The Demon's Covenant (24 page)
Read The Demon's Covenant Online
Authors: Sarah Rees Brennan
“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 DemonsMae 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 GeraldâGod forbid!âor 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 Jamieâ”
“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 toâand I don't want to getâ”
“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 bedroomâat 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 brushâand wondered what the hell she was doing there. It was clear she couldn't help.
“Iâ” said Nick, his voice halting. “I don't mind it as much whenâwhen 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.
It wasn't the last.
I felt like I had to keep Olivia safe. I couldn't abandon her, not in the state she was in. I could not have left anyone in so much pain, let alone someone I loved.
I had to learn so much so fast. I had to spend so much time running, and learning, and trying to help Olivia in the worst conditions imaginable. I could not take her to anyone who might give her real help, because of course they would think that her talk of magic was more madness: They would try to cure her of her memories as well as her delusions. I could not even take her to the Goblin Market, because they would have known her immediately for what she was. A magician. A killer.
I sacrificed my son because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
I did not think much about the creature then. I knew
there was something wrong, but I was not sure how much of what Olivia said was truth and how much was madness, and when she talked about her child, she was at her worst. Those stories were the worst. I did not want to believe them.
I was tired all the time. I was distantly grateful that the horrible thing never cried or made a fuss. I didn't like looking at it, but I told myself that was because it was Arthur's child, born of a man who was evil and God knew what suffering on Olivia's part, the child of a man I hated and a woman I loved.
I let Alan fuss over it, since that seemed to make him happy. God help me, when Olivia tried to hurt it I told him to take care of it. I made it his especial charge. I made him responsible.
God forgive me.
It was more than a year later that I realized what I had done. We were fighting a demon possessing a dead body. Olivia was throwing spells and I was hitting it with a poker. I had to beat an already dead thing into pieces, and as I looked at its blank, rotting face, I knew.
I thought, My son is upstairs putting a demon to bed.
Olivia had told me what it was a thousand times. Neither of us had the slightest idea how to save what might once have been Olivia's child. There was no child left, and no hope. There was one of a race of murderous, evil things in my home, and I was filled with senseless, unreasoning terror. As if that had not been the case for a year. As if I had not already betrayed my son by refusing to recognize the danger I had put him in.
As soon as the dead thing stopped moving, I left its messy remains on the rug and ran upstairs. Alan was still in the creature's room, bending over the cradle and singing a song
his mother used to sing to him. And in the cradle there was that monster, beyond the reach of human words and feelings.
I should have taken Alan then. I should have taken Alan and driven away from Olivia and the nightmare in the cradle, turned my back on it all and saved my son.
I couldn't bear to leave Olivia. I told myself I would be careful, I would watch it, there might be some way to exorcise it, that Alan was too young to understand and he would be terribly distressed. I told myself that demons were cunning and the creature knew it was helpless and Alan was caring for it. There would be no profit for the demon in harming my son.
Only, of course, demons hurt humans for sport.
There are times when the true horror of the life I have condemned us to settles on me, like stones pressing down on my chest, and I think that soon I will be mad too. There was one day, when Alan was almost seven and came home straight from school as he always does. When Alan is at school I have to keep the creature with me in case Olivia tries to hurt it again.
It is part of his daily routine, as soon as he comes in the door, to give it a kiss and say, “Hi, Nick. Did you miss me?”
As if it could.
That done, he takes out his schoolwork and shows it to me, gold stars and teacher's praise, the little offerings he brings in his effort to make my day brighter.
Sometimes I wish he wasn't so good. It just makes everything else look so much more twisted, so much worse.
That day I noticed something new, though: that the creature's eyes tracked his movements when he was in the room. They don't track mine or Olivia's unless we make a move that is directly related to it. It seems as indifferent to
humans as if they were particularly mobile chairs. But it was watching Alan.
My blood ran heavy and cold through my veins, as if terror could turn me to stone, and I tried not to think of what bloody game or dark purpose the demon might intend for my son.
That night I went upstairs with an enchanted knife in my hand and stood over the cradle. Drowning hadn't worked, but this knife had the strongest spells the Goblin Market knew laid on it.
The night-light was on, casting a pattern of cheerful rabbits on the opposite wall. It lay sleeping in a pool of light, but even sleeping it doesn't look like a child.
Not quite.
I stood there sweating, the hilt of the knife turning slick in my grasp. Then from the door I heard Alan say, “Dad?”
I turned and saw him looking at me, and the knife, and the demon. My little boy's face went so pale it seemed translucent. He looked like the tired old ghost of a child long dead.
“Nick,” he said, coming into the room, almost stumbling in his sleepy haste. “Nick, wake up.”
It doesn't wake like normal children, grumbling or yawning or rubbing sleep from its eyes with small fists. It is simply alert in a moment, black eyes watchful and cold. Alan lifted it out of the cradle with an effortâthe body is three years old and big for its age. The demon tried to squirm away. It does not seem to like being touched, but Alan clung to it, staring up at me with huge, terrified eyes.
I said his name.
“Come on, Nick,” Alan said, his voice breaking even as he tried to sound calm, as if the demon needed comfort. “I had a nightmare. I need you to come sleep in my bed.”
Alan has it trained to hold his hand and follow him when crossing roads. When he held its hand then, his knuckles were white.
As soon as he left the room I heard him break into a run, dragging the creature with him.
I went to put the knife away. I hid it and came back. Alan had dragged his wardrobe in front of the door. He'd barricaded himself in with the demon.
In the morning I had Olivia spell her way in, silently. I did not wake them as I came in over what remained of the wardrobe.
When I drew the blanket back, Alan was sleeping with one arm curled around the monster. In his other hand was an enchanted knife.
I'd never dreamed he knew where I kept the weapons, let alone that he'd stolen one. And now he was clinging to the demon and the knife, not even to defend against the magicians but to protect that thing fromâbecause he was scared ofâ
I can't write it. My little Alan, my baby boy.
What would Marie think, if she saw what had become of him?
“Come downstairs,” I said. “I'll get breakfast.”
We have never spoken of that night. He pretends it never happened, hugs me without hesitation, still brings home good marks and trophies like offerings, acts like he has never doubted or feared me for a moment.
It scares me sometimes, how well he can pretend.
