Sarah Brennan: The Demon’s Surrender

But now Mama was finally ready to dance again, they would be all right. Just like this.

“How about you?” Mama asked.

Sin just smiled, which meant she was holding out for Nick Ryves. He hadn’t been to the Market in a couple of months, so he was due back.

Nick and Sin weren’t exactly friends. It was hard to be friends with Nick.

He was the best dancer she’d ever seen, though, and that made her like him. Sin respected talent, and it was hard to dislike anyone when you loved to watch them move. Besides, you learned a lot about people dancing with them. That was why Sin made sure to dance with every new dancer once.

“Don’t tell me it’s Nick Ryves.” Mama wrinkled her nose. “That boy’s creepy. I’m saying this as someone personally acquainted with fifteen necromancers.”

Sin shrugged. “He’s better than his brother.”

“I don’t see what you have against Alan,” Mama said predictably. “He’s very gifted.”

Alan Ryves was the kind of boy all the parents and grandparents and busybodies of the Market thought everyone should be like: perfect, studious, ever so polite and ever so politely disdainful of the dancers. He got up Sin’s nose more than anyone she had ever met.

“I know. Being so boring and yet so irritating at once, that’s a gift.”

Mama did not respond. Sin glanced up to see that her mother’s eyes had gone wide, pools of brightness reflected from the lanterns, and Sin immediately twisted around to see the threat.

There was no threat. There was just Alan Ryves and his annoying face, and at his shoulder where Nick always stood there was… well, there was Nick.

It wasn’t that Sin did not recognize him. It was unmistakably Nick, all dead-white skin, dead-black hair, and drop-dead stare, but those sullen, too-sharp, and too-strong features of Nick’s had clicked into place: He was almost as tall as his brother now. Muscles that had made him look squat before, like a surly full-grown goblin rather than a kid, fit on his new frame in easy rippling lines as he walked.

He still moved like a dancer, smooth and sure.

This was Nick made new under the burning lanterns, light racing golden along the angular line of his cheekbones, fire kindling in the depths of his black eyes.

Mama whistled.

Sin smiled absently. It wasn’t that she was not interested by Nick’s sudden ridiculous good looks. She was just distracted by something even more unexpected.

She found herself feeling a little sorry for Nick.

Sin had always been a cute kid. She’d known that ever since she could remember: There was no way not to know, when she and Mama had to use it. She’d been using curls and ribbons and a sweet smile to get people to come to Mama’s stall and have their fortunes told since she was five years old.

She’d been dancing almost as long. First just to amuse the tourists, providing entertainment that was more about her smiles and her pretty costumes than the fact that she could dance, and then for the demons, when it was only talent that really counted. But making it look good never hurt.

She was used to attention and admiration. But it did change when you grew up, new and sometimes unexpectedly painful, like aching muscles.

Last year she had been at the stall of a potion-maker she’d known for years, and he’d given her a present because she looked so pretty that night. He’d spelled out her name in dandelion seeds, shining like stars in the moonlight.

He’d spelled it Sin. She’d always spelled it Cyn before. But now people looked at her and saw something different.

Mama had put her arm around Sin’s shoulders as they left the potion-maker’s stall.

“So make the name yours,” she’d said.

A stage name was the truest name a dancer could have. She’d learned to use what people saw when they looked at her. She’d always been a performer.

Heads were turning as the brothers moved through the crowd, and Nick did not look even slightly fazed. Sin saw him meet a few gazes for an instant and then let his eyes slide deliberately away, his mouth curling. Nick, who never wanted to talk or play or be friends, looked as comfortable as he did in the dancing circle with the demons. As if he had always known he was going to be beautiful.

Nick had never been one for performance. But it looked like he knew how to use this new power he had as a weapon.

She could understand that.

Sin rose from her place by Toby’s crib, and took a moment to let the lights of the Market and the wind from the beach wash over her.

Her mother caught her eye and winked. “Go get your partner.”

“Oh, I will, but Nick can wait,” Sin said. “First I want an audience.”

It was the night of the Goblin Market, a night for seeing someone in a new light.

She thought Nick was human at the time.

Sin spotted her mark right away. He was a guy in a suit who had the air of someone who’d been to the Market a few times before and was trying to give the impression it had been more than a few. He was also handing over a lot more money than the German book of witchcraft he was paying for was worth.

“Welcome to the Market,” Sin said.

When he spun around, she was already positioned so that the fairy lights caught the red glints in her hair and left her face wearing shadows and a slow scarlet smile.

It was a lot like placing her mother’s crystal balls on the stall so they were shown off to their best advantage. Sin wasn’t for sale, but it did no harm to let tourists believe she might be.

The man visibly hesitated, then swallowed. “It’s not my first time.”

“Oh,” said Sin. “I could tell.”

“I guess,” the guy said, his eyes traveling over Sin’s bright clothes and gleaming skin. “You’re one of the attractions?”

“I’m the star attraction,” Sin murmured. “Follow the music when it starts, and you’ll see me dance.”

The man took a step toward her and she felt a flash of triumph. She had him, like a fish on a line.

“What are you doing right now?” he asked.

“She’s busy being underage,” said the most irritating voice in the world.

They both looked around to the book stall, which Alan Ryves was leaning his bad leg against, a book in one hand and his usual expression of righteousness on his face.

“So perhaps what you should do right now is leave,” he continued in his gentle voice, the one he used as he limped around the Market charming every old biddy in the place. Such a nice boy, they all said.

Nice boys were such a pain.

“Er, so I’ll just be,” said the tourist, and then stepped backward and away, into the crowd.

Alan gave her a little smile, as if he expected her to thank him for scaring away her audience. As if he’d done something nice for her, and he was expecting her to be pleased. There were fairy lights over his head, too, making his glasses catch the light and his red hair seem to catch fire. He looked even more ridiculous than usual.

He was wearing a T-shirt that said I GET MY FUN BETWEEN THE COVERS. It had a picture of a book on it.

“Hi, Cynthia,” he said.

“What is wrong with you?” Sin demanded. “Besides the obvious.”

Alan’s smile twisted in on itself, and Sin bit her lip as she realized what he thought she’d meant. She hadn’t been thinking about—well, she had been, it was hard not to notice—but she hadn’t intended for him to assume she was talking about his leg.

She didn’t feel like losing any ground before the ever-so-saintly Ryves brother, though, so she just sneered, turning her face pointedly away to look at the rest of the Market. There were a lot of sights that deserved her attention far more than Alan.

One of them was her little sister Lydie, being carried past in Trish’s arms. Trish made fever wine during the day before the Market, but at night she often volunteered to babysit.