It was just the truth. But it seemed to knock Alan back a little. He almost smiled, and ran one hand roughly through his hair. It made his hair stand up on end, a glinting riot of curls.
“Cynthia,” Alan said. “Trust me, you don’t want to be here. Will you just go?”
“Trust you?” Sin echoed. “Aren’t you, like, a compulsive liar? No, I think I’m going to stay right here.”
She illustrated her point by perching herself on the fence.
Alan almost smiled again, but insisted, “You really don’t want to—”
He’d been pale before, but now he went gray, his face locked in a spasm of pain. He gritted his teeth for a moment, lips skinned back, grimacing helplessly, and then he fell face forward on the grass.
Sin scrambled off the fence and onto her knees.
“Alan,” she said. “Oh my God, Alan—”
He could not answer, that much was clear. He was moaning into the grass, but they didn’t sound like conscious moans. They sounded like the long, guttural cries of an animal in agony.
Sin manhandled him onto his back, careless of his leg, too desperate to be careful of anything. He screamed once when she was doing it, but she was a dancer, and that meant never hesitating once you were committed to a course of action.
When she had his head in her lap, she realized that she’d trapped herself there, but it wasn’t like she could have abandoned Alan while he had some sort of fit. She couldn’t leave him, not like this, not all alone. So she couldn’t get help.
All she could do was watch his body seizing with what seemed like hundreds of separate convulsions, shaking with another rush of pain before the first had completely passed, face turning away from her even as she stroked his hair. The terrible moaning sound seemed to be ripped right from his chest after a while. It went on and on, helpless and exhausted.
She thought it would never end, and then it did. The sky was gray with evening and Alan’s skin looked ashen as the fading light. His body was still shuddering a little with the aftershocks of pain, but the terrible strained tautness had finally gone out of it.
He blinked up at her. His glasses had gone crooked, and he looked a little confused.
“Cynthia?”
“What,” Sin said, “the
Alan struggled to sit up, his arms bracing his body up, able to drag himself a little away on the grass. Sin was impressed that he’d managed it, though she was less impressed that the first order of business once he was conscious was apparently getting away from her.
Alan looked like he was considering trying to get up, but he wisely remained sitting in the grass. He wiped the sweat off his forehead, and winced even at that movement. “That was the magicians.”
“The Aventurine Circle,” Sin said. “They’re torturing you.”
Alan offered up a tired smile, as if that could possibly convince her this was not as bad as it clearly was. “Something like that. Yes.” He pushed his hair back again with what seemed to be a habitual gesture. His fingers were trembling. “I’m never going to be able to make you believe you don’t owe me now, am I?”
“No,” Sin said, because—well, of course he couldn’t.
She’d already known she owed him everything, and now here was more proof, evidence more terrible than she had dreamed. And it could have been Toby: It could have been her baby.
It occurred to her why he’d said it.
“You don’t have to worry,” she said, lifting her chin. “I’m not going to assault you with sexual favors. This isn’t actually your most attractive moment.”
Alan laughed weakly. “I imagine not.”
“That’s not—,” Sin stopped, and swore. “How are you feeling? Why are they doing this?”
“Horrible,” Alan said promptly, with the same lack of bravado he’d shown about the bow. “And they’re doing this to make Nick do what they want.” He sighed and rubbed the inside of his left wrist. It was the left hand that bore the magician’s mark. “That’s why Gerald marked me, and why Celeste thought Gerald having a mark on me was valuable. They wanted me as a hostage, so they could have a demon on a leash. Killing me would make me useless. But every time they make a demand and Nick doesn’t obey them, they give me a little display of their power.”
That was why things had been so quiet over the last few weeks, when Sin had been expecting the magicians to attack the Market fast and without mercy. The magicians had bigger game to go after, and once they were assured that the demon was theirs to command, they would come for the Market.
Sin should have thought of this, shouldn’t have been counting Nick and Alan as allies so readily. She bet Mae, with all her plans, had thought of it.
“Does Mae know?”
“Yes,” Alan said. “She guessed, so I told her everything. Plus I’m trying not to lie to her anymore.”
His voice warmed when he talked about her, Sin noticed. She got it: Mae was the one smart enough to guess, the special one he didn’t lie to, the one he wanted.
“Aren’t you angry?”
Alan frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You’re being tortured!” Sin almost shouted at him. “And the demon is just letting it happen!”
It was enough to make her laugh, or scream. The magicians had actually overestimated the demon. They had
