The Demon's Covenant

smile.

Mae raised her eyebrows at Erica and nodded at Seb to sit down.

Glancing up from her lunch, she saw Jamie at the door. He must have forgotten to pack a lunch today. He was standing in the cafeteria looking a bit lost, as if he was there so seldom that he’d forgotten where they put the food. Mae raised a hand to signal him over to their table.

Jamie didn’t see her, since Nick had just appeared at his side. Nick walked on and then looked back and jerked his head, in an impatient and peremptory way that indicated Jamie should follow him.

Jamie hadn’t had someone to sit with in the cafeteria for almost two years.

“Look, isn’t that Nick Ryves?” said Rachel. “I thought he moved. Or went to prison.”

“Rachel, he did not go to prison,” Mae said, glaring.

“He could’ve gone to prison,” Rachel told her. “Hazel told me she saw knives in his schoolbag once.”

“I find that extremely unlikely,” said Mae, with a laugh she hoped everyone else found convincing.

“I don’t,” Erica offered in her soft voice. “He does kind of look like a serial killer.”

“A hot serial killer, though,” said Rachel.

“Uh, I have no opinion on that,” Tim said, coughing. “Seemed an okay guy. Not chatty, though,” he added thoughtfully. He darted a look over at Seb for approval, obviously having received the Jamie memo, and said, “Maybe we should ask him and your brother to sit with us?”

Mae looked over at Jamie, who had certainly spotted her by now and had deliberately turned his back on their table, shoulders hunched up in two sharp, defensive points, as if he was trying to grow spikes like a hedgehog.

“Jamie wouldn’t be crazy about the company,” she said. “He’ll come around.”

“He shouldn’t be hanging out with Nick Ryves,” said Seb, speaking for the first time. He had one arm looped around his knee, and he was scowling at the apple on the table before him. “He’s dangerous.”

“Hey,” Mae said in her most authoritative voice. She saw Rachel and Erica both sit up and take notice. “Nick’s a friend of mine. And Jamie’s.”

She picked up her sandwich and, in the sudden silence, began to eat. Across the room Jamie and Nick were eating too. To her enormous lack of surprise, Jamie was doing most of the talking, but at one point, when Jamie made a vehement gesture and knocked his apple right off the table, Nick caught it before it hit the ground.

Jamie would get over being mad at her and get over his crush, Mae knew. But she fell silent anyway, leaning against Seb, who seemed a little quiet himself, and let the conversation wash over her without making it flow her way.

When she went up to buy a Coke, Nick cornered her against the vending machine.

Trapped between the humming red box and his body, Mae couldn’t actually tip her head back far enough to see his face without thumping it against the vending machine. She settled for raising an eyebrow at what she could see, which was basically Nick’s shoulder, the faded black-to-gray material of his shirt stretched tight over muscle and drooping out of shape at the collar, showing the bare lines of collarbone and throat.

Mae closed her hand tight on the damp metal of her Coke can.

“About yesterday,” Nick said, and stopped.

“Forget it,” Mae told him.

Nick braced himself against the vending machine with one hand over her head.

“All right.” He pulled away, her Coke can gleaming in his hand. “Alan’s going to a lecture tonight. Come by and read to me.”

Mae pushed off the machine and snatched her can back as she walked past him.

“I’ll think about it,” she said over her shoulder. “If I don’t get a better offer.”

The better offer she wasn’t really expecting came from Alan, and it wasn’t an offer at all.

Seb gave her a lift home from school in his surprisingly nice car, which was tan-colored and sleek and which, she had to point out, Seb was actually too young to drive.

“What are you talking about?” Seb asked, all innocence. “I’m eighteen. It says so on over half the IDs I own.”

Mae snorted.

“I wouldn’t dream of doing anything illegal,” he assured her, with the smile that had made her notice him.

They were hardly past the school gates when they drove by Jamie, bobbing happily along to the sounds of his iPod as he walked. Mae grinned just seeing him, and she was gratified that Seb slowed the car without her asking.

“Hey, Jamie,” said Seb. “Want a lift?”

“Hey, Seb,” Jamie responded without missing a beat. “Drop dead.”

“Right,” said Seb, and pulled back from the side of the road, knuckles white on the wheel.

“It takes more than a day,” Mae told him.

“Not for Nick Ryves,” Seb remarked, his voice grim and his eyes on the side mirror, where Mae could see Jamie climbing into Nick’s car and making his instant lunge for the car radio. She grinned to herself and hoped Nick would be able to put up with the country music.