thought Nick would mind about Alan getting tortured, and maybe he was displeased that his human toy was being broken, maybe he was angry, but he was a demon like all the others. So unfeeling that it didn’t matter if Alan had given up everything for him, so cold that he could weigh Alan’s suffering in the balance and find it nothing to affect his behavior at all.
She called herself seven different kinds of fool for being shocked.
He was a demon. They just did not care.
“Nick doesn’t know,” said Alan. “The magicians give me their messages for him. I don’t deliver them. I have warning of when they’re going to attack, and I’ve managed to get away from him every time, get somewhere he can’t hear or see. He has no idea what the Circle are doing.”
“You crazy bastard,” Sin said, in awe and horror so tangled up she could not tell which was which. “What if they decide you’re useless and they kill you?”
A corner of Alan’s mouth went up. “Then they really won’t have any leverage over Nick at all, will they? He’ll be safe. He won’t do anything terrible, except to them. He’ll be allied with the right people. He’ll be all right.”
“You, however, will be dead,” Sin reminded him.
Alan seemed calm, even though he still looked sick and shaky. “I admit the situation is not ideal.”
“Demons always take more than you can afford to pay,” she said in a low voice, remembering Merris and her eyes bleeding into blackness.
Alan shook his head, closing his eyes. He looked too exhausted to keep them open. Sin had a sudden urge to push back his hair herself, take care of him, as if he was Lydie or Toby. He looked so lost and so resigned to it that she thought perhaps nobody had taken care of him in years.
Her care would not be welcome, though. He’d made that pretty clear.
Even when it was worn to a thread held taut with pain, his voice was still beautiful.
“Love always costs more than you can afford to pay,” he said. “And it’s always worth the price.”
They sat together on the cool grass in the gathering evening, silent for a while. Sin had absolutely no idea what to say. She’d been right, he was crazy. Sane people did not do things like this. Sane people did not love demons.
“I don’t understand,” she admitted softly at last. “I don’t see why you’re doing all this.”
“Wouldn’t you,” Alan asked, “for your brother or sister?”
Sin was silent. After a moment, she reached out and took his hand, trying hard to make it clear it was an offer of comfort and nothing more, not shifting any closer. Alan was visibly startled, maybe even a little disturbed, but his fingers closed around hers tight all the same. Perhaps he was just so desperate for comfort he wasn’t going to be choosy about its source.
She would have liked to sit there with him longer, but night was already closing in, and she could not think about what she wanted first.
“I’ve got to go,” she started awkwardly after a pause. “The kids.”
“Of course,” said Alan. “I’m sorry to have kept you from them so long. Thank you.”
“Oh for God’s sake, don’t thank me,” Sin burst out, her voice rough. She didn’t want to cry.
She helped Alan up instead, and he let her. He refused to lean on her, though, so she walked beside him as he made his slow, wavering way down through the fields to his car.
About halfway there Alan’s phone rang, the noise stunning in the still evening. Alan fished the phone out of his pocket, and Sin was not surprised to hear his voice come out suddenly steady and strong.
“Hi, Nick,” he said, and after a pause, “Well, that’s right, I sent you a text. If you insist on killing people with paintbrushes, you have to get the Tube home. Those are my rules. I consider them harsh but fair.” Another pause. “I didn’t think that while I was gone, you’d forget how to use the
He talked on for a little while, teasing and fond, obviously keeping up about two-thirds of the conversation. He sounded absolutely normal.
If she was Nick, Sin thought, and she found out about this lie, she wasn’t sure the magicians would get the chance to kill Alan. She might do it herself.
Sin let Alan get in the car and drive away, back to the home where he would have to pretend to be tired from learning how to use a bow and nothing more. She went quietly to the wagon, thanking Trish as she went by for putting the kids to bed.
When she swung the door softly closed behind her, she found Lydie awake and sitting up in bed. There was a small radiant sphere of light held between her palms, rays dancing on the walls of their tiny home.
“Lydie,” Sin said, her voice hushed with terror. “Lydie, you know you can’t do that.”
“It was dark,” Lydie told her. She sounded guilty, though, and the light went out.
Sin crawled into her bed between theirs and curled her body around Lydie’s through the sheets. She couldn’t let her muscles be stiff with fear that Lydie could’ve been discovered while Sin was away. Lydie would notice. Lydie was seven years old. Sin couldn’t let her mind dwell on thoughts of how the Market would react to a child who was showing power this strong, this young. It was bad enough to have any magical power. Then you couldn’t really be part of the Market. You had to be a pied piper or a potion-maker or a necromancer.
But people born with too much power, they said, always wanted more. When their sixteenth birthday came, when they came into their real power and made their choices, the people born with too much power became magicians.
Which meant, as far as the Market was concerned, that people born with too much power were born evil.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s dark,” Sin whispered, her arm tight around Lydie’s body. “I’m here. I’ll keep you safe.”
5
