The Demon's Covenant

“Like what, Mother?”

Annabel’s mouth quivered for a moment and then set. “I wonder if Elizabeth might still be up for golf,” she said. “I am sick of wasting my time here.”

“Annabel,” Mae said. “Please, Annabel—”

Annabel looked scared, as if she thought Mae might start breaking things with her mind as well. She ran out the door and across the landing, heading down the stairs and back to her uncomplicated life, where things like this did not happen.

Mae felt frozen until the sound of Annabel’s car engine broke her trance and made her run again, down the stairs, to make her go back to Jamie, to make her take it back.

The car was already going down the driveway, so Mae ran after it and thumped it. Annabel did not look behind her. As far as Mae could see, her mother did not even check the side mirror. The car just accelerated, Annabel was that desperate to escape her kids and all their weirdness. Mae lost her head and tried to run after it, to chase her and catch her and keep her.

She stopped running when the car hit the main road toward the city, and sat in the grass of the crescent with her head on her knees. Annabel had never gone before, not really, not like Roger. She had always kept her distance but never left.

Mae got to her feet and walked back up the hill to her house as soon as she realized that they had both left Jamie alone.

When she pushed open the front door, she heard Gerald’s voice coming from the direction of the kitchen.

She hesitated, then kept pushing the door open, but much more gently, and slipped inside.

Gerald wasn’t looking in the direction of the door. He was sitting on one of the stools at the counter, sandy head tilted toward Jamie. Jamie was leaning against the kitchen surfaces with his arms wrapped around himself.

“I know it hurts, Jamie,” Gerald said. “I’m sorry it hurts. But it won’t keep hurting. The pain goes away. I promise.”

Jamie gave a jagged little laugh.

“Jamie, look at me,” Gerald commanded softly, and Jamie pulled his fixed gaze from the floor and looked. “I promise you,” Gerald told him, serious.

Jamie’s face softened, still sad but a little comforted and more than a little adoring.

Mae moved, barely letting her feet touch the floor as she did so, gentle and quiet as a shadow. She slipped up the stairs and into her room, inching her bedroom door open lest even a creak let Gerald know he and Jamie were not alone.

Nothing seemed to teach Jamie not to leave the door of his heart always open, not to believe people when they acted as if they liked him. Mae went to her chest of drawers and pulled open the second drawer.

She drew out the knife she had killed one magician with from underneath a folded shirt.

She’d dreamed about this knife, hated the thought of it, never wanted to use it again. Now the hilt fit against her palm and everything was simple. She still hated the knife.

But she was perfectly prepared to use it.

Mae slipped the knife into her pocket and went to make her way down the stairs again, but she was stopped short by the sight of Gerald and Jamie, who had relocated to the hall. She hit the floor so she was hidden by the stair rail and watched, one hand in her pocket gripping the knife.

She could run down and help Jamie in time. Gerald wouldn’t be expecting her to have a weapon.

Jamie did not seem in need of defense at the moment, though. Gerald’s hand was cupped under his elbow, guiding but not forcing, and when Jamie stepped away, Gerald let him do it.

“I don’t want to go back to the house.”

“I think some of the other magicians could really help you,” said Gerald. “Ben’s brother and he tried to keep in touch for a while. I want to be able to help, Jamie, but I don’t have the experience.”

“You never wanted to see them again?”

“The magicians came and got me when I was eleven years old,” Gerald said. “And God, Jamie, I was so glad to go.”

Jamie looked up at him, eyes luminous with sympathy, and Gerald gave him a little pained smile.

“But a lot of the other magicians were like you. They had families who were well-meaning, or started out well-meaning, who tried not to be afraid, or pretended everything was all right. It didn’t last. They’ll always be scared of you. They’ll always end up hating you, because you have more power than they do. Everything’s about power in the end.”

“I don’t think so,” Jamie said, but not angrily. He was looking up at Gerald as if he wanted to help him, to convince him, and of course Gerald would be able to see that and use it.

“No?” Gerald asked. “Then why does she hate you? Just because you’re a circus freak?”

Jamie flinched as if he’d been hit.

“She had no right to say that to you,” Gerald continued. “She has no rights left over you at all. She’s not your mother anymore. We’re your family now. I’m your family now. I won’t let anything hurt you ever again.”

Why couldn’t Annabel have said something like this? Mae thought, and was deeply and terribly angry with her, with Gerald, even with Jamie for looking at Gerald with his heart in his eyes and on his sleeve, out in the open where Gerald could see it and play with it to win.

“We’re going away, after we neutralize the demon.”

Jamie frowned. “Nick.”

“Sure,” said Gerald. “This place where Arthur hatched his plot and where the child that wasn’t a child was born, where it all went wrong, it’s the place to end things, but I want my Circle to have a fresh start. We’re going to go to Wales. I want you to come with me.”

“What?” Jamie said, and almost smiled, an expression born more of nervousness than pleasure. “I can’t—”

“Can you stay here?” Gerald asked him softly. “Will she want you here?”

“She’s my mother!”

“And obviously, she loves you very much.”

The light above them, shaped to look like a candelabra, rang out like a dream catcher in the wind, bulbs chiming in their metal cases. Gerald looked up as the sounds went faint as the far-off peals of a bell, and then looked back at Jamie.

“Don’t you see?” he asked, his voice tender. “You don’t belong here. You belong with me.”

Jamie looked at Gerald with longing, and then looked away. “We could go to Wales and do magic, and everyone would be kind to me. Things would be beautiful, and I’d have so much power—”

“Yes.”

“And we’d still send demons over the mountains to murder people.”

“Nobody would make you do anything you didn’t want to do. You could take all the time you need to get used to—”

“The idea of killing people?” Jamie asked, and he put a hand to his mouth and laughed behind it, terrible and muffled. “No. There’s something you never understood, Gerald. You never had a chance.”

Mae began to move, slowly, still crouched, to the top of the stairs. She was poised to leap up and run.

“You wanted me to like you,” Jamie went on, softly. “Well, I do. I really do. You tried to make me like magic. And I do now, I finally do, so thank you for that. But I know where leaving with you leads. I could never hurt someone else so I could have magic. I don’t care what happens to me. I won’t come with you.”

The front door slammed open with a bang. The lights began to rattle and swing. Mae stood up as Gerald grabbed Jamie’s wrist, and Jamie made a small, agonized sound.

There was something moving below the surface of Jamie’s arm, spreading from the point where Gerald’s hand was, as if he’d changed Jamie’s veins into lines of barbed wire.

“You’ll change your mind.”

“Gerald?” Jamie asked, his voice breaking.

Mae should have realized when Laura threw the spell at Jamie, and not Gerald. Of course there was a catch to the protection Gerald had given him. He was safe from everyone’s magic but Gerald’s.

“I don’t intend to leave you here with these people so they can eat you alive or Celeste can snap you up. I don’t intend to leave you at all,” Gerald said. He didn’t look friendly now, his eyes lit up electric blue and their house going mad around them. “You’ll thank me later.”

Jamie’s breaths were coming out like sobs. He lifted a hand, and Gerald laughed down at him.

“You don’t have enough power. Maybe one day.”

“Let me go!”

Jamie ended with a scream that sounded torn out of him by the roots. Gerald was walking backward toward the open door, dragging Jamie with him.

Mae gave up on waiting for Gerald to turn his back and just hurtled down the stairs, brandishing her knife.

She knew it was a mistake when Gerald saw her over Jamie’s head and she remembered how she had been frozen once before, been tossed aside as if she could not possibly be a threat, and thought that once she was neutralized there would be nobody to help Jamie at all.

Before Gerald could do more than look at her with wide, shocked eyes, he let Jamie go and fell to the floor.

Annabel lifted her golf club over her head and hit Gerald with it again. She looked like an avenging angel with a truly excellent tailor.

“Get away from my son,” she snapped to Gerald’s unconscious body, and stepped over him without faltering for an instant in her mile-high heels.

“Mum,” Jamie gasped, and flew to her, burying his face in the shoulder of her suit, arms around her waist and almost lifting her off her feet.

“James,” said Annabel, sounding desperate and awkward and patting him on the back with the hand that wasn’t holding the golf club. “Who is that man? What’s happening? I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have left, that was a very badly judged move on my part, it won’t happen again. Mavis, is that a knife?”

“Um,” Mae said, and pocketed it. “Maybe?”

“Guns don’t always work,” Jamie muttered, muffled into her shoulder.

“Ah,” said Annabel faintly. “Indeed.”

“We can’t call the police,” Mae said. “They can’t do anything against magic.”

Annabel raised an eyebrow. “Of course not. Besides, my friend Cora is on the force; she would think I’d started using drugs. Is there anyone who might understand what is going on here?”

“There’s Nick and Alan,” Mae began.

The memory of where she’d been headed before she overheard Jamie’s confession hit her like an earthquake. Mae grabbed for her phone and tried calling Nick’s number again. It was still turned off.

It was past two o’clock.

“Annabel,” said Mae urgently. “You have to drive me to Huntingdon.”

“Cambridgeshire?” Annabel said, sounding more amazed than outraged. Mae had almost expected her to point out that she had a meeting, but she didn’t. She patted Jamie’s back again, seeming resigned to the fact that he wasn’t letting go of her. She even let her hand rest on his shoulder once she was done. “Why do we need to go there?”

“Well, first of all, this guy is going to wake up soon, and we shouldn’t be here when he does. And second, there’s something I need to do. This guy—he’s the leader of a whole bunch of magicians who are attacking Jamie and Nick, and I have a plan to deal with them, and everything’s going to happen in Huntingdon Market Square, and I have to be there.”

“You have a plan to deal with them?” Jamie asked incredulously, pulling away from Annabel a little and staring. “Oh my God, of course you do.”

“I have to get there quickly,” said Mae. “Mum, please. I know you’re confused. I know this all seems crazy. But if I don’t get there, people will die.”

Annabel seemed to come to a decision. She pulled away from Jamie completely and made for the stairs. “I suppose you can explain yourself in the car, Mavis. Excuse me while I fetch something.”