The magicians weren’t gods, though, and these weren’t locusts. They weren’t any kind of insects Mae had ever seen before, more like nightmares of insects thought up by someone who had never seen any but had heard horror stories, flying spidery things with bristles and too-big red eyes.
“How was your summer?” Jamie asked nobody in particular. “Well, I was eaten by insects from hell, and it was all downhill from there.”
Nick lunged and reeled Jamie in by his shirt collar, hand on the back of his neck, and Jamie made a face and shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, there was a curving shimmer of silver in the brown irises, like the reflection of a scythe.
The nightmare buzzing died. The insects dropped out of the air.
Jamie was suddenly breathing shudderingly hard, as if he’d just run a race. His skin looked waxy, and he had to lean against Annabel’s shoulder to stay upright. Nick looked a little pale himself.
“I can’t give you enough power,” he said. “You don’t have the magician’s sigil. I don’t know how—”
“Try me,” Mae said. “I have a mark, so maybe—”
She didn’t finish her sentence. Nick reached out to her, though, and Mae felt the magic rush through her as if the mark was a lock with a key in it, opening, as if her body was a channel with water crashing through it, sparkling and sweet and changing everything.
She lifted a hand, and a crow flying at her head suddenly stopped as if it had hit a wall, screeched and slid limp to the ground. And she knew that the magic was all gone, so quickly, leaving her a shaking and empty vessel.
“You’re not a magician,” Nick said, dragging her out of the way as another storm hit, shielding her with his body. “It’s like—it’s like filling a cup or filling a lake, there are different magic capacities.”
His eyes turned to Jamie, thoughtful, but before he could do a thing, the wolf that was really a magician came leaping at them, shreds of shadows in its teeth and a friend behind it. They hit Nick full in the chest, and his sword went flying.
Mae started toward him, but then there was another dead thing lurching at Jamie and Annabel, and Annabel was still trying to hold Jamie up. Mae ran to them instead, her shoes sliding on mess she refused to look down at, and grabbed Jamie so Annabel could swing.
“Mum is kind of badass,” Jamie said into Mae’s shoulder. “Where’s Nick?”
Mae glanced around and saw Nick thump a wolf in its snarling face with his elbow, and then palm a dagger. “He’s punching wolves.”
“Good, good,” said Jamie. “I know he likes to keep busy.”
Mae looked across the nightmarish whirl that the market square had become and saw Alan at last, in the front wave nearest to the magicians, fighting to get to them with a knife in one hand and a gun in the other. She saw him hit someone in the face with his gun, so she presumed he was out of bullets.
They could lose, she thought, and then heard the moan slide out between Nick’s clenched teeth when the second wolf got its claws in his shoulder to the bone. Mae and Jamie let out a curse at about the same moment and ran to Nick just as he slit its throat.
Mae pushed aside the wolf, which was turning back into a dead man even as she touched it, and bumped heads with Jamie as they both bent over Nick. He stared up at them from the bloody bricks, eyes wide.
“Do you think his eyes are all pupil?” Jamie asked desperately, patting Nick on the shoulder that wasn’t wounded. “It’s kind of hard to tell.”
“I’m fine,” Nick snarled, and shut his eyes.
“Mae, he is not fine!” Jamie almost yelled, and Mae scrambled to her feet.
“Oh God,” she said. “Alan’s down. Alan’s
“What?” Nick rasped.
Mae looked down and saw Nick struggle up on one knee. He glared up at her and then got painfully to his feet, a knife in either hand. There was blood running down his arm, his shoulder was a mess, and his mouth was set in a grim, determined line. “Where’s Alan?”
“Oh, Alan’s fine,” said Mae, nodding to where Alan was throwing himself at the magicians again. Sin was beside him now, and the rest of the Goblin Market was behind her. “I was lying so you’d get up. Sorry about that.”
Nick laughed, spun, and stabbed something. “Don’t be sorry. I’ve just decided lying’s kind of sexy.”
Mae laughed too, but it was nervous. Nick was bleeding too much and not healing himself, he probably couldn’t heal himself, and he was going to slip in his own blood soon if he kept trying to move as if he wasn’t hurt.
Annabel was slowing down too. She stumbled, and Mae had to run and bring her knife down hard, almost severing a dead man’s hand at the wrist so it would not touch her mother.
“Where’s your brother?” Annabel panted, struggling to her feet.
Mae looked over at Jamie and saw him standing to one side of Nick, just before another stumbling demon went for Nick’s throat and Nick went down again. Mae cursed and began to struggle back toward them, a hundred illusions and enemies in her way and Annabel shouting her name.
The dead thing’s head came half off under Nick’s knives, and then Jamie was pulling it off Nick, who was really down this time. Mae could see a lot more blood.
“Nick!” she screamed, and Alan’s head turned.
He left Sin’s side and started to fight his way backward through the crowd, the knives in his hands running blood, and he was running too.
