The Demon's Covenant

“How dare you come here?”

“Cynthia,” said Alan, his voice far sharper than when he was talking to demons, and Mae remembered what she’d somehow forgotten, since Alan seemed to get on so well with most people: that these two did not like each other.

“Traitor,” Sin said distinctly, in such a white-hot rage that she had to enunciate every word, condemn him with all the clarity she possessed. “Never come back. You are not welcome.”

She spat into his face. Alan just stood there, pale and still. Sin cast him one more burning look and then ran as if she could not bear to be close to Alan for a second longer. Mae started furiously after her.

Alan’s hand flew out and grasped her wrist, his fingers clamping down hard.

“Don’t, Mae,” he said quietly. “Her mother was a dancer who slipped up and got possessed last year. She has every right to hate the demons. And me.”

“Oh,” said Mae.

“Oh,” Alan echoed, sounding tired. He let go of her wrist. “You should go after her,” he said. “She could probably use a friend. Don’t worry about me. Sin’s their future leader and she’s banished me, so nobody else will try anything. I’ll go wait for you in the car.”

Mae looked around at the Goblin Market people, who were still glancing at Alan with eyes glittering under the fairy lights. She stepped in close to him and felt shielded suddenly from wind she had barely noticed before; she always forgot unassuming Alan was so tall. She reached up and clasped her hands around his warm neck, tying together the two ends of the cord on which his talisman hung. She felt his breath stutter against her cheek as her fingers slid along the back of his neck.

She had honestly meant it to be a simple gesture of comfort.

“I’m on your side,” she whispered, and drew back.

“I know,” said Alan, and walked away so she wouldn’t be leaving him in a crowd of enemies. She watched him go, disappearing in plain sight, not making for any ruins or shadows, just fading unobtrusively into the night as he walked with his head down.

She went to find Sin, following in the direction she’d run.

Five minutes later she was stumbling blind down a hill, convinced she’d got turned around at some point and was about to plunge off a cliff, when she lost her footing and fell into what seemed in the moonlight—which was not very much light at all—to be a grassy shelf in the hills where there were wagons.

Mae had never seen real wagons before, not wagons, with high wheels and wooden trim painted red. There was a painted sign on the front of one wagon, with chimes hanging in front of it in the shapes of ballerinas and knives and masks. Mae felt as if a wizened fortune-teller was about to pop her graying head out of the billowing red curtains and demand whether she wanted to dream of her true love tonight.

Sin’s shining head emerged from the curtains instead, hair free of her ribbons and tumbling dark against the vivid material.

“Mae,” she said, and smiled. “Great. Come on in.”

“I can’t,” Mae said. “I came here—I came here with Alan Ryves.”

Sin’s face, lit by sparkling eyes and cherry lips, seemed to shut down, tucking laughter and color away. It made her look quite different.

“My brother had a third-tier demon’s mark,” Mae continued. “Alan took the mark to save him. My brother’s alive because of Alan. If people are taking sides, I’m on Alan’s side every time. I owe him that. So now ask me again to come in. Or don’t.”

Sin’s brown hands grasped at the curtains.

“For your brother,” she said eventually. “I can understand that.” She grinned again, all bright resolve. “Come in.”

Mae grinned back. “Okay.”

Inside the Davies’ wagon was small as expected, and bright in the way Mae would have expected the place where Sin lived to be. She climbed in the door and imagined how someone taller would have banged their head doing it, thankful for once that she was ridiculously short. There wasn’t much in the wagon: a tiny red-covered table with a crystal ball on it, a pile of schoolbooks, a fox’s skull. Three beds took up most of the space, jammed up against each other but with an attempt made to distinguish them: one was a crib rather than a bed and had a blue blanket with teddy bears on it, one was red with black fans stitched on the coverlet, moving gently as if they were being plied by invisible ladies, and one was black with skulls and crossbones.

“My baby sister Lydie loves pirates,” Sin said. “Don’t ask me why. Bedtime stories are about walking the plank all the time. Toby gets nightmares.”

Toby. He’s always escaping from his crib and making his sister worry herself sick.

“I think I met your baby brother earlier tonight,” said Mae.

There was a tightness suddenly to Sin’s smooth brow. “Was he with Trish? She’s meant to look after the kids on Market nights, but he’s always getting away.”

“Alan took him back to Trish,” Mae told her, using Alan’s name deliberately.

Sin made a face. “You’re not going out with him, are you?” she asked, going over to the copper basin on her chest of drawers. There rose petals floating in the water inside. “Because leaving aside the traitor issue, you could still do so much better.”

Mae sat down on the bed with the red duvet and watched as Sin twisted her dark hair up in a knot and splashed her face with the rose-petal water.

“There’s nothing wrong with Alan,” Mae said to her back.