The question exploded out of her. Alan didn’t even turn his head.
“My dad,” he said. He drew his wallet out of his pocket and flipped it open.
Sin peered at the photograph tucked into the plastic slip. It was an old picture, with a white curl at one corner. It showed two kids, Alan thin and inquisitive-looking under a mop of hair, a very short Nick, and Daniel Ryves standing braced with his arms over his chest. Sin remembered him a little, a big burly guy with kind eyes. Everyone had liked him.
“He looks like Nick,” Sin said. “I mean, Nick stands like he did.”
Alan slid a single look over to her, but it was enough. She was surprised to see that she’d somehow said the right thing.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, Nick does.”
“And your mother?”
“I couldn’t help her,” Alan said. “She died when I was four. I remember how the world was when she was alive, how normal everything seemed, how warm and safe.”
“So, normal girls.” Sin paused. “And what were you going to do with Mae, after you saved her?”
“I was hoping she would love me,” Alan said.
He was back to staring out the window.
“She didn’t?”
“It wasn’t her,” Alan said. “It was me. Like I said—she was perfect. She’s strong, she can handle anything about this world, she can handle Nick, and I can…I can read people. I can maneuver them. She liked me a little. There was some hope. But instead of being honest with her I lied to her for Nick, without a second thought. She was everything I’d been dreaming about, that I thought I could be happy if I found. She was the girl I could have had a normal relationship with, the girl I should have been able to trust. She was perfect. Which means there’s something wrong with me.”
Sin nodded. “Did you think you were just going to change back?”
To the kid he’d been when he was four years old, like someone in a fairy tale waking up from a long sleep. As if it worked that way.
“I think,” Alan began, and stopped. “I feel as if I made a bargain. When Nick and I were kids. I wanted, so badly, for him to belong enough in the human world. Not to be human, but to be happy, to have people around him be safe and for people to love him. If he doesn’t have a soul, I thought—I wanted to give him mine. I feel as if I did.”
“Do you regret it?” Sin asked. “For Mae?”
Alan stopped looking out of the window. He didn’t look at her, either. He looked straight ahead, and turned the key in the ignition.
She caught the small smile all the same. “No,” he murmured. “But like I said. There’s something wrong with me.”
They peeled away from the pavement, finally leaving that bookshop behind them.
“I think you’re all right,” Sin told him. “I mean, you know, irredeemably messed up, but in a charming way.”
Alan laughed. “Thanks.”
“I’m glad we made friends before my entire life collapsed around my ears, though,” Sin said. “I don’t want to be your latest little kid in danger, or kitten up a tree to be rescued, or whatever. Speaking of which, here’s my half of the money for the books.”
She plucked a ten out of her sports bra and held it out to Alan between two fingers.
Alan almost drove into a wall.
“Watch it, I don’t want to be rescued from a car crash!”
“Where did you get that?”
“Oh, I mugged someone.”
“Cynthia,” Alan said, his voice twanging like a string about to snap. Anyone else would have had to guess or at least have made her confirm what he already knew, but not this boy. “You could have been killed.”
“Nah.” Sin waved her hand. “She was an old lady. Feeble.”
“Seriously,” Alan said.
“Seriously,” she said. “You’re the guy who wants to look after everyone he meets. Don’t tell me I can’t look after my own family. Don’t you dare.”
Alan looked briefly exasperated before he tried to look persuasive and patient.
“I want to help you.”
“And you did,” Sin told him. “And I appreciate it. But I don’t like it. I can’t bear owing someone as much as I owe you, not for long. I’d rather take some chances.”
“Surely I can be concerned that you’ve decided to adopt a job that kills half its practitioners in their first year.”
“Yeah,” Sin said. “Be concerned. Knock yourself out.”
“You ever think that you might be taking on too much, when other people would be happy to share the
