Jamie leaning in toward him a little.
“You’ve got the demon signed onto this plan yet?” Sin continued.
“Not yet,” Mae said. “But I will.”
19
Treachery
Pretty thing like you shouldn’t be walking home alone,” Mae said as Alan emerged from the bookshop.
The windows behind him were already dark and the sun was slipping below the horizon, but Alan turned a golden smile on her. It lit up his whole face, like a beacon lamp in a window.
“Hey,” she said, ducking her head because she didn’t deserve that smile.
Because she’d come here with the full intention of doing everything she could to make Alan change his mind, so that when she told Nick they were setting up a trap for the magicians, his brother would be in on it. Nick would never have to know Alan had thought of betraying him.
It felt like dismissing what Alan had gone through in Durham as unimportant. It felt like betraying Alan, like choosing Nick.
Maybe it was.
“Haven’t seen you around in a while,” Alan remarked.
Mae had taken a week to finish school, to visit Sin and some of the people she’d collected, and to be cowardly about approaching Alan or Nick. But July was coming, and there was no time left to be afraid.
“I know,” Mae said, and hesitated.
They left the little side street where the bookshop was hidden and came onto the high street, the shop fronts shimmering and the street itself in shadows, the evening sky inked shades of violet and coral.
“Nick told me,” she continued quietly. “He told me and Jamie what he did in Durham. Alan, I’m so sorry.”
She looked over at Alan. His head was bowed. Mae was forcibly reminded of the way his brother had sat when he told them, before he looked up with that terribly empty expression on his face.
“It was my fault,” Alan said. “I was wrong to go there, and wrong to stay. I thought I could win them over, but it was selfish of me to endanger them like that. I wanted a chance with my family, but I didn’t deserve it in the first place. I gave Nick the power to hurt them, and then I gave him the motive. It was my fault. But I’m going to fix it.”
“Alan,” Mae told him. “You can’t.”
“Mae. I have to.”
She turned and faced him in the neon-lit twilight.
“You’re risking your life and Nick’s life on the word of a magician who has already tried to kill you and a demon who promised she’d get you both if you didn’t give her a body. You can’t give Liannan a body, and so you can’t trust her. You can’t leave Nick helpless to face the magicians. Nick will hate you. And that won’t matter, because the magicians are going to murder you both.”
“I don’t think so,” Alan said. “But I’m prepared to take that chance.”
“Alan—”
They weren’t even pretending they were going to walk on, that they weren’t having a scene on the high street. They were standing in front of the Riddle sculpture, a little shielded from the view of curious pedestrians.
Mae doubted anyone would listen or spare them a second glance anyway. They would just see two teenagers breaking up.
“Mae. You didn’t see, and you don’t understand. My brother made four people love me. He made their heartstrings into puppet strings. Nobody in the whole world should have that kind of power,” Alan said. “Least of all Nick.”
“You shouldn’t do it.”
Mae heard her own voice shaking. Alan probably thought she was upset, caught up with fears for them and their fate at the hands of the magicians; the helpless little woman who would be staying home wringing her hands and imagining horrors.
The only horror Mae was imagining was that of telling Nick that his brother was going to betray him.
Alan didn’t know that the pleading note in her voice meant she was imploring him not to make her do it.
Mae did not stay standing this time. She sat on the edge of the Riddle sculpture, folded steel four times the size she was, all the sharp edges flowing together to form a razor point. Nothing had ever looked more modern, but every steel fold was inscribed with riddles taken from a book one thousand years old.
She closed her eyes and leaned her cheek against the evening-cool steel.
“Mae,” Alan whispered, and Mae realized his face was very close to hers.
She opened her eyes and saw him there, one hand over her head, bracing himself against the sculpture. His eyes were on a level with hers, and the sky behind him seemed to be darkening to match them, the colors of sunset bleeding away to leave her with deep twilight blue.
“I heard you and Seb might not be getting along so well.”
“You could say that.”
Her whisper was so dry, it barely carried.
