“I don’t want to draw Nick,” Seb snapped.
“But I guess I’ll do it for art,” Nick continued calmly. “I’m told I have the body of a god.”
“A Greek god, or one of those gods with the horse heads or elephant’s legs coming out of their chests?” Alan asked. “Next time someone tells you that, ask them to specify.”
The smell of meat and smoke drifted to Mae and made her sit up, rising from the crushed grass. “All right, I’m awake. Feed me.”
Seb got up and started to hand around plates, though Mae noticed that Nick had to get his own. He abandoned the car and came to sit on the grass as far away from Seb as he could manage, hair drying tufty and falling damp into his eyes. Jamie looked mildly ill at the sight of food but also anxious not to insult Alan’s cooking, so he pushed it sneakily toward Nick whenever Alan happened to glance away.
Alan turned his head just in time to see Nick eating calmly off Jamie’s plate.
“Oh no, Nick,” Jamie said in tones of supremely unconvincing shock. “How could you? When my back was turned for one moment. And my food was so delicious.”
Alan reached out to smack Nick in the side of the head and Nick ducked, still eating. Mae was looking at them, glad that they seemed easy together for once, and she saw their faces change.
It was strange. For a moment they looked alike, eyes narrowed and lower lips drawn in, appreciative.
Then Alan smiled ruefully to himself and turned his head, Nick got to his feet, and Mae looked across to see what they’d been looking at.
Through the garden gates came Sin, like a reminder they could never really escape the magical world, a vision of beauty and danger that made Mae recall why she didn’t really want to.
She looked more normal than Mae had ever seen her, but she still moved like a dancer in jeans and a scarlet string top, a bright red bandanna caught in her flying hair. She was all vivid color, and for a moment Mae was just dazzled by how spectacular she was.
At the next moment she registered that Sin’s mouth was set in a straight red line.
“Sin?” Nick asked, and he definitely sounded pleased.
“Alan?” said Sin.
“Uh, no,” Nick told her.
Sin raked him with a dismissive dark glance and then looked away, her jaw tightening. “Alan?” she repeated. “I’ve been sent to deliver a message to you from Merris of the Market. Alone.”
Alan rose to his feet, lurching a little as he did so, and Sin looked away as if she’d seen something obscene, but she followed him into the kitchen.
And it occurred to Mae that Sin was exactly the right person to help her.
She stood and went for the kitchen door, where she halted and watched.
Alan and Sin were arguing in hushed, tense whispers, Sin’s back against the kitchen counter as if she felt the need to have her back to something in case a fight began. Alan was holding on to the counter, with his fingers gone white.
“Are you going to deliver the message, or did you just come here to accuse me of lying to Merris?”
“You did lie to Merris!”
“I lie to everyone,” Alan said softly. “It’s nothing personal.”
Sin looked furious and helpless for a moment, lips parted, and then nothing but furious again.
“Merris says she’ll do it. First of July. Huntingdon Market Square. There will be nobody there to stop you doing what needs doing. And I don’t even know what that means,” Sin went on, her voice suddenly sharp. “All I know is that you and Merris are making a bargain with the magicians, and I hate it more than I can say.”
“Well,” said Alan, “you’re not the leader yet.”
“We haven’t sold any talismans,” Sin said, her voice a little unsteady. “We haven’t given any advice. People are dying at the hands of demons, and we are doing nothing to stop it. I follow Merris’s orders, but if I didn’t? I’d carve your treacherous heart out of your chest.”
Alan’s voice didn’t change. It remained quiet and reasonable. “You’d try.”
Sin made a disgusted noise. “I think we’re done here.”
She pushed off the kitchen counter, and Alan grabbed her wrist. She stared up at him in outrage, every inch the princess of the Market assaulted by a commoner.
Alan said, “Stay.”
“What?” Sin exclaimed, sounding equal parts stunned and amused. “Because you enjoy my company so much?”
“Ah, no,” Alan said. “You and Nick were pretty friendly before all this, weren’t you?”
Sin put her hand behind her back, fingers curled over a slight bulge beneath her shirt where Mae was prepared to bet she kept her knife.
“What are you trying to say?”
“Go out and be nice to him. He doesn’t often like people. I don’t want him hurt.”
Sin’s mouth fell open. “Hurt? The
