“I didn’t—” he said in a choked voice. “I didn’t want to.”
“No, no, of course not,” Jamie said, casting a look at Mae. The look said, very specifically,
Mae shrugged.
“I was committed,” Seb said. “Laura said I was. I had to be. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Yes, you do,” Jamie said instantly. “We know some people, Alan knows some people. That girl you met, Sin, she can help you. Alan will help you. If you don’t want to do this, and Seb, believe me, you don’t, I’ll help you.” He stroked Seb’s hair with a little more confidence now. “Everything’s going to be—”
Seb looked up, face like a drowning man breaking the surface when he’d thought he never would again. Jamie was bent solicitously toward him.
When Seb reached out it looked like the gesture of a drowning man too, his fingers locking around the back of Jamie’s neck. Seb pulled Jamie’s head down and kissed him on the mouth.
Mae started to think that she should maybe go inside.
Jamie jumped back as if Seb’s mouth had conveyed an electrical charge.
“Um,” he said. “Huh?”
“It was horrible,” Seb told him. “I hated it.”
“Look, I was caught off guard!”
Seb did not really seem to hear him, which as Jamie had descended to panicked babbling, Mae considered was for the best.
“It didn’t seem like much at first,” Seb said. “Just the demon, in the circle, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the way he laughed. Anzu. He said—he said he knew you.”
“We had a thing,” said Jamie absently, sounding as if he was not even listening to himself. “One of those things that end badly, where they never call, and also they mark you for death.”
“It was just a tiny mark on some woman I was never going to see,” Seb said, bowing his head again. Jamie automatically resumed petting him, looking a bit fraught. “What did it matter? And the power, the power felt —”
“I know,” said Jamie. “I know. But it’s okay, the Market people, they know how to take a first-tier mark off. Seb, it’s going to be—”
“So I let him out again,” Seb continued, hoarse suddenly. “And again. And nothing—nothing happened. I didn’t even have to think about it. There was just the magic, and it was amazing and whatever the demon had done, really, it didn’t have anything to do with me.”
Jamie’s hands stilled.
“Then I saw her,” Seb said, heedless, words tumbling out like a man falling off a cliff with no way to check himself and no hope at all of being saved. “She was just this woman, she was small, she had brown hair, I’d never seen her before in my life. But she had these black eyes and there was this—this reptile feeling coming off her and this silence, this awful silence. She looked like a human, but she wasn’t one. Not anymore. And she looked at me and her tongue, it—it turned into a black snake and wriggled out from between her lips and Laura said”—Seb choked on horror—“Laura said, ‘He says thank you.’”
There was a silence, thick and terrible. Then Jamie gave a full-body shudder. He pushed Seb violently away and scrambled to his feet, almost hurling himself at the door, and stopped at the threshold to look back at him.
His face was very pale.
“Don’t you ever come near me again,” he said.
“He wore a three-tier mark for weeks,” Mae told Seb when the door snapped shut, the sound ringing out like a shot. “Every day he thought something like that was going to happen to him. You have to understand.”
Seb’s head came up and he stared at her, eyes widening and face flushing a slow, ugly red, as if he’d had no idea she was there at all.
“I’m sorry,” he said huskily, and he got to his feet, still staggering a little. His jeans were dusty from the gravel. “I shouldn’t—I’m sorry.”
The black eye Nick had given him was gone. Mae didn’t know enough about black eyes to guess whether it had vanished through time or magic. He was unmarked, the beautiful boy who’d smiled at her and stood by her when she was miserable, and he looked like he could barely stand.
This was what happened to recruits. This was what Gerald wanted to do to Jamie.
“You said you didn’t want to do it again,” Mae said. “Jamie was right before. We can help you. Come inside.”
She started down the steps toward him, and he shied away like a terrified animal, hands up as if to ward her off or surrender.
“I made my choice,” he said. “I’m wearing two of their marks. No matter where I go, they’ll find me. And it’s not like I want to go anywhere else. There’s nothing for me anywhere else. It was stupid to come here. I’m sorry. Tell him I’m sorry.”
Seb bolted. Mae was sure he just wanted to escape, but escape from them led straight back to Gerald.
She went into the hall and found Jamie curled on the bottom step of the flight of stairs.
“Hey,” she said gently, and went over to her brother, sitting down on the step above him so she could rest a hand on top of his hair. Jamie leaned into her hip.
“Gerald’s done a lot worse,” Mae said quietly at last. “Why are you so mad at Seb?”
