The Demon’s Surrender

He wheeled, a furious but contained movement like an animal in a cage, and stalked down the street.

Sin followed. “Are we stealing a car?”

It seemed like a good idea to her, but she hoped Nick knew how to do it. She suspected he did.

Over his shoulder, Nick said, “I’ve got another car.”

The car was parked a few streets away. Sin would never have picked it out as Nick’s. It was a sleek silver thing, gleaming like the surface of a polished gun and expensive-looking.

At any other time, Sin would have had questions. Now she slid into the passenger seat as soon as Nick turned the key in the door. The black leather of the seat slid beneath her jeans, butter-soft and sinking, and Sin’s guess was that this was an old car lovingly restored.

She remembered seeing a car this color in Nick’s garden this summer, but she would never have thought he could do so much with it in such a short time.

She hoped it went fast.

The engine purred into life, and she found that it did. Nick, grim-faced behind the wheel, seemed to be taking street corners very personally. Sin gripped the dashboard and waited, watching the city pass by in a blur until they reached the river.

Then all there was to do was follow the Thames through the Bankside until they found the magicians’ boat.

Sin was on the riverside, and she wasn’t driving. She watched the river with such intensity that her eyes burned.

“There!” she said, and pointed.

Nick followed the progress of the boat down the river, and at the first opportunity he took a sharp left onto London Bridge. Car tires screeched around them, horns blaring and wheels spinning, and Nick stopped their car by driving it into the bridge railing.

Sin was braced against the dashboard already. She lowered her head and tried to absorb the impact as it slammed through her body, then shoved open the car door and staggered out. On one side of her was Tower Bridge, framed golden against the light, and on the other was the glittering far-off city and the hundred sparkling red eyes of the OXO tower. They swam in front of her eyes.

She stood still for a moment, staring straight in front of her, trying to will the dizziness away. Between massed rows of box-shaped office buildings with box-shaped windows there was another building, almost hidden. The piece of it she could make out looked like a white door surrounded with light. Sin focused on it until she could see properly again.

Then she turned to Nick and found him standing on the bridge railing.

He jumped.

Sin rushed to the rail and saw the boat passing in the river below, saw its pristine whiteness marred by the dark shape of Nick landing on the deck. In the wake of the boat as it moved were two white lines cut into the black water, ripples spreading to form bird’s wings, like a swallow leaving as winter came. In a moment the boat would be gone.

Sin vaulted onto the broad steel strip that lay on top of the marble rail and dived like a swimmer.

She landed like an acrobat, like a dancer was taught to land, in a ball, rolling off the impact and ending the roll on her feet.

On her feet, on the deck of the Queen’s Corsair, where the whole Circle was waiting for them. And they had no plan, neither of them even knew how to make a plan, all they had was this driving rage and the need to find Alan, to save him at any cost.

Nick had landed like a cat on his feet, braced, and Sin didn’t like to think about how much that must have hurt. His only concession to the pain was standing still for a few seconds.

Then he was moving again, going for the door, and Sin followed him. The hell with plans.

Down the flight of stairs they went, and into the corridor, where they met their first magician.

It was the gray-haired woman, Laura.

Sin knew something was very wrong, so wrong she could not even put it together in her head, when Laura stepped aside for Nick and Sin with a smile.

Nick stormed on without a sign he had noticed, but Sin had noticed. They passed Helen next, and she stood to one side with her head bowed. Not one magician tried to stop them on their way or even seemed surprised to see them.

When Sin glanced back over her shoulder, she saw the magicians they had passed were following them at a distance, in procession like mourners following a hearse.

Nick did not look back. He just strode on, apparently oblivious to everything, down the corridors and the steps until he reached the glass doors of the ballroom. He shoved both open, and they broke with a crash like music and thunder.

Inside the ballroom was most of the Aventurine Circle, all except for the magicians following in Nick and Sin’s footsteps, and Jamie. Seb was there, and the look on his face made Sin go even colder.

All the other magicians were tense, almost standing to attention. Gerald was chatting to a couple of still and silent magicians as if he was attending a soiree.

He turned after a moment, a well-mannered host recognizing two new guests. He nodded at them, tall but basically unthreatening-looking, his voice mild and pleasant.

“Cynthia Davies? I never expected to see you here again, but—out of the frying pan, straight back into the frying pan, as the saying doesn’t go. Of course you’re welcome. And Nick. Always a pleasure.” Gerald smiled. It was