“I didn’t do anything,” said Nick. “You think I’d care enough to do something to her? Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Did you hurt her, Nick?” Alan asked.
Nick made himself keep smiling. “Maybe a little.”
There was a door standing ajar down the corridor, a silhouette tracing a slightly different darkness onto the shadows. It was either Jamie or his mother, Nick could not tell and did not care. Whoever it was, they were breathing rapidly, as if they were afraid, and standing halfway up the stairs, Mae was breathing too fast as well.
Nick did not glance over to see if she looked afraid. He would not have seen the shadow at the open door, if the door had not been directly behind Alan’s head.
He kept looking at Alan who was not his brother, standing there with a gun hanging limply at his side. Alan’s face was still that terrible color, his eyes avoiding Nick’s, but his thin chest was rising and falling evenly enough. He didn’t look scared. He looked heartsick.
“Listen to me,” Nick said. “Everything’s going to be all right. You don’t need to stay in this nightmare any longer. Your father took me and my mother in. You saved our lives. I’ll pay you back. I’ll get that mark off you. Then it will be even between us, and once it is, I don’t ever want to see your face again.”
12
Blood Calls to Blood
EVERYTHING SEEMED UNNATURALLY CLEAR TO NICK IN the days following his discovery, and he seemed to have lost the ability to attach meaning to particular things. He would look at Mae, who was apparently unable to meet his eyes now, and he would look at Alan trying to eat with one side of his mouth bruised and swollen, and he would not feel anything at all.
He’d never been like Alan, never been able to take an interest in people, never had a crush or even a real friend. He’d just thought he was more sensible than Alan. Now he thought that perhaps this easy detachment was what allowed his father to offer people up to the demons. Nick sat on the couch, a lumpy brown affair covered in fluff that seemed to be shedding with age, and thought about sacrifice.
The idea of strangers dying didn’t matter much to him. He could do it, he thought. There was nothing the demons could give him that he wanted, but if there had been, he could have done it.
He realized distantly that this should frighten him, but fear, like pity, was something that never came. He didn’t want to talk to the others. He didn’t even want to look at them.
He’d slept on the shabby brown couch since he found out, not that he was sleeping much. He spent the best part of most nights outside in the garden, practicing the sword until he was exhausted, his skin slick with sweat and his mind mercifully empty, and even after that he didn’t sleep well.
The third night on the sofa he’d almost managed to get to sleep when he heard Alan screaming. Nick rolled automatically off the sofa and was at the top of the stairs before he realized what he was doing.
The door to Alan’s room was open. Someone had reached him before Nick.
Alan was sitting up in bed. He looked haggard and drained, eyes too dark in a face that was too white, but Mae was sitting with him in the tangle of sheets, and she was holding his hands. Nick couldn’t see her face, but he could see Alan’s. More than that, he could hear Alan’s voice, talking in a low, warm rush that sounded worried and desperate and just a little comforted already.
Mae murmured something, her few words lost in the flood of his, and Alan stopped talking for a moment to smile. It wasn’t one of his calculated smiles; it was something helpless and shy. He ducked his head for a moment and then looked up at her again, eyes shining with hope.
Alan would probably go back to Exeter with Mae and Jamie, Nick realized. He’d been thinking that Alan might return to Durham once he was free, but the way he was looking at Mae, he would want to be wherever she was.
Mae leaned forward, one of the strings on her string top sliding down the curve of her shoulder, and gave Alan a kiss that landed to one side of his smile, lips brushing the bruise there as if to make it better.
Maybe she’d want that too.
Nick slipped back downstairs, footsteps falling as softly as a shadow falls, making sure that nobody saw.
If he’d stopped to think, he would never have gone to Alan in the first place. Alan was nothing to him.
It seemed like either Alan or Jamie woke screaming every night now. Time was running out.
Nick went to school because it seemed like a good way to avoid them and spent a day wandering the halls silently, thinking about how many schools he’d gone to and had to struggle through because Alan wanted it and Daniel Ryves would have wanted it. He’d tried to be normal, tried to follow his father’s advice, but he wasn’t normal and Daniel Ryves wasn’t his father.
It all seemed very pointless now.
“Hey,” said Carr, that annoying little terrier snapping at his heels, the last in a line of people he had put up with, had pretended to be like. “Where’ve you been, man?”
Nick looked right through him for a long, cold moment, waiting to see him flinch. When he did, Nick turned away, and Carr grabbed his elbow again.
“Hey! What’s gotten into you?”
Nick whirled around and punched him. He fell hard, cracking his back against the floor and sliding to hit the wall. Nick stood over him and curled his mouth, watched fear creep over the other boy’s face.
“Nothing,” he whispered. “I’ve always been this way.”
He went home. It had occurred to him that there was a magician to talk to there.
When he came in the door he climbed the stairs, and then climbed another narrow, creaking flight to the attic room where Mum was. It was so rare for him to come to his mother’s room that for a while he simply stared at the worn wood of the door. It wasn’t a barrier. It was nothing but a cheap, flimsy plank of wood. Eventually, since he could come up with no other way to suggest he was on a mission of peace, he knocked on the door.
His mother’s voice, calm and pleased, called, “Come in!”
When Nick came in, she was sitting on a stool, straight-backed, dealing cards for herself on her bed. She turned a smiling face to the door and saw him. The cards slipped out of her hands. Her face shut up like someone securing every door and window so their house would be safe from attack.
Nick realized that he always thought of her at her worst, during the screaming fits or the times she had to be medicated. She was always at her worst when Nick was there.
She’d been able to hold down a job when they really needed it, though. She got on well with Alan, who was not her son any more than he was Nick’s brother, and she seemed to be friendly with Mae. She was not as mad as he had always told himself, and if she were, it was his father’s fault.
“Do you want me to get those?”
Nick meant the words to be polite, but they came out abrupt. Well, it was no use pretending. He and his mother had always been enemies, and now he knew why.
“No,” his mother said. Nick looked at her and remembered staring into the pale eyes of the wolf he’d strangled, knowing that there was human intelligence behind the wolf’s eyes, and also knowing that she would kill him if she could.
He walked toward her, and Mum scrambled up from her stool, her movements awkward as if panic had wiped away control of her own limbs, and Nick discovered something else.
Mum was afraid of him. It had never occurred to him before, since she had no reason to be frightened of him, but he knew her reason now. He wondered what Black Arthur could possibly have done to her to make her so scared that fifteen years later here she was, backed up against a wall and trembling.
Nick held up his hands in surrender and did not move any closer. “I wanted to talk to you.”
She had her face turned away from him, a strand of black hair fanned across her cheek. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Look,” Nick said. “I know about my father. I mean, I know that Black Arthur is my father.” He stopped, but she did not respond
to the name, just kept her face turned away and breathed in little gasps, snatching air as if he was about to take it away from her. “Am I like him?” Nick continued. “Do I look like him at all?”
Mum made an obvious effort and looked at him. The one window the attic contained was set in the slanted ceiling, and in the space between them was a square of light where dust motes drifted and sparked. Their eyes met across it.
“Yes,” Mum answered. “You look like him.”
It was strange to think he looked like someone he had never seen. He was not used to looking like anyone but her; he was used to her being the worst part of him.
“I’m leaving Alan,” Nick said. “He has no part in this. I want you to come with me.”
“I’ll die before I go anywhere with you.”
He had not expected understanding Mum to make everything harder. He could not hate her anymore, and he certainly could not feel anything warmer for her, but he’d thought that if he understood her, she could understand him. He’d expected logic, but there was no logic to be had from her. Black Arthur had seen to that.
“What did he do to you?” Nick asked suddenly.
Her eyes went from ice to fire. “I don’t talk about that!” she spat, and he watched the saliva fly from her lips, gathering in tiny bubbles at the corners of her mouth. “I don’t think about it. I don’t want to remember anything that happened before.”
She was trembling, her hands grasping the air as if she had to get a handhold on it or fall. Nick moved toward her instinctively.
Her voice cracked like ice breaking underfoot. “Don’t touch me.”
Nick looked at her grasping hands and thought of Alan’s hands, and the way Alan’s mother had hands just like his. Mum’s hands were small, very thin at the wrists, and Nick stared at them and thought about his own hands, large hands with long, brutal-looking fingers made to curve around a sword hilt or a neck.
He knew who he’d inherited them from. He felt for an instant like the assembled pieces of some weapon Black Arthur had built.
He turned away from his mother and toward the door. He should not have come.
“I’m not him, you know,” he said over his shoulder.
“I know,” said Mum. “I loved him.”
That night, when he was practicing the sword in the garden, Mae came to speak to him.
Alan had been pleased by the garden that first morning in the house, when they were still brothers. It was small but the wooden fence was high, hiding them from all the world, and in this hidden place was a weeping willow.
Nick did not care about trees or gardens or anything but the clean cut and thrust of his sword and the ache in his muscles that sang through his body as a relief from thought. He pivoted, sliced darkness across the throat, and came within an inch of beheading Mae.
He caught the downward swing of his sword and stepped back. He did not speak.
Mae ducked under a branch of the willow, its green fingers trailing through her hair. The May air was warm, but it had a bite to it, and she leaned against the tree and hugged herself.
Nick curled his lip and turned his back on her, executing the next movement in his exercises. His sword went glancing through the points of an invisible opponent, throat, chest, thigh, and then he turned and caught one behind him, putting the power of his wrist behind a solid thrust. He let the easy physicality of it take hold of him, that flashing point of steel in the night becoming his single focus in the world, the sustained effort a slow burn through the muscles of his back and arms.
Mae’s voice was an unwelcome intrusion in his thoughtless world. It cut through the tactile sensations of effort and exhaustion and pulled him up short.
“When are you going to start talking to your brother again?”
Nick turned the sword hilt between his hands, making the blade jump like a fish. He watched Mae jump as well, and wondered if Black Arthur liked to see people squirm before he sacrificed them.
“You must’ve mistaken me for someone else,” he told her. “I don’t have a brother.”
“You do have a brother,” Mae said. “And I’m worried about him.”
“Oh?” said Nick, and lunged forward to slash the air above her head, to her left, to her right. He cut a door in the air for her to walk through and, panting slightly, demanded, “If you’re so worried about him, why don’t you go comfort him?”
A trickle of sweat was running between his shoulder blades, the cool current in the air washing down his back and making him shiver. He saw Mae notice, and let her see him smile.
“Or maybe you’d rather comfort me?”
Mae looked up at him silently, eyes dark in the pale upturned oval of her face. The willow was casting long shadows on her skin, like the stripes of darkness cast by a shutter. Her eyes were not like pools, but there was something trembling under their surface.
Nick sheathed his sword and leaned in.
He reached out with lazy intent to touch her hair, and she grabbed his wrist an instant before he touched her.
“Think a lot of yourself, don’t you?”
Nick blinked. “I thought—”
“You think you can use me as a way to punish Alan,” said Mae. “I noticed.”
“That wouldn’t be the only reason,” Nick told her, leaning against the willow by her side. The bark was rough against his bare skin.
“Oh, no?” asked Mae. “What’s the other reason?”
Nick smiled a small smile that someone watching them would not have been able to see. It touched his lips and lingered for a moment, private and promising. “Might be fun.”
“I don’t think so,” said Mae.
She stepped away from him. Her eyes were narrowed.
“I’m not stupid,” she said. “I’m attracted to you, I could be attracted to Alan, but what does it matter? I’ve been attracted to people before. I’m not looking to settle down, and I’m not territory to be fought over in your little war. I won’t let myself be used, and I won’t let whatever crisis you’re having hurt my brother’s chance to live.”
Nick raised his eyebrows. “Your brother’s chance? Who says he has one?”
“I say he does!”
“I’m not interested in charity work,” Nick informed her. “If you want to save your brother, you’ll have to rely on Alan.”
“I trust Alan,” said Mae, “but I don’t rely on anyone. If I have to, I can kill a magician myself.”
“Really?” Nick drawled. “Didn’t you let one go just the other day?”
“That was stupid,” Mae said. “I should have killed him before he could escape. I won’t be that stupid again.” He saw her hands clench into fists. “And I’m not afraid.”
Nick’s eyes traveled over her face. “I believe you,” he said, and watched her relax. “You’re brave,” he added honestly.
When she almost smiled, he leaned in again, and she hesitated, her breath coming fast against his lips. She didn’t move.
“You’re brave,” Nick whispered into her mouth, “but that’s not enough.”
It had been too easy to palm a knife and hold it to her throat when he went in for a kiss. When she swallowed, the edge brushed her skin.
“They’ll surprise you,” Nick continued, looking down into her outraged face. “They’ll use magic; they’ll use demons. You don’t know what you’re doing, and they will get to you before you can get to them.”
Mae tipped her head back because of the pressure of the knife against her throat. He’d been telling the truth. She was brave. She didn’t look scared at all. She looked furious.
“Carry a knife from now on if you plan to kill,” Nick continued in a thoughtful, detached voice. He grinned at her and added, “Make sure to catch them by surprise.”
She glared silently up at him.
He drew the knife across her throat, lightly, not cutting her, but making sure she could feel the edge slide against her skin. “Slash across the throat or”—he trailed the point down her body, the blade
skimming from the vulnerable hollow at her throat over the fragile material of her shirt—“under the ribs. Don’t even try for between the ribs. Amateurs always hit a rib, and if they try for the heart, they always hit the breastbone. Across the throat or under the ribs for a killing blow. Do you understand that?”
Mae drove her fist into his stomach, at a point under his ribs. “You’re an ass,” she said, between her teeth. “Do you understand that?”
He ignored the pain and smiled. “You’d better pray Alan will protect you and Jamie,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re on your own.”
He touched his knife, and the blade withdrew into its hilt with a soft snick. He slipped it into Mae’s pocket, then turned away and stooped to pick up his sword, unsheathing it and beginning to execute a few more passes.
If anything, his return to routine made Mae angrier. When he turned to face her, bringing the sword up and around in an overarm pass, she was trembling with fury.
“You’re the one on your own,” she said.
Nick swung and ducked an imaginary enemy’s swing in return, legs bent and thighs braced. “I can take care of myself.”
“You’re going to be miserable,” Mae told him, and stormed back to the house.
He watched her go, squaring her shoulders. Before she opened the door, he saw her touch her face and wondered if she was crying.
Nick stepped backward, spun, and parried another imaginary blow. He silently congratulated himself on the way he’d made her angry enough to forget all about discussing Nick’s so-called brother.
He swung again. These exercises with the sword were nothing like real fights; they were just a way of keeping ready for real fights, making sure his reflexes were still fast and the weight of the sword did not tire him.
Eventually he did get tired. He felt as if the heaviness of steel had been shot through his bones and had settled cold in the pit of his stomach. He was exhausted and chilled and he had to force himself not to think.
Across the dark, ragged patch of garden the window of their kitchen shone, a square of orange light. The curtains were open, and through the glass Nick could hear faint music playing. Jamie was dancing around like an idiot, and Mae was leaning against the door looking at Jamie, her face smoothing out into calm. Alan was cooking something, and when Jamie pushed the wooden spoon he’d been singing into like a microphone over Alan’s shoulder, Alan turned to Jamie, and Nick glimpsed Alan’s smile. Over the strains of the radio came the sudden deep, sweet sound of Alan singing. Mae looked startled and impressed, and she started to smile too.
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