The Demon's Covenant (53 page)

Nick put his arms around her. He moved slowly and awkwardly, but once he was done she was wrapped in strong arms, held against his chest. He was big and solid and warm all around her, and she found herself holding on to his shirt, holding tight in both clenched fists as if she was about to start
beating on him. She was standing on her tiptoes, but he was taking most of her weight; she was pressing her face against his collarbone. It would be all right to hit him or to shriek or to do anything she liked.

This time yesterday morning Annabel had known nothing about magic. She'd had a day to learn, to show fear and grace, and then no more days.

Mae was just howling, screaming through her teeth, getting tears and snot all over Nick's shirt. They were going to put her mother in the ground out by Mezentius House, and the alternative had been putting her in the river.

Nick's arms were like iron bars around her. He wasn't murmuring soothing words or stroking her back, nothing like the demon in her dream, nothing like a human would have done in his place, but he wasn't letting go, either.

“Mavis. Mae,” he said at last. “I don't know. You have to tell me. Is this right?”

“Yeah,” Mae said into his shirt, her voice breaking, and she cried without screaming, just leaning into him and smelling cotton and steel. It was awful and heartbreaking and she was exactly where she wanted to be, here, with him, in these arms and no one else's, and she finally understood why she had kept coming back and why she'd kept acting like a crazy person, her plans always collapsing and nothing making sense. She got it now.

She was kind of in love with him.

It had never happened to her before, and he would not have even the slightest idea how to love her back.

She was too tired and broken apart to deal with that now. She just rested, her eyes shut and leaning against him, exhausted and almost glad. She loved him, and he was here.

It was tempting to try and fall asleep standing up, measuring
his steady breaths against her own, but by then she figured she was calm enough, and she owed it to him to step away.

“Thank you,” she said. It came out sounding very formal. “I'm going to find Sin now. You can go after Alan.”

Nick nodded, looking down at her. She looked back up at those strange alien eyes, that cruel mouth, and her heart turned over in her chest as if he had flipped it like a coin to show a new surface.

“We're going to sort this out,” she promised him. “We're going to get Jamie back, and we're going to make Alan safe. We are.”

Except there was no way to make Alan safe. Gerald could do whatever he wanted to him, anytime he liked, and Nick would have to watch.

Nick shifted, the line of his shoulders too tight, fury and helplessness on his face for one murderous moment, and then he nodded again.

“Tell me about your plan sooner next time. You're the war leader, aren't you?” he asked, and waited for her to nod. “So lead.”

Mae watched him turn and go in the direction his brother had gone, stalking him like a predator.

“Yeah,” she said softly to herself. “Sounds like a plan.”

Mae didn't want to lie to Nick, so she went to find Sin, weaving through the narrow green pathways between the caravans and tents.

Sin was sitting in a deck chair with baby Toby in her lap, long brown legs hooked up over the side with her feet tucked into the place where the chair legs bisected. She was talking to Merris Cromwell.

Merris looked the same to Mae, except for her dead-black
eyes. The measured, approving smile she gave Mae was entirely her own. Mae could not see a trace of Liannan in her by day.

“Mae,” Sin said with her vivid, welcoming smile, with passionate, determined sympathy. “Come sit with us. I was just telling Merris how amazing you were.”

“Indeed she was.”

Sin looked gorgeous and carefree this morning, her torn silk changed to a loose cotton top and a denim skirt that left her legs bare. Her brother and her leader had been saved. She'd got what she wanted.

Only she caught Mae's hand as Mae went by, her fingers curling soft as a secret against Mae's palm, and Mae liked her too much to hate her now.

Celeste's war would crash down on Sin's head too. They had to be united, the way they had been for a moment in that market square.

“I hear that you were the one who formulated the whole plan,” said Merris. “I hear that you were the one who tried to hold the force together by suggesting the magicians surrender. In fact, it seems you showed a great deal of initiative Cynthia here did not.”

Sin stopped smiling.

Mae frowned at Merris. “Sin did great. She got all those people together. I could never have done it without her.”

“Yes,” said Merris. “She showed all the hallmarks of a very fine lieutenant. But it occurs to me that what this Market needs is someone independent and intelligent.”

Sin's dark eyes were suddenly blazing with fury and hurt. Mae just felt fury. She barely knew this woman, but she was in no mood to see one of her friends put down like this for no reason.

“I have only three years,” Merris said, her voice suddenly almost sweet, like the chiming of bells at the Goblin Market. “When I go, I want to be absolutely sure that my Market is in the best possible hands. From now on, I think I will be looking at you as well as Cynthia, trying to determine which of you should become leader of the Market in my place.” She paused. “That is, if you want the job.”

Mae looked around at all the colors of the Market, and thought of the nighttime square, the feeling of a plan when all the pieces fell smoothly together, how terrible it felt to be useless. Jamie had made a plan and had gone to carry it out.

She needed to do something, and she had loved the Goblin Market from the very first time she had seen it.

“Oh yes,” she said hoarsely. “I want it.”

Merris rose from her chair, more lightly than a woman of her years should have been able to. Mae found herself lost in those demon-dark eyes.

“Excellent. Time will tell,” Merris said, “which of you is up to the challenge. I look forward to finding out.”

Mae and Sin found themselves staring at each other, a coldness slipping between them for the first time since the easy start of their friendship. Mae was not surprised to find herself suddenly assessing Sin's strengths and weaknesses, trying to think of ways to undermine one and exploit the other.

Sin's eyes were narrowed, cool: surveying her new rival, the impostor.

And then Mae remembered how kind Sin had been to her, and Sin might have remembered that Mae's plan had almost worked, or even what had happened to her mother. Sin looked away, through the twisting path of tent flaps and hanging lanterns, to the rolling expanse of the meadow. There were two
dark figures against the horizon and the hawthorn. Nick and Alan, Mae thought, picturing Nick's look of helpless fury, were having a fight.

She knew how it would go. Nick would rage and Alan would lie, and neither of them would ever leave.

“Well, look at it this way,” said Sin. “At least we're not being stupid enough to fight over a guy.”

“That's true.”

“Well. Let the best woman win.”

Sin shut her eyes, taking a moment to relax in the sunshine spilling warm over the meadow, light touching the tips of the grass blades with honey. Mae tried not to think about Alan's heart in the hands of magicians or about Jamie friendless in their midst. She tried not to think about love or loss.

She looked around at the Goblin Market spread like a feast before her, and thought of war. She thought about winning.

“Yeah,” Mae said. “Sounds like a plan.”