Before their lips met, Mae turned her face away.

“Nick,” she said in a low voice. “Don’t.”

Nick went tense all over. The bow of his back, with his face bent toward Mae, suddenly looked a great deal more sinister. “Why not?”

Mae tilted her face up again, this time defiantly. She did not move out of Nick’s shadow. “Leaving aside the fact that I actually do have more pride than to let you say, ‘Oh well, I might as well have her’ the moment it seems like Alan doesn’t want me after all, as if I have no choice in the matter, as if I’d put up with being passed around like a parcel—”

“That isn’t how it is,” Nick snarled. “Just because I was trying not to stand in the way—”

“Leaving that aside,” Mae said, powering on determinedly over Nick’s voice until he shut up, “there’s the mark. And that makes the idea that I have no choice in the matter far too close to the truth.”

Nick glared down at her. “You asked me to put that mark on you!”

“I know I did,” Mae said, her tone level.

“Don’t lie to me.” Nick’s voice was suddenly loud, suddenly so angry that it struck Sin it went right through being an order and crashed into becoming a plea. “You wanted me before the mark. I know you did.”

“I know I did too,” Mae said again, in just the same way, and then her voice went softer. “But feelings change.”

Nick stared down at her, eyes boring into her face. “No,” he murmured, his voice low and sure. “You still want me.”

“What does it matter?” Mae asked bleakly. “I don’t know how my feelings would have changed without the mark. I trust you not to use the mark against me deliberately, but we don’t know how much the mark affects me without either of us knowing it. We do know it makes me want to please you, to do what you want. I can’t risk becoming some sort of satellite to you. I don’t want to lose bits of myself. I want you, but I don’t want to be yours. I want to be mine. And what about you? What do you want?”

Nick drew his hand away from her face as if her skin had burned him. “I don’t understand.”

“Sure you do,” Mae said. “You can’t just reach out and snag the parcel as it goes by. This is the human world, and I’m a human. I know that you’re not one. But I need you to say something to me. I need to know.”

“What use is it?” Nick demanded. “Since apparently I’m being punished for doing what you wanted.”

Mae launched herself up from the sofa. Nick had to stand up in a hurry, or she would have head-butted him in the face. He swung away from the sofa, looking like a caged animal about to start pacing, and Mae crossed her arms over her chest. There was a sheen of tears making her dark eyes gleam.

“It’s not about punishing you,” Mae said furiously. “It’s not about you at all. It’s about me, it’s about staying myself. But if I’m able to get the pearl, well, then maybe I’ll want to hear what you have to say to me.”

Nick went still. He had not considered the pearl this way before, Sin thought, and she thought too that he might be surprised Mae had.

“So what you need is the pearl.”

“What I want,” Mae said, “is for you to come to me after I get the pearl, and tell me what you want. And if you don’t want anything enough to try and put it into words—”

She shrugged in a jerky movement and went for the door. Sin flattened herself against Alan’s bedroom door, about to slide in, but she heard Mae’s last words loud and clear.

“Well then, Nick. Don’t bother.”

Once she had slipped into Alan’s room, she leaned back against the closed door and gave him a smile.

“So your brother disapproves of me.”

“Of course,” Alan said, looking up from his book and smiling at the sight of her. “You’re obviously going to break my heart.”

It didn’t sound entirely like a joke, and Sin didn’t know what to say, so she went over to the bed and kissed him. Alan pulled her down close, his hand at the back of her neck. After a few minutes Sin drew back so she could climb onto the bed. She got in on the left side, his good side, and whispered into his ear, “Obviously, that is my plan.”

“It’s just clear to everyone I don’t deserve you,” Alan said. “But don’t worry about it. I’m going to lie and scheme and kill to keep you anyway.”

“That’s all right then,” Sin said. She drew her mouth along the line of his jaw. “Why don’t you close your book?”

Alan did not do so. “It’s very interesting.”

Sin smiled against his skin. “So am I.”

“The most interesting girl I know,” Alan murmured.

She’d heard that before, with “beautiful” instead of “interesting.” She liked it better this way.

She wasn’t crazy about the way Alan pulled away from her a little and looked at her seriously.

“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” he started, which was a beginning that never ended well. “And I want to be honest with you.”

“You don’t have to be,” Sin said. “If you lie, I’ll know what you mean.”

Alan reached out and touched her face, and looked at her as if she was a kaleidoscope, showing all her different colors, and he liked them all.

“I’m being terribly selfish right now,” he said in a low voice. “Cynthia. You know I’m as good as marked for dead.”

Sin’s hands curled into fists, her nails cutting into her palms and stinging, the way tears stung when you refused to let them fall.

“I know,” she said.

“The Circle’s a mess right now,” Alan continued. “But it won’t be a mess forever. They’ll find a way to use Gerald’s mark on me. Or they’ll just kill me.”

“We’ll get it off,” Sin said.

“We’ll try,” he returned. “But that’s the thing. I don’t want to act like I only have a few days to live. I want to act like I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want to go anywhere. I want us to take our time.”

“Oh, just great,” Sin said. She kissed him again to show him that he could wait around being romantic all he wanted. She would still be there. “You’ll be sorry when I move out.”

“You’re still—?”

“‘Let’s not rush things, Cynthia,’” Sin said in an imitation of Alan’s voice. “‘Let’s just move in together.’ Yes, I’m moving out. You can come over and cook me dinner now and then, though.”

“Sounds fair.”

Sin settled lower down, against the rise of the pillows. “For now you can read to me.”

“I’d like that,” said Alan.

He sat up a little to rearrange the pillows, then pulled them flat rather than pushing them against the headboard, Sin’s head sliding down on them. Alan leaned over her and kissed her, arched over her, one hand running along her ribs, fingers trailing warm over her thin T-shirt. Sin’s breath came short as the kiss went deep and it didn’t matter, breathing seemed like a faraway irrelevance compared to shivering under Alan’s mouth.

“I would, you know,” Alan murmured into the kiss.

Sin gave a soft interrogative sound, which was as good as he was getting right now.

“Lie,” Alan answered, kissing her again.

“Scheme,” he added after a moment into her ear, and kissed the place at the edge of her jaw. Sin arched up underneath him, and his fingers touched the slice of skin between her shirt and jeans.

“And kill,” he whispered against her mouth, and kissed her breathless again.

“That’s good to know,” Sin told him when she had to break away, her heart drumming in her ears. She turned her head to the side, saw Alan’s free hand still holding his book, and started to laugh softly, looking up at him. “You’re keeping your place.”

“Of course. I’m going to read to you.” Alan smiled down at her. “In a minute.”

After quite a lot longer than a minute, he did. Sin put her arm around his stomach and rested her cheek against his shoulder and listened to him. He’d chosen something he thought she would like.

She did like it. She was simply happy, in a way she hadn’t been in a year and more, in a shining, certain way. She hid her smile against his shoulder and went to sleep.

When she woke up in the early morning, she was cold because she was lying on top of the covers and she was alone.

Sin stretched and rose from the bed, straightening her wrinkled clothes and yawning as she padded out into the hall. She saw Mae in the sitting room, curled up on the sofa in a ball and fast asleep. She hadn’t left after all.

Sin was smiling as she opened the kitchen door.

Nick was sitting on one of the chairs, hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging empty in front of him. Something about the way he was sitting made Sin think he had been there for a while.

But not all that long. The blood on the table and on one of the other chairs, sprayed over the floor, was not quite dry yet.

There were two knives on the table. Sin knew them, had seen Alan throwing them once at the Goblin Market. Nick must know them too.

They were Alan’s knives.

She could see very clearly what had happened. She wished she couldn’t. She wished she could just stand there in the doorway and shake and demand to know what was going on.

But she knew, as well as Nick did.

When the mark that could torture him or kill him or do anything to him that Gerald of the Aventurine Circle wanted had made Alan get up and go God knew where, Alan had forced himself into the kitchen.

To stop himself from leaving, to delay himself just a moment, he’d put a knife through his hand and held himself pinned to the table for the time he needed to leave them a message.

The words were cut deep into the surface of the table, deeper than they needed to be, as if Alan was desperate to show how much he meant what he had written.

I love you. Don’t come after me.

13

Dark My Light

I’M GOING AFTER HIM,” NICK SAID.

It made Sin blink and shook her out of paralysis into movement. She wasn’t certain how long she had been standing there, shivering and staring at the blood and words.

She moved forward a step and found her body had betrayed her, making her wobble. “We don’t know where he is.”

Nick stood up, pushing his chair back violently.

“I know where Gerald is. And I’m going to gut him slowly until he tells me what he did with my brother.”

Sin looked up at his black eyes.

“All right,” she said. “We’ll go together.”

She left before he could argue with her, running back to the room and shoving on her shoes, grabbing up her knives. She got one look at the dented pillow where Alan had slept beside her that night and had to swallow down terror and panic, but she didn’t let herself falter. She ran right back out to the sofa, where she shook Mae awake.

“Wha—,” Mae said, her eyes still blurry with sleep. Sin felt a moment of envy that Mae didn’t know, and pity because she was going to tell her.

“Alan’s gone,” she said. “Nick and I are going to get him. Please will you stay with Lydie and Toby?”

Mae was awake in an instant, reality doing the job of cold water, her whole face changing. A slight crazed look about her eyes suggested she would much rather deal with a whole band of killer magicians than two kids, but she nodded at once.

“Of course,” she said, and squared her shoulders.

“Thanks,” Sin told her, and ran. In the hallway she ran right into the solid wall of Nick’s back. “I’m coming with you,” she reminded him furiously.