freaked out, terrified he would not meet her expectations.
“How did you know?”
“I’m a demon,” Nick answered matter-of-factly. “That kind of thing, we spent years watching at human windows and learning. I know what humans want.”
Because Nick got to spend time with Jamie, because Jamie liked him.
Mae had been so confident that Seb liked her. She felt such a fool.
“Great,” Mae said softly.
“You want me to kill him?”
It was very strange to hear someone say that and know he meant it.
“Don’t,” Mae bit out.
“He was alone with you and Jamie with that mark on him,” Nick said, a thread running through his voice like strangling wire. “He can’t be very powerful or I’d have sensed magic on him, but that mark makes it not matter. He could’ve killed either of you, anytime.”
“He didn’t. I don’t think he ever wanted to hurt us.”
“Really,” Nick said. “You know who never get a chance to change their minds about that? Dead men.”
“Don’t do it!” Mae repeated, and turned her face away. She heard Nick get up and cross the room toward her, stopping a few inches away from the spot on the floor where she sat.
“But you’re—you feel bad,” he said with his shadow on her.
Mae looked up into his face. “I know,” she said. “I came here because you make me feel better.”
“What?” Nick snapped. “How?”
He was glaring at her suddenly, as if she’d made him angry. Mae did not reach out for him, no matter what the mark catching at her wanted.
“I like that you don’t lie,” she said eventually. “I like that you want to protect us even though I don’t want you to kill him. You try really hard, and you don’t give up. I like all that, so I like having you around. You make me feel better, when you’re not making me feel worse, which happens too. I don’t know how to explain it in any way that makes more sense.”
“Is that comfort?” Nick asked slowly.
Mae took a deep breath. “Yes. Something like that.”
It made sense. She’d agreed to teach him about feelings, so it made perfect sense that she had to strip-mine her own heart to give him an instruction manual.
“Your dad,” she said. “Daniel, I mean. You shouldn’t feel bad because you didn’t say it back. He liked going to the DIY shop with you. You made him feel better, even if you sometimes made him feel worse. That’s what’s important.”
“Clearly, that’s why he asked,” Nick said dryly. “I want to know something about—what he asked me. About that.”
“I can’t define love,” said Mae, feeling a sudden burst of panic she didn’t even know how to explain to herself. She wanted to leave suddenly, just go running down the attic stairs and never look back. “Don’t ask me that. I don’t know how to. I don’t want to—”
Nick looked at her full-on for a moment, too close and too unsettling, his eyes like the night outside her windows trying to crawl in. “I have to know,” he said. “And everything I can find out says something different. Some people say it lasts forever. Does it?”
“Love,” Mae said.
Nick nodded slowly, not breaking their gaze.
She didn’t want to lie to him, and she couldn’t help remembering. Her father had been no Daniel Ryves. He hadn’t been Black Arthur, either. He’d been the warm one, who made time to play with the kids, who pushed her and Jamie to play sports neither of them were interested in but that meant they were with him. He’d been the one who wanted kids. He’d loved them.
At some point he’d become disillusioned with his family; he’d realized that they weren’t the way he wanted his family to be and were not fixable, and he gave up. He told Annabel it wasn’t working, as if they had been a failed experiment. The starter family. So he knew not to make the same mistakes again.
The memory of how he’d left could still hurt Mae. But he couldn’t, not anymore.
“No,” Mae said, dragging the words out reluctantly. “No. Sometimes love doesn’t last. If you just keep on being yourself and you aren’t the person someone else wants you to be, the person they want to love, sometimes they stop. And if—if someone doesn’t love you back, sometimes you stop loving them. Everything else stays, all the pain and the mess. But love gets lost.”
Nick shut his eyes and said, “I see.”
Mae was aware she’d just drawn a picture clear as any of Seb’s had been, of Nick failing to be human, unable to love Alan back, of what Nick feared coming true.
She wanted to tell him she wasn’t going to let it happen, but she needed to be sure her plan would work.
It was then it hit her.
“Hey,” she said. “I went to the magicians’ house today. I saw their circle of stones.”
