I thought, My son is upstairs putting a demon to bed.
Olivia had told me what it was a thousand times. Neither of us had the slightest idea how to save what might once have been Olivia’s child. There was no child left, and no hope. There was one of a race of murderous, evil things in my home, and I was filled with senseless, unreasoning terror. As if that had not been the case for a year. As if I had not already betrayed my son by refusing to recognize the danger I had put him in.
As soon as the dead thing stopped moving, I left its messy remains on the rug and ran upstairs. Alan was still in the creature’s room, bending over the cradle and singing a song his mother used to sing to him. And in the cradle there was that monster, beyond the reach of human words and feelings.
I should have taken Alan then. I should have taken Alan and driven away from Olivia and the nightmare in the cradle, turned my back on it all and saved my son.
I couldn’t bear to leave Olivia. I told myself I would be careful, I would watch it, there might be some way to exorcise it, that Alan was too young to understand and he would be terribly distressed. I told myself that demons were cunning and the creature knew it was helpless and Alan was caring for it. There would be no profit for the demon in harming my son.
Only, of course, demons hurt humans for sport.
There are times when the true horror of the life I have condemned us to settles on me, like stones pressing down on my chest, and I think that soon I will be mad too. There was one day, when Alan was almost seven and came home straight from school as he always does. When Alan is at school I have to keep the creature with me in case Olivia tries to hurt it again.
It is part of his daily routine, as soon as he comes in the door, to give it a kiss and say, “Hi, Nick. Did you miss me?”
As if it could.
That done, he takes out his schoolwork and shows it to me, gold stars and teacher’s praise, the little offerings he brings in his effort to make my day brighter.
Sometimes I wish he wasn’t so good. It just makes everything else look so much more twisted, so much worse.
That day I noticed something new, though: that the creature’s eyes tracked his movements when he was in the room. They don’t track mine or Olivia’s unless we make a move that is directly related to it. It seems as indifferent to humans as if they were particularly mobile chairs. But it was watching Alan.
My blood ran heavy and cold through my veins, as if terror could turn me to stone, and I tried not to think of what bloody game or dark purpose the demon might intend for my son.
That night I went upstairs with an enchanted knife in my hand and stood over the cradle. Drowning hadn’t worked, but this knife had the strongest spells the Goblin Market knew laid on it.
The night-light was on, casting a pattern of cheerful rabbits on the opposite wall. It lay sleeping in a pool of light, but even sleeping it doesn’t look like a child.
Not quite.
I stood there sweating, the hilt of the knife turning slick in my grasp. Then from the door I heard Alan say, “Dad?”
I turned and saw him looking at me, and the knife, and the demon. My little boy’s face went so pale it seemed translucent. He looked like the tired old ghost of a child long dead.
“Nick,” he said, coming into the room, almost stumbling in his sleepy haste. “Nick, wake up.”
It doesn’t wake like normal children, grumbling or yawning or rubbing sleep from its eyes with small fists. It is simply alert in a moment, black eyes watchful and cold. Alan lifted it out of the cradle with an effort—the body is three years old and big for its age. The demon tried to squirm away. It does not seem to like being touched, but Alan clung to it, staring up at me with huge, terrified eyes.
I said his name.
“Come on, Nick,” Alan said, his voice breaking even as he tried to sound calm, as if the demon needed comfort. “I had a nightmare. I need you to come sleep in my bed.”
Alan has it trained to hold his hand and follow him when crossing roads. When he held its hand then, his knuckles were white.
As soon as he left the room I heard him break into a run, dragging the creature with him.
I went to put the knife away. I hid it and came back. Alan had dragged his wardrobe in front of the door. He’d barricaded himself in with the demon.
In the morning I had Olivia spell her way in, silently. I did not wake them as I came in over what remained of the wardrobe.
When I drew the blanket back, Alan was sleeping with one arm curled around the monster. In his other hand was an enchanted knife.
I’d never dreamed he knew where I kept the weapons, let alone that he’d stolen one. And now he was clinging to the demon and the knife, not even to defend against the magicians but to protect that thing from—because he was scared of—
I can’t write it. My little Alan, my baby boy.
What would Marie think, if she saw what had become of him?
“Come downstairs,” I said. “I’ll get breakfast.”
We have never spoken of that night. He pretends it never happened, hugs me without hesitation, still brings home good marks and trophies like offerings, acts like he has never doubted or feared me for a moment.
It scares me sometimes, how well he can pretend.
Mae stopped reading, breathing as if she’d been running a race. Her throat felt too small, as if it was closing up in an attempt to stop the words coming through.
“Another human reason to hold hands,” Nick said, his voice distant. “Crossing the street. See? This isn’t my first time.”
Mae’s voice came out stifled. “My mistake.”
Nick’s eyes did follow Alan. It was one of the first things Mae had noticed when she was getting to know him as more than just a devastatingly good-looking jerk. She’d seen and thought he was as scared for his brother as Mae was for hers.
“Why are you holding on so tight?” Nick inquired. “To comfort me?”
Mae looked down at their linked hands. She could barely feel her own hand, she realized slowly. She was holding on to his so hard her fingers had gone white and numb.
“I guess so,” she said softly.
Nick’s voice was freezing cold. “It doesn’t work. I can’t imagine why you think it might.”
“Okay.”
“Can I stop touching you now?” Nick snapped. “I don’t like it. This whole idea was stupid!”
Mae pulled her hand sharply away and into her lap, where she held it with her other hand, trying to massage warmth and movement back into her fingers. Nick rolled off the bed and caught his sword up from the floor, stalking over to the window and starting to put away his sharpening kit.
She thought of Alan, seven years old and barring his bedroom door because he was terrified of what his own father might do.
“Alan’s fine,” she said. “He’s all right now.”
“Sure,” said Nick, staring out the window and rolling his shoulders as if he was planning to punch someone. “Why wouldn’t he be? Dad’s dead. Mum’s dead. Every human he ever thought of as family is either dead or wants nothing to do with him. Whatever game I want to play with him, whatever purpose I have for him, I can go right ahead. The monster has him all to itself.”
Mae took a deep breath. “Don’t talk about yourself in the third person. It makes you sound like a serial killer. And Alan has me and Jamie too.”
Nick sheathed his sword and turned away from the window. Sunlight did nothing to soften his face at all. It just lit up the restless, dangerous glitter of his eyes.
“Yeah,” he said, suddenly predatory and intent. “Alan seemed happy this morning. You two have a nice night, did you?”
Nicholas Ryves, ladies and gentlemen, Mae thought. The only person in the world who could make a matchmaking scheme sound like a death threat.
“Sure,” she said, her voice chilly.
He’d made it extremely clear he wasn’t interested, but this was just rubbing it in.
“How nice?” Nick demanded.
“None of your business!”
“Oh?” he said, and smirked. “That nice. No wonder he was in such a good mood.”
“There were—” Mae said, and stumbled on her words. She glared at a random corner of the room rather than keep looking at Nick. “A lot happened at the Goblin Market, you know. He had plenty of things to think about.”
“Did he kiss you?”
Her gaze snapped up from the corner to Nick’s face, an outraged reply burning on but not leaving her lips.
“Yes,” she answered slowly, instead of telling him exactly how inappropriate his question was. He had no reaction to the news that she could see. “It wasn’t that big a deal,” she went on, putting one verbal foot carefully in front of the other. “We’re not going out or anything. I mean, for God’s sake, he also seemed to have a good enough time kissing Liannan last night.”
That got a reaction.
Nick lunged across the room at her, and she jumped off the bed and stood with one hand raised, knowing that there was no way on earth she could stop his vicious rush.
He stopped himself, body straining as if he’d hit an invisible barrier. “What?” he bit out, with the force of a blow behind the word.
“Liannan,” Mae repeated, trying to make her voice so light it couldn’t disturb the fragile equilibrium Nick seemed to have reached.
“Kissed Alan,” Nick said flatly.
It occurred to Mae now to wonder exactly what Liannan was to Nick. She knew that Liannan knew him. Anzu the demon had spoken about some kind of alliance, the three demons together, and Alan had said once that Liannan acted like Nick was her boyfriend.
Perhaps he missed her. She was his own kind.
“Nick,” Mae said. “Are you jealous?”
He broke and ran, slamming the door, and Mae charged after him. He was so much faster than she was, she heard him knocking into or possibly leaping over the stair rail before she was at the bedroom door. She ran after him anyway, knowing by the crashing where he was headed, and she was in the kitchen by the time he strode into the garden and lifted a hand.
Dark clouds raced from the corners of the sky to cover the sun, jagged stitches of lightning bright against the shadowed heavens. There was no thunder, only silence, until Nick spoke.
“Liannan!” he shouted. “Come and face me!”
Lines broke the ground in every direction from the spot where Nick stood, as if he was at the center of an earthquake. The demon’s circle formed around him violently, dust rising so Mae almost lost sight of him.
Nick’s entire backyard was a demon’s circle, and flames were licking and leaping from every line. She didn’t dare go outside.
The balefire was burning high, making the whole circle glow, shimmering against the garden fence and turning the air above it smoky and hazy. If any of the neighbors looked out of their windows, questions were going to be asked and the fire brigade was going to be called.
At the other edge of the demon’s circle, under the gnarled yew tree, there were two shapes forming.
That wasn’t right.
Liannan and Anzu rose together out of the flickering balefire, not touching but with their bodies curved toward each other. Liannan was as beautiful as she had been last night but much less soft, skin the stark white of alabaster and hair flying, a being of stone and scarlet.
Anzu’s wings were ragged and black, like the wings of a moth in the night. The bright red of Liannan’s hair showed through his tattered wings, as if he was already enveloped in her fire and burning away.
Nick stood in the whirlwind of fire and wings, the still, dark center of the demon’s circle. They drew in toward him at once.
He stood waiting for them, his shoulders held stiff. Mae recognized his stance. He was ready to fight.
Liannan got to him first, her long arms reaching out. The gesture looked sinister, like a mermaid reaching up to pull a man into dark, drowning waters.