The Demon's Surrender

“What about Seb?”

“What about him?”

“What’s he doing, do you know?”

“I really don’t care,” said Nick. “Stalking Jamie from a bit farther away, I imagine. It’s his hobby.” He looked at Sin, stretching out the kinks from sleeping in her field, and his mouth twisted. “You’d better come along. Anzu will be expecting us.”

They welcomed the exchange of the damp Tube station for a rattling old carriage with worn seats.

“Thoughts?” Sin asked eventually.

“Anzu seems pretty taken with you,” Nick said. Sin wished that he had a tone other than enraged or noncommittal. “I think that’s why he’s sticking around. That and, of course, to torture me.”

“Should I be concerned?”

“Not especially,” said Nick. “He always treats his pets pretty well. Much better than I did.”

That effectively killed that conversation. They made their way back silently to the flat, and Sin waited as Nick got out his keys. She heard nothing in the flat, but that didn’t mean Anzu wasn’t there waiting, silently in the dark, with the infinite patience of demons.

She was listening for Anzu’s silence so intently she almost did not register the slight noise. Her instincts saved her; her hands were on her knives before she knew why they were there. Nick, who had pushed open the door, was an instant too late drawing his sword.

The magicians were waiting for them. Sin leaped back as Laura sent a bolt of black fire shimmering from her hands. It hit Nick head-on and he stumbled, going down to his knees. Sin ducked down and darted to his side, her hand under his elbow, and tried to get him up. Then a crow launched itself at Sin’s eyes from the ceiling, and she spun away from Nick, throwing her knife like a javelin and pinning the bird against the door frame.

The illusion changed and the magician turned from bird to man, slumping on the threshold, and black fire came from two directions. Sin threw herself down on the dead body.

While she was down there, she retrieved her knife. When she rose to her feet again, she saw that Nick had fallen and was slumped against the door, his face slack and young and defenseless.

It had been that easy for the magicians to get the jump on them. It would be this easy to die.

There were four magicians left alive in the flat, Sin saw. She should leave Nick and run, but Nick was Alan’s little brother, the person he loved best in the world. Nick was her ally.

Sin stepped over and in front of Nick with both knives at the ready.

She deflected one fireball and hit the wall hard, jarring her arm up to the shoulder. She thought Laura was the leader of this expedition. If she could just get to Laura—

One of the other magicians crashed into her hurt shoulder, his burning-bright fingers sending a sizzling line of pain up along her arm. His hand pinned her wrist against the wall, and her fingers convulsed open. The knife slipped from her numb hand and clattered to the floor. Sin lunged at him with her other knife, driving it home, but her aim was off and the knife stuck in his rib.

Black fire exploded behind Sin’s eyes, and she slid down the wall. She hit the floor too hard, cracking her forehead against it, and watched three sets of feet approach as blood rushed in her ears.

One set of feet exploded in ash and bones. Darkness washed over Sin’s vision, and her hand clenched on the ash carpeting the floor, trying to force herself up and into consciousness, trying to understand what has happening.

Dimly, she saw Laura’s heels moving past her eyes, the sound of the shoes echoing in her ears. She could not even lift her head, could not tell if she was saved or dead.

Darkness rushed back to stay, and the world was gone.

Sin’s head throbbed. Her arm was red agony, but the darkness had receded enough for her to be able to sit up, her palms sliding in ash and blood. The magicians were long gone, though one had left a charred shadow on the wall.

Behind her, Nick said, “Am I supposed to be grateful?”

Sin turned her head slowly, and saw Nick sitting up against the open door, one leg drawn up and an arm around it. There was blood on the side of his face, streaking vivid red from his black hair.

Anzu was crouched in the doorway, between Nick and the dead body. There was a smudge of blood and ashes on his cheek.

Sin was fairly certain that, unlike Nick, the blood on Anzu’s face was not his own.

Anzu shrugged in answer.

“I’m not,” Nick said. “You took my brother. There is nothing you can give me that will make up for that.”

There was a silence. Anzu glanced over at Sin, almost as if he expected her to say something, to disagree with Nick. Sin just stared at him, silent as a demon. She could not feel grateful either.

Anzu turned his gaze back to Nick.

“He left you, you know.”

“What?”

“Your precious brother,” Anzu said. “We don’t lie. You know I am telling you the truth he never did. He left you a thousand times. He used to lie in bed daydreaming about he and his father driving off, getting away from you when you were a nightmare child with black button eyes. He used to not be able to sleep because he was scared of you! He worked with his leg hurting, and he thought about how much easier the struggle would be if he didn’t have to feed you and your mother. He knew Mae preferred you, so many girls preferred you, and he resented you for that. He would get in the car and drive away and leave you for ten, fifteen minutes, driving out of the city never to come back, until he turned around. He meant to leave you. You took his life, and you took his chance at love, and he hated you, and he wanted to leave you!”

Nick swallowed, the flex of his throat terribly obvious and almost vulnerable with his head tipped back like that.

“But he didn’t leave.”

“No,” Anzu said. “But he wanted to. He should have. If he had, he’d still be alive, wouldn’t he? I didn’t kill him. You did. He would have lived, without you. He would have had a life, if only he hadn’t wasted his time trying to love something that could never love him back.”

Nick laughed. It was a truly horrible sound, with nothing human in it, echoing off the cement and the prison wires on the walkway. He sat against the door because he was too hurt to get up, bleeding beside the body of a magician and the body of his brother, and laughed a cold, awful laugh as if he was at the point of madness, as if he was on the edge of despair.

“Who knows?” said Nick Ryves, with nothing at all left to lose. “Maybe I did.”

He turned his face away from the demon in his brother. Anzu stared at him, furious and disgusted, and lifted a hand to hit Nick, as if too angry to simply strike out with magic.

He raised his right hand to hit Nick, and his own left hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. Protecting his brother.

Nick looked around. Sin shot to her feet, which a moment ago had seemed impossible, and all the blood rushed dizzily to her head, the world spun in a sickening whirl, and she did not care.

“Alan?” she whispered.

Anzu looked down at his hand as if it had betrayed him, and then his gaze turned inward, thoughtful, almost dreamy, as if he finally had something to look forward to.

“Oh, you’re going to be very sorry you did that,” he whispered in Alan’s stolen voice, and Sin knew it was for their benefit. He left Nick’s side, turning his back on him, and went over to Sin. “Say it again,” he commanded her.

She was not going to endanger herself by refusing the demon when he was furious. But Alan was in there. She would not throw his name in his face.

She looked into his black eyes, the crackling magic changing him, and tried to look past it all.

“Alan,” she said softly.

Anzu gave her a charming smile, bright and brilliant as stage lights.

“No.”

19

Mavis to the Rescue

ANZU DISAPPEARED THEN, LIKE A GHOST AT DAWN, LEAVING a shimmer in the air. Sin put out a hand to steady herself and then pulled it away, too late: She had already made a bloody handprint on the wall.

Nick eased himself to his feet and passed his hand over the magician’s body. It sparked, like the glints of fire in banked coals, and turned into more ash.

Neither of them spoke about Anzu, and what revenge he might be taking on Alan’s body. It would do no good. There was absolutely nothing they could do about it.

The sound of a door opening made them both go for their weapons, with what Sin suspected was a mutual sense of relief. Anything was better than thinking.

It wasn’t a magician. It was Mae. She had dark circles under her eyes, but she looked fairly calm.

Mae looked around at the hall, decorated with ashes and blood.

“I love what you’ve done with the place.”

“What are you doing here?” Nick demanded.

“Well,” Mae said. Her fingers played with the strap on her messenger bag, plucking at the strap so hard her knuckles were a little white, but she kept her head tipped back and looked Nick squarely in the eye. “I hit you. But you controlled me, so I’m glad I punched you,” she continued, and twisted the bag strap around again. “But I’m sorry I blamed you. I know you did everything you could to protect Jamie.”

Nick said, “Why are you here?”

“Oh,” Mae said. “Yes.”

She stopped fiddling with her bag strap and squared her shoulders, a habitual gesture of hers, trying to make herself larger than she was. One small girl, wanting to be able to take on the world.

“I came here so you could look at my face.”

Sin often had trouble reading Nick’s expressions, or being able to tell whether he had an expression at all. This one was pretty easy, though. He stared at Mae as if she was insane.

“What?”

“I know,” Mae said. “It’s pretty big of me, especially considering what an enormous jerk you are. But I’m a giver.”

“I think I may be missing a subtle human nuance here,” Nick told her. “What exactly are you trying to give me?”

“Emotional support,” Mae said firmly. “You said once that my face made you feel better. And I know that you are feeling worse than you ever have in your life, and I know it won’t help much. But in case it might help a little, I wanted to be here. For you. I thought you might want that too.”

“I want,” Nick began violently, and then checked himself. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “I want to—I want to not hurt you.”

“That’s good,” Mae said, almost gently.

“Is it?” Nick asked. “It’s different from how I’ve wanted other people. I don’t want to hurt you, but at the same time I do. I want to hurt everybody, all the time. I told you. I meant it. I want to burn down the world.”

He meant it. The dark promise in his voice made Sin flinch where she stood in the doorway, not quite able to look away. Mae didn’t flinch.

“You don’t have to hurt me. I can just be here. I’ll talk at you, or if you don’t want me to talk, I’ll read a book and you can sharpen your weapons.” She paused, and when Nick didn’t speak, she said, still in that gentle-for-her voice that wasn’t quite gentle, “Or I can go.”

Mae waited another minute. Then she nodded her head, shifted her bag strap into position with some finality, and turned away.

“No,” said Nick, with an effort. “Don’t go.”

Mae turned back to him and smiled slowly. It was a hell of a smile, dimples deepening and dark eyes turning warm. It made her beautiful for a moment, even though she wasn’t.

That was what made Sin turn away at last. She remembered being that happy, wildly, stupidly happy, happy in spite of everything. She didn’t want to hate Mae.

She went into the kitchen, closed the door, and made herself a cup of coffee. She sat at the table and tried not to think about what she had lost.