Sarah Brennan - The Demon's Covenant

“I was glad to do it,” Alan said. “I can help Jamie some other way.”

“We can help Jamie,” said Mae, and Alan nodded, accepting the correction in his turn. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t understand.” She took a deep breath.

“You and Nick,” she went on. “You’re not getting on, are you? When I called, there was that storm. Did something bad happen? Did he do something?”

Alan drew in a slow breath that answered her even before he spoke. “Mae,” he said. “Do you want me to lie to you?”

He put a hand up to his face, fingers smoothing away the worried line between his brows. Soon it would be etched there, Mae thought, and no hand could erase it. Least of all his own.

“No,” Mae breathed. “No, I don’t want that.”

Alan took a detour inside the almshouse ruins, roofless and with only part of the walls remaining. The nameless government types who hadn’t allowed the almshouse to be torn down had allowed glass doors to be built in the places doors would have been inside the almshouse, doors in the shape of glass windows and filled with artificial light. Suspended in the glass were fragments of Roman pottery lined up alongside old cola cans, and Alan was looking at those rather than her when he said, “You’d believe me if I did lie to you.”

“So tell me something true. Did you never want anything for yourself?”

Alan looked at her then.

“Yes,” he said. “One or two things.”

Mae looked down and kicked an eight-hundred-year-old wall.

She glanced up at the sound of movement and saw that Alan had circled so there was a glass door between them, lights captured in the glass casting an aquamarine glow on his face. He looked as though he was underwater, pale and otherworldly, his palm against the glass as if he was reaching out a hand to drag her down.

“I always thought those doors were kind of silly,” Mae said at random, trying to make this moment not serious, make it not matter.

“Really?” Alan asked, fingers light on the glass, touching carefully, as if he had one of the artifacts in his hands. “I like them. I like the idea that the past and the present are always tangled together, making us who we are.”

“Clearly the bright lights distracted me from the deep symbolism,” Mae said, and smiled at him.

He smiled back at her, the same smile as when she’d told him it mattered if he was hurt, surprised and sweet.

“After we go to Celeste Drake tomorrow, after Jamie is safe,” he began, and paused. “I thought Nick and I might stay here in Exeter.” He traced the shape of a broken cup with musician’s hands. “I was wondering what you were doing Saturday night.”

It was such an ordinary thing to say, such an overwhelmingly normal way to ask someone out after a conversation about demons and sacrifice, that it struck Mae speechless.

Alan watched her behind the door of light, his eyes dark serious blue. He waited patiently for her to answer.

“I don’t know. Does a rave sound like your idea of a good time?”

“It might,” Alan answered, lowering his eyes. His eyelashes sparked gold in the fluorescent lights. “If you were there.”

“You can’t ask me this now,” Mae blurted.

“Is it the wrong time, or is it that it’s me asking?”

“There’s a boy at school,” Mae told him. “We’re not going out, but I more or less promised him a chance. I don’t go back on my word.”

Alan stepped away from the door into the arms of the gathering shadows.

“I appreciate your honesty,” he said. “I’ll be honest too. It’s something I try, every now and then. Not often.” He smiled, and this time it was an ordinary smile, friendly and making her smile back involuntarily. “I hope that boy wastes his chance.”

Mae ducked her head to hide the smile, though it was in her voice as well. “You never know, but …”

“No, I understand,” Alan said. “What are you doing Saturday night? I’m asking as a friend. I thought we could go—just as friends, of course—back to the Goblin Market. If you’re interested in visiting it again.”

Mae burst out laughing at how sly he was.

“You don’t play fair.”

Alan drew her out of the ruins, still smiling. “You don’t say.”

Jamie wasn’t back by the time Mae got home. She had to face the fact that he would rather spend time with someone he was afraid of than come back and talk to her.

Either that or Nick had put him in the hospital.

Since she assumed she’d get a call if it was the hospital, she went to bed in one of the guest bedrooms. She could talk to Jamie tomorrow; she wanted a night so they could both rest, and so she could hug the thought of the Goblin Market to herself.

She remembered seeing a wood hung with glittering lights, magic being sold like toys at stalls, hearing drums and chants and knowing that she would rather be there than anywhere in the world. She was going again. She almost loved Alan, just for that.

But it wasn’t fair to Alan to love him for the potential of magic. She owed him more than she could ever repay: it was due to Alan that Jamie was alive at all. It wouldn’t be fair to Alan to love him for that, either. The idea of building love out of gratitude or pity made her feel sick, and she imagined it would make Alan feel sick too.

Loving Alan because of his smile and his smarts and how kind he was, that would be fair, but she’d had the chance to do that already. She’d known how he felt about her. She’d been so worried about Jamie, so swept away by the spectacle of magic, she hadn’t thought about it, and then when she wasn’t paying attention, somehow it had become all about Nick.

Things were different now.

It wasn’t fair to let Alan be second choice, either.

This wasn’t about romance, though. She’d given Seb her word, and she intended to keep it. This was just about friendship.

And magic.

She heard Jamie come in and immediately run upstairs and start drawing a bath. Now that she knew he was safe, she thought she could sleep.

The shutters on her window were open, and she could see the gray spire of St. Leonard’s Church rising like a Gothic turret against the sky. When she shut her eyes she did not see that gray-on-black vision, the color of scissors slicing through black paper and cutting the night in two.

Mae remembered the music and the lights and the magic, and at the center of it all the dancers who called up demons. The girl in red who Nick had called Sin. She’d been dancing when Mae had first seen her, every movement clean and purposeful, every movement lovely. And every time she went still, the audience’s breath caught and their attention fastened on her. She was powerful and beautiful, and in the midst of shining magic she belonged completely.

When she went to the Goblin Market, she might see that girl again.

Caught in a blurred warm place between sleep and wakefulness, Mae relived that moment, seeing that girl and feeling a pang of sudden visceral longing.

If I could have anything in this world, she’d thought, all I’d want is to be like her.

Sleeping with her new talisman safe around her neck, she dreamed she heard snarling and pacing outside her window, as if her garden was the stalking ground for hunting cats. She knew they could not get in, but she could not shut out the sound of their hungry cries.

6

Spirit for Your Skin

Mae woke to the sound of the doorbell ringing. She cracked open one eye, saw the blinking red numbers that told her it was six o’clock in the morning, and planted her face back into her pillow.