15

Lady Errant

Mae woke from uneasy, demon-haunted sleep to the sound of a crash. She rolled out of bed and ran out onto the landing, and then stopped dead at the sight of Jamie panting and leaning against the stair rail.

Nick was sitting on the top step. He was breathing hard too, chest rising and falling fast under a thin gray T-shirt. He leaned his wrists against his knees and looked over at Mae.

That made Jamie look too. He smiled at her, which showed they were all right unless Jamie was offended by Seb’s actual presence, and made Mae grin back.

“Mae, he made me go out for a run,” Jamie called out. “Tell him I don’t run!”

“Jamie and I are lilies of the field. We toil not, neither do we jog,” Mae informed Nick.

She came over and slipped her arm around Jamie’s waist. He leaned heavily on her, sweaty cheek against hers, and made a piteous whimpering noise.

“Turns out he does run,” Nick drawled. “Given an incentive. And he wouldn’t be so out of breath if he hadn’t kept shrieking.”

“That was not a shriek,” Jamie said with dignity. “It was a husky masculine cry of terror.”

“Maybe you should start with something a little more soothing,” said Mae, patting Jamie’s back.

“Yes, soothing,” Jamie said gratefully. “Less knives. More Yogilates!”

The doorbell rang. Mae went to change into jeans, as Jamie was apparently now a wreck of a man and couldn’t answer the door. She peeked out the window and saw who it was before she came down the stairs and let Seb in.

“I thought maybe you could use a lift to school,” Seb said, car keys in hand. He almost dropped them at the sight of Nick and Jamie. “Hey,” he said warily. “What’s going on?”

“Nick is spotting me during my new exercise regimen,” Jamie announced, giving Seb the evil eye. “I wish to be more toned. And attractive. To men.”

Seb went a slow, horrified red.

Nick laughed, and Mae bit back a smile so he wouldn’t feel they were ganging up on him.

She was glad to see him. When she’d looked out the window, she’d known it was him and not Nick this time, and not just because Nick was already on her stairs. The memory of both of them was fresh with her, the way they stood, their exact heights. Seb looked totally different from Nick. He looked normal and lovely and like he couldn’t break her heart, and besides that, she hated walking to school.

“C’mon, let’s go,” she told him.

She opened the door to a beautiful summer morning, drenched in light.

Behind her, Nick said, “Might see you later.”

Today Nick said his first word: “chair.”

I have not written in this journal for some time. I didn’t like the thought of leaving Alan this record of misery.

Today is different from all other days. Nick said his first word today, his voice harsh, croaking like a raven rather than a child.

But he understood what he was saying. He said more than one word. Alan pointed to me and he said, “Dad.”

That stunned me more than the miracle, more than the demon with words in its mouth.

If I thought of him as anyone’s child, I thought of him as Arthur’s. But of course Nick has not seen Arthur for four years, of course Alan has been by his side all this time whispering words to him, telling him how the world is.

Alan has been sure that Nick is his brother, and that makes me his father.

The demon’s father.

I don’t feel like his father, but I cannot call him “it” anymore. I cannot forget the rush of happiness that came over me when I heard him talking and felt for the first time that there could be hope.

If he talks, if he can be that close to human, then I might have a real purpose at last.

I picked Nick up for the first time today. He’s getting far too heavy for Alan to carry. And Alan looked so happy when I did it.

I had to put him down after a few moments. Not because he was heavy, but because I could not bear to have those eyes and that still mask of a child’s face so close to mine. I do not know how Alan can bear it.

Alan’s so young. He didn’t know enough about babies to know what one should look like, and he’s used to Nick by now. Perhaps Nick looks human to him.

This evening before bedtime I saw Nick sitting by Alan as he usually does, an upside-down book held in his lap.

“Shall I read to you, Nick?” I asked, and I took the creature up again and put him in my lap. He tried to wriggle away as he always does with Alan, but I held him firmly, and he stopped struggling after a moment. Resting against my chest, he felt small and warm, like a real child. I concentrated on the story, kept my voice steady and even, and as I read, “The king of all wild things said … ,” Nick’s head dropped into the crook of my elbow and he was asleep.

I was not quite sure what to do next, and then I saw my son. He’d dropped his book and was standing looking at me and his brother. The look of hope and fear on his face made me want to throw the demon away, reach out and hold him close.

Instead I drew my fingers through Nick’s thick black hair. It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t so bad. Nick stirred but did not wake, and Alan smiled, tremulous but so happy.

“Come here, my darling,” I said, then reached out with my free hand and drew him to me. He came willingly, nestling into me as he has not since he was very small. “This is just the beginning,” I told him. “We have to think very carefully about what to do next.”

If a demon can be taught to be human, then I will have done something terribly important with my life.

I think that I started writing this as a way to keep my son, who has barred doors against me and always looks for another face first, who has not been all mine since he was four years old. I wanted him to have this after my death, because I had failed him in life so completely.

Now I have an idea of what I can do for him.

I held my son close and began to whisper plans, keeping the demon safe and warm in the circle of my arm.

Mae shut the book.

Nick had come into her music room after school, hurled the copybook at her feet, and moved to the window, fixing her with an expectant look. She’d promised to help him, so she had opened the book and hoped that Daniel Ryves wouldn’t try to murder or leave Nick this time.

She hadn’t thought it might help.

Nick wasn’t at the window like a guard standing braced for an attack anymore. He was sitting on the window seat with a look of serious attention on his face. A lock of hair had fallen into his eyes, a slash of curving black that made Mae’s fingers lift to touch it, even though he was across the room.

“He used to carry me when we were moving,” he said. “Dad. So I wouldn’t—wouldn’t wake up.”

It came out cool, just a statement of fact. Nick looked away afterward, though, the angle of his jaw tight, and Mae thought it might be time to change the subject.

“What do you know about marks?” she asked.

Nick started and stared at her, eyes suddenly wide.

“What do you mean?”

Mae raised her eyebrows. “I was thinking about this mark that’s giving Gerald all his power, about the magician’s sigils and the three different demon’s marks.”

“There’s only one demon’s mark,” Nick interrupted.

He was looking at her again and leaning back against the window glass, arms crossed over his chest. Mae would’ve thought that Nick might look less out of place in the music room, which she and Jamie had messed around in and danced through and used as their playroom for years, but he didn’t. His eyes glittered a little too coldly in the lights of the chandelier, his clothes were worn and dark in the bright white room, and whichever way she looked at him, he was either a boy who didn’t fit into her home or a demon who didn’t fit into her world.

She wanted to reach out and brush back that lock of hair, all the same.

“No, you know, first there’s the first-tier mark, the doorway, and then there’s the second-tier mark, the triangle, and then the third-tier mark, the eye. That’s what I mean.”

“They’re all part of one mark,” Nick told her. “Just one. The magicians don’t let us into this world with enough power to make our mark, so we have to work up to possession by stages. But I could do it. That’s why Anzu and Liannan are so angry with me. I could put the full mark on anyone I wanted, and let a demon slide in.”

“So demons have only one mark,” Mae said. “But now magicians have two. It seems a bit much for Gerald to have invented a whole new one. I think it makes more sense for him to have modified one of the existing marks. What does the magician’s sigil do?”

“Lets you drain power from your Circle’s circle of stones.”

“And the demon’s mark lets you possess someone.”

“Doesn’t just do that,” Nick said. “Anzu marked Alan and Jamie, didn’t he? Couldn’t possess them both.”

It had never occurred to Mae before that of course Anzu, the Obsidian Circle’s pet demon, would have been the one to mark Jamie. She made a face at the thought.

“So what was his plan?”

“Possess one,” said Nick. “Save the other for later. The full demon’s mark, it forms a channel between humans and demons, so you can possess them, or just control them. That way you can have slaves as well as bodies to possess once the one you’re possessing breaks down. Anzu and me, we once had bodies in this desert kingdom. We had an agreement: We marked an army of slaves for the king so long as we got bodies for seven years.”

“Really,” Mae said. “Slaves. What happened next?”

“He didn’t keep his part of the bargain,” said Nick. “So we called up a storm and buried the kingdom under the sand. It’s probably still there now. We buried it deep.”

“I meant what happened to the slaves,” Mae clarified. She thought she did a good job of keeping her voice even.

“Oh, they died too,” Nick said. He sounded as indifferent as ever, but he kept his eyes on her and watched for her response. She thought he might be feeling a bit wary.

“You could have let them go.”

“No,” Nick answered. “What I mark is mine. It’s the same way for magicians. A magician takes a sigil to show he belongs to his Circle. When we’re going through magicians, the magicians’ blood can ransom a mark. A mark can be transferred. But there’s no way to make a mark cost nothing. A mark always costs someone everything.”

“So if Gerald had invented a mark to make humans obey him …” Mae said.

“Wouldn’t give him any more power, would it?” Nick asked. “Most humans don’t have magic.”

Mae nodded. It was the magician’s sigil Gerald had modified, then, it had to be. But exactly how he’d changed it, there was no way to know. Until they knew, how could they fight him?

Gerald had been able to knock Nick flat, and he was after Jamie. She didn’t know what to do.

“Do you think you can beat Gerald?” she asked quietly.

Nick’s face did not change, but the chandeliers above them rang out like wind chimes with the breeze picking up.

“I know I can,” he said. Mae looked into his eyes and tried to find something reassuring there, something she could rely on, but they were full of sliding shadows. “Don’t,” Nick added abruptly. “Don’t be scared about Jamie. They can’t have him. He’s my friend.”

Mae took a deep breath, feeling lighter in the chest area. She did believe that, even though it hadn’t occurred to her when Nick offered to be friends. She wondered why she hadn’t realized that Nick meant it, as he meant everything he said. Jamie was under his protection forever. Jamie was safe, if Nick could make him so.