Seb looked deeply amused.
“Do you know Nick from ballet?” he asked Sin.
“Er,” Sin said. “What?”
Mae wasn’t any good at putting on a show, but she knew how to smooth over a situation when she had to.
“I’ve seen Sin dance,” she put in tactfully. “She’s fantastic.”
“Yeah, plus I look fabulous in tights,” Sin said, catching on. “Not as good as Nick, though.”
“Naturally,” Nick drawled. “I’ll go get the swords.”
“Cut it out, Nick,” Alan snapped from the depths of his deck chair and his book, and when Nick’s back stiffened, Alan directed a meaningful glance toward Seb. “Now’s not the time.”
Alan’s tone was perhaps a little bit too sharp. Nick’s eyes narrowed.
“Has it ever occurred to you,” he said softly, “that I get very tired of playing nice?”
There was something dark in the air between them now. Mae glanced at Seb warily, and found him looking a little pale.
“Yes, actually, it has,” Alan returned. “What are you going to do about it?”
“This.”
Nick wheeled on Alan, who dropped his book and suddenly had his gun out. Nick’s magical knife flashed in the summer sun: a thin blinding line of light that dazzled Mae one moment and grazed Alan’s arm the next. The gun fell out of Alan’s hand and to the grass with a thump; three drops of blood fell on its gleaming surface.
Nick moved into Alan’s space as Alan stood, knife coming around in a shining circle, and then he froze. Alan held the dagger from up his sleeve against Nick’s throat, forcing Nick’s head back until Nick gradually lowered his knife. Alan smiled a small, tender smile.
“Oh, baby brother,” he said. “Too slow.”
He tucked the dagger back into his sleeve, neat and precise, and Nick stepped away from him.
“See?” Nick said, touching the graze along his throat, ring flashing in the sun the same way his knife had. “We don’t have to play nice.”
The look Nick shot Seb was a challenge, daring him to make something of the sudden appearance of weapons at a barbecue.
“You want someone to play with, I’ll play,” Sin said, finishing Mae’s braids. Mae pushed off the side of the car and saw Sin reach behind her back again, fingers closing around the hilt of her knife.
“I can’t wait to see you two dance,” Mae said brightly.
Sin let go of her knife with a sigh. “We could do that.”
Nick threw the old guitar into Alan’s hands, then went over and tipped Sin backward in his arms so the ends of her hair brushed the grass, and as she started to laugh, Alan started to sing.
Mae had known he had a beautiful voice, but she had not heard it low and sweet on a summer afternoon, wrapped up in the sound of long-still guitar strings turning into living music under his hands.
Only the thinnest glittering sliver of sunlight could be seen between Nick’s h*ps and Sin’s. The burning of Mae’s mark was actually making her feel sick.
She slid her arm around Seb’s waist and shut her eyes, face pressed into his shoulder.
“Come into the kitchen a moment,” she whispered.
He came with her slowly, the grass slithering warm around her bare ankles, her fingers linked with his. When he closed the door behind them, she stepped up close to him in the cool, shadowy kitchen and kissed him on the mouth. He stood there, and she stepped back, watching him, suddenly uncertain.
“Do you not—” she began.
“No,” Seb said. “Yes. I’m sorry. Come here.”
He curled a hand around her shoulder, careful, as if he was scared to touch her. His eyes looked darker than usual, the green lights drowned, and for a moment she felt like she was looking up at someone completely different.
She could hear Jamie singing off-key, the exuberant noise mingled with the sweet, pure sound of Alan’s voice. Her bare feet were sticking to the cork tile. Seb’s face was very close to hers.
He tilted her face up just so, his fingers trembling against her jaw.
“Your eyes are …” Seb said, stumbling over the words, his breath faltering and warm against her cheek. “They’re just—beautiful.” He leaned in closer. “I’ve wanted to tell you that for years.”
He shut his eyes, leaned in, and kissed her like he meant it, soft and a little hesitant but focused. She’d had kisses before that felt like questions. This kiss felt like Seb was begging her for something, and she tried to give it to him.
“Whoops, sorry, can I just get some ice from the freezer?” Jamie asked, and Seb and Mae parted.
“I think I left my sketchbook in the grass,” Seb said hastily, and exited.
“Thanks very much,” said Mae.
“I said I was sorry,” Jamie said from the freezer, not at all repentantly. “So, that girl from the Market, she seems to like Nick,” he said with enthusiasm. “I think he needs cheering up. Well, maybe. With Nick it’s kind of difficult to tell.”
Mae smiled and nodded and pressed her palm protectively over the demon’s mark. Her mark wanted her to do what Nick wanted, whatever that was, to be close to him. This was the way demons possessed you. They made you want to give in.
If there had ever been a possibility of her being with Nick—and of course there hadn’t been, Nick had made that perfectly clear—it was gone now. She could never be sure if she wanted to be with him or if the mark was drawing her to him. She could never let herself be controlled like that.
When Mae and Jamie came out, everyone appeared to have taken advantage of their absence in order to pick fights.
“If you can sing like that, why did you never sing for the Market?” Sin demanded.
Alan was keeping his place in the book with a finger. “For the dancers?” he asked coolly. “I’ll pass.”
“I just don’t like you, that’s all,” Seb snapped. Seb and Nick were standing near the car. Mae hoped that Seb hadn’t tried to touch it.
“I don’t think so,” said Nick. “I think you’re so jealous of me you can’t stand it.”
Mae acted fast.
“Seb doesn’t need to be jealous of anyone,” she said, twining her fingers with his and pulling him backward with her and toward Alan. “Hey, how about another song?”
Alan obeyed, plucking out a low, gradual song, the kind you didn’t dance to. Mae lay back in the grass and let the sun wash over her face and travel warm down her body, putting in comments as everyone talked, long pauses drifting in between the conversations.
At one point she levered herself up on her elbows and saw Nick sitting on the ground beside Alan’s chair, long legs stretched out and laughing at something Alan was saying. Alan reached out and did not ruffle his hair, but traced the air above it without touching him. That seemed to be an acceptable compromise.
Alan looked happy. He loved Nick, Mae was certain of that, and so surely, surely he wouldn’t betray him.
The sun was low in the sky, light flowing over the clouds like melted butter, when Sin rose and brushed the grass off her jeans. “I’d better get going,” she said. “I can’t leave Trish with the kids all day.”
“Come back anytime,” Nick said lazily, head against the arm of Alan’s chair.
“Oh, I might just,” said Sin, sparkling at him. She raised an eyebrow at Alan. “Good?”
“Great,” Alan said, his mouth curving.
Sin shrugged and walked toward the kitchen door to fetch her bag. Mae jumped up and mumbled something about ice as she ran to follow Sin.
When she opened the door, she saw Sin with her bag open, hesitating at the kitchen counter. Mae saw the tablet and the paper inside, Sin’s fingers a fraction of an inch away from them.
Sin shook her head and closed the bag again.
“Thinking of leaving them?” Mae asked from the door.
Sin jumped. “I’m not going to. I have kids to feed.”
“It matters that you thought about it,” said Mae.
“Why? He won’t know.”
“I will,” Mae told her. “And you will. What do you think of Alan and Nick now?”
“As how?”
“As an alternative to being ruled by magicians,” Mae said. “You told me you loved the Market, and we could be friends because I loved the Market too. Are you going to let the Market be ruined?”
“Do you have a plan to stop it?”
“Yeah,” Mae said. “Actually, I do. Alan’s going to lure Nick to what Nick will think is a Market night, and he’ll trap him in a magicians’ circle and strip away his powers. How do you think Nick will react to that?”
Sin sucked her breath in through her teeth. “Kill him.”
Mae had only been thinking that Nick would never forgive him. That he might kill Alan had not occurred to her, but Sin’s flat certainty made her go cold.
“We can’t let that happen.”
Sin hesitated. “What’s your plan?”
“Are there people in the Market who would follow you without stopping to consult with Merris?”
Sin looked as if not consulting Merris was a foreign concept to her.
“You could start with Matthias the piper,” Mae suggested, and Sin looked suddenly thoughtful. “I’ll warn Nick. Then, instead of being trapped, he’ll work with the Market people. We can all deal with the magicians together.”
“Kill them, you mean.”
Mae took a deep breath and thought of the magician she’d killed for Jamie, thought of the bloody knife she’d washed and kept in a drawer she never opened. Then she thought of why she’d done it, and whether the nightmares were worth it.
“Yes,” she said steadily. “That’s what I mean.”
Nick and Jamie would both be safe, and Alan and Merris would not be able to make choices that would ruin them.
Sin gave a tiny nod. “I just wanted to be sure you knew that.”
She tapped her fingers against the top of the kitchen counter, and then fished her phone out of her jeans pocket and tossed it at Mae. Mae caught it neatly.
“Put your number in it,” Sin said. “I’ll ask some people. And I’ll let you know if we have a plan.”
Mae remembered Jessica the messenger, and that she had known how Mae danced at the Goblin Market. A tourist could have talked. Or there might be a spy at the Market. “Be careful who you talk to.” Sin nodded as if that went without saying.
Sin’s phone was plain and cheap. Mae thought of her own phone, which slid open and was tiny, shiny, and covered in stickers with slogans and castles and cupcakes on them. Sin loved Merris. She had no mother.
She was risking so much more than Mae was.
“Thank you,” Mae said.
She keyed in her number and then threw the phone back to Sin, who caught it and smiled, one of those beautiful showpiece smiles, as if she was throwing Mae a red flower.
“Don’t thank me,” she said. “Just keep your part of the bargain.”
When Mae went back into the garden, she found Jamie curled up like a cat in the grass.
“I think I would like to go to sleep,” he said.
“Come on,” Seb said, sliding his sketchbook into his pocket and offering Jamie a hand up. “I’ll take you home.”
They drove home in companionable silence, the engine humming and the sun shining through the windows. The air had turned amber and slow as honey, and Seb was humming as he drove. Jamie was lying down in the backseat, his breath slow and regular, and Mae half shut her eyes against the sunlight, her lashes cutting up the world into shadows and gold.
Seb pulled up outside their house, wheels crunching on the gravel, and he reached out and touched her hand.