Seb made a sound that was almost a laugh.
“You know what,” Jamie said to him. “I’m having a bad day. So if you don’t mind, I was thinking that today I would pretend you don’t exist.”
“There is no use even trying to have a civil conversation with you!” Seb said, his voice rising.
Jamie winced. “You’re very loud for someone who doesn’t exist.”
Mae gave him a look. “You’re very rude to guests in our home, Jamie. I suggest you try being nicer, and as you may recall, I’m always right.”
The bargain was pretty much laid on the table. Give Seb a chance, and Mae would forget about Jamie doubting her. Jamie’s mouth quirked appreciatively, and he shrugged.
“I’ll do a deal with you, McFarlane,” he said. “You can exist. And you can even have coffee. But if you raise your voice or make any sudden movements, I shall die. And that’ll show you.”
Seb shrugged in return, hiding how pleased he was pretty badly. “Fair enough.”
Mae turned away and toward coffee, hiding a smile. She’d been pretty sure her bargain would work. She’d told Seb as much last night: Jamie just wasn’t very good at being angry. He lost his grip on it somehow.
That definitely wasn’t genetic.
“You again?” Seb asked, his voice suddenly harsh.
Mae spun on the kitchen steps, hand going involuntarily up to the neck of her robe again, as if she was some shamed Victorian maiden. Nick was on the step, not looking at her or even bothering to acknowledge Seb’s existence.
“You ready?” he asked Jamie.
“Ready?” Jamie echoed. “Yes, yes, I am ready. I am ready to drink a lot of liquids and lie on the sofa moaning faintly all day long. That is what I am ready for. I cannot engage in physical activity of any sort or my head will fall right off. Is that what you want, Nick? Because if so, I find that hurtful.”
“You’ll feel better when you start running.”
Nick looked wound too tight. Mae wondered why he had even come here, and then it occurred to her that it was just possible he wanted Jamie—that he was disturbed by what had happened last night, and in search of company and comfort. Demons weren’t supposed to need those things, but Nick had been wrapped in watchful love for fifteen years, been the audience to what Daniel Ryves had described as Alan’s “years-long one-way conversation” until he had finally started talking back.
Now there was something badly wrong between him and his brother, and he’d chosen Jamie, with the same warmth and the same ridiculous sense of humor and capacity to talk for hours, and he was coming to get him.
Or possibly torturing Jamie cheered Nick up.
“But we were going to bring my old guitar over to Alan so we could see him play it and stuff,” Jamie said with deep cunning. “We need the car for that.”
“Didn’t bring the car,” Nick told him.
“You should go fetch it,” Jamie urged. “I’ll wait here. I won’t move. Why would I move? My head might fall off.”
“Seb and I can bring the guitar over later,” Mae offered.
“Good,” said Nick abruptly, and reached out for Jamie’s arm. Jamie was too busy giving Mae a betrayed look to be vigilant, so Nick grabbed him without much difficulty and pulled him out the door.
Nick had his hand on the door, no doubt to slam it, when Annabel came downstairs.
Mae was aware that her mother owned pajamas. She’d seen them neatly folded in her wardrobe, but Annabel never emerged from her room unless she was fully dressed and fully made up.
Today was no exception. Annabel was in crisp tennis whites, swinging her racket, with her hair in a shimmering ponytail that made the very idea of wisps seem like a horrible dream.
“Mum, help me,” Jamie said beseechingly. “I don’t want to go for a run.”
“Good morning, Mavis, James,” Annabel caroled out. “Lovely to see you again, Nick.”
Nick inclined his head and almost smiled. Annabel looked at Seb, a faint curl of her lips indicating vast polite distaste.
“One of Mavis’s young men, I presume.”
Seb looked overwhelmed by the unfairness of the world.
Annabel visibly dismissed the painful thought of Seb’s existence from her mind. “Enjoy your run, boys.”
“Mum!” Jamie wailed.
“Exercise is good for you,” she said serenely. She sailed past Mae on her search for coffee, and Nick shut the door.
Seb was left standing in the hall. “I think,” he said, “I kind of hate Nick Ryves.”
“Coffee?” Mae asked.
Mae amused herself by watching her mother’s dismay until she felt mean about tormenting Seb, so she finished her coffee and ran upstairs to get dressed and get the guitar. She did it in less than five minutes, but Seb’s pale face when she returned suggested that the moment Mae’d gone up, her mother had whipped out the thumbscrews.
“Sorry about her,” said Mae, going out with Seb into the sunshine, which was a warm yellow splash on their high walls. “She’s kind of like a high-powered modern White Witch. It’s always office hours, and never casual Friday.”
She thought of Annabel going up the stairs quick as a cat in her teetering high heels and grinned slightly. Seb caught her smile and reflected it back to her.
“It’s fine,” he said. “She’s just worried about you. She thinks I’m like all the other boys you’ve dated.”
“But you know you’re something special,” Mae teased.
Seb’s smile twisted a little, rueful and something else besides. “I know I’m different.”
Mae thought of Nick wielding a sword by night and Alan throwing knives on the cliffs with Goblin Market music behind him. Seb had no idea how different some of the boys she knew were.
Not that she was dating either of them.
Mae felt disloyal having had that thought, itchy and uncomfortable about it in a way that started at the tingling spot just below her collarbone. She reached up and touched it lightly, fingers slipping under the high-necked blouse she’d dug up from the bottom of her wardrobe.
She drew her hand away and grabbed Seb’s, a lifeline into a world where choices were easier. He took a breath as if he was startled, and she laced their fingers together, deciding to ignore his hesitance for now.
“So what do you want to do?” she asked.
Seb’s hand was warm in hers. The sun made the pale gravel in her driveway a blinding white path full of promise.
“We should drop off the guitar to Ryves’s place,” Seb suggested, and the dazzle in Mae’s eyes seemed to dim slightly.
She wanted to yell at Seb. Didn’t he know that she had to be away from Nick for a while, because apparently whenever she saw him her brain turned off and she did stupid and insane things? And she couldn’t be stupid and insane when she had to save him.
She didn’t yell at Seb. There was a mark burning on her skin that felt as if a channel had been opened between her and the demon who had marked her, as if there was something connecting them that was almost like a dry river bed, burning and aching for a rush of magic or the thrill of contact.
She didn’t say anything. She wanted to see Nick badly.
Mae had shoved that thought into a box in her mind and slammed the lid on it by the time they were there. Seb seemed relaxed, happy, and at ease with her once they were in the car. The trapped heat made the car luxurious and not oppressive, warmth from the car door seeping through Mae’s thin blouse and an air conditioner blowing light on her knees. She was glad she’d chosen a skirt for once, glad the next week of school would be the last, and glad Seb was there. He was living proof that she could be normal and not seduced by magic, that she could have both worlds.
The garden gate on the side of Alan and Nick’s house was open. When Seb and Mae walked in, they saw that Nick had wheeled a car out of the garage and was cleaning it.
It was silvery in a way that looked more like steel and shaped in a way that made Mae think of the cars her father’s friends bought instead of or just before leaving their wives, but it was old and missing a door. Clearly this was Nick’s one true love, the Aston Martin Vanquish. Nick was washing it, shirt off and a bucket of water beside him. Jamie was sitting cross-legged in the grass with a paperback folded open on his lap, looking less ashen and disheveled than earlier, and Alan was fiddling with an ancient rusty barbecue.
“Are you going to tell him or will I?” Jamie asked Nick.
“Tell me what?” Alan’s voice was wary.
Jamie smiled as if he was oblivious to the tension in the air. “Yesterday there was an English quiz,” he said proudly. “And Nick got a B minus.”
“Yeah?” said Alan, stilling and then smiling a beautiful, slow-blossoming smile. Jamie beamed. Nick looked indifferent, but it was less convincing than usual. “Well done.”
Mae hung back, not really wanting to interrupt and spoil the moment, but of course Seb had no idea and walked right into the garden. Jamie noticed him, and the glow of his pleasure faded a little, then brightened when he noticed the guitar in Seb’s hand.
“Hey.”
“Hey, Jamie,” Seb said in return, and gave Alan a brief, slightly embarrassed nod. “Hi—we came over to drop off the guitar. I’m Seb McFarlane. I’m Mae’s, ah …”
“Gentleman caller,” Mae filled in.
“Hi,” said Alan, straightening up. The sun was so hot that even Alan had abandoned his usual button-up shirts and was wearing a T-shirt, which made it obvious his shoulders and arms were strong and muscled in a way that did not exactly suggest a mild-mannered bookshop employee. “What’s with the guitar?”
He smiled at Mae and Seb both, in his usual friendly way, but he didn’t give Mae a special look or smile like he usually did. Mae wondered if that meant things were going to be awkward between them.
“Well, I took guitar lessons once,” Jamie explained, “but then after, um, you know, two lessons, I sort of lost interest and wandered off.” He frowned slightly. “I don’t think I have the soul of a musician. But I have this guitar! And Nick said you played the guitar. So I thought I could bring it over here and you would play it. Having a musical accompaniment to barbecue is important to me.”
Once Jamie had finished his spiel on how he was clearly not giving Alan a present, he blinked hopefully at him. Alan’s mouth curved into a smile.
“I guess I can play you a few songs,” he said, and limped up to Seb, taking the guitar. “You two want to stay around for barbecue and its important musical accompaniment?”
“Well,” Mae said, and stopped.
Nick had not even looked at her, had not looked up from washing the car. She was painfully aware of him, though. Every move he made was echoed by a twinge in her mark, as if it was a second heart beating only for him.
She should probably go.
“Sure,” Seb said, and sat down on the grass by Jamie. “Thanks.”
That was that, then. Mae went and sat with Seb and Jamie. She wanted to use them as her talismans, as if being near them meant she was guarded from all magic.
Alan went to fetch Jamie a glass of water. He’d apparently been keeping Jamie hydrated for a while.
“My reading voice needs care,” Jamie said. “It has nothing to do with my clever consumption of eleven thousand drinks last night.”
“I want water too,” said Nick. “I’m hot.”
“Here’s some water,” Alan told him, coming from the kitchen carrying Jamie’s glass. He took a sponge out of Nick’s bucket and squeezing it so the water flooded into Nick’s hair and down his back.
The water slid from the nape of his neck, where the black locks lay like inky scrawls against the white skin, and down the curved arch of his spine, droplets chasing one another down the smooth expanse of his back. Nick made a small sound of satisfaction, then resumed washing the car, sponge moving in steady strokes, ring catching the light so brightly it hurt Mae’s eyes.