The light from the beacon lamp was coming from the sitting room now, filtering through a door left ajar into the little hall. Alan pushed open the door gently, and once it was fully open Mae understood why.
Nick was asleep on the sofa, one elbow pillowing his head, long legs hooked over one of the sofa arms. That couldn’t have been comfortable.
Alan limped into the room.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “Hey, wake up. We’re home.”
Nick’s eyes snapped open and he said, “I’m awake, I’m up,” in a clear voice, then turned his face into his arm a little, eyelashes sweeping his cheeks and casting shadows on his pale face.
“No, you’re not,” Alan told his brother, voice pitched low and sweet with no intention of waking him. He reached out and brushed black locks carefully back from Nick’s brow, a gesture Nick would in no way have allowed when awake.
Even in sleep it made Nick shift uneasily, the gray T-shirt twisted around his torso climbing, baring the sharp angle of his hips and the flat of his stomach where a black leather band was fastened, the hilt of a knife pressed against his skin.
“Does he, uh, generally sleep armed?” Mae asked, and then saw Nick stir and shut her mouth. She put a foot over the threshold, testing, and his head came up a little. She withdrew.
Alan glanced back at her. “We both do.”
Mae didn’t want to wake Nick, so she stayed quiet. Alan stood there looking down at Nick, fingers poised a fraction of an inch from his sleeping face.
Nick did not make any of the usual noises of someone sleeping, no snores or sighs, not a murmur. He did not even sleep like a human being.
Alan made a small, worn sound that was not quite a sigh and limped away to put out the beacon lamp.
Mae went to the kitchen to get herself a glass of water. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was until she poured the water down her throat, feeling it splash cold and lovely onto her parched tongue. She leaned against the counter and hung on to her glass, fingers sliding in the condensation.
“Hey.”
She twisted her head around to see Alan at the kitchen door. He still looked a little pleased about Nick’s beacon lamp, faint warmth lingering in his eyes and his smile.
“Hey.”
“So I don’t mind taking Nick’s bed,” said Mae. “Then we can both get some sleep.”
“Yeah, well, about that,” Alan said, rubbing his eyes. “Sunday means time and a half, so I kind of have to be at work by seven. Nick’s bed or my bed: ladies’ choice. I’m going to make some coffee.”
He went and turned on the kettle, getting down his cup and some instant coffee. Annabel had a coffee grinder at home that was the only thing in the kitchen she and Mae knew how to use. Annabel wouldn’t allow instant coffee in the house.
“So,” Mae said slowly as the kettle puffed hot bursts of mist at them, “you’re going to do a day’s work on no sleep, and Nick was worried that someone was going to hurt you. You had to climb up a stupid mountain with your bad leg. And you knew how the Goblin Market would react when they saw you. Why on earth did you want to go?”
Alan stirred his coffee and bit back a laugh.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked. “I thought it would please you.”
“Um,” said Mae, turning her water glass around in her hands. “So you took me somewhere that you really didn’t want to go and you knew you wouldn’t enjoy, and you had a terrible time. You know, that’s a lot of guys’ definition of a date.”
There was a window across from the sink and the countertops covered with a stick-on sheet that gave the glass a frosted look. The sticker was peeling away from one edge, but the dawn light still came through fuzzy, touching Alan’s curly hair with blurry gold fingers.
A corner of Alan’s mouth came up.
“My definition of a date includes the girl agreeing to go on one with me,” he said. “Don’t worry about it, Mae.”
He moved past the counter, cup angled so there was no chance of spilling it on her, and Mae thought about Sin laughing and saying that Alan wasn’t exactly the type to make a girl’s heart start racing, about how pleased Alan had been by something as simple as a light in the window calling him home. He looked so tired, and the happiness was already slipping off his face as if it did not belong there.
“Aside from that small detail,” Mae told him slowly, “I think it was a pretty good date. You definitely deserve a kiss on the doorstep. Or, you know. Wherever.”
She said the words on an impulse born of fever fruit and sympathy, and then she was panicking. It wasn’t that she had any objection to kissing Alan, but she wanted to be fair. She didn’t know if this was fair.
She did know that she liked the way happiness flooded back into his face, eyes on hers suddenly, warm and private, as if he was about to lean over to her and whisper the best secret he knew in her ear.
“Just one,” she told him. “There’s that other guy. I said I’d give him a chance. But I’d like to—to see.”
“I understand,” Alan said, soft. He still looked so happy.
Mae put her glass down, though it seemed to want to cling to her suddenly sweaty hands. The kitchen was full of shadows, but Alan was close enough to see clearly. She tipped her face up to his.
He put his hands on either side of her, holding on to the counter and holding her bracketed between his arms, apparently so he could survey her at his leisure. He was all lit up.
“Ah,” Mae said, hesitating. She reached out and curled her fingers around the blue shirt Alan had unbuttoned, knuckles resting against the warmth of the T-shirt and chest beneath, and smiled. “Are you waiting for anything in particular?”
“Oh,” Alan said softly, in a response to her “Ah.” He moved in a little closer to her, being surprisingly tall again. There was just a fraction of space between them now. “No,” he continued, sliding off his glasses and pushing them away down the counter.
He looked different without them, younger, the slow flush rising in his cheeks very plain. He bent his head down, the warmth of his mouth and body touching hers even though he wasn’t touching her, not quite.
He lifted a hand to her face, not even touching that, fingers playing about a centimeter from her jaw.
“I like to take my time,” he murmured, words a whisper in the tiny space between them. “I want to get it just right.”
Then he kissed her, slow and thorough, his mouth capturing hers and his body suddenly pressed all along hers, and she grasped at his shirt collar and a moment later his hair, fingers closing around the curls. His mouth moved against hers, soft and catching every broken breath she let out. She felt the shape of his small, warm smile pressed against hers, the edge of his teeth light on her lower lip, and his tongue sliding inside her mouth.
Mae found herself making a little choked sound and pulling his head down to hers, trying to bring him closer. Suddenly she was flat on her back on the kitchen counter, one leg wrapped around Alan’s good leg, one of Alan’s hands cradling the back of her head as he kept kissing her, exploratory, his lips lingering over hers even as his breath came harsh in her ears.
She was pulling his shirt off his shoulders when he drew back, mouth a bitten-red line and eyes bright, and pushed himself off from the counter to lean against the kitchen wall about a foot away.
“Just one, you said,” he reminded her.
Mae sat up. “Um,” she said, and laughed. “Wow.”
Alan laughed with her, cheeks stained pink, and moved around her to snag his glasses and his cup of coffee. When he slid them back on he looked more like the usual Alan, even though his hair was still mussed and his mouth still red.
“Thanks. Well. Nerdy guys try harder, you see,” he explained. “The other guys, they’re so busy with sports and actually getting more girls, but nerdy guys have time to think about it.”
“And to learn how to throw knives with deadly precision.”
“And that, obviously,” Alan said, nodding. He rubbed the back
of his neck, glancing down to the floor and back up at her. “You should go get some rest. I’m going to try and wake Nick with coffee, tell him about what happened with Gerald.”
“Okay,” said Mae.
She made no move to get off the kitchen counter while Alan went to the kitchen door, opened it, and then hesitated on the threshold. “Mae.”
“Yes?”
He smiled at her, gradual and pleased. “You’re pretty wow yourself.”
He left, closing the door behind him. Mae took a minute to admire the kitchen ceiling and get her breath back before she went up to bed.
12
Lying with Demons
Mae woke to the sound of steel on stone. She hit the bedclothes heaped over her head and sat up, fighting her way out of the sheets, to find Nick sitting at the window, sharpening his sword. He raised an eyebrow at her no doubt disheveled appearance.
“Who’s been sleeping in my bed?”
“I didn’t know which bed belonged to who,” Mae snapped. The sheets smelled of steel and cotton, but that hadn’t told her much. They both smelled like that. She looked across the floor and saw her jeans, too far out of reach for her to scoop up and wriggle into. “Do you mind?” she asked. “I’m not wearing any trousers.”
“No,” Nick said thoughtfully. “I don’t mind at all.”
Mae rolled her eyes at him. “And what were you doing here, Nicholas? Decided to watch me sleep?”
“Yes,” said Nick, and bowed his head over his sword again. He had tissues, oil, and sandpaper laid out on the windowsill in front of him, and a little stone block he was passing his sword up and down, very carefully. “I came to gaze on your sleeping face. Only you had the blanket over your head, so I just had to gaze at a lump I thought was your sleeping face, and that turned out to be your shoulder. Which just wasn’t as special.”
“Your life is hard.”
Sunshine was pouring in through the window, turning his sword and his ring into brilliant lines of light. Mae wondered what time it was.
Nick threw the battered old copybook at her, barely pausing as he sharpened his sword, as if it was a throwaway gesture.
“I thought,” he said. “Since you were here. That we could maybe have another lesson.”
Mae clenched her fingers on the sheets and found herself looking at the book as if it was a snake. She turned away to the curve of Nick’s back over his sword, and swallowed.
“Funny thing. I can’t seem to teach anyone to be human while I’m not wearing any trousers.”
“Is that so?”
Mae made a regal gesture, dismissing him from her presence. Nick threw his sword up into the air and then stood to catch it.
“Fine,” he said. “I need to go wet the sandpaper anyway.”
Nick left the room and Mae lunged for her jeans, stepping into them and pulling them up over her underwear, which had polka dots. She did up the button of her jeans and felt a lot better.
Normally she wouldn’t have been all that bothered, but today she felt the urge to be in full armor. She wasn’t feeling entirely comfortable with herself.
She had kissed Alan. Alan had kissed her. She’d really liked it. She’d given Seb her word, and now she was leading Alan on.
That fever fruit stuff was lethal.
It would’ve been reassuring to be sure that she could attribute what she’d done entirely to the fever fruit, but she’d been able to handle it better this time. She hadn’t been stumbling around trying to make time with Gerald—God forbid!—or anything. Maybe the fever fruit had made her a little more reckless, a little more inclined to give in to desires she already had.
She was in such a mess.
Mae put her face in her hands and then pulled herself together. So she was confused and conflicted and all kinds of embarrassed. She had a demon to teach.
And these were pretty basic human emotions.
“You decent?” Nick asked from behind the door.
“Yeah.”
“Pity,” he said, coming back inside with the wet piece of sandpaper, which he was smoothing gently up the blade of his sword. Mae had no idea why he was doing it, but he was absorbed enough that she wasn’t sure he would have noticed any indecency right away.
He went for his bed, sitting on the end and resting his sword against one knee.
“Do you get embarrassed?”
“Do you mean am I worried about people seeing me with my jeans off?” Nick asked. “Sure. Sometimes people are overcome. They fall down. They hit their heads. It’s worrying.”
“I actually knew you were shameless already,” Mae informed him. “I asked you about being embarrassed. Do you ever think about something you’ve done or said, and want to curl up and hide?”
Nick considered.
“No.”
“Humans do,” said Mae, sitting down on the bed herself. “You should try to avoid embarrassing us, or we might kick your ass.”
Nick laughed. “That’s a concern.”
He lay back on the twisted sheets, one arm curled under his head, free hand resting against his chest.
“Hey,” Mae said. “You should hold my hand.”
She reached out and touched his hand, and he flinched violently away.
“Why?” he demanded. “You were in the car. I told Jamie—”
“You told him why demons don’t touch humans,” Mae said. “You want to act human, though. Humans touch other humans. Comfort, love, duty, or fear, we do it for a thousand different reasons. If you give a damn about a human, if you want to even pretend to give a damn, then sometimes you have to touch them.”
Nick rolled like a cat and suddenly Mae was flat on her back against the pillows, with his face an inch away and his hands pinning her down.
“What difference does it make?” he said into her ear. “I’ve touched you before.”
Mae punched his chest and turned her face away, trying not to register that the corner of his mouth brushed hers as she did so.
“You touched me for a reason,” she said in a strained voice, concentrating on the wall and not Nick’s warmth and weight. “Sometimes you have to touch someone for no good reason except to let them know you’re there.”
The weight and warmth was gone suddenly, and Mae lay on the bed unmoving for a moment before she sat up and saw Nick lying where he’d been before. He was glaring up at the ceiling.
“I don’t like it,” he said through his teeth. “It doesn’t feel natural. I touch people to hurt them. I don’t want to—and I don’t want to get—”
“Aw, Nick,” Mae said. “I promise not to hurt you. Since you’re so delicate.”
Nick slanted an amused glance at her. “Stop harassing me to get in on my hand-holding action. I feel pressured. And used.”
Mae huffed a little laugh, but her heart wasn’t really in it. She looked around at the bedroom—at Alan’s bookshelves, the kit Nick had laid out to sharpen his sword, and the dark gray carpet that looked like a giant wire scrubbing brush—and wondered what the hell she was doing there. It was clear she couldn’t help.
“I—” said Nick, his voice halting. “I don’t mind it as much when—when people touch me. Some people.”
Mae looked down, and Nick, who had looked more relaxed when he’d been stabbed, slowly lifted his hand from his chest and laid it on the tumbled sheets between them, fingers half-curled into his palm. He was still regarding the ceiling with a fixed glare.
“Because you trust them not to hurt you?” Mae asked tentatively.
“No,” Nick said, his voice harsh. “Because I’d let them hurt me.”
Her fingertips brushed his, and she resisted the sudden nervous urge to snatch her hand back as if she’d just received an electric shock. Instead she swallowed and laced her fingers with his. Her hand was stupidly small in his, and he had calluses from the sword.
She was far too aware of such an unimportant thing, of so little of his skin against hers.
“So why’re we doing this?” Nick
continued. “What human emotion am I meant to be expressing here?”
“Affection,” Mae said. “Platonic affection.”
“Oh, really.”
“Actually, I’m faking it,” Mae told him. “I hope it’s good for you. Your first time should be perfect.”
The ends of Nick’s hair caught against the rough cotton bedclothes, and Mae’s free hand tingled with the desire to reach out and brush it back, maybe play with it a little.
It was a stupid impulse. Nick wouldn’t appreciate it. He’d made that very clear.
She sat with her legs drawn up to her chest and her socked feet tucked up in the ridge of sheets between them, and tried to ignore the way he was lying back on the bed, graceful and lazy and laid out for her.
His ring was warm with their body heat against her palm.
“Be gentle with me,” he murmured.
“Yeah, we’ll see.”
She’d been kissing his brother last night. This was pathetic. Mae was not going to allow herself to pine.
“So,” said Nick. “Are you going to read the book?”
Mae took a deep breath and looked at the book. She was holding hands with a demon, but she didn’t want to touch that book.
She did, all the same. She drew it onto her lap gingerly, as if it might explode if not handled with great care, and started to flip the yellowed pages to reach the point where she had stopped before.
Please, she thought to a dead man. Please stop hating him.
She did not let her voice tremble as she read out.
There should have been a point where I said, “This is madness,” and took any steps necessary to save Alan. There must have been a moment where it was possible to go back.
The first time the magicians came, we escaped through sheer luck. Perhaps they underestimated me. After all, I was just a human who knew nothing about magic. How could I possibly defend myself against them?
The magicians think we’re stupid.
Olivia was crying and shouting spells beside me. Alan was in the back, scared and trying not to show it, clinging to that thing and murmuring a little song.
I ran two of them down with my car. I reversed over one of their bodies to make sure he wouldn’t be able to follow us, to make the color of magic and the rising storm go away. It was the first time I had ever harmed another human being in my life.