The rest of the Circle had filtered in by now. There were ten magicians in the room with them, far too many to fight. Alan, Jamie, and Mae were in a small knot, guarded by Laura and the other magician with the knife. Alan had unobtrusively placed himself between the others and the knives and he kept edging forward, trying to see Anzu, trying to see more of the room. The magicians fell back as he moved, which meant they did not want to kill him yet.
Nick could not move from the circle of imprisonment, but he absorbed all he could. The room was paneled and dim, all light coming from Anzu’s fire and lightbulbs in faux candlesticks attached to the walls. The room was large, and it looked even larger because of the circles and pentagrams and amulets forming a crazy pattern that tricked the eye. The chalked lines and deep shadows stretched Nick’s vision until the floor seemed about to tilt into another world.
There was nowhere to hide in this room. Even if Nick could get out of the circle, it would be pointless. They had to wait until there were fewer magicians, but there seemed no prospect of there being fewer magicians anytime soon. Everyone was gathered here expecting Black Arthur, the leader of them all.
That was bad news, of course, and yet Nick could still sense the singing, tugging feeling of the call of blood in his veins. His heartbeats were pounding to Black Arthur’s approaching footsteps and, evil or not, spell or not, he could not help it: He wanted to see his father.
Then he looked at Alan, who had tasted his blood and who must be feeling the same things Nick felt, and as the door creaked open he saw Alan turn pale and sick with dread.
He wished his father a thousand miles away as Black Arthur came into the room.
The spell of blood to blood sang in Nick’s veins, as if there was a kettle somewhere bringing his blood to the boil. For a moment all he could hear was that singing victorious sound, and all he could feel was the tug of connection between himself and this man, the link formed of shared blood.
Its purpose accomplished, the spell ended. The link snapped.
In the sudden silence, Nick found himself staring at his father. He felt the same thing he had felt since he found out the truth. He felt nothing.
There should have been at least some feeling of connection, Nick thought, but instead he was left staring at his father as he would have stared at the page of a book, trying to make sense of what he saw.
Black Arthur did not look as much like Nick as Nick had imagined he would.
He looked a lot like Mum, as if they had chosen each other because they wanted to see themselves in each other’s faces and not just their eyes. He looked enough like Nick that Nick could see the markers of shared blood he’d never been able to find in Alan’s face. They were clear on the face of this stranger.
Arthur was tall and pale and had black hair. He had Nick’s broad shoulders and his strong hands, but something about his muscles looked too sleek and civilized, as if he had built them up for display rather than earning them by fighting. He wore his black hair longer than Nick wore his, and unlike Nick’s, it was curly. The ends almost touched his shoulders, and the effect was that of a mane.
He had Nick’s flat cheekbones and his brutal, full mouth, but the one thing Nick had expected, Arthur did not have. He did not have Nick’s eyes.
Black Arthur had eyes an even paler blue than Mum’s. They were pale enough to remind Nick of that dying wolf’s eyes, so pale that even the blue looked like an illusion, a trick of the light cast on ice.
When he spoke, he did not have Nick’s voice. He had the warm, easy voice of a leader, someone comfortable using words and through words, using people.
“Well done, Gerald!” he said, giving due credit to his lieutenant, but he did not glance Gerald’s way.
His big, black-maned head was thrown back to survey his prize, and his wintry wolf’s eyes were fastened on Nick. They were shining with possessive pride.
Nick folded his arms across his chest and glared as Black Arthur prowled around the circle of imprisonment, eyes running over every detail of Nick’s face and body as if he was an art dealer examining a picture.
“Say something,” Arthur commanded at last. “Anything.”
“Let me and my brother go,” said Nick. “Or I’ll cut your heart out.”
He did not know how Arthur would react to that — whether he would be angry or laugh at the empty threat — but he did not expect Arthur to look delighted. He had the air of a man whose dog had just done a wonderful trick.
Arthur opened his mouth, but Nick never found out what he was going to say, because the moment before he spoke there was a rap at the door.
“Come in,” Arthur said irritably.
“Sir, I’m not sure—” said a voice near the door, but the door swung open amid the sound of protests.
Mum stood in the doorway.
There was a magician behind her, but it was hard to notice anything but Mum. She had her eyes fixed on Black Arthur and her face was white, white as a flame that was burning hot as a star.
Nick cursed softly. Alan looked wild with panic.
Arthur said, “Livia!” and held out his hands, and without a moment’s hesitation Mum walked toward him and took both his hands in hers.
He stood with his head bowed down to hers, their black hair mingling, and they looked like brother and sister in each other’s arms, like twins. Nick saw in that moment how they must have been together, before he was born: two magicians who did not care about anything but themselves and each other, beautiful and brilliant and cruel. Mum’s face looked older than Arthur’s now, marked by lines of care and pain, but there was nothing on her face that looked anything like fear.
“Arthur,” she said, running her fingers through his hair. Nick had never seen Mum show affection like that to anyone.
Arthur smiled down at her. “I knew you would come back to me one day,” he said. “I knew it.” He paused, and when Mum kept her silence, Arthur said, “You have come back to me, Livia, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” Mum said slowly. “Yes, I have.”
“You’ve forgiven me,” Arthur prompted her, as a stage director to an actress who seemed to have forgotten her lines.
Mum looked at him for a long time. “No,” she said. “No, I haven’t forgiven you.”
Arthur caught her hands in his again, pressing them as if Mum’s were cold. “But you will,” he said confidently. “Everything’s all right now. It’s all turned out exactly as I told you it would. You should never have run, Livia. You should have known you couldn’t change anything.”
“I always knew this would happen,” Mum said. “I used to sit alone in a hundred different rooms and think of how it would be, standing face-to-face with you again. And then I heard the children talking about going to find magicians — and I knew the day had finally come.”
Arthur laughed. “You never loved him?”
“Who?” Mum asked. “Daniel? No, but he was very kind to me. I owe him something. He tried. No man ever tried as hard as he did.”
Her gaze moved for the first time away from Arthur’s face, traveling in an unconcerned way from the paneled wall to the demon in his flames, until she found Alan. Alan stood there with magicians around him and his hands tied, his face a naked plea. Mum’s expression did not change.
Nick was not surprised that Mum never looked at him.
“He tried to interfere,” said Arthur. “He failed, and you were always mine. Forgive me, Livia. You’ll see that it was worth it. I will give you anything in the world.”
“Give me just one thing,” Mum said, smiling into his eyes. “And I’ll forgive you.”
“Anything,” Arthur told her, and kissed the top of her head, tucking her against him. They looked as if they were posing for a picture of the perfect couple.
Nick said loudly, “I have a question.”
Mum did not look at him even then. She was doing her trick of pretending not to know Nick was in the room, even though her whole body was tense with awareness of him. She had her eyes turned away, and he could see her schooling her face into blankness in case he spoke to her.
Arthur’s gaze fell on Nick and absorbed him to the exclusion of all the world.
“Of course,” he said. “You only have to ask.”
