Mae looked at him, his dark blue eyes serious and his mouth a straight line. She nodded slowly and reached out for the knife Alan had got at the Goblin Market in May.
Alan grabbed her wrist before she reached it, pinning her hand to the ground. The grass was cool under her open palm, and his fingers pressed down like a vise.
“You shouldn’t do this because you think you owe me,” he whispered. “You shouldn’t do this at all. I shouldn’t ask you.”
It occurred to Mae that Alan was so unused to the truth that his voice went harsh when he spoke it, as if he was speaking a strange tongue. It made him sound a little like Nick.
She gave the demon’s brother a level look.
“But you are asking me.”
Alan smiled. It was a terrible smile. “Yes.”
“Because there’s nobody else you can ask,” Mae said. “Because Nick can’t know. Which demon am I calling?”
Alan’s shoulders went tight at that, the way she’d turned it into a done deal, his fingers biting into her wrist. “Liannan.”
“Well, okay then,” said Mae. “It’s been more than twenty-four hours since I saw that shark-toothed little smile. I was starting to miss her.”
She reached out for the knife again, pushing at Alan’s hold so he had to really hurt her or let her go. He let her go and snatched up the knife instead.
“I’ll cut it. I’ve been going to the Market since I was four years old. I had my hand on Nick’s to guide him when he cut his first circle, and I’m not going to make any mistakes.”
“Oh, and I am?” Mae demanded, outraged.
“Mae,” said Alan, his voice low. “You’re going to risk your life for no other reason than because I asked you. Let me do this one thing.”
He kept looking at her with terrifying determination, and she supposed it wasn’t worth fighting about. She made a sweeping gesture that gave him permission, and lay back in the summer-warm grass as Alan sank his knife into the earth and made all the symbols, trapped within one circle.
She closed her eyes against the summer sky and smelled the broken earth, crushed grass, the cool leaf and grape smell the breeze was drifting over to her from the vineyard, and the cotton and steel smell of Alan close by.
Eventually he said, “I’m done.”
Mae sat up, feeling a little dizzy. There was the circle laid out before her, there was no Market and no Nick and no Sin and no magic. She had to do this herself.
“I have a speaking charm in my bag,” Alan told her.
“No,” Mae said. “I can speak for myself.”
Alan swallowed and nodded. He was rising slowly to his feet as she scrambled up and walked into the circle. She could feel his eyes on her back, watching, but he couldn’t help her now. Nobody could touch her.
Mae closed her eyes and remembered the lines of the circle, then put what she knew into action. She lifted her arms and danced, demanding entry into the demon world, making her steps as fast and as confident as she could. She refused to think about what would happen if she faltered.
The sun was hot on her hair, a light breeze lifting strands and playing on the skin of her neck. She thought about that instead, about summer in the vineyard, Nick’s hand in hers with the silver ring growing warm between their palms, Alan’s mouth on hers in the dark, quiet kitchen. She couldn’t dance the way Sin danced, like poetry in motion, so she made the dance different, made it negotiation in motion.
Mae held out her thought of the world like a glittering bauble, held it up mockingly just out of Liannan’s reach, and she smiled with her face lifted to the sun.
It was more of a smirk, really. She was thinking,
“I call on the nightmare lover,” she said, and twisted through summer air turning cold. The circle seemed to be tipping somewhere else, to a place she didn’t want to go, and her hair was streaming suddenly in an icy wind. “I call on she who waits for dancers to fall. I call on she who had me and lost me yesterday. Come and get me, Liannan! If you can.”
The circle flipped as if she was standing in a snow globe, and she found herself enveloped in chaos. Summer had been torn away and she was in darkness, hearing screams that sounded tortured or triumphant, horrible low laughter, and never any words. She felt cold fingers touching her hands, pulling on her clothes; she looked down and saw nothing. She shuddered uncontrollably and then looked up and saw Liannan leaping for her like a tigress, all glowing eyes and teeth.
“Mae!” Alan shouted, far away. “Don’t move!”
She locked her muscles to stop herself from running. She hadn’t trespassed in this circle, she belonged here, and she was wearing her talisman. Liannan couldn’t touch her.
There was no partner to share this with, nobody to help bear the burden of linking the worlds, nobody to comfort her in the presence of demons. Liannan’s breath was a cold blast in her face, like some freezing alternative to a furnace. The cord of her talisman had turned into a line of ice as well, the cold of it burning so all she wanted to do was scream and tear it off.
Mae didn’t like it when someone tried to scare her. She held still as needle-sharp invisible fingers ran down her body, still as her own talisman burned her, still as a clammy sheen of sweat gathered on her skin and she began to shake. Liannan was a fraction of an inch away, her breath cold in Mae’s mouth.
“Can you call demons, little one?” she asked, her voice low and almost musical. Her presence flooded through
