The Demon's Covenant

Alan shut the book and said, “I want you to dance up a demon for me.”

He said nothing else for a moment, reaching for his worn bag and sliding the book inside. He took out protective amulets, stones with strange, curving traceries on them, little wooden statues of women, glittering necklaces of jewels strung together with symbols Mae didn’t recognize, and an enchanted knife she did recognize.

All of this magical paraphernalia lay spread out on the grass, in the sunlight. It was a day for picnics, and instead Alan wanted her to call up a demon.

“If you dance for a demon alone, sometimes they come,” Alan said. “But without a partner, without the fever fruit, you haven’t paid for anything. They can ask for anything they want in exchange for an answer. The price is guaranteed to be high. And you could die just trying. You’ve only danced for them twice. If you slip up, or even if you don’t, the demon might ask for something you can’t afford to lose. You could get possessed. You could be dead within an hour.”

Mae looked at him, his dark blue eyes serious and his mouth a straight line. She nodded slowly and reached out for the knife Alan had got at the Goblin Market in May.

Alan grabbed her wrist before she reached it, pinning her hand to the ground. The grass was cool under her open palm, and his fingers pressed down like a vise.

“You shouldn’t do this because you think you owe me,” he whispered. “You shouldn’t do this at all. I shouldn’t ask you.”

It occurred to Mae that Alan was so unused to the truth that his voice went harsh when he spoke it, as if he was speaking a strange tongue. It made him sound a little like Nick.

She gave the demon’s brother a level look.

“But you are asking me.”

Alan smiled. It was a terrible smile. “Yes.”

“Because there’s nobody else you can ask,” Mae said. “Because Nick can’t know. Which demon am I calling?”

Alan’s shoulders went tight at that, the way she’d turned it into a done deal, his fingers biting into her wrist. “Liannan.”

“Well, okay then,” said Mae. “It’s been more than twenty-four hours since I saw that shark-toothed little smile. I was starting to miss her.”

She reached out for the knife again, pushing at Alan’s hold so he had to really hurt her or let her go. He let her go and snatched up the knife instead.

“I’ll cut it. I’ve been going to the Market since I was four years old. I had my hand on Nick’s to guide him when he cut his first circle, and I’m not going to make any mistakes.”

“Oh, and I am?” Mae demanded, outraged.

“Mae,” said Alan, his voice low. “You’re going to risk your life for no other reason than because I asked you. Let me do this one thing.”

He kept looking at her with terrifying determination, and she supposed it wasn’t worth fighting about. She made a sweeping gesture that gave him permission, and lay back in the summer-warm grass as Alan sank his knife into the earth and made all the symbols, trapped within one circle.

She closed her eyes against the summer sky and smelled the broken earth, crushed grass, the cool leaf and grape smell the breeze was drifting over to her from the vineyard, and the cotton and steel smell of Alan close by.

Eventually he said, “I’m done.”

Mae sat up, feeling a little dizzy. There was the circle laid out before her, there was no Market and no Nick and no Sin and no magic. She had to do this herself.

“I have a speaking charm in my bag,” Alan told her.

“No,” Mae said. “I can speak for myself.”

Alan swallowed and nodded. He was rising slowly to his feet as she scrambled up and walked into the circle. She could feel his eyes on her back, watching, but he couldn’t help her now. Nobody could touch her.

Mae closed her eyes and remembered the lines of the circle, then put what she knew into action. She lifted her arms and danced, demanding entry into the demon world, making her steps as fast and as confident as she could. She refused to think about what would happen if she faltered.

The sun was hot on her hair, a light breeze lifting strands and playing on the skin of her neck. She thought about that instead, about summer in the vineyard, Nick’s hand in hers with the silver ring growing warm between their palms, Alan’s mouth on hers in the dark, quiet kitchen. She couldn’t dance the way Sin danced, like poetry in motion, so she made the dance different, made it negotiation in motion.

Mae held out her thought of the world like a glittering bauble, held it up mockingly just out of Liannan’s reach, and she smiled with her face lifted to the sun.

It was more of a smirk, really. She was thinking, You know you want this.

“I call on the nightmare lover,” she said, and twisted through summer air turning cold. The circle seemed to be tipping somewhere else, to a place she didn’t want to go, and her hair was streaming suddenly in an icy wind. “I call on she who waits for dancers to fall. I call on she who had me and lost me yesterday. Come and get me, Liannan! If you can.”

The circle flipped as if she was standing in a snow globe, and she found herself enveloped in chaos. Summer had been torn away and she was in darkness, hearing screams that sounded tortured or triumphant, horrible low laughter, and never any words. She felt cold fingers touching her hands, pulling on her clothes; she looked down and saw nothing. She shuddered uncontrollably and then looked up and saw Liannan leaping for her like a tigress, all glowing eyes and teeth.

“Mae!” Alan shouted, far away. “Don’t move!”

She locked her muscles to stop herself from running. She hadn’t trespassed in this circle, she belonged here, and she was wearing her talisman. Liannan couldn’t touch her.

There was no partner to share this with, nobody to help bear the burden of linking the worlds, nobody to comfort her in the presence of demons. Liannan’s breath was a cold blast in her face, like some freezing alternative to a furnace. The cord of her talisman had turned into a line of ice as well, the cold of it burning so all she wanted to do was scream and tear it off.

Mae didn’t like it when someone tried to scare her. She held still as needle-sharp invisible fingers ran down her body, still as her own talisman burned her, still as a clammy sheen of sweat gathered on her skin and she began to shake. Liannan was a fraction of an inch away, her breath cold in Mae’s mouth.

“Can you call demons, little one?” she asked, her voice low and almost musical. Her presence flooded through Mae’s mind like disease. “Of course you can. All humans can. Whether the demons will come when you call, oh, that’s another thing.”

Mae took a deep breath. “And yet here you are.”

Liannan’s crystal-colored eyes were dulled in the darkness, pools full of shadows with no light to reflect. She smiled.

“Here we are,” she said. With a flicker as if Mae had blinked, though she hadn’t, they were standing in Manstree Field and lights were playing brilliantly in Liannan’s eyes. “Now,” the demon continued, still smiling, “what do you want?”

“It wasn’t her who wanted to speak to you,” said Alan, his voice close now and hoarse, as if he’d been shouting. “It was me.”

Mae wondered what he had seen when she saw the demon world, but she didn’t even dare look at him. She wouldn’t risk taking her eyes off Liannan.

The demon laughed, stretching her arms over her head as if she was enjoying the sunshine. Her hands looked almost like a normal girl’s hands today, the ice formed into the shape of human hands and faintly flushed with pink, as if someone had mixed a few drops of blood in water before it was frozen. She even had nails, though they glittered like steel.

“Why, Alan,” she said, giving him a lingering look. “All you ever have to do is take off your talisman and say my name, and I will come slipping sweet into your dreams.”

“I share a room with my brother,” Alan said pleasantly. “That’d be a little awkward.”

Liannan lifted one shoulder in a shrug. She seemed to be dressed in a waterfall, water tinted just green enough to veil her body rather than reveal it. Even her hair was wet, rivulets of water running through the dark red curls like ribbons. Her shoulder rose right out of her liquid wrap, white and wet.

“Instead you get your little girlfriend to risk her life so that you could see me,” Liannan said, and Mae did look at Alan then, and saw the red stain on his cheeks, as if he’d been slapped in the face. Liannan laughed. “It happens all the time,” she said, as if she was soothing him. “A man who was hanged in this field once promised to love a woman forever, and the next year handed her body over so he could have me. He lived to be sorry for his bargain. They usually live long enough to be sorry.”

A man who was hanged, Mae thought. She’d known why the field was called Manstree Field, of course, and the vineyard was called after the field, but it had never really hit home until now. People had hung from a gibbet here, their bodies swaying like fruit from trees. They were all standing in the shadow of a gallows.

“Come to make a bargain with me?” Liannan inquired.

Alan hesitated. “Yes.”

Liannan seemed almost tender, as if she was speaking to a child or someone she loved very much. Mae could feel her cold, clawing hunger. “Think you’re going to be sorry for it?”

“Oh yes,” Alan breathed.

Liannan turned away from both of them, her watery train a circle that foamed and gleamed about her feet. The sunlight hit her full on and made her dazzling, like the sun breaking the ocean into a thousand sparkling points of light.

“At least it sounds interesting. Ask me, then.”

“Something else first,” said Alan. “Let Mae go.”

“What?” Mae demanded.

“I need to be alone with Liannan,” Alan said. “And I can’t—I can’t think the way I need to while you’re in danger. I want Mae free to step out of the circle with no consequences.”

“You can have that,” Liannan told him. “At a price.”

“I’ll pay it.”

The demon began to look amused. “I haven’t told you what it is yet.”

“I know.”

“And what do you have, Alan Ryves, that makes you believe I will give you an answer and let a human free of my circle?”

Alan looked at her the way he looked at demons, steadfast and calm, as if they had just walked into his bookshop and asked for a recommendation. As if they were people.

“I have a winning card to play,” he said. “I think.”

“Better hope you’re right,” Liannan murmured. “Or you go home to your brother tonight wearing black eyes and a smile. All right, Mae, you can leave.”

Mae stared into her cold eyes. They reflected the summer vineyard of Mae’s childhood like carnival mirrors, twisting everything.

“And if I don’t leave?”

Liannan laughed. “I’d be delighted if you stayed. It won’t let Alan out of his bargain. A bargain’s a very personal thing between two people, you know. Maybe the most personal thing there is.”

Mae narrowed her eyes. “Maybe for you.”

She could feel Liannan’s dark presence receding like chains being unlocked and slipping away from her. She could feel the whole demon world slipping away. The sense of pressure, as if she was leaning against a door and trying to keep it shut, was suddenly and blissfully gone.

She hadn’t wanted Alan to buy her freedom, but it would be stupid not to take it.

She stepped out of the circle, the sun warm on her arms and the back of her neck, her muscles unlocking from tension and terror and turning liquid, the heat of a normal summer day as shockingly sweet as having hot water poured all over her aching body.

Alan caught her as she stumbled, both her hands landing on his arms. She got only a glimpse of his eyes, wide and a little frantic, black pupil swallowing up the blue, and then he was kissing her. He held on to her a little too tightly, making her remember with a jolt that he was strong, and he kissed her almost desperately, as if they were standing at a harbor somewhere about to be parted. As if he was saying goodbye.