“What else do you want me to do?”
“Uh,” Sin suggested, “
“I haven’t taken the Aventurine Circle sigil, which lets you get the stored power from their circle of stones. Gerald has a new mark that allows all the magicians to exchange power between them, and I haven’t taken that either. Using Nick was absolutely the only way I could avoid taking the marks. Having him, and more power than anyone else, is the only reason they let me stay.”
“And why do you want to stay?” Sin inquired.
Jamie looked down at Lydie’s head. “To help.”
“Forgive me if I think you might have another motive,” Sin said. “I can see you’re brimful of magic right now. Everyone at the Market knows how magicians kill more, the longer they’re in a circle. The appetite grows by what it feeds on—the craving gets worse and worse. If you were safe, if the circles were gone, would you give up all the magic the demon gives you? Could you give it up?”
Jamie kept looking at Lydie, and not into Sin’s eyes, but he did answer her.
Low and soft, he said: “No.”
At least he sounded ashamed.
“So you’d rather enslave a friend than give up power,” said Sin. “And you expect me to believe you want to help?”
“I came and sat down beside you with a magic knife in the pocket nearest to you,” Jamie said. “Either I want to help you, or I’m kind of dumb.”
Sin hesitated. “I don’t know you that well. You could be all kinds of dumb. What I know for sure about you is that you’re a magician. Power runs through your veins, more essential than blood. You can’t tell me you could give it up.”
“No,” Jamie answered, his voice stronger this time. “I can’t.”
“Nick trusted you, and you’re using him,” Sin said. “Maybe you hate the other magicians. But power obviously comes first with you. So I can’t trust you.”
“That’s true,” Jamie said. “But you can pick up your knife. I hope you will take that as the goodwill gesture it is, and not the chance to chop my head off, which… it also is.”
Sin walked across the deck to her other knife. She scooped it up in one movement and wheeled back around to Jamie.
With both knives in her hands she felt calm again, the sound of them slicing air like a lullaby in the dark. She held her arms crossed, poised to kill anything that hurt her family.
She allowed herself to look at Lydie.
Lydie was being brave, taking short, panting breaths but not crying. She stared at Sin silently, her eyes huge, and Sin nodded at her and saw she was being held quite gently, and quite far away from Jamie. As if she was a peace offering, and not a shield.
Sin tucked one of her knives into the belt of her jeans, so she had one hand free.
“I’ll give you your magic knife for my sister.”
“Done,” said Jamie. He took his hands off Lydie’s shoulders and flung them up to catch the knife Sin hurled, at the same second Lydie threw herself at Sin.
Sin checked Lydie’s rush and pushed her sister behind her. “Stay calm,” she said. “I’ve got you.”
She kept her gaze steady on Jamie, who was holding the knife tight in one hand without opening it.
“Thank you,” Jamie said. “It’s my lucky charm. I don’t mean that in a serial killer way.”
“You have a lucky knife, but you don’t mean that in a serial killer way?”
“That’s right,” said Jamie, with a little smile. “I’m harmless, I promise.”
She didn’t believe he was harmless for a second.
Since she had got to know Alan better, she had been thinking about different sorts of acts.
This boy, with his hunched-in shoulders, his flood of so many words it was hard to pay attention to any of them, he was camouflaging himself.
Since he’d been living a normal life while secretly a magician up until a couple of months ago, camouflaging himself must be second nature to him.
“Whose side are you on?” Sin asked directly.
“My own,” Jamie said. “And my sister’s. I promised her I would help you.”
“And how do you intend to help me?”
Jamie grinned at her. “Like this,” he said, and made a sweeping gesture.
The whole boat rocked with the wave that went shuddering through the river.
“Jamie, you might want to think about taking it down a notch,” Alan said. Sin saw him from the corner of her eye, gripping the door frame so he didn’t fall down.
“Everyone’s a critic,” Jamie muttered. He repeated the gesture, this time in miniature.
The river moved, nudging the boat gently but inexorably toward one of the riverside walls. There was a flight of shallow, slimy stone steps set in the wall. They were the most beautiful things Sin had ever seen.
