She stepped out of the circle, the sun warm on her arms and the back of her neck, her muscles unlocking from tension and terror and turning liquid, the heat of a normal summer day as shockingly sweet as having hot water poured all over her aching body.
Alan caught her as she stumbled, both her hands landing on his arms. She got only a glimpse of his eyes, wide and a little frantic, black pupil swallowing up the blue, and then he was kissing her. He held on to her a little too tightly, making her remember with a jolt that he was strong, and he kissed her almost desperately, as if they were standing at a harbor somewhere about to be parted. As if he was saying goodbye.
“Hey,” Mae said, after a breathless, warm moment. She stopped clinging and pushed him backward; it didn’t really work. “Stop that.”
“No, sorry, I know,” Alan told her, eyes still mostly black. “There’s this other guy. It isn’t fair.”
“Right.” Mae took a deep breath, and then another. For a moment she was sure Alan was going to kiss her again and not sure what she would do about it when he did; then he tipped his head forward and laid his forehead against hers, quite gently.
“I thought you were dead for a second there,” Alan told her, soft. “And it was my fault.”
Liannan’s voice came as a surprise, cold in a world that had gone warm and small.
“You’re boring me. Either get to the point or ask me to join in.”
Alan took Mae’s hands in his, palms up and fingers linked as if they were about to dance, and then he dropped them instead.
“Mae,” he said, “would you please go to the car?”
“Oh, you have got to be
“And you were the one I asked to call her,” Alan said. “Because I trusted you to leave me, so I could ask what I need to ask. In private. Please.”
“I want to help you!”
“And you did,” Alan told her. “But I’m not helpless just because I can’t do magic. Just because I couldn’t call a demon myself. You helped me and I’m grateful, but I have to do this on my own. Can you trust me enough for that?”
His eyes were on her, worried and terribly focused. As if she was going to tell the guy who’d insisted on saving her brother that she didn’t trust him. As if she was going to make anyone feel helpless for being without magic.
Mae felt her mouth curve in a smile, half rueful and half just surrender. “I can trust you enough for anything. Doesn’t mean I like it.”
She backed up a few steps away from the demon’s circle and Alan both, into the tall grass and closer to the trim rows of vivid green vines. Alan threw her his car keys, and they described a neat little silver arc against the sky before she caught them in one open hand.
She walked away and left him with the demon.
14
The Lesson of Fear
She lay flat in the backseat of the car for hours, staring up at the worn gray roof and trying not to think about Alan’s hands holding her too tight and the kiss that had tasted like a goodbye.
If Liannan killed Alan, she was the one who was going to have to carry the news back to Nick.
It would be all her fault.
She shut her eyes and tried to concentrate on the music, while Alan’s death played out against her eyelids.
“Mae, are you asleep?” Alan asked, at which point Mae opened her eyes, scrambled up on her knees, and punched him in the chest.
“No, I was lying back contemplating the fact of your
She pulled out the earbuds and turned off her iPod, shoving it into her pocket to hide the evidence. Alan looked hideously tired, gray shadows under his eyes, as if someone had rubbed their dusty thumbs over the tender places directly below his lashes, but he smiled.
“What were you listening to?”
“I don’t wish to discuss it at this time,” she said loftily.
What she did want to do was give Alan a hug, hold on hard to make sure he was real and alive after all the horrors she had been imagining, but he looked like he might break or fall down if she touched him.
She climbed into the passenger seat instead, and Alan got into the car, moving carefully, as if he was old. He turned the ignition, and Mae reached out as the car came humming to life and touched him, very gently, on the shoulder.
“What did you ask her, Alan?”
Alan did not look at her. He looked over the steering wheel. The sky was ashen, all the blue bled out of it as gray evening set in, and Alan’s face had a tinge of the same color.
“I asked her whether I could trust Gerald to keep his part of the bargain,” he said hoarsely. “And she says that I can.”
Mae felt as if someone had pulled her stomach out from under her.
