“How much older?” he asked.
“When you’re seven.”
He doesn’t seem to have any kind of powers. Sometimes I think that he has them and sees no need to use them, has no desire to protect our family. Most of the time I tell myself that it’s the talisman Alan makes him wear. It hurts him. When I saw that it was leaving a mark on his skin, I told him he could take it off, but Alan, merciless and patient as a mother spooning medicine into a crying child’s mouth, said no.
Not that Nick ever cries.
He does like watching me fix things. When the drains or the pipes are giving me trouble, when the car won’t start, I get to work and then I feel the hair stand up on the back of my neck, I feel a cold, crawling premonition of danger, and I turn to see black eyes fixed on me.
Last time we had to move I asked for an old house, a bit of a fixer-upper. I think it’s good for him to learn simple human things.
Alan stares at us as if we’re performing arcane rituals and goes off to teach himself Aramaic.
“Just you and me, Nicky,” I said to him once, and a corner of his mouth went up, little hands in his jeans pockets.
He said, “Guess so.”
When we go out to the DIY shop and leave Alan at home he reaches up and automatically catches my hand when we cross the road. He pulls away as soon as we reach the other side of the street. It’s just a moment, small fingers curled against my palm. At the shop sometimes I pick him up to show him the wrenches and screwdrivers.
“My boy likes to work with his hands,” I said last time, without even thinking.
There are moments like that.
Then there are moments like at the Goblin Market last month. We were terrified someone was going to notice Nick’s eyes. Alan was holding his hand so hard that it left bruises in the shape of his fingertips on Nick’s skin.
Nobody noticed. Nobody would expect a demon child. People thought he was a little strange, like they’ve heard Olivia is, but they smiled when they saw Alan holding his hand.
“Taking good care of your little brother?” Phyllis asked.
Alan smiled the shy smile that makes everyone smile back at him. “I’m trying.”
She gave them both some sweets, and when Alan nudged him, Nick even remembered to say thank you.
Then we passed the dancers, and Nick stood transfixed. There was a demon in one of the circles, in the shape of a woman. She stood wreathed in fire with lips like blood, wearing winding flames as a dress, scorching orange tendrils sliding against her white skin.
She was staring back at Nick.
“Come on, Nicky.” I seized his other hand and dragged him away. He had to trot to keep up with me and Alan, and he looked over his shoulder and almost stumbled.
Nick, who rarely volunteers anything and even more rarely indicates his feelings on any subject, said, “She’s pretty.”
I looked back as well. The demon woman stood staring after him, after our Nick. Tendrils of fire wrapped like chains around her hands, and her fingers were icicles sharp as knives.
Just before I started writing this, I was putting Nick to bed. Alan was out at the shooting range with Merris Cromwell and her dancers, and Nick was standing at the window until bedtime. I thought he might be feeling a little forlorn, so I read him two stories instead of one and he seemed sleepy by the end, eyelids falling and face scrunched up against the pillow. Almost a child, and almost mine.
I did not even think about it when I said, “Do you love me?” in the same automatic, instinctive way I used to say it to Alan when he was small. Alan used to smile, wide and bright, as if he’d won something because he got to answer the question. He used to throw his arms up in the air and say, “Yes!” and then Marie or I would have to sweep him up and kiss him.
Nick turned his face away from me slightly.
“No,” he said in his cold, hollow little voice.
Then he went to sleep.
Mae looked up and saw Nick, who did not look like anyone who might ever conceivably have been called Nicky.
“That’s how it goes,” he said, expressionless. “We never make humans happy. They always think we might.”
He turned his face away and added in a soft voice, not gentle but like a rising fire, “I don’t think we can.”
“Did you know about Seb?” Mae asked. “Not the magician thing, the other thing. About Jamie. Is that why you laughed, when I told you I was seeing him?”
Nick’s eyes flickered over to her. “Yeah,” he said after a minute.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Alan said to me once that as I couldn’t tell lies, I shouldn’t tell secrets,” Nick said. “I thought you’d figure it out.”
She should have figured it out. Seb had been far too accepting of her set terms, far too eager to enter into a relationship where he was tested and never touched. Every time they
