“Yes. Put down all your weapons,” Gerald confirmed, in his mild, patient way. “Or we cut Jamie’s throat.”
He’d never liked Jamie all that much anyway.
That was Nick’s first thought. His second thought was that Alan did like Jamie, that Jamie made him laugh, and that there had always been more to Alan’s protectiveness of Jamie than a desire to impress Mae. Blond, sunny Jamie was probably Alan’s idea of a proper brother, a real one, the one he could’ve had if his mother had lived. Alan would want Jamie safe.
Besides, Jamie was Mae’s brother. Nick found he did not want to think about how Mae would look if she learned that Nick had let her little brother die.
Nick would have preferred not to see Jamie die, given the choice, but he hadn’t been given a choice. It was not as if the magicians would let Jamie go if Nick put down his weapons. They would only kill Nick too, and then he would have committed a very noble and totally pointless suicide.
“We won’t hurt you,” Gerald promised.
“Oh, really? On your honor as murderous magicians?”
Laura made a choked-off sound of surprise or indignation, but Gerald kept his eyes trained on Nick’s face.
“Black Arthur doesn’t want you hurt. Do what we ask, and the boy won’t be hurt either.”
“Gerald, this is ridiculous,” said Laura sharply.
It could be true, Nick thought. Even if Arthur had been hunting them for Mum’s charm all this time, he might not want Nick killed. He was Arthur’s son.
He could use that.
It was a risk, though. The magicians might just want two intact bodies for the demons to possess. Nick looked down at the reassuring gleam of his knife and then over at Jamie.
Laura the magician had tight hold of Jamie, one hand in his hair, pulling his head back to bare his throat for her blade. The knife was so close to his skin that he could not even tremble in case he opened his veins against the edge. Jamie was keeping still, with his back arched taut as a bowstring and his eyes wide, scared and hopeless.
“All right,” Nick said. “I’ll put down my weapons.”
He knelt and put down the knife, then unsheathed his sword and laid it the ground, looking warily up at Gerald as he did so, ready to snatch the sword back up if he made any sudden movements. Gerald just smiled like a king well-pleased with the tribute laid at his feet.
He rose slowly, and Gerald murmured, “All of the weapons, Nick.”
Nick snapped one knife from his wrist sheath and threw it down. Then he reached into his pocket for his switchblade, and drew that out too. Gerald’s gaze was fastened on him, watching every movement, and Nick regretted putting any of his weapons down. Anything would have been better than this slow, enforced stripping of Nick’s defenses under the eyes of the enemy.
He let the switchblade fall out of his open palm. He made sure that every weapon he dropped landed within easy reaching distance.
He left the knife in his boot and the knife fastened inside his belt and jeans, against his thigh, where they were. What Gerald didn’t know might end up hurting him, if they were lucky.
“Now take three steps back,” Gerald said quietly.
That would put Nick across the threshold into the room where Anzu waited, and a safe distance away from the weapons. Nick checked over his shoulder and saw that three steps would not bring him anywhere near Anzu, waiting in his simmering flames.
He looked back at Gerald and nodded. He took three deliberate steps back.
He immediately felt the difference, a sudden sensation as if walls had slammed down all around him. Claustrophobia seized him, the feeling pressing on his chest and squeezing his lungs so he could only breathe in short, shallow pants. He looked around and saw that there was a circle of imprisonment chalked onto the floor around him.
Nick looked up sharply at Gerald and saw his eyes flash with triumph.
He wondered when magicians had learned how to trap a human in an imprisonment circle. This wasn’t one of those where you would die if you crossed the line; it did not even offer you that choice. Nick could feel the barriers in place. He risked it anyway, tried to step forward and simply could not do it, any more than he could have walked through a wall. This was a genuine imprisonment circle, and he was trapped inside as surely as Anzu was trapped inside his.
Inside his, Anzu was laughing.
The magician Laura had loosened her hold on Jamie. She had one arm looped casually around his neck, and it would have looked like a gesture of affection if she had not still been gripping the knife. Nick could see her properly now, a small middle-aged woman with an intelligent face. She looked surprised that Nick had put down his weapons, although not half as surprised as Jamie did.
“How did you know it would work?” she asked Gerald.
“I guessed,” Gerald replied, his voice as soft as ever, belying that hard, triumphant gaze. “I was assigned to watch them, remember? I wasn’t sure it would work, but I wanted to test my theory.”
Nick did not care what Gerald’s theory might be. He was busy calling himself a hundred kinds of fool for putting down the sword. It was becoming more and more obvious that they were outmatched. The magicians had tricks none of them were prepared for. The magicians had clearly planned this. Nick should have let Jamie be a casualty and got out of there. Jamie didn’t matter at all, not compared to what else Nick might lose.
He felt something colder and sharper than regret, turning in his belly as if he’d swallowed a needle, when he heard the footsteps coming down the stairs and down the corridor toward them.
There were at least four people, and one set of steps Nick knew by heart: fast as anyone’s step but with that slightly dragging foot. When the magicians came closer, he saw that one had a knife to Mae’s throat, and Alan’s hands were tied. The magicians had done just the same as they had with Nick and Jamie, targeting the weak one and using them as leverage. Of course it had worked on Alan, but it should not have worked on Nick.
Alan looked at Nick. His eyes widened slightly when he saw the imprisonment circle. His gaze traveled from Nick to Jamie. Nick saw him putting together what must have happened and he wanted to say he was sorry but then, incredibly, Alan smiled.
His eyes were shining as he asked, “Are you all right?”
Nick nodded. It wasn’t a lie. He was going to be all right. He was going to get out of this circle, and he was going to kill every magician in this house. He looked at Alan, and Alan seemed all right too, wrists bound tightly but unmarked. After a moment he looked at Mae and saw that she, unlike Jamie, had clearly struggled. The knife must have just grazed her. Her throat was bloody but not bleeding too much, and she looked steady on her feet.
Nick kept cataloguing these details, all the while hollowly aware that he could see no way they were going to survive this.
“Let’s all go inside and talk, shall we?” said Gerald, making an inviting gesture to the room of circles and pentagrams. “Black Arthur will be here soon.”
His eyes moved from Jamie to Mae to Alan, as if taking a survey, and then they turned to rest on Nick.
Gerald smiled and added, “He’s been waiting a long time to meet you.”
14
Black Arthur
THE SOUNDS OF LONDON WERE COMING IN FROM AN OPEN window. Cars were purring mechanically down the streets, and the evening sunlight was cresting the tops of the tallest buildings, crowning them with gold. The rest of the city was in shadow, miles of uniform gray stretching out and interrupted by the glittering lines of rivers.
It might as well have been another world. In this room there was no sound but the hiss of fire in a demon’s circle and Gerald’s quiet, pleasant voice.
