The Demon's Lexicon (13 page)

It was like one of the stories Alan used to read to Nick at bedtime, about the perfect knight shielding his lady. Only the lady was a murderer. She'd chosen Black Arthur, chosen to be a magician, and chosen to kill.

Nick thought Dad must have not known what she was until it was too late.

Now two strangers knew that their mother had called the demons and made sacrifices for them. They sat at their dinner table and looked at Nick and saw his mother's cold face. Mae had even started going upstairs to talk to Mum.

“It's very kind of you,” Alan said one night at dinner.

Mae shrugged. “I like doing it. Olivia tells a lot of wonderful stories. My mother's never done anything worth talking about in her life.”

She'd taken to calling Mum Olivia, in the same casual way Alan did, as if they were all friends.

“Your mother's never fed people to demons?” Nick said. “Poor you.”

Mae's eyes narrowed. “I just said Olivia was interesting. I didn't say I thought what she did was right.”

Nick leaned across the table toward her. “Tell me,” he said, lowering his voice and watching the way his murmur sliced through her, small and sharp as a hook that a fish might swallow without thinking. “Do you find the demon's mark on your brother interesting?”

“No.”

Nick talked right over her. “Just think, if it wasn't for the mark, you would never have heard Mum's stories or danced at the Goblin Market. You were thrilled by all that, weren't you?
You think it's all so exciting, so
glamorous
. Lucky for you Jamie got marked, isn't it?” He lowered his voice even more to see her leaning toward him, caught, and then he twisted the hook into her flesh. He smiled at her slowly and whispered, “Bet you're glad it happened.”

Mae's face was crumpled and white as a tissue clenched in someone's fingers.

“How can you say something like that?” she said, her voice taut with outrage. “Your brother's marked too. How does that make you feel?”

She glared at him, eyes accusing, and Nick saw that Alan and Jamie were looking at him too. He didn't bother deciphering Jamie's expression; he looked at his brother, and Alan looked back. He didn't look angry like Mae. He looked patient, and a little pained; he looked as if he was waiting for Nick's answer.

Then they all looked away.

Alan glanced from his own glass to Nick's and then to the water jug. When Nick looked around the table, puzzled by Alan's sudden preoccupation, he saw that everyone at the table was looking at their glasses.

All the glass on the table wore a shining spiderweb pattern. Fractures crossed and crisscrossed each other, cutting thin lines that caught the light. Nick's and Alan's eyes met over the rims of their suddenly beautiful glasses.

The glasses burst quietly, with no more noise than someone blowing on a dandelion clock. Then there was nothing but glittering shards and water pouring over the table.

Jamie's plate broke in half.

What was Mum
playing
at?

Nick got up and hit the table with his fist.

“Nick, don't,” Alan said. “You'll hurt yourself.” He wrapped
his hand around Nick's fist and lifted it from the table.

Nick stared at him, for a paralyzing frustrated moment unable to understand what he was saying. It registered, and he looked at his hand in Alan's, the skin unbroken. Alan's warning had been in time.

“Relax,” Alan said. “You asked Liannan. She said the Circle was coming, the whole Circle. You know how long it takes to move the summoning circles. They can't possibly be here yet. It's just Mum.”

He saw the change in Alan's face, and wondered if his own face had betrayed him, shown some of the rage sweeping through him. Alan never liked seeing it, so Nick tried not to show it more often than he could help.

Then he recognized the light in Alan's eyes and realized he'd had an idea.

“What?” he said, hope rising. “What is it?”

Alan smiled at him. “Wait a bit. I need to go work something out.”

He left his dinner on the flooded table, and Nick heard his dragging footsteps going, as fast as he could, up the stairs and away from everyone to work out his new plan. Nick was in no humor to think about all Alan's secrets.

“I can clean up,” Jamie offered.

Nick let him, moodily forking up the rest of his dinner as Jamie cleaned.

He was not used to girls coming to his house so they could glare at him. Over broken glass and water, Mae was staring at him, her eyes gleaming and furious. Jamie was hastily moving anything that could have been used as a missile out of her reach.

After another long moment of glaring, Mae got up. They
heard her stamping her way up the stairs as if she wanted to grind every stair to powder under her heels.

Nick rolled his eyes. “How long's that going to last for, then?”

“Oh, don't worry. Give her—ten years, and she'll have forgotten all about it,” Jamie said, snagging Nick's plate. “Or you could apologize.”

Nick scowled. “What?”

“It's a fairly simple concept,” said Jamie.

Maybe it was for Jamie, who moved gently and apologetically through life, like a hunted animal trying not to stir the leaves as he passed. Nick wasn't sorry, and he was ready to rip out the throat of anything hunting him. She'd invaded his house; she could apologize.

On the other hand, Nick couldn't deal with any more hassle than he was dealing with right now. Maybe it would be simpler to go and smooth her down.

He left Jamie washing up and went upstairs to the room that Mae and Jamie shared, the room that used to be his, and found Mae on the bed that used to be his.

She was crying.

Nick was appalled.

“I'll get Alan,” he said, taking a smart step back.

He had the door almost shut when Mae said, “No, don't!”

With great reluctance, he opened the door again. There she was, huddled on the bed with her arms around her knees, face red under her pink hair, rumpled and ridiculous-looking.

“I'll get Jamie,” he proposed, and what he really meant was,
I'll get out of here
.

“No,” Mae repeated. “Don't.” She was starting to look angry again; all things considered, Nick found that soothing.
She wiped at her face with the back of her hand and added, “I don't want him to see me cry.”

“I don't want to see you cry either,” Nick said.

Her face softened slightly, and he realized she'd taken that the wrong way. Nick imagined spending the next five minutes explaining to her that actually she could cry all the time if she liked, he just didn't want to see it, and then shut his mouth.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Mae asked, her voice a little gruff with crying. She scrubbed at her wet cheeks with her sleeve and looked embarrassed.

Nick chose his words carefully. “Jamie said I should come and apologize.”

“Oh,” Mae said. “Okay. Apology accepted, I guess. It's not really you I'm mad at, anyway. I'm just—I'm scared, and that makes me angry, you know?”

“Not really,” Nick answered, leaning against the door frame. “I don't recall ever being scared.”

Mae looked taken aback.

“Fear's useless,” he tried to explain. “Either something bad happens or it doesn't: If it doesn't, you've wasted time being afraid, and if it does, you've wasted time that you could have spent sharpening your weapons.”

Mae stared at him for a while.

“You're lucky you're cute,” she said eventually. “Because you're kind of creepy.”

Nick grinned at her. “It's a vibe that works for me.”

It was much more comfortable to flirt with her than see her cry. He risked a few steps into her room and she didn't immediately burst into tears, so he looked around. Jamie made his bed, he noticed; Mae left her underwear on the floor.

“Hey,” Mae said sharply, and he looked away from her underwear and raised an eyebrow.

“I've never been scared,” he said, conceding her something. “But I've been angry, all right.”

“Oh really,” Mae said. “You come off as so Zen.”

Nick grinned at her again, standing beside her bed. She smiled back and wiped a final fierce time at any tears still lingering on her cheeks.

Mae took a deep breath and seemed to be done with crying. “It's just—he's all I have. Even before they split up, Mum and Dad spent more time at the tennis club than with us. We used to play dolls together for hours when we were little.”

“Oh,” Nick said. “Well, me and Alan did too. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Mae echoed, smiling.

“If by dolls you meant knife practice.”

“Maybe you can understand,” Mae allowed. “You do have a brother.”

Guarded in case this was a womanly plot to make him talk about his feelings, Nick nevertheless let himself relax a bit more and said, “I do have a brother.”

“He's my little brother,” Mae continued. “I have to—I should be able to protect him, and I can't. I didn't. And I always did before. He's my little brother,” she repeated insistently, speaking more to the universe than Nick, and then she took another deep breath. “I guess you can understand that. Alan must look after you.”

“When I was small,” Nick conceded, and shrugged. “I don't need much looking after these days.”

He almost smiled as he thought about being small, before Alan had been hurt, when he'd never imagined it was possible for Alan to be hurt. Alan had taught him to read and told him
pointless bedtime stories and insisted on holding his hand when they crossed the street.

It was different now. They looked out for each other. They were a team. Or that was how it had been; Nick didn't see how keeping secrets was looking out for him.

“What's wrong?” Mae inquired.

He looked down at her and saw her frowning. He reached out, wrapped a strand of that silly pink hair around his wrist, and smiled at her slowly, drawing a smile from her in return.

“What could be wrong?” he asked.

He knew where this was going, and from the calm look in her eyes she did too. It was solid ground in the midst of his home being invaded, Alan lying, girls crying, and boys talking to him about empathy. It was good to be sure of something again.

“So,” Mae said, uncurling from the tight ball of misery she'd been in and stretching a little. “You don't get scared.”

“No.”

“Ever get lonely?” She smiled as she spoke, her dimple showing as she brought out the line.

He stooped toward the dimple, and then remembered Alan.

He let go of her hair, and it fell from around his wrist. “No,” he said, his voice cold. “I have my brother.”

Mae looked puzzled, as if she was trying to work out what had inspired this change of behavior rather than getting ready to weep again. Nick was a little relieved, but mostly he just wanted out. He didn't want to see girls cry, and he didn't want anything that Alan might want for himself.

“Wait,” Mae said as he headed for the door. He glanced back at her. “Thanks for coming up,” she said. “I thought—Alan said you might want help with your homework.”

She looked at him questioningly, and he was glad she wasn't making a scene. He supposed he should have predicted this. It would take more than demon hunting to make Alan stop nagging him to do his homework.

He shrugged and said, “Sure.”

A few minutes later he found himself in the sitting room and on the floor, hunching over the small table like a grouchy vulture. The teachers had assigned him an essay on a stupid book about some idiot girl whose problems were too small to really count and whose life had happened too long ago to matter. Alan usually helped him with this kind of thing; the fact that Alan was somewhere upstairs, doing God knew what, made Nick feel even more annoyed by the book girl.

Nick was already wrestling with the girl's love life when Mae joined him. She came over to the table, sat crosslegged, and took the book in her hands.

“What are you having trouble with?”

The answer was everything, but Nick decided to be more specific. “The stupid girl goes back to the man who lied to her. She'll never be able to trust him. What am I supposed to write about that?”

Mae leaned back thoughtfully, arching her spine a little. “Maybe she doesn't want to completely trust him. Maybe she's looking for an element of danger.”

“Maybe she's stupid,” Nick said. “Still doesn't give me much to write about.”

“You might find things slightly clearer if I read out some important bits,” Mae suggested, and did so. Her voice was calm and sweet.

She obviously had very specific ideas about which were the important bits. She'd worked out, after three days, that
Nick didn't like to read. She might run away to raves all the time, but she was smart, in the same way Alan was smart.

When the low light fell on her ridiculous hair that way, it looked a pale rose color. She lifted her gaze from the book to meet his, and shadows quivered in her dark eyes.

“Right,” Nick said. “Thanks.”

Mae smiled slowly. “You're welcome.”

Nick had never really wanted to get to know a girl, but here she was, in his house. He felt as if he was being forced into it.

Mae walked toward the door and as he watched her go, she turned her head to look at him. The light went out, and the curve of her neck and fall of her hair were suddenly swallowed up in darkness.

Her voice was even. “I suppose this isn't a power failure.”

Nick did not bother to answer her. They both knew what it was.

Nick had excellent night vision and acclimated himself quickly to the darkness. He palmed a knife from the sheath strapped around his arm and walked with a soft tread toward Mae. He could see her shape clearly, but he knew that to her there was nothing but black night and then the sudden touch of his hand on her waist. He held on to her with one hand and his knife with the other.