Sarah Brennan: The Demon’s Surrender

She was just about to take a deep breath and calm down when something else occurred to her: Here was Nick, inserted into their class in the middle of a school day. There was only one person Sin knew who could talk people around like that.

“Your brother,” Sin got out, feeling strange and hesitant about saying the words. “Is he here?”

“Yeah,” Nick said offhandedly. “He’s probably still wrapping stuff up with the headmistress.”

“Okay,” Sin said, and made up her mind. She picked up her own French book and slammed it into Nick’s chest, possibly too hard. “You take this,” she told him. “You need to get to French. I need to—go somewhere else. Um. Right now.”

Nick gave her a blank look, but most of Nick’s looks were pretty unreadable anyway, and Sin did not have time to explain herself. She bolted out of the door, ran down one flight of stairs, stood in the stairwell with another flight to go, and saw Alan limping down the hallway to the main doors.

Then she yelled, “Stop!”

Alan spun around, one hand going to the end of his shirt where she presumed his gun was concealed. Then he stood, squinting up at her through his glasses, looking a little uncertain.

Sin was always conscious of the light she was standing in, and she knew she must be little more than a girl’s shape against the big casement window behind her. A girl’s shape with curly hair escaping from a braid, wearing a bulky gray uniform. Alan had never seen her look anything like this before.

So when he said, “Cynthia?” with a measure of confidence, she understood he’d known she went to school here all along.

She descended the stairs. She was surprised by how much she didn’t want to: She was used to having the advantage over Alan, being in a place that set her off like a stage. Now here they were in a school in Ealing, surrounded by white walls that had gone gray and gray tile worn to white. She was without costume or backdrop or audience.

Sin lifted her chin as she came down. She didn’t need props.

“You wanted Nick to be in class with me.”

“Well, yeah,” Alan said mildly. “We’re all up in London for the same reason, aren’t we? I thought it would be nice for Nick to have someone he knew at school.”

They were all up in London for the same reason. The Aventurine Circle was there: a Circle with magicians in it who would not forgive the Goblin Market’s recent attack, a Circle with one magician in particular who had his mark on Alan and could do whatever he wanted to him at any moment.

Sin nodded. “That’s totally reasonable. Is there any particular reason you didn’t tell me you were going to do it? Is there any reason Nick had no idea until he walked into my class? Do you ever tell anyone anything?”

There was a beat, and Sin realized that it must look like she’d run through the school purely in order to abuse Alan.

His mouth twisted, color rising high on his cheekbones, as if she’d hit a sore spot. “Not often.”

Sin bit her lip. “I didn’t come down here to yell at you.”

Alan looked slightly alarmed. “Did you come down here to throw things?”

“Everything was so crazy before. We had to bury the dead, and organize a move, and I never got a chance to talk to you.”

“Did you want to?” Alan asked, sounding incredulous.

“Yes,” Sin snapped. “I wanted to say thank you.”

Alan looked startled. “For—”

“For my brother,” Sin said.

She heard her voice come out rough again. She knew she was doing this all wrong: She didn’t know how to thank someone for something like this. Sin was a Market girl born and bred. She understood bargains, she understood trading. She had always paid off her debts and tried to be fair exacting her prices.

Now all she could do was say thank you. It felt like revealing exactly how pathetic she was, that she had nothing else to offer.

She could not put a price on Toby’s life. There was nothing she had to give that could ever come close to paying back what she owed. If Alan Ryves ever asked her for anything, she would have to give it to him.

She wished he would ask for something, instead of standing there looking politely surprised.

“Cynthia,” he said, in a gentle voice she hated. That was the way he talked to children. “I would have done it for anybody.”

“I would have thanked anybody!” Sin said, and then there was a sound against the stairwell window like a storm of hail-stones.

Sin’s head turned to a window that showed a clear blue sky. Then she looked back, meeting Alan’s serious gaze, and they both flattened themselves against the walls on either side of the stairs and waited.

The sound was less like hailstones now and more like dozens of fists slamming into the window harder and harder until Sin heard a creak like ice underfoot and then the ringing, tinkling sound of glass hitting the floor.

She slid her knife out of the sheath under her shirt and eased carefully along the wall until she could peep up the stairs.

There was a nightmare creature there, tapping its way through the shards of broken glass like a fastidious old lady. It was made of mismatched bones. It had a fox skull for an elbow, and a human skull perched on top of the whole gleaming construction.

The bones were held together by bits of ribbon. Sin could see the tiny twists of fabric jerk just before the thing moved its bone limbs. They made it look like a huge, horrible puppet.

The long bones it had in the approximate place of forearms looked like they’d been taken from horses’ legs, sharpened to a point.

They didn’t have much time. Somebody was going to come investigating the noise.

Sin waited to hear the click of bones on the stairs once, twice, three times.

Then Alan stepped out from his place against the other wall, took aim, and fired. The human skull on top of the creature exploded into dust and fragments.

Somebody was definitely going to come investigating that noise. And the thing was still advancing.

Sin darted up the stairs, pressing her side to the wall. Once she was a few steps up she launched herself off the wall and into the tower of bone.

Her knife found the ribbon tying the fox skull to the horse leg. When she slashed it, the creature’s arm fell off.

She grabbed at the thing and climbed it, using the pieces of bone as handholds, and scythed ribbons to cut it off at the point that was more or less its knees.

It was still able to lash out at her, now little more than a rattling whirl of bone, like a mobile over a cradle come to life and turned savage and hungry. Shards of bone stung her face. She thrust her knife through the tangle.

The creature collapsed into a heap of knots and bone, not an instant before Sin heard someone clattering down the stairs.

Sin leaped up and away, ducking her head to hide the cuts on her face. When she glanced up apprehensively, she was in equal parts annoyed and relieved that it was only Nick.

He stood with a short sword in hand, the broken window behind him, body braced for a fight. His eyes lit on his brother. “Don’t tell me I missed all the fun.”

“Maybe next time we’ll save you some,” Alan said, grinning.

And then they heard a door open down the hall, and Sin restored her knife to its sheath. When she looked up, Ms. Popplewell was advancing, and Alan and Nick had both hidden their own weapons. Alan was wearing a very convincing air of shock and helplessness.

Nick looked vaguely homicidal, but that was sort of his default expression.

“What on earth is going on here?” demanded Ms. Popplewell.

“That’s exactly what I would like to know,” Alan said. “Does this happen often? Somebody chucked this disgusting heap through the window—any one of us could’ve been really hurt!”