Anzu, who had landed directly in the middle of the summoning circle beside Nick’s, looked around with a wild bright smile.
Nick looked up at him.
Their eyes met as the markings of the circle burned with rising fire, burned high, burned hot, sparks flying upward into that vaulted ceiling.
“Poor Hnikarr,” Anzu murmured, his amusement plain. “You don’t have much power left for anyone, do you? Here you are, crawling and begging. Aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Nick said, between his teeth.
Anzu smiled, malice written all over his face. “I love it.”
And Gerald blasted power at Jamie like a lightning flash and a shock wave combined. Jamie went flying across the floor, hit with a bang that rattled the boards, and dug his hook into the wood as he tried to get up.
The white light of magic had died out of Gerald’s eyes, but he stepped toward the summoning circles and away from Jamie.
“You’re right,” Gerald said. “Power is worth everything. It’s certainly worth your life.”
He glanced at Nick, obviously all but used up, then laughed. He reached into the circle where Anzu stood.
“And I’m about to have everything.”
Both of Anzu’s hands shot out across the circle, like a vulture swooping down on his prey at last. Hands growing talons at the ends bit into Gerald’s flesh, shadowy wingtips curved down savagely to envelop him.
Gerald’s eyes went past blue into white, fierce shining white, like looking into the sun, like more power than anyone could bear. He laughed.
Then it was like a light burning out.
The light drained from white to blue to gray, until even the ashes of light were gone and darkness filled Gerald’s eyes, as if someone had spilled shadows inside him, staining him forever.
There was nothing left of the balefire but smoke and darkness.
Nick stood, a looming black shape in the smoke. Jamie stepped up to his side, his eyes icy white fire in the gloom.
Sin and Mae both came forward and motioned to the Market to join them.
“A demon’s mark on a magician means just the same thing as a demon’s mark on anyone else,” Jamie said. He spoke softly but clearly, his voice ringing around the room. “It means you can be killed, controlled, or possessed. Nick gave me power because he chose to. He did what I said because he wanted to. And he obeyed Gerald’s orders because it was part of Mae’s plan.”
The magicians had already begun to recede from Gerald like the tide, as if realizing how far from human company and comfort he had suddenly gone.
Whatever love or grief he had felt, it did not matter now. He had reached out for power above all, and got his reward.
Laura the gray-haired magician, Gerald’s right hand, was crying, covering her face, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably. Sin had seen mothers cry like that for dead children.
Anzu turned Gerald’s body slowly to look at her, face blank as a stone, and then he looked where Gerald had been looking in the last moment of his life, back at Jamie.
The mouth that had been Gerald’s mouth twisted at the corners. Anzu moved, pulling a carved ring off his finger, and threw it at Jamie.
Jamie caught the ring and Mae took it from him, slid it onto the finger of his remaining hand. The ring shone there, like the tears running down Jamie’s face, falling from his magic-bright eyes.
“Which of you will surrender to me?” Jamie asked the surrounding magicians quietly. “Which of you will join the Market?”
Laura lunged at him.
“Never, you little monster,” she shouted, palm lifted.
Nick caught her hand above her head and forced it down. Laura shook with horror, looking into his black eyes.
The magicians had never seen one of their own possessed before. It must have happened once, long years ago, and they must have learned to be careful enough that horror faded out of memory, and they were even able to believe Jamie’s story that he could control a demon through his mark.
Sin had believed it herself.
She couldn’t blame Gerald for believing it too.
Laura tore her hand out of Nick’s grip and ran headlong out of the room. No-one stopped her.
Jamie looked around the room. “Will anyone surrender to me?” he asked, still quiet.
Helen of the Aventurine Circle, sword wielder, his mother’s murderer, stepped forward with her fair head bowed.
“I will,” she said. “If you will have me.”
With a painful effort, Jamie smiled at her. “I will.”
Helen came striding across the room, over the broken glass and the remains of two summoning circles, and
