Sarah Brennan - The Demon's Lexicon

“And why would you ask me that?” Nick said, and watched Jamie flinch at his tone. “I’m not a magician.”

He refused to think of Mum and how like her he was. He glared at Jamie and was amazed when Jamie did not look away.

“I’m not!”

“I–I didn’t think you were,” Jamie said, obviously lying. “I just meant — they kill all these people. Why do they do that? What could possibly be worth that?”

It was clear he thought that Nick had some kind of dark insight into a magician’s psyche. Nick wondered why he didn’t just go to Mum if he was so curious, but it wouldn’t do any real harm to answer him.

“Power,” he said. “As I understand it, just using the power makes you want more. It’s a rush; it’s addictive, and it’s not just that. Once you have enough power, you can have anything you want. Some magicians are successful politicians. Some are actors. Some are completely normal people, people you see at the bank and the post office, who just happen to have the ability to change shape or control the weather. Some magicians are rich, some are famous, some are stupidly good-looking.”

Jamie gave Nick a rather complicated look.

Nick raised an eyebrow. “Some of us manage to be stupidly good-looking on our own.”

“Er,” said Jamie, and cut himself on the cheese grater.

“I have changed my mind,” Nick announced. “You can help cook by standing in a corner and not touching anything. Do it carefully.”

He said it without heat. The omelets were starting to resemble omelets, and he hoped the subject of magicians was closed. Most conversations he had with people from school went a lot worse than this.

Jamie was quiet, fidgeting with an oven glove on the countertop.

“Don’t hurt yourself with that,” Nick advised.

Jamie grinned. “Okay.” He kept fidgeting while Nick went to the fridge for some peppers, and then asked suddenly, “So — where’s your dad?”

Nick slammed the fridge door. “He died.”

“Oh.” Now Jamie had the look of a deer caught in the headlights, who for some reason was feeling really sad for the car. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Why?” Nick snapped, opening cupboards just so he could bang them closed and express his fury at people who did not know when to shut up. “You didn’t know him. Why should you care?”

“Um. Empathy?” Jamie suggested.

Nick stared at him silently. The silence stretched on, Nick watching Jamie become ever more uncomfortable, and then a moment before Jamie’s nerve broke Mae and Alan came into the kitchen and rescued him.

Alan looked from Nick to Jamie’s alarmed face and seemed a little sad, just like he had when they were young and teachers had told him that Nick didn’t play well with others. Nick failed to see how it could keep coming as a surprise.

“This is excellent,” said Mae, coming and sitting on the draining board. “Carry on. I have always dreamed of having handsome men lovingly prepare all my meals.”

“Nick rescued the omelets,” Jamie confessed. “They were going wrong for me somehow.”

Mae laughed and tugged him toward her, putting her arms around him from behind and giving him a kiss on the side of his head. “Funny how they always do.”

Neither of them was too bad. Mae was good at smoothing over awkward situations, good at dealing with people, and Nick appreciated that, but he didn’t need to find himself appreciating anything about her.

Nick made omelets and Jamie made jokes and Mae and Alan made conversation, but Alan was still marked. All Nick had learned was that Mae and Jamie’s parents would not be arriving to remove at least one problem from his life.

On the morning of the fourth day, Jamie tipped a switchblade out of his box of cornflakes.

“I think these promotional campaigns have really got out of hand,” he said, freezing with his hand on the milk carton. “One shiny free knife with every packet of cereal bought is not a good message to send out to the kiddies.”

He picked up his bowl, tilting it and trying to drop the switchblade back into the box without actually touching it. Nick rolled his eyes, reached over, and took the knife, tucking it into the waistband of his jeans. He saw Jamie’s eyes wander to the flash of skin and didn’t make an issue out of it; a lot of people liked to look at Nick.

“So — do you have a system?” Jamie asked.

“What?”

“Well, if knives go in the cornflakes, do guns go in the raisin bran? I just wanted to know if there’s some kind of system I should look out for.”

Even though a system was actually not a bad idea, that kind of thing was a problem. The way Jamie kept making uneasy jokes about their life and Mae kept revealing a disturbing fascination with it made Nick feel as if he was a freak show suddenly on display for these people.

Mae walked in the door at that point. She pushed Jamie’s hair out of his eyes as she went by, then took a proper look at his pale face. She stooped and kissed his forehead before she went to get her muesli.

They were always doing weird stuff like that, as if they thought it was normal. It made Nick uncomfortable. He was just glad Alan hadn’t seen the latest bit of weirdness. Alan’s face went strange every time they did something like this, as if someone had hurt him.

Nick frowned at Mae as she tried to spoon up her muesli while bent over Alan’s copy of the Hexenhammer, an old German book about witches. Nick was used to having girls over now and then, but it was strange for him to have a girl constantly, comfortably around the house, sitting rumpled and sleep-flushed over a book, white curving flesh showing as her pajama top shifted with her movement.

That kind of thing was another problem.

Mae’s voice was accusing. “Are you looking down my top?”

“Well,” Nick said, “it’s a new experience for me.”

“Oh, really?”

“Generally girls take their tops off so fast around me,” Nick explained. “It’s hard to get a good down-the-shirt view. Not that I really complain, under the circumstances. Very nice, by the way.”

Mae looked annoyed for a minute, and then a smile tugged at her mouth, drawing her away into amusement. “Well,” she said, shrugging. “I grew them myself.”

Nick liked the easy, casual way she flirted, comfortable with her body and confident about its appeal. He liked her smile.

He looked away from both of them, scowled, and ate his cereal. A few minutes later Alan came down with damp hair, smiling as if they were a group of friends who had chosen to be here together. He ruffled Jamie’s spiky blond locks before he sat beside Mae, and Nick narrowed his eyes.

He hoped that Jamie wasn’t getting any ideas about being a little brother to Alan.

They all started talking about their favorite music, Mae talking about rock music and Alan talking about classical, while Jamie put in a few words for country music.

Nick didn’t speak. His favorite music was the music of the Goblin Market, the drums that made the air thrum with danger and tried to pierce the silence of the demon world, and he didn’t need Dad’s voice in his head to remind him that wasn’t normal.

Another thing Nick couldn’t get used to was that Mae and Jamie knew about Mum. Nobody knew about Mum. Everyone at the Goblin Market, even Merris Cromwell, only knew about Dad. They knew that he had shown up at the Market wanting help for a wife bound with enchantments, and protection for his young family. Dad had taken Mum in when she came running out of the night chased by monsters, and then taken her as his own.

It was like one of the stories Alan used to read to Nick at bedtime, about the perfect knight shielding his lady. Only the lady was a murderer. She’d chosen Black Arthur, chosen to be a magician, and chosen to kill.