“If I could just make him understand.”
“Jamie,” Mae said, “I don’t know if you can. I’ve been trying to help him understand, and he’s so different from us, he’s—”
“Not from me,” Jamie told her. The way he sounded, lonely and small, broke her heart.
“Yes,” she said, and her voice went scratchy. “Yes, he is. I understand why you love him, Jamie, but there’s just no hope. He’s just not human.”
She stared when Jamie lifted his head and blinked at her, a corner of his mouth lifting in a faint version of his usual crooked smile. “Um,” he said. “Mae. Do you think it’s Nick?”
The incredulous way he pronounced Nick’s name told her she’d been wrong.
“Who—who is it?” she asked, sounding stupid and not even caring. If it was Alan—and come to think of it, Alan was much more Jamie’s type—then it was still bad. Alan would be kind, but he wouldn’t be interested. He’d still be pursuing Mae, and Jamie would have to watch that.
Jamie hesitated.
Then he laid his head back in his arms again and said, tired and already sunk low, already hopelessly fallen, “Gerald.”
“Jamie!” Mae exclaimed. It was almost a cry.
Jamie sat up. “You don’t know him.”
“I don’t want to!” She found her gaze locked with her brother’s.
“You don’t understand.”
“Why, because I’m not a magician?” Mae demanded. “You never told me! Why did you never tell me?”
“I was scared of how you’d react!” said Jamie. “I was scared that you’d hate me. You were always saying you were psychic, or there was something out there. I thought that you might hate it. That I had magic. And you didn’t.”
He turned his face away, arms sliding around his knees, making himself as small as he could be.
“Gerald says they all end up hating us,” he said. “Because they want the magic or they fear it, or both.”
Mae thought of Jessica Walker sitting straight-backed and hungry-mouthed in their mother’s parlor, asking if she had ever hated her brother. As if any jealousy, any craving for a different, shining world or for a power that made her special, would have been enough to make her do that.
She got to her feet and went to the door, opening it and staring at the dark hall beyond, not letting herself look back.
“Then Gerald’s a fool,” she told him. “And so are you.”
Mae crawled under the bedclothes and pulled the covers over her head. She was trying so hard not to think about Jamie that she had a dull, throbbing headache, and the pain would not quite let her sleep.
Instead she tossed and turned in the uncomfortably hot cocoon of blankets, and finally half fell and half forced herself into an uneasy doze, only to be woken by a tap on her window.
She rose, carpet soft under her bare feet, and saw a pale face in the night, harsh lines blurred behind the glass. Nick looked at her and smiled, and she put her hand out. The metal latch of the window was easy to undo; the click echoed in her head as if it was much louder than it was.
The night air was cool on her hot face. Nick was kneeling on the window ledge, and he reached out and touched the side of her neck. His hands were cool too, and sure. The touch was just what she wanted.
She retreated to sit on her bed and Nick sat with her, the rumpled covers sinking under their combined weight. She reached out and slid her arm around his neck, and he wasn’t angry or distant; he held her back.
His arm was around her, hard muscle against the small of her back, and she hid her face in the strong curve of his shoulder. The worn material of his T-shirt was soft under her cheek, and she could smell him, clean skin and hair, cotton, and the sharp smell of steel. She felt her heart catch in her chest and then, as if to make up for faltering, it started to race.
Nick stroked her hair with those cool, sure fingers, and murmured to her that everything was all right. His hand lingered for a moment at the fine, short hair at the nape of her neck, and she shivered. She was pressed up close against his chest and knew he felt the long, slow tremor run through her body. He went still.
Mae lifted her head from his shoulder, cupped his face in her free hand, and kissed him. He kissed her back without hesitation, warm and careful and thorough, tongue curling in her mouth. She let herself fall backward against the pillows. She tugged him down.
The sheets were tangling around her bare legs, and his jeans were rough against them. He let her have control of the kiss, his lips moving lazy and sweet against hers, his fingers still stroking her neck: the nape, the sides, then resting his knuckles against the hollow of her throat. He kept murmuring to her, low, caressing words. Everything was so warm.
All along her body she felt chills following in the wake of his hands. He lifted her shirt and stroked along her spine, lifted the cord of her talisman and moved his mouth from hers to kiss her jaw, her chin, and the side of her neck where the talisman lay. He whispered to her that she should take it off.
She whispered back that she would. Then she glanced down at him and saw him smile.
That slow, malicious smile wasn’t Nick’s.
Mae felt the tug of the talisman lifting under her hands, catching at her hair, and for an instant felt a flash of burning pain where the talisman still rested against her skin.
She shoved him back and saw that under his hooded lids, his lowered lashes, his eyes were not black. They were cold and colorless as ice.
