“No?” Mae asked. “Where d’you think that mark’s leading you, then? Should I ask again next week?”
“Look,” he said. “This isn’t—this isn’t the way you’re thinking it is. You’re confused. That demon’s been lying to you.”
Mae laughed in his face. “You idiot! You don’t know anything, do you? Demons can’t lie.”
Seb opened his mouth to speak, then checked himself, and visibly faltered even on silence.
Mae got in his face, his clear green eyes filling her vision. “In April they marked Jamie.”
“Jamie?” Seb echoed, the name different on his lips.
“Yeah,” said Mae, and mimicked the way he’d said it, knowing it was cruel and not caring. “Jamie. And the demon and the traitor saved him. And me. I killed a magician. Did the Circle ever tell you about that?”
Seb just stared.
Mae smiled. “I’d tell you his name. But I never actually knew what it was.”
“Mae, I like you,” Seb said with sudden explosive urgency. “That was why—I thought I could—”
Mae sneered. “I think we both know why you picked me. And we both know who you really like.”
“No,” Seb said. “No. This isn’t you, Mae.”
“Maybe you don’t know me,” said Mae, and she stepped away from him, throwing the sketchbook at his feet. “After all, you don’t know much. You think this Circle is an escape for you? You think this is leading anywhere good?”
“There was nowhere else to go,” Seb said softly.
Mae took a deep breath. “Well, now there is,” she said. “Let’s go. Both of us. We can work something out.”
Seb stared at her some more.
“I know you lied to me in about a hundred different ways,” Mae told him. “No two people in the history of the world have ever been as broken up as we are. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you get out of here.”
Jamie. Nick. Now Seb. She was developing an unsettling habit of wanting to save boys.
“Seb!” Laura called out. “Get back in here.”
Seb gave her an agonized look. “Stay there,” he repeated, and left the room.
Mae sat on the bed and tried to make a plan. She didn’t think for a minute that Seb running around the house like a scared rabbit was going unnoticed. Someone was going to come in that door, very soon. She had to know what to do.
The door opened gradually, and Jessica Walker stood on the threshold.
“My, my,” she said. “What have we here?”
Mae gave her a bright smile. “Hi there,” she said. “I was just thinking about that internship you offered me.”
Five minutes later she was leaving the house of the Obsidian Circle escorted by a rival magician. Seb went pale when he saw her and Gerald looked furious, but they could all see Mae’s ears. Hanging from them were knives shining in circles.
Celeste kept her gloved fingers curled at the small of Mae’s back where her T-shirt did not quite meet her jeans; velvet prickled against Mae’s bare skin.
“I trust you’ll remember we helped you, and let your brother know we regret the little unpleasantness last time,” she said into Mae’s ear before she climbed into the limousine. “My offer still stands.”
“I’ll remember,” Mae said, and looked at Jessica. “Do you want these back?”
Jessica smiled brilliantly. “No. They look good on you.”
Mae had not known where else to go, so she found herself in the attic again, shadows slipping long fingers through the window and across the floor toward her as she read. The demon watching her was directly under the window, already lost in the spilling darkness.
Mae raised her voice and tried to make a dead man’s words come clear.
“Isn’t it time that I started learning how to use weapons?” Alan said to me today.
He’s nine years old. Last time the magicians came I almost lost an eye, and he had to hit a man with an umbrella stand.
If he hadn’t, then it would be just him, Nick, and Olivia. They would be helpless.
It is time, but the sight of him holding a gun with the same serious thought as he holds his pencil when he does crosswords makes my stomach turn over. I should be enough to keep them all safe.
Alan won’t let Nick touch his new gun. “It’s not a toy,” he said, gentle and worried.
“I know,” Nick answered, not taking his eyes off it. “Toys are stupid.”
When I asked Nick what he wanted for his birthday, he said a knife. I told him that knives were not really appropriate birthday gifts. He stood silent, staring at me. I don’t think he understands the word “appropriate” yet, and I couldn’t think of how to explain it.
“When you’re a little older,” I said.
