“Are you—” Nick said, and did not look at Alan. “Aren’t you going to take her charm?”
Arthur reached to touch Mum’s neck, and metal links slipped like sand through his fingers, one chain followed by another, as if he was telling rosary beads. Magic symbols gleamed against his large, capable hands, hands Nick had inherited from him, hands with the strength to kill. At last there was only one charm left, lying cupped in his palm. It was a simple silver disc with a black symbol carved onto it.
“This one?” Arthur inquired. The chain was taut in his hand. If he closed his fingers around it and pulled, it would snap in an instant.
“I guess so,” said Nick, not daring to look at Alan. “That one. Don’t you want it?”
Arthur lifted the chain and dropped a kiss on the symbol, then let the charm fall back to Mum’s breast. “I want her to have it,” he said mildly. “It is keeping her alive.”
Nick strode forward in a fury and then found himself pulled up short by the confines of the imprisonment circle. It was like being a savage dog kept on a chain so he would not fly at throats. He felt like flying at throats. He made a sound that was almost a snarl.
“If you didn’t want the charm, why were we hunted all over the country?” he demanded. “What did you want? Was it her? You killed Dad because you couldn’t find yourself a different girlfriend?”
There was a stir around the room. There was Anzu laughing quietly at the spectacle of Nick, unable to escape the circle. Some of the magicians had actually drawn back when Nick moved, and now Alan was standing at the front of their little group.
Alan had not moved. The gray, worn look of dread on his face had not changed.
“I love Livia,” Arthur said calmly. “But you wouldn’t be able to understand that, now would you?”
He let go of Mum, left her standing by herself and staring almost thoughtfully out the window. She made no move to stop him leaving, just lifted her hand to her charms and began to thread them through her fingers, telling them as he had moments before, as if she were praying.
Black Arthur walked toward Nick, coming so close that his shoes almost touched the outside of Nick’s circular chalked prison. They stood face-to-face, Nick only a shade smaller than Arthur, their eyes almost on a level. Nick knew they were father and son, but he felt as if Arthur was a spectator at the zoo, and he was a tiger in a cage. Arthur looked at him with gentle interest, and Nick only just stopped himself from snarling again.
“We weren’t hunting Livia,” Arthur said softly. “This was never about Livia. This was never about a charm. Who’s been telling you lies?”
Nick looked at Alan and kept his mouth shut.
Arthur went on, his voice soft and smooth, as if with words alone he could reach through cage bars and stroke a tiger into tameness. “You wouldn’t understand lies, obviously.”
“You assume a lot about me for someone who just met me today,” Nick observed coldly.
Arthur smiled at him, a private and particular smile, as if he was about to let Nick and only Nick in on a joke.
“Hunted all over the country,” he said, repeating Nick’s words with an echo of Nick’s flat inflection. “Not just the Obsidian Circle, but every magicians’ Circle in England went hunting. Do you know what they wanted?”
His father was close but not close enough to kill, and they were all in danger. The sense of being trapped was worse than anything. No matter what came, Nick could not fight. He could not even run.
“Do you want to tell me?” Nick asked in a rough voice. “While I’m young?”
Arthur smiled again, almost fondly. “They wanted you,” he murmured. “Just you.”
Nick’s mind raced. He didn’t know how much other magicians might have wanted Arthur’s son as leverage. He didn’t know what he meant to Black Arthur.
The intensity of Black Arthur’s gaze made Nick think that he must mean something.
“You don’t know how often my magicians have watched you,” Black Arthur said. “I know so much about you, so much you don’t know. So much you need to know. After all, you thought the Obsidian Circle were causing all the little incidents in your house, didn’t you?”
Nick nodded guardedly, waiting for Arthur to drop a hint.
“There was the car that dropped in your garage,” Arthur reminded him. “There were all those strange things happening in your house, glasses breaking and lights going out. Why would we do any of that? Didn’t it ever occur to you that your house was flooded with magic for the week when you were not wearing your talisman?”
Nick remembered the lights going out so he could be left in the dark with Mae. He distanced himself from the memory so he could view it at a remove, so he could think about what he had done and what he’d meant to do.
He had been angry before those glasses broke. He had been angry before the car fell. He had been angry, and the world had started falling apart around him.
After all, what did it matter? He had suspected he was a magician already. Now he knew why Arthur had wanted to find him, and perhaps why the other Circles had wanted to get him first.
“No,” Nick said, “it never occurred to me — but it makes sense.”
“All the other Circles wanted you,” Arthur murmured to him, “but you’re mine. My greatest achievement. Do you want to know why?”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “I’d like you to explain your entire evil plot in detail. Don’t forget the bit where you tell me your one weakness.”
Black Arthur laughed. “We’re not enemies. I’m going to explain all of this to you, and then you’ll understand. We’re going to be partners, and I, unlike some people—” He spared Alan a dismissive glance and then leaned forward, all his attention on Nick. “I will never lie to you.”
His eyes looked as pale as the demon Liannan’s and almost as hypnotic. Nick could feel Arthur’s breath on his face.
“Nicholas,” said Black Arthur. “I’m going to tell you everything.”
“Don’t bother,” Nick said. “I already know everything. Thanks.”
Arthur’s words, Arthur’s caressing and commanding voice, seemed to indicate that Nick, or at least the prospect of a magical heir, was worth a lot to him. There was something a shade off about him, though, something a little too detached about his perfect act, that made Nick doubt everything his eyes and ears told him.
Maybe it was the fact he was still trapped in a magical circle that made him doubt Daddy’s affection.
“Do you?” Arthur asked, and his glacier-colored eyes went to Alan. “Who told you? Did you tell it, Alan?”
Nick spoke loudly, to wrench Black Arthur’s attention away from Alan. “It doesn’t matter who told me! Tell me what you want.”
Black Arthur smiled. “Oh, I want everything,” he said. “Don’t you realize how much power you have?” he continued softly. “Don’t you realize what you are — what you could be?”
“Look,” Nick snapped. “I told you, I know everything. Stop playing games. I know that Alan isn’t my brother. I know what you’re capable of, and I know what I’m capable of. I know who I am.” He took a deep breath. “I know you’re my father.”
There was a long silence. Everyone had drawn in their breath, and there was nothing in the room but dead air. Nick could not look away from Arthur’s face. Black Arthur looked surprised, but after a moment he threw back his head and laughed.
“That’s what you know?” he asked. “And why would it matter to you who the father is?”
Nick stared. “What?”
“Why would you care who the father of the body is?” Arthur asked, eyes glittering and lingering on Nick’s face. “What does it matter? The body’s just a puppet. Don’t tell me you haven’t felt it.”
The room was all shadows as the sun began its long descent, the windows full of grayness. Nick felt for an instant as if they were poised on the brink of a much colder world and perhaps had already started to fall. He looked at his hands in the slanting yellow rays shed by the lamps and saw the chalked lines of the circle below. He remembered the House of Mezentius, and a possessed man trapped in a circle just like this one.
“You are a demon I called into my son,” murmured Black Arthur. “You never had a father or a brother. You never had a heart.”
His gaze stroked possessively up and down Nick, and Nick finally understood why Black Arthur looked at him the way he did. He was not staring at a son. He was staring at an object, one that he had created and wanted to use.
