washing the sweat off her skin and all the tiredness out of her muscles, leaving her with nothing but a sweet ache along her body.
She reached out and trailed her fingertips down the ridges of Nick’s stomach, curious, until her hand met the cool shock of water and the leather of his belt.
“I’m a little disappointed,” Sin said.
Nick smirked. “I’m a little shy.”
Sin caught hold of the wet rope securing his talisman, knotted it around her hand, and pulled his head down to hers. He caught her small delighted laugh with his mouth.
His skin was cool and his mouth hot against hers, and she stood on her tiptoes to get more. It wasn’t like Sin was short: These Ryves boys were both too tall.
Nick rescued her from the passing and disturbing moment when Alan Ryves crossed her mind by solving her problem and picking her up, hands sure on the small of her back and bending her backward so she was lying on the water like a mermaid in her bed, her hair spreading out with the waves. Then he pulled her back up to him, and she slid her arms around his neck and kissed him again.
“Come on,” Nick murmured against her mouth. “I don’t like the sea. Why don’t we get out?”
Sin smiled. “Why don’t we?”
He carried her out of the ocean and laid her down on the shoreline, the place where the pebbles lay washed by the surf until they looked like jewels. Her soaked hair fanned out in the sand like seaweed, and Sin arched up so he could slide his hands under her back and save her from the chill. He stroked up and down her back obligingly, and slid down her body a little, nudging her talisman sharply to one side as if it irritated him, so the wet rope bit hard against her neck as his mouth opened on her throat, warm and lingering.
Sin pulled his wet hair a little as a punishment for the sting of the rope, and arched up against him again.
Then an alarm shattered the silence from cliffs to sea. Sin went rigid with fear: She levered herself up and met Nick’s gleaming black eyes.
“Alan,” he growled.
“Mama,” Sin said, and now that they’d both named what they had back at the Market, what could be in danger, the spell of a moment was broken. Sin was up and running, not caring if Nick was running too or where he was, only caring that she got back.
She launched herself up onto the cement platform and landed hard, skinning her knees bloody and not caring about that either, rolling to her feet and running.
There were magicians all around them. The first three magicians had been a decoy, something to make them feel as if they were safe from attack. This was real.
Sin saw the tourist Alan had warned away from her, magic glowing in his hand. His eyes went wide as he recognized her.
She was faster on the draw than he was. Her knife was buried in his throat before the magic ever left his hand, and she was running on.
Everywhere across the Market her people were fighting, and they beat the magicians back. Sin was shivering with triumph and exhaustion by the time she finally reached the dancers, ready to find Mama and rest, with her singing that they would be all right.
It was very quiet where the dancers were. It was so still.
Mama was lying facedown in her circle. The balefire had all gone out.
Sin stepped into the dead summoning circle, knelt down on the earth and turned her mother over, so gently. For a moment she was absolutely, blessedly relieved: Mama’s breath was coming steadily, stirring the fall of her golden-brown hair over her face, and Sin thought she was just hurt, that everything was going to be fine.
Mama opened her eyes.
All the light and joy of the Market, all the light and joy Sin knew in this world, drained away in the terrible demon darkness of those eyes.
“No,” Sin said, her voice a lonely whisper, drowned out by the sound of the sea, by the terrible sucking silence emanating from the thing that had moments ago been her mother.
“Mama!” came Lydie’s voice, and Sin looked up to see her little sister come dashing toward them, and thought,
Alan scooped Lydie up fast as she went by, turning her face toward his with his free hand, talking to her in rapid, soothing tones, comforting her, not allowing her to see.
There was nobody to comfort Sin, and she had to see.
The demon seemed to be registering its success, its body coming to terrible life in Sin’s arms, Mama’s mouth curving into a gradual, awful smile.
Mama was nothing but a shell with a demon inside her; Mama herself was caged in the back of her own mind. That was what happened whenever an ordinary person had dreams of demons and opened a window to let them in. Or whenever a dancer fell in a summoning circle.
In the distance Sin could hear Merris giving the orders to those in the know for taking a possessed person, for dragging the demon-infested body to Mezentius House, where it would be held prisoner until the body rotted away from the inside out, until the body died. The necromancers were coming and the men with chains, those who had spells to throw.
Her mother was still inside there, helpless, with the demon in command.
“Mama,” said Sin, finding her voice in extremity, the words tumbling desperately out. “Mama. I’ll come with you. Don’t be too scared. I’ll come, I’ll stay. Mama,
