It was a jolt to look into his black eyes, after Merris’s. But there was no human struggling in there, Sin reminded herself. There was just this boy she’d known for years; there was just this demon, eternal and cold, and nothing else.
She didn’t know what that meant.
She did know that he was dressed all in black, for dancing, and whether he was boy or demon, he was the best partner she’d ever had.
Sin smiled at him. “Welcome to the Market.”
He looked down at her, dark lock of hair falling into his eyes, mouth curving. He looked like the perfect partner for tonight.
“Did you save me the first dance?”
Beyond Nick’s shoulder Sin saw Alan lingering at Carl’s stall, bright head bent over an array of bows and arrows. She waited for a second, but he didn’t seem aware of the weight of her attention, didn’t look up to catch her eye.
Alan presented a problem, but for the first time Sin had an idea how to solve it. Before the attack at school, it would not have occurred to her that Alan might appreciate a performance.
“Better than that,” she told Nick. “I saved you the last one.”
Sin took a time-out from dances and accepted a plastic cup of water from Chiara. Then she noticed the slice of fever fruit floating in it.
“You’re just basically a bad person,” Sin told her, and sipped.
Chiara gave her a serene smile, which changed into a slightly more wicked smile at a hovering tourist. Sin took a gulp of water, laced with a taste that raced down her throat burning sweet and strong.
She swallowed and said, “What does everyone think about Alan Ryves?”
“I never think about Alan Ryves,” said Chiara.
Matthias the piper, thin as his own instrument, came by and stole the cup right out of Sin’s hand. “Personally, I like him.”
The dancers en masse gave Matthias a very startled look.
Matthias gestured to his throat and said appreciatively, “Beautiful voice.”
“Do you care about anything but people’s voices?” Chiara asked.
“Yes,” said Matthias, considering. “But I can’t think of any-thing I care about half as much.”
Tonight’s theme for the dances, the ones intended to attract tourists who might then stay to pay for answers from demons, was fire: September had come in cold, and the tourists could huddle around the lines of flame and see dancers catapult through them, dance along them, juggle lit torches enchanted to draw scenes on the air. More Market people had come to watch than usual because of the beckoning warmth of the flames.
Nick was taking his own break from the dancing and sitting with Alan on a log by one of the banked-up fires. Alan was talking to Nick and laughing, his hands making shapes of shadows against the firelight.
“Tell you what I’d do,” Chiara concluded after a thoughtful pause. “I’d take them both. That might be fun.”
“They’re brothers,” said another dancer, Jonas. “That’s sick.”
“No, it’s okay because they’re not actually related,” Chiara argued.
“That’s a demon,” Matthias observed mildly. “Nothing about it is okay.”
Everyone fell silent at that reminder. Nobody wanted to think about demons these days, to admit that if demons were unspeakably corrupt, then they should not let Merris lead them. To think about what lay behind Nick’s eyes was admitting that they were all treading on black ice.
Everything had been so much simpler when Sin could just hate both brothers.
Except she had not been able to hate Nick for long, only from the time when she’d learned what he was until she’d met him again.
She’d always found it easy to hate Alan. But she couldn’t do that, either. Not anymore.
“We made a bargain with them,” Sin said. “The Market always keeps its bargains.”
She remembered Merris’s face, and how demons kept their bargains. That did not stop her from swinging to her feet, taking another drink of fever-touched water, and going over to the spot by the fire where Nick and Alan were sitting. Nick was stretched out like a portrait in charcoal, all black and white in lovely lines, and Alan animated and firelit in red and gold.
They looked up as she came toward them, identically wary.
“Time for our dance?” Nick asked.
“Yes,” said Sin. “And I wondered if Alan might like to sing for us.”
Alan stared. Sin widened her eyes at him, schooling her face into a picture of innocent inquiry.
“Are the dancers going to play nice?”
“If you are,” Sin said. “Maybe.”
She didn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t for things to be easy, after years of being at daggers drawn, as if all she’d needed to do was reach out once.
She reached out and Alan took her hand. She was startled by how that felt: Alan’s hand strong and gun- calloused, but holding hers rather carefully, as if he was worried he might hurt her.
It was ridiculous to be startled. She knew Alan was usually gentle. She’d been watching him play with children
