Sin helped him, her arm around his shoulders, and Nick acted, grabbing hold of both Alan’s arms and almost throwing him into one of the chairs by their small round kitchen table.
“Now,” Nick said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Sin slipped in, eel-swift, to block Alan from Nick’s view. “Leave him alone. Have you no pity?”
Nick put a hand to Sin’s throat, forcing her head back. The demon’s attention was on her now, his eyes glittering.
“Don’t stand between me and my brother,” he said softly. “And no.”
“Don’t touch her,” Alan commanded, his voice thin and hoarse.
Nick released Sin’s throat and stepped back, until he was behind the counter, as if he did not trust himself not to lash out unless there was a barrier in his way.
Sin didn’t trust him either.
“She knows what’s going on,” Nick observed. “Obviously. How many people know? Why did you lie to me? Why do you always lie?”
“It’s in my nature,” Alan said in a low voice, and then more clearly: “I didn’t want you to get upset. There was no point in telling you.”
“No point?” Nick echoed.
“No,” said Alan. “There’s nothing you can do. It’s just Gerald demonstrating his power over me. He wants you to be upset, so when he comes to you with demands, you’ll do what he wants.”
Alan had decided not to mention that there had already been demands, Sin noticed. She turned toward Alan, joining him in this conspiracy almost without a thought. She bowed her head as if she was fussing over him, making sure Nick could not see her face.
Her eyes and Alan’s met in perfect understanding.
In his nature, indeed.
“And you didn’t think I should know this,” Nick said.
“I didn’t feel like giving him the satisfaction,” Alan returned.
“He was trying to keep it from everyone,” Sin added. “I happened to see him have another attack, the day I was teaching him archery up on the hill. If I’d thought it would do you any good to know, I would have told you.”
Perfectly true, as far as it went.
She looked up to see if Nick was buying it. He was standing with his arms braced on the counter and his head bowed.
“What are we going to do?” he asked, and then louder, his voice furious: “What’s the plan?”
“Oh, well,” Alan said, his voice gentle and tired. “That’s the problem. There isn’t one.”
“What do you mean, there isn’t one?”
“Think about it, Nick,” said Alan. “I can’t make a plan. If there was a plan, I couldn’t know it. Gerald could torture it out of me anytime he liked.”
Nick’s shoulders bunched as his brother spoke. His head stayed bowed.
“What are we meant to do then?” he snarled. “Just sit and wait until he comes with his demands? Or until he pushes you too far and kills you?”
“The second would be preferable,” Alan said. “I won’t have you a magician’s slave.”
“Why not?” Nick demanded. “What does it matter? I was one before.”
“That was before you were mine,” Alan said. His voice was steadier now. “Nick, if I do die. If it happens, I hope it won’t, but if it does, it’s all right. I’ll feel all right about it if I can leave you safe behind, with Mae and Jamie. It will be like leaving behind a life’s work. Do you know something? I remember snatches of things before you came, bits and pieces about my mother. But as far back as I can think in a straight line, from that point of my life to this, there’s you, and wanting to take care of you. That’s what I remember. It’s all right.”
Nick did look up then.
“I remember my life, before you,” he said, his voice chilly and distant. “Don’t make me live like that again.”
“Nick,” Alan said.
“Nick,” Nick repeated viciously. “What was that, in the beginning, but some baby name you used because you heard Olivia call me Hnikarr. A demon’s name in a child’s mouth. Until you turned it into the biggest lie you ever told. Nicholas Ryves. As if there was such a person. As if I was a person. Who do you think I’ll be, when you die?”
“I think you’ll be Nicholas Ryves,” said Alan. “You made that lie true for me. You’ve answered to the name, every time I called. I know who you are.”
“Do you know what I am?”
Demon, thought Sin, but she did not say it. Even Alan did not speak, just shook his head and waited.
“I can’t make a plan,” Nick said slowly. “I can’t save anyone. All I can do is kill. I’m a weapon. And if I can’t be your weapon, I’ll be someone else’s.”
“What are you going to do?” Sin asked.
Nick tilted his chin, baring his throat to Alan for a moment, as if that was a response.
“Be careful,” Alan murmured, as if it was.
“You’re one to talk,” Nick said. “For nine minutes tonight, I thought you were dead already.”
He sounded perfectly calm about that, but he had counted the minutes. Sin couldn’t quite put the two things together, not in a way that made any sense.
Nick turned his eyes to her, blank but still demanding, like staring into an abyss that stared back. Sin met his gaze, refusing to let him read anything from her face again, and his eyes bored into her for a moment.
Then he turned away. He left the kitchen, and a second later, the door of the flat slammed shut.
Alan got out his phone and called Mae.
“I think,” he said, “you might want to expect a guest fairly soon. Let me know if your aunt Edith sees him and calls the cops. I’ll come bail him out eventually. Yes, Cynthia and the kids are safe here.”
He raised an eyebrow at Sin. She shook her head.
“She’s already asleep,” Alan said without missing a beat. “Yeah, it’s been a long night. I’ll let her know you want to talk to her.”
He turned the phone off.
“What do you think Nick’s going to do?” Sin asked.
“I don’t know,” Alan answered. “I’m trying not to think about it. If I don’t know, I can’t tell Gerald. Besides, it’s only fair for Nick to have some secrets, considering my—entire life.”
“Yes,” said Sin, thinking of how she’d thought the demon might lash out, even at Alan, the way Nick’s hand had felt at her throat. “You’re certainly the problem child.”
She sagged against the kitchen table. Alan could see through any show she might put on. There was a certain freedom in knowing that, in simply stopping.
She was so tired.
“You really should take my bed,” Alan said. He gave her a beautiful, plausible smile. “You’ve had quite a night of it. You need your sleep.”
Sin didn’t mention what Alan had gone through tonight. Instead she backed away from the table, going for the sitting room and the sofa there, and paused at the kitchen door to say, “I do need my sleep. That’s why I don’t want an angry demonic alarm clock going off at me.”
“I can handle Nick,” Alan told her.
“No doubt,” Sin said. “I can handle the floor.”
Alan got up and limped over to her. The limp wasn’t usually so obvious, but then, he must be even more tired than she was. Sin looked away so she wouldn’t have to see it, closing her eyes and leaning her head against the door frame.
When she opened her eyes, she saw that had been the wrong thing to do. There were faint bitter lines around Alan’s mouth.
“Some horrible things have happened to you tonight,” he said in a level voice. “I’d just like for you to have a bed.”
“And what about what happened to you?” Sin asked. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You don’t think that counts, because it’s you.”
She stopped leaning and backed away from him, through the door into the other bedroom. She crooked her finger at him and summoned up a smile. “We can share. I don’t mind.”
She moved backward without a glance behind her. She might not have the Ma
rket anymore, but she was still dancer enough to move gracefully, no matter where she was. She backed up without missing a beat until the backs of her knees hit the bed, and then she sat.
When she looked up, Alan was standing in the doorway.
“I do mind,” he said.
“Right,” Sin said, and her fragile calm broke like a rope snapping beneath her feet. “I wasn’t offering anything more than sleep, you know.”
Alan went scarlet to his eyebrows. “I didn’t think you were.”
“I wasn’t,” Sin snarled, and she leaned her head in her hands. She wanted to cry, but her eyes felt like hot hollows in her face. She hadn’t cried in a long time.
She heard Alan crossing the room, never able to be light on his feet. He sat down on the bed beside her and touched her arm, just brushing it with his fingertips, as if he didn’t want to presume.
“Cynthia,” he said. “Okay.”
“I wasn’t,” Sin insisted, and was almost sure she was telling the truth: She was so tired, and she might want comfort, but that was no way to get it. She ground the heels of her hands against her closed eyes until they hurt.
“Cynthia,” Alan repeated, putting so much effort into his beautiful voice that it cracked, the whole façade cracked, neither of them quite good enough at their roles to make them true. “It’s okay.”
“What’s okay?” Sin demanded. “Nothing’s okay. I let the Market down. I should have known that since getting to you wasn’t working, they would come after us. I should have worked it out!”
“I should have—,” Alan began, but she interrupted him fiercely.
“They’re my people,” she said. “Not yours. I was the one who knew Lydie had magic, and I should have protected her. I was meant to be a leader, I was meant to take care of her, and I failed!”
She still could not cry, but she was shaking suddenly, hard, bone-jarring shaking, her whole body betraying her. Alan took hold of her elbow carefully, always gentle, and Sin turned to him blindly and locked her arm around his neck. She buried her face in his collarbone, gritted her teeth, and shook and shook.
“Cynthia,” Alan murmured, and rocked her for a little while, stroked her hair. She could feel it going electric with static, curls rising up to wrap around his fingers. She wished she could tie him down somewhere, keep him just like this, just for her. “Cynthia.”
She let him go and leaned back, stretching onto his pillow. She kept hold of his arm, pulling him toward her. “Come here,” she said. “Lie to me.”
Alan lay down beside her, a little awkward pulling up his bad leg onto the bed. His hand in her hair wasn’t awkward, anything but, fingers slow and light as the rays of the moon on her skin, drawing a curl back from her cheek. She reached up and took off his glasses, snapping the earpieces closed with her teeth, and smiled at him as she slid them onto the bedside table.
He was gorgeous by moonlight, hair and skin turned a hazy golden color, his eyes starlit-night blue and so sweet, so deep, pools you could drop your heart into and lose it forever.
“Cynthia,” he murmured, fingers still brushing her cheek, making her shiver. “I’m not lying.”
Sin closed her eyes and tucked her cheek into the curve of his neck and against his pillow.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “Just like that.”
8
Burning Wishes
SIN WOKE WARM AND SAFE, THE MORNING SO EARLY THAT THE rays of light falling across the bed just seemed like paler shadows. She had a hand curled around the front of Alan’s shirt, anchoring him close beside her. The blankets were heaped over her, Alan’s breath was slow and regular against her hair, and Sin felt no inclination to move whatsoever.
She tugged Alan a little closer. He made a drowsy inquiring sound.
Sin gave a sleepy hum in response.
Her hum wavered and died away in her throat when Alan’s fingers brushed her ribs. She hadn’t really registered before that her shirt had ridden up, but she did now.
Alan’s hand slid along her side, moving smooth and sure from cloth to skin. His gun-calloused fingers lingered at the hollow above her hip, and Sin realized that Alan had definitely woken up with a girl in his bed before.
She rolled a little toward him easy as a cat being stroked, and at that point Alan woke up all the way, yelped, and fell out of bed.
Sin would’ve laughed, except for the small stifled sound Alan made when he hit the ground.
She levered herself up on her elbows and said sharply, “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” Alan bit out, white around the lips, and she hated his stupid leg for ruining something that should have been ridiculous and warm. If it hadn’t been for that, they would both have laughed; if it hadn’t been for that, she would have noticed him before, the same way the other girls who had been in this bed must have.
“Your leg,” she began. “Is it—”
“Cynthia, leave it!” Alan snapped.
There was something furious and humiliated about the tight line of his mouth. If she had been another girl, someone who hated his leg less, he wouldn’t have been this embarrassed.
He grabbed at the bedpost with unnecessary force and hauled himself gracelessly to his feet. Sin closed her eyes, imagining how it would be if she knew her body was guaranteed to fail her.
“I apologize,” Alan told her stiffly.
Sin blinked her eyes open. “What?”
Alan was staring with great interest at the wall. “I didn’t know it was you,” he said. “Well, I did know it was you, but I was half-asleep, and—”
Sin blinked again as the fact that he was being a gentleman about not quite groping her sank in. She began to smile.
“That’s all right,” she said, and rolled back on the pillows, making a space. She glanced up at him through her fallen hair and asked, amused and inviting, “Are you getting back in?”
“Ah,” Alan said. “No. I have translations to do. And you—” He reached out then, not for her but for the blanket, which he pulled up over her shoulder. “Cynthia,” he said. “Just rest.”
Rejection number one hundred and fourteen—but who was counting—should have stung more, but his voice and the way he drew up the blanket were gentle, and she could stand to get more sleep.
Sin cuddled in under the covers. She was asleep again almost immediately. She stirred automatically every now and then, her hand reaching for the kids, but as soon as she surfaced from sleep she knew things were taken care of for now. For now, she could rest.
Every time she woke she glanced over at the little desk by the window, where Alan sat with an old scroll and a sheet of notepaper, occasionally scribbling something. His face in the morning light was serious and absorbed. The sound of the pencil on paper was like a whisper, shushing her back to sleep.
The last time she woke up, her eyes snapped open to the sound of Toby fussing.
Alan was standing up, hip propped against the desk, the baby in his arms.
“Shh,” he said, commanding and coaxing at once, his voice very low. “Shh. Let your sister sleep a little longer.”
Toby stared at him, mouth working doubtfully for a moment, then decided to grab for Alan’s glasses and laugh. Alan echoed the laugh back at him, the sound turning into music and the sunlight pushing warm gold fingers through Alan’s red hair.
It was a revelation.
Alan mattered. He meant something to her, and that meant he could hurt her. Considering the evidence so far, it meant he was going to hurt her.
This was another terrible problem, on top of all the others.
She had no idea what she was going to do, but she could sleep for just a little longer.
She hadn’t slept like this in more than a year.
She woke up with the demon hanging over her, blank eyes on her face.
Sin whipped a fist around hard, aiming for his stomach. He grabbed her wrist, and she twisted and sat up in bed. “What do you want, Nick?”
“Mavis on the phone for you,” h
e said, and dropped his mobile phone on her pillow.
“Mavis?” Sin asked.
“Definitely not,” said Mae. “Smack Nick around a little for me, would you?”
“Anything for a friend.”
“So I was wondering what shoe size you are.”
Sin rose from the bed, unwrapping the sheets from around herself as she did so. She realized only when she saw Nick’s raised brows that she’d unwound them slowly, with a little dramatic gesture. She raised her eyebrows back at him and turned her back.
“I don’t understand.”
“Look, all your stuff got burned to ashes last night,” Mae said. “I’ve got a ton of clothes and things I’m going to bring over. Also I’m going to buy you some shoes.”
“I don’t want charity,” Sin said flatly.
“It’s practicality,” Mae volleyed back. “We’re allies, right? Allies need to be able to leave the house. For that you need shoes. So tell me your shoe size, because I’m financially irresponsible and if you don’t I’ll buy a whole bunch of different size shoes.”
“Mae—”
“I’m in the shop,” Mae said. “I’m getting ready to waste the world’s shoe resources!”
Sin told Mae her shoe size and hung up. She was going to have to work out a way to pay back Mae as well.
She turned back to Nick.
“Thank you for the phone,” she said. “And for letting us stay.”
“Alan’s letting you stay,” Nick said.
“Okay,” Sin said. “Why aren’t you at school?”
“Why aren’t you at school?” Nick echoed.
“Uh, my uniform burned up. When my home exploded into flames.”
“So did mine,” said Nick. “When I tossed a lighter into my wardrobe. Tragic, really.”
Sin rubbed the center of her forehead. “Where are Toby and Lydie?”
“Alan has the baby, and he brought the girl to school. He went by to pick up Mae and they’re coming back here to make some sort of plan.”
“What sort of plan?” Sin asked apprehensively.
“I don’t know, I’m not any good at plans,” Nick said. “Well, I’ve got a stage one: Kill some people. After that you’ve lost me.”