15
15THE KNOCK ON THE FRONT DOOR CAME ALMOST IMMEDIATELY after Mae spoke. “Mae,” Sin said, low. “Are you at the door?”
Just as low, though the demons were not there to hear her, as if Sin’s fear was infecting her, Mae whispered, “No.”
Sin cut off the call, leaned her forehead against the phone, and boosted herself to her feet. She shoved her phone into her pocket, unlocked the door, and threw it open so hard it hit the wall, because otherwise she would have stayed cowering in the bathroom.
A moment later, she wished she had.
She’d stepped out between the possessed bodies of the people she loved. Anzu and Liannan were standing in the hall. They had been looking at each other, but now they were both looking at her.
Liannan stood there with the red hair streaming down her shoulders snarled with ash, a bright, sharp smile on her face.
“Merris?” Sin whispered, because it was not night yet. It was daytime even if it was daytime in hell, and that was who should be in this body.
And Merris answered, black starting to bleed from the ash in her hair, staining the red and spreading.
“Thea,” she said, using the Goblin Market nickname for her instead of the severe “Cynthia” she usually preferred.
Sin felt a great bound of hope in her chest, as if she could fling herself into Merris’s arms like a child and expect to be saved, just like that. As if it could be that simple.
But Merris’s hands had nails that glimmered strangely sharp, and there was still red in her hair and a wild strangeness to her face.
“Liannan?” Anzu asked, and he sounded uncertain.
“I’m here,” said Liannan, her voice changing again, lifeless and flat, all the humanity leached out. “But it is technically her turn.”
“Technically?” Sin whispered.
Liannan smiled. “Our boundaries are more fluid these days.”
“It’s disgusting that you have to sully yourself like this,” Anzu said.
“I don’t know,” said Liannan. “All that screaming gets tiresome after a while, don’t you find?”
Sin wouldn’t have thought she could look away from Liannan lest she miss a moment when she might turn into Merris, but she found her head turning helplessly to look at Alan’s face.
“No. I enjoy it,” said Anzu, and used Alan’s mouth to smile. “Especially now.”
Liannan moved past Sin, her hair brushing whisper-soft against Sin’s shoulder, and stood beside Anzu. She reached up and drew her fingernails down his cheek, deliberately drawing four bleeding lines.
“I do not think this was a particularly good idea,” she said. “The city’s on fire. So I see he’s taking it well.”
The trails of blood moved across Alan’s face, drawing a pattern as if the demon was going to play noughts and crosses in blood across Alan’s skin. Then a shadow fell across the blood.
Nick stood in the kitchen doorway, his hands on the door frame as if he was blocking the way.
There were three demons standing close enough to reach out and kill her, and the kids were only a door away.
“Liannan,” said Nick, “you’re not welcome here.”
“But the city’s burning,” Liannan said. “It’s beautiful. I know you’re put out that Anzu stole your pet, but we are all together at last. Let us cheer you up. Let’s take your bad mood out on the humans. We could go to the Tower of London and get those executions started again.”
Nick stared at her blankly. Liannan turned away from Anzu and toward him, reaching out a hand. He didn’t flinch back, and she didn’t touch him: He’d known she wouldn’t. They were comfortable together, with the ease of long familiarity.
“I’m sorry too,” Liannan told him. “Alan was lovely. But he’s gone now. Let’s go out and choose you a new one.”
“Why don’t you get out?” Nick asked. “You’re boring me.”
“We could—”
“I have a headache tonight, dear,” Nick drawled. “I didn’t ask you to come. I could have gone to find you any time in the last month, Liannan, but I didn’t. Can’t you take a hint? I don’t want you here.”
“I want to talk to Merris,” Sin said into the silence after those words.
The demons looked at her, as if they were distantly surprised she dared to speak at all. Anzu moved toward her, and a warning, animal impulse at the base of Sin’s spine told her she was in danger.
“No,” said Merris. “Don’t touch her.”
She reached past Anzu and took Sin’s wrist, and Sin let her despite those lethally pointed nails. Merris drew her into the sitting room, leaving the others out in the hall.
Merris sat down on the sofa, gracefully crossing her legs. Her whole body looked younger, Sin saw with a dull sense of shock, her legs strong, their muscles taut. Dancer’s legs.
“What is it you need, Thea?” Merris asked, and her voice was gentle, for Merris. It would have been reassuring, aside from everything else.
Sin sat on the very edge of the sofa and uncurled her hands from their fists.
“You’ve changed,” she said softly.
“Well,” Merris said, and smiled a small secretive smile. She did not look at all displeased. “I suppose I have.”
“You’ve been away from the Market a long time,” Sin said. “Were you at Mezentius House?”
“At first.” Merris’s tone was dismissive. “I put a friend of mine in charge there. I was not going to simply abandon my responsibilities.”
Her hands had been veined but strong once, gnarled at the back like old tree trunks but still moving gracefully to express herself. They were smooth now. Sin had liked Merris’s hands the way they were. The Market had been safe in Merris’s hands. Sin had, as well.
“What about the Market? Were you just going to leave it up to Mae?”
“Oh,” Merris murmured. “She’s come out on top already, has she?”
She did not sound in the least surprised. Sin gritted her teeth.
“She hasn’t come out on top. I’ve been thrown out of the Market, but they haven’t chosen her as a leader. They all thought you were coming back, and I want to know what’s going on,” she said between her teeth. “I thought—you said Liannan was whispering to you, and you had to silence her, and now you’re letting her out during the day!”
Merris smiled faintly. “I started whispering back. We started whispering to each other. When I was young, I was a dancer.”
Sin nodded.
Merris raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you’ve heard the stories. But you never saw me dance. I was better than your mother ever was, I was better than you ever will be. I danced in Goblin Markets around the world. The most beautiful songs played in the Goblin Market today, Cynthia, they were written for me. Do you want to know why I was so good?”
In Mezentius House, Sin had thought about not being able to dance anymore. She’d pictured being hurt, being wrenched out of the world she knew, and when she’d escaped unscathed she found it even harder to look at Alan, or anyone else who couldn’t dance.
She’d always known that she would have to stop dancing one day, but something about Merris’s voice made her picture it now: more than half her life, not able to dance a real dance, the true dance, under the lights of the Market.
Merris said, “I never cared about anything else. And then it was over.”
The word over was crushing in Sin’s mind for a moment, and then she thought, Never? About anything else?
“I had to find something else to do, some other way to be part of the Market,” Merris said. “And I found a way. I founded Mezentius House, and I made the Market bigger and brighter than it had ever been before. But when I went away with Liannan, I went dancing. And I was better than ever.”
“It’s the demon,” Sin got out. “But I’ll get the pearl, and I’ll bring it to you. I will.”
“I’m going to go around the world,” Merris said. “I only have so many nights to do it, but I’m going to visit every Goblin Market there is, and dance one more time. If you could do what you loved best in this world, would you let anything stop you?”
“Yes,” Sin answered. “If people needed me.”
“And that’s what has always been wrong with you,” Merris said tenderly. “That is why you will never be a true artist. But you come so close. I cared about the Market, I cared about turning a profit and building up the magic, but I was never able to care much about any one person. You were different. You almost reached perfection, but you were never quite disciplined enough. The children, your school, those visits to your father—oh, I knew about those. You were never focused. Not enough to sacrifice everything else. You were such a disappointment. But somehow, I don’t know how it was, exactly. Somehow I cared more about you than I ever did about anyone before.”
Sin turned away, back hunched, trying to bear the onslaught of the words. She felt the touch of Merris’s hands on her face, smooth and young, and looked up into demon eyes.
“If I’d had a daughter, I would have wanted her to be like you,” Merris murmured. “But just a little better.”
It wasn’t Merris’s fault. She was possessed, and a lie could not pass her lips any more than her eyes could change back to gray.
Sin had tried, as hard as she knew how. She’d never wanted to disappoint Merris. She’d always tried to balance in a place where she could be both like her mother, beautiful and carefree, and like Merris, the ideal leader.
All these performances, and nobody had ever really appreciated them except one person, and now he was gone. Alan was gone and Merris was going, and Sin knew the only thing she could do was protect what was left.
Sin swallowed. “Will you go back to the Market?” she asked. “Will you check that everyone’s all right? Will you talk to Mae? Please.”
Merris stood up from the sofa. Sin did not dare look up, in case she saw Liannan intent on going dancing through flames and death. She kept her head bowed until her neck ached.
She felt Merris’s lips touch her forehead, gently.
“For you,” she said, “I will. But I won’t stay.”
Sin looked up into those black eyes. “I’ll get the pearl,” she promised again. “I’ll bring it to you. You’ll see, then. The demon will be quiet, and everything will be the same as it was before.”
Merris smiled, pitying and a little scornful. “Child,” she said. “That never happens.”
She left, her back straight, her body strong and lithe and young. Sin watched her go and told herself that she would get that pearl, she would, and once the demon was silenced, Merris would come back.
She tried to forget the kiss good-bye.
“I’ll go with Liannan,” Anzu said from the hall, and Sin looked around to see Nick grab his arm.
“That’s not Liannan right now,” Nick told him. “And you’re staying here.”
The door closed behind Merris, and Anzu rounded on Nick. “Oh I am, am I?”
Nick’s eyes narrowed. “Yes.”
“Great,” Anzu said. The air seemed to glitter around him, molecules crystallizing with his icy rage. “What do you do for fun around here? Oh wait, don’t tell me, I know!”
He spun and slammed open a door. Sin was on her feet with her heart in her throat and her knives in her hands before she realized that he had gone into Alan’s room and not Nick’s.
She sheathed her knives immediately. She couldn’t show concern, she couldn’t give him the idea that it might be fun to play with Toby and Lydie. She had to hope he had forgotten or was at least uninterested in the fact that they were there.
Anzu emerged from the doorway again almost at once. He was carrying a sword.
Sin had forgotten they’d stowed all Nick’s swords in there, away from the kids.
Alan had never had the balance to use a sword effectively, so it was like seeing the smooth, easy new walk to see his body wielding a blade with careless ease. The sword shone in the dim hallway. Its point was aimed at Nick’s heart.
“Come on,” Anzu said softly.
The steel edge pierced the cotton of Nick’s T-shirt, just touching. One shove of the blade, and Nick would be spitting blood.
Nick moved, not backward but sideways, drew his sword, and brought it around in a tight, vicious circle. Anzu only just raised his blade in time to meet Nick’s, and there was a ring of steel that echoed through the little rooms.
Sin couldn’t see Nick’s face as he followed up on his strike, moving in and forcing Anzu’s blade back.
“Let’s take this outside.”
She could see Anzu’s face, though, savage and hungry and gleaming with a terrible kind of triumph, though Sin didn’t know what he thought he’d won. He spun and almost swaggered through the door, blade dangling carelessly from his hand. Nick followed him.
As soon as the door shut, Sin leaped into the hall and to Nick’s bedroom, scrabbling for the doorknob and shoving at the door with her elbow in a burst of panic.
Lydie and Toby were on the bed, curled up tightly together, asleep. Mae had made sure they got dressed, and Sin hoped she’d fed them too. She couldn’t tell if Mae had washed their faces, because both of their faces were grimy again already, screwed up and covered in dried tears.
They must have heard some of what was going on outside. They had been so good. They hadn’t made a sound.
Sin hated to wake them.
Maybe, since they were asleep, she could go outside and see what was happening. Just for a moment.
She shouldn’t do it, Sin thought, wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans. But Alan was in there, trying to hold out, helpless and watching all this. What he must be feeling, fearing his own hands would strike down his brother.
She knew it was a mistake, but she made it. She closed the door softly so she wouldn’t wake the kids, grabbed her keys, and dashed out the door.
The demons were dueling in the roof garden, circling and striking, blades catching the light of the sinking sun in a blinding rain of blows. Anzu was dancing around Nick, taunting, making a game of this, and Nick was feinting and dodging.
Nick was trained, but Alan had made sure his brother’s power was limited. Sin suspected it might be less than Anzu’s power.
Sin ran down the cold passage lined with wire mesh and then up the steps. She knelt on the highest step that would still be out of view, poised like a sprinter ready to leap.
The sunlight bathing him alone could not account for the gold of Anzu’s hair and skin. Even the bones of his face looked different; he was changing Alan’s very bones because he felt like it, turning his face into something sharp-edged and beautiful and terrible.
He seemed angry.
“What I want to know is what’s wrong with everyone?” he demanded, dealing Nick a blow that, if Nick hadn’t parried it, would have cut his head clean off. “Liannan cooperating with a human, sharing with her, running around doing the human’s little errands!”
The way he spat out the word had added vehemence because it was punctuated by another savage stroke of his sword. Nick met the stroke, his arms and shoulders braced. If Sin hadn’t known enough to measure the impact of that strike, she would never have guessed how hard Nick had just been hit.
“And as for you,” Anzu exclaimed, disengaging and spinning in a furious circle. Nick met each of the blows, blocking them, parrying them, but not making any attacking moves of his own. He was like a stone, looming dark and comparatively still. Next to Anzu, he looked like a statue in a graveyard. “You,” Anzu said with loathing. “Having a temper tantrum about your little pet? You make me sick.”
Nick’s shoulders bunched, muscles moving differently than they had before, engaging with the sword now. Sin knew the look of someone turning their body into a weapon.
She was not surprised when he lunged at Anzu. Anyone human would have stumbled at the sudden onslaught, and Anzu had to retreat, but he did it fast, almost gleefully, almost dancing back.
Nick delivered a series of punishing hits so close together they didn’t look like a series but like one continuous monumental effort to batter Anzu to pieces. Anzu was only just keeping up, only just able to defend himself, and he looked delighted about it.
Nick wasn’t lacking power; he had been holding back. For a moment Sin didn’t understand why he should do that, why he would want to spare Anzu, and she thought about a demon’s loyalty to its own kind.
Or maybe he had realized what she had, after Anzu started talking. Maybe he knew his brother was trying to hold out, and he was trying to spare the body.
She wished she knew. She wanted to be sure, but all she was sure of was that Alan was being tortured, and that he would never in a thousand years have wanted to hurt his brother.
If it came down to a choice, she had to try and protect Nick.
Nick did not look especially in need of protection. Anzu was still dancing backward, the body changing like a mood ring, all shifting colors and bones. He seemed to be trying to alter the body into something entirely new, into air and light.
He stepped off the side of the building, pivoting into nothingness, and landed on the rooftop of a building yards away. He stood on the smooth gray slant of the roof, staring across the space at Nick, their gazes locked and mirroring each other, a void reflecting a void, nothingness going on forever.
Nick jumped, a spring that a human wouldn’t have been able to make. If Anzu was barely connected to the human body, Nick was using it to the fullest extent he could. He was a thundercloud of muscle and magic, fighting a lightning bolt. Anzu kept laughing and they kept moving, halting for a moment with swords locked at the crest of the roof.
They went down the other side of the roof caught in combat, even their silhouettes against the sky slipping away from her.
Sin judged the distance and then bounded to her feet and ran, building up steam for the jump, all the muscles in her body coiled and burning to prepare for the effort.
Her hurtle through the air was a brief moment of terror, wind and hair whipping into her eyes and leaving her blind. Then her knees hit the very edge of the roof, viciously hard. She felt her jeans and the skin of her knees both tearing, but she ignored the sting and, crouching low, made her way up the slope of the roof.
The sound of swords clashing filled her ears before she saw them again. Anzu was not even sweating. Nick was, his T-shirt clinging damp to his collarbones. He was breathing hard, but he circled Anzu without a hint that he might relent or pause. His mouth was set in a grim line.
“We can go dueling through the rooftops of London,” Anzu said. “We could cross blades on top of Westminster Abbey. No human could catch us. No human could stop us, no matter what we wanted to do. You were stranded out here with the humans, isolated and in chains, but we are both here now. There’s no need to crawl for them any longer.”
Nick was crouching like Sin, not to hide but to attack. Locks of wet hair were falling in his eyes and he was panting, but his teeth were bared in something like a savage grin.
It occurred to Sin that they might both be enjoying themselves. She might just be trying to throw herself into the middle of some deadly inhuman game.
“And as for that pet of yours,” Anzu went on, raging and exulting at once. “He couldn’t fight you like this, could he? He was even more worthless than an ordinary human. He was broken, and useless, and pointless.”
He punctuated each of his descriptions of Alan with a slash, face alight with triumph. Nick dealt him another series of hard blows for an answer, bearing down with his superior weight and strength, and Sin waited for the moment when one of them would stop using their magic to fuel their fight and simply use it to lash out.
It didn’t happen. Anzu betrayed himself by flinching under the barrage of blows, his parry vicious but wavering a little, almost uncertain.
Nick knocked him back with another blow.
“I’m your brother,” Anzu shouted. “Not him!”
The next blow of Nick’s sword brought Anzu to his knees. Nick drew his blade slowly, lightly, along Anzu’s throat. Anzu was still wearing an awful half smile, as if he thought this was all part of a game.
“You’re right,” Nick said, his voice utterly emotionless. “This isn’t like fighting Alan. He’s human and weak and broken, all the things you said. And Alan would have cheated by now. He would have won.”
Anzu stopped smiling. Nick crouched down, his face close to Anzu’s.
Cold as ever, Nick murmured, “I know my brother when I see him.”
Sin sat on the sofa and hated herself. Nick had had the situation under control. Of course he had. There was no need for her to be running around like a fool, trying to protect a demon!
Once she’d seen that Nick could handle himself, she had turned around and gone back, but it was too late. She had no time to wake the children and make her escape. Both the demons had come back almost as soon as she did.
Worse than that, Nick had gone into Alan’s room and slammed the door. Sin had not the faintest idea what he could be doing there, but she did not appreciate being left out here alone with Anzu.
Anzu did not bother her. He seemed not to notice she was there. He just stood staring out the window, arms crossed over his chest. The sun was setting, throwing red banners over the buildings and crowning them with light. It almost looked like the city was burning again.
For a while Sin sat, waiting for him to do something and reproaching herself for her own stupidity in not running when she could. She would almost deserve whatever the demon decided to do to her.
At last she began to believe he would stay put. There was still no sound from Nick’s room, where the children were.
Sin tried to make herself relax. She had to be strong to get the children out at the very next opportunity that arose. She would not be so weak as to let the chance slip out of her fingers a second time.
She couldn’t relax. She wished something would happen, a disaster, anything she could deal with so she wouldn’t have to think.
Failing that, she wished Nick would get out of Alan’s room so she could go in there and look at his stupid guns and books, put her head on the pillow they had shared last night, and cry.
With nothing she could do, all Sin could think of was Alan. He was locked up in his own body, dying slowly, watching all of this.
She knew what happened to a possessed body. What Nick and Anzu had been saying today was not news. Demons loved to boast in their dancing circles of how they made humans suffer, trapped in bodies that started to fall apart so fast, trapped in a corner of their own minds and screaming.
She had spent hours talking to her mother, trying to comfort her even though she knew that Mama could never respond to her touch, never answer her again.
Alan would go through that, all of that, but even more slowly, and he might have to see people he loved hurt at his hands.
Sin looked across the room at Anzu. He was not using much magic now, and he looked almost like Alan again. She could look at his red hair curling against the collar of his shirt and the solemn lines of his profile, as if he was absorbed in thought, and she could almost think it was Alan.
But it wasn’t. It would never be Alan again.
She was on her feet before she realized what she was about to do, walking softly until she reached the window and the demon.
She stood beside him and thought of Alan trying desperately to survive a little longer, as if she or Mae could possibly hope to save him. She shut her eyes, the setting sun painting the darkness behind her eyelids scarlet and gold.
Sin put her hand at the back of his neck and drew his head gently down. She kissed him on the mouth.
The demon let her do it.
“I’m right here,” Sin breathed. It felt like Alan was close for a moment, even though he wasn’t. “Hold on.”