up. It was a pretty acrimonious divorce. They both wanted most of the assets and less time with the kids.”
Jamie tried to smile. Apparently he made jokes when he was upset as well as when he was afraid. Nick just stared at him, and after a moment Jamie started talking again.
“Mum got the house, Dad got the holiday home, and they got joint custody. They both thought they got ripped off. It’s easy enough to call them and say you’re spending extra time with the other one. They can’t check. They don’t talk, and anyway — they’re glad to be rid of us. Even if they did find out we were gone, they’d think Mae took me to one of the raves she sneaks off to sometimes. So.”
So that explained some things. It explained why the demon had gone for Jamie in the first place. The magicians didn’t dare let the demons out often or at random, since secrecy was as important to them as it was to the Market. Demons had to choose victims who were alone and unprotected, whose disappearance would not be noticed soon, and parents usually noticed rather quickly if a child disappeared or turned up possessed. Not these parents, obviously.
It explained Mae’s rebellion, created to punish her parents or get their attention, and explained the way Jamie was, caught young in the middle of a domestic war, just trying to stay out of trouble. Look how well that had worked out for him.
Nick could understand it, but he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to it.
“So the magicians knew you wouldn’t be missed,” he said.
That didn’t seem to be right. Jamie went very white.
“I suppose they might think that,” he said. “Mum’s very busy, and I don’t think being a single parent is the type of life she had planned. I don’t think we’re the type of kids she wanted. She never means to be unkind.”
When Mum was in her screaming fits, she sometimes hit out. Alan had gotten black eyes that way. Mum never meant to hurt him, but there it was.
“What is that?” Nick asked abruptly, staring at the pan.
“I don’t know,” Jamie answered, stirring the unidentifiable mass with a helpless air. “It was meant to be omelets.”
“I thought it was French toast.”
“It sort of looks like brains,” Jamie remarked sadly.
They both regarded the pan for a moment, and then Nick came to a decision.
“All right, push over. I can fix this. You go grate some cheese.”
Jamie squinted up at him. “You’re going to fix this?” he repeated, and looked extremely doubtful.
“Yes,” Nick said. “All this and I can cook, too. Get out of my way.”
He pushed Jamie aside, lightly enough because Jamie was so little that a rough push from Nick might have sent him through the window. Jamie still looked unsure, but he went over to the fridge and got some cheese in an obvious effort to look willing.
“Can I ask you something?” he asked.
Nick looked up from chopping onions. “In the sense that I won’t stop you with actual violence,” he said in a guarded voice, “yes.”
“What do magicians want?”
“And why would you ask me that?” Nick said, and watched Jamie flinch at his tone. “I’m not a magician.”
He refused to think of Mum and how like her he was. He glared at Jamie and was amazed when Jamie did not look away.
“I’m not!”
“I–I didn’t think you were,” Jamie said, obviously lying. “I just meant — they kill all these people. Why do they do that? What could possibly be worth that?”
It was clear he thought that Nick had some kind of dark insight into a magician’s psyche. Nick wondered why he didn’t just go to Mum if he was so curious, but it wouldn’t do any real harm to answer him.
“Power,” he said. “As I understand it, just using the power makes you want more. It’s a rush; it’s addictive, and it’s not just that. Once you have enough power, you can have anything you want. Some magicians are successful politicians. Some are actors. Some are completely normal people, people you see at the bank and the post office, who just happen to have the ability to change shape or control the weather. Some magicians are rich, some are famous, some are stupidly good-looking.”
Jamie gave Nick a rather complicated look.
Nick raised an eyebrow. “Some of us manage to be stupidly good-looking on our own.”
“Er,” said Jamie, and cut himself on the cheese grater.
“I have changed my mind,” Nick announced. “You can help cook by standing in a corner and not touching anything. Do it carefully.”
He said it without heat. The omelets were starting to resemble omelets, and he hoped the subject of magicians was closed. Most conversations he had with people from school went a lot worse than this.
Jamie was quiet, fidgeting with an oven glove on the countertop.
“Don’t hurt yourself with that,” Nick advised.
Jamie grinned. “Okay.” He kept fidgeting while Nick went to the fridge for some peppers, and then asked suddenly, “So — where’s your dad?”
Nick slammed the fridge door. “He died.”
“Oh.” Now Jamie had the look of a deer caught in the headlights, who for some reason was feeling really sad for the car. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” Nick snapped, opening cupboards just so he could bang them closed and express his fury at people who did not know when to shut up. “You didn’t know him. Why should you care?”
“Um. Empathy?” Jamie suggested.
Nick stared at him silently. The silence stretched on, Nick watching Jamie become ever more uncomfortable, and then a moment before Jamie’s nerve broke Mae and Alan came into the kitchen and rescued him.
Alan looked from Nick to Jamie’s alarmed face and seemed a little sad, just like he had when they were young and teachers had told him that Nick didn’t play well with others. Nick failed to see how it could keep coming as a surprise.
“This is excellent,” said Mae, coming and sitting on the draining board. “Carry on. I have always dreamed of having handsome men lovingly prepare all my meals.”
“Nick rescued the omelets,” Jamie confessed. “They were going wrong for me somehow.”
Mae laughed and tugged him toward her, putting her arms around him from behind and giving him a kiss on the side of his head. “Funny how they always do.”
Neither of them was too bad. Mae was good at smoothing over awkward situations, good at dealing with people, and Nick appreciated that, but he didn’t need to find himself appreciating anything about her.
Nick made omelets and Jamie made jokes and Mae and Alan made conversation, but Alan was still marked. All Nick had learned was that Mae and Jamie’s parents would not be arriving to remove at least one problem from his life.
On the morning of the fourth day, Jamie tipped a switchblade out of his box of cornflakes.
“I think these promotional campaigns have really got out of hand,” he said, freezing with his hand on the milk carton. “One shiny free knife with every packet of cereal bought is not a good message to send out to the kiddies.”
He picked up his bowl, tilting it and trying to drop the switchblade back into the box without actually touching it. Nick rolled his eyes, reached over, and took the knife, tucking it into the waistband of his jeans. He saw Jamie’s eyes wander to the flash of skin and didn’t make an issue out of it; a lot of people liked to look at Nick.
“So — do you have a system?” Jamie asked.
“What?”
“Well, if knives go in the cornflakes, do guns go in the raisin bran? I just wanted to know if there’s some kind of system I should look out for.”
Even though a system was actually not a bad idea, that kind of thing was a problem. The way Jamie kept making uneasy jokes about their life and Mae kept revealing a disturbing fascination with it made Nick feel as if he was a freak show suddenly on display for these people.
