Just like that. Like magic.
Mae searched for Jamie for about an hour before she gave up, went home, and ran up the stairs to find her mother in the parlor having tea with a messenger from a magicians’ Circle.
“Uh,” said Mae, quick-thinking and brilliant as always.
Annabel was gleaming with polite determination to be a perfect hostess, pale and avid as a very polite ghoul.
The messenger for the magicians’ Circle looked far more normal. She had dark hair and a smart suit, but Mae could imagine her in jeans and a jumper, being a normal mother. Except then she tilted her head and Mae saw her earrings, circles with tiny knives inside them, real knives with needle-sharp points.
Alan had explained that circles with knives inside were a sign magicians had their messengers carry, promising death to anyone who interfered with them.
Mae had always thought that jewelry should make a statement.
For this one, though, she didn’t need the jewelry. Mae had seen her before. Nick and Alan had drawn weapons at the very sight of her, and she’d smiled, her red-lipsticked businesswoman’s mouth forming a smile that was just a little too calm, just a little too close to cruel, and said, “Black Arthur says that now’s the time. He wants it back.”
At the time, Mae had not even known who Black Arthur was or what he wanted. She did now.
She did not know the woman’s name.
Annabel blinked at her twice, a motherly Morse code for, Well done, you barged in on me and my guest like a bull longing for a new china shop.
“This is my daughter, Mavis,” she said apologetically. Whether she was apologizing for Mae’s sudden arrival or Mae’s pink hair was unclear. “This is Jessica Walker, Mavis. She’s a colleague of mine looking for planning permission from the board.”
“I have a client who wishes to expand her interests to Exeter,” said Jessica Walker, the magicians’ messenger, and smiled with a hint of teeth. “We’ve met before, haven’t we, my dear?”
That smile was an obvious challenge. Mae suddenly found calm in her sea of panic and smiled back.
“Have you?” Annabel asked.
“Certainly,” said Mae, matching Jessica’s cool, amused tone.
“I met her and a group of her friends when they were interviewing me for an extracurricular project,” Jessica said. “Do you know the Ryves brothers? Sweet boys.”
“I don’t believe so,” said Annabel slowly, a pin-scratch line appearing between her silvery brows.
“Mavis struck me as a very promising girl,” Jessica continued, twinkling at Mae. “School’s almost out,” she added. “Have you considered doing an internship? My client could use an extra pair of hands, and it would look terribly good on your CV.”
“I hadn’t thought about it, but maybe it would be interesting,” Mae said, and Annabel looked briefly startled and pleased.
Not while the messenger was looking at her, Mae was glad to see.
“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” said Jessica, almost absently, “could you possibly get me another plate of that delicious shortbread?”
Annabel smiled, facade as perfect as the glaze on good china, and said, “Of course.”
Her mother rose, smoothing her dove gray skirt, and left the parlor. Mae came in, scuffing the creamy carpet deliberately, making it clear that she was at home here, that she was facing down her enemy on her own turf.
Then she sank into the chair opposite the magicians’ messenger, still warm from her mother’s body, and said, “Does the Obsidian Circle have a message for me?”
“What makes you think it was the Obsidian Circle who sent me?” Jessica Walker asked smoothly.
It hadn’t occurred to her before, but of course there were other circles. And of course, they might take an interest in Jamie.
“Whichever Circle sent you,” Mae said, keeping her voice even, “I’d like to know what they want.”
Jessica crossed her legs with a rasp of silk stockings. “My, you have learned a lot, haven’t you? When I saw you in April, I don’t think you had the faintest idea what was going on.”
“Yeah, I catch on fast.”
“What do you know about messengers, Mavis?”
“It’s Mae,” Mae snapped.
“Like Mae West?” Jessica inquired, and did not wait for Mae’s nod. “Let me guess. You’ve heard we have the power to be magicians, but instead of killing people ourselves, we serve the magicians so they will dole out power to us. Like a magical weekly wage. Does that strike you as likely?”
“How d’you mean?”
“A great many messengers would be all too ready to kill for our own power,” Jessica said softly. “The fact is, we do not have enough capacity for magic to bind the demons and set them loose on chosen victims. We were born with only the barest maddening trace of magic in our veins. Not enough. Not nearly enough. You do know it’s hereditary, don’t you?”
Nick had thought he was a magician, being Arthur and Olivia’s son. Gerald had talked about having a magical ancestor.
Mae hadn’t actually considered it before, but she said, “Sure.”
“It goes underground in some families, and turns up when magic is forgotten, like stumbling on lost treasure. You didn’t find treasure. Do you never hate your brother,” Jessica murmured, “for being the one born with all that shining magic as his birthright?”
“No,” said Mae.
“He’s going to be very good,” Jessica continued as if Mae hadn’t spoken. “That’s why Gerald is being so careful with him. He’s going to stand in circles of fire and command storms one day. He’s going to wear a ring. And you can dance up a demon just a little better than the other dancers in the Goblin Market. Do you think that’s fair? Do you never want power of your own?”
Mae forced her mind to go slowly over what Jessica was saying, to be methodical and pick out the important details. The fact that she might have a drop of magic in her blood after all wasn’t important.
Not compared to the fact that the magicians clearly had a spy in the Goblin Market, if they knew how she danced. Probably more than one.
“I never hated my brother,” said Mae. “That was your question, wasn’t it? And I answered it. Never did. Never will. I love him.”
“And does he love you enough to share power with you?” Jessica asked. “He could, if he were a magician and you were a messenger. If he wore a sigil and you wore a token, you could have all the power you wanted.”
“If I persuaded Jamie to join the Obsidian Circle, you mean.”
“Not necessarily. But Gerald Lynch is a very brilliant young man.”
Mae rolled her eyes. “I’m sure.”
“You know the sigils the magicians wear?” Jessica asked. “Brands that feed them power and mark them as belonging to a particular Circle. They’re a little like demons’ marks, in a way. Power bleeds through.”
Mae remembered Olivia pulling down her shirt to reveal the black sigil of the Obsidian Circle on her white skin. Nobody who wears this mark is innocent, she’d said, her pale eyes glowing like a hungry animal’s.
Gerald and this woman sitting so calmly in her mother’s parlor wanted to put a mark like that on Jamie.
“Word on the street is that Gerald’s invented a whole different kind of mark,” Jessica said. “Some people say more than one, but I don’t believe that. The one everyone is talking about is based on the Obsidian Circle’s master ring. Thorned snakes eating their own tails. If it’s true, that would be power worth serving.” Jessica’s lips curved, the knives in her earrings ringing out faintly, like wind chimes. “Could be power enough to take on a demon.”
Mae curled her fingers tight into her palms and forced herself to keep smiling.
“So you’re here to frighten Jamie into joining?”
“I’m here to watch you both,” Jessica said. “And perhaps give you a little advice on your best course of action.”
Annabel came through the door, walking like a cat in her towering heels.
“Have you two been having an interesting conversation?” she asked.
She shook her head as Jessica got up to help her with the tray, murmuring that it was not at all necessary, and Jessica leaned against the back of Mae’s chair. Mae’s spine felt as if it wanted to crawl out of her skin and hide down the front of her shirt, but she refused to let herself turn around, even when Jessica was so close her breath was ruffling Mae’s hair.
“Very interesting. I do hope that Mavis will consider the internship,” the messenger said, and she touched Mae’s hair with one hand.
The gesture must have looked casual to Annabel, even affectionate, but it was such a shock that it felt like an invasion. Her fingers were just a little too tight in Mae’s hair as she spoke, her calm voice the way Mae had heard it months ago, too close to cruelty.
“I will be sure,” said Jessica Walker, “to keep in touch.”
She did not stay long after that. When she was gone, Annabel offered Mae a cup of tea. Mae shook her head.
“If you took an interest in law,” Annabel said, “it would make me very hap—”
“You can’t ever let that woman in the house again,” said Mae.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mavis!”
“Annabel,” Mae said, “I—when I knew her before, I can’t talk about it. It’s private. But she was terrible to friends of mine. She scared me badly. I don’t trust her. I don’t want her here, or—or around you.”
“It seemed like her client’s custom might be a valuable asset to the firm,” Annabel said slowly, and Mae’s heart sank.
She was usually able to persuade people, to make them see things her way, but it had never worked with Annabel.
“When you and your brother disappeared,” Annabel began.
“Oh, not this again!”
“Hear me out, Mavis. When you disappeared, I was very—” Annabel cleared her throat. “I was very distressed. I realize that your father has pulled away a lot from you both in recent years, and I have been absorbed in my work and not compensating for the loss. I regret that.”
“Um,” Mae said. “Okay.”
“If you two ran away under the impression that I would not care,” Annabel said, “I did. And while your behavior was extremely reckless and irresponsible, I know I was at fault as well. If you wish me to turn away this client for your peace of mind, I will. I should cut back on my work anyway, and—we should make an effort to eat together.”
Annabel was probably just saying this because she felt she had to, because she didn’t want the girls down at the tennis club to gossip about her delinquent children, but she’d said that she would turn the magicians’ messenger away all the same. Mae was so relieved she wanted to cry.
“All right,” she said. “It’s a deal.”
She thought of something and fumbled at her neck, untying the cord that held her talisman in place. If the magicians had sent a messenger to visit her mother, they could send demons.
“Could you wear this, Annabel?” she asked, getting up and holding it out. “To seal the deal,” she added, and gave Annabel a smile she hoped would be convincing.
Annabel looked pleased at the gesture and absolutely horrified by the necklace, which looked like a huge dream catcher, gleaming with bones and gems.
“Thank you, Mavis,” she said bravely, tying it on and tucking it immediately under her blouse. “It’s very unique. Does it have any … occult significance? I know you like that kind of thing.”
Annabel probably classified anything from reading horoscopes to outright Satanism as “that kind of thing,” but she was being terribly good about this. Mae went behind her mother’s chair and then leaned down and circled her shoulders with both arms, giving her a brief squeeze.