Alan threw and missed. Gerald disappeared over the crest of the hill. Sin came flying back to where Alan stood, seized him by the arm, and shouted up into his face, “Why didn’t you get him?”
“Merris said not to kill him,” Alan snapped. “Throwing knives only have so much range, and guns don’t work, so—”
“So why didn’t you
Alan’s voice in response was a low snarl. “And how do you suggest I do that?”
Mae’s step slowed. She didn’t want to be there. She didn’t want to see Alan’s face as it looked right now, white and somehow wiped clean, caught in a moment of pure, furious despair.
“I—” Sin said, and stopped. She let her hand fall from Alan’s arm.
“Don’t worry, Cynthia,” said Alan, looking down at her. “I take it as a compliment, really. It’s the first time you’ve ever forgotten for a moment about my leg.”
He didn’t sound as if he was taking it as a compliment. He sounded tired and bitter.
Mae reached them, and she smiled at Alan a little desperately. He transferred his attention to her entirely, smiling back, and Sin turned away and snatched Toby out of Mae’s arms as she went.
The absence of the baby was an enormous relief. Mae’s face must have made that very clear, because Alan actually looked amused.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “This is just how you pictured the night going.”
With Gerald gone, the alliance against the magician was lost. Sin was at Merris’s side, Toby cradled to her chest. Merris and Sin were staring at Alan, both of them dark and dignified for a moment, looking alike even though they looked nothing alike. In the space between them and Alan, the grass was stained with blood.
“There’s nothing else I can do?” Alan asked.
Merris said, “You’ve done enough.”
They drove back from Cornwall with the sun rising slowly in a cloud-pale dawn sky, the roads gray and empty before them. Mae was so tired she kept finding herself napping with her face against the window of the car door, and she had no idea how Alan was managing to drive.
In between the bursts of power napping, she tried to stay awake and keep Alan company. She was too tired to be at all tactful.
“So how come you and Sin hate each other?” she asked as Alan turned the car left at Alphington Junction.
Alan gave a soft, startled laugh, hands light on the wheel. He didn’t look tired, but the lines at the corners of his eyes were deeper than they should have been. “We don’t hate each other,” he said. “We’re just too different. If the Goblin Market was one of the American high schools you see in the movies, she’d be the head cheerleader and I’d be the captain of the chess club.”
“Good at chess, are you?” Mae asked.
“Not bad,” said Alan. “You play?”
“Oh, every now and then.”
“We should have a game sometime,” said Alan, his voice so mild the dark thought occurred to Mae that sometime soon she might get beaten at chess, something that hadn’t happened since she was eight years old.
“We should,” she agreed. “Seemed a bit worse than the eternal rivalry of the chess club and the cheerleaders, though.”
“Well,” said Alan, “dancers don’t like seeing people even stumble. I get it, I do: Stella—Sin’s mother—I saw her fall. I’ve seen a lot of dancers fall. I know why Cynthia reacts the way she does to me. She can’t help it. But I can’t help it either. When a girl shudders every time I walk by, it doesn’t make me particularly well disposed toward her.” Alan shrugged, eyes still on the road. “Some people are just destined never to get on. I don’t hate her. I just don’t like her. It’s not a big deal.”
“I don’t imagine Sin gets that a lot,” Mae commented.
“What?”
“Boys not liking her,” said Mae. “She’s kind of amazing. And beautiful.”
She spoke almost absently, forehead pressed against the glass as she tried hard not to sleep. There was morning mist obscuring the fields on either side of the road, so dense and white it looked like there were mutant sheep lurking on all sides.
It was possible she was overtired.
“You’re just as beautiful as she is,” said Alan. That was a flat-out lie, like so much of what Alan said. Like so much of what Alan said, it sounded true. “And you read,” he added.
“Uh, hot,” said Mae, feeling quite a bit more awake.
“Well,” said Alan, faint color in his cheeks, “I think so.”
She wasn’t the only one in the car feeling tense. There was a slight defensive posture to his shoulders now, as if admitting any sort of honest emotion, even something as simple as liking girls who read, was bound to get him hurt.
Mae remembered Nick, obviously desperate to leave the moment Alan told him how he felt. She could see how lying might make Alan feel more comfortable.
She made the decision to defuse this conversation, since they were stuck in the car together for the next three-quarters of an hour. She did not want to be forced to leap out into the morning and face the mutant sheep if things got awkward.
