but she did not struggle. She stayed perfectly still and raked her eyes carefully over Nick’s face. He could practically see her mind ticking over the possibilities, trying to form a plan, trying to guess what Nick would do next.
He kissed her.
He moved in and pressed her hard against the banister, holding her soft and small and trapped against him. He kept her face tilted up, her chin cupped in his palm and his fingers against her jaw. His arm around her waist was tense, unyielding as an iron bar.
She could not get away, and she did not try. After a moment her arm slid around his neck, and she kissed him back.
Nick was only aware of how miserably cold he had been when he felt the chill, settled into dull pain in his bones, finally ease. He grabbed the dry, warm material of her T-shirt in his fists, pushed it up until he felt the smooth, warm skin of her back under his hands. Mae curved her mouth against his and against his shut eyes the swinging lightbulb became the dancing lanterns of the Goblin Market, and he thought with savage satisfaction of how hurt Alan would be by this.
He and Mae heard the dragging sound of Alan’s footsteps at the same time. She pulled back and Nick tried to follow her mouth but did not push the issue when she turned her face away, her breath wavering against his cheek.
Alan was standing at the top of the stairs, his curly hair sleep-ruffled and his kind face startled, about to be hurt. Nick had not realized how much he hated him until now.
“You,” he said. The word came out thick, as if he were snarling through a mouth full of blood.
Alan had stopped looking surprised. His eyes traveled from Nick’s face to Mae’s, and he began to look angry. Alan didn’t have a clue that Nick had ever, for even a moment, liked Mae. The way he saw it, the only reason Nick had for doing this was to hurt him.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said quietly. He was far too good at lying and keeping secrets to reveal anything in front of Mae. “Can I ask where you’ve been?”
“Where I’ve—” Nick abandoned Mae and started up the stairs, slowly, moving as he did when he was stalking something for the kill. “Where did you go,” he asked, “last Christmas?”
Alan looked shocked. Of course he looked shocked. He’d thought his lies would never be discovered; he’d thought Nick would never suspect. Nick had always believed that Alan did not lie to him, that he was the exception, but why should Alan make an exception for him? He was nothing to Alan.
After a moment Alan’s ordinary, gentle face was in place, a mask that Nick hated and wanted to break into a thousand pieces. Nick kept advancing.
Alan said carefully, “What do you know?”
“I know everything!” Nick shouted. “I know that Black Arthur is my father. I know that you’ve been lying to me all my life. You’re not my brother.”
Alan bit his lip. “It’s not that important,” he said in the lying, soothing voice he always used with people who might suspect them. “It’s like being adopted. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
“If it wasn’t important, then why did you lie? Why did you keep lying?”
Alan glanced down the stairs to Mae, and Nick saw he was too hurt to be calm about this. “Because I knew you’d go mad!” Alan snapped. “And you’re not exactly proving me wrong, are you?”
“Shut your lying mouth,” said Nick softly. “It isn’t like being adopted. That’s not why you lied. You hid the fact that your own mother existed; you didn’t even dare tell half a lie and say we were half brothers. You tried to tie me to you and that dead idiot Daniel as tightly as you could. You were scared to death that I’d grow up to be a monster!”
“Don’t talk about Dad like that,” Alan said sharply. “And you’re not a monster.”
“Why not?” Nick asked. “I’m much better at killing than you are. I can call the demons with a piece of chalk and a word. Did you ever think about what that might mean, Alan? Were you ever scared of me?”
Alan flinched, and Nick saw the truth written cle?uth miarly on his face for once. He’d been scared, all right.
Nick wanted to make him scared now.
“You thought I might grow up to be a magician like Black Arthur,” Nick said slowly. “After all, both my parents have a taste for blood.”
“I didn’t,” Alan told him in a thin voice. “I never thought you were anything like Black Arthur. You’re not his son, he didn’t bring you up, he didn’t die for you—”
Nick reached Alan at the top of the stairs and roared that thin voice down.
“Don’t try a guilt trip on me. It won’t work! Stop thinking that you can manipulate me the way you manipulate everybody else. It makes me sick. Who says Daniel Ryves died for me? Why should he have done anything for me? It was her he wanted. I was something she brought with her, I was something that belonged to the man who stole her from him. What did Daniel Ryves see when he looked at me? Do you think he liked it?”
Nick was telling the truth. He didn’t feel guilty, and he didn’t feel sad. It wasn’t hard to stop calling another liar Dad and start calling him Daniel. All he felt was black, twisting fury, the desire to hurt someone, and the knowledge that there was nothing to stop him doing it. Not anymore.
He saw the shadow pass through Alan’s kind eyes. He saw, quite clearly, Alan’s decision to lie again.
“I’m sure that when Dad looked at you,” he said, “all he saw was his son.”
Nick drew back his fist and punched Alan in the face.
There was an outraged scream from Mae, whom Nick had entirely forgotten. She exclaimed, “Nick, don’t,” and began charging her way up the stairs when the deed was already done.
She didn’t have a hope, but Alan was no clumsy amateur. He’d rocked back when Nick’s fist connected, and he was falling when Nick glanced at Mae. There was a twist of movement in Nick’s eye, and that was all the warning he got before Alan pulled a gun on him.
The barrel was cold against Nick’s jaw. Alan’s grip on it was steady.
“Don’t do that again,” Alan said, blood blooming from the broken corner of his mouth and trickling down his chin.
Mae hesitated on the stairs and did not come any closer.
Nick turned his face in toward the gun and spoke into the barrel as if it was a microphone.
“If it was adoption,” Nick sneered, letting his mouth brush the steel, “why didn’t you tell me about Durham? Why didn’t you tell your precious Aunt Natasha about your adoptive family? We could have all gone to stay with your real family at Christmas — you, your crazy new mother, and a murderous magician’s son make three.”
“Nick,” Alan said, and made a small sound of frustration. “You’re my real family. It was just that — please try to understand. It was just that I wanted to remember how things were when Mum was alive and everything was all right. I just wanted to have a few days of pretending. I never wanted to drag my aunt into this nightmare with me!”
“Too bad,” Nick said. “She got dragged in.”
Alan’s hand did tremble then. For a moment Nick thought he was going to faint, but he just stood there trembling, with his face the whitish gray color of ashes. Nick let his mouth curve upward so that Alan would see him smiling, see that he didn’t care. Alan’s hand tightened on the gun, and for a moment Nick thought that he might use it. Then he lowered it, slowly, as if he thought that he might use it too.
“Nick,” he said, his voice wavering badly and making him sound very young. “Nick, what have you done?”
“I didn’t do anything,” said Nick. “You think I’d care enough to do something to her? Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Did you hurt her, Nick?” Alan asked.
Nick made himself keep smiling. “Maybe a little.”
There was a door standing ajar down the corridor, a silhouette tracing a slightly different darkness onto the shadows. It was either Jamie or his mother, Nick could not tell and did not care. Whoever it was, they were breathing rapidly, as if they were afraid, and standing halfway up the stairs, Mae was breathing too fast as well.
Nick did not glance over to see if she looked afraid. He would not have seen the shadow at the open door, if the door had not been directly behind Alan’s head.
He kept looking at Alan who was not his brother, standing there with a gun hanging limply at his side. Alan’s
