mouth gone dry to hear what Nick had to say.
Low and cold, Nick said, “Betray me.”
Alan’s head snapped up. “What?”
“Betray me,” Nick said again, still in that terrible toneless demon’s voice, hands clenching on the kitchen counter so hard Mae thought it would break. “Turn me over to the magicians, take the magic, do whatever you think you need to do, I do not care. But don’t leave.”
She’d had it all wrong, Mae thought, feeling numb all over. She’d known Nick was afraid of something, learning fear the way she’d described it:
She just hadn’t understood.
From the look on Alan’s face, he hadn’t understood either.
“Oh, Nick,” he said in a soft, amazed voice. “No.”
He limped the few steps toward his brother, then reached out. A shiver ran all the way through Nick, as if he was a spooked animal about to bolt, but he didn’t bolt. Alan’s hand settled on the back of his brother’s neck, and Nick bowed his head a little more and let him do it.
“No, no, no,” Alan said in his beautiful voice, turning it into a lullaby, soothing and sweet. “Nick. I would never leave.”
Mae had no place being there right now, so she closed the kitchen door softly and walked home.
Outside it was still dark, but the tattered storm clouds were curling around one another almost gently, the storm calmed, the sky full of possibility.
The rain had stopped.
20
The Demon’s Price
Mae woke on the day of the Goblin Market to the sound of her phone ringing by her ear. It was Sin, freaking out about cover for her people. Mae sat up in bed, grabbed her laptop, and got some maps of Huntingdon Market Square up onscreen.
“Look, Sin,” she said. “Think. The square’s in the middle of town. There are houses on every side of it! Well, one side’s a church, but you take my point. There is absolutely no chance that the magicians won’t be shielding themselves. Trust me, I saw the Aventurine Circle do this on the Millennium Bridge. They’ll be giving us cover. All we have to do is use it.”
“And if they decide to take it down?”
“They’d expose themselves as well as us,” said Mae. “It’s going to be fine.”
“It’s not,” Sin told her quietly. “People are going to die. I think it’s worth it, to eliminate the magicians. You’re not Market, though. Not yet. Can you handle people dying because of your plan?”
Mae rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand, fuzzy morning vision coalescing to St. Leonard’s fragile Gothic spire outside her window, stretching up into a clear blue sky.
“I don’t know,” she said quietly, and shut her eyes. “I guess we’ll have to see.”
Sin was silent for a moment. Then she abruptly switched topics. “The demon’s agreed to the plan?”
“Yes,” Mae said automatically, because if she even hesitated, Sin would know something was wrong and call the whole thing off.
Then she actually had to think about it. Nick had definitely not agreed, but she had told him and he hadn’t said no, he’d just had the Nick equivalent of a nervous breakdown with the weather. He’d seemed amenable after that, but that might have just been because Nick was generally agreeable with people trying to pull all his clothes off.
He’d told Alan to betray him, but he didn’t want Alan to do it. Mae thought of the way Alan had looked at Nick after Nick told him. She thought the odds were pretty good that Alan didn’t want to do it either.
There was a very good possibility that Nick had told Alan about her plan, and they were both on her side now.
She might want to check before she bet people’s lives on it, though.
“So there’s a fence on one side of this marketplace?” Sin asked. “Do you think it’ll be a good size to put my archers behind?”
“Uh, archers?” Mae said. She wondered if this was a secret second stage to their plan. Step one: Defeat evil. Step two: Enact Robin Hood play.
“Guns don’t always work,” Sin reminded her patiently. “Bow and arrow’s better than any throwing dagger. You can pick off magicians at your leisure.”
“Can you shoot a bow?” Mae inquired, curious and a little thrilled at the notion.
“Yeah,” said Sin. “But I like my knives better. I’m not much for leisure.”
“I’d like a lesson someday.”
“If we win this one,” Sin said, “you can have anything you want. You’ll be down here by seven, right?”
“At the latest. See you then.”
Cambridgeshire was four hours away, and it was after eleven now. She had to call Nick. Mae hung up on Sin and keyed in the N to get Nick’s number from her contacts list right away.
Nick had his phone turned off.
