The Demon’s Surrender (32 page)

21

The Last Answers to the Last Questions

S
IN AND
N
ICK WENT INTO THE FLAT, WALKING CAREFULLY
. S
IN
hardly knew what she expected, but when they opened the door they saw all the lights were out, the ashes on the floor and walls lost in shadow. They moved through the gray, silent rooms of the flat, not speaking, until they had covered every inch and they were sure Anzu was not there.

Sin glanced at Nick, but as usual his face revealed nothing. She covered her eyes and tried to pull herself together, be the perfect performer and present herself just right.

She headed for the kitchen where Alan had first kissed her, going straight for the kitchen table, and slid onto it.

She heard Nick’s footsteps, echoing in the hush, coming from the hall through to the kitchen toward her. She found herself unable to raise her head and look at him.

She knew he was standing very close. She could feel the warmth of his body, almost resting against her legs. She sat very still.

“Alan,” said Nick, the name and his voice a shock in the quiet room. It felt as if he had uttered a curse.

Sin looked up then, unable to help herself. Nick was staring down at her with those devouring-dark eyes. She shivered, not able to help that, either. The shiver almost turned into a shudder: She felt alone and cold suddenly, stranded far from human warmth and held transfixed by the demon’s regard.

“I know,” she whispered. “I won’t let him down.”

Nick’s face was a blur of black and white before her eyes, too close to make anything out. The feel of him this close was like sensing the approach of a dangerous animal, his breath hot on her face as chills raced through her body.

He took a breath that hitched in his chest, not ragged but torn clean in two, and that sign of pain made him reality rather than nightmare. She lifted her hands and touched him, his shoulders solid and warm against her palms.

Nick dropped a rough kiss at the corner of her mouth and cheek. He’d never been clumsy with her before.

“Good luck,” he said in her ear.

They both heard the tiny, traitorous sound as the door creaked open. For a moment Nick’s arms went around her hard, the lines of his body suddenly prison bars, but Sin yanked herself free.

She strode into the hall and met Anzu coming in the door. It was such an ordinary human thing to do, coming home, and he was so unmistakably something else. His hair was vermilion, his skin bone white. All his vivid colors betrayed the fact that there was poison lying just beneath his surface.

“Anzu,” she said, and gave him her best smile, like both hands held out to welcome him.

A returning smile lit that face, so lovely, so cruel, and so changed. It was strange, seeing a demon look pleased.

Of course, he had said he was lonely. And demons always told the truth.

“My dancer. Is this a greeting for a lover?”

Sin’s lips curled in real amusement. “This is a greeting for someone I want to make bargains with. I’m always the sweetest to customers.”

Demons appreciated the truth. Anzu looked at her with a glint in his eye that was not quite warmth but that might have been had he been human, like the reflection of fire in a glass.

“What do you want?” Anzu asked, his voice almost indulgent. “And what do you have to offer me?”

“She’s not the one making an offer,” Nick said from the doorway. “I am.”

The room filled with nothingness, none of them moving or making a sound. Sin did not even want to breathe and disturb the moment.

“I made a bargain with you and Liannan once, that I would give you bodies,” Nick continued. “All I want to do now is keep it.”

Anzu’s lips curled in a sneer. “I have a body.”

“Now, now,” Sin said, coaxing the reluctant buyer like a good Market girl. “Hear him out.”

“That body won’t last,” Nick informed him dispassionately. “You’re tearing it to pieces.”

“Your brother won’t last,” Anzu snarled, and went for him in a rush.

Nick put out a hand and took him by the throat. Anzu halted.

“Your brother won’t last,” he repeated, his voice soft and hateful.

Nick nodded. He drew his thumb lightly over Anzu’s jugular vein; Sin couldn’t tell if it was a gesture of affection or a death threat. “I know,” he said, voice just as soft. “The body lasts for such a short time. That’s how it is for all demons. Except me.”

“How nice for you,” Anzu spat.

“It could be you,” said Nick. “How about it? I can make it so you have a body for a long, long time.”

Anzu backed out of Nick’s hold, wary as a wild animal being offered food.

“Why would you want to help me?”

“For Alan,” Nick said. “Because if I had a soul, I would trade it for his. And because I would like to keep my word.”

Anzu looked at him for a long moment.

“I don’t need anything from you, traitor,” he said at last.

“Anzu,” Sin murmured. “You don’t want to go back to the demon world, do you? If he wants to help, let him. He owes you that.”

“He betrayed me,” Anzu said. “I spent long, cold years dreaming of his pain. I will not have my dreams taken away. Why should he be the one to escape? Why should he be happy?”

“You said you wanted to know what it was like,” Sin said. “You could be happy too. If you never had to go back to the demon world, and you had company.”

Sin looked at him with passionate appeal, as she’d looked at a hundred audiences, trying to show she cared and thus make them care too. This performance mattered more than any other.

“Take the deal, and I’ll go with you anywhere.”

She reached out and did not quite let her fingers touch his bare arm. She figured a demon would prefer that.

In any case, that was what her instincts told her to do. Always leave them wanting more.

She held her body curved beside his and kept her posture relaxed, as if she wanted to be there.

Demons seeking bodies came to windows and tempted humans. Well, Sin was the best performer the Market had. She could tempt anyone.

This demon had been cold and lonely for a long time.

Sin swayed toward him, warm and close.

She whispered, “Please.”

Sin had not known what to expect from Black Arthur’s house. This was the magician who had put a demon in his own child, the shaper of a future they had all been forced to live in, the villain of the piece who had died in the first act. She had never laid eyes on him.

The house was just a rich person’s house. It had windows vast and shining as shop windows, as if the rooms were stages to display their wealth to the audience of the world.

Sin could not see inside the windows from her position on their neighbor’s roof, though she did think if these people were all as rich as their houses suggested, they could take better care of their gutters. She was lying flat on the gray-shingled slope, listening to the cars purr by on the street, waiting for the ordinary noises of early morning to be broken by something strange.

All she could make out from her place was a sea of gray roofs spread out below them. The city seemed far away to Sin, a different and safer world.

But not her world.

The song came, soft and thrilling and lovely. The music went rippling down the street like a river. Sin had always thought that Market music was more beautiful because it was secret, but it sounded even better out in the open.

Down below, people’s heads were turning. Then they started to follow, moving to the sound of the song, pouring out of their houses in dressing gowns and business suits, dancing to the piping.

That would be enough to make the magicians come to the windows, and enough to make them afraid. They didn’t know how far the pipers’ power over these people would extend.

Nor did Sin, actually. When she had inquired, Matthias had said, “I could pipe them into the sea,” and added, “Hadn’t you heard? Pipers steal children.” When she asked for him to stop talking nonsense and children’s stories, he had laughed and walked off, piping already. She’d found her hand tapping a rhythm before she recalled that she danced to no tune she did not choose.

As far as the magicians were concerned, pipers might well be able to pipe people into the sea and steal children, and create an army to fight them.

Sin heard something else, too. She heard the rustle through the bushes in these houses’ front gardens, the sound of dragging bodies through the grass in the back, and she knew the necromancers had sent every crushed piece of roadkill, every frozen cat curled beneath a bush, every drowned dog with a bloated belly in the Knightsbridge area staggering toward the magicians’ house.

The railings running along the houses burst into blue flame that the potion-makers had assured them would burn hot and fast, and that the magicians would not be able to put out.

Sin heard the front door of the house slam open, heard the commotion in the garden, and felt fiercely proud.

Now that the Goblin Market had come out of hiding, they were more powerful than the Circle had ever dreamed.

Sin rose cautiously, still crouched, and saw Nick rise on the other side of the roof. They gave each other a nod and a flashing smile, and then Sin tucked herself into a ball and rolled easily, head over feet, until she reached the magicians’ roof.

She stood at the edge of the roof, testing it, and jumped. She caught the gutter with both hands as she fell, swinging easy, and found the windowsill with her feet. She rested her toes against the sill, and when there was no sign of it giving way, she knelt down and tested the window. It was locked.

Sin sighed at magicians and their apparent conscientiousness about home security, and stretched back up on her tiptoes to grab the gutter again. She flexed her back and locked her legs together, making herself a pendulum, gathering force and speed.

She crashed through the magicians’ window feetfirst. Her shoes and jeans caught most of the damage, though she felt the swift, hot sting of a cut opening on her cheek as she landed on a wooden floor amid broken glass.

She had as much luck with the room as with the window. Which was to say none.

There was a magician in it, a young man drawing a circle, obviously wanting more power before he joined in the fight outside.

Well, she’d brought the fight in to him.

Sin drew her knives and threw one as the magician leaped to his feet and deflected the knife with a shimmer of magic rising from his palm.

Sin did not risk throwing her other knife. She eyed him warily. He eyed her back just as warily. Throwing knives always got people’s attention, but she would have preferred to see him a little more relaxed, a little more certain he could beat her. She could’ve used that.

Instead he threw a pale fireball at her, and all she could do was dodge.

She dodged and ducked, making a bigger production of it than she had to, trying to draw his eye with unnecessary movement. She used fancy footwork in the mess of shards and gleaming splinters of glass, silver sweeping in her wake as she lunged and retreated meaninglessly, making battle a dance.

His eyes went to her feet for a second. Sin threw herself forward and slid her knife up under his ribs, a sure and swift killing blow. He doubled over against her, his blood spilling hot on her hands, and Sin pulled her knife out and stepped away so his body fell heavily onto the floor. There was a sickening crunch as if he’d broken his nose, but that hardly mattered now.

Sin jumped over his body and went for the door, out into a long hall full of dusty pictures. She ran under a chandelier in the shape of a dream catcher, the carved crystal hanging dull and dim, throwing open every door in the corridor as she went.

She could hear running feet and slamming doors, and did not know which sounds were her allies, intent on the same task as she, and which the magicians running to fight them.

When she opened the next door, one opposite a charmed tapestry inscribed with rings, crowns, and jewels, it didn’t matter.

The room beyond was vast, with a vaulted ceiling and a glossy wooden floor that bore twelve of the most perfect summoning circles Sin had ever seen, the lines of communication that translated demons’ silent language into speech straight and true, the circles within circles smooth. There were pairs of circles overlapping each other, like dancers’ circles, as if to make more room for the demons. Even the circles not currently occupied gleamed with subtle fire, with a shimmer like the reflection of the magical stones for which the magicians’ Circles were named.