“What, you don’t talk anymore?” snapped Mae, and wanted to bite her tongue out.
“I talk,” said Nick, his mouth curving slightly. “And I see you still pester people.”
He had a deep voice that reminded Mae of a fire; a low, dangerous sound that crackled occasionally and made you jump. Listening to Nick talk was like seeing Alan walk. It was always obvious there was something wrong.
“It is one of my favorite activities,” said Mae, and went to get Alan some juice.
When she came back, she found Alan sitting in an armchair by the fireplace like a proper guest. Nick was roaming the room as if he was a feral dog she’d shut up in the house and he was searching for signs of danger and getting ready to bolt. He was stooped over the grand piano and he looked up, not startled but wary as she entered the room. Mae took a quick, instinctive step back and her free hand found the doorknob, her palm suddenly sweaty against the cool juice glass.
She’d always been a little jolted when she met Nick’s eyes, and it was worse now she knew why. His gaze was steady, his eyes not the windows to any soul but to another world, a world with no stars or moon, no possibility of light or warmth.
Then he looked down at the piano keys and was again simply the best-looking guy she’d ever seen, with lashes lying feathery on high cheekbones, a sooty shock of hair such a dense black that it didn’t shine but always looked soft, and a full mouth that should have been expressive but somehow never was.
“Do you play?” she asked, and felt stupid and enraged. She never usually felt stupid.
“No,” said Nick in that low, emotionless voice. She thought that was all he was going to say, since he was always careful with words, acting as if he had a very limited supply and might run out at any moment. But he added, “Alan used to. When we were kids.”
“Ages ago,” Alan put in, his voice very light. “I was also on the football team and I played the guitar. But where I really shone was my work on the tambourine.”
He didn’t say that that had been before their father died and before Alan had been crippled, when they’d had money. Mae held on tight to the doorknob and felt embarrassed by her whole house.
“We could get a piano,” Nick said.
“And what, keep it in the garden?” Alan made a soft sound, almost a laugh.
“We could get a bigger place. You could play the piano. You could play football. We can do anything we like—”
Mae had never heard Nick’s voice show feeling, but she had heard it show danger plenty of times. He didn’t shout, but sometimes everything went silent when he spoke and his voice sounded louder, like the slide of a knife from a sheath in a sudden hush.
She remembered Nick’s voice sounding like this one night when he’d whirled and hit his brother. And she remembered Alan coolly pulling a gun.
Alan’s voice cut Nick off.
“No, Nick. You can’t.” He turned away from his brother and focused on Mae. “Mae, come here—thank you—and tell me what exactly is going on with Jamie. What magician is he mixed up with? What’s going on?”
And Mae found herself sitting in the armchair across from Alan, her hand curled, as if still around the glass Alan was now holding, and feeling at a loss and almost annoyed. That was the thing about these two. It wasn’t that she didn’t like them. She did, but she didn’t feel in control around them. She wanted to feel in control.
“Gerald, of course,” she almost snapped. “He said he’d come back for us and he has. Only I didn’t know he’d come back, and it’s—it’s pretty clear that Jamie’s been meeting him and not telling me. I saw them, and they seemed like they were friends. His damned Obsidian Circle tried to kill Jamie a month ago! I don’t know what he’s doing, what kind of hold he might have over Jamie, and I don’t understand anything.”
So she’d gone running to them. Again.
Mae clenched her hands into fists and looked away from them both into the empty grate. She hated feeling so useless.
She wasn’t looking when the door burst open and Jamie’s voice rang out, saying, “Mae, are you really sick—oh.”
Mae twisted around and saw Jamie held still by surprise in the open door, one hand clinging to the door frame. His expression of concern was fixed on his face, as if he’d absentmindedly left it there even though he was done with it, and Mae felt suddenly and unexpectedly angry with him.
He was much more scared to see Nick than he’d been to see Gerald. And no matter what Nick was, he’d done nothing but help them.
“Hey, Alan,” Jamie said, a real smile touching his lips but not staying long. “Nick. Wh-what’s going on?”
You’re busted, that’s what, Mae thought, feeling about eight years old and meanly pleased to see her little brother in trouble. She turned to Nick, to tell him—to show him—that she knew what they owed to him, that she wasn’t scared.
When she looked at Nick, she saw him draw his sword.
It was so bizarre that for a moment Mae forgot to be angry. This was her home: The shiny cold floors, high ceilings, and white walls that looked like blank pages were no setting for swords and sorcery.
Despite everything she knew, Nick still looked like part of the normal world. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He shouldn’t have been wielding a sword, but he was. The blade was bright and steady in his hands, held with casual expertise, and he walked forward softly as a stalking cat and lifted his sword with each step until the edge was held against Jamie’s throat. For an instant Mae thought that Nick wouldn’t stop.
He did stop.
“In trouble again, Jamie?” Nick asked. “Seems to be a hobby of yours. And I’m getting pretty tired of cleaning up your messes. I think last time was enough, don’t you?”
Jamie swallowed, his Adam’s apple brushing the sword edge.
“I can see the magic all around you,” Nick continued, his voice sinking further. “Who gave that to you? Or should I be asking what you did to get it? Mae’s been telling us all about the company you’re keeping these days. Maybe I should have saved myself some bother and let the magicians cut your throat when I had the chance. They would have done it, you know.”
Jamie tried to speak and had to clear his throat before he could. “I know. And I’m not—”
“Don’t lie to me,” Nick snarled. “I don’t like it.”
Nick took a step forward, just slowly enough for Jamie to take a step away. His back slammed up against the door, and Nick had him trapped.
“That’s enough!” said Mae, jumping up, but before she could move toward them the moment changed.
Jamie suddenly didn’t look scared, didn’t look uncertain. He tilted his head and fixed Nick with a long, calm look. Then he reached up and caught the blade gently between his palms. Mae looked at the back of Nick’s head and wished for a frantic moment that she could see his face, until she remembered that even if he was about to slice Jamie’s hands open, his expression would not show one trace of emotion.
Nick’s body was held taut, either to attack or defend.
Jamie closed his eyes.
Between his hands the sword flew apart like a dandelion clock that had been blown on. It dissolved into a hundred glittering points of steel that fell in the air around both boys, fading as they fell until they were nothing more than dust motes, visible for an instant in the light from the bay windows.
“I’m not a magician,” Jamie whispered. “I’m not. I know what I owe you all. I know that both of you could have let me die, and I know that if Mae hadn’t killed a magician for me I would’ve died. You’ve all done more than enough for me. I didn’t want to be a burden anymore. I wanted to be able to handle this myself!”
“Let him go, Nick.”
Mae looked back instinctively at the sound. Alan was leaning forward in his chair; he hadn’t made the slightest effort to get up. She looked at him and realized his body had been held in the same taut lines as his brother’s.
He had not spoken in that tone of low command until he’d heard Jamie say
that he wasn’t a magician.
Nick gave no sign that he’d heard Alan. The hilt of his vanished sword was still in his hand, and he tossed it high up into the air like a toy.
The day was so bright that the light of the chandelier seemed pale and irrelevant, but it caught the sword hilt with a sudden particular gleam. The gleam spread, became a ray of light that looked almost like a sword, and when the hilt hit Nick’s palm the light had become steel. The sword was whole.
“Do you think I need a sword to kill you?” Nick asked softly.
“No,” said Jamie in a shaky voice. “But you didn’t have to threaten me.”
“Let him go now,” Mae ordered.
Nick didn’t pay any more attention to her than he had to Alan.
“I wasn’t threatening you. I was menacing you. You threaten people with words,” Nick said. “I prefer swords.”
He stepped back then, sliding his restored blade into the sheath he kept strapped to his spine, under his T-shirt.
“And that one is my favorite sword,” he added, turning away from Jamie and heading for the window. “Don’t mess around with it again.”
He braced himself against the casement, one leg up on the window seat and his face turned a little away from them all. Jamie slumped against the door, looking massively relieved, and of course immediately said something ill-advised.
“You and swords,” he remarked brightly. “Compensating for something?”
The corner of Nick’s mouth curved upward a fraction. “No.”
He apparently didn’t feel the need to say anything else, but the slight sign of amusement relieved the tense atmosphere a little. Mae took her seat again, and Jamie went over and sat on the hearth rug between Mae and Alan’s chairs, curling himself up small and leaning closer to Mae’s chair. She reached out and touched the ends of his spiky hair, and he smiled at her.
“Now that we’re done menacing each other with swords, I feel it’s time for social pleasantries,” Jamie announced. “How’ve you been, Alan?”
“I’ve been all right,” said Alan. “What’s going on with Gerald, Jamie?”
“He hasn’t hurt me,” Jamie told them very quickly. “He came to me after school about—a couple of weeks ago. I was scared, but he didn’t hurt me, and he said he wasn’t going to. He just wanted to talk to me. I didn’t want to, but what else was I supposed to do, go running to Mae after everything she’d done? Call you guys?”
“You could’ve called,” Alan assured him. His voice was warm enough to strike a grateful smile from both Jamie and Mae.
“Oh yes,” Nick said. “Call anytime. I love to chat.”
“He really did just want to talk. I didn’t want anyone else to get involved. I didn’t want to risk Mae getting hurt,” said Jamie. “It’s not that I trust him. I don’t trust him. I know he hurts people, but he was being reasonable. All he asked was for me to hear him out, and I thought that if I did there was a chance he’d just go away.”
“You should have known magicians only want one thing,” Nick said. Jamie abruptly flushed scarlet. Nick smirked and went on, “To recruit you for their magical army of darkness.”
Jamie nodded cautiously. “I said no. I’m still saying no. It’s all under control.”
“Yeah, it’s all totally under control,” Mae burst out. “I saw you in that alleyway, and your new friend froze me before I could say a word or move a muscle. Like someone getting their dog to sit or pressing pause. Like I was a thing.”
Jamie looked at her with wide-eyed concern, but Mae wasn’t ready to forgive him yet. She looked away and her eyes found Nick, still standing apart from them all, still looking out the window. His thumb was casually hooked in the loop of his jeans, and as she looked at his hand resting against his thigh, she noticed something new: He was wearing a silver ring. She could see there were shapes carved in the silver but not what they were, and she was a bit surprised. Nick had never struck her as the jewelry type.
Like it mattered. Like she’d ever really known anything about him at all.
“I’m sorry, Mae,” Jamie said in a small voice. “He doesn’t really think that—that non-magical people are as important as magicians. It’s not his fault, exactly. He started doing magic when he was really young, and his family was terrible to him about it, and then the magicians came for him when he wasn’t much older than ten and he was so grateful, he felt so rescued, he believed everything they believed. It doesn’t mean—”
“That he’s a bad person?” Nick asked. “He kills people. Now I’m no expert, but doesn’t that make you a bad person?”
Jamie glared at Nick. “You’ve killed a lot more people than he has. What does that make you?”
“Not a person,” Nick murmured, not sounding particularly interested. “Surely you remember.”
There was a short and extremely uncomfortable silence.
“If you’re not a magician,” said Alan, quiet and thoughtful, to all appearances entirely unconscious that anyone might be feeling the least bit awkward, “then how did you just do magic?”
“I’ve been practicing,” Jamie admitted. “Just a little. Gerald’s been teaching me some things.” He paused. “I’m sorry. I won’t—I won’t do it anymore.”
Jamie looked guilty, and it broke Mae’s heart, even if she was angry with him. He’d been born with these powers, and he’d hidden them from everyone for years. He’d even hidden them from her, and she hated that. She resented him for lying to her and making her feel stupid, and at the same time she hurt for him when he talked about doing spells as if he’d committed a crime.
Mae wanted to tell him he didn’t have to stop, but she wasn’t about to encourage this connection with Gerald.
Nick did not look terribly concerned about Jamie’s dilemma.
“I can sense the magic on you. This isn’t the trace of some little tricks you’ve been trying out. This is the real stuff.” He tilted his head, considering; Nick always seemed thoughtful rather than worried when people were afraid. “If you haven’t been doing any big magic,” he continued softly, “then someone’s cast a powerful spell on you. Curious about that at all?”
Jamie turned a nasty shade of white.
“Seems like your pal Gerald can’t be trusted,” Nick concluded. “I for one am shocked.”
“Let’s not start panicking when we don’t know for sure what’s going on,” Alan said reasonably. “It might be nothing. Not that I’m inclined to trust Gerald myself, which is why I thought it might be best to come back to Exeter and stay for a while until we do know what’s going on.”
“I think it might be best to kill them all,” Nick said.
At the same time Jamie said, “You don’t have to do that for me.”
Alan decided that he was going to respond to Jamie. “It’s not a problem. We’re used to moving around, we want to help, and besides, the company’s good here.” He sent Mae a small smile. “Plus, it might be nice to settle somewhere for a while. Maybe Nick could even make some friends.”
Nick scowled out the window. “I have friends in Exeter already. I have—those people, you know, they hang around outside the bike sheds, they’re always hassling Jamie.”
“Those are some awesome dudes,” Jamie muttered. “Don’t let them get away.”
“You might try remembering just one name,” said Alan sharply. “Since they’re such good friends of yours.”
Mae straightened in her chair. She had never heard quite that tone in Alan’s voice before.
“Fine then,” Nick snapped, and directed a dark glance Jamie’s way. “Hey, Jamie. Want to be friends?”
Jamie looked extremely startled. “Um,” he said, and went a bit pink. “Um, all right.” He paused and added, “Friends don’t menace friends with giant terrifying swords, okay?”
Nick snorted. “Okay.”
“See, Exeter’s working out well already,” Alan said, sounding a little amused, and Mae thought she might have been imagining the note of tension in his voic
e before. “Jamie? Do you think you could make an appointment to see Gerald?”
Mae wondered if Jamie knew some sort of spell to get in touch with the Obsidian Circle, or if possibly Gerald had carrier pigeons.
“Well, sure,” Jamie said. “I have his phone number.” He hesitated for a moment and then said uneasily, “What—what are you planning to do to him?”
Gerald didn’t think that normal people were as important as magicians. He killed normal people and fed them to demons in order to get more magic, and still Jamie could seem worried about him, as if Gerald really was a friend.
Of course, Nick and Alan were her friends, and she knew what they were.
She’d thought of Nick as more than a friend, once, and she’d imagined that perhaps he felt the same way about her.
She had been wrong about that. All he’d been interested in was using her to spite his brother.
It didn’t matter that Nick had never cared. Mae had been interested when she’d thought he was a gorgeous guy whose strangeness she’d put down to the effects of living on the run from magicians. She wasn’t still interested now that she knew he was a demon, put into the body of a baby by the Obsidian Circle magicians and raised human, but a demon all the same; something otherworldly that preyed on her kind. It would be impossible.
She tore her gaze away from Nick, dark and silent at the window, to the friendly face of the guy who’d raised a demon and set him loose on the world.
“I just want to talk to him,” Alan said soothingly, eyes on Jamie’s face. “For now.”
3
Messenger at the Gates
Mae decided to skip the end of her last class so she could get her breakup over with. She told the math teacher that she had to go to the bathroom “kind of urgently,” and Mr. Churchill told her to go with a look on his face that said he wished he was teaching in an all-boys’ school.
She made her way over to the new building, a stucco bungalow tucked in between the bike sheds and the playground where the GCSE class took art. The bell rang as she approached, and the other kids poured out, Jamie included, as if education was lingering in the classroom like a deadly airborne virus.