“What?”
“Your precious brother,” Anzu said. “We don’t lie. You know I am telling you the truth he never did. He left you a thousand times. He used to lie in bed daydreaming about he and his father driving off, getting away from you when you were a nightmare child with black button eyes. He used to not be able to sleep because he was scared of you! He worked with his leg hurting, and he thought about how much easier the struggle would be if he didn’t have to feed you and your mother. He knew Mae preferred you, so many girls preferred you, and he resented you for that. He would get in the car and drive away and leave you for ten, fifteen minutes, driving out of the city never to come back, until he turned around. He meant to leave you. You took his life, and you took his chance at love, and he hated you, and he wanted to leave you!”
Nick swallowed, the flex of his throat terribly obvious and almost vulnerable with his head tipped back like that.
“But he didn’t leave.”
“No,” Anzu said. “But he wanted to. He should have. If he had, he’d still be alive, wouldn’t he? I didn’t kill him. You did. He would have lived, without you. He would have had a life, if only he hadn’t wasted his time trying to love something that could never love him back.”
Nick laughed. It was a truly horrible sound, with nothing human in it, echoing off the cement and the prison wires on the walkway. He sat against the door because he was too hurt to get up, bleeding beside the body of a magician and the body of his brother, and laughed a cold, awful laugh as if he was at the point of madness, as if he was on the edge of despair.
“Who knows?” said Nick Ryves, with nothing at all left to lose. “Maybe I did.”
He turned his face away from the demon in his brother. Anzu stared at him, furious and disgusted, and lifted a hand to hit Nick, as if too angry to simply strike out with magic.
He raised his right hand to hit Nick, and his own left hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. Protecting his brother.
Nick looked around. Sin shot to her feet, which a moment ago had seemed impossible, and all the blood rushed dizzily to her head, the world spun in a sickening whirl, and she did not care.
“Alan?” she whispered.
Anzu looked down at his hand as if it had betrayed him, and then his gaze turned inward, thoughtful, almost dreamy, as if he finally had something to look forward to.
“Oh, you’re going to be very sorry you did that,” he whispered in Alan’s stolen voice, and Sin knew it was for their benefit. He left Nick’s side, turning his back on him, and went over to Sin. “Say it again,” he commanded her.
She was not going to endanger herself by refusing the demon when he was furious. But Alan was in there. She would not throw his name in his face.
She looked into his black eyes, the crackling magic changing him, and tried to look past it all.
“Alan,” she said softly.
Anzu gave her a charming smile, bright and brilliant as stage lights.
“No.”
19
Mavis to the Rescue
ANZU DISAPPEARED THEN, LIKE A GHOST AT DAWN, LEAVING a shimmer in the air. Sin put out a hand to steady herself and then pulled it away, too late: She had already made a bloody handprint on the wall.
Nick eased himself to his feet and passed his hand over the magician’s body. It sparked, like the glints of fire in banked coals, and turned into more ash.
Neither of them spoke about Anzu, and what revenge he might be taking on Alan’s body. It would do no good. There was absolutely nothing they could do about it.
The sound of a door opening made them both go for their weapons, with what Sin suspected was a mutual sense of relief. Anything was better than thinking.
It wasn’t a magician. It was Mae. She had dark circles under her eyes, but she looked fairly calm.
Mae looked around at the hall, decorated with ashes and blood.
“I love what you’ve done with the place.”
“What are you doing here?” Nick demanded.
“Well,” Mae said. Her fingers played with the strap on her messenger bag, plucking at the strap so hard her knuckles were a little white, but she kept her head tipped back and looked Nick squarely in the eye. “I hit you. But you controlled me, so I’m glad I punched you,” she continued, and twisted the bag strap around again. “But I’m sorry I blamed you. I know you did everything you could to protect Jamie.”
Nick said, “Why are you here?”
“Oh,” Mae said. “Yes.”
She stopped fiddling with her bag strap and squared her shoulders, a habitual gesture of hers, trying to make herself larger than she was. One small girl, wanting to be able to take on the world.
“I came here so you could look at my face.”
Sin often had trouble reading Nick’s expressions, or being able to tell whether he had an expression at all. This one was pretty easy, though. He stared at Mae as if she was insane.
“What?”
“I know,” Mae said. “It’s pretty big of me, especially considering what an enormous jerk you are. But I’m a
