“I trust him.”
“Well,” Sin said, her hand still on Mae’s arm, “that makes one of us.”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Mae asked. “No matter how I feel about him, nobody should have that kind of power over me. So I’m going to get the pearl, and nobody will have power over me again.”
“So,” Sin said, and rolled away from Mae, lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling. “Consider me warned.”
Mae left. Sin stayed and watched Lydie play dress-up for a while, making sure she seemed all right, and then she put her clothes back on and returned to the living room, where Mae and Alan were sitting on one sofa together. Sin looked away to see Nick lying on the other sofa, back to his magazine.
“You might help,” Mae told him.
“I wish I could,” Nick drawled. “But I find reading so challenging.”
Mae directed her accusing glare at the magazine.
“I’m really just looking at the pictures,” Nick said, and smirked. “They’re very… absorbing.”
Mae jumped up off her sofa and snatched the magazine from his hands. “Nick, there are children here!”
She spared a moment to actually look at the magazine. Sin was able to see the cover.
It was about cars.
Nick propped one elbow on the back of the couch, pulling at his own hair. He gave Mae a slow smile.
“I know,” he murmured, his voice a dark, conspiratorial whisper. “Scandalous.”
Mae flushed slightly and hit Nick on the head with the magazine.
Sin gestured for Nick to get his legs off the sofa so she could sit down. He scowled and complied, sinking low against the sofa cushions with his magazine.
“Give me back my phone.”
“Sorry,” Sin said, forking it over. “Thanks for it. And thanks for letting us stay another night. We’ll be out of your hair soon.”
“It’s fine,” Nick muttered. “Alan’s always bringing home strays to bother me.”
Mae glared. “Hey.”
“You annoy me less than you used to,” Nick told her, and then after a pause, “Still quite a lot, though.”
“I wish I could say the same,” Mae said. “The annoyance just grows and grows.”
“Toss me a book, Mae, I’ll help,” Sin offered, and Mae turned away from Nick and did so.
After wrestling with Elizabethan spelling for a while, Sin looked over at Nick. Lydie was sitting at his feet, staring intently. Nick was reading his magazine, apparently oblivious of his devoted suitor.
“You said demons are meant to be humanity’s darkest dream come true,” Sin said.
“It’s a theory. Alan tells me them,” Nick said.
“But,” Sin said, “don’t you come from, you know, hell?”
“We’re demons,” Nick told her, glancing up from his magazine. “Not devils. I know exactly as much about hell or heaven or where I come from as you do.”
“But demons don’t die,” Sin said. “So you’ll never know anything else.”
“No.”
“If we go to a better place—”
“Then I can’t follow any of you. I presume I go back to the demon world when this body dies,” Nick said in a soft snarl. “But for now I’m here, and I don’t want anywhere better. Here is fine.”
He looked at the other sofa, then turned back restlessly to his magazine. Sin looked at him and felt almost shocked. It had never occurred to her that Nick could be happy.
Here in a tiny flat, getting white sauce on his leather wrist cuffs, lounging around reading a magazine with his brother and Mae close by. This was what the demon wanted.
Heart enough to make a home for a demon, Sin thought, her eyes straying to Alan again, and she hated herself for the abiding little ache of longing.
She was very flexible, so she could have kicked herself in the head with relative ease, but she doubted it would help.
That night Sin told stories to Toby and Lydie until they were asleep, and slept on the floor by their bed, borrowing a sofa cushion to use as a pillow. The next day Alan had to go to work and Nick had to go to school. Sin spent her time walking with Toby through Willesden, going through charity shops finding clothes for Lydie and Toby and even a uniform for herself, though it was two sizes too large. She bought the cheapest phone she could find.
She spent the afternoon checking out the prices of flats and the cost of day care. She had just enough for a deposit.
When Merris came back, she’d see that Sin had managed without her.
Alan called the house and offered to take a break from work to collect Lydie. Sin turned him down, but said it would be great if he could sit in the house and eat a sandwich or something while Toby took his nap.
“Then I can go get Lydie myself,” Sin finished.
