The Demon's Covenant (39 page)

Sin's eyes widened, but she was a Market girl. Mae wasn't surprised to see that her face and voice betrayed nothing more. “Done,” she said briskly, and then a thought seemed to occur to her. She smiled, the curve of her lips cynical and not happy. “So you want me to play nice with the demon, do you?” Her stance shifted, ever so subtly. Suddenly the curves
of her body were on offer, as was the curve of her red mouth when she said, low, “And you, traitor? How do you want me to treat
you
?”

Alan laughed. Sin looked outraged.

“Really, Cynthia.” He gave her a look over his glasses. “Your usual barely concealed contempt will be fine.”

“It's Sin,” Sin snarled.

“Want to do another deal?” Alan asked. “Watch me walk across a room without flinching, and I'll call you whatever you like.”

Sin bit her lip. “Get me that translation. I want to be paid in advance.”

Alan nodded and made his way across the kitchen. Sin leaned against the counter with her back deliberately to him, so she wouldn't have to see him walk.

That meant she saw Mae standing at the door. She gave her a slight smile and pushed herself up so she was sitting on the counter, one slim leg kicking out at a cabinet. “Hear anything interesting?”

“I think so,” Mae said slowly. “Merris is incapacitating the Market and allying with the magicians.”

Sin looked angry for a moment, then sighed and let her tense shoulders relax. Mae crossed the room to Sin and leaned against the counter, close enough that Sin's bare shoulder was pressed warm against Mae's blouse.

“Gerald of the Obsidian Circle wants Alan to trap Nick on Market night and strip him of his powers,” Mae said. “One blow and he gets rid of the greatest threat they have. Nobody can stand up to him then. Merris isn't even trying to stand up to him now. How long do you think the Market will survive?”

“The other choice is that Merris dies,” Sin said, her voice a thread.

Mae closed her eyes. “I know. I'm really sorry. But you told me you loved the Market.”

“What can I do?” Sin demanded.

Mae could hear Alan's step outside the door and only had time to say, “Something,” before he came in. He looked mildly startled to see her but approached Sin anyway, handing her a folded piece of paper and a tablet wrapped in cloth. Sin opened the paper and scanned it with an expert's eye.

“All I have to do is pretend to like your demon?”

“Putting on a show is kind of your specialty, isn't it?”

“I thought it was yours,” Sin said, level. “You had us all fooled.”

“True. I know all the acts people put on,” Alan told her absently, fetching a plastic bottle of lemonade out of the fridge as he spoke. “So you'd better make your act good.”

He left, swinging the bottle in his hand. Sin looked very annoyed as she swung her little black bag off her shoulder and onto the counter and stuffed the tablet and the translation inside. Mae felt a little ill watching an ancient artifact being handled like Monday's homework, but she stopped herself from snatching it away.

Instead she said, “Can we talk?”

Sin looked up, her eyes narrowed. “Later,” she promised, low and thrilling, the voice she used at the Market. “Right now I have a show to put on.”

She left her bag on the counter and walked out into the sunlight. Even her hair seemed to be moving differently, swinging jauntily around her slim shoulders. She headed straight for Nick.

Mae watched from the door and felt the mark burn hot under her blouse.

“Now I have the boring part of the afternoon done with,” Sin said, without even sparing Alan a glance, “I thought I might stick around. See if there's anything exciting going on.”

Nick leaned back on his elbows, looking more relaxed as well as slightly predatory.

“What did you have in mind?”

Sin offered him her hand and he took it, thumb moving deliberately over the inside of her wrist, and let her pull him to his feet. She did not wait a moment before she stepped in and kissed him on his curling mouth.

“Surprise me,” she suggested.

Then she sat down gracefully beside Jamie and gave him a smile. Jamie gave her a look of wholehearted admiration.

“You should draw her,” he advised Seb, having clearly decided Seb had a use after all.

“If you like,” Sin allowed, brushing her hair back. It was glinting brown and red in the sunlight, enough glowing tones to show it was dark instead of black.

Seb looked pleased to show off his artistic skills, shifting his notebook to one knee and starting to sketch, lead whispering against the smooth paper. Mae noticed that he didn't seem all that impressed by Sin, which was kind of nice after the way Alan's and Nick's eyes had followed her entrance.

While Seb was drawing, Sin wandered over and sat on Nick's Vanquish, pulling Mae over to put her hair in tiny pink braids. Nick regarded them both with amusement.

“You said I was never even allowed touch the car,” Jamie grumbled.

“Well, get that good-looking and I'll let you do anything you want,” Nick told him. “Also, stop moaning or I'll remember that today I want to start you on sword practice.”

“Sword practice?” Sin echoed. “I wouldn't mind seeing that.”

“Nick fences,” Mae informed Seb. “The little white outfit and the metal beehive helmet? He wears those.”

Seb looked deeply amused.

“Do you know Nick from ballet?” he asked Sin.

“Er,” Sin said. “What?”

Mae wasn't any good at putting on a show, but she knew how to smooth over a situation when she had to.

“I've seen Sin dance,” she put in tactfully. “She's fantastic.”

“Yeah, plus I look fabulous in tights,” Sin said, catching on. “Not as good as Nick, though.”

“Naturally,” Nick drawled. “I'll go get the swords.”

“Cut it out, Nick,” Alan snapped from the depths of his deck chair and his book, and when Nick's back stiffened, Alan directed a meaningful glance toward Seb. “Now's not the time.”

Alan's tone was perhaps a little bit too sharp. Nick's eyes narrowed.

“Has it ever occurred to you,” he said softly, “that I get very tired of playing nice?”

There was something dark in the air between them now. Mae glanced at Seb warily, and found him looking a little pale.

“Yes, actually, it has,” Alan returned. “What are you going to do about it?”

“This.”

Nick wheeled on Alan, who dropped his book and suddenly had his gun out. Nick's magical knife flashed in the summer sun: a thin blinding line of light that dazzled Mae one moment
and grazed Alan's arm the next. The gun fell out of Alan's hand and to the grass with a thump; three drops of blood fell on its gleaming surface.

Nick moved into Alan's space as Alan stood, knife coming around in a shining circle, and then he froze. Alan held the dagger from up his sleeve against Nick's throat, forcing Nick's head back until Nick gradually lowered his knife. Alan smiled a small, tender smile.

“Oh, baby brother,” he said. “Too slow.”

He tucked the dagger back into his sleeve, neat and precise, and Nick stepped away from him.

“See?” Nick said, touching the graze along his throat, ring flashing in the sun the same way his knife had. “We don't have to play nice.”

The look Nick shot Seb was a challenge, daring him to make something of the sudden appearance of weapons at a barbecue.

“You want someone to play with, I'll play,” Sin said, finishing Mae's braids. Mae pushed off the side of the car and saw Sin reach behind her back again, fingers closing around the hilt of her knife.

“I can't wait to see you two dance,” Mae said brightly.

Sin let go of her knife with a sigh. “We could do that.”

Nick threw the old guitar into Alan's hands, then went over and tipped Sin backward in his arms so the ends of her hair brushed the grass, and as she started to laugh, Alan started to sing.

Mae had known he had a beautiful voice, but she had not heard it low and sweet on a summer afternoon, wrapped up in the sound of long-still guitar strings turning into living music under his hands.

Only the thinnest glittering sliver of sunlight could be seen between Nick's hips and Sin's. The burning of Mae's mark was actually making her feel sick.

She slid her arm around Seb's waist and shut her eyes, face pressed into his shoulder.

“Come into the kitchen a moment,” she whispered.

He came with her slowly, the grass slithering warm around her bare ankles, her fingers linked with his. When he closed the door behind them, she stepped up close to him in the cool, shadowy kitchen and kissed him on the mouth. He stood there, and she stepped back, watching him, suddenly uncertain.

“Do you not—” she began.

“No,” Seb said. “Yes. I'm sorry. Come here.”

He curled a hand around her shoulder, careful, as if he was scared to touch her. His eyes looked darker than usual, the green lights drowned, and for a moment she felt like she was looking up at someone completely different.

She could hear Jamie singing off-key, the exuberant noise mingled with the sweet, pure sound of Alan's voice. Her bare feet were sticking to the cork tile. Seb's face was very close to hers.

He tilted her face up just so, his fingers trembling against her jaw.

“Your eyes are …” Seb said, stumbling over the words, his breath faltering and warm against her cheek. “They're just—beautiful.” He leaned in closer. “I've wanted to tell you that for years.”

He shut his eyes, leaned in, and kissed her like he meant it, soft and a little hesitant but focused. She'd had kisses before that felt like questions. This kiss felt like Seb was begging her for something, and she tried to give it to him.

“Whoops, sorry, can I just get some ice from the freezer?” Jamie asked, and Seb and Mae parted.

“I think I left my sketchbook in the grass,” Seb said hastily, and exited.

“Thanks very much,” said Mae.

“I said I was sorry,” Jamie said from the freezer, not at all repentantly. “So, that girl from the Market, she seems to like Nick,” he said with enthusiasm. “I think he needs cheering up. Well, maybe. With Nick it's kind of difficult to tell.”

Mae smiled and nodded and pressed her palm protectively over the demon's mark. Her mark wanted her to do what Nick wanted, whatever that was, to be close to him. This was the way demons possessed you. They made you want to give in.

If there had ever been a possibility of her being with Nick—and of course there hadn't been, Nick had made that perfectly clear—it was gone now. She could never be sure if she wanted to be with him or if the mark was drawing her to him. She could never let herself be controlled like that.

When Mae and Jamie came out, everyone appeared to have taken advantage of their absence in order to pick fights.

“If you can sing like that, why did you never sing for the Market?” Sin demanded.

Alan was keeping his place in the book with a finger. “For the dancers?” he asked coolly. “I'll pass.”

“I just don't like you, that's all,” Seb snapped. Seb and Nick were standing near the car. Mae hoped that Seb hadn't tried to touch it.

“I don't think so,” said Nick. “I think you're so jealous of me you can't stand it.”

Mae acted fast.

“Seb doesn't need to be jealous of anyone,” she said, twining
her fingers with his and pulling him backward with her and toward Alan. “Hey, how about another song?”

Alan obeyed, plucking out a low, gradual song, the kind you didn't dance to. Mae lay back in the grass and let the sun wash over her face and travel warm down her body, putting in comments as everyone talked, long pauses drifting in between the conversations.

At one point she levered herself up on her elbows and saw Nick sitting on the ground beside Alan's chair, long legs stretched out and laughing at something Alan was saying. Alan reached out and did not ruffle his hair, but traced the air above it without touching him. That seemed to be an acceptable compromise.

Alan looked happy. He loved Nick, Mae was certain of that, and so surely, surely he wouldn't betray him.

The sun was low in the sky, light flowing over the clouds like melted butter, when Sin rose and brushed the grass off her jeans. “I'd better get going,” she said. “I can't leave Trish with the kids all day.”

“Come back anytime,” Nick said lazily, head against the arm of Alan's chair.

“Oh, I might just,” said Sin, sparkling at him. She raised an eyebrow at Alan. “Good?”

“Great,” Alan said, his mouth curving.

Sin shrugged and walked toward the kitchen door to fetch her bag. Mae jumped up and mumbled something about ice as she ran to follow Sin.

When she opened the door, she saw Sin with her bag open, hesitating at the kitchen counter. Mae saw the tablet and the paper inside, Sin's fingers a fraction of an inch away from them.

Sin shook her head and closed the bag again.

“Thinking of leaving them?” Mae asked from the door.

Sin jumped. “I'm not going to. I have kids to feed.”

“It matters that you thought about it,” said Mae.

“Why? He won't know.”

“I will,” Mae told her. “And you will. What do you think of Alan and Nick now?”

“As how?”

“As an alternative to being ruled by magicians,” Mae said. “You told me you loved the Market, and we could be friends because I loved the Market too. Are you going to let the Market be ruined?”

“Do you have a plan to stop it?”

“Yeah,” Mae said. “Actually, I do. Alan's going to lure Nick to what Nick will think is a Market night, and he'll trap him in a magicians' circle and strip away his powers. How do you think Nick will react to that?”

Sin sucked her breath in through her teeth. “Kill him.”