embarrassment. “Hello, Cynthia.”
“Hello, Alan,” Sin said. “Hello, Nick.”
Nick did not look fazed in the slightest. “I was just telling Alan—”
Sin raised her eyebrows. “I heard.”
“And as I was telling Nick,” Alan said, “I’m fine.”
“Nick is right—,” Sin started.
Then she stopped as she saw a change pass over Alan’s face, like the dark shadow of something coming just below the surface of still waters.
“Okay then,” Alan said, a touch too lightly. “If you’re both so keen on me sleeping in my own bed, I guess I’ll go do that now. We have an early start in the morning—Lydie’s school is pretty far off.”
He had obviously done this before, lied and taken himself out of Nick’s sight. He’d obviously got away with this before.
It was Sin’s fault he didn’t get away with it this time.
She said nothing, just stood there and tried to cope with the realization that Alan was going to be tortured in the next room, and she could not even go to him lest his brother find out it was happening.
Alan moved past her.
Faster than even she could move, Nick was blocking the door.
“Why does Sin look like that?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”
“Nick,” Alan said, his voice fraying like a rope about to snap. “Get out of my way.”
Nick filled the doorway edge to edge.
“No.”
“Nick,” Alan said. Then he screamed between his teeth, a strangled terrible sound, and fell forward on his face.
Sin lunged and grabbed one of his arms, slowing his fall so he did not land as hard as she’d feared he would.
Alan did not seem to notice the impact as he fell. He gave another low cry, trying to curl in on himself and failing to do even that, his body shuddering out of his control.
Sin slid to her knees, dragging Alan’s head and shoulders into her lap. The floor was hard wood; she could at least stop him hurting himself. Alan gave another low scream, cut off as if he was strangling himself.
“Shh,” Sin said helplessly. “You’re all right. I’ve got you. I’m right here.”
As if that would matter to Alan, but she could think of nothing else to say.
There was movement in her peripheral vision. She looked up into the drowning black of the demon’s eyes.
“What is happening to him?” Nick demanded.
Alan let out another awful choked sound, shaking so hard it was difficult for Sin to keep hold of him. Nick recoiled as if someone had hit him, someone strong enough to make him feel it.
“What—,” he ground out.
“Shut up,” Sin told him. “I need to help Alan.”
“Help him, then!” Nick’s voice was becoming almost impossible to understand, as if someone was using the wrong instruments to play a familiar song, and the melody was coming out fractured and strange. “What can I do? There has to be something I can do!”
“I’m just going to be there for him,” Sin said. “And you’re just going to shut up.”
Alan moaned, the sound ragged and terrible. Nick was silent.
“Shh,” Sin said again. She stroked his hair and felt Alan’s hand clasp her wrist, his skin fever-hot. He made another cutoff sound, and she realized what he was doing, in the midst of agony.
He was trying not to wake the children.
Sin wanted to cry. Instead she held fast to her control, and to him.
It went on, and on, and on. She had the thought that she would never have let anybody else comfort one of her family, that she would have reached out, and wondered if the demon cared too little to do even that much.
She looked at Nick again, over Alan’s head.
He was crouched on the floor and trembling in sharp bursts, like a whipped dog. She saw his hand, reaching out across the floor toward Alan, then forming a fist and hitting the floor instead.
He did not seem to notice he was bruising his hand, any more than he noticed her looking at him. His devouring demon’s eyes were fixed on Alan.
He might care, then, Sin thought. In his way. But he wasn’t human, and his way wouldn’t do Alan much good.
“I’m here,” she told Alan, again and again. “I’m here.”
It might be a comfort to know someone human was here for him, at last.
Her knees were aching by the time Alan finally went limp and boneless in her arms. For a moment the thought that his heart could have simply given out, that he could have just died, sent sick fear coursing through her, and then he tried weakly to sit up.
