sections by black iron.
“That’s a—” Alan began.
“Beacon lamp,” Mae finished.
“Lights the path back you have to follow,” Alan said, as if he was quoting. “Calls your wanderer home.” He shook his head, mouth curving a little, and then swung out of the car, hand on the door helping him do it smoothly. “Nick had a few objections to me going to the Goblin Market,” he said as he came around to her side.
Mae foiled his chivalrous intentions by opening her door herself and leaping out. Alan shrugged, smiled at her, and went to the door, sorting his keys and still talking, very casual, head bent over the keys as if he thought he could possibly hide how pleased he was.
“He shouldn’t be wasting a beacon lamp like that, though,” he said, opening the door to let her in. “I’ll have a word with him about it. They’re expensive. It was silly.”
“Sure it was,” said Mae, and Alan shot her a look over his glasses, warm and a little embarrassed.
The light from the beacon lamp was coming from the sitting room now, filtering through a door left ajar into the little hall. Alan pushed open the door gently, and once it was fully open Mae understood why.
Nick was asleep on the sofa, one elbow pillowing his head, long legs hooked over one of the sofa arms. That couldn’t have been comfortable.
Alan limped into the room.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “Hey, wake up. We’re home.”
Nick’s eyes snapped open and he said, “I’m awake, I’m up,” in a clear voice, then turned his face into his arm a little, eyelashes sweeping his cheeks and casting shadows on his pale face.
“No, you’re not,” Alan told his brother, voice pitched low and sweet with no intention of waking him. He reached out and brushed black locks carefully back from Nick’s brow, a gesture Nick would in no way have allowed when awake.
Even in sleep it made Nick shift uneasily, the gray T-shirt twisted around his torso climbing, baring the sharp angle of his hips and the flat of his stomach where a black leather band was fastened, the hilt of a knife pressed against his skin.
“Does he, uh, generally sleep armed?” Mae asked, and then saw Nick stir and shut her mouth. She put a foot over the threshold, testing, and his head came up a little. She withdrew.
Alan glanced back at her. “We both do.”
Mae didn’t want to wake Nick, so she stayed quiet. Alan stood there looking down at Nick, fingers poised a fraction of an inch from his sleeping face.
Nick did not make any of the usual noises of someone sleeping, no snores or sighs, not a murmur. He did not even sleep like a human being.
Alan made a small, worn sound that was not quite a sigh and limped away to put out the beacon lamp.
Mae went to the kitchen to get herself a glass of water. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was until she poured the water down her throat, feeling it splash cold and lovely onto her parched tongue. She leaned against the counter and hung on to her glass, fingers sliding in the condensation.
“Hey.”
She twisted her head around to see Alan at the kitchen door. He still looked a little pleased about Nick’s beacon lamp, faint warmth lingering in his eyes and his smile.
“Hey.”
“So I don’t mind taking Nick’s bed,” said Mae. “Then we can both get some sleep.”
“Yeah, well, about that,” Alan said, rubbing his eyes. “Sunday means time and a half, so I kind of have to be at work by seven. Nick’s bed or my bed: ladies’ choice. I’m going to make some coffee.”
He went and turned on the kettle, getting down his cup and some instant coffee. Annabel had a coffee grinder at home that was the only thing in the kitchen she and Mae knew how to use. Annabel wouldn’t allow instant coffee in the house.
“So,” Mae said slowly as the kettle puffed hot bursts of mist at them, “you’re going to do a day’s work on no sleep, and Nick was worried that someone was going to hurt you. You had to climb up a stupid mountain with your bad leg. And you knew how the Goblin Market would react when they saw you. Why on earth did you want to go?”
Alan stirred his coffee and bit back a laugh.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked. “I thought it would please you.”
“Um,” said Mae, turning her water glass around in her hands. “So you took me somewhere that you really didn’t want to go and you knew you wouldn’t enjoy, and you had a terrible time. You know, that’s a lot of guys’ definition of a date.”
There was a window across from the sink and the countertops covered with a stick-on sheet that gave the glass a frosted look. The sticker was peeling away from one edge, but the dawn light still came through fuzzy, touching Alan’s curly hair with blurry gold fingers.
A corner of Alan’s mouth came up.
“My definition of a date includes the girl agreeing to go on one with me,” he said. “Don’t worry about it, Mae.”
He moved past the counter, cup angled so there was no chance of spilling it on her, and Mae thought about Sin laughing and saying that Alan wasn’t exactly the type to make a girl’s heart start racing, about how pleased Alan had been by something as simple as a light in the window calling him home. He looked so tired, and the happiness was already slipping off his face as if it did not belong there.
