So I need your help. He’ll trust you. I need you to lead him somewhere deserted and trap him in a summoning circle for me.”
“Oh, you need Alan to betray Nick and then you’ll steal Nick’s powers and kill them both,” said Mae. “Great idea. Hey, can I come? I’ll bring a picnic lunch if you promise not to let blood get on the sandwiches.”
“She makes a good point,” Alan observed, speaking more slowly than Mae would’ve liked. “How could I trust you?”
“How could I trust
“I’d have a lot to lose, as well.”
“Would you?” asked Gerald. “Nothing that you won’t lose anyway, if you fail to keep the demon in check. Which you know you will.”
He leaned forward a little so he was totally obscured from Mae’s view.
“I know what you’re afraid of, Alan,” Gerald told him quietly. “But how many people have to die before you risk him hating you?”
Mae made up her mind and got to her feet.
“All right,” she said. “You can leave now.”
She could see Gerald’s face clearly now, lifted to hers and vaguely startled. She reached out, grabbed his hand, and hauled him to his feet. When his fingers curled automatically around hers, all the magic lights went out.
“I’d say you outstayed your welcome, but you never actually got a welcome, did you?”
She used her grip on Gerald’s hand to tow him away from the table. She felt perfectly prepared to get behind him and shove his horrible magic self every step of the way to the front door, but then Gerald decided it was too much trouble or that he’d said all he wanted to say. He pulled his hand away and made for the door.
He stopped on the threshold and said, “Alan.”
Alan was still sitting down in the middle of that shadowy kitchen, head bowed over the table. “Mae’s right. You should go.”
There was a pause. Mae looked defiantly at Gerald, Alan looked away, and Gerald looked like he was trying to find a way to make the winning move.
“In two worlds, he is the most dangerous thing alive,” Gerald said at last. “And you made him. I’ll be in touch.”
The kitchen door swung closed, and a moment later Mae heard the sound of the front door closing too, imagined a brief flare of magical light as Gerald went humming down the road, congratulating himself on a job well done, and left them here in the dark.
“Alan,” said Mae, kneeling on the floor by his chair and thus getting a look at his shadowed face. “Don’t listen to him. He’s lying to you.”
“He’s not lying,” Alan said. “Nick killed those people.”
“Sorry,” said Nick from the door, his voice toneless. “Am I interrupting something?”
He flipped the switch, and the kitchen filled with ordinary, non-magical light. Mae thought of Gerald saying that Nick would never think to use his magic for something beautiful or kind, and then reminded herself fiercely that Gerald was an idiot. Nick would think using his magic that way was crazy, and he’d be right. There was a perfectly good light switch.
Nick leaned against the door frame, arms folded.
“Heard the magician leave,” he observed. “He had me down in five minutes. He shouldn’t have been able to do that. He had ten times the power today than he did outside the graveyard.”
Alan leaned back in his chair. His expression was suddenly thoughtful, now that Nick could see it: Nick hadn’t seen what he’d looked like before, hunched over in the dark.
“Looks like Gerald really has invented a different kind of mark,” he said. “I wonder how much stronger he is now.”
“I wonder how we’re going to deal with it,” Nick said sharply.
“I don’t know yet,” said Alan. “But I will.”
Nick nodded, seeming to accept that this was settled and Alan would be learning all the secrets of the murderous magicians’ Circle anytime now. Mae steeled herself for the inevitable questions about what Gerald had wanted, and what Alan had said to him in return, and why that had left Alan and Mae talking about murder in the dark.
Nick said, “You’re going to be late for the Goblin Market.”
“He’s right, we should really go,” said Alan.
Mae had wanted to do her hair, put on some kind of outfit, worry about what she looked like, as if the Goblin Market was some weird mix of a job interview and a boy she liked. Now there was no time and she didn’t care. She didn’t care about magicians and the bargains they offered, either. For a shining second all she could see were lanterns strung from bough to bough and magic for sale.
“I’m going to work,” said Nick. “Got the evening shift.”
He turned away, and Alan turned in his chair toward him in a sudden, violent movement. “Nick.”
Nick glanced over his shoulder.
“In two worlds,” said Alan quietly, “there is nothing I love half as much as you.”
