unappealing. You lose sight of the fact that the object you’re viewing from afar is a person.”
“I know you’re a person!”
“You don’t know anything about me. In fact, I sort of doubt you know anything.”
“I know some things about you,” Seb said. “I could get to know more. You could get to know me.”
“Tempting!” Jamie exclaimed. “No, wait, that’s not the word I mean. What’s the opposite of that?”
Normally, it wouldn’t have taken Sin so long to notice someone’s body language. But there had been the knife to distract her, those awful eyes, and the demon’s mark.
Jamie’s thin shoulders were hunched up, his fingers always on the curl toward fists. Every muscle he had looked tense.
“I realize I don’t deserve a chance,” Seb said. “But I wanted to say—I wanted you to know that I want one.”
Jamie blinked, which was the first not entirely negative reaction he’d had. Sin was horrified witnessing the whole scene: She didn’t want to think about magicians having painful crushes, or feeling anything. They were the enemy. She didn’t want to see this.
She was grateful for how distracted they were, though. She could reach out and touch Jamie.
Seb looked away, obviously embarrassed, as if he hadn’t meant to reveal that much desperation.
“Why should I care what you want?” Jamie asked eventually.
“Well, you and Gerald don’t seem to be getting on so well lately,” Seb said awkwardly. “I thought—you might want someone who would be on your side.”
The way Jamie was standing changed in a way that might have meant there would have been a change in his eyes, if they had still looked like human eyes.
“What do you mean by that?” Jamie asked in a soft voice.
“Well,” Seb said again, awkward and hopeless. “If you felt like I do—no, I don’t mean that. I mean, if you’re lonely here.”
“And you were doing so well, too,” Jamie said. “I don’t care about being lonely. But you’re right. I’m not getting along with Gerald. I don’t like it when people tell me what to do, and the whole Aventurine Circle seems to have an opinion on how I should behave. I could use an ally.”
Sin saw the wariness in Seb’s eyes, but he took a step forward all the same.
“What do you mean by an ally?”
“I mean someone who will support everything I do,” Jamie answered, with a faint, unpleasant smile, “and do everything I say.”
Seb took another step forward. Jamie stood. The knife in his pocket, which Sin had just managed to get her hand on and draw out a few crucial inches, tumbled neatly into her palm.
Jamie didn’t seem to notice. He reached out his hand and Seb hesitated, then jerkily offered his hand in return.
“Then it’s settled,” Jamie said, still smiling that smile. His fingers slid over the inside of Seb’s wrist. Seb shivered, and Jamie’s nasty smile spread. “Sweetheart.”
There were steps outside the door. One was someone in heels, Sin thought. Seb jerked away at the sound, as if he’d been caught doing something indecent. Jamie didn’t seem to care.
“Here it is,” Celeste’s voice said.
Sin couldn’t see her, because she was standing behind Nick.
He stood at the door like death waiting to be invited in, all in black. It made his face look white as a skull.
“You’re late,” Jamie snapped. He clicked his fingers, and Nick walked slowly, reluctantly, forward over the tilting floor.
Sin realized this wasn’t Nick’s ordinary pallor. He was a demon in a human body: Being trapped in a vessel over running water was like being slowly tortured for someone possessed. There was no way he would be here willingly.
He was here, though, and coming like a dog to heel.
When he reached Jamie he went down in a crouch by the table. His eyes flickered over Sin, not even seeming to register her.
Jamie reached out and twisted the cord of Nick’s talisman around his fingers. Sin saw the leather bite deep into the side of Nick’s neck.
“Don’t be late again,” Jamie commanded softly. “Or I won’t let you go back. Understand?”
Jamie’s hold on the talisman forced Nick’s head back, his face tilted up to Jamie’s. The strange light of Jamie’s eyes shone reflected in Nick’s blank black gaze.
Nick lowered his eyelids and nodded.
“Turns out when a demon marks a magician,” Celeste said from the door, her voice rich with satisfaction, like a cat in the process of drinking the cream, “it doesn’t give the demon any power over the magician at all. Rather the opposite, in fact. Isn’t it marvelous?”
It couldn’t be true, Sin thought. If Gerald had control over Nick already, he wouldn’t have bothered torturing Alan.
“Marvelous for me,” Jamie agreed, his tone as silky as hers. “Since he’s mine, and I don’t feel like letting the
