It was none of his business. But it was just possible that, along with wanting to trap her, he was interested. She had been summoning him for years.
“The Market found out that my sister is a—that she has strong magical powers,” Sin said. “Very strong. She couldn’t be allowed to stay. And I couldn’t let her go, not to the magicians. She’s mine. She and my brother stay with me. And they need to eat.”
“The princess in exile,” Anzu said. “That must hurt.”
“Is that a question?” Sin demanded.
Anzu laughed. The flames of the demon’s circle leaped and danced with the joy of hurting her. “No. Don’t be so impatient. I am letting you off easy, you know. When and where did you last see Hnikarr?”
“You’re not letting me off easy,” Sin said. “You just have more to think about than possessing one dancer. Like revenge. I saw him less than an hour ago, at his home. I’m staying with him. We were training together.”
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days,” Anzu mused.
Sin smiled at him scornfully, and Anzu’s mouth twisted, showing nothing but darkness beyond his lips, no more teeth than a bird had in its beak.
“Last question pays for all, falling dancer,” he said. “Are you in love?”
Sin flinched, her hand pulling back on reflex as if they had touched and he had burned her. Anzu lunged at her, but Sin was too well trained to fall for that trick. She stood unmoved and stared into the demon’s eyes, shimmering with light and shadows but ultimately empty.
He was beautiful, a dazzling gold mirage amid the flames, and he conjured a vision of another demon standing just this close to her, shadow-black hair falling into a face like a sculpture and a chill in the air all around them.
Beautiful boys had stood looking into her eyes before. None of them had ever touched her like the sight of someone at the window with her baby brother, trying to make sure she got to rest a little longer.
“Well?” the demon whispered, calling her back from a certain smile in the sunlight to the crackling flames and his bleak eyes.
Sin wrapped her arms around herself.
“Yes,” she whispered back. “I am.”
Anzu grinned. “I thought so.”
The demon was dwindling, the flames of the circle winking out, and Sin said, “It’s not who you think.”
Even Anzu’s wings were going dark, so she could hardly see them against the black of his clothes. The only light left was that of his hungry, watching eyes.
“No?”
“No,” said Sin. “I don’t think demons are very lovable.” Anzu said, “I think you’re right.”
Then he disappeared, down into darkness. All that was left was a chalk circle on the floor, and the echo of his last laugh from the walls.
Ana the bookshop owner counted the money out into Sin’s hand. One of the women stirred, as if she would have liked to protest and say she hadn’t received what she wanted, but she did not speak.
Nick’s phone rang in Sin’s pocket as she was going up the steps, and she answered it.
“Cynthia,” said Alan, and the human world came back in a warm rush, the performance over.
Sin gripped the phone tight. “Hi.”
“Nick said you had the phone. Toby’s sleeping, and Nick and Mae are both here, so I thought I would go buy some books that might help us and collect Lydie from school. Can I pick you up on the way?”
“Yes,” Sin said. She left the shop and sat on the pavement, refusing to let her legs collapse underneath her, making herself sit gracefully, her skirt in a pale pool around her. “I’m outside a bookshop now. Come get me.”
9
My Mother’s Daughter
SIN HAD BEEN WORRIED ALAN WOULD NOTICE SOMETHING WAS wrong. She had not been expecting him to be distracted by his own obvious delight, filled with a kind of hushed awe, like a child ushered into a sweetshop and told he could have anything he wanted if he would be quiet.
“These are real Elizabethan spell books. It was an amazing age for magic, you know.”
Alan ran slow, tender fingertips down one book’s spine. Sin had a little flashback to the morning, and then put herself on notice. She might have had a revelation, and she might even go so far as to admit this behavior was adorable, but she was not prepared to develop a full-on nerd fetish.
She smiled up at him, and was fairly sure she pulled off mysterious rather than besotted.
“You’re not one of those crazed conspiracy nuts who thinks Shakespeare was a magician, are you?”
Alan’s face lit with his smile in return. “Some people might say the theory isn’t crazy but the only way to explain Shakespeare’s extraordinary time management.”
“Some people might be crazy,” Sin said, dancing backward with a volume in hand. “Just a thought!”
She raised her voice a touch too loud, and Ana the bookseller looked up and caught her eye. Sin fell silent and tried not to think about the cellar, where the smell of balefire must still be lingering. She looked back at Alan, wanting his smile, but he was looking at the shelves.
Sin went and sat on the warm radiator in the corner, tucked up behind the shelves on New Age spirituality, and breathed in and out. She wished she could do some actual exercises, but doing the splits in a bookshop was bound
