Sin smoothed her hands down a white tennis skirt.
“I have money now,” she said. “Are you sure you want to—”
“Yes, of course, like I’m ever going to stop eating and fit into them,” Mae said. “I want you to have them. They look good on you.”
Sin looked at her brown eyes and wondered how rich you had to be, how sure the basics were always coming your way, before you felt comfortable giving without counting the cost and demanding a lot from the world.
Demanding a lot from the world could otherwise be thought of as ambition, which was a pretty desirable quality in a leader. Sin shoved the thought viciously aside.
No matter how far Sin might be from the Goblin Market, she wasn’t going to surrender it to Mae in her head.
Sin pulled another garment out from Mae’s bag and saw it was a deep blue silk robe with the price tag still attached.
“Mae!”
“I happened to see it when I was shoe shopping,” Mae said. “It reminds me of the red robe you used to have. It’s gorgeous, you’re gorgeous, you should have it.”
As if it was that easy.
“Thank you,” Sin said, slipping it on. She climbed onto the bed as Lydie clambered off to investigate the bag.
Mae jostled Sin’s bare leg with her jeans-clad one. “Think nothing of it.”
“Is Merris back yet?” Sin asked, now their heads were close together and they could speak quietly.
She wished she could take it back as soon as she’d said it. Mae would have told her right away if Merris had returned. Sin knew better than this.
She just couldn’t help wanting Merris to come home, in a desperate, pathetic way, as if everything would be okay then. When she knew it wouldn’t change anything.
“No,” Mae said, and stared fixedly down at her open book. “This is about the enchantments laid on magical objects,” she continued after a moment, surging ahead with resolution. “There’s a chapter about breaking spells meant to be unbreakable. Like, for locks, or magical chains, or—”
“Jewelry,” Sin said.
Mae smiled. “Yeah. Celeste Drake’s pearls. The suggestions are to break the thing surrounding it. Like if a magic lock’s on a treasure chest, stove in the top of the chest instead. Or if the magical object’s locked on a person—you can kill them. It should come off then.”
Sin leaned her head against Mae’s. “Ah.”
“That works for me,” Mae told her, voice hard. “It really does.”
Sin kept her head by Mae’s, speaking low and tracing the vein running along the inside of Mae’s arm. “You should know,” she said. “I don’t want to take your revenge away from you. But I will. Getting that pearl could get me back into the Market. It could even get my sister accepted. If I get the chance to take it, I will.”
“Then you have two good reasons to get it,” Mae whispered in her ear. “But I have three.”
They both had the Market to gain. Mae had a mother to avenge and Sin a sister to protect.
Mae’s third reason came to Sin like a dark cloud on the horizon, changing the whole landscape into something dim and menacing.
Of course. Mae was carrying a demon’s mark. She was being watched and controlled.
That pearl, the barrier to the power of demons, meant Mae’s freedom.
“Why’d you ever take that mark?” Sin whispered back. “Did he make you?”
Mae stared at Sin. “How do you know?” she whispered.
Sin shrugged, her shoulder pushing against Mae’s. “Nick told me.”
“Did he?” Mae shut her dark eyes. “It was my idea. I wanted him to. I asked him to. I just wanted to do something. At the time, I was feeling helpless and I had to do something. If I did the wrong thing, it’s up to me to fix it.”
Sin raised her eyebrows, even though Mae could not see her do it. “
“Another demon was coming for me,” Mae said. “Anzu.”
Sin’s body was lying alongside Mae’s, so there was no way for Sin to hide the sudden tension that ran all through her muscles. Mae opened her eyes.
“You know him?”
She remembered Anzu’s smile today, as she had told him she did not think demons were lovable. She’d had a moment to collect herself, though, and that was long enough for her to be able to put on a show.
Sin twisted her hair around her finger and gave Mae a jaded smile. “Honey, I know them all.”
“Then you know why, if any demon was going to have their mark on me,” Mae said, “I wanted it to be Nick.”
“You trust him?”
Mae hesitated and drew back to meet Sin’s eyes, her gaze level and serious, to show how much she meant it.
