Sin stood outlined against the lights of London, feeling the rapt eyes of the audience on her, the eyes of all but one. She drew her hands up along her body to her head, and heard the ripple rising from the crowd as she began to undo the fever blossoms and ivy binding her hair.
Her dancers were moving slowly and gracefully around the pillar where she stood, arms curving over their heads and swaying. Nick just stood, watching her.
Sin cupped the red flower in her hand and then threw it. It arced through the air like a bright bird flying home, like a compass swinging to true north.
Alan caught it almost automatically, and then paused. For a moment he simply sat with one arm around his guitar, his face wiped clean with shock.
Then he ducked his head and looked up again. With sudden color staining his cheekbones vivid red, he met Sin’s eyes and smiled.
If the last smile had been a curtain drawn back, this one was a sunrise.
“This is a trig point,” Alan said.
Sin blinked. This was not the kind of conversation guys typically directed at her after she had thrown them a fever blossom. In fact, this was not the kind of conversation guys typically directed at her at all.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told him eventually.
“The pillar you ended up on there, when you were dancing,” Alan said. “It’s a trig point. Those pillars were set up all over England in the 1930s, as the points in a measurement system that covered the whole country. You can work out where roads and bridges are in relation to the trig points.”
“Oh, you can?” Sin said helplessly.
“Not really anymore,” Alan told her. “They’re a bit obsolete now we have helicopters and aerial maps and so on. A lot of them are gone. But not this one.” He’d fixed the pillar with an intent gaze, but now he turned back to Sin and smiled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just thought it was interesting.”
“It’s not that it isn’t interesting,” Sin said. “I just wasn’t expecting geography right now.”
They were walking alone together through the Market. The other dancers had peeled away after she’d thrown the fever blossom. They all knew the fever blossom meant Sin had decided to spend time with someone this Market night: whether she was just going to flirt with them a bit or draw them away and kiss them depended on how the spending time went. Occasionally a guy would presume that by tossing him a flower she’d promised something more.
She knew how to deal with those guys. Harshly.
She wasn’t sure how to deal with a guy who had seemed pleased by being thrown the flower and then seemed to have no expectations at all, or any hopes.
It was possible Alan was just glad to be getting along with a section of the Goblin Market he’d always had friction with before. It was possible that Alan earnestly talking about geography was his way of turning Sin down, in which case she wanted to tell him that it didn’t matter how good his voice was, she hadn’t decided anything about him yet.
It was possible Alan just thought it was interesting. Sin really had no idea. She was a little warmed by that thought, though: that he wasn’t talking down to her as if she couldn’t possibly understand what he was saying. A lot of guys did that, and she’d always known Alan was really smart. She’d always uneasily suspected he thought she was stupid.
She decided to smile at him. “I’m a bit puzzled by you, that’s all.”
She was expecting Alan to look a little flattered, and to start trying to find out if by puzzled she meant intrigued. She was not expecting him to laugh.
“Well, I’m very mysterious. And inscrutable.”
“You really kind of are,” Sin said, and took his arm.
Any good performer knew how to lie with his whole body as well as his mouth, and Alan could do it: fading into the background as expertly as Sin stood out. But she’d noticed the way he had seemed uncertain about his hand after she’d taken it.
He did react when she took his arm. He hesitated and almost flinched, and she thought she had made a misstep until he put his hand over hers, in an almost courtly gesture that reminded her of the oddly gentle way he had held her hand before, and they walked on.
It was a little disturbing walking like that. Sin was keenly aware of the fact that Alan could not keep in step with her, always favoring his right leg, his walk a little jerky. It made her think of falling, and she felt a little panicked, her heart beating fast.
She didn’t want to pull away.
“So are you going to play for us at the next Goblin Market?” Sin asked.
“I think I could be persuaded,” said Alan. “Cynthia. I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”
He did not say her name with his usual dismissive intonation. Sin found she didn’t mind it like this.
“Yes,” she said slowly, and became aware that her heart was not beating faster purely because of panic. It was so strange—this was
“My brother keeps pointing out to me that guns don’t always work,” Alan said, and Sin was amazed both at the fact that Alan could think this was a good time to bring up his brother and also at the tone he used, fond and a little exasperated, so normal, when talking about the demon. “Long-range weapons work better for me, for obvious reasons. I saw you with a bow and arrow, in the square at Huntingdon.”
In the square where they had all fought and lost. Sin remembered the weight of the bow and arrow in her hands that night, and remembered too the weight of Toby in her arms when Alan had handed him to her, when she’d thought she would never hold him again.
