“And I’ll show you out,” said a woman’s voice. Mae was pretty sure it was Gerald’s second, Laura.
Mae froze, listening for a step, ready to flee.
Seb had obviously been standing very close to the door. She heard nothing until she saw him walk right into the hall and they stood face-to-face, staring at each other.
Then Seb lunged. He came right at her and Mae backed into a door, and when he kept coming, she ran down the cellar steps.
Seb only followed her, of course, and then she was trapped in the cellar of the magicians’ house, Seb blocking her way out and a huge circle of stones in front of her shimmering with cold light.
“Mae,” Seb said. “What are you doing here? You have to get out!”
He was perfectly fine. He didn’t look like anyone had even said a harsh word to him.
On the other hand, he also hadn’t immediately started yelling for Gerald.
“What is this place?”
“This is the real obsidian circle,” Seb said. “All our demon’s circles are reflections of it. All our power comes from it. So believe me when I say you can’t be here. You have to go.”
“All your power,” Mae repeated. “So what if someone takes more than their share?”
“You can’t,” said Seb. “That’s not how the circle works. You all get an equal share, and your natural abilities do the rest.”
“Natural abilities?” Mae echoed. “I hear you don’t have much. Not a great magician, are you, Seb? But you are a magician.”
Even in the dim light of the cellar, filtering in from the top of the stairs, she saw Seb go dull red.
“Yeah,” he said. “I am. I’m sorry. But I don’t want to see you get hurt. Mae, please. They’ll kill you if they find you down here.”
He advanced on her and she flung up one hand, defensive. He grabbed her wrist and ran, dragging her behind him up the stairs and back into the hall.
“Seb?” Gerald’s voice said, sharp. “What are you doing?”
Mae and Seb stared at each other. Mae saw her own complete panic reflected on Seb’s face.
Then he hurled her bodily through an open door.
“Stay there,” Seb ordered her in a low voice. He went out, shutting the door softly behind him, and left Mae alone in what was clearly his bedroom.
The room was plain but big, with wood floors and a little cream-colored rug. Lying on a mahogany desk was the sketchbook Seb always carried, its green cover curling at the edges.
Where I am now is okay, Seb had told her.
He was living in a nice house and paying his rent by killing people.
Mae went over to the desk and picked up his sketchbook. There was always a chance there might be drawings of Gerald’s mark in it, details that could give her some clue how to deal with him.
She opened the book to a picture of Jamie laughing. It made her shaking fingers still for a moment. Seb’s pencil had been wielded carefully, light in a way that made Jamie’s spiky hair look soft; dark and clean to mark the line of his jaw, his hands that looked even in a picture as if they were in motion, and the crooked slope up of his mouth as he began to smile.
Mae started to feel angry all over again. The picture was so good. If Seb could create something like this, why did he have to be what he was?
Everything he’d ever said to her had been a lie.
She turned a page of the sketchbook with her hands shaking again.
Jamie was sitting at his desk this time, balancing a pencil on top of a schoolbook. He looked serious and intent, face turned away from Seb, earring winking above the collar of his shirt.
Mae turned another page. This time Jamie was leaning backward in his chair, talking to someone else. The person’s hair was dark and the features knife-edge clean, so she assumed it was Nick. When she turned another page, Jamie was walking with someone else, smaller than he was and softly curved, presumably herself, but all the people with him were ghosts. Only Jamie stood out, luminous and laughing and living on the page.
The door opened with a slow creak, the very hinges moaning Seb’s reluctance. Mae looked up and saw him standing there, looking tall and dark and humble, and she wanted to hit him very badly.
So she did. She strode over to him and whacked him on the chest with his sketchbook.
“Even if you weren’t a lying murderer,” she said, “I think this means we’re breaking up.”
“No,” Seb said, almost automatically, as if that was the noise that came out when you hit him. “No, look, Mae, you’ve got it wrong.”
He grabbed her by her elbows and jerked her toward him, landing a kiss on her mouth like a blow. He held her as if she was a giant doll, an awkward puppet he was trying desperately to learn how to manipulate. The taste of him she got between her tightly closed lips was bitter, already hopeless.
She opened her equally tightly shut eyes when he pulled back.
“As if that’s even important,” she said, her mouth twisting. “When you’re—”
“I’m not a murderer!” Seb snarled.
