Sarah Brennan: The Demon’s Surrender

It was very quiet where the dancers were. It was so still.

Mama was lying facedown in her circle. The balefire had all gone out.

Sin stepped into the dead summoning circle, knelt down on the earth and turned her mother over, so gently. For a moment she was absolutely, blessedly relieved: Mama’s breath was coming steadily, stirring the fall of her golden-brown hair over her face, and Sin thought she was just hurt, that everything was going to be fine.

Mama opened her eyes.

All the light and joy of the Market, all the light and joy Sin knew in this world, drained away in the terrible demon darkness of those eyes.

“No,” Sin said, her voice a lonely whisper, drowned out by the sound of the sea, by the terrible sucking silence emanating from the thing that had moments ago been her mother.

“Mama!” came Lydie’s voice, and Sin looked up to see her little sister come dashing toward them, and thought, No, no, no with the force of a scream she could not let loose, with the force of a prayer.

Alan scooped Lydie up fast as she went by, turning her face toward his with his free hand, talking to her in rapid, soothing tones, comforting her, not allowing her to see.

There was nobody to comfort Sin, and she had to see.

The demon seemed to be registering its success, its body coming to terrible life in Sin’s arms, Mama’s mouth curving into a gradual, awful smile.

Mama was nothing but a shell with a demon inside her; Mama herself was caged in the back of her own mind. That was what happened whenever an ordinary person had dreams of demons and opened a window to let them in. Or whenever a dancer fell in a summoning circle.

In the distance Sin could hear Merris giving the orders to those in the know for taking a possessed person, for dragging the demon-infested body to Mezentius House, where it would be held prisoner until the body rotted away from the inside out, until the body died. The necromancers were coming and the men with chains, those who had spells to throw.

Her mother was still inside there, helpless, with the demon in command.

“Mama,” said Sin, finding her voice in extremity, the words tumbling desperately out. “Mama. I’ll come with you. Don’t be too scared. I’ll come, I’ll stay. Mama, I love you .”

Her voice rose then, in a high childish wail, but she couldn’t afford to be childish now. As the Market people came to deal with her mother, Sin surged to her feet and went to deal with Merris Cromwell.

“You certainly cannot come to Mezentius House,” Merris informed her. “You’re far too valuable to risk.”

Sin had always been awed and scared by Merris before. She’d always seen her at a remove, knowing that her mother would probably inherit the Market someday, since she was a Davies and the best dancer they had. She’d left her mother to deal with Merris.

Her mother was as good as dead. Which meant Sin was the best dancer in the Market, and she was the next in line to be leader.

“My mother’s in there,” Sin said. “I’m going to stay with her. And if you don’t let me, I’ll leave the Market.”

It was an insane thing to say. What would she do if she left the Market, especially now Mama was gone, now Toby and Lydie had only her? She couldn’t do anything but dance. She would have to become one of the dancers not attached to the Market, who danced for demons alone, who usually died in less than a year.

It was an insane thing to say, but she meant it.

“You can let me go to Mezentius House, or you can find a new heir. I will not let my mother die alone!”

Merris let her go. Sin promised Trish and Carl all her tips for the next season, anything, if they would care for Lydie and Toby until she came back. Toby was asleep, but Lydie cried, and Sin was terribly grateful that Alan was still holding Lydie, his eyes wide and so sorry for them both. Sin wasn’t going to let herself cry in front of Alan Ryves.

She cried at the House of Mezentius. She stayed with her possessed mother for three nightmarish weeks, cried and bled and screamed and stayed, until her mother died. And she went back to the Market, still able to dance.

That was one mercy. There was nobody else to inherit the Market, and nobody else to take care of Lydie and Toby.

Sin did not need anyone else. She could do it, just like dancing: It didn’t matter how hard it was. What mattered was never, ever to falter.

She didn’t falter, and she did not fall once over the year and more that passed, not when they found out that Nick Ryves was a demon that had been put in a child and raised among them all this time. Not when they discovered that Alan was the greatest traitor imaginable, someone who had chosen a demon above his own kind. Not when the threat of the magicians became so great and Merris got so sick that they had to make a bargain with the demon and the traitor.

Not even when Alan Ryves, the boy Sin had never liked, gave her a gift she could never have imagined and could never repay when he put himself in the power of magicians to save her brother.

So Sin was not going to hesitate for a moment now, though a demon had strolled into her ordinary London classroom with its graying blackboards and harsh fluorescent lights. Sin’s magic world and her normal world were meant to be kept apart, but here was Nick Ryves at her school.

He looked much the same as he had more than a year ago, when he’d stood looking down at her with wet hair fringed by moonlight.

“Sin?” asked Nick, who she had thought was human once. He seemed, as far as you could tell with Nick, startled and perhaps even pleased to see her.

Sin crossed her legs under her rough uniform skirt.

“I’m sorry,” she said smoothly. “My name’s Cynthia Davies. I don’t believe we’ve ever met.”

2

The Final Test

SIN,” NICK SAID, SOUNDING VAGUELY ANNOYED, “WHAT ARE you—”

He tugged on his school tie as if it was a choke chain and scowled, then fortunately the bell rang and everyone sprang up. The next class was French and their teacher was pretty strict: Nobody was going to hang around and get in trouble, no matter how good-looking the new boy was.

Nobody was paying attention, and in the bustle of the other kids leaving, Sin could seize her chance to act and not be noticed.

She made a point of never being noticed at school.

“Listen closely,” she said, speaking very quietly and exercising great self-restraint by not grabbing Nick by his rumpled tie to make him listen. “We don’t know each other, have you got that? I’m not at all the kind of girl who knows boys like you.”

“What?” Nick said flatly.

“I study really hard: I have to because I’m not that smart. I’m good at gym, and I have some friends on the lacrosse team. In school I never wear makeup, and I don’t talk much to boys. Not that many people notice me and that is the way I like it.”

It was all true, as well. She needed to study, and she didn’t want the attention of any normal boys. This was just the way she wanted to be, as well as keeping her profile low in case the authorities took a second look at her unorthodox lifestyle living in a wagon with two little kids. It wasn’t any more or less of an act than how she was at Market nights.

Nick was frowning at her. “I don’t expect you to understand,” Sin snapped. “But I expect you not to screw this up for me.”

“Fine,” Nick grated out. “We don’t know each other.”

“Good.”