The Demon's Covenant

struggling and in pain and still trying to do the right thing. Her Jamie.

Mae tipped her forehead against his and held on for just a little while longer. “Yeah,” she promised him. “I’ll be okay.”

They stood like that until Jamie said, “Nick,” and Mae said, “Huh?” and then stepped back as Jamie said, “Nick. Over here. Nick!”

Nick was striding past the tent, clearly intent on finding Alan again, but at Jamie’s call he checked himself and came striding over to them. Someone had found him a new shirt, as the old one had been ripped in two and soaked in gore, but beneath the clean cotton his whole body looked tense and exhausted.

“What?” he asked.

Jamie let go of Mae’s hands with one last, clinging press. “I’m really sorry about this,” he said. “I know that you’re upset about Alan and you don’t know what to say to me about—about anything, and this is the worst time to try and talk to you. But I’m going to the Aventurine Circle so I can help Alan and all of us, because I’m the only one they’d let in. So there isn’t any other time I can talk to you. I just wanted to say that you were a great friend. I’m really glad you asked me. I’m really glad we did that. And you can go find Alan now. You don’t have to say anything at all.”

Jamie stood a careful distance away from Nick and spoke carefully too, anxiously, trying to get it just right.

He was seeing these moments as his last chance to get things right, Mae thought, sick and aching. In case he died somewhere in London, among enemies.

“What?” said Nick, and scowled. “What are you talking about? Don’t be an idiot. You’re not going anywhere.”

“I am,” Jamie told him sturdily.

“You want revenge for your mother?” Nick asked, and Jamie flinched. One of Nick’s hands closed in a fist and then loosened. He took a breath. “I’ll get it for you,” he said. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll make it happen. You don’t have to go anywhere and get your idiot self killed.”

“Okay, can you pass yourself off as a magician and gain Gerald’s trust and pass us information about Celeste’s plans and save all the magicians who want to be saved?” Jamie asked. “Because if so, awesome. I shall stay here and eat pie.”

Nick blinked at Jamie. “I was thinking more in terms of killing someone.”

Jamie’s smile this time was still wavering, but it almost looked real. “I know. But this is something I have to do. So I’m going to go do it. You take care of yourself, Nick.”

Jamie started to back away and his eyes left Nick, turning back to Mae.

“Hey,” Nick said abruptly, and tossed something at Jamie’s head.

Jamie caught it, fumbling it a bit, and then almost dropped it when he saw the rough carvings on the bright handle and worked out what it was.

“A knife, Nick?” he asked piteously. “I feel so betrayed.”

“It’s a magic knife,” Nick said. “I made it myself.”

“I don’t want to seem ungrateful when you have given me this thoughtful, homemade and totally terrifying gift,” Jamie told him. “But you can’t imagine that I’m going to use it.”

“Just to hold someone off. Just remember what I taught you,” said Nick. “Just buy a little time so I can come get you. Jamie. I’ll come get you.”

“Nick,” Jamie said. “I know. Thank you for my scary knife.”

He looked down at the knife, a bit helplessly, and then put it in his pocket. Then he started across the meadow in exactly the opposite direction to Alan, along the side of the river.

“Also,” Nick added curtly, “I’m sorry about your face.”

Jamie looked over his shoulder, and touched the demon’s mark crawling along his jaw with the back of his hand. “Sorry about saving all our lives by doing something you had to do?”

“Oh no,” Nick said blandly. “I just meant, you know. Generally.”

Jamie stared at him, shocked, and laughed. It was a real laugh, helpless and sweet, and Mae memorized it in case he died. Jamie by the river at dawn, laughing.

His eyes caught Mae’s and he stopped laughing. His gaze simply held hers.

You and me against the world. Mae nodded at him, and Jamie turned and walked slowly away down the river. He squared his thin shoulders as he went, and the gesture almost broke Mae’s self- control, but she had to be standing up and looking all right if he turned around.

“Don’t leave,” she ordered Nick between her teeth. If Jamie turned around, he would see that she wasn’t alone. She watched Jamie go until even when she squinted against the dazzle of the sunlight on the water he was nothing but a tiny black speck, and then the speck was lost. “Okay,” Mae said at last. It was all over. Jamie was gone. “Okay, you can go now.”

Nick nodded, his head dipping briefly. His hair was such a dense black it looked dusty in the sunlight, the light glancing off it and forming white around it. The shape the light formed was jagged and nothing like a crown.

“That woman,” he said. “Helen. I could have killed her on the bridge in London. I didn’t. I thought—it was meant to be a human sort of gesture, sparing your enemies. Showing mercy. I got it wrong. I wish I’d killed her. Then Annabel would be alive instead.”

Hearing her name was like a blow to a wounded place. Mae wanted to be blind suddenly, to be deaf and dumb and blind so they couldn’t tell her about it and she wouldn’t have to talk about it and she wouldn’t have ever seen it, her mother’s empty eyes staring up into the night sky.