like?”
Sin couldn’t answer him. Her mouth had gone dry. She went and stood with her back against the kitchen counter, her hands gripping it, because having a physical support and something to hold on to was all there was to comfort her.
“I know enough about possession,” she said eventually, her voice paper thin and dry. “I was with my mother every day until she died.”
She tried not to remember the echoing white passages of Mezentius House, the sounds of screams from the other rooms. She tried not to remember when the screams were coming from her room, how scared she’d been the demon would hurt her so she couldn’t dance anymore, how her mother’s body had twisted like a prisoner’s on the rack and changed, so terribly fast. Her beautiful mother.
Oh God, Alan.
Sin clutched the countertop as hard as she could, until her bones ached. She could not fall apart. In a minute she would go to the kids.
No, in a minute she would go to the bathroom and wash away the traces of ashes and tears. They couldn’t see her like this.
“You don’t know about possession like I do,” Nick said. He sat at the table with his head bowed over his arms, staring down at his knuckles. His voice was measured, utterly cold. “You don’t know it from the inside.”
“Stop,” Sin said.
“No,” said Nick, calm and pitiless. “First you slip in and they’re fighting so hard, they can’t believe such a thing has happened to them. So you torture them. You crush them and they scream inside their own heads and you laugh at them, because nobody but you will ever hear them again.”
Sin closed her eyes and measured her breaths, in and out. She wasn’t going to think about Alan, she wasn’t going to break down. She had the kids to think of.
“Second, they start to beg, and that’s funny. You hate them so much, for no reason except that they’re human and they’ve been sucking up all the warmth of the world for years without thinking to appreciate it. You want them to crawl to you. And then you torture them some more. Because it’s so much fun. Third—”
“Third, they want to make a bargain,” said a new voice, as flat as Nick’s but not as smooth, the words jerky, not quite pieced together, in a way that reminded Sin of the way Mae had moved when Nick forced her to the door. As if it wasn’t her body.
As if it wasn’t his voice.
She opened her eyes and saw Alan’s body lounging in the doorway, with an easy grace Alan had never possessed. He was standing in a little pool of ashes, looking like he’d been swimming in that burning river. Ash covered his clothes and made a filthy halo around his head.
He gave them both a sunny smile.
“Usually it takes a few days before they get around to the bargaining,” the demon continued. “But you may have noticed, your boy’s quick. Such an interesting mind.”
Nick’s head had reared back. He looked more nightmarish than the other demon did, his eyes black holes in a mask so white it blazed.
“Do you want to know why bargaining with demons almost never works?” the demon asked. He strolled into the kitchen, moving in fluid, easy strides.
Seeing the loss of the limp she’d always hated was almost too much for Sin. She wanted to be sick.
He circled Nick’s chair, but Nick sat there like a stone. The demon roved over to Sin. She pressed back hard against the counter.
“How about you, princess?”
That was what made her realize what should have been obvious long before. Of course, what other demon had served the Circle so well that he deserved a reward like this? What other demon wanted revenge like he did?
What other demon would have followed Nick home?
“I don’t know, Anzu,” Sin said between her teeth.
“Humans are so rarely eager to offer us what we want,” Anzu murmured, the curve of Alan’s mouth like a scimitar. “Everything.”
He was standing very close now. She was glad he smelled like ashes and blood, not like guns.
“But your boy, your Alan—” Sin flinched, and Anzu’s smile broadened with delight. He pushed his face closer to hers, as if he could scent out weakness. “
She made herself breathe in measured, controlled breaths. She held her body still and did not speak, and Anzu lost interest in her, moved away and back to his real target.
“Interesting how quickly he gave up, don’t you think?” he asked Nick. “Really, it’s as if he was used to being the slave to a demon already. As if he never had a soul to call his own.”
Now that Anzu had turned away, Sin moved quietly, heading for the bathroom. She was going there to wash her face; she had always intended to do that, it was nothing to remark on.
As soon as she was in the bathroom she slid the lock on the door closed, even though she knew it would not keep a demon out.
She leaned against the bathroom door, fished her new phone out of her jeans pocket, and called Mae. The phone rang and Sin was still in control, she was, but her body felt as if it had been frozen in those moments where Anzu leaned close, and now it was turning to water. Her legs simply would not hold her up. She slid, the door still at her back, to the cool tiles of the bathroom floor.
