a genuinely nice smile. “I admit I was expecting you.”
Nick drew in a breath. Even that sounded like a snarl.
Sin discovered she’d stepped back from him, as if his fury was a black aura pushing people away without their conscious will.
“Where is he?” Nick asked. Hearing his voice was terrible, the sounds mangled and flat, like the sound of an animal being flayed alive and still roaring for blood. “Where is he?”
The other magicians drew back. Gerald’s smile did not even flicker.
“The thing is,” he said conversationally, “I can’t let the other Circles think the Market can run around assassinating magicians without consequences, can I?”
Oh God. Gerald had given Mae a gun for more reasons than one.
He knew the entire Circle would believe Alan had killed Celeste. He’d framed someone he knew he could publicly, terribly punish any time he wanted, and thus win over Celeste’s supporters.
Sin whispered, “What have you done to him?”
Nick’s voice rose, something between a howl and a whine. “Where is he?”
“Come now,” Gerald said. “Since you let him be tortured instead of performing the very simple tasks we requested, I didn’t think it would be too much of a blow.”
“What are you talking about?” Nick demanded. “Where is he?”
“Nick didn’t know,” Sin said. “Alan told him you hadn’t made any demands yet. Alan didn’t want him to know.”
She wondered dully what Gerald had done with the body.
She was sure he’d killed Alan slowly.
“We lied to you,” Sin told Nick. “Gerald asked for things. Alan told him you wouldn’t do them.”
Nick laughed, a horrible cracking sound. “I would have—I would have done anything.”
Gerald looked briefly disconcerted, but a second later he was smiling again. “Now you’ll do anything because I tell you to,” he said gently. “Alan was of no further use to me. And this was so much fun. I can’t wait until you see.”
“See?” Sin asked.
Gerald nodded toward the double doors that led into the dining hall. Nick did not spare him another glance. He wheeled and went for the doors.
Sin followed him, forcing every step. She couldn’t not look, and yet she knew that whatever lay beyond those doors, she did not want to see.
Nick threw them open. The sound rang out through the ship.
The dining hall was cleared of its table and chairs, cleared of everything. It was just an empty room, with the morning sun casting gold rays on the wooden floor.
There was something glittering in the middle of that bare floor.
Alan was standing at one of the windows, the sunlight turning his hair more gold than red.
Everything was very still and quiet in the room, nothing but the sound of them all breathing. Sin slowly realized what the metal thing on the floor was: It was Alan’s glasses, broken and twisted out of shape.
Alan turned slowly from the window to face them.
Of course, it wasn’t Alan anymore.
The sunlight was warm on the face she loved, lingering on planes and angles, brightly caught in the curls of his hair.
Sunlight could not touch the flat black of his eyes, cold openings into another world.
The world slipped away from Sin, lost a second time. She was terribly cold in that sunlit room, shaking with it, and there was no-one to put his arms around her now. The room was filled with the demon’s silence.
That thing worse than death, that thing every dancer feared worst of all, the word never spoken, meaning lost and lost forever.
Possession.
Sin heard something break the silence and realized it was her, her ragged breaths turning into gasps. She put her shaking fingers to her lips, trying to cut off the sounds, and found streams of tears running down her face. She pressed her hand hard against her mouth and tried to stop crying.
The demon in Alan smiled.
14
Pouring Away the Ocean
SIN FORCED HERSELF TO STOP CRYING. SHE CHOKED BACK THE frantic sounds that wanted to erupt from her. They hit the back of her throat hard and burned on the way down.
She couldn’t stop looking at the demon, though, and she still had not the faintest desperate idea what to do.
When Nick moved, she realized she had been braced for him to move all along, body tensed to cope with whatever Nick was about to do while her eyes were fixed on Alan. She didn’t know what horror Nick was about to unleash, what storm of fury was about to descend on all their heads. Her survival depended on being prepared and
