“It was still very—” Alan glanced up from the counter. Color rose to his cheeks in a flash flood of embarrassment. “Hello, Cynthia.”
“Hello, Alan,” Sin said. “Hello, Nick.”
Nick did not look fazed in the slightest. “I was just telling Alan—”
Sin raised her eyebrows. “I heard.”
“And as I was telling Nick,” Alan said, “I’m fine.”
“Nick is right—,” Sin started.
Then she stopped as she saw a change pass over Alan’s face, like the dark shadow of something coming just below the surface of still waters.
“Okay then,” Alan said, a touch too lightly. “If you’re both so keen on me sleeping in my own bed, I guess I’ll go do that now. We have an early start in the morning—Lydie’s school is pretty far off.”
He had obviously done this before, lied and taken himself out of Nick’s sight. He’d obviously got away with this before.
It was Sin’s fault he didn’t get away with it this time.
She said nothing, just stood there and tried to cope with the realization that Alan was going to be tortured in the next room, and she could not even go to him lest his brother find out it was happening.
Alan moved past her.
Faster than even she could move, Nick was blocking the door.
“Why does Sin look like that?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”
“Nick,” Alan said, his voice fraying like a rope about to snap. “Get out of my way.”
Nick filled the doorway edge to edge.
“No.”
“Nick,” Alan said. Then he screamed between his teeth, a strangled terrible sound, and fell forward on his face.
Sin lunged and grabbed one of his arms, slowing his fall so he did not land as hard as she’d feared he would.
Alan did not seem to notice the impact as he fell. He gave another low cry, trying to curl in on himself and failing to do even that, his body shuddering out of his control.
Sin slid to her knees, dragging Alan’s head and shoulders into her lap. The floor was hard wood; she could at least stop him hurting himself. Alan gave another low scream, cut off as if he was strangling himself.
“Shh,” Sin said helplessly. “You’re all right. I’ve got you. I’m right here.”
As if that would matter to Alan, but she could think of nothing else to say.
There was movement in her peripheral vision. She looked up into the drowning black of the demon’s eyes.
“What is happening to him?” Nick demanded.
Alan let out another awful choked sound, shaking so hard it was difficult for Sin to keep hold of him. Nick recoiled as if someone had hit him, someone strong enough to make him feel it.
“What—,” he ground out.
“Shut up,” Sin told him. “I need to help Alan.”
“Help him, then!” Nick’s voice was becoming almost impossible to understand, as if someone was using the wrong instruments to play a familiar song, and the melody was coming out fractured and strange. “What can I do? There has to be something I can do!”
“I’m just going to be there for him,” Sin said. “And you’re just going to shut up.”
Alan moaned, the sound ragged and terrible. Nick was silent.
“Shh,” Sin said again. She stroked his hair and felt Alan’s hand clasp her wrist, his skin fever-hot. He made another cutoff sound, and she realized what he was doing, in the midst of agony.
He was trying not to wake the children.
Sin wanted to cry. Instead she held fast to her control, and to him.
It went on, and on, and on. She had the thought that she would never have let anybody else comfort one of her family, that she would have reached out, and wondered if the demon cared too little to do even that much.
She looked at Nick again, over Alan’s head.
He was crouched on the floor and trembling in sharp bursts, like a whipped dog. She saw his hand, reaching out across the floor toward Alan, then forming a fist and hitting the floor instead.
He did not seem to notice he was bruising his hand, any more than he noticed her looking at him. His devouring demon’s eyes were fixed on Alan.
He might care, then, Sin thought. In his way. But he wasn’t human, and his way wouldn’t do Alan much good.
“I’m here,” she told Alan, again and again. “I’m here.”
It might be a comfort to know someone human was here for him, at last.
Her knees were aching by the time Alan finally went limp and boneless in her arms. For a moment the thought that his heart could have simply given out, that he could have just died, sent sick fear coursing through her, and then he tried weakly to sit up.
Sin helped him, her arm around his shoulders, and Nick acted, grabbing hold of both Alan’s arms and almost throwing him into one of the chairs by their small round kitchen table.
“Now,” Nick said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Sin slipped in, eel-swift, to block Alan from Nick’s view. “Leave him alone. Have you no pity?”
Nick put a hand to Sin’s throat, forcing her head back. The demon’s attention was on her now, his eyes glittering.
“Don’t stand between me and my brother,” he said softly. “And no.”
“Don’t touch her,” Alan commanded, his voice thin and hoarse.
Nick released Sin’s throat and stepped back, until he was behind the counter, as if he did not trust himself not to lash out unless there was a barrier in his way.
Sin didn’t trust him either.
“She knows what’s going on,” Nick observed. “Obviously. How many people know? Why did you lie to me? Why do you always lie?”
“It’s in my nature,” Alan said in a low voice, and then more clearly: “I didn’t want you to get upset. There was no point in telling you.”
“No point?” Nick echoed.
“No,” said Alan. “There’s nothing you can do. It’s just Gerald demonstrating his power over me. He wants you to be upset, so when he comes to you with demands, you’ll do what he wants.”
Alan had decided not to mention that there had already been demands, Sin noticed. She turned toward Alan, joining him in this conspiracy almost without a thought. She bowed her head as if she was fussing over him, making sure Nick could not see her face.
Her eyes and Alan’s met in perfect understanding.
In his nature, indeed.
“And you didn’t think I should know this,” Nick said.
“I didn’t feel like giving him the satisfaction,” Alan returned.
“He was trying to keep it from everyone,” Sin added. “I happened to see him have another attack, the day I was teaching him archery up on the hill. If I’d thought it would do you any good to know, I would have told you.”
Perfectly true, as far as it went.
She looked up to see if Nick was buying it. He was standing with his arms braced on the counter and his head bowed.
“What are we going to do?” he asked, and then louder, his voice furious: “What’s the plan?”
“Oh, well,” Alan said, his voice gentle and tired. “That’s the problem. There isn’t one.”
“What do you mean, there isn’t one?”
“Think about it, Nick,” said Alan. “I can’t make a plan. If there was a plan, I couldn’t know it. Gerald could torture it out of me anytime he liked.”
Nick’s shoulders bunched as his brother spoke. His head stayed bowed.
“What are we meant to do then?” he snarled. “Just sit and wait until he comes with his demands? Or until he pushes you too far and kills you?”
“The second would be preferable,” Alan said. “I won’t have you a magician’s slave.”
“Why not?” Nick demanded. “What does it matter? I was one before.”
“That was before you were mine,” Alan said. His voice was steadier now. “Nick, if I do die. If it happens, I hope it won’t, but if it does, it’s all right. I’ll feel all right about it if I can leave you safe behind, with Mae and Jamie. It will be like leaving behind a life’s work. Do you know something? I remember snatches of things before you came, bits and pieces about my mother. But as far back as I can think in a straight line, from that point of my life to this, there’s you, and wanting to take care of you. That’s what I remember. It’s all right.”
Nick did look up then.
“I remember my life, before you,” he said, his voice chilly and distant. “Don’t make me live like that again.”
“Nick,” Alan said.
“Nick,” Nick repeated viciously. “What was that, in the beginning, but some baby name you used because you heard Olivia call me Hnikarr. A demon’s name in a child’s mouth. Until you turned it into the biggest lie you ever told. Nicholas Ryves. As if there was such a person. As if I was a person. Who do you think I’ll be, when you die?”
“I think you’ll be Nicholas Ryves,” said Alan. “You made that lie true for me. You’ve answered to the name, every time I called. I know who you are.”
“Do you know what I am?”
Demon, thought Sin, but she did not say it. Even Alan did not speak, just shook his head and waited.
“I can’t make a plan,” Nick said slowly. “I can’t save anyone. All I can do is kill. I’m a weapon. And if I can’t be your weapon, I’ll be someone else’s.”
“What are you going to do?” Sin asked.
Nick tilted his chin, baring his throat to Alan for a moment, as if that was a response.
“Be careful,” Alan murmured, as if it was.
“You’re one to talk,” Nick said. “For nine minutes tonight, I thought you were dead already.”
He sounded perfectly calm about that, but he had counted the minutes. Sin couldn’t quite put the two things together, not in a way that made any sense.
Nick turned his eyes to her, blank but still demanding, like staring into an abyss that stared back. Sin met his gaze, refusing to let him read anything from her face again, and his eyes bored into her for a moment.
Then he turned away. He left the kitchen, and a second later, the door of the flat slammed shut.
Alan got out his phone and called Mae.
“I think,” he said, “you might want to expect a guest fairly soon. Let me know if your aunt Edith sees him and calls the cops. I’ll come bail him out eventually. Yes, Cynthia and the kids are safe here.”
He raised an eyebrow at Sin. She shook her head.
“She’s already asleep,” Alan said without missing a beat. “Yeah, it’s been a long night. I’ll let her know you want to talk to her.”
He turned the phone off.
“What do you think Nick’s going to do?” Sin asked.
“I don’t know,” Alan answered. “I’m trying not to think about it. If I don’t know, I can’t tell Gerald. Besides, it’s only fair for Nick to have some secrets, considering my—entire life.”
“Yes,” said Sin, thinking of how she’d thought the demon might lash out, even at Alan, the way Nick’s hand had felt at her throat. “You’re certainly the problem child.”
She sagged against the kitchen table. Alan could see through any show she might put on. There was a certain freedom in knowing that, in simply stopping.
She was so tired.
“You really should take my bed,” Alan said. He gave her a beautiful, plausible smile. “You’ve had quite a night of it. You need your sleep.”
Sin didn’t mention what Alan had gone through tonight. Instead she backed away from the table, going for the sitting room and the sofa there, and paused at the kitchen door to say, “I do need my sleep. That’s why I don’t want an angry demonic alarm clock going off at me.”