“There’s nothing wrong with Alan,” Mae said to her back.
“Well,” said Sin, laughing in a slightly brittle way as she reached for a towel, as if she was trying to make the whole conversation and her own heart lighter by sheer force of will. “He’s not exactly the kind of guy who makes a girl’s heart start racing. I’d be surprised if he could urge anyone’s heart past a gentle jog.”
She laughed again, and Mae reminded herself that Sin was walking a bright, fragile bridge over the cold horror of what had happened to her mother.
Sin glanced over her shoulder at Mae, and Mae blinked. Without her makeup, especially the vivid lipstick, Sin looked quite different. She was still beautiful if you looked at her properly, but it was suddenly possible to overlook her. Her whole demeanor had changed, as if the makeup was a mask that carried a role with it.
“Maybe Alan’s a chameleon,” said Mae. “Like you.”
Sin’s arched eyebrows arched farther, like swallow’s wings in a painting.
“Oh, you’ve noticed that, have you?”
“I’m a quick study.”
“I can see,” said Sin, and spun away from her dresser, ribbons flaring.
She grabbed at the red shawl covering the table and whipped it off with easy grace, the crystal ball on the table not even moving. She flourished the shawl, and it described a red arc and landed on her hair as she leaped onto the bed beside Mae.
“Tell your fortune?”
“You’re a gypsy fortune-teller?” Mae asked.
“No,” said Sin. “But my exotic beauty does make people think so.” She smiled a flashing smile, strong brown legs hooked over Mae’s jeaned lap, as if her beauty was a joke. “Because, you know, dark-skinned girl telling fortunes, what else could I be?”
Sin’s mouth twisted, and Mae searched for something to say that definitely wouldn’t be racist.
The way Sin’s grin turned wicked indicated that she knew exactly what Mae was thinking.
“My dad’s family was from the Caribbean originally. My mother was Welsh, and she told fortunes. So,” Sin said, “let me read the secret of your heart’s desire.”
“No secret,” said Mae, twitching the shawl aside so it fell. “I want …”
To be like you, she would have said before today, but now Sin was a person and not an ideal to aspire to. She had all these problems Mae did not know if she could have dealt with; she had a life that had shaped her into something very different from Mae.
She didn’t want to be Sin, but there was still something about her that drew Mae close, something about the whole Goblin Market. She felt like a moth diving for a succession of jetting flames. She didn’t think she’d be burned if she learned how to dance around them.
“I want to belong here,” she said finally.
Sin unhooked her legs from over Mae’s, leaping to her feet, and went over to her chest of drawers. She took the crown of red flowers she’d pulled from her hair and drew two blossoms from it.
“I thought you’d say that.” She crossed the floor and looked down at Mae, dark eyes steady and serious for once. She took one of Mae’s hands and laid the blossoms in it. “Cross your palm with scarlet,” she said, and smiled. “I’ll let you know where the next Market is being held. And if anyone questions you, show them these.”
“Two flowers means an invitation?”
“Two flowers is an invitation to the Market. One flower’s an invitation to something else.” Sin smiled. “Three flowers, I tell people it means an invitation, and it means I want them killed on sight.”
Mae nodded slowly. “Thanks.”
Sin shrugged. “I love the Market. If you come ready to love the Market too, then I’m your friend.”
“Then you’re my friend,” said Mae, and rose. “I have to go meet Alan now. He’s my friend too.”
“Fine,” Sin said. “I was going to shoo you out anyway. I have a guy coming over.”
“Oh, really,” said Mae, and it was suddenly like talking to Rachel and Erica at school, laughing over lunch about who fancied who. “Someone special?”
At least somebody was getting a little fun from the effects of the fever fruit.
Sin elbowed her. “Oh, he’s something else. Come back to the Market next month, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Mae backed away, already missing the Market. Alan was waiting, though.
She put her hand on the door and looked back at Sin, who was sitting on the bed doing her makeup fresh. The new lipstick she was applying, smoothly and expertly without a mirror, was a rich, dark red. This was red for something besides attracting a glance. This was a red to linger over.
“I can’t wait to come back,” Mae told her.
Sin smiled at her, slow and deliberate, becoming yet another person.
“I’ll save you a dance.”
The only way Mae knew back to the car was to go through the Goblin Market again. She had promised herself she would not delay, but it was hard walking through all the shadows and the spotlights, hard not to obey the cries of “Come buy!”
She did not stop at any stall. She might have looked around just a little.
There was a stall full of different-colored and labeled lamps. One looked like an old-fashioned lantern, black iron bisecting the light into four steady beams, and had the words BEACON LAMP written on its label. Another was rose pink and tiny, like a rosebud that glowed; it was labeled LIGHT OF LOVE.
“Gives off just enough light to see love by,” the stall owner called out to Mae. “If you can see love in this light, you know it’s true!”
Mae laughed and walked on, promising herself she would stop at that stall next time. She couldn’t allow herself to stop now.
Then she stopped.
There in the busy throng of people buying and selling, dancing and laughing, she saw Sin’s little brother Toby.
Gerald was here, in the very heart of the market, holding the child in his arms.
She strode over to him, her heart pounding too hard in her chest. “Do you want me to tell everyone who you really are?” she demanded as she drew closer. “Then I could have the pleasure of watching you being torn limb from limb.”
He whirled and started as he recognized her. He didn’t draw back from her as she stepped in, though.
“You do seem to turn up a lot, don’t you?” Gerald said.
“I could say the same about you.”
They stood together in one of the spaces of shadow in the Market, just another young tourist couple. Gerald could freeze her right now, hold her trapped in the air like a dragonfly in amber, and maybe nobody would notice.
Mae reached out over the tiny distance that separated them.
“Give me that child,” she said, and tried to make it sound commanding.
She snagged her fingers on the front of Toby’s little shirt, curling around the material, and then slid an arm around the child, even though that meant having her arm trapped against Gerald’s chest.
He did not let go of Toby. Mae looked down at his arm and saw a shadowy mark on the inside of his wrist, but before she could make out the mark Gerald smiled, and his sleeve slithered down past his wrist as if it was alive.
He spoke, and she felt the vibration of his low voice starting in his chest, then soft in her ear. “He was wandering around alone and I picked him up. I don’t wish any harm on a child. And I don’t wish any harm on you. You’re Jamie’s sister.”
“How very reassuring,” Mae bit out. “I know who the child belongs to. Give him to me.”
“If I do,” Gerald said, “you won’t go making any rash announcements to the Market?”
“He is a baby!” Mae hissed. “Not a bargaining chip.”
Gerald was silent. Mae looked away from his face, thoughtful and pitiless in the half-light, and into Toby’s. Toby seemed happy enough caught between them, big eyes staring back at Mae, mouth forming a loose and wondering O.
“Okay,” Gerald said finally, and pushed Toby into her arms.
He was unexpectedly heavy, and she had to shift him awkwardly around to get him at any sort of reasonable angle. Gerald backed away.
“I have somewhere to be, anyway,” he said, uncomfortable as she’d never seen him before, as if displaying mercy was an unforgivable breach of good manners and all he could do was get away and pretend it had never happened.
Then he was gone. She was fairly sure he’d used magic to do it: Nobody really disappeared like that, swallowed up by the air as if it was dark water.
Nobody else seemed to have noticed.
“Necklace, lovely lady?” asked an Asian guy with a grin like a skull and twinkling dark eyes. “Necklace for the pretty baby?”
He looped a necklace over Toby’s head with swift, clever hands, clicking his fingers as he did so.
“Are those bones?”
“Finest bones, lady,” said the man with a hint of reproach. “Rat for brains, bird for song, fox for cunning and—just between you and me—a little human bone to bind the spell.”
“You’re just like a fairy godmother of death,” Mae snapped. “Do you know where I can find Trish? She’s meant to be looking after Toby.”
“Oh,” the man said, his face changing. “Sorry, lady, didn’t know you were one of the Market people. I’m pied, you see.”
“You’re pie?”
He smiled. “Not Market, then. I’m a pied piper. We make the music for the Market, but we’re not Market people ourselves: We use magic. I can start a tune and make children, animals, or pretty young things follow me anywhere.”
Mae grabbed the two blossoms from her pocket and waved them under his nose. “That must be a useful skill. Where’s Trish?”
The piper grinned. “Didn’t mean anything by it,” he said. “Honestly, you’re not my type. And I haven’t seen Trish.”
Toby blew a bubble of saliva into Mae’s ear. “Great.”
The pied piper smiled mockingly at her pain and moved on.
Mae came to a decision. Sin was busy with a guy, but surely she could go knock on the door and Sin could tell her what to do with the kid. Sin didn’t seem the type to be easily embarrassed, and Alan had been waiting long enough.
She marched back in the direction from which she’d come, walking a good deal more carefully with Toby in her arms. Even so, she almost stumbled four times going downhill, and clutched at the baby too tight in panic. He made small crowing sounds whenever she did that. Either she was being mocked by a two-year-old or he was going to grow up to be a fan of danger sports.
Mae put one foot in front of the other, walking blind and burdened, and reached the shadowy gathering of wagons just in time to see Gerald knock on the door of Sin’s red wagon and be let in.
11
Caveat Emptor
Mae burst into a breakneck run for the wagon even as the door swung shut, the curtain billowing gently in the night air.
She had a hand on the door and a warning on her lips before it occurred to her that they were two girls alone, and once Gerald’s cover was blown he would have no reason to play nice.
And she was holding a baby. Sin wouldn’t thank her for carrying her little brother directly into the line of fire.
Okay, Mae thought. Back to the Market, alert them all there’s a magician in the wagon with the heir apparent, save Sin, and most important, get someone else to hold the baby.
Before she went, she wanted to check that Sin was all right.
She shifted Toby into the crook of her elbow and reached out with her free hand to twitch the curtain aside just a fraction.
There were lit candles floating in the bowl of rose petals and water.
Sin was standing by her bed, wrapped in red silk with black flowers and thorns stenciled on it. The silk looked fragile enough to tear at a movement, and there was plenty of potential for movement in the curves beneath.
For now she was still, dark red lips curved and dark eyes thoughtful.
All Mae could see of Gerald was his back and a sliver of his face as he tilted his head to look at Sin. His eye was lit by a gold gleam from the candles. “You said you wanted to talk.”
He took a step toward her, and she flowed toward him like a red silk river until she was pressed up against him, hand at the nape of his neck where his sandy hair curled. Gerald’s hand hesitated, wavering in midair, and then settled on her hip.
Sin laughed, her eyelids lowered as if she was sleepy, as if she’d just risen from bed and wanted to crawl right back in.
“Sure,” she murmured, throaty, and slid the red silk robe off both brown shoulders at once.
Then she grasped ivory handles and drew out long knives with the sleek sound of tearing silk. Before Gerald could take a step back, the blades were kissing behind his neck.
Sin said, “Let’s talk.”
Mae felt her lips curve into a grin. There was no need for a rescue mission after all. Apparently Sin had the situation under control.
That was when she felt the hand touch her shoulder.
She refused to let herself scream, clamping her jaw shut and whirling to face whatever was behind her. Her hand was suddenly cradling Toby’s head, her first strange impulse to shield it.
Behind her was Merris Cromwell, standing over her looking surprised and displeased, as if she’d caught Mae trespassing in her garden.
“There’s a magician in there,” Mae said, low.
“Cynthia has already notified me and lured the magician away from the Market,” Merris replied in her normal voice. “Why you feel torturing a magician might be appropriate entertainment for a toddler, I cannot imagine.”
“I did not know—”
“Well, now you do,” Merris said. “Could you perhaps remove the child from the vicinity before—”
The door to the wagon banged open, Gerald stumbling as Sin pushed him out and then followed close behind him, her knives at his back. She was striding easily until she saw Mae.
“What’s Toby doing here?”
Gerald’s eyes flashed to Mae’s face and then to the child in her arms. He had obviously absorbed something from the sudden tightness of Sin’s tone. He looked thoughtful.
“He was wandering,” said Mae. “I thought I should bring him back to you. Sorry to interrupt.”
“Yeah,” Sin said, kicking Gerald in the back of his knees so they buckled and he went down hard onto them in the dirt. “It’s a very special night.”
“Sin,” Gerald asked, “do you know who you are serving?” He jerked his head toward where Merris Cromwell stood with her face like a carving in stone. “Do you know who she is, the cold mistress of Mezentius House? Do you know what that means?”
Mae couldn’t help but remember the scream of that woman in Merris’s institute, being tortured by a demon that was living inside her husband and destroying him from the inside out. Merris made the relatives of the possessed people pay to have them restrained, and pay extra to stay with them and watch them die slowly.
Judging from what Mae had seen of Mezentius House, she made them pay a lot.
Sin grabbed a fistful of Gerald’s sandy hair and held her long knives clasped in one fist, both blades sharp against Gerald’s throat.
“I lived a month last summer in that house,” she said, soft. “My mother died there. I know who I serve.”
Gerald looked in Merris’s direction, ignoring the knives that shifted dangerously as he moved.
“I’d like to offer you an opportunity,” he said. “Send them all away, and we can talk. I have some things to say that you might find interesting.”
“If he continues to talk like a door-to-door salesman,” Merris said to Sin, “cut his throat.”
Sin smiled. “With pleasure.”
Merris’s voice had been deep and measured, completely without emotion as far as Mae could see, but Sin’s glance upward was at once fond and pleased, as if she had just been praised by an adored teacher.
“You trust her,” Gerald said. “That’s nice. Be nicer if she trusted you, of cour
se.”
“Shut your mouth,” Sin snapped.
Gerald did no such thing. “Did she tell you when the pain started, Sin?” he asked, voice soft and impossible to stop as the wind blowing in from the sea. “Did she tell you what the doctors said? Do you know how sick she is?”
It might not have worked, if Sin hadn’t been looking at Merris.
Mae, watching Sin and Gerald, did not see Merris’s face, but she saw the change that swept over Sin’s.
Gerald struck.
He seized the moment of indecision and broke backward, rising to his feet and into Sin’s body. He knocked her off her feet and whirled on her, magic streaming from his palms in two bursts of light.
She made a small, choked sound and hit the ground hard.
“Well,” said Gerald, wheeling on Merris, his hands still blazing with power. “I imagine you’ll be willing to talk now.”
Mae was holding Toby so hard he was whimpering softly in her ear. She looked desperately at Merris.
Merris was smiling.
Gerald collapsed on the ground with a knife in his back.
“You always say you want to talk,” Alan said, walking out of the shadows of the hills with a new throwing knife already in hand. “And then you attack people. It doesn’t make me feel very chatty.”
From the night-dark grass, Gerald let out a low groan and then twisted, raising himself up on one hand. He pulled out the knife and let it drop, bloody, to the ground.
“I might point out that she was the one who pulled her weapons on me,” he said.
Alan stopped by Sin where she lay in a tangle of torn silk gone gray in the moonlight, mouth pulled tight in agony but trying to sit up. He offered her his free hand; she glared up at him and shook her head. Alan shrugged and limped forward to Gerald.
“You invaded our market for purposes of your own,” Alan told Gerald. “You did not ask permission. You trespassed, and you thought you could do so without fear of retribution because you’re stronger than we are.”
“I am stronger than you are,” said Gerald. “I took down your precious brother, didn’t I? You have no idea what I can do to you.”
He rose slowly to his feet, slivers of magic glinting through his fingers as if he was running gold coins through his hands and they were catching the light. There was a snick as Alan popped his left wrist sheath and suddenly had knives in both hands, and one of them lifted to Gerald’s throat.