Sarah Brennan - The Demon’s Surrender

“No,” Sin said, keeping her voice even. “You’re not.”

“I really shouldn’t have let those children go, should I?” Anzu asked musingly. “But there are so many ways to have power over you.”

He kissed her under her ear, lightly, as if they were lovers and he was teasing.

“There are plenty of other ways to change your mind. Ways that will hurt Hnikarr, too. And I would so love to do that. There’s that girl Hnikarr seems so taken with, or the little magician, of all the perverse things for him to take a fancy to. The girl is your rival, isn’t she? Would you like me to kill her?”

“No,” Sin said, her skin crawling and cold under his mouth.

“I’d like Hnikarr to be unhappy,” Anzu said, almost dreamily. “I would like for him to be alone. But perhaps you’re willing to bargain for the girl’s life?”

Sin thought of Mae dead. She closed her eyes and apologized to her friend. She would have fought to defend her, died to defend her if she had to, but this was different.

“No. I’m not currency.”

“I wonder who I have to kill to convince you,” said Anzu, and kissed her.

It was a swift, intense thing, like being made the center of a storm, those talon-feeling fingers tilting up her chin. His touch stung and the kiss burned: There was nothing of Alan in it at all.

Sin drew one of her knives and lunged, a swift thrust upward at his throat. The blade sliced through nothing more than colored shadows and smoke. Anzu disappeared like mist in the sun.

He left her standing in the kitchen with her blade drawn, and no enemy she could possibly fight.

Sin blundered out of the kitchen, not able to stay there for a moment longer. She hit her shoulder hard against the bathroom door and noticed distantly that things had come to such a pass that she was being clumsy.

She’d had some vague thought of washing her face, but she didn’t. She found herself just standing in the bathroom the same way she’d stood in the kitchen, feeling helpless and sick.

She climbed into the bathtub, back against the edge and her knees drawn up, cool porcelain propping her up on all sides. She rested her forehead on her knees and breathed in and out.

There was a sound in the hall. Sin’s head snapped up.

Nick was standing at the threshold of the room, arms up to grab the door frame. The black of his eyes were two chasms, the abyss looking back at her with intent to devour.

“I won’t have him going after Mae or Jamie,” Nick said. “If Anzu’s taken a shine to you, can’t you play along for a while?”

She should have thought of Nick overhearing. This flat was too small, the walls too thin. She should have known.

He prowled into the room, every movement he made a promise of violence. Sin thought again of Anzu, wearing his stolen body so lightly, like a weapon carelessly flourished. He could kill you, barely meaning to.

Nick looked like he would kill her and mean it with all his heart.

“And how exactly do you suggest I play along?” Sin snapped. “You want me to cuddle up to the thing murdering Alan?”

“I don’t care what you have to do. I want them safe.”

“You still want to protect Jamie, even though he has control over you. Even though he gave Gerald control over you.”

Nick gave a small shrug.

“You already had to murder a woman,” Sin said, and tried not to think of Phyllis’s blood pooling with the rainwater on the deck. “What terrible things will you do for them next?”

“I’ve done terrible things for a lot less reason,” Nick said. “I don’t mind.”

“I do mind,” Sin whispered. “There are some roles you can’t play, without changing who you are. I can’t do this.”

“Alan’s been possessed. The magicians are coming after us. Anzu wants revenge badly enough to go after Mae and Jamie. Is this the time to start having moral issues, when you could help ?”

“I know who I am,” Sin snarled back. “I know how far I can go. And from there we just have to deal with the mess.”

Nick glared at her, then away. He met his own demon’s eyes in the mirror.

When he moved, he moved to get into the bath, sitting on the edge, swinging his long legs into the tub. She didn’t notice his eyes then, but that he moved like she did, like a dancer, making even something ridiculous like this look graceful. She felt a sense of kinship with him, a remembered flash of feeling from a year ago and more, before all this change and love and pain, when they had just been dancers together.

He stared down at his hands, held clasped tight around each other between his knees, as if he didn’t trust himself not to hit something.

“Alan would have liked that,” Nick said roughly. “Having someone he could trust to do the right thing.”

Sin leaned against Nick’s leg, desperate for any comfort.

“I don’t think you’re doing the wrong thing,” she said. “I think you’re doing the same thing. You’re doing what you can. Alan would be proud.”

“I don’t want to think he would be proud,” Nick snarled. “I want him back .”

His body was warm against hers, simple physical contact all the comfort he could give her. It wasn’t comfort for him, she knew that, but he was providing comfort for her despite that. For his brother, because she had meant something to Alan.

Sin bowed her head. “Me too.”

She finally admitted to herself that despite her lack of certain vital demonic information, she’d got it right the first time, when she had liked Nick Ryves. He tried really hard, he loved his brother, and in the end, at this last extremity, she could count on him.

She saw Mae at the door, sleep-rumpled, her eyes wide. Sin reared backward, realizing how very bad this must look, and realized a moment later that backing off must have looked much worse.

Another realization came gradually: Mae didn’t look jealous.

She was smiling.

She said, “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

20

The Thief of the Pearl

THE MORNING HAD GONE FROM PALE TO BLAZING. the sun was burning a hole in the sky, yellow darts piercing far and away across the stretch of blue, and it had turned into one of those autumn days that left everyone squinting in the light but remained cold.

Sin was putting Matthias in charge of the night shift of the Market guard. The piper was a strangely good archer.

“The bowstrings sing to me,” he told Sin and Mae absently, oiling a string. “Your voices, however, I find consistently annoying. Run along.”

“This is some fine, fine respect you’re showing two people, one of whom will undoubtedly be your future leader,” Mae said.

“People who can sing have better things to do than lead,” Matthias shot back. “In any case, if I had a vote, I’d vote for Sin.”

“Your support is very much appreciated,” Sin purred at him, in the throaty stage voice that could make a man’s head turn at ten paces.

Matthias made a face and Sin laughed at him, touched his sleeve, and passed on with Mae at her side.

Sin’s heart was unexpectedly lifted by the sight of the Market with reinforcements, the addition of the other magic users making the Market bigger and stronger. Now the Market was harder to hide but better in a fight.

And that was the plan.

She would never have done it. Even if she had wanted to try, she would’ve expected a disaster. But Mae had believed in it, and accomplished it. For this moment, with Mae’s plan before her, with something to do at last, Sin was able to be grateful and not resent her.