glanced around and saw Nick on his knees, snarling something and touching Jamie’s arm. The blood stopped spurting from the horrible space where his hand had been, and they were all three crouched on the cobblestones, shirts covered with a vivid mess of blood. Jamie was sobbing, low and hoarse.
Sin and Mae exchanged looks. Mae had gone bone white, but as Sin met her eyes she nodded once, slowly.
Both of them drew their knives and stood protectively in front of the boys.
The sight of weapons galvanized Helen. She drew her sword and went for Sin, who parried the sword with one knife, then cut in at Helen’s ribs with the other. Helen only just managed to leap back and deflect the strike.
A blaze of magic flew at Sin from another magician’s fingers, and she had to throw herself back out of its path. She smelled the ends of her own hair burning.
All around them, arrows were let fly. Mae had hurled herself on the ground to escape them.
Helen attacked again, delivering a strike so hard that Sin held her knives crossed one in front of the other so both knives absorbed the impact of the blow, jarring the bones of her arms to the elbows. Sin saw another magician’s hands brighten and she ducked and dived, sliding on her belly on the cobblestones and snatching Helen’s ankle, pulling her foot out from under her.
She couldn’t keep dodging, she thought as she rolled and sprang back up. She could hold them off for maybe two minutes longer.
Nick rose from his crouch, and there was no more light glancing on the Monument.
The storm rolled in low. It felt as if the city of London had been swallowed at a gulp by some vast, hungry beast.
“You took my brother,” the demon said, and his voice echoed against that dense, dark sky. “Now you’ve crippled my friend. There is almost nothing else in the world you can do to me, and absolutely nothing else you can bargain with. All I want is to tear you to
Lightning hit the Monument and traveled down and down, enveloping the whole stone column in a shimmering blanket of light. The light chased down the column to the ground in seconds, and when it hit, it hit two magicians.
It didn’t hit Gerald.
He said, “I command you not to hurt any member of my Circle. And I don’t think Jamie is in any state to counteract my order.”
A shudder passed through Nick, as if he was trying to ripple out of his own shape and become something else, anything else so long as it could leap at Gerald and destroy him.
Gerald’s lips curled.
Then his face was obscured.
The piping started, eerie and low, as if it came creeping with the mist over the broken cobblestones from the lightning strike. Every loose shard of stone began to rise, dancing in the air and then being hurled at the magicians.
The pipers of the Goblin Market were hidden on the rooftops, in the mist. The magicians had nothing to fight. Sin almost laughed in triumph, and then had to whirl out of the way of Helen’s sword, jumping in midair and twisting. She didn’t have to be better than Helen. She only had to be faster.
Then she looked around to check on Jamie. He was unconscious in Seb’s lap, Mae on her knees beside them. The wound where his hand had been was nothing but smooth skin, and his face, gilded by lightning, was gray and still.
Sin spun into engagement with Helen, making her knives a blur, almost dancing, going for the quick cuts to Helen’s arms and legs, holding her off and distracting her so she would let Sin move. She hurtled right into the path of Nick’s sword.
Nick checked his swing just in time and threw himself at her. Sin tumbled down to the cobblestones with Nick on top of her as Gerald’s latest fireball whizzed over their heads.
Nick took his weight on his arms, braced on either side of her. She was extremely grateful: It left her with enough breath to hiss, “Jamie’s in shock or worse. We have to get him some help! How much magic do you have left after healing him and causing a storm?”
Nick hesitated.
“That much, huh.”
“Enough,” Nick growled, and a dark cloud fell like a curtain. The little light remaining in the sky went out.
The bells of St. Magnus the Martyr pealed out from below in a rush of music that ended in a deep clang, like another, closer thunderclap.
Mist and storm cloud met to make their little stretch of cobblestones a square of impenetrable smoke. It bought them enough time to scramble to their feet, dash to collect the magicians who were on their side, and run.
18
Reaching Through the Dark for You
THEY TOOK JAMIE TO THE GOBLIN MARKET. IT WAS ACTUALLY very helpful to know where you could go to find all the potion-makers.
They did not let the older members of the actual Market know they were bringing magicians in, but Sin did get her friend Chiara to help.
Nick and Mae went outside, Sin presumed to fight where they would not disturb Jamie. Sin stayed in the wagon with Chiara and a potion-maker called June, helping them mix up concoctions for pain with fever fruit as well as willow bark. Someone had run for one of the pipers, and a girl carrying an ivory-inlaid pipe played a song to soothe care away.
