just the way you move for me. I saw them fall. You’ll fall too.”
Sin raised an eyebrow. “Not today.”
“Oh,” said Liannan, “I can wait.”
She turned whip-fast toward Mae, hair trailing her like a comet’s tail as she moved and then settling, glorious, around her white shoulders.
“What about you?”
Mae folded her arms. “What about me?”
“You want something,” Liannan said. “I can tell.”
“I could use some information,” Mae admitted slowly.
“Oh, you want so much more than that.”
“Your prices are too high,” said Mae. “You’re like a loan shark. Only desperate people go to you for help. And I’m not desperate—I can help myself, given the right tools. I don’t want anything but information from you.”
Liannan tilted back her head and laughed so Mae could see her rows on rows of pointed teeth, small and white as sharpened pearls.
“You were born for the Market, weren’t you?” she asked. “The dance gets you two questions, and the beautiful dancer used them up. So tell me, haggler for the truth, what else do you have to give?”
“What else do you want?” Mae returned. “Besides the obvious.”
Liannan tilted her head, considering.
“I want a kiss.”
Mae blinked at her. “A—a kiss?”
Liannan stood watching her, silent, as if she felt an echo deserved no reply. She was still smiling a little, razor- sharp teeth indenting her lower lip. Mae was suddenly very aware of the demon’s mouth, red and lush with the promise of ripe fruit. She thought again of poisonous plants.
“A kiss?” Sin echoed from behind Liannan, easy and beguiling. “I have a certain amount of expertise on the subject.”
“No,” Mae said quickly. She appreciated the gesture, but she didn’t want to be rescued from anything she could handle herself. “You can have your kiss. I’ll do it.”
She reached out, her hand trembling, magic lights and darkness flickering around her fingers.
Liannan laughed, and Mae felt it like a knife running along her spine.
“I’ll keep you both in mind for later. But I don’t believe I mentioned who I wanted the kiss from.”
“Ah,” said Mae, feeling both saved and at the same time, terribly embarrassed. “Right.”
Liannan turned away from them.
“I’ve always wanted to do this,” she remarked. “Summon one of you. Make you see what it’s like. I call on the one the Goblin Market calls a traitor. I call on the liar, the demon lover, the murderer. I call on Alan Ryves!”
Alan stepped out of the shadows of ruins and into the moonlight, limping across the night-gray grass to the circles where magic fires were blazing. There was a sudden hiss rising all around the Market, like a nest of snakes waking and uncoiling, ready to strike.
The demon smiled and beckoned Alan on.
“I do hope you won’t think I was being too harsh,” Liannan murmured.
“No,” said Alan. “It was just the truth.”
“It always is,” Liannan told him. “And people always hate hearing it.”
She was standing at the very edge of the place where the circles joined, magic glowing palely at her feet. Alan stopped about an inch away from her, still standing on shadowed grass.
“Come,” Liannan coaxed. “This little girl promised me a kiss, and you know what happens to her if she can’t keep her promise.”
The threat was clear and the thought—possession—like a blow to the stomach, but even though Mae felt sick and winded, she didn’t feel afraid. Alan wouldn’t let it happen. Not in a thousand years.
She opened her mouth, trying to think of some way to phrase,
“It’s all right, Mae,” he said. “It’s all right, Liannan,” he added in the same warm voice. “I don’t mind.”
“And what if the Market folk stone you to death?” Liannan asked. “Will you mind then?”
“I probably will mind that, yes,” said Alan, as calm as she was.
Liannan shrugged, a loose, sinuous movement. “Men have died for less than a kiss from me before now. What do you desire, Alan Ryves?”
They were watching each other. Mae was surprised at how disturbed she felt by the sight of them, both so clearly fascinated.
“Safe passage.”
“Nobody’s ever safe,” Liannan said. “But you will come to no harm from me tonight. Now take it off.”
