The Demon's Covenant (46 page)

“Nick!” she shouted. “Stop it! It's going to be okay. I've got a plan.”

Nick looked in her direction, head tilting at a strange, unsettling angle, like a bird of prey.

“What else did he say?”

There was an edge to his voice like a sharpened sword, like the whine of an arrow through the air.

“It doesn't matter,” said Mae. “None of it matters, Nick.”

He laughed and turned his back on her still laughing, a wild, horrible sound that made the sky shudder with fracturing light. The clouds split and suddenly it was raining, not summer rain but cold sheets of water that gleamed silver and gold in the lightning and then went dark, drops landing so hard on Mae's skin that they stung. The cascade almost drove her to her knees.

She lunged at Nick instead, grabbing his arms, her fingertips sliding on his wet skin until she dug them in and pulled to turn him around. He didn't budge for a moment, immovable as a rock, then he whirled on her.

“Maybe none of it does matter,” he told her. “And what happens to you then?”

“You've been warned now,” said Mae. “There's an army
of Goblin Market people. When Alan takes you to the Goblin Market, when he tries to lure you into a magicians' circle—”

“When he—” Nick said, and laughed again with a catch in it.

The wind was screaming in her ears now. If she hadn't been so close to Nick, she wouldn't have been able to hear him. She could barely see him, the rain lashing gleaming needle points into her eyes, but she hung on tight to his arms.

“Don't go into the circle,” Mae shouted at him, his face a pale blur above her. “Stay outside and fight with us. And we'll kill the magicians, and—and Alan will see he was wrong. He'll be sorry. Nick.
Listen
to me.”

Nick leaned in and whispered in her ear, “Why?”

“Because I know what I'm doing,” she said. “Because everything's going to be okay. I know you're upset—”

“Why?” Nick said again, his voice tearing the way the lightning was tearing at the sky. He slid his wet face against Mae's, so she felt the bridge of his nose and the cruel curl of his mouth against her cheek, as he demanded softly, “Why should I care? If—if—what you're saying is true, then I don't. If what you say is true, there's no reason at all to try and keep up the pathetic pretense that I could ever be anything like human.”

There were lightning strikes now. Mae could see, over Nick's shoulder, in her rain-dimmed vision, that there was a tree burning.

He was going to kill somebody.

“Stop this,” she said through clenched teeth, and slid her hands to his shoulders.

She tried to shake them, but he was stone under her hands, as if he was right and nothing about him was human at all.

Nick said, low and almost amused, “No.”

“Don't you think you're being a little—” Mae began, and then Nick touched her. His palm hit her throat, strong fingers around her neck, then his hand slid around to the nape of her neck, tilting her head back.

“Don't you think you should be a little concerned, Mae?” he asked. “You with your lovely demon's mark. I'm done playing human. Just imagine what I could do to you.”

The rain wasn't in her eyes anymore. Nick was leaning over her instead, water slipping from his hair, breath coming in slow, shuddering pants. There was something watchful and terrible in his eyes.

The whole city could burn.

He was standing too close because he wanted her to be scared. He was waiting for her to run or to surrender.

She didn't plan on doing either one.

Mae stepped forward and caught his hand, and Nick started and made to pull away. She hung on, tangling their wet, cold fingers together, not letting him make them any demon terrifying any human. She knew him, had heard his true name, read his father's diary, held his hand before. They knew each other.

He stopped trying to pull away and just looked down at her.

Mae sucked in a breath of stormy air.

Then she reached up to curl her fingers tight into the soaked material of Nick's T-shirt.

“Okay,” she whispered. “I'm imagining a few things.”

Nick made a gasping, hurt sound and leaned in, his face half sliding and half scraping against hers, catching a little where he needed to shave, starting a slow, warm, prickling feeling crawling down her rib cage. Then his mouth caught hers, her lips parting, remembering the precise feel of his
mouth against hers, and every nerve ending she had felt touched with lightning.

The whole city could burn, and for a moment she didn't care.

She was kissing Nick, he was kissing her, it was Nick again at last. Mae's back hit the wet roof tiles and she pulled him down with her, hands knotted in his wet hair, his mouth hot and demanding on hers, lips curling the way she remembered them. She'd memorized his mouth.

“Shhh,” she said, frantic, between kisses. “Nick. It's all
right
.”

It was so different from the first time. She'd been concerned about him then, too, but it hadn't been this wild, intangible thing, she hadn't felt her heart beating like a frenzied bird trapped in her chest.

“Shhh,” she said against the corner of his mouth, and ran a hand up along the center of his chest, flat muscle under soaked cotton. Her fingers caught on the talisman and the scar beneath it.

He almost smiled, though the smiled twisted in on itself and disappeared. “Mavis,” he said, his voice scraping away from the edge, and she told herself she didn't like it.

He was calmer now, she thought, and he might listen. She should pull back, deal with him calmly, be in control.

He kissed her again, sharing a shuddering breath from his open mouth to hers, his body pressing her down against the storm-washed roof tiles, and Mae kissed him back. She was burning hot in the middle of a storm, so hot she was shaking with it.

“Shhh,” she said, nosing blindly along his cheek, kissing the sharp corner of his jaw and then sliding her mouth down the pale rain-slick line of his throat.

He didn't make sounds like other boys did, so she had to pay attention to every little detail in the small lightning-soaked
space between them. She bit down on the curve where his neck sloped into his collarbone, tasting the warm rainwater pooled there and the cool skin beneath, and felt him tense above her.

“Come here,” he ordered, and she pressed her lips against his throat and smiled.

Nick peeled the wet material of her shirt away from her skin, fingers sliding under the collar, and ran the shocking-cold metal of his ring along her mark. Mae arched up into him, and he caught her mouth and the small sound she made, his teeth running along the line of her lower lip.

“I have a—” Mae whispered into the slow, hot kiss, drunk on Nick all around her. She was tempted to thump her head against the roof tile in a desperate effort to clear it, but instead she kissed Nick some more. “I—oh God—I have a plan.”

Her plan had not been to push the drenched cotton of his shirt up so she could run a hand up his ribs, skating over the leather band where he kept a knife hidden, but it was happening anyway. Nick was sitting up a little, she was levering herself up on her elbows to help him, to strip his shirt off so she could have wet smooth skin under her hands.

“This is becoming a habit of yours, Nick,” Alan's voice said coldly from the skylight, and they both froze.

“Don't let me interrupt,” Alan continued, and disappeared down the ladder before Mae had even registered the expression on his face, though she could tell from the tone of his voice that it couldn't have been good.

Mae swore between gritted teeth, and Nick bolted backward, lunging away from her and toward the skylight. She pressed her forehead against the heel of her hand and cursed herself silently and at length. She was so stupid, how had she
done this, and after what Alan had said to her on the high street. How he must feel now.

She scrambled to her feet and went for the ladder, making her way shakily down it, legs not working particularly well, as she heard Nick thundering down the attic stairs.

“Alan!” he shouted, but there was no answer back, not even a shout.

Mae was stumbling down the stairs to the hall when Nick caught Alan in the kitchen, the door open and the fluorescent lights on. Alan was standing beside the kettle, which he'd switched on. He looked pale and determinedly casual.

Nick had hold of the kitchen counter. The way he was gripping it and the fact that he was disheveled and soaked to the skin combined to form the impression of a drowning man.

“Alan,” he said, “I want to talk.”

Mae was at the foot of the stairs now, making her way slowly to the kitchen door. She wasn't sure if she could help by getting involved. She couldn't leave the explaining to Nick, but she couldn't blame Alan if he did not want to look at her right now.

Apparently Alan didn't want to look at his brother, either. He was staring down at his empty cup.

“You do?” he asked Nick, his voice clipped. “Well, that's new and different for us. What do you want to say?”

Nick looked at him, eyes glittering under his wet fall of hair. Every muscle in his body looked tense, and Mae remembered what she had told Nick, realized how much he might hate Alan at this moment, and waited with her mouth gone dry to hear what Nick had to say.

Low and cold, Nick said, “Betray me.”

Alan's head snapped up. “What?”

“Betray me,” Nick said again, still in that terrible toneless
demon's voice, hands clenching on the kitchen counter so hard Mae thought it would break. “Turn me over to the magicians, take the magic, do whatever you think you need to do, I do not care. But don't leave.”

She'd had it all wrong, Mae thought, feeling numb all over. She'd known Nick was afraid of something, learning fear the way she'd described it:
feeling paralyzed even though you know you have to act, because you're sure that if you even move, the most terrible thing you can think of will happen.

She just hadn't understood.

From the look on Alan's face, he hadn't understood either.

“Oh, Nick,” he said in a soft, amazed voice. “No.”

He limped the few steps toward his brother, then reached out. A shiver ran all the way through Nick, as if he was a spooked animal about to bolt, but he didn't bolt. Alan's hand settled on the back of his brother's neck, and Nick bowed his head a little more and let him do it.

“No, no, no,” Alan said in his beautiful voice, turning it into a lullaby, soothing and sweet. “Nick. I would never leave.”

Mae had no place being there right now, so she closed the kitchen door softly and walked home.

Outside it was still dark, but the tattered storm clouds were curling around one another almost gently, the storm calmed, the sky full of possibility.

The rain had stopped.

20
The Demon's Price

Mae woke on the day of the Goblin Market to the sound of her phone ringing by her ear. It was Sin, freaking out about cover for her people. Mae sat up in bed, grabbed her laptop, and got some maps of Huntingdon Market Square up onscreen.

“Look, Sin,” she said. “Think. The square's in the middle of town. There are houses on every side of it! Well, one side's a church, but you take my point. There is absolutely no chance that the magicians won't be shielding themselves. Trust me, I saw the Aventurine Circle do this on the Millennium Bridge. They'll be giving us cover. All we have to do is use it.”

“And if they decide to take it down?”

“They'd expose themselves as well as us,” said Mae. “It's going to be fine.”

“It's not,” Sin told her quietly. “People are going to die. I think it's worth it, to eliminate the magicians. You're not Market, though. Not yet. Can you handle people dying because of your plan?”

Mae rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand, fuzzy morning vision coalescing to St. Leonard's fragile Gothic spire outside her window, stretching up into a clear blue sky.