Sarah Brennan: The Demon’s Surrender

“Not this one,” Nick said.

Liannan smiled at him, sweet and cruel. “All right, my darling,” she told him indulgently. “We’ll see. I’m off to play my own game now.”

She went over to Nick, her feet hardly seeming to touch the ground, and leaned up to kiss him. Nick jerked slightly away, and she only caught the corner of his mouth.

Liannan laughed as if she found him infinitely amusing. “See you later,” she murmured, and moved away, easy and boneless in the night, swimming through shadows.

“Merris,” called Sin.

She turned, the haughty face Sin knew so well smooth and young, but still the face she knew, half the woman she had cared for and half a demon.

But Sin was getting used to that.

“I loved you very much,” she called out. “I wanted you to know.”

“Yes, child,” said Merris, in her old impatient way. “I knew.”

Then she was gone. Nick and Sin exchanged glances, understanding each other well enough, and turned back to search through the lights of the Market for Alan.

Liannan’s open disbelief that Nick had changed, that the long, painful process of transformation could ever work at all, made Sin take especial note of all the magicians moving, some more obviously uneasy than others, through the Goblin Market.

She saw the fearless leader of the Aventurine Circle walking through the Market, using his usual method of diplomacy, which was talking at people blithely and persistently and moving on, leaving them stunned in his wake.

“He says after learning to talk to me, everyone else was easy,” Nick said behind her. “Which is funny, as I never recall him having trouble talking to anyone at all.”

Jamie’s voice, addressing Seb and Mae and floating over to them, bore him out. Seb was walking beside Jamie as usual, but something about the way they were walking caught Sin’s attention: Jamie’s body angled back to mirror Seb’s, perhaps. She thought this might be a date.

“I was thinking that what I need is a nickname,” said Jamie. “A fearsome nickname. Like James Hook.”

“I think that one’s already taken,” Seb told him, sounding utterly bemused but affectionate, and almost not embarrassed about it.

“Oh,” Jamie said, downcast. “Really?”

“Captain Hook in Peter Pan ,” Mae informed him readily. “His first name was James.”

Jamie frowned in thought. “Captain Hook was cool. I could go with that. What would you say to James Hook the Second? I don’t really think I look like a captain.”

“I think you’re an idiot,” said Nick. “Not that that’s relevant. Except that it is always relevant.”

“Oh, hush up or I’ll be Evil Jamie again, and pull your hair,” Jamie said lightly, while Seb and Mae both glared at Nick. Sin stepped forward to intercept the glares.

“Thanks so much for all your help with the lights, Seb,” she told him. “You really have an eye for this.”

Now Seb did look completely embarrassed. Apparently he could accept being gay, but coming out as artistic was a step too far.

Jamie looked impressed, though. “Oh, hey,” he said. “They’re great.”

“Right,” Seb said. “They’re not that good. But. Um. I’m glad that you—that you like them.”

Jamie looked confused, then surprised and dawningly pleased. He still did not seem terribly used to being liked.

He smiled, crooked and a little shy. “Yeah, they have a certain appeal I’m starting to appreciate,” he said, and when Seb stayed there looking helplessly down at him, Jamie was obviously seized by an impulse, pulled him down, and gave him a light kiss.

So definitely a date, then.

“Not a word, Nicholas,” Mae said, with terrible warning in her voice. “I think it’s nice.”

“You’re both deranged, and you always were,” Nick drawled. “I’m never going to be done getting you tiny lunatics out of trouble.”

He did not sound deeply upset about it. Mae dimpled up at him. “We get you out of trouble right back.”

She had changed out of her beautiful dress, which meant that Sin had been able to force her into it for all of twenty minutes. She was wearing a black business skirt and heels, which was not exactly Mae’s style but which suited her somehow, and a pink T-shirt that read AND THEN THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER (BARRING DEATH, DIVORCE, ARREST FOR TAX FRAUD, THAT INCIDENT WITH THE POOL BOY…) The letters on her shirt got too small to read at that point.

Against her pink shirt was the dull gleam of the black pearl, the talisman safeguarding her from demons, the jewel that canceled out a demon’s mark. For at least seven years, and then they would see.

Nick looked away from Mae and at a random patch of grass.

“We could…,” he said, and hesitated. “We could grab a cup of coffee. Sometime. You and me.”

“Are you asking me out?” Mae inquired.

She waited for Nick’s tiny nod, and then she was beaming, even brighter than before. Sin would not have thought that was possible.

“I don’t know about coffee. I might hold out for dinner.”

“We can do whatever boring thing you want,” Nick told her.

Mae laughed. Sin thought she was trying for mocking and sophisticated, but Mae just sounded happy. “Ah, l’amour .”

“I’ll entertain myself looking at your face,” Nick said. “You know I like that.”

“Yeah,” Mae said, beaming and beaming. “Sounds like a plan.”

They couldn’t stand around here talking all night. They had to be seen around the Market, shaking hands and walking through the stalls, and it was almost time to dance.

When Sin set off, Mae followed her at once. She caught on fast, that girl.

They had never dared hold the Market in such a public place, but now with the magicians’ spells for privacy here they were, in a park surrounded by the purr of cars, a palace not so far away. The stall of lights was located on a statue of Queen Victoria, beacon lights dripping around her neck, a single love light hanging from her stone scepter.

Helen the magician was standing at Carl’s weapons stall, having an animated conversation about morning stars.

Phyllis’s stand of chimes was gone and would never be set up again, but Ivy had put up chimes around the scrolls and tablets and old books in her stall. The chimes sang out softly as she moved around them, their song calling passersby to her stall.

Sin stopped and spoke to Matthias, who was walking along with two older women behind him, making complicated hand gestures as they went. Neither of them, unlike Matthias, was Asian.

“These are my parents,” Matthias said, and gestured to the women, his thin piper’s hands moving with easy, fluid grace. He had his pipe tucked away.

“A pleasure,” said Sin, and shook both their hands.

One of the women gestured at Sin after she was done shaking hands.

“She says she’s heard a lot about you,” said Matthias. “She’s probably thinking about someone else. If you’ll excuse me, there are a lot of gullible tourists to rook once I’m done showing my parents around.…”

He laughed, dark eyes sparkling in his thin face. The other woman took his arm, her face much amused: She clearly thought her horrible little boy was hilarious.

Sin blamed it on the parents, really.

She just felt lucky she’d had good ones. Her father was walking through the Market for the first time in years, with Lydie and Toby in tow. He’d promised they would all come and watch her dance.

Later they would all go home together. There would be food on the table, the children would be looked after, and Mae would be in charge of the Market for now, making reckless, brave decisions, even though she would obviously need a little help.

There was time now to rest, to do the right thing by Lydie and Toby, to work out exactly what kind of leader Sin wanted to be, and if she wanted to be a leader at all.