to him.
“Whoops, sorry, can I just get some ice from the freezer?” Jamie asked, and Seb and Mae parted.
“I think I left my sketchbook in the grass,” Seb said hastily, and exited.
“Thanks very much,” said Mae.
“I said I was sorry,” Jamie said from the freezer, not at all repentantly. “So, that girl from the Market, she seems to like Nick,” he said with enthusiasm. “I think he needs cheering up. Well, maybe. With Nick it’s kind of difficult to tell.”
Mae smiled and nodded and pressed her palm protectively over the demon’s mark. Her mark wanted her to do what Nick wanted, whatever that was, to be close to him. This was the way demons possessed you. They made you want to give in.
If there had ever been a possibility of her being with Nick—and of course there hadn’t been, Nick had made that perfectly clear—it was gone now. She could never be sure if she wanted to be with him or if the mark was drawing her to him. She could never let herself be controlled like that.
When Mae and Jamie came out, everyone appeared to have taken advantage of their absence in order to pick fights.
“If you can sing like that, why did you never sing for the Market?” Sin demanded.
Alan was keeping his place in the book with a finger. “For the dancers?” he asked coolly. “I’ll pass.”
“I just don’t like you, that’s all,” Seb snapped. Seb and Nick were standing near the car. Mae hoped that Seb hadn’t tried to touch it.
“I don’t think so,” said Nick. “I think you’re so jealous of me you can’t stand it.”
Mae acted fast.
“Seb doesn’t need to be jealous of anyone,” she said, twining her fingers with his and pulling him backward with her and toward Alan. “Hey, how about another song?”
Alan obeyed, plucking out a low, gradual song, the kind you didn’t dance to. Mae lay back in the grass and let the sun wash over her face and travel warm down her body, putting in comments as everyone talked, long pauses drifting in between the conversations.
At one point she levered herself up on her elbows and saw Nick sitting on the ground beside Alan’s chair, long legs stretched out and laughing at something Alan was saying. Alan reached out and did not ruffle his hair, but traced the air above it without touching him. That seemed to be an acceptable compromise.
Alan looked happy. He loved Nick, Mae was certain of that, and so surely, surely he wouldn’t betray him.
The sun was low in the sky, light flowing over the clouds like melted butter, when Sin rose and brushed the grass off her jeans. “I’d better get going,” she said. “I can’t leave Trish with the kids all day.”
“Come back anytime,” Nick said lazily, head against the arm of Alan’s chair.
“Oh, I might just,” said Sin, sparkling at him. She raised an eyebrow at Alan. “Good?”
“Great,” Alan said, his mouth curving.
Sin shrugged and walked toward the kitchen door to fetch her bag. Mae jumped up and mumbled something about ice as she ran to follow Sin.
When she opened the door, she saw Sin with her bag open, hesitating at the kitchen counter. Mae saw the tablet and the paper inside, Sin’s fingers a fraction of an inch away from them.
Sin shook her head and closed the bag again.
“Thinking of leaving them?” Mae asked from the door.
Sin jumped. “I’m not going to. I have kids to feed.”
“It matters that you thought about it,” said Mae.
“Why? He won’t know.”
“I will,” Mae told her. “And you will. What do you think of Alan and Nick now?”
“As how?”
“As an alternative to being ruled by magicians,” Mae said. “You told me you loved the Market, and we could be friends because I loved the Market too. Are you going to let the Market be ruined?”
“Do you have a plan to stop it?”
“Yeah,” Mae said. “Actually, I do. Alan’s going to lure Nick to what Nick will think is a Market night, and he’ll trap him in a magicians’ circle and strip away his powers. How do you think Nick will react to that?”
Sin sucked her breath in through her teeth. “Kill him.”
Mae had only been thinking that Nick would never forgive him. That he might kill Alan had not occurred to her, but Sin’s flat certainty made her go cold.
“We can’t let that happen.”
Sin hesitated. “What’s your plan?”
“Are there people in the Market who would follow you without stopping to consult with Merris?”
Sin looked as if not consulting Merris was a foreign concept to her.
“You could start with Matthias the piper,” Mae suggested, and Sin looked suddenly thoughtful. “I’ll warn Nick. Then, instead of being trapped, he’ll work with the Market people. We can all deal with the magicians
