to attract attention.
She just sat with her head bowed for a little while, then got up and went to find Alan.
He was standing with his hip propped against the bookshelves, rescuing a book from a high shelf for a tiny brunette with glasses.
“Anything for a woman who likes Poe,” he was saying, which Sin could have done without hearing: She could already tell from his attentive stoop and his smile that he was flirting.
Sin slinked her way to his side with all due haste, and slipped an arm around his waist. “Hi,” she said throatily, tipping her face up to meet Alan’s slightly startled eyes.
“Hi?” he said, as if he had some reservations about the word.
His shoulder was at exactly the right height for her chin, Sin discovered, as she rested it there and beamed at the little brunette.
“Hey, I’m Cynthia,” she said. “You looking for something? You should let us help you!”
The girl got the message and gave a small nod. “No, I think it’s in another section. Thanks anyway.”
She looked a bit disappointed. As well she might: Sin really doubted that any of the other sections had bookish redheads.
“What was that about?”
With anyone else, Sin might have been able to say, “What was what?” and convince him of her innocence. But lies didn’t work on Alan; she knew better than to play a player.
She disengaged from him and kept her eyes downcast, suddenly scared he could see right through her.
“Can’t waste time dilly-dallying,” she said. “We’re on a mission.”
She was extremely grateful when Alan did not pursue the matter. He went back to browsing instead, and it was not long before he was ready to buy his books and go.
That gave her time to think.
He’d been flirting with the little brunette. She’d seen him with Mae, too, recalled with sudden, vivid clarity a time when he’d taken off his talisman and put it in Mae’s hand, the long line of his fingers gently closing Mae’s over the necklace.
He’d never once flirted with Sin.
Why should he, though? The same night he had almost stroked Mae’s hand closed, Sin had spat in his face.
There was an alternative theory, of course. She might not have given him any encouragement back in the day, but she had been throwing herself at him for weeks now.
He’d had plenty of chances to flirt with her. If he’d been at all interested in doing so.
Sin got into the passenger seat of the car, and when he slid into the driving seat she said, “So did you pick up Mae in a bookshop?”
She was so smooth.
She tilted a teasing smile toward him to make it seem more like a friendly question. He smiled faintly back.
“I met Mae in a bookshop,” Alan said. “If that’s what you mean.”
“I just wondered if that was how you rolled. Finding dates in bookshops. New one on me.”
“Well, I do work in a bookshop,” Alan said. His voice was warm and relaxed, a little puzzled, but he hadn’t turned on the engine. Sin wondered if that meant something.
“Time management,” she remarked. “Like Shakespeare.”
“‘We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone,’” Alan said, his voice slightly different, touching the words gently the way his hands touched books. She thought it was a quote. “Well, that,” he continued, his voice back to normal. “And it is an easy way to find girls who read.”
“Right,” Sin said.
Girls who were smart.
“Girls who I’d have something in common with,” Alan went on. “Something to weigh in the balance before they meet Nick.”
That last part wasn’t quite a joke, Sin noticed.
“Not that much in common,” she said. “Since they wouldn’t know about demons, or magic, or the Market. Ever tell any of them?”
“No,” said Alan. “That’s why—that’s why I thought Mae was so perfect.”
Sin looked across the tiny, unbridgeable space in the car between them. Alan had turned his face away.
“She came to us to save her brother,” Alan said. “I could—I could understand that. She found out about everything because of her brother. I didn’t draw her into anything. And I could help her.”
Sin’s voice went sharp. “Oh, so it’s vulnerable women?”
“No,” Alan snapped. “Mae’s not—”
“She’s not,” Sin said. “And you wouldn’t like it if she was. But you, with Nick and that mother of his, with kids? Has anyone ever loved you without needing you?”
