Nick had never really wanted to get to know a girl, but here she was, in his house. He felt as if he was being forced into it.
Mae walked toward the door and as he watched her go, she turned her head to look at him. The light went out, and the curve of her neck and fall of her hair were suddenly swallowed up in darkness.
Her voice was even. “I suppose this isn’t a power failure.”
Nick did not bother to answer her. They both knew what it was.
Nick had excellent night vision and acclimated himself quickly to the darkness. He palmed a knife from the sheath strapped around his arm and walked with a soft tread toward Mae. He could see her shape clearly, but he knew that to her there was nothing but black night and then the sudden touch of his hand on her waist. He held on to her with one hand and his knife with the other.
She stayed still. She had not even flinched when he grabbed her. Nick did like her courage.
“Don’t move,” he said. “If I see something move, I will stab it.”
Her voice was a whisper. He did not even see the movement of her lips in the shadows. “I understand.”
They waited a while, standing close, the curve of her hip pressed against his thigh, until it became clear that there was nothing stirring in that still night. Light brimmed for a moment, a faint flicker caught between shadows and brightness, and then flooded the room. Now that she was safe and could see, Mae moved. She put her hand on his arm, her fingertips five warm points against his skin, and he remembered her trembling lips close to his on the night of the Goblin Market.
“I have to make sure Alan is okay,” said Nick.
“I’ll check on Jamie,” Mae responded.
Nick sheathed his knife instead of watching her go. It would be better if she and her brother both left, as soon as possible.
The sudden descent of darkness had only moved Alan to light a candle so he could see the map of England he had stretched out on their floor.
“If demons had attacked under cover of darkness, were you planning to roll that up and hit them with it?” Nick inquired.
“No,” said Alan, and waved his gun to prove it. Then he used the gun to trace a line along the map from Exeter to London. “Tell me what you see.”
“I think it’s called a map.”
Alan gave him an expressive look over the top of his glasses. “The Obsidian Circle’s coming for us,” he said patiently. “Liannan said they’d take nine days. It doesn’t take nine days to get from Exeter to London, even with the summoning circle. They’ll want to make a stop, find a good place to set up their circle so they can arrive in London with a full complement of demons. They’ll want to be at maximum strength. They’ll be calling up every demon they have.”
Nick was glad that Alan wasn’t keeping the plan a secret. He felt he could wait to see why his brother clearly considered this good news.
Alan’s eyes were gleaming with triumph. “So where, between Exeter and London, would you stop to do a spot of demon calling?”
His gun traced the path between Exeter and London again, lingering for a moment to give Nick a clue. Nick whistled between his teeth.
“Of course,” he said. “Stonehenge.”
Alan called Mae and Jamie up to hear their plan, and once Alan had recovered somewhat from Mae sitting on his bed, he was able to explain it.
“Magicians have the same traditions as the Goblin Market people. They’ll choose a place with a lot of human history attached to it to call their demons, and there’s a six-thousand-year-old tomb on the way.” Alan shrugged. “They’ll come looking for us here. We can surprise them there.”
“We catch them off guard,” Nick said. “We catch two of them and bring them back here. Then we kill them and use their lifeblood to take off the marks. You guys can go home, and we can go into hiding.”
He thought the plan sounded good, and Jamie seemed to agree with him. Mae and Alan looked faintly wistful.
“You’ll have to teach me Aramaic by e-mail,” Mae said, and Alan looked embarrassingly pleased.
They launched into an enthusiastic little dialogue about dead languages which Nick, as someone who had failed French, did not pay much attention to. He just noted that this time Alan had picked someone with whom he had a lot in common. That might help him. He was glad, he told himself. It would help them both. Alan could use a girlfriend to distract him from that girl Marie in the picture. Nick wouldn’t even think about touching Mae if she was his brother’s girlfriend.
Mae shifted on the bed, and a book fell out from under Alan’s pillow. Alan moved so fast that he caught it before it hit the floor and shoved it out of sight.
Nick saw Alan’s wary glance toward him. He was still trying to keep the picture a secret, then.
“We’ll go tomorrow,” Alan said. “I’ll write you a note about going to the dentist, Nick, but you can still make your morning classes. You’re not skipping two full days this week.”
Normally he would have rolled his eyes and made some comment about Alan being a mother hen, but Nick was still frowning at the pillow. It didn’t take Alan long to turn back to Mae and begin talking about Latin.
Later Alan brought up the subject of Mae again. Nick was trying to get to sleep when Alan came in after his shower with his glasses fogged up and his hair dripping onto the shoulders of his I’M A LIBRARIAN, NOT A FIGHTER T-shirt. He tried to towel his hair dry and talk about his feelings at the same time.
“I know that she’d eaten the fever fruit and everything, the night of the Goblin Market,” he said. “But she did pick me. I mean, that might mean something.”
Nick stared at the ceiling and said, “I guess so.”
“It wouldn’t be right to ask her while she’s living with us and relying on us to help her brother,” Alan went on, worried about all the usual little details only he would have worried about. “Afterward, though, I thought I might ask her if I could give her a call. Sometime. What do you think?”
“I don’t know why you always do this,” Nick said. “What’s the point? You want to get married and have babies and have to run with them all over the country, like Dad had to run with us?”
It sounded more savage than he’d meant it to. When he levered himself up on one elbow and threw his brother a baleful glare, Alan looked a little pale.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I don’t — it’ll be years before I start thinking about getting married and things.”
“But you do want to,” said Nick. “Someday. That’s what you’re saying. Why?”
His brother flinched. “You really don’t understand why someone would want a family?”
“I have no idea!”
Alan clenched his fists around the damp material of his towel, looking like he wanted to throw it in Nick’s face. He went dark red and snapped, “I want somebody to love me.”
“Oh my God,” Nick exclaimed, turning violently away.
When he turned around again, which was not for some time, he saw Alan reaching under his pillow to touch that stupid book as if for reassurance. All of Alan’s pictures stared at Nick from the bedside table: Mum and Dad on their wedding day, looking as young as Alan was now, Nick a scowling child in the uniform of a long-forgotten school. When Nick closed his eyes, he saw the hidden picture as if it was lined up alongside the others.
“Alan,” he said quietly.
“Yes?”
“Do you get scared?”
Alan laughed, a small fraught laugh like something tearing, and said, “I’m scared all the time.”
The answer was so unexpected that Nick opened his eyes. He’d never thought of Alan as being scared. Alan always had a plan, always stayed calm and knew what to do. He looked at Alan, and his brother’s face looked just as it always did, calm in the low light, but his face lied just as well as the rest of him.
Later that night Nick woke to the sound of Alan talking to demons in his sleep, words Nick couldn’t make out broken up with cries. He rolled out of bed as fast as if it was an attack and shook Alan roughly awake. Alan stirred, opened his eyes, and then recoiled violently from Nick, his back hitting the wall.
