“Not really,” Mae said, dragging the words out. “It’s all a bit …”
Talking broke the equilibrium she’d had going, the steady march to her bedroom and oblivion. She ended up collapsing on the stairs with her elbows on her knees, and for a moment she was sure Jamie would pass on regardless.
She should have known better. He came down the stairs at once and was kneeling on the step below her, brown eyes warm and unguarded.
“Mae,” he said. “Mae, what is it?”
Mae didn’t know. She found herself humiliatingly close to tears. She wanted to spill out the whole story: Alan actually considering Gerald’s bargain, Daniel Ryves standing over a cradle with a knife, Liannan whispering about demons and what Mae wanted. She didn’t know how to fix any of it, or even how to fix herself and Jamie, make certain that things were as they always had been, him and her against the world.
Jamie took her hand in his and held on, looking slightly horrified and so concerned.
“I love you,” Mae said, stumbling over the words, trying ferociously hard not to actually cry. “I know you’re mad at me, but I need—I need things to be okay.”
“Things aren’t okay,” Jamie said, and then he leaned in and eased himself up, tucking her cheek against his thin shoulder, and said in her ear, “You have the worst taste in men in the world. But I love you, too.”
It was that simple, and she felt stricken at the thought of how awful it must be for Alan, never to have this warm human contact, the certainty of someone saying it back. Mae closed her eyes and held on to Jamie’s soft T-shirt with clenched fists, and did not let go for a long time.
That night the demons whispered outside her window in Jamie’s voice, small and beseeching, asking for help. But she knew Jamie was safe in bed, and she put her head under the covers when the low, terrible sobbing began.
13
Bargains at the Gallows
Mae’s Monday morning was slightly brightened when Jamie came downstairs wearing the purple LOCK UP YOUR SONS T-shirt she’d given him, which he usually only wore to bed.
“Nice,” she said as Jamie fished around for the purple knit cap in the cupboard where they kept their hats. Nobody really knew where the purple knit cap had come from. It was a purple mystery. “Do you want me to put some eyeliner on you?”
“No, Mae. We’ve had this discussion.”
Jamie spoke lightly, as if everything between them was fine, but if that were true, Jamie wouldn’t be dressing this way. Mae had told him Seb was going to be polite to him from now on. Jamie was clearly determined to be defiant in purple.
“Hang on a second,” said Mae, and she dashed upstairs and changed out of her black HEATHCLIFF HAD IT COMING shirt and into a matching purple LOCK UP YOUR SONSd shirt.
Unlike Jamie, Mae wore hers quite often.
Today it was a uniform, something that said I am on the same side as you and willing to fight with you. Jamie smiled, crooked and pleased, when he saw it, and Mae knew her sartorial peace offering had been accepted.
They walked to school, talking about how much they were longing for the summer holidays.
“Oh, I am planning things,” said Jamie. “Great, great things. I could join a band.”
“You gave up the guitar after two lessons.”
“Well,” he said, “I could be a backup dancer.”
“Backup dancers have to wear belly shirts and glitter,” said Mae. “So obviously, I support this plan.”
“The answer to glitter is the same as the answer to eyeliner,” Jamie told her. “In fact, put all forms of makeup into the big box of no.”
“You’ll never make it as a backup dancer with that kind of attitude.”
“Well,” said Jamie, “maybe I’ll learn a new skill.”
They were drawing level with the school when Jamie did something very unexpected: He smiled.
It was a particular smile, warm and slow as sunrise, that he used when he saw Mae, Annabel, boys he had usually disastrous crushes on, and friends he no longer had at all.
“Hi,” Jamie said, happy and a little shy. “Um—what are you doing here?”
Mae turned to see Nick leaning against the door frame, schoolbag slung over one shoulder.
“Going to school,” he said. “This building. Right here.”
“Yes,” said Jamie. “But why do you go to school at all when you’re a …” His eyes slid around the playground. “When you’re a spy?” he offered eventually.
Nick stared at Jamie for a moment, blank black eyes possibly trying to convey that Jamie was a strange human being who bothered him.
“I wonder the same thing myself,” he said. “Alan insists, though.”
“Oh,” said Jamie. “Well. But this is great!”
“Great’s a strong word,” Nick drawled.
He peered through the glass into the darkened hallway of the school. Someone very misguided had painted the hall turquoise once.
Mae couldn’t blame Nick for a certain lack of enthusiasm.
“See, I had this thought,” said Jamie.
“Congratulations.”
“I thought,” Jamie said, narrowing his eyes slightly, “that maybe sometime … I mean, you have trouble reading, don’t you?”
Nick straightened up from slouching against the door frame, which made Mae realize how relaxed he had been before, how relaxed he’d allowed himself to be, since it was just the three of them.
“What’s your point, Jamie?”
Jamie frowned, face screwed up, as if he was trying very hard to think of the exact right thing to say. “The thing is,” he said, “Alan’s really smart, isn’t he?”
A certain tension eased out of Nick’s shoulders. “Yeah.”
“Well, so stuff is really easy for him—because he’s so smart,” said Jamie, who was quick about feelings even if he did say ridiculous things about spies. “So he probably skips over about half the steps a normal not-so-smart person would need for learning something. And when it’s something that doesn’t come naturally to, uh, spies, it must be even harder. But I’m not particularly smart.”
“You amaze me.”
“So we could go over some stuff together,” Jamie persevered. “We’ll be in the same class. It will just be homework. Everyone has to do homework. Maybe sometimes I could read the assigned books to you. Auditory learning helps a lot of people with reading problems. And it would help me remember as well!”
Jamie looked up to see how this sales pitch was going, and frowned some more.
“And if I help you with schoolwork,” he continued in a small, reluctant voice, “it would be great if you could help me with … self-defense.”
“You want to learn how to use knives?” Nick asked. He might have dwelled on the word “knives” an instant too long.
Jamie flinched. “Absolutely,” he said. “Instruments of brutal death? I’m very keen.”
“I see that,” said Nick. There were other people streaming through the gate now, the gloomily murmuring Monday morning crowd about to form where they were standing. Nick glanced over at them, always hyperalert around strangers, body held ready to attack.
He looked back at Jamie.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Jamie blinked and then smiled again, gradual and sweet. “Okay.”
He kept smiling, an obvious hopeful invitation for Nick to smile back at him and seal the bargain. Nick stared at him, face blank as a stone, for a long moment. Then he let one corner of his mouth curl up and looked away from Jamie, as if to indicate that that was as much as Jamie was getting.
Jamie beamed.
Mae and Nick had not exchanged a word yet. He didn’t deserve even a hello, considering the way he’d acted yesterday, but he hadn’t shot down Jamie’s offering of gratitude for Friday. She relented.
“I didn’t do so badly in my classes last year,” she said. “If you little ones need help, feel free to come to me.”
Nick rolled his eyes. Jamie gave her an impish grin. Things seemed all right among all of them for a moment.
The usual morning crowd was not behaving as usual, Mae noticed. Normally everyone massed against the front doors, but today they were scattered around the playground, standing in separate but equally far-flung knots of friends. Every one of them seemed impelled, by some mysterious warning impulse, to keep their distance from the demon.
Mae’s train of thought was cut off by an arm sliding around her shoulders.
“Hey,” said Seb in her ear, squeezing her shoulders briefly and then letting go. “Hey, Jamie.”
Jamie peeled away from Mae’s side and went to Nick’s. Nick’s eyes tracked the movement as if he was not quite certain how to deal with it either, and then apparently he made up his mind. He shifted slightly in front of Jamie, protective.
Unfortunately, he was used to doing that with a weapon in his hand, and he hit Jamie in the chest with his schoolbag.
“Ow!” Jamie exclaimed. “What do you have in there? Um. Wait, never mind. I retract the question. I never need to know.”
“Spy stuff,” Nick murmured.
Beside her, Seb had gone rather still. “Ryves,” he said. “Didn’t know you were back in town.”
Nick stared at him without speaking. Clearly, his air suggested, here he was, and he didn’t find it necessary to bother actually talking.
“Friend of yours?” Seb asked Mae. There was something odd in his voice. She’d seen Seb and Nick hanging around together when Nick had lived here before. She would have assumed they were friendly enough.
Evidently not.
“Yeah,” Jamie snapped, bristling like an angry cat.
“That reminds me,” said Nick. “You’re not bothering Jamie anymore.”
He put it as a statement of fact, something that could not possibly be called into question. He sounded a little bored doing so.
“You don’t actually get to give me orders, Ryves,” Seb informed him. “But I wasn’t planning on it.”
“Good,” Nick said softly.
Seb was actively glaring at Nick now, Mae saw. Nick wasn’t glaring back, but he was holding himself in a way that was even more potentially threatening than usual.
“Reunions are so touching,” Mae said, her voice breaking the tense silence. “Had a good weekend, Seb?”
She had thought for some reason that Nick and Seb looked more alike than they really did, possibly because they both fit the paradigm of tall, dark, and handsome—if you liked the tall and dark thing.
Seb had a bit of a reputation in school. He got into fights and had a bad home life and he walked around the place looking angry half the time, and that was enough to qualify him as dangerous.
Next to Nick, he didn’t look dangerous. He looked like a spaniel placed beside a Rottweiler. He wasn’t as tall, or as broad across the shoulders, and Mae had seen what Nick could do even without magic. Nick could tear Seb to pieces.
Seb wasn’t a magician or a demon or anything who deserved that. Mae felt a sudden rush of protectiveness.
“My weekend was okay,” Seb said, glancing back at her and smiling. There was a sweetness tucked like a secret in the lines of his mouth, a potential for warmth that Nick simply did not have.
Mae curled her hand around Seb’s arm. He didn’t flinch back from her touch or go tense. He looked startled but pleased, and there was the sound of a key opening the doors of the school behind them.
“Come on, Nick,” said Jamie, his voice abruptly hard, and Mae realized how her gesture must have looked to him. He refused to look at her when she tried to catch his eyes, concentrating on Nick.
Jamie looked terribly relieved to have someone to be walking away with. Mae didn’t know how this had gone so wrong.