He punctuated each of his descriptions of Alan with a slash, face alight with triumph. Nick dealt him another series of hard blows for an answer, bearing down with his superior weight and strength, and Sin waited for the moment when one of them would stop using their magic to fuel their fight and simply use it to lash out.
It didn’t happen. Anzu betrayed himself by flinching under the barrage of blows, his parry vicious but wavering a little, almost uncertain.
Nick knocked him back with another blow.
“I’m your brother,” Anzu shouted. “Not him!”
The next blow of Nick’s sword brought Anzu to his knees. Nick drew his blade slowly, lightly, along Anzu’s throat. Anzu was still wearing an awful half smile, as if he thought this was all part of a game.
“You’re right,” Nick said, his voice utterly emotionless. “This isn’t like fighting Alan. He’s human and weak and broken, all the things you said. And Alan would have cheated by now. He would have won.”
Anzu stopped smiling. Nick crouched down, his face close to Anzu’s.
Cold as ever, Nick murmured, “I know my brother when I see him.”
Sin sat on the sofa and hated herself. Nick had had the situation under control. Of course he had. There was no need for her to be running around like a fool, trying to protect a demon!
Once she’d seen that Nick could handle himself, she had turned around and gone back, but it was too late. She had no time to wake the children and make her escape. Both the demons had come back almost as soon as she did.
Worse than that, Nick had gone into Alan’s room and slammed the door. Sin had not the faintest idea what he could be doing there, but she did not appreciate being left out here alone with Anzu.
Anzu did not bother her. He seemed not to notice she was there. He just stood staring out the window, arms crossed over his chest. The sun was setting, throwing red banners over the buildings and crowning them with light. It almost looked like the city was burning again.
For a while Sin sat, waiting for him to do something and reproaching herself for her own stupidity in not running when she could. She would almost deserve whatever the demon decided to do to her.
At last she began to believe he would stay put. There was still no sound from Nick’s room, where the children were.
Sin tried to make herself relax. She had to be strong to get the children out at the very next opportunity that arose. She would not be so weak as to let the chance slip out of her fingers a second time.
She couldn’t relax. She wished something would happen, a disaster, anything she could deal with so she wouldn’t have to think.
Failing that, she wished Nick would get out of Alan’s room so she could go in there and look at his stupid guns and books, put her head on the pillow they had shared last night, and cry.
With nothing she could do, all Sin could think of was Alan. He was locked up in his own body, dying slowly, watching all of this.
She knew what happened to a possessed body. What Nick and Anzu had been saying today was not news. Demons loved to boast in their dancing circles of how they made humans suffer, trapped in bodies that started to fall apart so fast, trapped in a corner of their own minds and screaming.
She had spent hours talking to her mother, trying to comfort her even though she knew that Mama could never respond to her touch, never answer her again.
Alan would go through that, all of that, but even more slowly, and he might have to see people he loved hurt at his hands.
Sin looked across the room at Anzu. He was not using much magic now, and he looked almost like Alan again. She could look at his red hair curling against the collar of his shirt and the solemn lines of his profile, as if he was absorbed in thought, and she could almost think it was Alan.
But it wasn’t. It would never be Alan again.
She was on her feet before she realized what she was about to do, walking softly until she reached the window and the demon.
She stood beside him and thought of Alan trying desperately to survive a little longer, as if she or Mae could possibly hope to save him. She shut her eyes, the setting sun painting the darkness behind her eyelids scarlet and gold.
Sin put her hand at the back of his neck and drew his head gently down. She kissed him on the mouth.
The demon let her do it.
“I’m right here,” Sin breathed. It felt like Alan was close for a moment, even though he wasn’t. “Hold on.”
16
They Have to Take You In
SIN WOKE TO EARLY-MORNING LIGHT STABBING BETWEEN HER eyelashes. She was wedged in the corner of the sofa, and she cracked her neck to get out the crick in it, stretched, and realized that she had fallen asleep with a demon two doors away from Lydie and Toby.
She wrenched herself off the sofa, flooded with horror, and met a demon’s eyes.
“Anzu’s not here,” Nick said.
Sin closed her eyes for a brief moment of pure, deep thankfulness, and then she went for the door. She’d been stupid long enough.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m getting Lydie and Toby out of here.”
