“What are you going to do?” Sin asked.
Nick tilted his chin, baring his throat to Alan for a moment, as if that was a response.
“Be careful,” Alan murmured, as if it was.
“You’re one to talk,” Nick said. “For nine minutes tonight, I thought you were dead already.”
He sounded perfectly calm about that, but he had counted the minutes. Sin couldn’t quite put the two things together, not in a way that made any sense.
Nick turned his eyes to her, blank but still demanding, like staring into an abyss that stared back. Sin met his gaze, refusing to let him read anything from her face again, and his eyes bored into her for a moment.
Then he turned away. He left the kitchen, and a second later, the door of the flat slammed shut.
Alan got out his phone and called Mae.
“I think,” he said, “you might want to expect a guest fairly soon. Let me know if your aunt Edith sees him and calls the cops. I’ll come bail him out eventually. Yes, Cynthia and the kids are safe here.”
He raised an eyebrow at Sin. She shook her head.
“She’s already asleep,” Alan said without missing a beat. “Yeah, it’s been a long night. I’ll let her know you want to talk to her.”
He turned the phone off.
“What do you think Nick’s going to do?” Sin asked.
“I don’t know,” Alan answered. “I’m trying not to think about it. If I don’t know, I can’t tell Gerald. Besides, it’s only fair for Nick to have some secrets, considering my—entire life.”
“Yes,” said Sin, thinking of how she’d thought the demon might lash out, even at Alan, the way Nick’s hand had felt at her throat. “You’re certainly the problem child.”
She sagged against the kitchen table. Alan could see through any show she might put on. There was a certain freedom in knowing that, in simply stopping.
She was so tired.
“You really should take my bed,” Alan said. He gave her a beautiful, plausible smile. “You’ve had quite a night of it. You need your sleep.”
Sin didn’t mention what Alan had gone through tonight. Instead she backed away from the table, going for the sitting room and the sofa there, and paused at the kitchen door to say, “I do need my sleep. That’s why I don’t want an angry demonic alarm clock going off at me.”
“I can handle Nick,” Alan told her.
“No doubt,” Sin said. “I can handle the floor.”
Alan got up and limped over to her. The limp wasn’t usually so obvious, but then, he must be even more tired than she was. Sin looked away so she wouldn’t have to see it, closing her eyes and leaning her head against the door frame.
When she opened her eyes, she saw that had been the wrong thing to do. There were faint bitter lines around Alan’s mouth.
“Some horrible things have happened to you tonight,” he said in a level voice. “I’d just like for you to have a bed.”
“And what about what happened to you?” Sin asked. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You don’t think that counts, because it’s you.”
She stopped leaning and backed away from him, through the door into the other bedroom. She crooked her finger at him and summoned up a smile. “We can share. I don’t mind.”
She moved backward without a glance behind her. She might not have the Market anymore, but she was still dancer enough to move gracefully, no matter where she was. She backed up without missing a beat until the backs of her knees hit the bed, and then she sat.
When she looked up, Alan was standing in the doorway.
“I do mind,” he said.
“Right,” Sin said, and her fragile calm broke like a rope snapping beneath her feet. “I wasn’t offering anything more than sleep, you know.”
Alan went scarlet to his eyebrows. “I didn’t think you were.”
“I wasn’t,” Sin snarled, and she leaned her head in her hands. She wanted to cry, but her eyes felt like hot hollows in her face. She hadn’t cried in a long time.
She heard Alan crossing the room, never able to be light on his feet. He sat down on the bed beside her and touched her arm, just brushing it with his fingertips, as if he didn’t want to presume.
“Cynthia,” he said. “Okay.”
“I wasn’t,” Sin insisted, and was almost sure she was telling the truth: She was so tired, and she might want comfort, but that was no way to get it. She ground the heels of her hands against her closed eyes until they hurt.
“Cynthia,” Alan repeated, putting so much effort into his beautiful voice that it cracked, the whole facade cracked, neither of them quite good enough at their roles to make them true. “It’s okay.”
“What’s okay?” Sin demanded. “Nothing’s okay. I let the Market down. I should have known that since getting to you wasn’t working, they would come after us. I should have worked it out!”
