected word, so close, and then relax. “Don’t do anything like this again,” he said. “All right?”
Alan reached behind him and grasped Nick’s upper arm. His thin finge
rs only half closed around the swell of muscle, but he held on.
“I promise I won’t put any demon marks on myself for the sake of any fetching pink-haired girls or their brothers ever again.”
Nick hung over Alan’s chair, uneasy but not exactly wanting to break away, and said in a rough voice, “You’d better not.”
Alan offered to run him to school, but Nick said he’d take the Tube. He knew Alan must really be tired when he agreed. Nick had no intention of going to school. He knew what he had to do.
Anzu had given him the name of a Circle. The Obsidian Circle: Black Arthur’s Circle. He knew that much, but he did not know how much power they had or where to find them. He did not have time to wait for the next Goblin Market. He could draw a basic circle of summoning. He would dance again and alone.
He needed answers. He needed his other demon.
He needed Liannan.
On one of the bleakest roads in Camden, there was a small gray lot behind the American Methodist Church. It was filled with builder’s dust and rubble years old, and there was a large metal Dumpster in it that was heaped with an assortment of rubbish.
On a Monday morning Nick didn’t think he would be disturbed here.
He drew the circle of summoning and confinement carefully with a white piece of chalk he had stolen from an art shop on the way. He’d taken a few protective charms from Alan’s bedroom, and he laid them carefully at intervals around the circle. The circle had to be secure. He was taking risks, but he would not take that risk. If a demon ever got out into the world, free of a magician’s control, it could mean the end of the world.
Nick was planning to take risks only with himself. He had no fever fruit, he had no dance partner, and he had never spoken directly to a demon before. If he slipped up, the demon would have him. If he could not manage to offer something she wanted, Liannan might not even come.
He was betting that she would come. She had always seemed like she wanted to come to him.
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