The Demon's Covenant (32 page)

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.

“I know that,” she told him, and smiled.

“When you talked about demons' marks, I thought you knew something else,” Nick said, and looked away.

She didn't even realize she'd risen until she was halfway across the floor, and by then she wasn't stopping until she reached the window seat. He had to tilt his head backward against the glass to look up at her.

“Nick, what do you mean?”

“I don't want to possess anyone,” Nick said softly, eyes shining like ink. “So I didn't think I'd want to mark a human. But the marks don't just mean possession. They mean being mine. They mean I can watch, and guard, and none of the others can touch, and I could—”

“Control someone,” Mae said. “Make them your slave.”

Nick blinked slowly, eyelashes sweeping the top of his cheekbones. “That too.”

He was devastatingly beautiful, Mae thought, and “devastating” was the word: She could see storms and cities burning in his eyes.

“I didn't think I'd want to mark a human,” he said. “But I do.”

“Alan,” Mae whispered.

“Yes,” Nick whispered back. “And you.”

Mae went still, torn between the impulse that said the demon's eye was on her, that she should run, and the impulse to move closer. Nick had never said anything to indicate she mattered to him before.

“Oh,” she said.

“And Jamie,” Nick continued.

“Oh,” she said, in a very different way. “Well. Thanks for my part in the compliment. Naturally I'd love to be watched and controlled, but I think I may be washing my hair that day.”

Nick grinned. “Yeah, all right.”

He looked more relaxed, Mae noticed. He was pleased about that book, she thought, pleased by the idea of the past and his father reading to him, his brother happy.

“I think we can get by without that,” she said. “Even if I, as the bombshell of the group, have to take one for the team and go seduce Gerald's secrets out of him.”

“That's ridiculous,” Nick told her. “I'm clearly the bombshell of the group.”

Mae laughed and held out her hand.

“What?” Nick demanded warily. “I'm not sure I'm ready for more hand-holding.”

“What?” Mae echoed back at him. “Another lesson for you, Nick: When you want to make a human happy, do something they enjoy with them. Besides, I'm having a moment of probably soon-to-be-destroyed optimism about the future. Don't worry. It probably won't last.”

She ran to put in a CD she liked that was a little bit rock and a little bit blues, and then she went over and grasped Nick's hands in hers, pulling him to his feet.

Her confidence was checked by the way he just looked down at her, as if waiting for the human to explain her strange customs. She opened her hands and his slipped out of hers, down by his sides.

Mae's skin was prickling with sudden shame. She wanted to run away so he would stop looking at her, slam as many doors as she could between herself and his eyes, and she wanted to somehow carry this off so he thought nothing was wrong.

“Come on,” she said, her voice going too high to be really light. “You know how to dance, don't you?”

He reached for her waist and then slid his big hands down along her body, fingers curling around her belt. His ring was a cold shock on the strip of skin between her shirt and her jeans.

“Yeah,” Nick said, his voice curling in the air like smoke from a raging fire, filling her lungs and making it hard to breathe. “I know how to dance.”

Mae looked up at him and saw nothing she could read: lowered eyelids and the line of his mouth. She put her hands
up anyway, catching at his shoulders and the rhythm. Her hands curved around the fragile barrier of his T-shirt, grasping the worn cotton as if it was all that was holding her up. Her knuckles pressed tight against the swell of his shoulders, feeling his muscles shift as he moved with her.

She dipped down with him a little, his hips touching hers, stepped back and then up against him again. Her breath hitched every time he stepped in to her, a warm scrape in the back of her throat, and she wished desperately that she could stop it, but she couldn't. He must be hearing it, every time.

When they neared a wall, she almost blundered backward into it, not expecting it, barely aware of things like
walls
, for God's sake. He palmed her hip, the hollow of his hand pressing down against her hipbone, and turned her easily, swinging her against him.

Mae's death grip on his shirt went loose, fingers curling up of what seemed to be their own volition to touch his neck, and that was a mistake. Nick started slightly, his cut-short hair prickling under her fingertips, and then she completely lost her mind, because she suddenly had both hands in his hair and was pulling his head down to catch the part of his lips, his tiny indrawn breath.

His mouth brushed hers for an instant, and then strong hands grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back at arm's length, hard.

“No,” said Nick.

Just that, short and brutal. He let her go and walked back to the window.

Mae's first impulse was to die of shame, but she realized after a hot, stomach-clenching moment that this was probably impractical.

“Right, sorry,” she said, forcing her voice to sound entirely unmoved. She'd just been carried away by the music. It was no big thing. “I get it.”

She paused and knew for a sinking moment that Nick wasn't going to respond, and she could think of absolutely nothing to say, and the best she could hope for was that he would just leave in total silence so she could work on her dying-of-shame plan. Then Jamie, her beautiful, beautiful, timely brother, opened the door and looked rather surprised.

“Nick!” he said, smiling. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” Mae lied promptly. “Where have you been?”

“Oh, I think we know where he's been,” Nick said in a dark voice from the window.

Mae hadn't even thought about where he'd been until that moment, when she looked into his sunny, open face and saw magicians written on it, as if Gerald had already set his mark there.

“I suppose you wouldn't believe I was signing us both up for Yogilates.”

Nick's silence was answer enough.

“Would you like me to read you a couple of chapters?” Jamie offered, brightening further at the thought of homework rather than knives. “We can't practice self-defense now—what a shame! Because it's too dark.”

“Knife work at night is something you're going to have to learn,” said Nick. “You have to train your eye to catch the glint of metal in the dark.”

There was a horrified pause.

“Seriously,” Jamie said. “I think Yogilates is my calling.”

Nick laughed and moved toward Jamie in a few quick
strides. His glance over his shoulder at Mae said he was leaving this situation and they would never speak of it again.

“Okay, you can read one chapter. And you can stop talking about Yogilates.”

“Oh, but”—Jamie's eyes flickered to Mae—“I could come down here with the book,” he suggested. “I could do a dramatic reading!”

“I'm good for dramatic reading just now,” Mae told him, and waggled her fingers in clear dismissal. Nick shepherded Jamie out of the door.

Mae went over to her armchair and tried very hard not to relive the last few minutes of the dance.

She clutched her hair in her hands, remembered grasping Nick's soft hair in handfuls, and let go, nails biting into her palms instead.

She didn't know what was wrong with her. She'd made passes and been shut down before. That happened when you had a tendency to take a chance rather than wait for guys to make their move. It didn't matter, not at all.

It had just been a stupid thing to do. That was what had her tied in knots. She wasn't usually stupid.

Nick had already made it very clear he wasn't interested.

So she'd leap at Seb next time she felt leaping urges, Mae told herself firmly, and went downstairs to make herself some coffee. She had gone through half a pot and had Dorothy Parker's
Here Lies
propped up on the table in front of her when she heard Annabel's heels going off like gunshots in the hall.

“Hello,” her mother said, going for the fridge. Mae waved her coffee cup in greeting and watched as Annabel drew out a packet of lettuce leaves that had turned brown and dispirited. “Oh dear,” she said. “Thai food all right by you?”