Sin propped her chin on her fist and regarded Nick with close attention. “And what is Mae?” she inquired. “Since she’s not your friend either, apparently.”
She hadn’t meant to talk about Mae. She’d wanted to lay out all the evidence before Merris, have her decide what to do.
But Merris wasn’t here: Nick was, and he was one of the few people Sin knew who might not instantly condemn Mae.
There were people in the Market who would kill Mae at the mere suggestion that she’d been seen with the magicians. Sin didn’t know how far Mae had gone, how tangled up with the magicians she had become, but Sin had a dead mother and a magician in the family as well. She could understand how Mae might have messed up.
She just didn’t know what she could do to help her.
Nick bared his teeth. “As far as I’m concerned, Mae’s the future leader of the Goblin Market.”
“Yeah,” Sin said in a level voice. “I was wondering, why is that?”
“She wants to be,” Nick said. “So I want it for her. And in my experience, Mavis doesn’t stop until she gets what she wants.”
Sin actually felt a bit better about that, the fact that Nick had apparently chosen Mae as the leader on his own rather than on orders from Alan.
“So if Mae’s the heir to the Market, what am I?”
“Why should I care?” asked the demon.
“I’ll tell you who I am,” Sin said. “I’m the only one who knows Mae’s made a deal with the Aventurine Circle.”
Nick’s hand shot out and he grabbed her wrist, too hard. Sin reached for her knife without even thinking about it. Nick dropped his spoon and went for his.
They sat bristling across a school lunch table, eyes locked, hands on their weapons.
Sin barely let her lips move as she said, “We can’t do this here.”
Nick rose without another word. The muscles in his forearm barely flexed as he pulled Sin smoothly to her feet, as if she weighed about as much as a lunch box. His other hand stayed in his pocket, where Sin had no doubt he had a knife.
They couldn’t be noticed, or if they had to be noticed they could not be followed. Sin made sure to look embarrassed and pleased as Nick stalked out of the cafeteria, sweeping her in his wake.
When the cafeteria doors slammed she snapped the shy, anticipatory smile off her face. He dragged her into the nearest classroom, and Sin glimpsed desks pushed out of order and windows streaming afternoon light, no escapes but the door behind them. She pulled out one of the long knives strapped to her back.
Nick delivered a swift hard blow to her wrist. Pain shot up to her shoulder and the knife went flying. He threw her up against the blackboard, hand pinning her wrist to the chalk-stained surface, his body pressing down on hers so she could not reach the other knife at her back.
He looked at Sin, a lock of his black hair falling in the tiny space between them as he leaned down.
“I’ve got you,” he said softly.
Sin smiled the sweet smile of a girl with a pocketknife already in her free hand, and let the tip of the blade trace the cotton over his tense stomach.
“And I’ve got a knife.” She leaned into Nick’s space, and he didn’t flinch from the blade, just stood there looking down at her with his face so utterly blank and his body so tense he might as well have been made of stone. “I saw her, Nick. She was with the magicians. She was wearing a messenger’s symbol. If I told the Market, they would take her apart.”
There was a long pause. Sin strained, testing the strength of Nick’s hold on her: His body was a solid wall of muscle. If she wanted to get away, she’d have to use the knife.
She wasn’t quite ready to do that yet.
“Well, you’re not going to tell the Market then, are you?” Nick demanded.
Sin took a deep breath.
“I don’t want to,” she said. “I don’t want her hurt. I can see how she might have gone to the magicians and got in over her head. Her own brother’s a magician.”
Mae’s little brother. She’d met him once and found him to be the kind of guy who faded into the background, so intently inoffensive that he was barely memorable.
She’d seen him again protecting the Goblin Market in battle, palm raised and his very eyes alight with magic fire.
She’d seen his power, and how he had chosen to use it, and her heart had leaped as she thought of what that could mean for Lydie.
Only then Mae’s brother had disappeared, and Mae said he had left to join a Circle of magicians.
That was a bond between Mae and Sin that Mae didn’t even know about, something Sin hoped Mae would never find out. Sin had nightmares about what could happen if Lydie came into that kind of power at sixteen, if her sister went off to join the magicians.
“I don’t think Mae meant to betray anyone,” Sin said. “But I can’t let the Market fall into the magicians’ hands. And I don’t know what she’s going to do.”
“I don’t know either,” Nick snarled. “I didn’t know she was doing this!”
“And this is the girl who’s going to be with your brother?” Sin asked. “This is the future leader of the Market? She’s working with the
