The Demon’s Surrender (17 page)
Read The Demon’s Surrender Online
Authors: Sarah Rees Brennan
Even though Seb had had his head bowed and his eyes determinedly fixed on the floor while Celeste and Gerald were in the room, Sin had received the impression that he was terribly, guiltily aware of her the entire time.
Neither of the boys seemed aware of her now.
Seb was looking at Jamie, green eyes intense, like a man on a mission. Jamie just looked bored.
“I’ve been thinking a lot, since we came here,” Seb went on. “Now that all the things that used to matter—school and stuff—they don’t matter anymore. Everything’s changed.”
“I know,” Jamie said in a serious voice. “At school, you were the one with all the power, and you made my life miserable. And now I’m the one with the power, and you want to be friends. Isn’t it funny how that works?”
“That’s not it,” Seb burst out, and bit his lip.
“That’s not it? You don’t want to be friends?”
Seb hesitated. Jamie laughed.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t care about how tortured you are about killing or your pathetic lack of power or anything else going through your mind. You may have finally worked out what you want, but I don’t care about that, either. Because I don’t care about you.”
Given Seb’s rapt attention, drinking in those terrible white eyes, Sin could work out what he wanted too.
So the beautiful prisoner-in-distress routine was unlikely to work, then. Just hell.
Careful not to let her chains rattle, Sin drew closer to Jamie.
“I know that,” Seb said. “But—”
“Would you care for some advice?” Jamie asked, his voice full of mock pity. “There is a reason following someone around and drawing little pictures”—he sneered at the word, and Seb flushed a painful red—“is so very unappealing. You lose sight of the fact that the object you’re viewing from afar is a person.”
“I know you’re a person!”
“You don’t know anything about me. In fact, I sort of doubt you know anything.”
“I know some things about you,” Seb said. “I could get to know more. You could get to know me.”
“Tempting!” Jamie exclaimed. “No, wait, that’s not the word I mean. What’s the opposite of that?”
Normally, it wouldn’t have taken Sin so long to notice someone’s body language. But there had been the knife to distract her, those awful eyes, and the demon’s mark.
Jamie’s thin shoulders were hunched up, his fingers always on the curl toward fists. Every muscle he had looked tense.
“I realize I don’t deserve a chance,” Seb said. “But I wanted to say—I wanted you to know that I want one.”
Jamie blinked, which was the first not entirely negative reaction he’d had. Sin was horrified witnessing the whole scene: She didn’t want to think about magicians having painful crushes, or feeling anything. They were the enemy. She didn’t want to see this.
She was grateful for how distracted they were, though. She could reach out and touch Jamie.
Seb looked away, obviously embarrassed, as if he hadn’t meant to reveal that much desperation.
“Why should I care what you want?” Jamie asked eventually.
“Well, you and Gerald don’t seem to be getting on so well lately,” Seb said awkwardly. “I thought—you might want someone who would be on your side.”
The way Jamie was standing changed in a way that might have meant there would have been a change in his eyes, if they had still looked like human eyes.
“What do you mean by that?” Jamie asked in a soft voice.
“Well,” Seb said again, awkward and hopeless. “If you felt like I do—no, I don’t mean that. I mean, if you’re lonely here.”
“And you were doing so well, too,” Jamie said. “I don’t care about being lonely. But you’re right. I’m not getting along with Gerald. I don’t like it when people tell me what to do, and the whole Aventurine Circle seems to have an opinion on how I should behave. I could use an ally.”
Sin saw the wariness in Seb’s eyes, but he took a step forward all the same.
“What do you mean by an ally?”
“I mean someone who will support everything I do,” Jamie answered, with a faint, unpleasant smile, “and do everything I say.”
Seb took another step forward. Jamie stood. The knife in his pocket, which Sin had just managed to get her hand on and draw out a few crucial inches, tumbled neatly into her palm.
Jamie didn’t seem to notice. He reached out his hand and Seb hesitated, then jerkily offered his hand in return.
“Then it’s settled,” Jamie said, still smiling that smile. His fingers slid over the inside of Seb’s wrist. Seb shivered, and Jamie’s nasty smile spread. “Sweetheart.”
There were steps outside the door. One was someone in heels, Sin thought. Seb jerked away at the sound, as if he’d been caught doing something indecent. Jamie didn’t seem to care.
“Here it is,” Celeste’s voice said.
Sin couldn’t see her, because she was standing behind Nick.
He stood at the door like death waiting to be invited in, all in black. It made his face look white as a skull.
“You’re late,” Jamie snapped. He clicked his fingers, and Nick walked slowly, reluctantly, forward over the tilting floor.
Sin realized this wasn’t Nick’s ordinary pallor. He was a demon in a human body: Being trapped in a vessel over running water was like being slowly tortured for someone possessed. There was no way he would be here willingly.
He was here, though, and coming like a dog to heel.
When he reached Jamie he went down in a crouch by the table. His eyes flickered over Sin, not even seeming to register her.
Jamie reached out and twisted the cord of Nick’s talisman around his fingers. Sin saw the leather bite deep into the side of Nick’s neck.
“Don’t be late again,” Jamie commanded softly. “Or I won’t let you go back. Understand?”
Jamie’s hold on the talisman forced Nick’s head back, his face tilted up to Jamie’s. The strange light of Jamie’s eyes shone reflected in Nick’s blank black gaze.
Nick lowered his eyelids and nodded.
“Turns out when a demon marks a magician,” Celeste said from the door, her voice rich with satisfaction, like a cat in the process of drinking the cream, “it doesn’t give the demon any power over the magician at all. Rather the opposite, in fact. Isn’t it marvelous?”
It couldn’t be true, Sin thought. If Gerald had control over Nick already, he wouldn’t have bothered torturing Alan.
“Marvelous for me,” Jamie agreed, his tone as silky as hers. “Since he’s mine, and I don’t feel like letting the rest of the Circle enjoy any of his magic. I guess you shouldn’t have killed my mother.”
“Jamie, do we have to go through this again?” Celeste sounded impatient. “Helen has apologized. And she was only a human.”
“I know, I know,” Jamie drawled. “But it’s the little things. Don’t you agree?”
“Make sure it behaves at the party tonight,” Celeste ordered. She turned on her heel and left.
Jamie let go of Nick’s talisman and leaned back along the table, putting his weight on his hands behind him.
“You heard my fearless leader, Hnikarr,” he said. “This party is going to be her little show of strength to the other Circles. I want you to stay in the ballroom like everyone else, so I can show you off. And I want you to be on your best behavior. No more magically throwing people down the stairs. That is naughty.”
“I understand,” Nick grated out, as if he was having difficulty speaking at all, or as if he was too sick to talk much.
Sin felt sick too, sick at the thought that this was how magicians treated their friends. She wanted to do something, to hurl the knife she had just stolen at Jamie’s head, but she couldn’t do a thing to help Nick, and if she tried she would only make sure she couldn’t help herself.
“Atta boy,” Jamie said encouragingly. “That’s what I like to hear. See how nice the world can be, when one of us is just the obedient slave of the other?”
Nick said nothing, but his lip curled in a soundless snarl.
Jamie smiled at him brightly, then got up. “Well, come on,” he said. “We have to get ready for the party.”
Nick uncoiled from the floor and rose, passing Jamie and making silently for the door. The boat lurched a little again, and Nick had to catch himself against the wall.
He had not acknowledged Sin’s presence in any way.
“You coming?” Jamie asked Seb.
Seb was looking at the floor again, but when Jamie stopped in front of the other boy, Seb lifted his eyes slowly to Jamie’s face.
“We’re supposed to guard her.”
“She’s chained up,” Jamie reminded him. He reached out and touched Seb’s arm.
Sin couldn’t see Jamie’s face, but she could see Seb’s. They could all hear the breath he drew in and could not let go.
“I thought,” said Jamie, “you were going to do what I wanted from now on.”
When Jamie left the room, Seb went after him.
Sin unclenched her fist around what she had been terrified for ten minutes one of them would see, or Jamie would miss. The magician’s knife gleamed safe in her palm.
She handled it with care, and let out a deep sigh of relief as the blade cut through the chains attaching her to the table leg with as much ease as if they were string. Then she unwound the chain from around her wrists and the table and stretched it out on the floor. She chose her spot and cut the length of chain exactly in two.
Then she wrapped the ends of her two new chains around both wrists, leaving them dangling so she could strike out in either direction at any time. She sheathed the blade and tucked it in her jeans pocket.
She was a dancer, so she made it to the door without more than the softest jangle of chains. She stepped outside to begin the hunt through the magicians’ lair for her sister.
11
End the Party with a Bang
S
IN WALKED THE CORRIDORS WITH A SOFT TREAD, TRYING TO
map out the enemy’s terrain. The boat had not looked this big from the outside. That might be magic, and it might just be perception.
Magic or not, it was a pretty fancy boat. There was nice furniture in every room Sin peeked into, smooth wood everywhere, sometimes bare, sometimes painted white. She would not have known she was on a boat if it had not been for the rocking on the water and the curves to the corners in the rooms. She went by a window once and saw the Thames, the buildings of London not so far away.
Far enough.
She went down two broad, shallow steps and saw glass doors leading into a vast dim room. She didn’t think a boat, however magically enhanced, could have more than one room like this one. It was clearly the ballroom.
She went inside. There were spindly white chairs arranged around the edges of the room, and when Sin looked up she saw rafters. She went through another set of double doors, these ones wood instead of glass, and saw a smaller room with the same high ceiling. There was a long table set for dinner, lilies in tall vases hanging their heads above china and crystal glasses.
An alarm began ringing through the boat.
Sin moved fast but not too fast, keeping her walk smooth so the chains would not rattle. She went through the door on the other side of the dining room, up some narrow steps into a dark corridor. She stopped outside four doors and heard voices or movement, then at a fifth door she heard nothing.
She pushed open the door and found Seb with his head in his hands.
Seb jumped to his feet. He and Sin stood staring at each other.
“Get in here,” Seb said in a level voice. “And shut the door.”
Sin stepped inside and shut the door. His room was small, just a bed, a little wardrobe, and a desk with a green sketchbook on it.
If Sin struck out with one of her chains now, it would be very hard for Seb to dodge. She was pretty sure she could knock him unconscious in less than two minutes.
“We could break the window,” Seb said, locking his door with shaking hands. “And you could jump in the river.”
“What would your new boyfriend think of you helping me escape?” Sin inquired.
Seb turned back to her, his mouth twisting. “He doesn’t have to know.”
“I’m not leaving my sister.”
“They’re not going to hurt her,” Seb told her in a low, strained voice. “They’re going to hurt you! I don’t want to see anyone else hurt. You have to go.”
“They’re not going to hurt her?” Sin asked. “Like they haven’t hurt you?”
Seb was silent.
“Do you have any family?”
Seb cleared his throat, a painful sound. “No.”
“If you did have a family,” Sin said, “if you had someone who loved you better than life, and who wanted more than anything to keep you safe, would you want to be left here?”
She heard steps coming down the corridor.
There was a wavering smile on Seb’s face, an expression that he seemed to be wearing because he did not know how else to respond. “There’s no-one who loves me,” he said. “Get in the wardrobe.”
Sin climbed in, folding herself up small over a tangle of socks and shoes, and Seb shut the wardrobe doors firmly after her. She was in a tiny black box, the only light the yellow line where the wardrobe doors met. She could still see Seb.
He sat back down on the bed and put his head back down in his hands.
He wasn’t a good actor at all. Sin could see his shoulders shaking, his whole body caught in a fine, continuous tremor. This wasn’t a boy used to the extremities of life and death, even if he was a magician.
She tensed her legs for a spring, and drew the magic knife out of her pocket.
“Sebastian,” Celeste’s voice said sharply from the door. “The girl—”
She stopped. Seb looked up from his hands.
“I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “What?”
There was silence. Then Sin heard a click of heels as Celeste walked over to Seb, and a flash of blond hair and black skirt as she sat on the bed beside him.
“You shouldn’t have left that room,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Seb said again, very stiffly, and Sin began to think this might work. If he seemed terrified and guilty all the time, he didn’t have to act. “It was—Jamie asked me if I wanted to talk.”
“I see,” Celeste said. “Sebastian, you’re going to have to give that up.”
Seb went deep red and traumatized-looking, as if someone had dipped him in tomato sauce and was about to continue with other strange forms of torture. Sin thought he might actually have forgotten he was hiding a fugitive in his wardrobe.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered into his chest.
“We’re very glad to have James in the Circle,” Celeste said. “He’s very talented, and I do hope he will become an asset to our side, but he’s obviously extremely volatile. And I wouldn’t describe him as a team player. It’s not all about having the power, you know. It’s about going the distance. I wasn’t the most talented magician of my generation. But I cultivated relationships, and I did not burn out. Don’t worry about your magic, Seb. Focus on your commitment to the Circle.”
Sin wished Celeste was not being kind. She would have bet Seb didn’t get a lot of that.
She didn’t want to think about the chances of Seb deciding to commit to the Circle and open the wardrobe doors.
“James is a very troubled young man,” Celeste said. “I hope he can learn to rein himself in, but I’ve seen a lot of gifted young magicians fall from grace. I wouldn’t want to see you go down with him.”
Seb still looked overcome with horror and shame at being spoken to like this, as if he could not deal with the fact that she knew, but he looked up at her last words.
“You don’t know him. He’s really good,” Seb said. “He was always such a good guy. I was pretty awful to him. A bunch of us were, but it was my fault. He had the power to hit back at us, but he never did. That’s what he’s like.”
The leader of the magicians put a hand on Seb’s shoulder.
“And then he got tested,” Celeste said. “And you see what he’s like now. Maybe you’ll be the special one in the end, Sebastian. I think you could be, but you have to try harder. You can’t do things like leaving that girl unguarded.”
And then she drew her hand away, giving him just a taste of approval with a promise of more later, if he could manage to deserve it. Sin saw Seb’s eyes skid to his wardrobe, and she clutched her knife.
“I could guard the—the little girl,” Seb volunteered hesitantly. “Where is she?”
“You can help us find the missing girl,” Celeste told him, sounding annoyed. “The party’s about to start, and I want everything in order.”
“What if she’s gone into the river?” Seb asked. “That’s what I would have done.”
Celeste stood up and moved out of view. After a moment, Seb rose to join her. Sin heard Celeste’s voice, clear and cold, as their footsteps echoed down the corridor.
“Then you will have to think of another way to make up for your failure.”
Sin did not dare move while the magicians searched the ship for her. If she ventured out, she was bound to betray herself.
Of course, staying where she was, she had plenty of time to think about how Seb might betray her.
She stayed put despite her doubts about how long his courage would last and despite her longing to act. This was her best chance, and that meant it was Lydie’s best chance as well.
She counted the seconds as if she was doing exercises and had to hold herself in position, so her mind would not play tricks with time. She lost count a few times, but she knew she waited in the dark for well over an hour before the noises outside dulled and centralized, concentrated at a spot a little way away.
Sin assumed they were getting ready for their party. The question was, would they want Lydie there or not? Would a scared child be a trophy or an embarrassment?
She wished Alan were here, or Mae, someone who could make a plan.
The only thing Sin could think to do was go look.
So she pushed the door cautiously open with her foot, gradually so it did not creak, listening for every sound. She slid out of the wardrobe like an eel, magic knife at the ready.
She missed her throwing knives so much.
The corridor was empty. Sin slipped along it and down the stairs, then waited with her hand hovering over the door, her other hand clasping the knife, and her breath snared painfully in her throat.
There was no sound directly beyond the door. Sin just touched it with her palm, and the door slid open a little, then a little more.
Beyond the door was the dining room with no lights on, the dimness illuminated only by the glow of lights at the top of the far wall.
The ballroom and the dining room had obviously been one vast room recently transformed into two. The wall that divided them was built only so far. The large wooden rafters ran along the vaulted ceilings of both rooms without a break.
There was a supper laid out on the table now, tiny sandwiches in rows like soldiers and jellies gleaming like jewels. Sin eyed the chairs pushed neatly in under the table; their carved wooden backs looked sturdy enough.
Sin closed the blade on her knife and tucked it securely under the wire of her bra. She could not risk it falling out of a pocket.
She charged forward, taking a running leap at the chair and then launching herself from the top of the chair back, somersaulting into the air. Behind her the chair rocked on two legs before falling back on all four.