Sarah Brennan - The Demon's Lexicon

Nick thought Dad must have not known what she was until it was too late.

Now two strangers knew that their mother had called the demons and made sacrifices for them. They sat at their dinner table and looked at Nick and saw his mother’s cold face. Mae had even started going upstairs to talk to Mum.

“It’s very kind of you,” Alan said one night at dinner.

Mae shrugged. “I like doing it. Olivia tells a lot of wonderful stories. My mother’s never done anything worth talking about in her life.”

She’d taken to calling Mum Olivia, in the same casual way Alan did, as if they were all friends.

“Your mother’s never fed people to demons?” Nick said. “Poor you.”

Mae’s eyes narrowed. “I just said Olivia was interesting. I didn’t say I thought what she did was right.”

Nick leaned across the table toward her. “Tell me,” he said, lowering his voice and watching the way his murmur sliced through her, small and sharp as a hook that a fish might swallow without thinking. “Do you find the demon’s mark on your brother interesting?”

“No.”

Nick talked right over her. “Just think, if it wasn’t for the mark, you would never have heard Mum’s stories or danced at the Goblin Market. You were thrilled by all that, weren’t you? You think it’s all so exciting, so glamorous. Lucky for you Jamie got marked, isn’t it?” He lowered his voice even more to see her leaning toward him, caught, and then he twisted the hook into her flesh. He smiled at her slowly and whispered, “Bet you’re glad it happened.”

Mae’s face was crumpled and white as a tissue clenched in someone’s fingers.

“How can you say something like that?” she said, her voice taut with outrage. “Your brother’s marked too. How does that make you feel?”

She glared at him, eyes accusing, and Nick saw that Alan and Jamie were looking at him too. He didn’t bother deciphering Jamie’s expression; he looked at his brother, and Alan looked back. He didn’t look angry like Mae. He looked patient, and a little pained; he looked as if he was waiting for Nick’s answer.

Then they all looked away.

Alan glanced from his own glass to Nick’s and then to the water jug. When Nick looked around the table, puzzled by Alan’s sudden preoccupation, he saw that everyone at the table was looking at their glasses.

All the glass on the table wore a shining spiderweb pattern. Fractures crossed and crisscrossed each other, cutting thin lines that caught the light. Nick’s and Alan’s eyes met over the rims of their suddenly beautiful glasses.

The glasses burst quietly, with no more noise than someone blowing on a dandelion clock. Then there was nothing but glittering shards and water pouring over the table.

Jamie’s plate broke in half.

What was Mum playing at?

Nick got up and hit the table with his fist.

“Nick, don’t,” Alan said. “You’ll hurt yourself.” He wrapped his hand around Nick’s fist and lifted it from the table.

Nick stared at him, for a paralyzing frustrated moment unable to understand what he was saying. It registered, and he looked at his hand in Alan’s, the skin unbroken. Alan’s warning had been in time.

“Relax,” Alan said. “You asked Liannan. She said the Circle was coming, the whole Circle. You know how long it takes to move the summoning circles. They can’t possibly be here yet. It’s just Mum.”

He saw the change in Alan’s face, and wondered if his own face had betrayed him, shown some of the rage sweeping through him. Alan never liked seeing it, so Nick tried not to show it more often than he could help.

Then he recognized the light in Alan’s eyes and realized he’d had an idea.

“What?” he said, hope rising. “What is it?”

Alan smiled at him. “Wait a bit. I need to go work something out.”

He left his dinner on the flooded table, and Nick heard his dragging footsteps going, as fast as he could, up the stairs and away from everyone to work out his new plan. Nick was in no humor to think about all Alan’s secrets.

“I can clean up,” Jamie offered.

Nick let him, moodily forking up the rest of his dinner as Jamie cleaned.

He was not used to girls coming to his house so they could glare at him. Over broken glass and water, Mae was staring at him, her eyes gleaming and furious. Jamie was hastily moving anything that could have been used as a missile out of her reach.

After another long moment of glaring, Mae got up. They heard her stamping her way up the stairs as if she wanted to grind every stair to powder under her heels.

Nick rolled his eyes. “How long’s that going to last for, then?”

“Oh, don’t worry. Give her — ten years, and she’ll have forgotten all about it,” Jamie said, snagging Nick’s plate. “Or you could apologize.”

Nick scowled. “What?”

“It’s a fairly simple concept,” said Jamie.

Maybe it was for Jamie, who moved gently and apologetically through life, like a hunted animal trying not to stir the leaves as he passed. Nick wasn’t sorry, and he was ready to rip out the throat of anything hunting him. She’d invaded his house; she could apologize.

On the other hand, Nick couldn’t deal with any more hassle than he was dealing with right now. Maybe it would be simpler to go and smooth her down.

He left Jamie washing up and went upstairs to the room that Mae and Jamie shared, the room that used to be his, and found Mae on the bed that used to be his.

She was crying.

Nick was appalled.

“I’ll get Alan,” he said, taking a smart step back.

He had the door almost shut when Mae said, “No, don’t!”

With great reluctance, he opened the door again. There she was, huddled on the bed with her arms around her knees, face red under her pink hair, rumpled and ridiculous-looking.

“I’ll get Jamie,” he proposed, and what he really meant was, I’ll get out of here.

“No,” Mae repeated. “Don’t.” She was starting to look angry again; all things considered, Nick found that soothing. She wiped at her face with the back of her hand and added, “I don’t want him to see me cry.”

“I don’t want to see you cry either,” Nick said.

Her face softened slightly, and he realized she’d taken that the wrong way. Nick imagined spending the next five minutes explaining to her that actually she could cry all the time if she liked, he just didn’t want to see it, and then shut his mouth.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Mae asked, her voice a little gruff with crying. She scrubbed at her wet cheeks with her sleeve and looked embarrassed.

Nick chose his words carefully. “Jamie said I should come and apologize.”

“Oh,” Mae said. “Okay. Apology accepted, I guess. It’s not really you I’m mad at, anyway. I’m just — I’m scared, and that makes me angry, you know?”

“Not really,” Nick answered, leaning against the door frame. “I don’t recall ever being scared.”

Mae looked taken aback.

“Fear’s useless,” he tried to explain. “Either something bad happens or it doesn’t: If it doesn’t, you’ve wasted time being afraid, and if it does, you’ve wasted time that you could have spent sharpening your weapons.”

Mae stared at him for a while.

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” she said eventually. “Because you’re kind of creepy.”

Nick grinned at her. “It’s a vibe that works for me.”

It was much more comfortable to flirt with her than see her cry. He risked a few steps into her room and she didn’t immediately burst into tears, so he looked around. Jamie made his bed, he noticed; Mae left her underwear on the floor.

“Hey,” Mae said sharply, and he looked away from her underwear and raised an eyebrow.