She was frozen, hovering over him for a minute. Then she scrambled back to her own seat and stared out of her own window.
“Right,” she said. The school doors were pushed open by the first rush of kids and Sin repeated herself, woodenly, as if there was a chance he hadn’t heard her before. “Right.”
Sin would have thought she’d be thankful for any distraction, but she wasn’t feeling any significant gratitude about having to get out of the car after twenty minutes of waiting and collect Lydie from the infirmary.
“She had a headache,” the nurse said. “She seems anxious about something.”
Sin got into the back seat with Lydie for the drive home, which was a reprieve, and she and Alan put on a wonderful show for Lydie about their marvelous bookshop adventures all the way there.
Lydie was looking slightly more cheerful as they took the lift up, which meant that of course they could hear Toby screaming through the front door.
Sin put her shoulder to it and pushed it open as soon as Alan’s key turned, running in and grabbing him from Mae’s arms. Toby reached out insistent arms as soon as he saw her, twining around her neck like an octopus assassin who specialized in strangling his victims. He bawled a couple more times in her ear, hoarse barks like a seal, rubbing his snotty face on her neck.
“Oh, thank God you’re here,” Mae said devoutly, collapsing against the wall. Her face was a brighter pink than her hair. “I hate kids. No, Toby, I don’t mean it, please don’t start crying again. They’re fine from a distance. Lovely! I love them. From a distance.”
“He just needs to be changed,” Sin said, bearing him off to do just that.
Behind her, she heard Mae say faintly, “Oh my God.”
When she came out, Toby balanced on her hip and regarding the world beyond her shoulder with a distrustful air, she heard Alan in the sitting room reproving Nick for not helping Mae.
“I tried,” said Nick, who was stretched out on the sofa reading a magazine. He had found a shirt somewhere, Sin noticed. “He cried a lot more when I was in the room. I think babies are like animals. They can sense my demonic aura of evil.”
“I want a demonic aura of evil,” Mae muttered, still looking traumatized.
“Too bad, Mavis, it is all mine,” Nick told her. “So I can’t babysit.”
“It would be irresponsible to leave you with Toby if you upset him,” Alan said thoughtfully.
Nick gave him a brief smile. “That’s why you’re my favorite.”
“But it would be irresponsible not to do something about this demonic aura of evil,” Alan continued, still thoughtful. “I mean, as part of my ongoing quest to acclimatize you to human ways. I think I’m going to offer your services as a dog walker to the neighborhood.”
Nick looked up warily from his magazine.
“You know Mrs. Mitchell doesn’t like to leave the house, Nicholas,” Alan said. “And she has those twin toy poodles. It would be a good deed.”
“I can smite you,” Nick grumbled. “Anytime I like.”
Mae and Alan were the ones who did the best research, so after a quick discussion, Nick and Sin went off to start dinner. It soon emerged that Nick was better at it, so Sin was delegated to chopping vegetables.
Which would have been fine if she hadn’t been afraid of dropping the knife on her baby sister’s head. Toby was settled happily, pretending to read with Alan, but Lydie stayed with Sin, clinging to her skirt. It reminded Sin of the way Lydie had been after Sin had come back from Mezentius House, once Mama was dead.
“Do you want to help me with the cooking?” she asked.
Lydie pressed her face against Sin’s hip. “No,” she said, muffled. “I’m fine here. I don’t want to be any more trouble.”
“Why is she scared now?” Nick asked, sounding bored. He was making white sauce for the lasagna.
“There could be
“I’m a demon,” said Nick. “You’ve heard about me, haven’t you? How I can make someone’s insides boil just by wanting it? Demons are supposed to be humanity’s worst dreams come true.”
“Nick,” Sin said warningly.
“So you don’t have to worry about magicians,” Nick continued calmly. “They’re not scary. Not compared to me. And if they come, I’ll kill them all.”
Sin made a meaningful gesture with her knife so Nick could see it. He shut up.
When Sin had to run to the bathroom for toilet paper to use as kitchen towels, though, Lydie did not follow her and trip her up. Instead she elected to stay in the kitchen. Sin heard her saying in an interested tone, “How many people have you killed?”
Kids.
She came back in time for the educational lecture about dumping bodies. Sin hoped she was not in for another talk with Lydie’s teachers about her marvelous but disturbing imagination.
After dinner it was Mae who saved Sin from having to look at Alan. She suggested that Sin try on all the clothes she’d brought, in case some of them didn’t fit.
Most of them fit pretty well. Sin was vaguely surprised.
Mae, lying on her stomach with Lydie on Alan’s bed playing fashion critics, with a book open and ignored before her, grinned. “They’re mostly my mother’s clothes,” she said and her grin faded. “Annabel was skinny like you.”
