Sarah Brennan - The Demon’s Surrender

“I could maybe draw you with a hook?” he offered. “So you’d know what it would look like.”

He pulled a tiny pencil and tinier notebook out from his jeans pocket and glanced at Jamie for approval. Jamie, still looking terrified and small but a little steadier, nodded.

Sin heard voices outside and stepped back, closing the door so whoever it was wouldn’t ruin the moment, and saw Mae bearing down across the dark fields with Nick behind her.

As Sin watched, Nick drew level with Mae and said something to her, too low for Sin to hear, and Mae whirled around and punched him in the face.

“What was that?” Nick asked.

Sheer horror at what she had done crossed Mae’s face for a split second, only to be submerged in the rising flood of rage.

“I’m serious,” Nick said while she shook. “What was that? Don’t punch people with your thumb inside your fist like that. You could break your thumb that way.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” Mae cried. “Don’t you dare. I trusted you. I trusted you to keep Jamie safe! What were you doing? How could you let this happen?”

“What was I doing?” Nick demanded. “Oh, standing idly by. What else would I be doing? Since I have absolute power over everything in this world. I thought it would be fun to watch Jamie get hurt. I’m just sorry I missed seeing Alan get possessed!”

“You probably didn’t miss much,” Mae shouted back. “It was probably just like all the times you possessed people yourself. They had families too.”

“You don’t have to tell me I deserve what happened to Alan,” Nick snarled. “I know I deserve it. I’ve possessed people; I’ve killed for thousands of years and I never cared about it. I could never even imagine regretting it. But I can now. I’m sorry now. Does that satisfy you? I’m sorry now. I’m sorry about Jamie. I would have done anything to stop him getting hurt, but I couldn’t do anything. I’m sorry, and it doesn’t matter at all.”

“I appreciate it, though,” Jamie called out.

His voice was completely audible through the wagon walls. Mae and Nick both looked around. Sin, at the door, gave them a little wave.

“We can hear you,” Seb contributed helpfully.

“Could you maybe come inside and yell here?” Jamie asked. “I’d—I’d like to see you.”

Mae charged for the door. Sin stepped aside, off the wagon steps and into the night-damp grass.

She didn’t want to go back inside. This wasn’t her tragedy. She hardly knew Jamie, and what she did know she did not much like. He had traded in Nick’s freedom, no matter how good his intentions.

She didn’t want to see Mae cry and try to fold Jamie against her, the space where his hand should have been a terrible obstacle between them. The two people in there were people who loved Jamie: He deserved to be surrounded in love now, in the darkest night of his life.

“Nick too,” Jamie called out, his voice muffled and a little wavering.

Nick came at the magician’s call, not glancing at Sin as he went by. It was impossible to see from his blank face what he felt at the order.

He had to do whatever Jamie said, and Jamie had betrayed him. But Nick was sorry Jamie was hurt.

Sin did not understand the ways of magicians and demons, and she did not know where else to go. She didn’t want to ask anyone in the Market for shelter, and now that she was alone with her thoughts, she could not help but think of Alan, of how he would never be rescued like Jamie.

Sin turned away from the wagons and toward the fields, through deep night and wet grass to the place where she’d taught Alan to use the bow. She sat cross-legged in the middle of a field, hands clasped and arms stretched out, and looked at the lights of the Market, not her home for the first time in her life. She was so glad Lydie and Toby were safe, but she was used to them always being there, always being a worry and a comfort and company.

Now it was just her, alone in the night, with nothing she could do and nobody to depend on her. She couldn’t think of a way to stay strong for another minute.

Sin laid her head down on her arms and cried.

She looked up after a while, shoulders shaking, because the Market was bred in her bones though it had cast her out, and she knew when a chill running down the back of your neck meant nothing and when it meant a demon was near.

Anzu was sitting very close. He was watching her solemnly, black eyes wide, like a child who did not understand what she was doing. He reached out a hand to touch her face. When his fingers came away wet with tears he smiled, as if wondering at the gleam in the moonlight.

“Come here,” he said.

Sin shook her head dumbly. But this was what demons did; they came when you were weak, when you had nothing left to lose and no way out of your pain.

“Come here to me, like you did before,” Anzu said, soft, coaxing her, and he put an arm around her and drew her in close.

It was Alan’s body and not Alan’s body, it was Alan and his murderer. Sin wanted to hold on and she wanted to kill him. In the end she just cried, thinking of sunlight in this meadow and Alan smiling as he missed a shot, thinking of all she had lost, and lost forever.

“That’s right,” Anzu whispered. His low, cold voice chased another shiver down her spine as he stroked her hair with Alan’s hands. “You can pretend I’m him.”

Sin woke curled up and chilled in the wet grass, the morning drawing yellow and blue fingertips across a clear gray sky. There was a demon standing over her, his arms crossed.

“Ready to go back?” said Nick. “Jamie’s sleeping. Mae wants to be alone with him.”

“What about Seb?”

“What about him?”

“What’s he doing, do you know?”

“I really don’t care,” said Nick. “Stalking Jamie from a bit farther away, I imagine. It’s his hobby.” He looked at Sin, stretching out the kinks from sleeping in her field, and his mouth twisted. “You’d better come along. Anzu will be expecting us.”

They welcomed the exchange of the damp Tube station for a rattling old carriage with worn seats.

“Thoughts?” Sin asked eventually.

“Anzu seems pretty taken with you,” Nick said. Sin wished that he had a tone other than enraged or noncommittal. “I think that’s why he’s sticking around. That and, of course, to torture me.”

“Should I be concerned?”

“Not especially,” said Nick. “He always treats his pets pretty well. Much better than I did.”

That effectively killed that conversation. They made their way back silently to the flat, and Sin waited as Nick got out his keys. She heard nothing in the flat, but that didn’t mean Anzu wasn’t there waiting, silently in the dark, with the infinite patience of demons.

She was listening for Anzu’s silence so intently she almost did not register the slight noise. Her instincts saved her; her hands were on her knives before she knew why they were there. Nick, who had pushed open the door, was an instant too late drawing his sword.

The magicians were waiting for them. Sin leaped back as Laura sent a bolt of black fire shimmering from her hands. It hit Nick head-on and he stumbled, going down to his knees. Sin ducked down and darted to his side, her hand under his elbow, and tried to get him up. Then a crow launched itself at Sin’s eyes from the ceiling, and she spun away from Nick, throwing her knife like a javelin and pinning the bird against the door frame.

The illusion changed and the magician turned from bird to man, slumping on the threshold, and black fire came from two directions. Sin threw herself down on the dead body.

While she was down there, she retrieved her knife. When she rose to her feet again, she saw that Nick had fallen and was slumped against the door, his face slack and young and defenseless.