Sarah Rees Brennan's Blog, page 14
July 5, 2011
The Last Lexicon Short Story
M'dears, I am so sorry this is late! Here is the free short story to celebrate the release of The Demon's Surrender.
It will (probably - there are few guarantees in Sarahland) be the last Lexicon story. Here are all the short stories written previously in the Lexicon universe.
Should you not have read one or all of the Lexicon books, well: they are now all out, a beauteous set of three. Mayyyybe you would like to read them.
If you have read the books, I thank you more than I can say, and I hope you enjoy this present.
All The Way Back Where We Started From: Even evil magicians hate their boss. (Featuring Hnikarr.)
All The Way Back Where We Started From
The rules of middle management still held good for magic.
Laura Godwin had worked in investment banking before the magicians came for her, and she had been somewhat surprised to find that her skills transferred quite easily.
You aimed for a certain point in the organisation, became quietly necessary and, barring absolute catastrophe, your job was safe. But you never reached for the top: it wasn't safe at the top, because too many ambitious people wanted that position and because if you did a bad job, those below you would be arranging things so one of those ambitious folk would get it.
Laura had seen it happen in other Circles, and taken note.
The Obsidian Circle had always been fairly stable. John Dee had been an old, wise magician, who had probably even died of natural causes. His grandson Arthur, the most powerful magician anyone had seen in an invariably magical family for generations, had been his natural successor, and if the boy was fond of theatrics, well, he was young and there was no harm in that.
The fact Laura did not like him personally was not important, though she would naturally have preferred a leader she did not constantly dream of smacking about the head.
Since their brief unpleasant stay in Durham, Laura had simply arranged matters so she was never alone with Arthur.
That had been a nightmare from the moment the car broke down.
"Fix it," Arthur had commanded, crossing his arms over his chest and sinking in his seat like a child denied an ice-cream.
Laura had never liked children. She counted to ten, and then to twelve just to be certain.
"I'm afraid my total ignorance about cars would interfere with my efficiency in spell-casting," she said evenly. "Do you have any wisdom to offer on the subject?"
Since Charles generally acted as a chauffeur for Arthur and now she was stuck with the job, she actually doubted that Arthur knew how to drive.
Laura had not been sure how long she could conceal her irritation while trapped in Arthur's sole company in a confined space, so she had been deeply thankful when the battered brown Ford drew up alongside the sleek black of their car.
Arthur's lip curled. He'd looked concerned that their rescuer might mess up their paint job.
His lip was still curled, a picture of supercilious dismay, black head tipped indolently back against the car rest, blue eyes heavy-lidded, when the young man tapped on his window.
They presented quite a contrast, Laura hadn't been able to help noticing. The other guy had curly hair too, but it was bright and rumpled, standing up all around his head and giving him the appearance of a friendly red-gold lion. He gave them a smile, as if he was so generally happy that his goodwill spilled all over strangers, even complete strangers giving him the stink-eye.
"Can I help out at all?"
Laura said yes, please and thank you, and described the noise under the bonnet before the car stopped. The young man, who introduced himself as Daniel, popped the bonnet and had a look, cheerfully talking to Laura as he did so.
Arthur's exaggerated boredom about the whole proceeding meant that he was the one who looked to the Ford, and saw the young woman in the passenger seat.
Laura felt his body go stiff and startled, and she looked across as well.
The woman was ravingly beautiful, with long black hair, white skin and a dissatisfied expression, like Snow White on a day when she had cramps. She was also a magician.
She and Arthur were staring at each other, eyes locked.
Laura recalled the sensation vividly, the sweet shock of joy and stunned recognition – you're like me, there is finally someone who is like me! When they had come for her, she'd felt it. She had been half in love with Arthur herself for twenty minutes, though he would never have deigned to notice a middle-aged woman in any way whatsoever and after the twenty minutes were up she realised he was a total pill.
He looked the part of a rescuer, though, a tall dark stranger from faraway lands, promising magic and adventure and freedom at last. The young woman had her hand on the car door already, Laura could see her fingers pressing white against the glass, as if the car was a cage.
"This is my wife Olivia," said Daniel Ryves, noticing Arthur's gaze. Since said gaze would have made a laser look lacking in focus, Laura could not blame him.
Daniel did not look unduly bothered, as if he was used to his gorgeous wife attracting attention, as if he was absolutely confident in himself and in her, happy to be doing his good deed for strangers on a sunny afternoon, absolutely confident in their love for each other and their future together.
Arthur went slinking out of the car toward Olivia. He opened the door for her and put out his hand for hers. She hesitated, looking up into his face: Arthur could be extremely charming, Laura thought clinically, which was an excellent quality in a leader. He never bothered to be charming unless he felt like it, which was not.
Olivia laid her fingers across his palm. Arthur lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.
Laura looked out through her car windshield and met Daniel's gaze. They both rolled their eyes, and it made Laura smile. Daniel Ryves smiled back, bright and open and genuinely charming, as if she wasn't invisible to him the way she was to Arthur, as if nobody was invisible to him.
If only Arthur had charm like that, self-effacing and drawing other people in by making it seem as if they were special and not him. Laura could really have used a leader with charm like that.
Poor Daniel. Laura expected that the girl would be driving away with them in twenty minutes.
She was wrong about that. It took two days.
It took some persuasion to make Arthur book rooms at a guest house near Daniel and Olivia's home. His first brilliant scheme was to call up a demon to kill Daniel, and potentially Olivia's family if they were holding her back.
His desire to have what he wanted immediately, with no thought for long-term strategy or cost, was the worst trait a leader could have. It also gave Laura a migraine to hear him complaining.
"We want our members willing, Arthur," she said, and there was an edge to her voice if Arthur had been smart enough to notice it. "We want them to make their own choices." Arthur frowned at her, ice-blue eyes brilliant under dark brows, and Laura gentled her voice. Arthur wasn't stupid, even if his arrogance produced that effect too often. "So that their loyalty to you will be unquestioned."
Arthur went off in a huff to court his lady. Laura stayed where she was, in a chair by a window in their little red brick guesthouse, and was grateful for the peace. There was a tree, its leaf-laden branches touching the window ledge, and Laura amused herself by making the leaves curl and turn gold with autumn, even though it was summer.
Magicians should make their own choices.
She had not even tried to resist, the way Olivia had, turning her face away from Arthur's like a snake refusing to be charmed. The first moment the magicians had walked into her office, Laura had known what she wanted – other people like her at last, and the magic at last, not a secret crushed into a corner of her heart but let flow free and fierce through her veins. Stepping from shadow into light. Arthur had put out his hand, and she had taken it without hesitation.
She was still not going to let Arthur kill Daniel Ryves. Laura thought it was rather gauche to sic demons on people she had been introduced to. The world was full of strangers to kill.
Laura had only had someone she knew killed once.
She'd never had children, but she had been married. Edward had been a kind man who wore rounded spectacles that he peered through at her with a look that was half love and half sorrow: he had not thought some part of her would always remain aloof from him. Laura could not recall his face, but she remembered that look with extreme clarity.
She had sent a demon to his window. It was best to make a clean break, moving from one life to another.
Laura was saving Daniel Ryves so Olivia could make that choice later, if she wanted.
After two days, Arthur talked Olivia around, and she left with them. Laura was glad for Olivia's company in the car on the way back to Exeter: she had not undertaken a trip in Arthur's company alone again, and it had been years.
Years, and Arthur and Olivia had been together that long. She was called Livia now, because Arthur was the kind of man who always called the women in his life by diminutives. Years, and Arthur had not gained but rather lost ground as a leader, his over-reaching ambition leaving the clever members of his Circle no choice but to search England for a magician who could rival his power. The only one in their circle who could do it was Livia herself, one of theirs now, and one of the strongest among them.
Laura had been watching, and Livia's loyalty seemed unshakable.
But if anything could shake that loyalty, it would be Arthur's latest scheme.
*
The cellar in their manor in Devon was a large dark space, the floor packed-tight earth. It had been a wine cellar, but nobody was going to keep wine in a place where they regularly raised demons. Balefire was no good for a vintage.
The circle of obsidians that channeled their Circle's power, that gave the Obsidian Circle their name, was glowing. The light of the balefire touched the black stones with white flashes.
Two ordinary demons' circles were drawn to overlap with the Circle. One demon's circle was drawn within it, using all the power of the obsidians to call a demon that had not answered a summons in a hundred years.
The word on the magical grapevine was that it had gone mad.
Laura was beginning to seriously wonder if Arthur had gone mad.
It was not like the standard, supposedly-sane demons were pleasant to deal with. In the two circles overlapping their obsidian one stood Liannan, its hair fire and its hands icicles, its face like the last beautiful illusion before death. In the other was Anzu, the shining predator, feathers falling from its hair like gold leaves in autumn.
They were both inclined toward the shimmering stones that wrapped around the other circle, to the balefire that roared and scintillated there, filling the circle with white flame and nothing more.
They had been chanting, Laura could not help but notice, for some time. Well past the amount of time they usually spent calling, the time when they decided this demon was not going to answer.
This demon being, again, the demon that had not answered a summons in a hundred years. Had it been a human, this would not be a case of 'not at home, possibly popped out for milk' but 'moved, had phone disconnected and house demolished.'
"We call on the demon they called Hnikarr in the west," Arthur shouted, and the force of conviction behind his rich rolling voice making every other voice chime in with renewed fervour. "We call on the demon they called Nicor on the storm-ruined sea, we call on the demon the northern tribes called Nix. We call on the tempest-summoner, the shipbreaker, the nightbringer, the one who shatters the sky. We call on the caller of the last darkness. We call on Hnikarr."
Which of them was going to be the first to break, Laura wondered, and say that this was not going to work? It was not going to be her: she was more the type to wait and watch, but she could use the first sign of rebellion.
She looked toward Livia, who was standing as always beside Arthur, like perfect male and female halves of each other, ice-blue eyes and ice-pale skin and coal-black hair.
Except that there was a shadow on Livia's face, whereas Arthur still looked absolutely serene.
Laura waited for Livia to speak, but something else happened instead.
There in the white blinding light, like the expanse in the heart of a star, something was rising. Darkness was being born.
The demons in the other circles leaned slightly toward it, as if they were trees bowed by the wind in a particular direction.
Hnikarr the sky-shatterer was a rather unsettling sight. Laura had seen a hundred demons before. They looked like Anzu and Liannan, bright and beautiful poisonous traps, vicious and vivid.
Hnikarr certainly looked vicious, looked as its names suggested. There was a strange shadow enveloping the man's shape of its body, like an outline drawn in black crayon around it: something about the darkness behind its arrogantly held head suggested a stormcloud.
That was not what disturbed Laura so profoundly: it was the fact it looked older than Anzu or Liannan, who always wore the radiance of youth. There were lines of cruelty marked on its face, etched from his narrowed crystalline eyes. It had dark short hair, dark simple clothes and a face that was all harsh angles.
There was nothing about it designed to allure. Laura did not know how to deal with a demon that did not advertise its wares, its twin promises of pleasure and pain. How could you bargain with this?
"Welcome, nightbringer," said Arthur. "I am the leader of the Obsidian Circle."
Laura knew with a sinking feeling that her brilliant leader was about to try.
The demon regarded him balefully. "Why are you bothering me?"
Laura was aware he was not really talking, but the demons' silent language usually seemed to beckon in your mind. This voice battered at your mind, like waves crashing against rock.
"I want to offer you something," Arthur said. "Something very special. I think you'll find it a most exciting opportunity."
"I think you'll find that I am a demon," said Hnikarr. "So you needn't talk to me as if you are trying to sell me a used car. I have been bargaining people out of their very blood for a song, for thousands of years before you were ever born, boy. My allies told me you had something entertaining to say. Say it."
Entertaining. So the demons were snickering at Arthur's antics behind their backs, like schoolchildren. Wasn't that marvellous.
Laura looked at Anzu and Liannan, beautifully blithe. Anzu was looking at Hnikarr: Liannan looked at Laura, though, and it did not bother to conceal its amusement.
"Oh, Hnikarr," it said. "How you wind the humans around your little finger."
"I don't want to wind them around my little finger," Hnikarr said. "I'll leave that to you, trap-layer." Its voice crashing in Laura's mind did not seem quite as harsh when it addressed Liannan: she could not tell if that was an insult or some demonic endearment. "The only thing I want to do," said Hnikarr, almost conversationally, "is crush them all."
"I think you want something else," said Arthur.
Hnikarr looked at Arthur, the crystal caves of its empty demon's eyes going on for miles.
"Go on then," it said. "Tell me what I want."
"Our records say you haven't taken a human host in a hundred and three years," said Arthur. "You got tired of it, didn't you? The same old routine, over and over again. Trick a human, possess it, see the body fall apart in weeks. Go again. You wanted to be done with it all."
His voice commanded Hnikarr to believe in him: the demon did not seem as amenable as most of the Obsidian Circle.
"I'll tell you what I got tired of," Hnikarr murmured. "You. You humans. I could not bear the idea of wheedling under another of your foolish windows. The idea of pleasing one of you, making one of you happy for even a moment, even if I could make you pay for it a thousand times over later… I could not do it any longer. I hate you all so much."
There was a crackle in the darkness around the demon, like the sound of lightning being born.
"Everyone needs a break sometimes," Liannan remarked, shrugging. When it moved the gesture looked fluid and boneless, like the action of a snake.
"Say you didn't have to wheedle under another window," Arthur said. "Say you could have a body without trickery, and the body would last not weeks, but years: a whole human lifetime. What then?"
"How?"
Hnikarr threw the word down like a gauntlet. Liannan and Anzu both laughed, their laughter falling in Laura's mind like shards of ice in a dark place, bright and potentially deadly.
"There are stories that suggest a child does not have its soul until it takes its first breath," Arthur said. "Or that an infant's soul is a frail flickering thing: infinitely fragile. Absolutely crushable."
Even though the Circle had heard Arthur's spiel many times before, when Laura looked around she saw unease written on several faces, pale by the light of the balefire. Being a magician meant making certain compromises, but—they were talking about children.
"So your plan is to present me with a pregnant woman," said Hnikarr.
"And with the aid of this Circle's magic, I believe we can make it possible for you to possess the unborn child."
Arthur nodded with great satisfaction, as if he had just proved a complex mathematical equation before a crowd.
"So tempting, isn't it?" Liannan drawled. "We do not possess humans before the age of sixteen, because they are useless before then. Their bodies fall apart even faster, and they do not channel magic sufficiently. Even you creatures with your pathetic magic should know that much, should know how we work. We are demons. Are you new?"
"Not to mention the danger," Anzu said. "It's hard to think clearly when occupying animals, and they last days. What he's suggesting, being trapped in an infant brain—it could warp your mind. The risk isn't worth it."
Liannan's tone had been only mocking: there was something serious in the way Anzu spoke.
Laura tilted her head to look at the savage lines of Hnikarr's face from a different angle. It could not possibly be considering this.
But they did say it was mad.
"A body, for a lifetime," Arthur murmured. He held his hands out, cupped as if he was offering Hnikarr something: a jewel, or an apple. "Wouldn't that be worth the risk?"
"I assume you would want compensation."
Arthur's hands broke apart: he made a small gesture, very small, indicating the tiniest of issues. "It would hardly mean anything to you," he said. "We would keep you safe in the Circle quarters until you grew into your power, and once you had it, you would have so much. I would want my share, and for you to do me some favours in return."
"You would bring him up among you?" Anzu asked. "Would you send him to bed without his supper if he was naughty?"
"No supper ever, then," Liannan murmured. "Sad."
All the demons laughed then, even Hnikarr, in a cold cascade.
"Your share," Hnikarr repeated. "Some favours. Enough power to rule all the magicians in England? Enough power to come out of hiding, and rule the world?"
Arthur hesitated. There was a brief moment of hesitation where the only sound in the room was the low roar of balefire and the echo of the demons laughing.
"You and I could share the world," Arthur suggested at last. "Don't you think?"
"I'll tell you what I think," Hnikarr said. "I think I'll do it."
There was a buzz of horror and astonishment around the Obsidian Circle, all magicians trained far too well to let stray words drop around demons. There was chaos in the demons' circles.
"No, Hnikarr," Liannan exclaimed. "This man is a joke-"
"I know the temptation is great," Anzu said. "I know you are unhappy. But the danger isn't worth it—who knows what could happen to you--"
"The temptation is not that great," Liannan sneered. "To be human, or something like it, for sixteen years. The idea is disgusting."
"You can't trust these people," Anzu said. "You wouldn't be safe."
"Such concern over my safety," said Hnikarr. "And my happiness. You're so sweet, Anzu. Almost human."
Liannan and Hnikarr were the ones who laughed then, wheeling on Anzu like hyenas taunting the weakest member of the pack. Laura had not seen demons interacting with their own kind often. She did not care if she never saw it again.
"And I may not be able to trust them, but you have been my allies since before the things that would become humans crawled out of the mud," Hnikarr said calmly. "With a body that lasts, once I hit sixteen I can line people up and mark them for you both. It will be in your best interests to guard me until I have my power."
"Of course we would," Liannan said. It was smiling now, a spark of interest in its face suddenly. Its teeth were like pearls sharpened to dagger points.
Anzu had turned its face away when the others had laughed at it. It was silent.
Hnikarr swung back to Arthur. When Liannan moved it was snakelike, and when Anzu moved it was light as if he was flying, but with Hnikarr when he took a step forward the sound echoed like thunder, the step of a monster that was coming for you and wanted you to know.
"I'll do it," said Hnikarr again. "And you can have the world, if you want it. But first you should understand why I'll do it, and what I am going to do. I hate humans, and the reason I hate them so much is because of how pathetically easy it is to trick them, because they turn their backs on the world they have already and create other worlds in their tiny little minds, worlds full of stupid, meaningless illusions. Take that woman," it added, and nodded towards Livia.
Livia did not start. She stayed perfectly still, the black hair hanging about her the only thing that moved, making her look like a statue in a black velvet cape.
Hnikarr's lip curled. Its teeth were like Liannan's, razor-sharp points, but Hnikarr's looked heavier somehow, as if it could literally take someone's head off with one bite. "I suppose you'd tell me that you love her. Wouldn't you?"
"If it was any of your business," Arthur said haughtily, "I suppose I would."
"Ah, love," said Hnikarr. "Lifts you up where you belong. All you need. Isn't that right? Except it's not all you need, is it, because you still want power enough to barter some mewling child for it. Love's just a lie, like all your other lies about comfort, and relief, and any sort of peace being possible for anyone in any world. That's why I hate you all, you hypocrites, making up whole worlds of words you don't even believe in yourselves. Not really: not when you're tested, not when you're tempted. You filthy, revolting liars."
There was light and sound in the shadow that enveloped Hnikarr now, thin white scars of lightning, snatches of thunder. The demon was surrounded by a glimpse of coming storms.
"I'll take your bargain, and I'll take the body. And I'll give you what you want in return. But you should know this: one day you'll die, partner, or you'll slip up, and then the world is mine alone. I'll burn it until it's all ash and wasteland. I will burn the world, and I will laugh as your whole lying race burns with it and finally, finally falls silent. That's my part of the bargain. All I want is the world's death."
Hnikarr, the caller of the last darkness.
Demons never lied.
Arthur, even Arthur, hesitated. "I won't slip up," he said. "You won't get out of our bargain."
Because demons never, ever got the best of bargains with humans, did they?
Hnikarr threw back its head. Its laugh felt like scrabbling ice-cold claws inside Laura's head. She had seen a hundred demons, but they had been controlled demons, they had both known what they wanted, agreed on and understood the price. They had not been deals made at the edge in darkness, throwing the world like a glass ball from hand to hand.
There was sweat dripping down the back of Laura's neck, cold as river water.
"Oh," said Hnikarr, still laughing. "You don't even care, do you? So long as you get what you want. You don't even care. Oh, this is humans for you. So much for the infinite human capacity for compassion, so much for human grace. Consider it a bargain."
The demon smiled, and for the first time there was a hint of allure about it, some spark of dark crackling excitement lighting its cruel face.
It said: "I can already hear the world burning."
"I can control you," said Arthur. "And I think our bargain is an excellent one. All that's left is to discuss logistics, isn't there?"
"Do you have a pregnant woman handy?" Hnikarr inquired casually.
Arthur frowned. "They litter the city streets. I can't imagine one will be difficult to get hold of."
He neglected to mention that if he had secured a pregnant woman before he secured his demon, said woman could have given birth three times over by now.
"I like you," Hnikarr said, its loathing and contempt so tangible Laura felt as if she could have painted the walls with them. "Can I make a request?"
Incredibly, Arthur smiled, as if he thought things were going terribly well. "Of course."
"Find a redhead," said Hnikarr. "Or a blonde. That's what I prefer. I enjoy warm colours."
Laura looked at Liannan and Anzu, flame and gold their accustomed shapes. They had all been together a long time.
"I will see what I can do," Arthur said graciously. "Of course, the process may take a few tries."
"I have time," said Hnikarr. "And I hear women litter the city streets. Send out your people and bring us our first victim."
Arthur made a gesture, and the members of the Circle began to file out of the room. Livia leaned into Arthur, murmuring something Laura could not catch, and then she left, too.
Laura went after the others. Arthur was extremely bad at the details of leadership, and so she had to choose who should go, and where they should go, to find a pregnant woman people would not miss and snatch her away.
As if magicians were no better than crude thugs, kidnapping people off the streets. Demons were meant to do their dirty work: they weren't meant to do demons'.
But Arthur was still the leader, for now. Laura gave the instructions, and had to deal with a little crisis: Charles came staggering in with some story about having Stella Davies, one of the leaders in the ridiculous little band of magician-haters who called themselves the Goblin Market, cornered until an ordinary human came to the lady's rescue and defeated Charles, one of their best magicians, by the cunning means of a briefcase to the head. Laura was horrified that Charles would share a story that cast him in such an extremely ridiculous light, and told him so.
Then she went to find Livia. After Arthur's latest display, she thought they might have a very productive little chat.
*
Laura could not find Livia at first. She was in none of the floors above, and for an awful moment Laura thought she had gone back into that room full of balefire and bad bargains, and that Laura would miss her chance to strike while the iron was hot and the shock of Arthur's sheer stupid recklessness still fresh.
She found Livia near the room where the demons waited, but not in it. Livia was standing down the hall, with a phone tucked between her shoulder and her cheek. Hearing Laura's step behind her, Livia whirled as if she was about to be attacked and the phone receiver tumbled to the floor.
"Laura," Livia breathed, and pressed a hand to her breastbone.
Oh, she had been shaken by Arthur's little performance, all right.
"What are you doing?"
Livia drew herself up: she had more natural dignity than Arthur did, Laura noted. Her cool eyes bored through Laura's face.
"What I do is none of your concern."
"Naturally, Lady Livia," said Laura, using the absurd name Arthur insisted on, and saw Livia's shoulders relax. "I only wished to ascertain that you were well," Laura continued, her voice unctuous, the efficient soothing tones of the perfect secretary. "You seemed somewhat disturbed."
Livia laughed, a short, barking laugh. "I think we were all somewhat disturbed."
Not much discretion, Laura noted. But that could be fixed, and it was always useful to be the recipient of your leader's confidences.
"I do wish Black Arthur-" again with the tiresome names, but it would be worth it to achieve the desired result-"would let you have more of a say when it came to running the Circle."
"Oh, enough, Laura," Livia snapped. "Arthur may trust you, but I don't. I know you don't like him, and I know you're trying to manipulate me into airing my dissatisfactions with him. You're not getting my confidence this way, and I will not accord you any more power."
She was cleverer than Laura had thought, but she didn't quite see everything. Or she had no ambition, to make her see.
Or love had rendered her blind.
Either way, Laura's plans looked bad.
"I do not want any more power," Laura said, quite truthfully. "I only wish that we were not embarking on this particular course of action. It seems to me—ill-advised."
"Well," said Livia. "There I agree with you. But you don't need to worry. We won't be carrying out Arthur's plans."
This was encouraging.
"No?" Laura asked.
"No," said Livia, and looked over her shoulder at the fallen phone. She smiled a small, strained smile. "Everything will turn out for the best," she said. "Arthur won't want to do it, once I tell him something."
Laura was watching closely, so she caught the tell: the involuntary fluttering movement of Livia's fingers toward her stomach, before she checked herself.
"You heard him," Livia continued sharply. "He loves me."
She might be a fine magician, but she was also fiercely stubborn. She had cast in her lot with Arthur, and would stand by while he led them all to ruin. It was useless to talk further with her.
Laura bowed her head. "Of course he does."
There was no point antagonising the current leaders, especially when she had no chance yet of acquiring a new one.
Livia hesitated, then nodded abruptly at Laura and walked back toward the room where the demons and the man she loved waited, her black hair flaring out behind her like a flag claiming her territory.
Laura was going to have to talk to Charles, and Rufus, and a few select others, about expanding their usual search for new magicians to recruit. Cast the net wider, to Wales, Scotland, even to Ireland. Lower the age restriction, and consider bringing them in young, when they could still be moulded.
There had to be a better candidate out there somewhere. Laura would find them.
The phone receiver lay at her feet, and because all information might prove useful, Laura picked it up.
She was vaguely startled to hear a woman's voice, not the voice of Daniel Ryves. The woman sounded frantic, her voice fraying as if she had been shouting down the line for some time.
"Olivia?" she said, and Laura had not heard anyone call Livia by that name in years. "Olivia, where are you? Olivia, please, please tell me. We'll come get you. We'll keep you safe. If he's scaring you, you should leave, and you should come to us. Olivia: I still love you, I believe in you, and I know you can do this. Come to us. I'll protect you. I would never, ever let anything happen to you. Please come."
Her pleading was cut into by the sound of a baby crying. Laura winced: she could not seem to get away from babies today.
The child did not sound as if it was in pain, just distressed by his mother's distress. Laura listened to its soft cries and his mother's hushing, her incoherent-with-familiarity murmurs of love.
Down the hall, Livia must have opened the door, because Laura heard a snatch of Arthur's voice. Then Hnikarr's laugh, that terrible ice storm of a laugh, rang in her head and mingled somehow with the sound of the baby crying, in a hideous and incongruous harmony.
I will burn the world, and I will laugh as your whole lying race burns with it.
The demon kept laughing, and the child kept crying.
So much for human grace.
Laura almost hoped that Livia was right and Arthur could be turned from his path. She did not see anything but darkness ahead, if Arthur had his way.
It will (probably - there are few guarantees in Sarahland) be the last Lexicon story. Here are all the short stories written previously in the Lexicon universe.
Should you not have read one or all of the Lexicon books, well: they are now all out, a beauteous set of three. Mayyyybe you would like to read them.
If you have read the books, I thank you more than I can say, and I hope you enjoy this present.
All The Way Back Where We Started From: Even evil magicians hate their boss. (Featuring Hnikarr.)
All The Way Back Where We Started From
The rules of middle management still held good for magic.
Laura Godwin had worked in investment banking before the magicians came for her, and she had been somewhat surprised to find that her skills transferred quite easily.
You aimed for a certain point in the organisation, became quietly necessary and, barring absolute catastrophe, your job was safe. But you never reached for the top: it wasn't safe at the top, because too many ambitious people wanted that position and because if you did a bad job, those below you would be arranging things so one of those ambitious folk would get it.
Laura had seen it happen in other Circles, and taken note.
The Obsidian Circle had always been fairly stable. John Dee had been an old, wise magician, who had probably even died of natural causes. His grandson Arthur, the most powerful magician anyone had seen in an invariably magical family for generations, had been his natural successor, and if the boy was fond of theatrics, well, he was young and there was no harm in that.
The fact Laura did not like him personally was not important, though she would naturally have preferred a leader she did not constantly dream of smacking about the head.
Since their brief unpleasant stay in Durham, Laura had simply arranged matters so she was never alone with Arthur.
That had been a nightmare from the moment the car broke down.
"Fix it," Arthur had commanded, crossing his arms over his chest and sinking in his seat like a child denied an ice-cream.
Laura had never liked children. She counted to ten, and then to twelve just to be certain.
"I'm afraid my total ignorance about cars would interfere with my efficiency in spell-casting," she said evenly. "Do you have any wisdom to offer on the subject?"
Since Charles generally acted as a chauffeur for Arthur and now she was stuck with the job, she actually doubted that Arthur knew how to drive.
Laura had not been sure how long she could conceal her irritation while trapped in Arthur's sole company in a confined space, so she had been deeply thankful when the battered brown Ford drew up alongside the sleek black of their car.
Arthur's lip curled. He'd looked concerned that their rescuer might mess up their paint job.
His lip was still curled, a picture of supercilious dismay, black head tipped indolently back against the car rest, blue eyes heavy-lidded, when the young man tapped on his window.
They presented quite a contrast, Laura hadn't been able to help noticing. The other guy had curly hair too, but it was bright and rumpled, standing up all around his head and giving him the appearance of a friendly red-gold lion. He gave them a smile, as if he was so generally happy that his goodwill spilled all over strangers, even complete strangers giving him the stink-eye.
"Can I help out at all?"
Laura said yes, please and thank you, and described the noise under the bonnet before the car stopped. The young man, who introduced himself as Daniel, popped the bonnet and had a look, cheerfully talking to Laura as he did so.
Arthur's exaggerated boredom about the whole proceeding meant that he was the one who looked to the Ford, and saw the young woman in the passenger seat.
Laura felt his body go stiff and startled, and she looked across as well.
The woman was ravingly beautiful, with long black hair, white skin and a dissatisfied expression, like Snow White on a day when she had cramps. She was also a magician.
She and Arthur were staring at each other, eyes locked.
Laura recalled the sensation vividly, the sweet shock of joy and stunned recognition – you're like me, there is finally someone who is like me! When they had come for her, she'd felt it. She had been half in love with Arthur herself for twenty minutes, though he would never have deigned to notice a middle-aged woman in any way whatsoever and after the twenty minutes were up she realised he was a total pill.
He looked the part of a rescuer, though, a tall dark stranger from faraway lands, promising magic and adventure and freedom at last. The young woman had her hand on the car door already, Laura could see her fingers pressing white against the glass, as if the car was a cage.
"This is my wife Olivia," said Daniel Ryves, noticing Arthur's gaze. Since said gaze would have made a laser look lacking in focus, Laura could not blame him.
Daniel did not look unduly bothered, as if he was used to his gorgeous wife attracting attention, as if he was absolutely confident in himself and in her, happy to be doing his good deed for strangers on a sunny afternoon, absolutely confident in their love for each other and their future together.
Arthur went slinking out of the car toward Olivia. He opened the door for her and put out his hand for hers. She hesitated, looking up into his face: Arthur could be extremely charming, Laura thought clinically, which was an excellent quality in a leader. He never bothered to be charming unless he felt like it, which was not.
Olivia laid her fingers across his palm. Arthur lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.
Laura looked out through her car windshield and met Daniel's gaze. They both rolled their eyes, and it made Laura smile. Daniel Ryves smiled back, bright and open and genuinely charming, as if she wasn't invisible to him the way she was to Arthur, as if nobody was invisible to him.
If only Arthur had charm like that, self-effacing and drawing other people in by making it seem as if they were special and not him. Laura could really have used a leader with charm like that.
Poor Daniel. Laura expected that the girl would be driving away with them in twenty minutes.
She was wrong about that. It took two days.
It took some persuasion to make Arthur book rooms at a guest house near Daniel and Olivia's home. His first brilliant scheme was to call up a demon to kill Daniel, and potentially Olivia's family if they were holding her back.
His desire to have what he wanted immediately, with no thought for long-term strategy or cost, was the worst trait a leader could have. It also gave Laura a migraine to hear him complaining.
"We want our members willing, Arthur," she said, and there was an edge to her voice if Arthur had been smart enough to notice it. "We want them to make their own choices." Arthur frowned at her, ice-blue eyes brilliant under dark brows, and Laura gentled her voice. Arthur wasn't stupid, even if his arrogance produced that effect too often. "So that their loyalty to you will be unquestioned."
Arthur went off in a huff to court his lady. Laura stayed where she was, in a chair by a window in their little red brick guesthouse, and was grateful for the peace. There was a tree, its leaf-laden branches touching the window ledge, and Laura amused herself by making the leaves curl and turn gold with autumn, even though it was summer.
Magicians should make their own choices.
She had not even tried to resist, the way Olivia had, turning her face away from Arthur's like a snake refusing to be charmed. The first moment the magicians had walked into her office, Laura had known what she wanted – other people like her at last, and the magic at last, not a secret crushed into a corner of her heart but let flow free and fierce through her veins. Stepping from shadow into light. Arthur had put out his hand, and she had taken it without hesitation.
She was still not going to let Arthur kill Daniel Ryves. Laura thought it was rather gauche to sic demons on people she had been introduced to. The world was full of strangers to kill.
Laura had only had someone she knew killed once.
She'd never had children, but she had been married. Edward had been a kind man who wore rounded spectacles that he peered through at her with a look that was half love and half sorrow: he had not thought some part of her would always remain aloof from him. Laura could not recall his face, but she remembered that look with extreme clarity.
She had sent a demon to his window. It was best to make a clean break, moving from one life to another.
Laura was saving Daniel Ryves so Olivia could make that choice later, if she wanted.
After two days, Arthur talked Olivia around, and she left with them. Laura was glad for Olivia's company in the car on the way back to Exeter: she had not undertaken a trip in Arthur's company alone again, and it had been years.
Years, and Arthur and Olivia had been together that long. She was called Livia now, because Arthur was the kind of man who always called the women in his life by diminutives. Years, and Arthur had not gained but rather lost ground as a leader, his over-reaching ambition leaving the clever members of his Circle no choice but to search England for a magician who could rival his power. The only one in their circle who could do it was Livia herself, one of theirs now, and one of the strongest among them.
Laura had been watching, and Livia's loyalty seemed unshakable.
But if anything could shake that loyalty, it would be Arthur's latest scheme.
*
The cellar in their manor in Devon was a large dark space, the floor packed-tight earth. It had been a wine cellar, but nobody was going to keep wine in a place where they regularly raised demons. Balefire was no good for a vintage.
The circle of obsidians that channeled their Circle's power, that gave the Obsidian Circle their name, was glowing. The light of the balefire touched the black stones with white flashes.
Two ordinary demons' circles were drawn to overlap with the Circle. One demon's circle was drawn within it, using all the power of the obsidians to call a demon that had not answered a summons in a hundred years.
The word on the magical grapevine was that it had gone mad.
Laura was beginning to seriously wonder if Arthur had gone mad.
It was not like the standard, supposedly-sane demons were pleasant to deal with. In the two circles overlapping their obsidian one stood Liannan, its hair fire and its hands icicles, its face like the last beautiful illusion before death. In the other was Anzu, the shining predator, feathers falling from its hair like gold leaves in autumn.
They were both inclined toward the shimmering stones that wrapped around the other circle, to the balefire that roared and scintillated there, filling the circle with white flame and nothing more.
They had been chanting, Laura could not help but notice, for some time. Well past the amount of time they usually spent calling, the time when they decided this demon was not going to answer.
This demon being, again, the demon that had not answered a summons in a hundred years. Had it been a human, this would not be a case of 'not at home, possibly popped out for milk' but 'moved, had phone disconnected and house demolished.'
"We call on the demon they called Hnikarr in the west," Arthur shouted, and the force of conviction behind his rich rolling voice making every other voice chime in with renewed fervour. "We call on the demon they called Nicor on the storm-ruined sea, we call on the demon the northern tribes called Nix. We call on the tempest-summoner, the shipbreaker, the nightbringer, the one who shatters the sky. We call on the caller of the last darkness. We call on Hnikarr."
Which of them was going to be the first to break, Laura wondered, and say that this was not going to work? It was not going to be her: she was more the type to wait and watch, but she could use the first sign of rebellion.
She looked toward Livia, who was standing as always beside Arthur, like perfect male and female halves of each other, ice-blue eyes and ice-pale skin and coal-black hair.
Except that there was a shadow on Livia's face, whereas Arthur still looked absolutely serene.
Laura waited for Livia to speak, but something else happened instead.
There in the white blinding light, like the expanse in the heart of a star, something was rising. Darkness was being born.
The demons in the other circles leaned slightly toward it, as if they were trees bowed by the wind in a particular direction.
Hnikarr the sky-shatterer was a rather unsettling sight. Laura had seen a hundred demons before. They looked like Anzu and Liannan, bright and beautiful poisonous traps, vicious and vivid.
Hnikarr certainly looked vicious, looked as its names suggested. There was a strange shadow enveloping the man's shape of its body, like an outline drawn in black crayon around it: something about the darkness behind its arrogantly held head suggested a stormcloud.
That was not what disturbed Laura so profoundly: it was the fact it looked older than Anzu or Liannan, who always wore the radiance of youth. There were lines of cruelty marked on its face, etched from his narrowed crystalline eyes. It had dark short hair, dark simple clothes and a face that was all harsh angles.
There was nothing about it designed to allure. Laura did not know how to deal with a demon that did not advertise its wares, its twin promises of pleasure and pain. How could you bargain with this?
"Welcome, nightbringer," said Arthur. "I am the leader of the Obsidian Circle."
Laura knew with a sinking feeling that her brilliant leader was about to try.
The demon regarded him balefully. "Why are you bothering me?"
Laura was aware he was not really talking, but the demons' silent language usually seemed to beckon in your mind. This voice battered at your mind, like waves crashing against rock.
"I want to offer you something," Arthur said. "Something very special. I think you'll find it a most exciting opportunity."
"I think you'll find that I am a demon," said Hnikarr. "So you needn't talk to me as if you are trying to sell me a used car. I have been bargaining people out of their very blood for a song, for thousands of years before you were ever born, boy. My allies told me you had something entertaining to say. Say it."
Entertaining. So the demons were snickering at Arthur's antics behind their backs, like schoolchildren. Wasn't that marvellous.
Laura looked at Anzu and Liannan, beautifully blithe. Anzu was looking at Hnikarr: Liannan looked at Laura, though, and it did not bother to conceal its amusement.
"Oh, Hnikarr," it said. "How you wind the humans around your little finger."
"I don't want to wind them around my little finger," Hnikarr said. "I'll leave that to you, trap-layer." Its voice crashing in Laura's mind did not seem quite as harsh when it addressed Liannan: she could not tell if that was an insult or some demonic endearment. "The only thing I want to do," said Hnikarr, almost conversationally, "is crush them all."
"I think you want something else," said Arthur.
Hnikarr looked at Arthur, the crystal caves of its empty demon's eyes going on for miles.
"Go on then," it said. "Tell me what I want."
"Our records say you haven't taken a human host in a hundred and three years," said Arthur. "You got tired of it, didn't you? The same old routine, over and over again. Trick a human, possess it, see the body fall apart in weeks. Go again. You wanted to be done with it all."
His voice commanded Hnikarr to believe in him: the demon did not seem as amenable as most of the Obsidian Circle.
"I'll tell you what I got tired of," Hnikarr murmured. "You. You humans. I could not bear the idea of wheedling under another of your foolish windows. The idea of pleasing one of you, making one of you happy for even a moment, even if I could make you pay for it a thousand times over later… I could not do it any longer. I hate you all so much."
There was a crackle in the darkness around the demon, like the sound of lightning being born.
"Everyone needs a break sometimes," Liannan remarked, shrugging. When it moved the gesture looked fluid and boneless, like the action of a snake.
"Say you didn't have to wheedle under another window," Arthur said. "Say you could have a body without trickery, and the body would last not weeks, but years: a whole human lifetime. What then?"
"How?"
Hnikarr threw the word down like a gauntlet. Liannan and Anzu both laughed, their laughter falling in Laura's mind like shards of ice in a dark place, bright and potentially deadly.
"There are stories that suggest a child does not have its soul until it takes its first breath," Arthur said. "Or that an infant's soul is a frail flickering thing: infinitely fragile. Absolutely crushable."
Even though the Circle had heard Arthur's spiel many times before, when Laura looked around she saw unease written on several faces, pale by the light of the balefire. Being a magician meant making certain compromises, but—they were talking about children.
"So your plan is to present me with a pregnant woman," said Hnikarr.
"And with the aid of this Circle's magic, I believe we can make it possible for you to possess the unborn child."
Arthur nodded with great satisfaction, as if he had just proved a complex mathematical equation before a crowd.
"So tempting, isn't it?" Liannan drawled. "We do not possess humans before the age of sixteen, because they are useless before then. Their bodies fall apart even faster, and they do not channel magic sufficiently. Even you creatures with your pathetic magic should know that much, should know how we work. We are demons. Are you new?"
"Not to mention the danger," Anzu said. "It's hard to think clearly when occupying animals, and they last days. What he's suggesting, being trapped in an infant brain—it could warp your mind. The risk isn't worth it."
Liannan's tone had been only mocking: there was something serious in the way Anzu spoke.
Laura tilted her head to look at the savage lines of Hnikarr's face from a different angle. It could not possibly be considering this.
But they did say it was mad.
"A body, for a lifetime," Arthur murmured. He held his hands out, cupped as if he was offering Hnikarr something: a jewel, or an apple. "Wouldn't that be worth the risk?"
"I assume you would want compensation."
Arthur's hands broke apart: he made a small gesture, very small, indicating the tiniest of issues. "It would hardly mean anything to you," he said. "We would keep you safe in the Circle quarters until you grew into your power, and once you had it, you would have so much. I would want my share, and for you to do me some favours in return."
"You would bring him up among you?" Anzu asked. "Would you send him to bed without his supper if he was naughty?"
"No supper ever, then," Liannan murmured. "Sad."
All the demons laughed then, even Hnikarr, in a cold cascade.
"Your share," Hnikarr repeated. "Some favours. Enough power to rule all the magicians in England? Enough power to come out of hiding, and rule the world?"
Arthur hesitated. There was a brief moment of hesitation where the only sound in the room was the low roar of balefire and the echo of the demons laughing.
"You and I could share the world," Arthur suggested at last. "Don't you think?"
"I'll tell you what I think," Hnikarr said. "I think I'll do it."
There was a buzz of horror and astonishment around the Obsidian Circle, all magicians trained far too well to let stray words drop around demons. There was chaos in the demons' circles.
"No, Hnikarr," Liannan exclaimed. "This man is a joke-"
"I know the temptation is great," Anzu said. "I know you are unhappy. But the danger isn't worth it—who knows what could happen to you--"
"The temptation is not that great," Liannan sneered. "To be human, or something like it, for sixteen years. The idea is disgusting."
"You can't trust these people," Anzu said. "You wouldn't be safe."
"Such concern over my safety," said Hnikarr. "And my happiness. You're so sweet, Anzu. Almost human."
Liannan and Hnikarr were the ones who laughed then, wheeling on Anzu like hyenas taunting the weakest member of the pack. Laura had not seen demons interacting with their own kind often. She did not care if she never saw it again.
"And I may not be able to trust them, but you have been my allies since before the things that would become humans crawled out of the mud," Hnikarr said calmly. "With a body that lasts, once I hit sixteen I can line people up and mark them for you both. It will be in your best interests to guard me until I have my power."
"Of course we would," Liannan said. It was smiling now, a spark of interest in its face suddenly. Its teeth were like pearls sharpened to dagger points.
Anzu had turned its face away when the others had laughed at it. It was silent.
Hnikarr swung back to Arthur. When Liannan moved it was snakelike, and when Anzu moved it was light as if he was flying, but with Hnikarr when he took a step forward the sound echoed like thunder, the step of a monster that was coming for you and wanted you to know.
"I'll do it," said Hnikarr again. "And you can have the world, if you want it. But first you should understand why I'll do it, and what I am going to do. I hate humans, and the reason I hate them so much is because of how pathetically easy it is to trick them, because they turn their backs on the world they have already and create other worlds in their tiny little minds, worlds full of stupid, meaningless illusions. Take that woman," it added, and nodded towards Livia.
Livia did not start. She stayed perfectly still, the black hair hanging about her the only thing that moved, making her look like a statue in a black velvet cape.
Hnikarr's lip curled. Its teeth were like Liannan's, razor-sharp points, but Hnikarr's looked heavier somehow, as if it could literally take someone's head off with one bite. "I suppose you'd tell me that you love her. Wouldn't you?"
"If it was any of your business," Arthur said haughtily, "I suppose I would."
"Ah, love," said Hnikarr. "Lifts you up where you belong. All you need. Isn't that right? Except it's not all you need, is it, because you still want power enough to barter some mewling child for it. Love's just a lie, like all your other lies about comfort, and relief, and any sort of peace being possible for anyone in any world. That's why I hate you all, you hypocrites, making up whole worlds of words you don't even believe in yourselves. Not really: not when you're tested, not when you're tempted. You filthy, revolting liars."
There was light and sound in the shadow that enveloped Hnikarr now, thin white scars of lightning, snatches of thunder. The demon was surrounded by a glimpse of coming storms.
"I'll take your bargain, and I'll take the body. And I'll give you what you want in return. But you should know this: one day you'll die, partner, or you'll slip up, and then the world is mine alone. I'll burn it until it's all ash and wasteland. I will burn the world, and I will laugh as your whole lying race burns with it and finally, finally falls silent. That's my part of the bargain. All I want is the world's death."
Hnikarr, the caller of the last darkness.
Demons never lied.
Arthur, even Arthur, hesitated. "I won't slip up," he said. "You won't get out of our bargain."
Because demons never, ever got the best of bargains with humans, did they?
Hnikarr threw back its head. Its laugh felt like scrabbling ice-cold claws inside Laura's head. She had seen a hundred demons, but they had been controlled demons, they had both known what they wanted, agreed on and understood the price. They had not been deals made at the edge in darkness, throwing the world like a glass ball from hand to hand.
There was sweat dripping down the back of Laura's neck, cold as river water.
"Oh," said Hnikarr, still laughing. "You don't even care, do you? So long as you get what you want. You don't even care. Oh, this is humans for you. So much for the infinite human capacity for compassion, so much for human grace. Consider it a bargain."
The demon smiled, and for the first time there was a hint of allure about it, some spark of dark crackling excitement lighting its cruel face.
It said: "I can already hear the world burning."
"I can control you," said Arthur. "And I think our bargain is an excellent one. All that's left is to discuss logistics, isn't there?"
"Do you have a pregnant woman handy?" Hnikarr inquired casually.
Arthur frowned. "They litter the city streets. I can't imagine one will be difficult to get hold of."
He neglected to mention that if he had secured a pregnant woman before he secured his demon, said woman could have given birth three times over by now.
"I like you," Hnikarr said, its loathing and contempt so tangible Laura felt as if she could have painted the walls with them. "Can I make a request?"
Incredibly, Arthur smiled, as if he thought things were going terribly well. "Of course."
"Find a redhead," said Hnikarr. "Or a blonde. That's what I prefer. I enjoy warm colours."
Laura looked at Liannan and Anzu, flame and gold their accustomed shapes. They had all been together a long time.
"I will see what I can do," Arthur said graciously. "Of course, the process may take a few tries."
"I have time," said Hnikarr. "And I hear women litter the city streets. Send out your people and bring us our first victim."
Arthur made a gesture, and the members of the Circle began to file out of the room. Livia leaned into Arthur, murmuring something Laura could not catch, and then she left, too.
Laura went after the others. Arthur was extremely bad at the details of leadership, and so she had to choose who should go, and where they should go, to find a pregnant woman people would not miss and snatch her away.
As if magicians were no better than crude thugs, kidnapping people off the streets. Demons were meant to do their dirty work: they weren't meant to do demons'.
But Arthur was still the leader, for now. Laura gave the instructions, and had to deal with a little crisis: Charles came staggering in with some story about having Stella Davies, one of the leaders in the ridiculous little band of magician-haters who called themselves the Goblin Market, cornered until an ordinary human came to the lady's rescue and defeated Charles, one of their best magicians, by the cunning means of a briefcase to the head. Laura was horrified that Charles would share a story that cast him in such an extremely ridiculous light, and told him so.
Then she went to find Livia. After Arthur's latest display, she thought they might have a very productive little chat.
*
Laura could not find Livia at first. She was in none of the floors above, and for an awful moment Laura thought she had gone back into that room full of balefire and bad bargains, and that Laura would miss her chance to strike while the iron was hot and the shock of Arthur's sheer stupid recklessness still fresh.
She found Livia near the room where the demons waited, but not in it. Livia was standing down the hall, with a phone tucked between her shoulder and her cheek. Hearing Laura's step behind her, Livia whirled as if she was about to be attacked and the phone receiver tumbled to the floor.
"Laura," Livia breathed, and pressed a hand to her breastbone.
Oh, she had been shaken by Arthur's little performance, all right.
"What are you doing?"
Livia drew herself up: she had more natural dignity than Arthur did, Laura noted. Her cool eyes bored through Laura's face.
"What I do is none of your concern."
"Naturally, Lady Livia," said Laura, using the absurd name Arthur insisted on, and saw Livia's shoulders relax. "I only wished to ascertain that you were well," Laura continued, her voice unctuous, the efficient soothing tones of the perfect secretary. "You seemed somewhat disturbed."
Livia laughed, a short, barking laugh. "I think we were all somewhat disturbed."
Not much discretion, Laura noted. But that could be fixed, and it was always useful to be the recipient of your leader's confidences.
"I do wish Black Arthur-" again with the tiresome names, but it would be worth it to achieve the desired result-"would let you have more of a say when it came to running the Circle."
"Oh, enough, Laura," Livia snapped. "Arthur may trust you, but I don't. I know you don't like him, and I know you're trying to manipulate me into airing my dissatisfactions with him. You're not getting my confidence this way, and I will not accord you any more power."
She was cleverer than Laura had thought, but she didn't quite see everything. Or she had no ambition, to make her see.
Or love had rendered her blind.
Either way, Laura's plans looked bad.
"I do not want any more power," Laura said, quite truthfully. "I only wish that we were not embarking on this particular course of action. It seems to me—ill-advised."
"Well," said Livia. "There I agree with you. But you don't need to worry. We won't be carrying out Arthur's plans."
This was encouraging.
"No?" Laura asked.
"No," said Livia, and looked over her shoulder at the fallen phone. She smiled a small, strained smile. "Everything will turn out for the best," she said. "Arthur won't want to do it, once I tell him something."
Laura was watching closely, so she caught the tell: the involuntary fluttering movement of Livia's fingers toward her stomach, before she checked herself.
"You heard him," Livia continued sharply. "He loves me."
She might be a fine magician, but she was also fiercely stubborn. She had cast in her lot with Arthur, and would stand by while he led them all to ruin. It was useless to talk further with her.
Laura bowed her head. "Of course he does."
There was no point antagonising the current leaders, especially when she had no chance yet of acquiring a new one.
Livia hesitated, then nodded abruptly at Laura and walked back toward the room where the demons and the man she loved waited, her black hair flaring out behind her like a flag claiming her territory.
Laura was going to have to talk to Charles, and Rufus, and a few select others, about expanding their usual search for new magicians to recruit. Cast the net wider, to Wales, Scotland, even to Ireland. Lower the age restriction, and consider bringing them in young, when they could still be moulded.
There had to be a better candidate out there somewhere. Laura would find them.
The phone receiver lay at her feet, and because all information might prove useful, Laura picked it up.
She was vaguely startled to hear a woman's voice, not the voice of Daniel Ryves. The woman sounded frantic, her voice fraying as if she had been shouting down the line for some time.
"Olivia?" she said, and Laura had not heard anyone call Livia by that name in years. "Olivia, where are you? Olivia, please, please tell me. We'll come get you. We'll keep you safe. If he's scaring you, you should leave, and you should come to us. Olivia: I still love you, I believe in you, and I know you can do this. Come to us. I'll protect you. I would never, ever let anything happen to you. Please come."
Her pleading was cut into by the sound of a baby crying. Laura winced: she could not seem to get away from babies today.
The child did not sound as if it was in pain, just distressed by his mother's distress. Laura listened to its soft cries and his mother's hushing, her incoherent-with-familiarity murmurs of love.
Down the hall, Livia must have opened the door, because Laura heard a snatch of Arthur's voice. Then Hnikarr's laugh, that terrible ice storm of a laugh, rang in her head and mingled somehow with the sound of the baby crying, in a hideous and incongruous harmony.
I will burn the world, and I will laugh as your whole lying race burns with it.
The demon kept laughing, and the child kept crying.
So much for human grace.
Laura almost hoped that Livia was right and Arthur could be turned from his path. She did not see anything but darkness ahead, if Arthur had his way.
June 14, 2011
The Sinning May Now Commence
Trilogy accomplished!
The Demon's Lexicon series has always been a bit of a changeling in the crib. About family in a Time of Great YA Romance, changing narrators every book ('what is the woman thinking? Is she mad?'), a hero of great jerkitude who does not have being in love to excuse him, gay characters, having the word 'demon' in the titles, and full of many other weirdo bad-marketing decisions I have made.
Those who wanted to read them and liked them despite all my weirdo decisions: thank you. One writer I know once said of me to another writer: 'She has the best fans' and I do. You show up at events in huge numbers, you write me emails that make me cry, you sing me songs that make me laugh, celebrate with me, and are generally completely awesome.
You guys, and your response to the books, has made me feel that I've created something I can be really proud of.
And I am really proud. They were my first books. I've never worked on anything so hard in my life before. I've never loved anything (anything - obviously, people are different - Mum, don't hang up) so much in my life before.
So goodbye to Nick, Alan, Mae, Jamie, Sin, Seb, Gerald, the Market and all the bridges, and here's an end to an adventure that started with me lying on a kitchen floor in England, stunned because the one big dream of my life was coming true. There will be more adventures, and I am so excited for and hopeful about them. Thank you all, so much, for coming on this first adventure with me. I hope you like the end of it.
To celebrate the release of The Demon's Surrender today, I announce this as an open thread. Discuss, ask me anything, start fights, whatever you like! (NOTE: This means there will necessarily be huge spoilers for the whole series in the comments! Beware spoilers. SPOILERS EVERYWHERE.)
June 11, 2011
Trial by Fire, Chapter Two
As you all know, I am a big fan of free content on the internet! It is like looking at a few pages in a bookshop: people can get a taste of the writer (um, I mean, see some of their words, not... lick the writer. Don't do that.) and see if they like.
I am also a big fan of Jennifer Lynn Barnes. You can see my thoughts about her book Raised By Wolves here.
A disclaimer here: Jennifer Lynn Barnes is my friend. Some of my writer friends' books I enjoy, some I don't enjoy, some I enjoy some of their books and not others. It is pretty much like with writers who are not my friends. ;)
I do enjoy Jen Lynn's books, and her company! She is an extremely smart lady who writes twice as fast as I do, and has many times through example educated me about feminism, tolerance and also monkeys. Also, the first time I ever met her we had ice-cream, and that prejudices me in people's favour.
So Raised by Wolves, if you haven't read it or didn't click the link (bad moves both) is about a human girl raised by werewolves (MONSTERS IN THE FAMILY, oh my heart) who is trained by her pack leader to be a badass because isn't that what you do when your little girl might want to start dating? Also contains: blonde best friends with shotguns, showdowns with evil, and thought-out pack dynamics.
Trial by Fire is the sequel. It comes out the same day as The Demon's Surrender, and both of the covers have fire on them. See?
SARAH: We should do something to celebrate this.
JEN LYNN: Yes. Something with fire.
ALLY CARTER, WISE FRIEND: I strongly urge you not to do whatever you are thinking of doing.
SARAH: Maybe we should video ourselves running with matches!
JEN LYNN: Lit matches, of course!
ALLY CARTER: DO NOT DO THIS THING.
SARAH: I mean, though it's traditional to run with scissors.
JEN LYNN: That's true.
ALLY CARTER: I hate everything about where this conversation is going.
SARAH: If I were to create a HYBRID object of scissors and lit matches-
JEN LYNN: Like a werewolf!
SARAH: I would call it a scistorch.
JEN LYNN: Will you send me one?
ALLY CARTER: ... I shan't sleep tonight. I will be FRETTING.
Warning: A scistorch should not be used by casual blog readers in their homes. Jen Lynn and I are highly trained experts.
Anyway, I am always puzzled about how to do sequel reviews without massive book one spoilers and without repeating myself, so I have decided to just give you a look at a side plot of, and some side characters in, Trial By Fire. Illustrated with pictures from The Vampire Diaries, because it also has a werewolf and a girl called Caroline who I strongly feel should be together.
This is Caroline. She is just your everyday cute blonde ice-hearted assassin. Really: She kills people. She is really good at it.
This is Devon. He is a ferocious fan of the theatre. And hair product. He is a big hit with the ladies.
Also: he is a werewolf.
This is how Caroline feels about werewolves, particularly werewolves who resemble Devon's villainous older brother. (This is not how you want assassins to feel about you.)
This is terrible news.
Caroline's sorry if Devon's impending demise is about to ruin his day. Except... not really.
Clearly, they should be together, and clearly, Trial By Fire is awesome.
And now without further ado (Please yes, Sarah, there has been so much ado!) I give you chapter two of Trial By Fire beneath the cut. Chapter One of Trial By Fire can be found here at Ally Carter's blog.
CHAPTER TWO
Sated and soothed, the pack slept. My all-too-human body was worn past all endurance, but for the first time in days, my pack-sense was calm, and the others' minds were quiet in my own. Their presences ebbed and flowed at the edge of my consciousness, and as I finally collapsed onto my bed, the protests of my aching body dissolved into infinity, into nothing.
I dreamed of wet grass and fallen leaves that crunched under my bare feet as I walked. I couldn't see my body, couldn't make out the outline of a single rock or tree, but I shrugged off the blindness as a mild inconvenience. My body knew what it was doing better than I did, and the scents I took in with each step were rich and familiar: damp soil and dew, cedar and cinnamon.
A sound. To my left.
My nose twitched and I whirled, my hair fanning out around me, my knees bent, ready to pounce.
Ready, if necessary, to run.
For a moment, there was silence. A twig snapped. Leaves rustled, and then I made out the faint sound of paws on wet ground.
A wolf.
I knew that much with certainty, but who the wolf was and why it had come here, I had no idea. The list of people who wanted to see me dead wasn't short enough that I could ignore the possibility of a threat. Still, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't coerce my feet into moving, couldn't keep my body from crouching down or my arm from moving to hold out a beckoning hand, palm up.
What was I doing?
The wolf moved closer, until I could feel the heat of its body, the warmth of its breath against my palm. I wanted to see, willed myself to see, and then there was light.
The wolf in question was female, larger than some but, based on the size of her paws, not quite full grown. She was thin—and, I knew instinctively, fast—built along lean, muscular lines that were almost masked by thick honey-brown fur that gave way to darker markings around her face and a bit of white near each of her paws.
She brought her eyes to mine, and there was something regal about the motion. I held my breath. I waited. She showed her teeth. She ducked her head. Finally, slowly, she stepped forward, that much closer to my outstretched hand.
And then the world froze and we were caught like that, inches apart, neither one of us able to close the gap. I fought the paralysis, but it didn't break until the scene around me had shifted and I found myself back in the clearing, the ground covered in snow, my body wrapped up in layers and layers of clothing and the wind whipping my hair at my face. It took me a moment to remember that after our run, I'd gone back to the cabin and fallen asleep in my own bed.
I'm still asleep, I thought. I'm at home in my bed, asleep. This is just a dream.
Despite the realization, I looked for the rest of my pack. I searched for them, with my eyes and with the part of me that knew each and every one of them like they were extensions of my own body.
I looked for the strange wolf who'd almost brought her nose to touch my hand.
But all I saw was a human, a stranger. A man. The part of my brain that thought like a girl recognized the cockiness in his expression and put his age at five or six years older than me.
The part of me that thought like Pack felt his presence like white noise, high-pitched and deafening.
Threat. Threat. Threat.
My instincts returned full throttle, and I braced myself for a fight, but the man never blinked, his light eyes focused on mine, his head tilted slightly to one side. Slowly, he raised his right hand, the same way I'd beckoned forward the wolf.
I felt the fight drain out of me, like a tire going flat.
Mesmerized, I walked toward the stranger with the diamond-hard eyes, and a serpentine smile spread over his face. Flames leapt to life at the ends of his fingertips, and I froze.
Eyes glittering, he lifted one flaming hand and waved.
Just a dream, I told myself. It's just a dream.
With the smell of smoke thick in my nostrils, I woke up.
~*~
"Have to say, Bryn, you look like the kind of happy that's not." Keely softened those words by setting a root beer float down in front of me on the bar and dangling a straw just out of my grasp. "What gives, kid?"
By profession, Keely was a bartender. By nature, she was supernaturally good at getting secrets out of people, and in the past six months, she'd become the third in the trio of adults in all of our lives, the cool aunt to Mitch's and Ali's more parental presences.
Long story short: no matter how much I didn't want to talk about the way I'd woken up that morning, covered in sweat and ready to swear that the house was on fire, I didn't stand a chance of keeping my mouth shut.
Knowing my own limitations, I leaned forward and grabbed the straw out of her hand. "Nothing gives. I just didn't sleep very well."
Because werewolves had a habit of sniffing out lies—literally—I'd spent years training myself to tiptoe around the truth. Rather than fight the compulsion to tell Keely everything she wanted to know, I made an effort at telling her the most abbreviated version of the truth I could manage.
"Bad dreams."
Keely tilted her head to the side. "What kind of bad dreams?"
I thought on the question for a couple of seconds before the bartender's uncanny ability for getting answers—which we called a knack—had my lips moving completely of their own volition.
"One second, I was dreaming, and the next, it was like I was being watched." I shuddered, remembering the way the cocky stranger had observed me, like I was some kind of specimen under a microscope.
"Do you think it was anything?" Keely's question was deceptively simple, and she masked its significance by turning her back on me and going to get refills for the handful of other patrons who'd found themselves at the Wayfarer on Thanksgiving Day.
Grateful for the temporary respite, I considered her question: did I think there was something to this dream?
Yes.
Whether the answer was mine as a human or the result of the pack-sense that had long since woven itself into the pattern of my thoughts, I couldn't say. In either case, I wasn't keen to share it with Keely, who would relay my answer to Mitch, who told everything to Ali, no questions asked.
Sometimes Keely's knack really sucked.
Taking a final slurp of my root beer float, I slipped off the bar stool and headed for the exit. "Bye, Keely."
Behind me, Keely snorted. "Leaving so soon?"
Once I was safely out of range, I paused to give Keely a disgruntled look and caught sight of Lake plunking her elbows down on a nearby pool table. I could tell by Lake's posture that she was preparing to lecture a couple of our twelve-year-old pack-mates on the art of the hustle.
"If you go in looking like you could tear them to pieces, they'll hedge their bets. The trick is to look completely defenseless."
I found myself nodding in agreement with Lake's lesson, because those were words to live by—in pool and in life.
The way Keely looked and the fact that she was human kept most Weres from realizing that she had a way of making people admit things they had no desire to say out loud, and it wasn't like I looked like much of a threat. Our entire pack was a testament to the power of being underestimated. We were younger and smaller and newer to the werewolf game than any of the other packs, but like Keely—like me—my charges were more than they appeared to be.
Most werewolves had at least one werewolf parent, but my pack—aside from Devon and Lake and a few others—was different. I was human, and the others had been at one point, too. The only difference was that they'd been bitten, and I hadn't.
Most humans didn't have what it took to survive a major werewolf attack, but those of us who did had one thing in common—a knack for survival.
We called it Resilience.
I'd spent most of my life as the underdog (no pun intended), so supernaturally good survival instincts had come in handy more than once—and I was fairly certain they would again. Or at least, I hoped they would.
Soon.
Images from my dream—eyes watching me, flaming fingertips, waving hello—flashed like lightning through my brain, leaving an impression in their wake that I couldn't quite shake, but I did my best to keep them from bleeding out to the rest of the pack. Leaving Lake to her lecturing, I pushed the front door open and was greeted by a chilly breeze and a feeling of wrongness that I recognized all too well: the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, the smell of black pepper and rotting leaves.
My back arched, and the only thing that saved me from growling was that I wasn't actually a Were.
Wolf. Foreign wolf.
My pack-sense went into overdrive, as it always did when a strange werewolf stepped foot onto Cedar Ridge land. Territory was everything to people like us, and though we allowed peripheral males from other packs to cross through our slice of Montana on a semi-regular basis, my reaction to their presence was always, for the first few seconds at least, completely visceral. Instinctively, my eyes scanned the grass lot, looking for the intruder in question, and the moment they landed on a familiar form, my pack-sense relaxed, and my stomach tightened with nausea and guilt.
"Casey." I greeted him with a nod, giving no visible indication of weakness. I'd been taught to hide my emotions by the master, and even though my temper had a tendency to get away from me, I could have written the book on pretending to be okay when a major part of you wasn't.
"Bryn." Casey returned my nod but didn't quite meet my gaze. Within my own pack, everything seemed so natural, but interacting with people from other packs—older male people in particular—was a jarring reminder of my alpha status. I was sixteen, female, and human and had at one point been this man's subordinate.
The only thing that made his deference now more awkward was the fact that a lifetime ago, he'd been married to Ali.
If it hadn't been for me, he still would be.
"Ali's back in the kitchen," I said, trying not to let my mind go back to the night less than a year ago when Casey had stood by and watched me being ceremonially beaten for breaking faith with Callum's pack. That Ali's then-husband had done nothing to stop it was something my foster mother would never, even for a moment, forget. "She and Mitch are working on getting dinner rolling. The twins are around here somewhere—you know how it is."
Babies were prized in any pack, and Katie and Alex had no end of teen and preteen admirers anxious to pull babysitting duty whenever Ali needed a break.
"I know how it is, Bryn."
Before Ali had left Casey, the twins had been the darlings of Callum's pack. Now even their father was relegated to the occasional holiday visit, which reminded me . . .
"Ali didn't say you were coming." I met Casey's eyes, and he glanced away.
"It's Thanksgiving," he said with a shrug that looked—to my eyes—almost like a challenge. "My family is here."
Werewolf law dictated that Casey's ability to visit Cedar Ridge lands depended on my consent, but given that I was a large part of the reason he'd lost Ali—and the twins—I wasn't about to bring Pack politics into this.
"Kitchen's right through the back. You can go surprise Ali and Mitch yourself."
Casey's jaw clenched when I said Mitch's name, and I kicked myself for inadvertently baiting him. Werewolves tended to be possessive of their females, and one very human divorce hadn't managed to convince Casey's inner wolf that Ali wasn't his anymore.
Luckily, however, I had no illusions whatsoever about Ali being incapable of taking care of herself. She had even less tolerance for dominance maneuvers than I did, and if there was something going on between her and Mitch, I doubted she'd think it was Casey's business any more than she thought it was mine.
"Good luck."
My words caught Casey off guard, and for a moment, he looked like he might actually smile. Instead, he held out a small package wrapped in brown paper.
"From Callum," he said. "For you."
I took the package and pushed down the urge to tear immediately through the paper, the way I'd opened Callum's gifts when I was little. Things were different now, and this was a token from one alpha to another. The situation called for a little dignity.
The second Casey stepped inside the Wayfarer and the door shut behind him, I ripped through the paper, shredding it to reveal a small green box underneath. Since I seriously doubted Callum had sent me a box, I dropped the paper and began gently tugging the lid off the top of the package to reveal . . .
A teeny, tiny stallion?
Carved from dark cherry wood, it bore the mark of Callum's craftsmanship: smooth, even strokes of a carving knife he'd carried in his pocket for as long as I could remember. As an artist, I favored materials lifted from the recycling bin or
stolen off bulletin boards around town. Callum carved wood, and apparently, he'd carved this piece for me.
I turned the box upside down, and the horse, no bigger across than the width of my hand, fell out into my palm. There was no note, no explanation—just a little wooden horse that, for whatever reason, Callum had sent to me.
A year earlier, I might have rolled my eyes at the gesture and been secretly pleased that he'd thought to give me anything at all.
Now I was suspicious. Highly suspicious.
What are you playing at, Callum?
There was a part of me that expected a response to my silent question, even though my pack-sense no longer extended to Callum or any of the other members of the Stone River Pack. They were Stone River, I was Cedar Ridge, and we might as well all have been human when it came to feeling each other's thoughts.
Seriously, Callum. A miniature horse?
I knew this wasn't just a gift, the same way I knew that Casey was here as much for Ali as for the twins. Werewolves were creatures of habit, and if there was one thing I'd learned about Callum in a lifetime of growing up in his pack, it was that he never did anything without purpose.
Easy there, Bryn-girl. Everything I've done, I've done for you.
It was easy to imagine Callum saying those words, just like it was easy to imagine him whittling, the knife moving in a blur of motion, wood dust gathering on the backs of his fingers as they moved.
"So," I said out loud, turning the horse over in my hands, "the only question is why."
The horse was not very forthcoming with answers, so I tucked it into the front pocket of my jeans, annoyingly sure that someday this little gift of Callum's would make perfect, crystalline sense and that I'd probably kick myself for not seeing the why sooner. Until then, I'd just have to be patient.
I hated being patient.
In search of a distraction, I went to look for Chase and found him sitting at the edge of the woods, almost out of sight from the restaurant and small cabins that dotted the rest of the Mitchells' land.
"You out here alone?" I asked Chase. "Don't tell me Lake and Devon have scared you off already."
I was only half joking. Lake had a fondness for weaponry and a habit of treating firearms like they were pets. If you weren't used to it, it could be downright disturbing.
"I haven't seen Lake," Chase replied. "And Devon's fine."
Of all the words I'd heard used to describe Devon Macalister, fine wasn't a particularly common one. People either loved Dev or hated him; there wasn't much in between.
"Was it the kids, then? Ali swears Lily's worse at three than she was at two."
Chase smiled and shook his head. "I just needed a minute," he said. "Quiet."
It took me a moment to realize that Chase wasn't talking about the kind of quiet you heard with your ears. The rest of the pack couldn't sense one another as strongly as I could sense them, being alpha—but I remembered what it was like to have the whisper of a pack constantly pulling at the edges of your mind. For Chase, who spent so much of his time at the edges of our territory, the noise level here was probably deafening.
"Quiet, huh?" I said, trying to remember what that was like.
Chase reached up to take my hand and nodded, rubbing his thumb back and forth over the surface of my palm. Without meaning to, I saw a flash of his thoughts, saw that he could have shielded his mind against the others but had chosen not to, because that would have meant closing me out, too.
I settled down on the ground next to him, matching his silence with my own. With Devon and Lake and even Maddy, I was always talking, joking, arguing, laughing, but with Chase, I didn't have to say anything, didn't even have to think it.
Given everything I had to think about—Callum's cryptic gift, Casey's arrival, the feeling that my dream the night before hadn't been just a dream—there was something calming about sitting there, just the two of us.
Right up until it wasn't.
For someone with the size and build of an NFL linebacker, Devon was impressively light-footed, and he appeared above us without any forewarning, oblivious to—or possibly ignoring—the implication that if he'd arrived a few minutes later, he might have interrupted something else.
"Who's ready for some food?" he asked, all smiles. "Dare I hope Ali is making her scrumptious cranberry sauce of awesomeness?"
I was on the verge of answering, but Chase beat me to it. "I could eat," he said simply.
I rolled my eyes. Chase was a werewolf, and he was a boy. He could always eat.
"It's Thanksgiving," Chase said in his own defense. "I've heard that food is kind of a tradition."
A flash of something passed between us, and I knew that Thanksgiving really was something Chase had heard about but never experienced—at least not in a way he cared to remember.
I added that to the list of things I knew about the boy independent of the wolf. From what I'd already gathered about Chase's human life, being attacked by a rabid werewolf and waking up in a cage in Callum's basement was pretty much the best thing ever to happen to him. My own childhood hadn't exactly been sunshine and rainbows, but I didn't push the issue—not with Devon standing right there, looking at the two of us and processing just how close my body was to Chase's.
The two of them were remarkably chill for werewolves. They didn't play mind games with each other, and they never made me feel like property—but there was still only one of me and two of them, one of whom had been my best friend forever, and the other of whom made my heart beat faster, just by touching my hand.
Awk-ward.
"So," I said, climbing to my feet and changing the subject ASAP, "I had a dream last night that someone tried to burn me alive, and I'm not entirely sure it was just a dream."
Devon stiffened. Chase's pupils pulsed.
Subject successfully changed.
"Now, who's ready to eat?"
Chapter Three of Trial By Fire will be up on Carrie Ryan's blog tomorrow!
Jen Lynn is giving away tons of books here!
And that's a wrap. Hope you enjoyed. Remember: don't play with scistorches.
I am also a big fan of Jennifer Lynn Barnes. You can see my thoughts about her book Raised By Wolves here.
A disclaimer here: Jennifer Lynn Barnes is my friend. Some of my writer friends' books I enjoy, some I don't enjoy, some I enjoy some of their books and not others. It is pretty much like with writers who are not my friends. ;)
I do enjoy Jen Lynn's books, and her company! She is an extremely smart lady who writes twice as fast as I do, and has many times through example educated me about feminism, tolerance and also monkeys. Also, the first time I ever met her we had ice-cream, and that prejudices me in people's favour.
So Raised by Wolves, if you haven't read it or didn't click the link (bad moves both) is about a human girl raised by werewolves (MONSTERS IN THE FAMILY, oh my heart) who is trained by her pack leader to be a badass because isn't that what you do when your little girl might want to start dating? Also contains: blonde best friends with shotguns, showdowns with evil, and thought-out pack dynamics.
Trial by Fire is the sequel. It comes out the same day as The Demon's Surrender, and both of the covers have fire on them. See?
SARAH: We should do something to celebrate this.
JEN LYNN: Yes. Something with fire.
ALLY CARTER, WISE FRIEND: I strongly urge you not to do whatever you are thinking of doing.
SARAH: Maybe we should video ourselves running with matches!
JEN LYNN: Lit matches, of course!
ALLY CARTER: DO NOT DO THIS THING.
SARAH: I mean, though it's traditional to run with scissors.
JEN LYNN: That's true.
ALLY CARTER: I hate everything about where this conversation is going.
SARAH: If I were to create a HYBRID object of scissors and lit matches-
JEN LYNN: Like a werewolf!
SARAH: I would call it a scistorch.
JEN LYNN: Will you send me one?
ALLY CARTER: ... I shan't sleep tonight. I will be FRETTING.
Warning: A scistorch should not be used by casual blog readers in their homes. Jen Lynn and I are highly trained experts.
Anyway, I am always puzzled about how to do sequel reviews without massive book one spoilers and without repeating myself, so I have decided to just give you a look at a side plot of, and some side characters in, Trial By Fire. Illustrated with pictures from The Vampire Diaries, because it also has a werewolf and a girl called Caroline who I strongly feel should be together.
This is Caroline. She is just your everyday cute blonde ice-hearted assassin. Really: She kills people. She is really good at it.
This is Devon. He is a ferocious fan of the theatre. And hair product. He is a big hit with the ladies.
Also: he is a werewolf.
This is how Caroline feels about werewolves, particularly werewolves who resemble Devon's villainous older brother. (This is not how you want assassins to feel about you.)
This is terrible news.
Caroline's sorry if Devon's impending demise is about to ruin his day. Except... not really.
Clearly, they should be together, and clearly, Trial By Fire is awesome.
And now without further ado (Please yes, Sarah, there has been so much ado!) I give you chapter two of Trial By Fire beneath the cut. Chapter One of Trial By Fire can be found here at Ally Carter's blog.
CHAPTER TWO
Sated and soothed, the pack slept. My all-too-human body was worn past all endurance, but for the first time in days, my pack-sense was calm, and the others' minds were quiet in my own. Their presences ebbed and flowed at the edge of my consciousness, and as I finally collapsed onto my bed, the protests of my aching body dissolved into infinity, into nothing.
I dreamed of wet grass and fallen leaves that crunched under my bare feet as I walked. I couldn't see my body, couldn't make out the outline of a single rock or tree, but I shrugged off the blindness as a mild inconvenience. My body knew what it was doing better than I did, and the scents I took in with each step were rich and familiar: damp soil and dew, cedar and cinnamon.
A sound. To my left.
My nose twitched and I whirled, my hair fanning out around me, my knees bent, ready to pounce.
Ready, if necessary, to run.
For a moment, there was silence. A twig snapped. Leaves rustled, and then I made out the faint sound of paws on wet ground.
A wolf.
I knew that much with certainty, but who the wolf was and why it had come here, I had no idea. The list of people who wanted to see me dead wasn't short enough that I could ignore the possibility of a threat. Still, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't coerce my feet into moving, couldn't keep my body from crouching down or my arm from moving to hold out a beckoning hand, palm up.
What was I doing?
The wolf moved closer, until I could feel the heat of its body, the warmth of its breath against my palm. I wanted to see, willed myself to see, and then there was light.
The wolf in question was female, larger than some but, based on the size of her paws, not quite full grown. She was thin—and, I knew instinctively, fast—built along lean, muscular lines that were almost masked by thick honey-brown fur that gave way to darker markings around her face and a bit of white near each of her paws.
She brought her eyes to mine, and there was something regal about the motion. I held my breath. I waited. She showed her teeth. She ducked her head. Finally, slowly, she stepped forward, that much closer to my outstretched hand.
And then the world froze and we were caught like that, inches apart, neither one of us able to close the gap. I fought the paralysis, but it didn't break until the scene around me had shifted and I found myself back in the clearing, the ground covered in snow, my body wrapped up in layers and layers of clothing and the wind whipping my hair at my face. It took me a moment to remember that after our run, I'd gone back to the cabin and fallen asleep in my own bed.
I'm still asleep, I thought. I'm at home in my bed, asleep. This is just a dream.
Despite the realization, I looked for the rest of my pack. I searched for them, with my eyes and with the part of me that knew each and every one of them like they were extensions of my own body.
I looked for the strange wolf who'd almost brought her nose to touch my hand.
But all I saw was a human, a stranger. A man. The part of my brain that thought like a girl recognized the cockiness in his expression and put his age at five or six years older than me.
The part of me that thought like Pack felt his presence like white noise, high-pitched and deafening.
Threat. Threat. Threat.
My instincts returned full throttle, and I braced myself for a fight, but the man never blinked, his light eyes focused on mine, his head tilted slightly to one side. Slowly, he raised his right hand, the same way I'd beckoned forward the wolf.
I felt the fight drain out of me, like a tire going flat.
Mesmerized, I walked toward the stranger with the diamond-hard eyes, and a serpentine smile spread over his face. Flames leapt to life at the ends of his fingertips, and I froze.
Eyes glittering, he lifted one flaming hand and waved.
Just a dream, I told myself. It's just a dream.
With the smell of smoke thick in my nostrils, I woke up.
~*~
"Have to say, Bryn, you look like the kind of happy that's not." Keely softened those words by setting a root beer float down in front of me on the bar and dangling a straw just out of my grasp. "What gives, kid?"
By profession, Keely was a bartender. By nature, she was supernaturally good at getting secrets out of people, and in the past six months, she'd become the third in the trio of adults in all of our lives, the cool aunt to Mitch's and Ali's more parental presences.
Long story short: no matter how much I didn't want to talk about the way I'd woken up that morning, covered in sweat and ready to swear that the house was on fire, I didn't stand a chance of keeping my mouth shut.
Knowing my own limitations, I leaned forward and grabbed the straw out of her hand. "Nothing gives. I just didn't sleep very well."
Because werewolves had a habit of sniffing out lies—literally—I'd spent years training myself to tiptoe around the truth. Rather than fight the compulsion to tell Keely everything she wanted to know, I made an effort at telling her the most abbreviated version of the truth I could manage.
"Bad dreams."
Keely tilted her head to the side. "What kind of bad dreams?"
I thought on the question for a couple of seconds before the bartender's uncanny ability for getting answers—which we called a knack—had my lips moving completely of their own volition.
"One second, I was dreaming, and the next, it was like I was being watched." I shuddered, remembering the way the cocky stranger had observed me, like I was some kind of specimen under a microscope.
"Do you think it was anything?" Keely's question was deceptively simple, and she masked its significance by turning her back on me and going to get refills for the handful of other patrons who'd found themselves at the Wayfarer on Thanksgiving Day.
Grateful for the temporary respite, I considered her question: did I think there was something to this dream?
Yes.
Whether the answer was mine as a human or the result of the pack-sense that had long since woven itself into the pattern of my thoughts, I couldn't say. In either case, I wasn't keen to share it with Keely, who would relay my answer to Mitch, who told everything to Ali, no questions asked.
Sometimes Keely's knack really sucked.
Taking a final slurp of my root beer float, I slipped off the bar stool and headed for the exit. "Bye, Keely."
Behind me, Keely snorted. "Leaving so soon?"
Once I was safely out of range, I paused to give Keely a disgruntled look and caught sight of Lake plunking her elbows down on a nearby pool table. I could tell by Lake's posture that she was preparing to lecture a couple of our twelve-year-old pack-mates on the art of the hustle.
"If you go in looking like you could tear them to pieces, they'll hedge their bets. The trick is to look completely defenseless."
I found myself nodding in agreement with Lake's lesson, because those were words to live by—in pool and in life.
The way Keely looked and the fact that she was human kept most Weres from realizing that she had a way of making people admit things they had no desire to say out loud, and it wasn't like I looked like much of a threat. Our entire pack was a testament to the power of being underestimated. We were younger and smaller and newer to the werewolf game than any of the other packs, but like Keely—like me—my charges were more than they appeared to be.
Most werewolves had at least one werewolf parent, but my pack—aside from Devon and Lake and a few others—was different. I was human, and the others had been at one point, too. The only difference was that they'd been bitten, and I hadn't.
Most humans didn't have what it took to survive a major werewolf attack, but those of us who did had one thing in common—a knack for survival.
We called it Resilience.
I'd spent most of my life as the underdog (no pun intended), so supernaturally good survival instincts had come in handy more than once—and I was fairly certain they would again. Or at least, I hoped they would.
Soon.
Images from my dream—eyes watching me, flaming fingertips, waving hello—flashed like lightning through my brain, leaving an impression in their wake that I couldn't quite shake, but I did my best to keep them from bleeding out to the rest of the pack. Leaving Lake to her lecturing, I pushed the front door open and was greeted by a chilly breeze and a feeling of wrongness that I recognized all too well: the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, the smell of black pepper and rotting leaves.
My back arched, and the only thing that saved me from growling was that I wasn't actually a Were.
Wolf. Foreign wolf.
My pack-sense went into overdrive, as it always did when a strange werewolf stepped foot onto Cedar Ridge land. Territory was everything to people like us, and though we allowed peripheral males from other packs to cross through our slice of Montana on a semi-regular basis, my reaction to their presence was always, for the first few seconds at least, completely visceral. Instinctively, my eyes scanned the grass lot, looking for the intruder in question, and the moment they landed on a familiar form, my pack-sense relaxed, and my stomach tightened with nausea and guilt.
"Casey." I greeted him with a nod, giving no visible indication of weakness. I'd been taught to hide my emotions by the master, and even though my temper had a tendency to get away from me, I could have written the book on pretending to be okay when a major part of you wasn't.
"Bryn." Casey returned my nod but didn't quite meet my gaze. Within my own pack, everything seemed so natural, but interacting with people from other packs—older male people in particular—was a jarring reminder of my alpha status. I was sixteen, female, and human and had at one point been this man's subordinate.
The only thing that made his deference now more awkward was the fact that a lifetime ago, he'd been married to Ali.
If it hadn't been for me, he still would be.
"Ali's back in the kitchen," I said, trying not to let my mind go back to the night less than a year ago when Casey had stood by and watched me being ceremonially beaten for breaking faith with Callum's pack. That Ali's then-husband had done nothing to stop it was something my foster mother would never, even for a moment, forget. "She and Mitch are working on getting dinner rolling. The twins are around here somewhere—you know how it is."
Babies were prized in any pack, and Katie and Alex had no end of teen and preteen admirers anxious to pull babysitting duty whenever Ali needed a break.
"I know how it is, Bryn."
Before Ali had left Casey, the twins had been the darlings of Callum's pack. Now even their father was relegated to the occasional holiday visit, which reminded me . . .
"Ali didn't say you were coming." I met Casey's eyes, and he glanced away.
"It's Thanksgiving," he said with a shrug that looked—to my eyes—almost like a challenge. "My family is here."
Werewolf law dictated that Casey's ability to visit Cedar Ridge lands depended on my consent, but given that I was a large part of the reason he'd lost Ali—and the twins—I wasn't about to bring Pack politics into this.
"Kitchen's right through the back. You can go surprise Ali and Mitch yourself."
Casey's jaw clenched when I said Mitch's name, and I kicked myself for inadvertently baiting him. Werewolves tended to be possessive of their females, and one very human divorce hadn't managed to convince Casey's inner wolf that Ali wasn't his anymore.
Luckily, however, I had no illusions whatsoever about Ali being incapable of taking care of herself. She had even less tolerance for dominance maneuvers than I did, and if there was something going on between her and Mitch, I doubted she'd think it was Casey's business any more than she thought it was mine.
"Good luck."
My words caught Casey off guard, and for a moment, he looked like he might actually smile. Instead, he held out a small package wrapped in brown paper.
"From Callum," he said. "For you."
I took the package and pushed down the urge to tear immediately through the paper, the way I'd opened Callum's gifts when I was little. Things were different now, and this was a token from one alpha to another. The situation called for a little dignity.
The second Casey stepped inside the Wayfarer and the door shut behind him, I ripped through the paper, shredding it to reveal a small green box underneath. Since I seriously doubted Callum had sent me a box, I dropped the paper and began gently tugging the lid off the top of the package to reveal . . .
A teeny, tiny stallion?
Carved from dark cherry wood, it bore the mark of Callum's craftsmanship: smooth, even strokes of a carving knife he'd carried in his pocket for as long as I could remember. As an artist, I favored materials lifted from the recycling bin or
stolen off bulletin boards around town. Callum carved wood, and apparently, he'd carved this piece for me.
I turned the box upside down, and the horse, no bigger across than the width of my hand, fell out into my palm. There was no note, no explanation—just a little wooden horse that, for whatever reason, Callum had sent to me.
A year earlier, I might have rolled my eyes at the gesture and been secretly pleased that he'd thought to give me anything at all.
Now I was suspicious. Highly suspicious.
What are you playing at, Callum?
There was a part of me that expected a response to my silent question, even though my pack-sense no longer extended to Callum or any of the other members of the Stone River Pack. They were Stone River, I was Cedar Ridge, and we might as well all have been human when it came to feeling each other's thoughts.
Seriously, Callum. A miniature horse?
I knew this wasn't just a gift, the same way I knew that Casey was here as much for Ali as for the twins. Werewolves were creatures of habit, and if there was one thing I'd learned about Callum in a lifetime of growing up in his pack, it was that he never did anything without purpose.
Easy there, Bryn-girl. Everything I've done, I've done for you.
It was easy to imagine Callum saying those words, just like it was easy to imagine him whittling, the knife moving in a blur of motion, wood dust gathering on the backs of his fingers as they moved.
"So," I said out loud, turning the horse over in my hands, "the only question is why."
The horse was not very forthcoming with answers, so I tucked it into the front pocket of my jeans, annoyingly sure that someday this little gift of Callum's would make perfect, crystalline sense and that I'd probably kick myself for not seeing the why sooner. Until then, I'd just have to be patient.
I hated being patient.
In search of a distraction, I went to look for Chase and found him sitting at the edge of the woods, almost out of sight from the restaurant and small cabins that dotted the rest of the Mitchells' land.
"You out here alone?" I asked Chase. "Don't tell me Lake and Devon have scared you off already."
I was only half joking. Lake had a fondness for weaponry and a habit of treating firearms like they were pets. If you weren't used to it, it could be downright disturbing.
"I haven't seen Lake," Chase replied. "And Devon's fine."
Of all the words I'd heard used to describe Devon Macalister, fine wasn't a particularly common one. People either loved Dev or hated him; there wasn't much in between.
"Was it the kids, then? Ali swears Lily's worse at three than she was at two."
Chase smiled and shook his head. "I just needed a minute," he said. "Quiet."
It took me a moment to realize that Chase wasn't talking about the kind of quiet you heard with your ears. The rest of the pack couldn't sense one another as strongly as I could sense them, being alpha—but I remembered what it was like to have the whisper of a pack constantly pulling at the edges of your mind. For Chase, who spent so much of his time at the edges of our territory, the noise level here was probably deafening.
"Quiet, huh?" I said, trying to remember what that was like.
Chase reached up to take my hand and nodded, rubbing his thumb back and forth over the surface of my palm. Without meaning to, I saw a flash of his thoughts, saw that he could have shielded his mind against the others but had chosen not to, because that would have meant closing me out, too.
I settled down on the ground next to him, matching his silence with my own. With Devon and Lake and even Maddy, I was always talking, joking, arguing, laughing, but with Chase, I didn't have to say anything, didn't even have to think it.
Given everything I had to think about—Callum's cryptic gift, Casey's arrival, the feeling that my dream the night before hadn't been just a dream—there was something calming about sitting there, just the two of us.
Right up until it wasn't.
For someone with the size and build of an NFL linebacker, Devon was impressively light-footed, and he appeared above us without any forewarning, oblivious to—or possibly ignoring—the implication that if he'd arrived a few minutes later, he might have interrupted something else.
"Who's ready for some food?" he asked, all smiles. "Dare I hope Ali is making her scrumptious cranberry sauce of awesomeness?"
I was on the verge of answering, but Chase beat me to it. "I could eat," he said simply.
I rolled my eyes. Chase was a werewolf, and he was a boy. He could always eat.
"It's Thanksgiving," Chase said in his own defense. "I've heard that food is kind of a tradition."
A flash of something passed between us, and I knew that Thanksgiving really was something Chase had heard about but never experienced—at least not in a way he cared to remember.
I added that to the list of things I knew about the boy independent of the wolf. From what I'd already gathered about Chase's human life, being attacked by a rabid werewolf and waking up in a cage in Callum's basement was pretty much the best thing ever to happen to him. My own childhood hadn't exactly been sunshine and rainbows, but I didn't push the issue—not with Devon standing right there, looking at the two of us and processing just how close my body was to Chase's.
The two of them were remarkably chill for werewolves. They didn't play mind games with each other, and they never made me feel like property—but there was still only one of me and two of them, one of whom had been my best friend forever, and the other of whom made my heart beat faster, just by touching my hand.
Awk-ward.
"So," I said, climbing to my feet and changing the subject ASAP, "I had a dream last night that someone tried to burn me alive, and I'm not entirely sure it was just a dream."
Devon stiffened. Chase's pupils pulsed.
Subject successfully changed.
"Now, who's ready to eat?"
Chapter Three of Trial By Fire will be up on Carrie Ryan's blog tomorrow!
Jen Lynn is giving away tons of books here!
And that's a wrap. Hope you enjoyed. Remember: don't play with scistorches.
June 9, 2011
The Last Surrender Cookie
Well, it's June 9th, five days before The Demon's Surrender is launched upon an unsuspecting world, and it's time for the last cookie!
I was asked for a scene with Jamie and Seb by several people (very pleasing!) and it was further indicated to me that if it was romantic in nature that would be lovely.
And so I hear and obey! People may not have noted before that my idea of 'romance' is 'horrifying and traumatic for all parties...'
The boat rolled. Sin's stomach was rolling too, but she didn't think there was any connection. Jamie checked his watch.
"How long are the two of us expected to stay here watching a chained-up girl with no powers?" he asked in a bored voice.
The question brought Seb's bowed head up for the first time.
"I don't know," he answered. He seemed to be choosing his words with difficulty. "But I'm – I'm glad they did. I want to talk to you."
"I got that from all the knocking on and waiting outside my door," Jamie drawled. "Here is some information about me you may not know. When I want to talk to people? I give them subtle hints like opening the door."
He slid the blade on his knife closed, and put it in his pocket. Then he slid closer down the table, toward Sin and away from Seb.
Even though Seb had had his head bowed and his eyes determinedly fixed on the floor while Celeste and Gerald were in the room, Sin had received the impression that he was terribly, guiltily aware of her the entire time.
Neither of the boys seemed aware of her now.
Seb was looking at Jamie, green eyes intense, like a man on a mission. Jamie just looked bored.
"I've been thinking a lot, since we came here," Seb went on. "Now that all the things that used to matter – school and stuff – they don't matter any more. Everything's changed."
"I know," Jamie said in a serious voice. "At school, you were the one with all the power, and you made my life miserable. And now I'm the one with the power, and you want to be friends. Isn't it funny how that works?"
"That's not it," Seb burst out, and bit his lip.
"That's not it? You don't want to be friends?"
Seb hesitated. Jamie laughed.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "I don't care about how tortured you are about killing or your pathetic lack of power or anything else going through your mind. You may have finally worked out what you want, but I don't care about that either. Because I don't care about you."
Given Seb's rapt attention, drinking in those terrible white eyes, Sin could work out what he wanted too.
So the beautiful prisoner in distress routine was unlikely to work, then. Just hell.
Careful not to let her chains rattle, Sin drew closer to Jamie.
"I know that," Seb said. "But-"
"Would you care for some advice?" Jamie asked, his voice full of mock pity. "There is a reason following someone around and drawing little pictures-" he sneered at the word and Seb flushed a painful red – "is so very unappealing. You lose sight of the fact that the object you're viewing from afar is a person."
"I know you're a person!"
"You don't know anything about me. In fact, I sort of doubt you know anything, full stop."
"I know some things about you," Seb said. "I could get to know more. You could get to know me."
"Tempting!" Jamie exclaimed. "No, wait, that's not the word I mean. What's the opposite of that?"
Normally, it wouldn't have taken Sin so long to notice someone's body language. But there had been the knife to distract her, those awful eyes and the demon's mark.
Jamie's thin shoulders were hunched up, his fingers always on the curl towards fists. Every muscle he had looked tense.
"I realize I don't deserve a chance," Seb said. "But I wanted to say – I wanted you to know that I want one."
I was asked for a scene with Jamie and Seb by several people (very pleasing!) and it was further indicated to me that if it was romantic in nature that would be lovely.
And so I hear and obey! People may not have noted before that my idea of 'romance' is 'horrifying and traumatic for all parties...'
The boat rolled. Sin's stomach was rolling too, but she didn't think there was any connection. Jamie checked his watch.
"How long are the two of us expected to stay here watching a chained-up girl with no powers?" he asked in a bored voice.
The question brought Seb's bowed head up for the first time.
"I don't know," he answered. He seemed to be choosing his words with difficulty. "But I'm – I'm glad they did. I want to talk to you."
"I got that from all the knocking on and waiting outside my door," Jamie drawled. "Here is some information about me you may not know. When I want to talk to people? I give them subtle hints like opening the door."
He slid the blade on his knife closed, and put it in his pocket. Then he slid closer down the table, toward Sin and away from Seb.
Even though Seb had had his head bowed and his eyes determinedly fixed on the floor while Celeste and Gerald were in the room, Sin had received the impression that he was terribly, guiltily aware of her the entire time.
Neither of the boys seemed aware of her now.
Seb was looking at Jamie, green eyes intense, like a man on a mission. Jamie just looked bored.
"I've been thinking a lot, since we came here," Seb went on. "Now that all the things that used to matter – school and stuff – they don't matter any more. Everything's changed."
"I know," Jamie said in a serious voice. "At school, you were the one with all the power, and you made my life miserable. And now I'm the one with the power, and you want to be friends. Isn't it funny how that works?"
"That's not it," Seb burst out, and bit his lip.
"That's not it? You don't want to be friends?"
Seb hesitated. Jamie laughed.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "I don't care about how tortured you are about killing or your pathetic lack of power or anything else going through your mind. You may have finally worked out what you want, but I don't care about that either. Because I don't care about you."
Given Seb's rapt attention, drinking in those terrible white eyes, Sin could work out what he wanted too.
So the beautiful prisoner in distress routine was unlikely to work, then. Just hell.
Careful not to let her chains rattle, Sin drew closer to Jamie.
"I know that," Seb said. "But-"
"Would you care for some advice?" Jamie asked, his voice full of mock pity. "There is a reason following someone around and drawing little pictures-" he sneered at the word and Seb flushed a painful red – "is so very unappealing. You lose sight of the fact that the object you're viewing from afar is a person."
"I know you're a person!"
"You don't know anything about me. In fact, I sort of doubt you know anything, full stop."
"I know some things about you," Seb said. "I could get to know more. You could get to know me."
"Tempting!" Jamie exclaimed. "No, wait, that's not the word I mean. What's the opposite of that?"
Normally, it wouldn't have taken Sin so long to notice someone's body language. But there had been the knife to distract her, those awful eyes and the demon's mark.
Jamie's thin shoulders were hunched up, his fingers always on the curl towards fists. Every muscle he had looked tense.
"I realize I don't deserve a chance," Seb said. "But I wanted to say – I wanted you to know that I want one."
June 3, 2011
Well I'm Back...
First things first: if I owe you email or indeed hard cash, I am terribly sorry! Pneumonia has spent its time kicking my ass and calling me Sally.
Even with this inconvenient illness, I had a wonderful time in America! It was fabulous to meet everyone in Boston, Chicago and New York, and answer very smart questions, and bibble to people about books - thank you very much to everyone who came, and I hope you had fun. I did many secret things, scooped up a vast pile of books, and am currently deep in edits of Whisper.
There is a very lovely write-up of the Boston Diversity in YA event, and all of us chatting. Also afterward, I cornered Malinda Lo to tell her how much she inspiiiires me.
This is just how I roll at events. In New York, it also went a bit like this.
GAIL CARSON LEVINE: One cat and one ogre walk into a room. Cat walks out.
SARAH: creepy stare of love
SARAH: Oh yes, I've just thought of another shameful story to tell you guys!
Books of Wonder (www.booksofwonder.com, 18 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011, 212 989-3270) also have bookplate-signed Demon's Surrenders from June 14th! If people would like one.
Speaking of Demon's Surrender, then I returned home and found my UK and Irish editions of Demon's Surrender had arrived! I have spent my time dancing the set of three (trilogy accomplished!) up and down the mantelpiece.
And there is going to be a Trilogy Accomplished! event in my native land.
Eason's Bookshop
O'Connell Street, Dublin
Thursday, June 23rd
6-9pm
John Stephens, author of The Emerald Atlas, and Sarah Rees Brennan, author of the Demon's Lexicon trilogy, read, do Q&A, sign books and tell all
Tickets are Free .... and can be obtained by calling 01-8583815. (Or if you just want to mosey on by, we'd love to have you.)
Given my usual ways, John Stephens will have to be strong.
Even with this inconvenient illness, I had a wonderful time in America! It was fabulous to meet everyone in Boston, Chicago and New York, and answer very smart questions, and bibble to people about books - thank you very much to everyone who came, and I hope you had fun. I did many secret things, scooped up a vast pile of books, and am currently deep in edits of Whisper.
There is a very lovely write-up of the Boston Diversity in YA event, and all of us chatting. Also afterward, I cornered Malinda Lo to tell her how much she inspiiiires me.
This is just how I roll at events. In New York, it also went a bit like this.
GAIL CARSON LEVINE: One cat and one ogre walk into a room. Cat walks out.
SARAH: creepy stare of love
SARAH: Oh yes, I've just thought of another shameful story to tell you guys!
Books of Wonder (www.booksofwonder.com, 18 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011, 212 989-3270) also have bookplate-signed Demon's Surrenders from June 14th! If people would like one.
Speaking of Demon's Surrender, then I returned home and found my UK and Irish editions of Demon's Surrender had arrived! I have spent my time dancing the set of three (trilogy accomplished!) up and down the mantelpiece.
And there is going to be a Trilogy Accomplished! event in my native land.
Eason's Bookshop
O'Connell Street, Dublin
Thursday, June 23rd
6-9pm
John Stephens, author of The Emerald Atlas, and Sarah Rees Brennan, author of the Demon's Lexicon trilogy, read, do Q&A, sign books and tell all
Tickets are Free .... and can be obtained by calling 01-8583815. (Or if you just want to mosey on by, we'd love to have you.)
Given my usual ways, John Stephens will have to be strong.
May 20, 2011
Demon's Surrender May Cookie
This is not the ninth! And I am so sorry. My puzzler is completely confuzzled by pneumonia, obviously.
But, of course, my dilatory pneumoniatastic ways mean that I am LEGALLY OBLIGATED (well, perhaps not in any way legally obligated, but however) to take requests.![[info]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1380451598i/2033940.gif)
the_glow_worm
asked for one of the demons who wasn't Nick. I tossed a coin for Liannan vs Anzu, and Anzu won, so here it is, the demon-tastic second-last Surrender cookie.
Hope you enjoy, and let me know what you want for June...
The drums of the Goblin Market were her own heartbeat in her ears. The Market was in her blood and bones. It didn't matter where she was: she could dance a Market night into being.
And the demon would come.
She danced and made the fall of her dark hair the night, the drape of her skirts the drapes on the market stalls. The swing of her hips and the arch of her back were the dance. Nobody could take this away, and nobody could resist her.
Come buy.
"I call on Anzu the fly-by-night, the bird who brings messages of death, the one who remembers. I call on the one they called Aeolos ruler of the winds in Greece: I call on Ulalena of the jungles. I call as my mother called before me: I call and will not be denied. I call on Anzu."
The dark cloud of her hair veiled her view of the room for a moment after she was done.
When that brief darkness had passed there was already a light rising. There was a sound between a crackle and a whisper.
Sin felt as if she was standing in the ring on a giant stove, and someone had just turned it on.
The flames rose, flickering and pale. They seemed hotter than the flames at the Market.
The demon rose as if drawn into view by fiery puppet strings. Anzu was trying to mock her and scare her at once, Sin saw. His wings were sheets of living flame, sparks falling from them and turning into feathers.
He was wearing all black, like the dancer boys did at the Goblin Market to contrast with the girls' bright costumes.
Fire and feathers were raining down on her, and she didn't have a partner.
Anzu tilted his head, feather patterns shining in his golden hair. She felt all the things she usually did when standing with a demon: the cold malice, the abiding fury. There was something else today, though; a kind of startled curiosity that left her startled in turn.
"What are you doing here?" Anzu asked.
"I'm here for answers," Sin said in a level voice, and kept her head held high. "As usual. I will not take off my talisman, and I will not break the circle. Other than that, you can name your price."
"Is that so," said Anzu. He looked out over the flames at the little wooden cellar, the open books on the tables with their pages curling as if trying to get away from him, and the faces of her three customers. "I don't think you know what a prize you have bought," he told them. "This is the princess of the Goblin Market, their heiress, their very best. Throwing her life away for a song."
The women looked at Sin in a way she did not want. She was meant to be a beautiful tool for them. They weren't paying her to be a person.
Sin knew the demon was only trying to provoke her, but she could not help her own anger, and the curl of Anzu's lovely predator's mouth let her know he could feel it.
"Not for a song," she informed him. "For a price. What's yours?"
"Let's put ourselves on an equal footing, shall we?" Anzu's smile made it clear how much she was degraded, how far the princess of the Goblin Market had fallen. Sin's rage burned, and Anzu's eyes gleamed. "Three true answers in exchange for three true answers. Doesn't that sound fair?"
"Agreed."
Merris had always said Sin wasn't good at looking ahead. Well, let it be so. She chose to act, give the customers what they wanted. She would think about the price later.
The woman with the red salon hair was the first to speak, her voice ringing out and obviously the voice of a born organizer.
"Does my husband love somebody else?"
Anzu looked over at her face. For a moment his eyes did not reflect otherworldly lights, but the ordinary lamps of this ordinary room: for a moment his gaze was warm.
"No," said the demon. "But he stopped loving you six years ago."
The woman's faint beginning of a smile shattered. Anzu's savage pleasure coursed through Sin's veins like poison.
The next woman spoke, the one without jewelry or salon hair. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick.
They saw what happened to everyone else, but they always thought the demon's answers would be different for them. They never seemed to learn that the truth was always cruel.
"Will they find out what I – what I did?"
The woman's voice was a thread that had become knotted, a twist in her throat.
"Yes," Anzu answered. The woman sagged as if she had been dealt far too hard a blow, but that wasn't enough for Anzu. "But you asked the wrong question," he continued relentlessly. "Will they find out tomorrow? Will they find out after you die? You'll never know when."
He gave her a smile as brilliant as a lit match hitting gasoline. Then his attention swung to the
last woman, who had real diamonds at her ears but rather a nice face. She looked uncertain under the demon's attention, and Sin thought for a moment she might decide to be wise.
As always, desire was stronger than wisdom.
The woman took a deep breath and asked, "Did she forgive me before she died?"
Anzu's cruel delight washed through Sin, like the cold rush of an ocean wave with knives in it.
"No."
The last woman began to cry. Anzu turned away from them all, making it clear he was bored. He shook back his hair: a cascade of sparks becoming feathers drifted through the air, like a flurry of golden autumn leaves.
He wasn't actually all that good at showmanship, Sin thought. He relied far too much on props.
"And now, dancer," Anzu said, eyes on her alone. "Now it's my turn."
He lifted a hand. He couldn't touch her, not while she wore her talisman and kept within her lines, but he wanted the shadow of his hand on her, talons curled, a looming threat.
Sin lifted her own hand, fingers curled to mirror his, and made a dance of it. She'd danced with one demon already today. She could dance with this one too. They walked in a circle within a circle, the shadows of their hands touching on the firelit wall.
If she didn't answer every question with absolute truth, he had the right to kill her.
"What happened to you," Anzu asked, "to reduce you to this?"
But, of course, my dilatory pneumoniatastic ways mean that I am LEGALLY OBLIGATED (well, perhaps not in any way legally obligated, but however) to take requests.
the_glow_worm
asked for one of the demons who wasn't Nick. I tossed a coin for Liannan vs Anzu, and Anzu won, so here it is, the demon-tastic second-last Surrender cookie.Hope you enjoy, and let me know what you want for June...
The drums of the Goblin Market were her own heartbeat in her ears. The Market was in her blood and bones. It didn't matter where she was: she could dance a Market night into being.
And the demon would come.
She danced and made the fall of her dark hair the night, the drape of her skirts the drapes on the market stalls. The swing of her hips and the arch of her back were the dance. Nobody could take this away, and nobody could resist her.
Come buy.
"I call on Anzu the fly-by-night, the bird who brings messages of death, the one who remembers. I call on the one they called Aeolos ruler of the winds in Greece: I call on Ulalena of the jungles. I call as my mother called before me: I call and will not be denied. I call on Anzu."
The dark cloud of her hair veiled her view of the room for a moment after she was done.
When that brief darkness had passed there was already a light rising. There was a sound between a crackle and a whisper.
Sin felt as if she was standing in the ring on a giant stove, and someone had just turned it on.
The flames rose, flickering and pale. They seemed hotter than the flames at the Market.
The demon rose as if drawn into view by fiery puppet strings. Anzu was trying to mock her and scare her at once, Sin saw. His wings were sheets of living flame, sparks falling from them and turning into feathers.
He was wearing all black, like the dancer boys did at the Goblin Market to contrast with the girls' bright costumes.
Fire and feathers were raining down on her, and she didn't have a partner.
Anzu tilted his head, feather patterns shining in his golden hair. She felt all the things she usually did when standing with a demon: the cold malice, the abiding fury. There was something else today, though; a kind of startled curiosity that left her startled in turn.
"What are you doing here?" Anzu asked.
"I'm here for answers," Sin said in a level voice, and kept her head held high. "As usual. I will not take off my talisman, and I will not break the circle. Other than that, you can name your price."
"Is that so," said Anzu. He looked out over the flames at the little wooden cellar, the open books on the tables with their pages curling as if trying to get away from him, and the faces of her three customers. "I don't think you know what a prize you have bought," he told them. "This is the princess of the Goblin Market, their heiress, their very best. Throwing her life away for a song."
The women looked at Sin in a way she did not want. She was meant to be a beautiful tool for them. They weren't paying her to be a person.
Sin knew the demon was only trying to provoke her, but she could not help her own anger, and the curl of Anzu's lovely predator's mouth let her know he could feel it.
"Not for a song," she informed him. "For a price. What's yours?"
"Let's put ourselves on an equal footing, shall we?" Anzu's smile made it clear how much she was degraded, how far the princess of the Goblin Market had fallen. Sin's rage burned, and Anzu's eyes gleamed. "Three true answers in exchange for three true answers. Doesn't that sound fair?"
"Agreed."
Merris had always said Sin wasn't good at looking ahead. Well, let it be so. She chose to act, give the customers what they wanted. She would think about the price later.
The woman with the red salon hair was the first to speak, her voice ringing out and obviously the voice of a born organizer.
"Does my husband love somebody else?"
Anzu looked over at her face. For a moment his eyes did not reflect otherworldly lights, but the ordinary lamps of this ordinary room: for a moment his gaze was warm.
"No," said the demon. "But he stopped loving you six years ago."
The woman's faint beginning of a smile shattered. Anzu's savage pleasure coursed through Sin's veins like poison.
The next woman spoke, the one without jewelry or salon hair. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick.
They saw what happened to everyone else, but they always thought the demon's answers would be different for them. They never seemed to learn that the truth was always cruel.
"Will they find out what I – what I did?"
The woman's voice was a thread that had become knotted, a twist in her throat.
"Yes," Anzu answered. The woman sagged as if she had been dealt far too hard a blow, but that wasn't enough for Anzu. "But you asked the wrong question," he continued relentlessly. "Will they find out tomorrow? Will they find out after you die? You'll never know when."
He gave her a smile as brilliant as a lit match hitting gasoline. Then his attention swung to the
last woman, who had real diamonds at her ears but rather a nice face. She looked uncertain under the demon's attention, and Sin thought for a moment she might decide to be wise.
As always, desire was stronger than wisdom.
The woman took a deep breath and asked, "Did she forgive me before she died?"
Anzu's cruel delight washed through Sin, like the cold rush of an ocean wave with knives in it.
"No."
The last woman began to cry. Anzu turned away from them all, making it clear he was bored. He shook back his hair: a cascade of sparks becoming feathers drifted through the air, like a flurry of golden autumn leaves.
He wasn't actually all that good at showmanship, Sin thought. He relied far too much on props.
"And now, dancer," Anzu said, eyes on her alone. "Now it's my turn."
He lifted a hand. He couldn't touch her, not while she wore her talisman and kept within her lines, but he wanted the shadow of his hand on her, talons curled, a looming threat.
Sin lifted her own hand, fingers curled to mirror his, and made a dance of it. She'd danced with one demon already today. She could dance with this one too. They walked in a circle within a circle, the shadows of their hands touching on the firelit wall.
If she didn't answer every question with absolute truth, he had the right to kill her.
"What happened to you," Anzu asked, "to reduce you to this?"
May 18, 2011
New York City Girl
I am currently in New York, where I am doing Fancy Secret Things I Can't Talk About Yet (unless you ask me in person, I am a spoiler fiend in person). One thing I can talk about is a meeting with my Random House editor Mallory Loehr and my cover designer for Whisper. They are letting me have lots of say in the cover, and it's so exciting. And Lovely Editor Mallory (L.E.M?) has lots of thoughts too. What does a modern Gothic look like? (Oh you guys are soon to hear so much about Gothics.) We go back and forth, back and forth. But it is loads of fun.
It is also strange, how your thoughts on covers change from being a first-time author ('I don't... know if I have a thought. Do you have a thought? What is a thought?') to having many thoughts about covers. Thoughts, bookmarked images, favourite other people's covers. As a reader, I didn't notice covers all that much. As a writer, you kind of have to. Fortunately I have many clever people, at Random House and elsewhere, in my corner!
Another thing I am doing that I can--and indeed should--talk about is an event.
Events are quite stressful things to do, because a) everyone is looking at you! b) don't disappoint them c) events should be joyful times - wait, talk about serious issues - wait, you're terrible at that d) personal experience can work as advice - no, these people are all too smart to set their kitchen floors on fire.
But, and I know this isn't the case for all authors, I love them. I love talking. I love books. I love the fact that people come listen to other people talk about books. So, I am very happy to say I'll be doing an event in New York before I leave.
YA Fantasy Author Event
Saturday May 28th from 12-2pm
Books of Wonder, 18 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011
DANIEL KIRK Elf Realm: The Road's End (Abrams)
BIANCA TURETSKY The Time-Traveling Fashionista (LB)
GAIL CARSON LEVINE A Tale of Two Castles (HarperCollins)
MAURISSA GUIBORD Warped (Random)
SARAH REES BRENNAN The Demon's Covenant (S&S)
I am excited! Partly because, Gail Carson Levine! I loved Ella Enchanted and Fairest and The Two Princesses of Bamarre, both for my own self and as books I read as babysitting books. (My babysitting career: full of reading aloud. Many impressions. Many skits.)
Also, she made me really happy, because she had two surnames, and so did I, and I wanted to be a writer. So. There is going to be a lot of starry-eyed staring in her direction.
Also, I love a multi-author event. I feel like 'oh, you poor people, you should have someone brilliantly intelligent up there, and everyone knows it won't be me.' I learn lots from them! And from being in the audience, I know it is a good way to hear more about books you might enjoy.
Speaking of events, my thanks to everyone who was at the Boston Diversity in YA event, and the Anderson's Lucky/Unlucky event last week! It was a pleasure to meet you, and thank you for listening to me share, uh, Unfortunate Personal Experiences/crack jokes/do skits. (I really like skits, okay.)
And if your soul craves signed copies of The Demon's Lexicon and The Demon's Covenant, they are now available both at Anderson's and at the Harvard Bookshop, where they are staff recommended (hurray and thank you!) and where there are alternate covers for Lois McMaster Bujold (nothing to do with my books, I just thought that was awesome).
Or of course, you could come to Books of Wonder, where I will be signing everything in sight, including possibly also other authors' books. And as at the other two events, I will be signing fancy bookplates you can stick into copies of The Demon's Surrender, which will be out seventeen days later...
It is also strange, how your thoughts on covers change from being a first-time author ('I don't... know if I have a thought. Do you have a thought? What is a thought?') to having many thoughts about covers. Thoughts, bookmarked images, favourite other people's covers. As a reader, I didn't notice covers all that much. As a writer, you kind of have to. Fortunately I have many clever people, at Random House and elsewhere, in my corner!
Another thing I am doing that I can--and indeed should--talk about is an event.
Events are quite stressful things to do, because a) everyone is looking at you! b) don't disappoint them c) events should be joyful times - wait, talk about serious issues - wait, you're terrible at that d) personal experience can work as advice - no, these people are all too smart to set their kitchen floors on fire.
But, and I know this isn't the case for all authors, I love them. I love talking. I love books. I love the fact that people come listen to other people talk about books. So, I am very happy to say I'll be doing an event in New York before I leave.
YA Fantasy Author Event
Saturday May 28th from 12-2pm
Books of Wonder, 18 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011
DANIEL KIRK Elf Realm: The Road's End (Abrams)
BIANCA TURETSKY The Time-Traveling Fashionista (LB)
GAIL CARSON LEVINE A Tale of Two Castles (HarperCollins)
MAURISSA GUIBORD Warped (Random)
SARAH REES BRENNAN The Demon's Covenant (S&S)
I am excited! Partly because, Gail Carson Levine! I loved Ella Enchanted and Fairest and The Two Princesses of Bamarre, both for my own self and as books I read as babysitting books. (My babysitting career: full of reading aloud. Many impressions. Many skits.)
Also, she made me really happy, because she had two surnames, and so did I, and I wanted to be a writer. So. There is going to be a lot of starry-eyed staring in her direction.
Also, I love a multi-author event. I feel like 'oh, you poor people, you should have someone brilliantly intelligent up there, and everyone knows it won't be me.' I learn lots from them! And from being in the audience, I know it is a good way to hear more about books you might enjoy.
Speaking of events, my thanks to everyone who was at the Boston Diversity in YA event, and the Anderson's Lucky/Unlucky event last week! It was a pleasure to meet you, and thank you for listening to me share, uh, Unfortunate Personal Experiences/crack jokes/do skits. (I really like skits, okay.)
And if your soul craves signed copies of The Demon's Lexicon and The Demon's Covenant, they are now available both at Anderson's and at the Harvard Bookshop, where they are staff recommended (hurray and thank you!) and where there are alternate covers for Lois McMaster Bujold (nothing to do with my books, I just thought that was awesome).
Or of course, you could come to Books of Wonder, where I will be signing everything in sight, including possibly also other authors' books. And as at the other two events, I will be signing fancy bookplates you can stick into copies of The Demon's Surrender, which will be out seventeen days later...
May 5, 2011
Demon's Covenant Short Story, Continued
And here is the rest of the short story! Again, hints at spoilers in Demon's Lexicon and Covenant, minor and major and just-mentioned characters herein.
"Well," Jamie said. "This was just like that film the Breakfast Club, except weirder, and also without anyone reforming, any touching heartfelt moments, or any soundtrack to speak of aside from glass breaking."
Part One found here.
All the other doors to the outside, including the one from the school kitchens that led onto the alley full of rubbish bins, were locked as well.
Mark leaned beside Seb against the countertop and wondered how much trouble they would be in if they broke a window.
"I think that window up above the door might flip open," Erica said, unexpectedly intrepid. "Tim, help me."
Tim knelt on the floor and gave Erica a boost, careful of her as he lifted. She caught at the lintel and peered out the window, lifting herself up by her hold on it, standing on point in Tim's cupped palms. Mark could not help but notice the long lovely line of her legs as she stretched up.
"Quit it," Tim said between gritted teeth, and glared at him.
"Quit what?" Seb asked. "What? What are you guys talking about?"
"Be careful," Jamie said uneasily, circling around Erica and Tim as if he could possibly do something to help.
"Erica, get down. If you fall, I think you might break something," Rachel said. "Did you know if you break your nose just right, you could die?"
"Just a second," Erica said, straining. "I think I-"
The window broke inward with a loud cracking sound, a burst of noise and light: Mark's eyes slammed protectively shut, fast and instinctive as flinching away from a hot stove.
He opened his eyes to see only two of them had not frozen, but moved of their own volition.
As opposed to Erica, falling like the broken glass.
Nick had lunged forward and caught Erica, her long fair hair sweeping over the taut curve of his arm, the ends trailing in the shards of glass on the floor, dying sunshine spilling through the broken window and casting a spotlight on Erica's gold hair and still face, on the muscled bow of Nick's back and the empty black of his eyes.
For a moment they looked like a tableau from a movie poster. Erica's eyes opened slowly: she smiled shakily, and said in a trembling voice: "You caught me."
Nick dropped her. Into Tim's lap, where they grabbed onto each other to stop themselves from both falling in the glass.
Seb was the other one who had moved: from against the countertop to the next wall. He'd thrown Jamie up against it, out of the way of the broken glass.
Seb and Jamie were both standing looking at each other and looking a bit uncertain.
Then Jamie pushed him away with extreme force.
"Don't touch me," he instructed.
"What?" Seb bit out, and went red with rage. "It wasn't like I – I wanted to!"
"Good," Jamie said. "Don't. In fact, let me make myself perfectly clear. If I am ever in any sort of danger, if I am ever being chased down by robot alligators from Mars, please, don't help me. Don't do me any favors. I don't want anything from you."
He nodded, decisively, and then looked past Seb to Erica, with an expression of concern.
Tim had just managed to get up, and help Erica to her feet. He was looking at Nick with a distinctly unfriendly expression.
"So what's with you?" he asked. "You've got amazing reflexes, but you're an enormous jackass, is that it?"
Nick leaned against the countertop. "I'm hoping there will be something like that on my tombstone, yes," he said. "Amazing Reflexes, Enormous Jackass has a certain ring to it."
"Does anyone know," Rachel said, her voice slow and careful, as if she was laying out game pieces on a board one by one, "what made the window break?"
Everybody looked at her.
Tim frowned. "Erica?" he asked, and when Erica went stiff with indignation beside him he said: "Not on purpose, baby, obviously."
Baby? Mark raised his eyebrows in Tim's direction, but Tim entirely missed this because Erica and Rachel were both glaring at him.
"The glass broke inward," Rachel said. "How could Erica possibly have done it? Follow-up question: are you the stupidest guy in school?"
"You're doing this," Seb and Jamie accused each other at approximately the same time, because apparently they were both completely losing the plot, and they continued to rant about "-think you're funny-" and "-just stop it-" as if it wasn't obviously impossible that either of them were responsible.
Then the two long, dark fluorescent lights above their heads broke, spraying glass everywhere.
Everyone hit the floor except for Nick. When Mark glanced cautiously upward he saw Nick shielding his eyes as if from too-intense sunlight rather than broken glass.
"I could get through that window," Nick said, sounding entirely calm.
"What," Rachel said. "And then saunter on home and leave us? Presuming you have anyone to go home to, what, you're going to be like 'Hi, honey, I'm home, had a good day at school, abandoned some kids to their deaths'!"
"Honey?" Nick asked. "I live with my mum. Not usually how I refer to her. Also, I am single."
"And I am shocked," said Rachel.
Nick's brows drew together in what might have been an infinitesimal frown as he regarded the window. "I guess I couldn't just go home and say that I abandoned some kids to their deaths," he said, and sounded mildly regretful about this.
"Why does everyone keep talking about deaths?" Erica demanded, still kneeling on the floor with broken glass in her hair. Her voice broke as she asked the question, and Rachel put an arm around her.
"I wish Mae was here," Rachel said into Erica's hair.
Erica sniffed back tears. "You'd just blame her for all of this."
"And it would make me feel a lot better."
The mention of his sister made Jamie's head go up: he climbed to his feet and went over to the girls. He offered his hand to Erica, who took it, and helped her stand up.
"Come on," Jamie said. "You were about to full-on escape through a window like some kind of ninja. You're both fine. And just think about how ticked off Mae is going to be that we all had an adventure without her. Now, I know what we need to do. Have a nice, soothing drink."
"Oy vey, Jamie, you're bringing alcohol to school now?" Rachel demanded. "Is that what you were doing, hiding in that bathroom? Tippling? Drowning your sorrows in Whisky River?"
Mark felt his shoulders tense, unhappy guilt like a string inside his body pulled painfully tight. Jamie did not look at any of them: he kept his eyes on the girls and kept hold of Erica's hands.
"I do drown my sorrows," Jamie said, pulling Erica toward the fridge and popping it open. "In milk. Who doesn't love milk? There are little cartons of it right here. Good for keeping you strong. Strong to run away very quickly from any dangers. Come on, they've even got the strawberry kind."
He picked out a strawberry milk carton and tossed it to Erica, who accepted it with a laugh. "Are you going to run with me?"
Jamie grabbed a little milk carton for himself, lifted Erica's hand and gave it a kiss and her a grin at the same time. "Are you going to keep up with me?" he asked. "Because I'm little, but I'm speedy."
Rachel came over to them. "Is there chocolate milk?"
Tim sidled closer to Mark. "I hate that guy," he said, jerking his chin in Jamie's direction. "I see why McFarlane has such issues with him."
"Oh my God," Mark said involuntarily, and then bit his lip and hoped nobody had heard the note of dismay in his voice.
"I mean, what's so great about him?" Tim asked in a heated undertone. "He's really short, have you noticed that? And I don't understand what he's talking about half the time. Why is he such a devil with the ladies?"
"Uh," said Mark.
"Can't he just pick one?" Tim demanded. "Why does he have to have them all? It's not really cool to be that much of a player. Like, stringing girls along, that's wrong. Girls shouldn't be drawn in to his, like, web. Girls should stick with someone who really likes just them even if he's not so good with words, not that guy. He thinks he's so smooth. Flirting all the time."
"I agree," Seb said, suddenly beside them but glaring over at Jamie. "He really does. All the time."
Mark felt his eyes cross. Given the fact that his best friends were jealous of Jamie Crawford's success with women and lightbulbs were spontaneously breaking over their heads, he figured he was in opposites land and could maybe look to Nick Ryves for help and support.
Nick was the only person doing exactly what Mark had expected, which was ignoring them all. He was dividing his attention between the broken window and his watch.
"This is getting more and more stupid," he observed in his winter-chill voice. "Come on, let's go investigate."
He strode off without a glance back at the others, so everyone followed him. That was sort of how school always was, Mark thought, and he was the first to follow, directly behind Nick.
Nick gave him a glance that might have been annoyed and might have been entirely neutral.
"Leave me alone," Jamie snapped behind them, and Nick's shoulders relaxed slightly.
"What's his name?" he asked. "The cranky little blond guy."
"Uh. Crawford," Mark said, clearing his throat and trying to sound as normal and manly as possible. He tried for a joke. "And I'm Mark Skinner, in case you forgot again."
"I did forget," Nick said, shrugging. "But I didn't ask."
Mark deliberately fell back a step, and collided with someone else. He jumped, more shaken by all the shattered glass in the dim school than he wanted to let on, then saw it was Jamie and jumped back farther.
"Sorry," Jamie said, mouth twisting. "Someone tripped me."
"Not on purpose," Seb said.
"No?" Jamie asked. "You just like walking close?" He rolled his eyes.
"Fine, it was on purpose!"
"If he's hassling you," Nick said, sounding bored. "Why not hit him?"
Everyone stared at Nick.
Jamie blinked. "That's what this situation needs, you think? Take this lovely violence and escalate it?"
"My favorite thing to do with violence," Nick said, but he sounded even more bored than before. He gave up on his attempt to be helpful, as if that was what it had been, and checked his watch again. "The bookshop closes at six on Thursdays, doesn't it?"
"Oh great, we missed the bookshop," Rachel said. "Oh, I bet Mae went without us. Oh, I missed the bookshop guy."
Mark jumped again, as if any of them could read his mind. But nobody seemed to be looking at him, or indeed listening to Rachel. Except for Nick, who did seem to be listening, but Mark doubted he had any particular interest in foxy bookshop guys.
"Why do you care about when the bookshop closes?" Jamie asked. "You're not much good at rea – ah – oh."
Nick turned around and looked at Jamie. It was not a neutral look.
"Sorry. I'm really sorry. Skinner," Jamie said, backing up. "Can I have a word?"
Mark evaded Seb's glare, which said that Jamie absolutely could not have a word, and nodded cautiously. He followed when Jamie walked back into the room where they'd had detention.
"Look, I know we don't get on," Jamie said as soon as they were in the room, and it was weird to have Jamie say something like that to him, so matter-of-fact. "But Rachel and Erica are my big sister's friends and they'll want to protect me, I think Tim was dropped on his head as a child, Seb is a psycho and Nick Ryves is like the unholy offspring of a psycho and a great white shark. So that leaves me with you. Could you, I don't know, talk to Seb and maybe say something like you know what he's doing?"
"What, you still think it's Seb?" Mark demanded. "How could Seb do something like this? He's been with us the whole time. And why would Seb do something like this? He's not crazy."
"Really," said Jamie. "Pardon me. I didn't realize there was some sort of arbitrary line drawn between torturing me and torturing a bunch of people. I'm sure Seb's a stand-up guy."
"He doesn't – we don't - torture you," Mark snapped.
They'd never hit him or anything. Mark told himself that, all the time.
Jamie stood in the middle of the classroom, shoulders hunched up in that spiky, defensive way he had. He put a hand up to his forehead, and hid his eyes.
"No," he said, and he sounded really tired. "Everything's great. You guys are cool. I really like my life."
It had been in a classroom a lot like this that Mark had let Jamie borrow stuff from his pencilcase, the first day of school. He'd just thought Jamie was cool then, that Jamie was his friend. They'd all been happy, and nobody had hurt anybody, yet.
"If you don't, it's not my fault," Mark said. "It's not. I just wanted to be normal. And it's not like you don't have secrets, too."
Jamie's hand dropped. "What?"
"You think I don't know?" Mark demanded. "I don't know what it is. But the way you – you look guilty at weird times. You're not scared of the stuff you should be scared of. You'd never talk about weird stuff like – like the pool, back when we were kids-"
"Nothing to talk about," Jamie bit out, curt as Nick Ryves for once.
"I know what someone's like when they're hiding something," Mark said. "And you are. So don't pretend like you're perfect, and you're honest. You always held people at arm's length. That's why you don't have any friends."
Jamie just looked at him for a moment, big brown eyes wide and hurt and scared, too.
"None of your so-called friends are honest with each other either," he said at last. "So that's not why. And I don't have to answer to you or tell you any secrets. We're not friends. Like you said, I don't have any."
He walked toward the door, pushing past Mark, and into a commotion. Seb and Rachel were both yelling.
"I was just talking to Erica for a moment-"
"I was having a conversation with Tim-"
"You were glaring at the door is what you were-"
"We don't know where he went!"
Mark did not need to ask who he was. The absence of Nick, a black void of a person, silent and cold and yet utterly inescapable, was immediately obvious.
"Maybe we should split up!" said Tim, and dashed off. Erica went after him while Rachel grabbed at her jacket and yelled: "No, nobody should ever split up, don't you watch movies?"
"I think," Jamie proposed, "I'll split up by myself."
"No, you won't," Seb said, lunging after him.
Which left Mark on his own. The corridors to the left and the right were covered, so the only way to go was to retrace his steps, back to the kitchen. Mark figured it might be a good idea to check, even though he pretty much suspected that Nick had decided to break out and leave them all. It would be just like him.
Mark walked quietly back, and he pushed the kitchen door gently open in time to see Nick's feet disappearing through the broken window above the door.
So. He was leaving, just as Mark had thought. Mark was kind of impressed that he could get through that window: he guessed Nick was a tall guy, and strong.
Mark wasn't really sure why he climbed onto the kitchen counter, and looked through it. There was a cool wind blowing, and jagged shards of glass left in the frame.
It was getting dark outside. There were bins standing like sentries in the little yard, and under the window Mark saw a man he'd never seen before, and Nick Ryves.
It was the sight of Nick that almost made Mark fall off the counter. He had to grip onto the frame, barely even noticing the sharp small pain as splinters of glass slid into his palms.
Nick was holding a sword. A real goddamn sword, sharp-looking, with cool light on the metal, sparking bright off the edge.
"There was no need to get civilians involved," Nick said.
God, he was crazy.
The other man laughed. "Don't tell me you care about something like that. Not you."
"Not me," Nick agreed easily, the sword slicing easy through the air as he moved forward, and the man moved back. "But the thing about civilians is that they tend to die. That's messy."
"This doesn't have to be messy," the man said – and God, they were both crazy, this was an adult and Nick was holding a sword and they were crazy – and the stranger's hands, they lit up, as if he could flick on two lighters with his fingers wrapped around the flames and not be burned.
This time he was the one who moved forward, the same way Nick had, with intent.
"I don't want to fight," the guy said. "I only want to talk."
Mark didn't see Nick move. He just heard the terrible sound of steel sliding through meat and bone, and saw the sword come out through the other side of the man's body black with blood.
"Sorry," Nick murmured, standing close. "I'm not much of a conversationalist."
The man's face turned up to the window as his body sagged. His blind eyes were staring right up at Mark's.
Mark had just seen a man killed.
He couldn't seem to look away from his face. It was all he could see, the man's pale face and blackness, dizzy swooping blackness. And Mark had suddenly let go of the frame, fallen on his hands and knees amid the broken glass on the kitchen floor. He wanted to be sick. He wanted to pass out, be unconscious so he wouldn't have to think.
Except there was a thud on the floor, Nick's boots landing an inch away from Mark's hand, and Mark looked up at him and cringed back.
Nick had put his sword away, but there was a crimson splash on his white T-shirt. His face above the bloodstained shirt was completely impassive, completely as usual.
"Come with me," Nick snapped the command, and Mark got shakily to his feet and did.
He had no idea where Nick was going, and it was a bit of an anticlimax to find it was the guys' changing room. Nick tried some of the locker doors, rattling them, until he got one of them open and fished out a black aertex shirt from a gym bag.
Mark thought about asking if that was Nick's locker, and found himself hiccupping out a laugh as he realized that quibbling over Nick stealing a shirt probably wasn't important compared to the murder.
"If you get hysterical, I will slap you," Nick said casually, and pulled off his shirt.
His sword was in a black leather sheath, secured around his waist and back with two narrow black straps. The black sheath ran along white skin to the small of his back, the ends of his black hair brushing the hilt.
Mark only realized he was sort of looking at the swell of Nick's shoulders, the same way he'd looked at Erica's legs, because they were there, when Nick looked around and his eyes narrowed.
Now guilty panic flooded Mark, along with the horror and fear.
"Look," Nick said. "I don't care if this whole school is flaming. And by that I mean, I don't care if this whole school is actually on fire."
"I don't know what you mean," Mark muttered.
Nick pulled on his new shirt and walked over to Mark, the same easy swing to his step as when he'd had a sword in hand. He had to tug the fabric down as he went, over another strap securing another weapon: a small sheathed dagger resting at the hollow of his hip.
"I mean this," Nick said, softly. "You're a coward. You spend your whole life tripping over your small stupid fears. You don't want to know what was happening in the yard, do you? You won't ask a single question, or tell a single person. Because you're scared of what happened. And if you're not scared of that…"
Nick reached out and took hold of Mark's shirt. He'd never touched Mark before: he didn't touch many people, Mark had noticed, except girls he was just about to hook up with or boys he was just about to hurt.
"Be scared of me," Nick murmured.
Mark was scared of Nick, who had murdered someone without changing expression. He was scared of that dead man whose hands had lit up, of windows and lights breaking and doors locking on their own.
He didn't want to know any of it.
"I won't tell," he whispered. "I swear."
"Good," said Nick. "I'd rather not kill you. There's a body I have to dispose of, and I'm already late for dinner."
It almost made Mark laugh again, sick and dizzy, thinking of someone waiting at home for the murderer. Keeping dinner hot while he disposed of a body.
Oh, he wanted nothing to do with this. Nothing.
"I wish I'd never met you," he said, his voice crackling hoarse in his throat.
"As far as I'm concerned, I barely have," Nick said, letting him go and making for the door, already bored. "I don't even remember your name."
This was just routine for him, Mark realized, stumbling out of the locker room. This didn't faze him even slightly: it really was an ordinary day in Nick's life.
The question of how many people Nick had killed rose to the surface of Mark's mind and was thankfully drowned out by the sound of his friends' voices calling his name.
Mark pushed past Nick and went running to them. They were all together, Tim and Seb and Jamie and Rachel and Erica.
"Mark, Nick, thank goodness," Erica called out. "The doors are open."
Seb caught Mark's arm as he came hurtling toward them. "Buddy, you do not look good."
"I'm fine," Mark said through stiff lips.
Jamie put a hand to Mark's forehead, pushing his hair back gently. "I don't think-"
"Get your hands off him," Seb snarled, and elbowed Jamie viciously aside.
"Right," Jamie said, putting both his hands in his pockets. His mouth twisted. "I forgot it was catching."
"I've had it up to here with the way you guys talk to Jamie," Rachel said suddenly. "You're all loathsome to him. I think you're all just generally loathsome. I'm so glad the doors are open, because I couldn't stand to spend another minute with any of you. I don't know how you live with yourselves."
She surveyed them all with utter contempt. Even Mark, pleased as he was to have the attention taken off him, felt himself withering a little under her stare.
Nick, he noticed, was giving her a half-smile. Nick really seemed to take to angry people.
"And don't even give me that look, Nick Ryves," Rachel added. "I don't go out with guys who are loathsome. Or guys who are younger than me. Or guys who look like you do: my mother is a sex therapist, I shudder to think of the diseases you might be crawling with." She spun around in a small, judgemental circle. "Any girl who went out with any one of you would have to be insane. I don't mean you, Jamie, obviously."
"Any girl who went out with me would be in for a terrible disappointment," Jamie said, and gave her an almost-real smile.
"I agree with Rachel," Erica said, her voice high and trembling. "You are all horrible to Jamie – you're all horrible – and I can't go out with you."
For a moment Mark thought it was a weird thing to say, until he saw she was looking directly at Tim.
"And that means no more secret making out in supply cupboards and getting caught and put in detention, either," Erica said, wiping at her eyes. "I thought – you were always so nice to me. I thought you were a good guy. I was a little embarrassed because you're in the year below but – but it turns out I should've been embarrassed because I'm so dumb."
"Baby, you're not-" Tim began.
"You're not dumb, Erica," Rachel said firmly. "He is, though. And he's not worthy of you. Come on, let's go find Mae. Come with us, Jamie."
"Nah," Jamie replied, painfully casual, as if he had anything else to do. "You girls go have fun."
Rachel looked at him for an instant, her hard gaze softening. "Okay," she said at last, tenderly. Then she looked around at the rest of them. "Burn in hell, guys, mmkay?" she said, and linked arms with Erica, and walked away.
The rest of them went for the open doors as well, at a slightly slower pace so they wouldn't have to catch up with the scary angry girl. Rachel and Erica were out of sight by the time they hit the playground.
"Well," Jamie said. "This was just like that film the Breakfast Club, except weirder, and also without anyone reforming, any touching heartfelt moments, or any soundtrack to speak of aside from glass breaking."
"You talk too much," Nick said.
Jamie blinked at him. "Did you change your shirt?"
Nick batted his lashes in Jamie's direction. "This one brings out the color of my eyes."
"Er," said Jamie.
"What-" Seb began.
"Guys, don't-" said Mark weakly.
Nick checked his watch again. "Look," he said. "I've got to go. I'll see you guys tomorrow. I hate you all."
With that charming closing remark, he walked off. Mark wondered if he was planning to double back and get the body, and felt like he wanted to be sick.
"Well, what he said," Jamie told them, then looked at Mark and hesitated. Then he looked at Seb. "Actually, I just hate you," he said in a conversational tone, and walked off, in a different direction to the way Nick had gone.
Mark looked at both their retreating figures, both of them terribly alone. He was pathetically grateful for Seb's hand under his arm, half holding him up.
"You know," Tim said, "Erica's right. We're horrible."
"Mate," Seb said. "You're just a bit thrown because the girl dumped you. Don't worry about it. Nice one, by the way. Older woman."
He held out his fist. Tim did not bump it.
"Don't talk about Erica like that," he snapped instead. "I really like her, okay? She's really nice. She's a good person. And we couldn't even stop pushing around her pal's brother for the five minutes it took us to get out of our stupid school? I mean, everyone says I'm dumb, but really, making everyone hate us, that strikes even me as too stupid to live. I'm going after her."
"Jesus, Graves, don't you have any pride?" Seb snapped.
"Here's the thing, McFarlane," Tim said, red-faced. "She's nice to everyone. Like I said, she's a good person. Better than you. So what she thinks of me matters a good bit more than what you think." He ducked his head, seeming half-ashamed to have said this much. "I'm gonna go. I'll catch you later."
He kept his head lowered even as Seb called out his name, walking steadily off in the direction Rachel and Erica had gone.
"God," Seb said. "Fine. He wants to be whipped? Fine."
They had reached the edge of the playground now. Seb leaned against the wall around it, fists pressed against the brick.
"Hey," Mark said. He still felt sick, and he was tired, but Seb was his friend. "You've been on edge all day. Is anything up – you know, at home."
As soon as he'd said it, he wanted to bite out his clumsy tongue. Seb wouldn't talk about his foster parents. Mark should have just invited him to spend the night, and acted like it was normal to have Seb over three nights a week. Mark was too shocky to be as careful as he should have been.
"No," Seb said, his voice final. "What would be up? Matter of fact, I should be getting home."
Mark wondered if he'd go home at all. Seb acted like occasionally sleeping rough was fun, an adventure where they'd get some beers and hang out in an abandoned house or a parking lot after dark. Mark always ended up cold and wanting to go home, to warmth and safety.
He wanted to go home now. He looked at the set of Seb's shoulders and wondered what it would be like not to be able to go.
Even Nick Ryves, apparently, had someone to go home to.
He thought about being fourteen, and believing Seb had no problems.
Now they were sixteen, and it wasn't as simple as Seb just being a jerk, either.
Mark thought about the cutting tone of Rachel's voice, of Nick's empty black eyes looking down at him and what Tim had said.
"There's – you know, now Tim's romance is out in the open and all," he said. "There's a girl I kind of like."
"Um," Seb said. "Yeah?"
"She's kind of a nerd," Mark said, and wished he could stop qualifying everything he said, when it really mattered and he really meant it. "But she's kind of cute. I don't know. Something about her gets me. And hell, actually going out with a girl would be better than just talking about them and not doing anything about it, the way we always do."
"Right," Seb said. His voice sounded brittle, but he was being unusually agreeable, and Mark forged on encouraged.
"We can't all be like you, mate," he said, and Seb went still. "Girls throw themselves at you, and you turn them down, and it's nice of you, you know, you're a good friend to stick with us. But this way, we can all have girls, maybe. So, I was thinking of asking her out. And Tim's right, about – about looking good in front of girls. We shouldn't push anyone around in front of them."
And since Erica and Abby went to their school, that surely meant hardly pushing anyone around at all. If he could be a better person in front of Abby, maybe that would become true.
"Yeah," Seb said. "Sure. Actually, I was thinking the same thing myself. Actually. The exact same thing."
"Oh, yeah?" Mark tried to sound casual instead of massively relieved. "You have your eye on a girl?"
"Yes," Seb said. "Definitely. I definitely do."
There was a pause.
"Who is it, then?" Mark asked.
"Ah," said Seb. "The weird one. You know." He hesitated. "Crawford's sister. Mae."
Mark did not want to tell him that this was a loony idea, or that Mae would undoubtedly put Seb's eyeballs on ice and use them as marbles if she ever found out the kind of stuff he said to Jamie.
"Crawford's sister," he said, instead, trying to delicately suggest the whole marbles thing without coming out and saying it.
"Yes," said Seb, and after another pause he said: "She's got really nice-"
"Boobs, no, I know," Mark said. Mae terrified him, but you couldn't help noticing.
"That is exactly what I was going to say, it's like you're reading my mind," Seb told him.
"She's kind of crazy, though," Mark offered. "Like, not just wearing bat necklaces and stuff. Like, makes that girl Rachel look like a nice walk in the park."
"I like a challenge," Seb said.
Mark shrugged. It occurred to him that if Seb was going for Mae, he could hardly go after Jamie. "Okay," he said. "Best of luck with that."
"Good luck with your nerd girl," Seb said, and it was as easy as that. Mark had been worrying over nothing.
"So I'll catch you tomorrow," he told Seb, and they exchanged nods.
As Mark went off, making his way home, he slid his phone out of his pocket and called Abby. He didn't have her number in his phone, but it was okay because he knew it off by heart.
"Hello, Mark," she said. She didn't play any games: he knew she had his number in her phone. She sounded a little tired. "You didn't make it to study with us."
"No," Mark said. "I was in detention. I really wish I could've made it."
"Really," said Abby.
"Abby," Mark said. "It's the best part of my week."
Abby made a sound, half startled and half laughing. "I'm sure."
"Do you want to go out with me?" Mark asked.
"Er," Abby said, and Mark's heart stuttered in his chest. "Yeah," Abby said, an instant later, open and honest. She didn't even try to hide the pleasure in her voice. "I'd like that."
"Yeah?" Mark said. "I'm glad. I was – I was kind of scared to ask you."
You're a coward, Nick had said. And he'd got him right, and he hardly knew Mark.
"I didn't think you were going to," said Abby, her voice thoughtful and analyzing as if Mark was homework for a moment, and then it warmed again. "But I'm glad you did."
"Do you think I'm a coward?" Mark asked. "Honestly."
"I think you are sometimes," Abby said. "Honestly. But I also think that – we're all scared of stuff, and we all do things we're not proud of. Especially in school. But nobody should be defined by the worst things they've done, and we can make up for most of it. Most of us wind up being okay, in the end."
Mark thought of Nick – not killing someone, he couldn't think of that, but his utter coldness and his calm, still face above a bloodstained shirt. And Jamie, spiky and alone, and Seb, who would be spending the night God only knew where. He wondered if they were all going to wind up being okay.
He sort of doubted it.
But maybe. Maybe they would. Maybe tomorrow school would be just the same, and maybe it would be a bit different.
"I kissed a guy once," Mark said.
"Mark," Abby said. "This is quite a phone call. I think I need to sit down."
"More than once," Mark said, confessing all. "I – but just the one guy. I don't want to kiss him any more but I – I did at the time. I've never told anyone this before."
"Can you tell me one more thing?" Abby asked, and she hesitated a little now, and Mark wondered if she maybe hated him. "I just, I do kind of need to know one thing."
"What?"
"Who do you want to kiss now?" Abby asked, and Mark realized she didn't hate him: she was shy. She was afraid, too. "I'd just really – considering the fact you asked me out a minute ago – I'd really like to know."
"I'm kind of scared to tell you," Mark said. "But-" He took a deep breath. "Can I come by your house and show you?"
"Well," Jamie said. "This was just like that film the Breakfast Club, except weirder, and also without anyone reforming, any touching heartfelt moments, or any soundtrack to speak of aside from glass breaking."
Part One found here.
All the other doors to the outside, including the one from the school kitchens that led onto the alley full of rubbish bins, were locked as well.
Mark leaned beside Seb against the countertop and wondered how much trouble they would be in if they broke a window.
"I think that window up above the door might flip open," Erica said, unexpectedly intrepid. "Tim, help me."
Tim knelt on the floor and gave Erica a boost, careful of her as he lifted. She caught at the lintel and peered out the window, lifting herself up by her hold on it, standing on point in Tim's cupped palms. Mark could not help but notice the long lovely line of her legs as she stretched up.
"Quit it," Tim said between gritted teeth, and glared at him.
"Quit what?" Seb asked. "What? What are you guys talking about?"
"Be careful," Jamie said uneasily, circling around Erica and Tim as if he could possibly do something to help.
"Erica, get down. If you fall, I think you might break something," Rachel said. "Did you know if you break your nose just right, you could die?"
"Just a second," Erica said, straining. "I think I-"
The window broke inward with a loud cracking sound, a burst of noise and light: Mark's eyes slammed protectively shut, fast and instinctive as flinching away from a hot stove.
He opened his eyes to see only two of them had not frozen, but moved of their own volition.
As opposed to Erica, falling like the broken glass.
Nick had lunged forward and caught Erica, her long fair hair sweeping over the taut curve of his arm, the ends trailing in the shards of glass on the floor, dying sunshine spilling through the broken window and casting a spotlight on Erica's gold hair and still face, on the muscled bow of Nick's back and the empty black of his eyes.
For a moment they looked like a tableau from a movie poster. Erica's eyes opened slowly: she smiled shakily, and said in a trembling voice: "You caught me."
Nick dropped her. Into Tim's lap, where they grabbed onto each other to stop themselves from both falling in the glass.
Seb was the other one who had moved: from against the countertop to the next wall. He'd thrown Jamie up against it, out of the way of the broken glass.
Seb and Jamie were both standing looking at each other and looking a bit uncertain.
Then Jamie pushed him away with extreme force.
"Don't touch me," he instructed.
"What?" Seb bit out, and went red with rage. "It wasn't like I – I wanted to!"
"Good," Jamie said. "Don't. In fact, let me make myself perfectly clear. If I am ever in any sort of danger, if I am ever being chased down by robot alligators from Mars, please, don't help me. Don't do me any favors. I don't want anything from you."
He nodded, decisively, and then looked past Seb to Erica, with an expression of concern.
Tim had just managed to get up, and help Erica to her feet. He was looking at Nick with a distinctly unfriendly expression.
"So what's with you?" he asked. "You've got amazing reflexes, but you're an enormous jackass, is that it?"
Nick leaned against the countertop. "I'm hoping there will be something like that on my tombstone, yes," he said. "Amazing Reflexes, Enormous Jackass has a certain ring to it."
"Does anyone know," Rachel said, her voice slow and careful, as if she was laying out game pieces on a board one by one, "what made the window break?"
Everybody looked at her.
Tim frowned. "Erica?" he asked, and when Erica went stiff with indignation beside him he said: "Not on purpose, baby, obviously."
Baby? Mark raised his eyebrows in Tim's direction, but Tim entirely missed this because Erica and Rachel were both glaring at him.
"The glass broke inward," Rachel said. "How could Erica possibly have done it? Follow-up question: are you the stupidest guy in school?"
"You're doing this," Seb and Jamie accused each other at approximately the same time, because apparently they were both completely losing the plot, and they continued to rant about "-think you're funny-" and "-just stop it-" as if it wasn't obviously impossible that either of them were responsible.
Then the two long, dark fluorescent lights above their heads broke, spraying glass everywhere.
Everyone hit the floor except for Nick. When Mark glanced cautiously upward he saw Nick shielding his eyes as if from too-intense sunlight rather than broken glass.
"I could get through that window," Nick said, sounding entirely calm.
"What," Rachel said. "And then saunter on home and leave us? Presuming you have anyone to go home to, what, you're going to be like 'Hi, honey, I'm home, had a good day at school, abandoned some kids to their deaths'!"
"Honey?" Nick asked. "I live with my mum. Not usually how I refer to her. Also, I am single."
"And I am shocked," said Rachel.
Nick's brows drew together in what might have been an infinitesimal frown as he regarded the window. "I guess I couldn't just go home and say that I abandoned some kids to their deaths," he said, and sounded mildly regretful about this.
"Why does everyone keep talking about deaths?" Erica demanded, still kneeling on the floor with broken glass in her hair. Her voice broke as she asked the question, and Rachel put an arm around her.
"I wish Mae was here," Rachel said into Erica's hair.
Erica sniffed back tears. "You'd just blame her for all of this."
"And it would make me feel a lot better."
The mention of his sister made Jamie's head go up: he climbed to his feet and went over to the girls. He offered his hand to Erica, who took it, and helped her stand up.
"Come on," Jamie said. "You were about to full-on escape through a window like some kind of ninja. You're both fine. And just think about how ticked off Mae is going to be that we all had an adventure without her. Now, I know what we need to do. Have a nice, soothing drink."
"Oy vey, Jamie, you're bringing alcohol to school now?" Rachel demanded. "Is that what you were doing, hiding in that bathroom? Tippling? Drowning your sorrows in Whisky River?"
Mark felt his shoulders tense, unhappy guilt like a string inside his body pulled painfully tight. Jamie did not look at any of them: he kept his eyes on the girls and kept hold of Erica's hands.
"I do drown my sorrows," Jamie said, pulling Erica toward the fridge and popping it open. "In milk. Who doesn't love milk? There are little cartons of it right here. Good for keeping you strong. Strong to run away very quickly from any dangers. Come on, they've even got the strawberry kind."
He picked out a strawberry milk carton and tossed it to Erica, who accepted it with a laugh. "Are you going to run with me?"
Jamie grabbed a little milk carton for himself, lifted Erica's hand and gave it a kiss and her a grin at the same time. "Are you going to keep up with me?" he asked. "Because I'm little, but I'm speedy."
Rachel came over to them. "Is there chocolate milk?"
Tim sidled closer to Mark. "I hate that guy," he said, jerking his chin in Jamie's direction. "I see why McFarlane has such issues with him."
"Oh my God," Mark said involuntarily, and then bit his lip and hoped nobody had heard the note of dismay in his voice.
"I mean, what's so great about him?" Tim asked in a heated undertone. "He's really short, have you noticed that? And I don't understand what he's talking about half the time. Why is he such a devil with the ladies?"
"Uh," said Mark.
"Can't he just pick one?" Tim demanded. "Why does he have to have them all? It's not really cool to be that much of a player. Like, stringing girls along, that's wrong. Girls shouldn't be drawn in to his, like, web. Girls should stick with someone who really likes just them even if he's not so good with words, not that guy. He thinks he's so smooth. Flirting all the time."
"I agree," Seb said, suddenly beside them but glaring over at Jamie. "He really does. All the time."
Mark felt his eyes cross. Given the fact that his best friends were jealous of Jamie Crawford's success with women and lightbulbs were spontaneously breaking over their heads, he figured he was in opposites land and could maybe look to Nick Ryves for help and support.
Nick was the only person doing exactly what Mark had expected, which was ignoring them all. He was dividing his attention between the broken window and his watch.
"This is getting more and more stupid," he observed in his winter-chill voice. "Come on, let's go investigate."
He strode off without a glance back at the others, so everyone followed him. That was sort of how school always was, Mark thought, and he was the first to follow, directly behind Nick.
Nick gave him a glance that might have been annoyed and might have been entirely neutral.
"Leave me alone," Jamie snapped behind them, and Nick's shoulders relaxed slightly.
"What's his name?" he asked. "The cranky little blond guy."
"Uh. Crawford," Mark said, clearing his throat and trying to sound as normal and manly as possible. He tried for a joke. "And I'm Mark Skinner, in case you forgot again."
"I did forget," Nick said, shrugging. "But I didn't ask."
Mark deliberately fell back a step, and collided with someone else. He jumped, more shaken by all the shattered glass in the dim school than he wanted to let on, then saw it was Jamie and jumped back farther.
"Sorry," Jamie said, mouth twisting. "Someone tripped me."
"Not on purpose," Seb said.
"No?" Jamie asked. "You just like walking close?" He rolled his eyes.
"Fine, it was on purpose!"
"If he's hassling you," Nick said, sounding bored. "Why not hit him?"
Everyone stared at Nick.
Jamie blinked. "That's what this situation needs, you think? Take this lovely violence and escalate it?"
"My favorite thing to do with violence," Nick said, but he sounded even more bored than before. He gave up on his attempt to be helpful, as if that was what it had been, and checked his watch again. "The bookshop closes at six on Thursdays, doesn't it?"
"Oh great, we missed the bookshop," Rachel said. "Oh, I bet Mae went without us. Oh, I missed the bookshop guy."
Mark jumped again, as if any of them could read his mind. But nobody seemed to be looking at him, or indeed listening to Rachel. Except for Nick, who did seem to be listening, but Mark doubted he had any particular interest in foxy bookshop guys.
"Why do you care about when the bookshop closes?" Jamie asked. "You're not much good at rea – ah – oh."
Nick turned around and looked at Jamie. It was not a neutral look.
"Sorry. I'm really sorry. Skinner," Jamie said, backing up. "Can I have a word?"
Mark evaded Seb's glare, which said that Jamie absolutely could not have a word, and nodded cautiously. He followed when Jamie walked back into the room where they'd had detention.
"Look, I know we don't get on," Jamie said as soon as they were in the room, and it was weird to have Jamie say something like that to him, so matter-of-fact. "But Rachel and Erica are my big sister's friends and they'll want to protect me, I think Tim was dropped on his head as a child, Seb is a psycho and Nick Ryves is like the unholy offspring of a psycho and a great white shark. So that leaves me with you. Could you, I don't know, talk to Seb and maybe say something like you know what he's doing?"
"What, you still think it's Seb?" Mark demanded. "How could Seb do something like this? He's been with us the whole time. And why would Seb do something like this? He's not crazy."
"Really," said Jamie. "Pardon me. I didn't realize there was some sort of arbitrary line drawn between torturing me and torturing a bunch of people. I'm sure Seb's a stand-up guy."
"He doesn't – we don't - torture you," Mark snapped.
They'd never hit him or anything. Mark told himself that, all the time.
Jamie stood in the middle of the classroom, shoulders hunched up in that spiky, defensive way he had. He put a hand up to his forehead, and hid his eyes.
"No," he said, and he sounded really tired. "Everything's great. You guys are cool. I really like my life."
It had been in a classroom a lot like this that Mark had let Jamie borrow stuff from his pencilcase, the first day of school. He'd just thought Jamie was cool then, that Jamie was his friend. They'd all been happy, and nobody had hurt anybody, yet.
"If you don't, it's not my fault," Mark said. "It's not. I just wanted to be normal. And it's not like you don't have secrets, too."
Jamie's hand dropped. "What?"
"You think I don't know?" Mark demanded. "I don't know what it is. But the way you – you look guilty at weird times. You're not scared of the stuff you should be scared of. You'd never talk about weird stuff like – like the pool, back when we were kids-"
"Nothing to talk about," Jamie bit out, curt as Nick Ryves for once.
"I know what someone's like when they're hiding something," Mark said. "And you are. So don't pretend like you're perfect, and you're honest. You always held people at arm's length. That's why you don't have any friends."
Jamie just looked at him for a moment, big brown eyes wide and hurt and scared, too.
"None of your so-called friends are honest with each other either," he said at last. "So that's not why. And I don't have to answer to you or tell you any secrets. We're not friends. Like you said, I don't have any."
He walked toward the door, pushing past Mark, and into a commotion. Seb and Rachel were both yelling.
"I was just talking to Erica for a moment-"
"I was having a conversation with Tim-"
"You were glaring at the door is what you were-"
"We don't know where he went!"
Mark did not need to ask who he was. The absence of Nick, a black void of a person, silent and cold and yet utterly inescapable, was immediately obvious.
"Maybe we should split up!" said Tim, and dashed off. Erica went after him while Rachel grabbed at her jacket and yelled: "No, nobody should ever split up, don't you watch movies?"
"I think," Jamie proposed, "I'll split up by myself."
"No, you won't," Seb said, lunging after him.
Which left Mark on his own. The corridors to the left and the right were covered, so the only way to go was to retrace his steps, back to the kitchen. Mark figured it might be a good idea to check, even though he pretty much suspected that Nick had decided to break out and leave them all. It would be just like him.
Mark walked quietly back, and he pushed the kitchen door gently open in time to see Nick's feet disappearing through the broken window above the door.
So. He was leaving, just as Mark had thought. Mark was kind of impressed that he could get through that window: he guessed Nick was a tall guy, and strong.
Mark wasn't really sure why he climbed onto the kitchen counter, and looked through it. There was a cool wind blowing, and jagged shards of glass left in the frame.
It was getting dark outside. There were bins standing like sentries in the little yard, and under the window Mark saw a man he'd never seen before, and Nick Ryves.
It was the sight of Nick that almost made Mark fall off the counter. He had to grip onto the frame, barely even noticing the sharp small pain as splinters of glass slid into his palms.
Nick was holding a sword. A real goddamn sword, sharp-looking, with cool light on the metal, sparking bright off the edge.
"There was no need to get civilians involved," Nick said.
God, he was crazy.
The other man laughed. "Don't tell me you care about something like that. Not you."
"Not me," Nick agreed easily, the sword slicing easy through the air as he moved forward, and the man moved back. "But the thing about civilians is that they tend to die. That's messy."
"This doesn't have to be messy," the man said – and God, they were both crazy, this was an adult and Nick was holding a sword and they were crazy – and the stranger's hands, they lit up, as if he could flick on two lighters with his fingers wrapped around the flames and not be burned.
This time he was the one who moved forward, the same way Nick had, with intent.
"I don't want to fight," the guy said. "I only want to talk."
Mark didn't see Nick move. He just heard the terrible sound of steel sliding through meat and bone, and saw the sword come out through the other side of the man's body black with blood.
"Sorry," Nick murmured, standing close. "I'm not much of a conversationalist."
The man's face turned up to the window as his body sagged. His blind eyes were staring right up at Mark's.
Mark had just seen a man killed.
He couldn't seem to look away from his face. It was all he could see, the man's pale face and blackness, dizzy swooping blackness. And Mark had suddenly let go of the frame, fallen on his hands and knees amid the broken glass on the kitchen floor. He wanted to be sick. He wanted to pass out, be unconscious so he wouldn't have to think.
Except there was a thud on the floor, Nick's boots landing an inch away from Mark's hand, and Mark looked up at him and cringed back.
Nick had put his sword away, but there was a crimson splash on his white T-shirt. His face above the bloodstained shirt was completely impassive, completely as usual.
"Come with me," Nick snapped the command, and Mark got shakily to his feet and did.
He had no idea where Nick was going, and it was a bit of an anticlimax to find it was the guys' changing room. Nick tried some of the locker doors, rattling them, until he got one of them open and fished out a black aertex shirt from a gym bag.
Mark thought about asking if that was Nick's locker, and found himself hiccupping out a laugh as he realized that quibbling over Nick stealing a shirt probably wasn't important compared to the murder.
"If you get hysterical, I will slap you," Nick said casually, and pulled off his shirt.
His sword was in a black leather sheath, secured around his waist and back with two narrow black straps. The black sheath ran along white skin to the small of his back, the ends of his black hair brushing the hilt.
Mark only realized he was sort of looking at the swell of Nick's shoulders, the same way he'd looked at Erica's legs, because they were there, when Nick looked around and his eyes narrowed.
Now guilty panic flooded Mark, along with the horror and fear.
"Look," Nick said. "I don't care if this whole school is flaming. And by that I mean, I don't care if this whole school is actually on fire."
"I don't know what you mean," Mark muttered.
Nick pulled on his new shirt and walked over to Mark, the same easy swing to his step as when he'd had a sword in hand. He had to tug the fabric down as he went, over another strap securing another weapon: a small sheathed dagger resting at the hollow of his hip.
"I mean this," Nick said, softly. "You're a coward. You spend your whole life tripping over your small stupid fears. You don't want to know what was happening in the yard, do you? You won't ask a single question, or tell a single person. Because you're scared of what happened. And if you're not scared of that…"
Nick reached out and took hold of Mark's shirt. He'd never touched Mark before: he didn't touch many people, Mark had noticed, except girls he was just about to hook up with or boys he was just about to hurt.
"Be scared of me," Nick murmured.
Mark was scared of Nick, who had murdered someone without changing expression. He was scared of that dead man whose hands had lit up, of windows and lights breaking and doors locking on their own.
He didn't want to know any of it.
"I won't tell," he whispered. "I swear."
"Good," said Nick. "I'd rather not kill you. There's a body I have to dispose of, and I'm already late for dinner."
It almost made Mark laugh again, sick and dizzy, thinking of someone waiting at home for the murderer. Keeping dinner hot while he disposed of a body.
Oh, he wanted nothing to do with this. Nothing.
"I wish I'd never met you," he said, his voice crackling hoarse in his throat.
"As far as I'm concerned, I barely have," Nick said, letting him go and making for the door, already bored. "I don't even remember your name."
This was just routine for him, Mark realized, stumbling out of the locker room. This didn't faze him even slightly: it really was an ordinary day in Nick's life.
The question of how many people Nick had killed rose to the surface of Mark's mind and was thankfully drowned out by the sound of his friends' voices calling his name.
Mark pushed past Nick and went running to them. They were all together, Tim and Seb and Jamie and Rachel and Erica.
"Mark, Nick, thank goodness," Erica called out. "The doors are open."
Seb caught Mark's arm as he came hurtling toward them. "Buddy, you do not look good."
"I'm fine," Mark said through stiff lips.
Jamie put a hand to Mark's forehead, pushing his hair back gently. "I don't think-"
"Get your hands off him," Seb snarled, and elbowed Jamie viciously aside.
"Right," Jamie said, putting both his hands in his pockets. His mouth twisted. "I forgot it was catching."
"I've had it up to here with the way you guys talk to Jamie," Rachel said suddenly. "You're all loathsome to him. I think you're all just generally loathsome. I'm so glad the doors are open, because I couldn't stand to spend another minute with any of you. I don't know how you live with yourselves."
She surveyed them all with utter contempt. Even Mark, pleased as he was to have the attention taken off him, felt himself withering a little under her stare.
Nick, he noticed, was giving her a half-smile. Nick really seemed to take to angry people.
"And don't even give me that look, Nick Ryves," Rachel added. "I don't go out with guys who are loathsome. Or guys who are younger than me. Or guys who look like you do: my mother is a sex therapist, I shudder to think of the diseases you might be crawling with." She spun around in a small, judgemental circle. "Any girl who went out with any one of you would have to be insane. I don't mean you, Jamie, obviously."
"Any girl who went out with me would be in for a terrible disappointment," Jamie said, and gave her an almost-real smile.
"I agree with Rachel," Erica said, her voice high and trembling. "You are all horrible to Jamie – you're all horrible – and I can't go out with you."
For a moment Mark thought it was a weird thing to say, until he saw she was looking directly at Tim.
"And that means no more secret making out in supply cupboards and getting caught and put in detention, either," Erica said, wiping at her eyes. "I thought – you were always so nice to me. I thought you were a good guy. I was a little embarrassed because you're in the year below but – but it turns out I should've been embarrassed because I'm so dumb."
"Baby, you're not-" Tim began.
"You're not dumb, Erica," Rachel said firmly. "He is, though. And he's not worthy of you. Come on, let's go find Mae. Come with us, Jamie."
"Nah," Jamie replied, painfully casual, as if he had anything else to do. "You girls go have fun."
Rachel looked at him for an instant, her hard gaze softening. "Okay," she said at last, tenderly. Then she looked around at the rest of them. "Burn in hell, guys, mmkay?" she said, and linked arms with Erica, and walked away.
The rest of them went for the open doors as well, at a slightly slower pace so they wouldn't have to catch up with the scary angry girl. Rachel and Erica were out of sight by the time they hit the playground.
"Well," Jamie said. "This was just like that film the Breakfast Club, except weirder, and also without anyone reforming, any touching heartfelt moments, or any soundtrack to speak of aside from glass breaking."
"You talk too much," Nick said.
Jamie blinked at him. "Did you change your shirt?"
Nick batted his lashes in Jamie's direction. "This one brings out the color of my eyes."
"Er," said Jamie.
"What-" Seb began.
"Guys, don't-" said Mark weakly.
Nick checked his watch again. "Look," he said. "I've got to go. I'll see you guys tomorrow. I hate you all."
With that charming closing remark, he walked off. Mark wondered if he was planning to double back and get the body, and felt like he wanted to be sick.
"Well, what he said," Jamie told them, then looked at Mark and hesitated. Then he looked at Seb. "Actually, I just hate you," he said in a conversational tone, and walked off, in a different direction to the way Nick had gone.
Mark looked at both their retreating figures, both of them terribly alone. He was pathetically grateful for Seb's hand under his arm, half holding him up.
"You know," Tim said, "Erica's right. We're horrible."
"Mate," Seb said. "You're just a bit thrown because the girl dumped you. Don't worry about it. Nice one, by the way. Older woman."
He held out his fist. Tim did not bump it.
"Don't talk about Erica like that," he snapped instead. "I really like her, okay? She's really nice. She's a good person. And we couldn't even stop pushing around her pal's brother for the five minutes it took us to get out of our stupid school? I mean, everyone says I'm dumb, but really, making everyone hate us, that strikes even me as too stupid to live. I'm going after her."
"Jesus, Graves, don't you have any pride?" Seb snapped.
"Here's the thing, McFarlane," Tim said, red-faced. "She's nice to everyone. Like I said, she's a good person. Better than you. So what she thinks of me matters a good bit more than what you think." He ducked his head, seeming half-ashamed to have said this much. "I'm gonna go. I'll catch you later."
He kept his head lowered even as Seb called out his name, walking steadily off in the direction Rachel and Erica had gone.
"God," Seb said. "Fine. He wants to be whipped? Fine."
They had reached the edge of the playground now. Seb leaned against the wall around it, fists pressed against the brick.
"Hey," Mark said. He still felt sick, and he was tired, but Seb was his friend. "You've been on edge all day. Is anything up – you know, at home."
As soon as he'd said it, he wanted to bite out his clumsy tongue. Seb wouldn't talk about his foster parents. Mark should have just invited him to spend the night, and acted like it was normal to have Seb over three nights a week. Mark was too shocky to be as careful as he should have been.
"No," Seb said, his voice final. "What would be up? Matter of fact, I should be getting home."
Mark wondered if he'd go home at all. Seb acted like occasionally sleeping rough was fun, an adventure where they'd get some beers and hang out in an abandoned house or a parking lot after dark. Mark always ended up cold and wanting to go home, to warmth and safety.
He wanted to go home now. He looked at the set of Seb's shoulders and wondered what it would be like not to be able to go.
Even Nick Ryves, apparently, had someone to go home to.
He thought about being fourteen, and believing Seb had no problems.
Now they were sixteen, and it wasn't as simple as Seb just being a jerk, either.
Mark thought about the cutting tone of Rachel's voice, of Nick's empty black eyes looking down at him and what Tim had said.
"There's – you know, now Tim's romance is out in the open and all," he said. "There's a girl I kind of like."
"Um," Seb said. "Yeah?"
"She's kind of a nerd," Mark said, and wished he could stop qualifying everything he said, when it really mattered and he really meant it. "But she's kind of cute. I don't know. Something about her gets me. And hell, actually going out with a girl would be better than just talking about them and not doing anything about it, the way we always do."
"Right," Seb said. His voice sounded brittle, but he was being unusually agreeable, and Mark forged on encouraged.
"We can't all be like you, mate," he said, and Seb went still. "Girls throw themselves at you, and you turn them down, and it's nice of you, you know, you're a good friend to stick with us. But this way, we can all have girls, maybe. So, I was thinking of asking her out. And Tim's right, about – about looking good in front of girls. We shouldn't push anyone around in front of them."
And since Erica and Abby went to their school, that surely meant hardly pushing anyone around at all. If he could be a better person in front of Abby, maybe that would become true.
"Yeah," Seb said. "Sure. Actually, I was thinking the same thing myself. Actually. The exact same thing."
"Oh, yeah?" Mark tried to sound casual instead of massively relieved. "You have your eye on a girl?"
"Yes," Seb said. "Definitely. I definitely do."
There was a pause.
"Who is it, then?" Mark asked.
"Ah," said Seb. "The weird one. You know." He hesitated. "Crawford's sister. Mae."
Mark did not want to tell him that this was a loony idea, or that Mae would undoubtedly put Seb's eyeballs on ice and use them as marbles if she ever found out the kind of stuff he said to Jamie.
"Crawford's sister," he said, instead, trying to delicately suggest the whole marbles thing without coming out and saying it.
"Yes," said Seb, and after another pause he said: "She's got really nice-"
"Boobs, no, I know," Mark said. Mae terrified him, but you couldn't help noticing.
"That is exactly what I was going to say, it's like you're reading my mind," Seb told him.
"She's kind of crazy, though," Mark offered. "Like, not just wearing bat necklaces and stuff. Like, makes that girl Rachel look like a nice walk in the park."
"I like a challenge," Seb said.
Mark shrugged. It occurred to him that if Seb was going for Mae, he could hardly go after Jamie. "Okay," he said. "Best of luck with that."
"Good luck with your nerd girl," Seb said, and it was as easy as that. Mark had been worrying over nothing.
"So I'll catch you tomorrow," he told Seb, and they exchanged nods.
As Mark went off, making his way home, he slid his phone out of his pocket and called Abby. He didn't have her number in his phone, but it was okay because he knew it off by heart.
"Hello, Mark," she said. She didn't play any games: he knew she had his number in her phone. She sounded a little tired. "You didn't make it to study with us."
"No," Mark said. "I was in detention. I really wish I could've made it."
"Really," said Abby.
"Abby," Mark said. "It's the best part of my week."
Abby made a sound, half startled and half laughing. "I'm sure."
"Do you want to go out with me?" Mark asked.
"Er," Abby said, and Mark's heart stuttered in his chest. "Yeah," Abby said, an instant later, open and honest. She didn't even try to hide the pleasure in her voice. "I'd like that."
"Yeah?" Mark said. "I'm glad. I was – I was kind of scared to ask you."
You're a coward, Nick had said. And he'd got him right, and he hardly knew Mark.
"I didn't think you were going to," said Abby, her voice thoughtful and analyzing as if Mark was homework for a moment, and then it warmed again. "But I'm glad you did."
"Do you think I'm a coward?" Mark asked. "Honestly."
"I think you are sometimes," Abby said. "Honestly. But I also think that – we're all scared of stuff, and we all do things we're not proud of. Especially in school. But nobody should be defined by the worst things they've done, and we can make up for most of it. Most of us wind up being okay, in the end."
Mark thought of Nick – not killing someone, he couldn't think of that, but his utter coldness and his calm, still face above a bloodstained shirt. And Jamie, spiky and alone, and Seb, who would be spending the night God only knew where. He wondered if they were all going to wind up being okay.
He sort of doubted it.
But maybe. Maybe they would. Maybe tomorrow school would be just the same, and maybe it would be a bit different.
"I kissed a guy once," Mark said.
"Mark," Abby said. "This is quite a phone call. I think I need to sit down."
"More than once," Mark said, confessing all. "I – but just the one guy. I don't want to kiss him any more but I – I did at the time. I've never told anyone this before."
"Can you tell me one more thing?" Abby asked, and she hesitated a little now, and Mark wondered if she maybe hated him. "I just, I do kind of need to know one thing."
"What?"
"Who do you want to kiss now?" Abby asked, and Mark realized she didn't hate him: she was shy. She was afraid, too. "I'd just really – considering the fact you asked me out a minute ago – I'd really like to know."
"I'm kind of scared to tell you," Mark said. "But-" He took a deep breath. "Can I come by your house and show you?"
May 4, 2011
Short Story for Demon's Covenant
This is quite a week for short stories for you guys!
This is my present to you guys to celebrate the release of Demon's Covenant in paperback in the US. If any of you guys have been waiting for the paperback - it's out! And if you want to get it or ask for it in a shop or anything, that'd be awesome.
Whether you've got it, you're getting it, you took it out from the library, loaned it from a friend or you've never read anything of mine at all, I hope you enjoy this.
This story is set immediately before the events of The Demon's Lexicon, no actual spoilers but some heavy hinting at spoilers in Lexicon and Covenant. Containing some major, some minor, and some only-mentioned characters in the series. This one's also dedicated to the real Mark Skinner, who is much more awesome than this version. ;) Title stolen from Oscar Wilde.
"Well," Jamie said. "This was just like that film the Breakfast Club, except weirder, and also without anyone reforming, any touching heartfelt moments, or any soundtrack to speak of aside from glass breaking."
The Coward With A Kiss
The two things Mark was most scared of in the world both involved Jamie Crawford.
The first was that someone would find out that he and Jamie used to kiss behind the gym when they were fourteen.
It had only been a handful of times, or maybe more than that. Sometimes Mark closed his eyes and remembered it with appalling vividness, as if it was a crime he had committed and could not forgive himself for.
That was how it had felt sometimes, shaky with excitement and guilt, his palms sweating and the tree branches blurring in the sky, brown brushstrokes wavering and mingling into grayness as he closed his eyes and felt Jamie's body against his, never pushy, lips rough but shy, thin chest flat against Mark's, unmistakably another boy.
He didn't know why he'd done it. Even now, he couldn't work out what had been wrong with him. Maybe once would have been acceptable, a mistake, boys will be boys his dad said, though never about things like this. But he'd kept doing it, kept coming back even though sometimes his heart drummed so hard in his throat it felt like it was going to choke him, even though he still looked down Ms Sturridge's blouse in English class. He couldn't decide if that meant he was normal, or even more of a freak than Jamie.
He used to wake in the night, shaking in his sweat, absolutely terrified that somebody would find out.
When he was fourteen, it was the thing Mark had been most scared of in all the world.
Now he was sixteen, there was one thing he was more scared of, and that was that people would remember he and Jamie used to be best friends.
It hadn't been a secret at the time. Everyone had known, from the first day of school until they were fourteen. They had walked to and from school together, Jamie's big sister herding them when they were younger as if she was a responsible adult when she was barely a year older. They had gone to football games together, one or the other of their dads taking them, until Jamie had a talk with his dad about—about how Jamie was, when he was thirteen—and then Jamie's dad stopped taking him.
That was the kind of thing that made Mark sweat. The prices you'd have to pay, every day, for not being normal.
So they'd had a fight and stopped being friends. That was normal, Mark told himself. It happened every day. That was what he'd told his mum and dad. He hadn't had to go into the details of the fight. Just: he'd made some new friends, and Jamie hadn't taken it well.
Which was more or less the truth.
When they were fourteen, Mark and Jamie walked in a bit late to their first class because they'd been—behind the gym.
There was a new kid in class.
There were two kinds of new kids: the kind who sidled in, apologetic about their newness and hoping to melt into a group as soon as possible. And there were the kind who seemed to shine with their newness, and collect new groups with themselves as the focus.
Seb McFarlane was definitely the second kind. He didn't even have real parents at all, he had foster parents, an altogether more dangerous and temporary arrangements. He was taller than most of the other guys, and he'd lived in Cardiff and Manchester and all sorts of places, and he wore his dark hair in a brilliant haircut that a lot of the other guys gradually copied, one by one, in the following weeks.
But on the first day, the first thing that Mark noticed was how Jamie reacted to him. Jamie went suddenly perfectly still, and stared. His face actually went white.
Seb stared back for a moment, just as still, then erupted from his desk like a tidal wave.
"What are you looking at?" Seb sneered, and Jamie, who never seemed to know a thing about saving face, stammered out: "Nothing – sorry-" sounding lost, and everyone else laughed.
Then Seb pulled his angry green gaze away from Jamie, and it fell on Mark.
"Coming, then?" he asked, and jerked his head toward the back row of seats.
Mark went after him, and so did Tim Graves, who was a bit of a thicko but the biggest guy in class and pretty hard, and Dave Liddell whose older brother was known to occasionally sell drugs now and then, and Guy Ferrell who'd got into three fights.
He didn't know any of them very well, and he was a bit uncertain what to talk about at lunchtime, but Seb managed the conversation with easy confidence. He called them all Graves, and Liddell, and Ferrell, and Skinner.
He propped his elbows on the table and said: "So, that guy Crawford," and his mouth twisted. "Be a bit more obvious."
Mark held the spoon for his yoghurt so tight it felt like it was going to cut into his palm. But nobody looked at him. Liddell told a story about Jamie, about how you never saw him at football games anymore, he guessed because all the guys in shorts got him excited, and Mark didn't say that wasn't fair. He laughed louder than anybody.
He repeated Seb's words to Jamie, behind the gym after school, with Jamie asking where he'd been at lunch even though Jamie knew very well where he'd been.
"Well, the new guy was hardly going to want to sit with you, was he?" Mark demanded, his voice coming out scathing. "Not after the way you couldn't take your eyes off him. Be a bit more obvious."
Jamie looked startled and hurt, dark eyes going wide, and then he smiled, sudden and sunny, as if he'd worked out a way to explain this.
"I wasn't staring at him because he's cute," Jamie said, and it made Mark's stomach actually twist with panic, hearing him say those words so casually, as if there were no consequences. "Hey," Jamie added, his voice soft, with a note to it like—like he was talking to a girl. "I don't like him. You know who I like."
He reached out and touched Mark's wrist. Mark looked down at him, felt his heart stutter in his chest, and thought about how Seb had just looked at Jamie and known. How long before that rubbed off on Mark, how long before everybody knew?
"Don't say things like that," Mark snapped, pulling away. "Just leave me alone."
Every time Mark had kissed Jamie, he'd told himself it was the last time.
He'd had no way of knowing, the morning Seb came to school, that it really had been the last time. But it was. He never kissed Jamie again.
He did push him, more times than he could count, to make him drop a book or have to grab at a banister. He made jokes about him while they were changing for gym, and he laughed at everyone else's jokes.
And slowly, Mark's greatest fear changed. He was still scared people would find out about him and Jamie behind the gym.
But he was even more scared someone would think back, remember the way he and Jamie had shared crayons back when they were little, gone on camping trips together, pushed their desks together and bent their heads together and laughed, for years. He was scared someone would think of all that, and look at Mark and how he behaved now, and think—what kind of person treats someone who used to be a friend like that?
He was scared of what Abby would think.
And he was still scared of what his friends would think. They were the only friends he had. Seb wasn't the untouchably cool idol he'd been to Mark when he was fourteen, but Mark still cared about his opinion.
So when Seb asked him to cut school after lunch, of course Mark did.
And of course Mark and Seb both wound up in detention the next day. That was no surprise.
The surprise was who else was there when Seb and Mark walked in.
*
The room contained Ms Sturridge, who after her divorce had thinned down until she was roughly the shape of a pencil, her features all coming to a point. Nobody looked down her blouse anymore.
It also contained Tim Graves, who was their friend, Nick Ryves, who was technically their friend, and Rachel and Erica, two girls in the class above them who were crazy Mae Crawford's crazy friends.
"Graves," Seb said, his voice low, as he took the desk beside Tim's and nodded for Mark to take the one beside his. "What're you doing here? If you had something planned, you could've let us in on it."
"Uh, no," Tim said, his eyes shifty. "I was, uh, I was caught smoking."
Mark and Seb both stared at him.
"Er – you don't smoke," Mark reminded him, trying to keep his voice tactful. Tim could sometimes be this way.
"I was trying it out!" Tim exclaimed. He eyeballed his own desk wildly.
Sometimes Mark wondered how on earth they'd all managed to hang onto their reputation as the dangerous troublemakers of the school.
Seb's voice became significantly cooler. "How about you, Ryves?"
Nick Ryves shrugged.
"What did you get detention for?" Seb pursued. His voice got colder and edgier with every word, like someone sharpening an icicle.
Nick didn't even look at him. "I don't know."
Seb's voice was incredulous. "You don't know?"
"Could be any one of a number of things."
Sometimes too, Mark wondered why they wanted a reputation like the one they had. The reality of it, of someone who did not care about anything or anyone, who might actually be dangerous, was Nick Ryves.
The guy who had taken one look at them and known they were the group he belonged to. Look at your life, Mark Skinner, Mark said to himself, like he had Abby Curtis's voice in his head. Look at your choices.
Frankly, the guy gave Mark the creeps. Even being in a room with him was unsettling. It wasn't just that he was big, though he was, his muscles and height making him look older than all of them, but that there was a sort of unpleasant cold feeling he dragged around with him.
Also, the guy was a jerk.
Mark didn't want to be anything like Nick Ryves. And he didn't know how to tell Seb, who so obviously did want to be just like that, to be so cold nothing could ever hurt him, that Mark preferred Seb the way he was.
It would sound totally gay if he tried.
"Skinner and I cut and got caught," Seb said, trying hard to sound offhand.
Nick Ryves had that effect on Seb: made him try too hard, which made all his failures more conspicuous. All he had to do was sit there and stare with those empty black eyes, and he won. Without even trying. Without even caring enough to try.
"Who's Skinner?" asked Nick.
"I am," Mark snapped. "I've had the same name for the past three weeks, every day of which you've been hanging out with us."
Nick glanced at Mark over his shoulder. The look was chilling, but that was pretty much Nick's normal look.
"Well, good for you," Nick drawled, sounding extremely bored, and turned away.
Mark rolled his eyes and took the desk between Seb and Rachel. He caught her eye and offered a smile.
"Don't even think about it, you miscreant," Rachel said, and stabbed her compass point into the surface of her desk.
Mark really just knew her as Mae Crawford's sulky dark satellite, while Erica was the smiling blond one. He hadn't realized she was actually insane.
He transferred the smile to Erica. "What're you in for?"
"What is this?" Erica's voice went high. "An interrogation? Stop acting like you are a member of the FBI, Mark Skinner! You aren't even American! Or Canadian. Can you join the FBI if you're Canadian?"
"I think so," Tim said thoughtfully.
"Don't talk to any of these guys, Erica," Rachel said. "If you had been unjustly imprisoned in a rubbish bin, would you strike up a conversation with the rats?"
"Settle down," Ms Sturridge said in a warning voice.
Mark was done talking anyway. He should've realized any friends of Mae Crawford were bound to be insane.
He opened his book and tried to concentrate on maths. He wasn't going to be able to make it to study group, again. He could at least get his homework done, so Abby wouldn't think he was a total loss.
Mark had basically been forced to join Abby Curtis's study group because he was failing maths, and it was that or a tutor. He always made a big production out of what a pain it was, having to go be cooped up with a bunch of nerds every Tuesday and Thursday.
He'd never have dared confess that he had more fun there than with his actual friends. Especially since Nick Ryves came to school.
Everyone was nice. Some of them followed football the same way Mark did. Eric always brought great snacks. It was all just—really nice.
And Abby was the nicest thing about it. She'd really tried to help Mark with his homework, not in a boring teacher way or a patronizing nerd way, but as if she really wanted to, and was genuinely pleased when he got it. She always helped everyone the same way, Abby did.
There was a girl in their group called Sophie who stammered, and Mark had made a joke about it. Not in front of Sophie – he wasn't being a jerk about it. Just to Abby, while he was packing up his books, maybe trying to make her laugh a bit because she had a nice laugh or whatever.
"Don't be a loser, Mark," she said, and he'd thought, what a bitch. He'd just been joking around. She didn't have to take things so seriously, and if she was going to hold it against him when he'd done nothing wrong, then to hell with her.
Only next study group, she'd acted just the same as she always did. And he saw her talk that way sometimes, to the others or about something, and he'd started to think—well, that he wished he could do that. Whenever he got that uncomfortable feeling, like something was a bit of a lousy thing to do or say. He wondered what it would be like to just say 'Cut it out' like Abby did, and not care what people thought of you for saying so.
And he started to notice stuff besides the fact that the buttons on her shirts strained when they were bending over their homework. Like the way her hair smelled like vanilla, and how she liked to wear penguin jewelry.
There was even stupid daydreaming about her and hanging around in hallways in case she might walk down them and say 'Oh, hey, Mark.' Because that was so useful.
Mark had been kind of happy to realize he really liked her, at first. Because that meant, well, that he didn't have to worry about the other stuff. It didn't matter if occasionally he'd hung around the bookshop and noticed that the new redheaded guy who worked there had amazing arms. It was Abby he wanted around, all the time as well as for—stuff, and she was a girl.
He was hanging around a shopping centre and saw a set of silver studs in the shape of penguins, and he'd bought them. Which was a totally ridiculous thing to do. He'd told the saleslady that they were for his little sister, like she cared.
That was before he realized something else.
He hadn't given the earrings to Abby. She'd probably never go for him anyway: she was smart, and it wasn't like he had a lot going for him.
Even if she did, if she got to know him better, and she heard all the jokes the guys made, or how they talked to Jamie—if, God forbid, Mark ever let anything slip about the stuff behind the gym—oh, Jesus, she'd just hate him. It wasn't any use.
And Seb and Tim and everyone, they were his friends. They were his only friends. Abby wasn't anything like the kind of girls they talked about, the kind of girlfriend Mark knew he should want. Mark didn't want to think about how they'd talk to her, or about her. He didn't want his friends to think any less of him.
So he couldn't give her penguin earrings. He couldn't even send her a text message telling her he had detention.
But he could do his maths homework. Mark bent his head over his book, and willed detention to be over soon.
*
Detention was finally over, even though Mark felt like an ice age or two had passed during it. Apparently Ms Sturridge felt the same way, because she basically bolted while they were all gathering up their books.
"Well, that was an enormous waste of my time," obviously crazy Rachel said, shoving her books into her bag as if they had personally offended her. "And an infringement of my right to free speech. All I did was point out that our gym shorts are too short."
"So short that it made you think someone on the school board was either a misogynist or a pervert," Erica reminded her gently.
"Mae said it first!"
"Not in front of our gym teacher," Erica pointed out.
Rachel sniffed. "You still haven't told me what you did."
Erica blushed a deep red. "I'm just late for class so much," she said. "I'm just so so late."
"You'd have to be pretty late for a lot of classes to get a detention!"
"I forget where the classrooms are," Erica claimed. "I get lost all the time." She laughed weakly. "I just wander – around and around."
Nick was first out of the classroom, not even looking at anyone else and shutting the door with a bang. Not to be outdone, Seb followed almost immediately, and Mark and Tim went after him.
When Mark saw Jamie standing at the bathroom, facing Seb and looking prickly and helpless as a hedgehog in the face of an oncoming car, Mark wished he'd stayed and talked to the crazy girls.
He felt a sharp stab of guilt. Looking at Jamie from a little way away, just him and Seb standing together, it was obvious how short and skinny Jamie was.
And it was obvious what he'd been doing. Mark was in the kind of group kids did their homework in bathrooms to get away from, waiting around just so they wouldn't be hassled as they went home.
Mark prayed for a distraction.
It was extremely unexpected when Nick Ryves answered his prayers.
He rattled the front doors of the school, and observed in his flat voice: "These are locked."
*
"What?" Seb said. "That's ridiculous. No they're not."
He strode over and pushed at the doors impatiently. Nick leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms as Seb pushed at the doors again, and then set his shoulder to them.
"Oh, you're probably right," Nick said as Seb shoved. "How embarrassing for me."
"What the hell?" Rachel said, and Mark turned around to see her and Erica at the classroom door. "Ms Sturridge knew we were still inside! This is teacher brutality."
"Not really brutality," Erica pointed out softly. "I mean she didn't like, throw rulers at us."
"Well, it's unlawful imprisonment!" Rachel said. "I'm calling my father. Who is also, I might add, a lawyer. I need his legal advice as well as his fatherly aid."
She whipped her phone out of her pocket, but instead of stabbing at the buttons as Mark had expected she just stared at it.
"I'm not getting any signal," she said, and her voice faltered, sounding as young as she was and not angry for the first time.
Mark dug in his pocket for a phone, as did everyone else around him. Even Nick Ryves put his hand in his pocket, though he did not take his phone out.
Mark stared at his phone blankly for a moment. He did not look up until Jamie spoke.
"Uh," said Jamie. "Well, we're trapped somewhere that our phones won't work. Does this seem unsettlingly like a horror movie to anyone else, or is it just me?" He paused for a brooding moment. "I always hated horror movies," he said finally. "I'm sure I'd die before the opening credits. Especially the ones with monsters or zombies in them. I am certain I would die straight away in the zombie apocalypse. Well, first pee myself and then die."
There was a silence after that. There often was when Jamie spoke. Jamie just kind of nodded his head at himself, earring flashing in the dim light, tucking his hands in his pockets and tilting a smile over at Erica and Rachel. They both smiled faintly back at him.
Mark saw, with a gathering sense of dread, Seb's shoulders bunch.
It was not a huge surprise when he wheeled on Jamie, green eyes narrowing, and said: "You're doing this. Aren't you?"
"Er, are you perhaps paranoid and delusional?" Rachel inquired. "How could Jamie possibly-"
Jamie laughed, the sound swift and cutting, not like Jamie's usual laugh at all. Not that Mark had heard Jamie actually laugh in years.
"Oh yes," he said. "It's totally me. I'm dying to be cooped up here with all of you people. Sorry, Erica and Rachel. You know it's always a pleasure. And okay, um, new guy, Nick, right? I don't really know you, though given the company you keep-"
"Are you in our class?" Nick asked.
Jamie looked at him for a moment. "Yeah," he said at last. "So I don't see us ever getting on."
"Good call," Nick told him.
Jamie shook his head fractionally and transferred his attention back to Seb.
"I have a point!" he announced. "And it is this. A desert island. A closet in which I am playing seven minutes in heaven. A party to which I am inviting people. My ideal life. Do you know what the common factor in all these scenarios would be, as far as I'm concerned? The fact that you would not be there, McFarlane. So if it involves you and me in a room together, you can be pretty sure it's not my idea." Jamie hunched his shoulders defensively, always trying to make himself look even smaller than he actually was, and added: "Are you doing this?"
"No!" Seb snapped.
"Pardon me," Jamie said. "Something happens to make my life miserable and I automatically think of you. It's like Pavlov's dog and the bell."
"Sorry, I don't know Pavlov," Tim said. "Is he in, like, the year above?"
"I don't think so," said Erica. "I'm pretty sure I'd know him then."
"Erica!" said Rachel.
Erica blinked. "Sorry, do you know him?"
"Yeah, um," said Mark. "Look, I don't mean to interrupt you guys or anything, but do you think it might be an idea to find a way to get out of here?"
The longer they stayed cooped up, the better the chances were that something really bad might happen. Seb and Jamie were both already wildly accusing each other of messing with people's phone signals.
It wasn't just that Seb got really angry sometimes, angry enough to make Mark worry.
It was the fact, which was really obvious and which nobody else ever seemed to realise, that Jamie Crawford was a crazy person.
*
The whole family was crazy. Crazy ran in the blood.
Well, not Jamie and Mae's dad. Mark supposed that was why he'd got out when he did.
Mark always remembered a garden party they had gone to when Mark and Jamie were six. They'd brought Mark along so the children could all play together, and it had been a huge house, way bigger even than Jamie's, which previously had been the biggest Mark had ever seen. Mark had been pretty excited. There was a marquee, which at the time he just thought of as a huge party tent, and a ton of the grown-ups were so fancily dressed Mark kept thinking this must be a wedding and looking out for the bride.
It was just a party. The Crawfords were rich, and so were their friends. After a while of hanging around the sides of the marquee and watching Mr and Mrs Crawford, both wearing white linen, wander around shaking people's hands and laughing at stuff that wasn't funny, Jamie and Mark got bored and wandered off to explore the garden holding hands, because you could still hold hands when you were six.
There was an ornamental lake, a weeping willow trailing its leaves on the crystal surface and goldfish surfacing occasionally from the depths. They were both fascinated. Mark just knelt at the edge, watching.
He looked up only when Jamie said, "I'd like to go swimming," held out his arms and, with a beatific smile, fell deliberately backward into the water.
He disappeared and Mark froze. He didn't have any idea what to do—they would get in trouble—everyone would look at them—
It was Jamie's big sister Mae, who had been wandering around the party as aimlessly as they were, who sounded the alarm. She charged across the water-smooth lawn, a small fury of dark hair and dungarees, and howled like a dungaree-clad banshee.
Then all the adults were pouring out of the marquee, a terrifying army in pale linen and fancy hat uniforms, and suddenly with longer legs and the same concentrated ferocity as Mae came Mrs Crawford. She kicked off her high, high ivory-colored heels with strange daintiness as she went, and dived into the pool, a perfect swimmer's dive with her hands over her head.
She emerged from the pool with Jamie clasped firmly to her, flicking her drenched blond hair out of her face with an economical little movement of her head. As she climbed out of the pool, her dress was dripping and streaked with green slime.
She did not look in the least concerned by anything, until Jamie started to cry and clutch at her. Then she looked discomposed, and looked to her husband.
He was staring at her, looking appalled by the scene they had created. He looked even more appalled when Mrs Crawford slid her heels back on, strode over to him and deposited Jamie in his arms.
Then she swanned off to change her clothes. She returned some time later looking cool and immaculate.
Mr Crawford looked around at the other people at the party, and awkwardly, half-heartedly patted Jamie on the back. He whispered "Hush!" into his ear with far more force than he put into comforting him.
And Mae's eyes narrowed. She sat on the ground, a big girl of almost eight, and howled her head off, drowning out Jamie's piteous sobs, embarrassing Mr Crawford completely.
The other guests remembered the Crawford girls making the scene, mostly. But Mark, still frozen with terror by the lake, remembered that Jamie had caused all the trouble in the first place, falling back fearless into the water as if drowning was not a possibility.
Jamie would never talk about it afterward, avoiding the subject as if he'd committed a crime.
Jamie was afraid of a lot, but never the things he should be afraid of.
And he just made things worse for himself.
When they'd been fourteen, Jamie had spent the first couple of weeks looking confused and hurt about how Mark was suddenly ignoring him. Then one of the comments one of them had made tipped him off, and he stopped looking confused, and tried to stop looking hurt.
But he didn't just do that. He started to dress differently. Nothing major, but—some of his shirts were purple now, or had purple in them. Sometimes they were made of different material, material like a girl might wear.
"You're just giving Seb the finger now," Mark said in a low voice to him, the day Jamie wore the purple thing with the buttons.
Jamie looked at him, that bright complicated upset-but-still-something-else look that Jamie used to have around him, the one that made Mark feel bad but angry too.
"I can wear what I want," he said. "That's the point. The other thing? That's just a bonus."
He gave Mark a small smile, crooked and upset and hopeful, and Mark hit Jamie's shoulder on purpose a little too hard going in the door.
It might have all been okay, if Jamie wasn't so stubborn.
A few months later, just after Mark's fifteenth birthday, when Mark hadn't—done anything weird in ages and he was starting to feel a bit more settled and calm, and a bit more horrible about the way Jamie looked sometimes, off by himself listening to music with his shoulders hunched in that way, Seb said at lunchtime in a very neutral voice: "You and Crawford used to hang out a bit once, right?"
Mark thought of how weird it had been, not having Jamie there to celebrate his birthday, and he swallowed down the instinctive denial and answered, desperately casual: "A bit."
Seb made a noncommittal sound, and he and Mark both busied themselves lighting cigarettes. Mark offered Seb his lighter and Seb took it, the light cast by the flame leaping from his cupped hand to lick at his dark lowered lashes and the caramel-tanned curve of his cheek.
Mark never really let himself acknowledge he'd had a bit of a crush on Seb, until it was gone.
"He seems an all-right guy, if he wasn't so, you know." Seb looked at Mark and rolled his eyes. They didn't need to say it. They understood you shouldn't.
Mark rolled his eyes as well. "Yeah. Bit of a laugh," he offered, very cautiously.
Seb shrugged, but not in a hostile way, and the next time Mark was passing Jamie in the halls—entirely coincidentally, he hadn't been looking for a chance, and it was when the halls were mostly empty so nobody would have to see—he said, quietly but fast so he'd be sure to get it out: "You know it doesn't have to be this way."
Jamie blinked about four times very quickly. "Be what way, what?"
"We could all hang out, maybe, I don't know," Mark said, still low and rapid. "If you weren't so-"
"Gay," Jamie said, and the word cracked out, like the sound of someone slapping someone else's face. Mark winced.
"No. I mean there's nothing wrong with it. But why do you have to shove it in people's faces? That's all, that's all I'm talking about. Like the shirts ant stuff."
"We both like football, am I right?" Jamie asked.
It was Mark's turn to blink. "Sure."
"And sometimes people who like football will wear football shirts, and sometimes they won't, and it never matters because nobody ever complains about someone liking football in public, or shoving football in their faces. Because people actually believe there's nothing wrong with that, nothing harmful or disgusting. You're right, there's nothing wrong with it. And that's what the shirts and stuff are about. Except it's way more important than football."
Mark had just been trying to point out a way to make life easier for Jamie, a way to make life easier for all of them. He'd basically said he wanted to be Jamie's friend again, and Jamie was getting angry with him about the way the world worked?
"Sorry, I hadn't realized you like being a freak with no friends," he muttered, and began to walk down the hall, turning his back on Jamie.
"Sure," Jamie said to his back. "If the alternative is being friends with Seb McFarlane. We could all hang out? Not in a million years."
The next day, Jamie came to school with an earring. He gave Seb and Mark both a bright smile as he walked in the classroom door, and honestly Mark thought Seb might explode.
One day someone was going to actually hit Jamie, and Mark didn't know what he would do, and some days Mark was afraid it was going to be him, because Jamie kept riling them up on purpose for no reason at all and there was always the abiding fear Jamie might tell someone about Mark, about the mistakes he'd made. Abby might believe in being honest, but what would she think of Mark then?
Everyone in school altered themselves in some way, to fit in better with your friends, to get along with people. There was no reason for Jamie to make life harder for himself and everyone else. He was crazy.
Cut for length, and part 2 up tomorrow, you guys! Sorry about that.
This is my present to you guys to celebrate the release of Demon's Covenant in paperback in the US. If any of you guys have been waiting for the paperback - it's out! And if you want to get it or ask for it in a shop or anything, that'd be awesome.
Whether you've got it, you're getting it, you took it out from the library, loaned it from a friend or you've never read anything of mine at all, I hope you enjoy this.
This story is set immediately before the events of The Demon's Lexicon, no actual spoilers but some heavy hinting at spoilers in Lexicon and Covenant. Containing some major, some minor, and some only-mentioned characters in the series. This one's also dedicated to the real Mark Skinner, who is much more awesome than this version. ;) Title stolen from Oscar Wilde.
"Well," Jamie said. "This was just like that film the Breakfast Club, except weirder, and also without anyone reforming, any touching heartfelt moments, or any soundtrack to speak of aside from glass breaking."
The Coward With A Kiss
The two things Mark was most scared of in the world both involved Jamie Crawford.
The first was that someone would find out that he and Jamie used to kiss behind the gym when they were fourteen.
It had only been a handful of times, or maybe more than that. Sometimes Mark closed his eyes and remembered it with appalling vividness, as if it was a crime he had committed and could not forgive himself for.
That was how it had felt sometimes, shaky with excitement and guilt, his palms sweating and the tree branches blurring in the sky, brown brushstrokes wavering and mingling into grayness as he closed his eyes and felt Jamie's body against his, never pushy, lips rough but shy, thin chest flat against Mark's, unmistakably another boy.
He didn't know why he'd done it. Even now, he couldn't work out what had been wrong with him. Maybe once would have been acceptable, a mistake, boys will be boys his dad said, though never about things like this. But he'd kept doing it, kept coming back even though sometimes his heart drummed so hard in his throat it felt like it was going to choke him, even though he still looked down Ms Sturridge's blouse in English class. He couldn't decide if that meant he was normal, or even more of a freak than Jamie.
He used to wake in the night, shaking in his sweat, absolutely terrified that somebody would find out.
When he was fourteen, it was the thing Mark had been most scared of in all the world.
Now he was sixteen, there was one thing he was more scared of, and that was that people would remember he and Jamie used to be best friends.
It hadn't been a secret at the time. Everyone had known, from the first day of school until they were fourteen. They had walked to and from school together, Jamie's big sister herding them when they were younger as if she was a responsible adult when she was barely a year older. They had gone to football games together, one or the other of their dads taking them, until Jamie had a talk with his dad about—about how Jamie was, when he was thirteen—and then Jamie's dad stopped taking him.
That was the kind of thing that made Mark sweat. The prices you'd have to pay, every day, for not being normal.
So they'd had a fight and stopped being friends. That was normal, Mark told himself. It happened every day. That was what he'd told his mum and dad. He hadn't had to go into the details of the fight. Just: he'd made some new friends, and Jamie hadn't taken it well.
Which was more or less the truth.
When they were fourteen, Mark and Jamie walked in a bit late to their first class because they'd been—behind the gym.
There was a new kid in class.
There were two kinds of new kids: the kind who sidled in, apologetic about their newness and hoping to melt into a group as soon as possible. And there were the kind who seemed to shine with their newness, and collect new groups with themselves as the focus.
Seb McFarlane was definitely the second kind. He didn't even have real parents at all, he had foster parents, an altogether more dangerous and temporary arrangements. He was taller than most of the other guys, and he'd lived in Cardiff and Manchester and all sorts of places, and he wore his dark hair in a brilliant haircut that a lot of the other guys gradually copied, one by one, in the following weeks.
But on the first day, the first thing that Mark noticed was how Jamie reacted to him. Jamie went suddenly perfectly still, and stared. His face actually went white.
Seb stared back for a moment, just as still, then erupted from his desk like a tidal wave.
"What are you looking at?" Seb sneered, and Jamie, who never seemed to know a thing about saving face, stammered out: "Nothing – sorry-" sounding lost, and everyone else laughed.
Then Seb pulled his angry green gaze away from Jamie, and it fell on Mark.
"Coming, then?" he asked, and jerked his head toward the back row of seats.
Mark went after him, and so did Tim Graves, who was a bit of a thicko but the biggest guy in class and pretty hard, and Dave Liddell whose older brother was known to occasionally sell drugs now and then, and Guy Ferrell who'd got into three fights.
He didn't know any of them very well, and he was a bit uncertain what to talk about at lunchtime, but Seb managed the conversation with easy confidence. He called them all Graves, and Liddell, and Ferrell, and Skinner.
He propped his elbows on the table and said: "So, that guy Crawford," and his mouth twisted. "Be a bit more obvious."
Mark held the spoon for his yoghurt so tight it felt like it was going to cut into his palm. But nobody looked at him. Liddell told a story about Jamie, about how you never saw him at football games anymore, he guessed because all the guys in shorts got him excited, and Mark didn't say that wasn't fair. He laughed louder than anybody.
He repeated Seb's words to Jamie, behind the gym after school, with Jamie asking where he'd been at lunch even though Jamie knew very well where he'd been.
"Well, the new guy was hardly going to want to sit with you, was he?" Mark demanded, his voice coming out scathing. "Not after the way you couldn't take your eyes off him. Be a bit more obvious."
Jamie looked startled and hurt, dark eyes going wide, and then he smiled, sudden and sunny, as if he'd worked out a way to explain this.
"I wasn't staring at him because he's cute," Jamie said, and it made Mark's stomach actually twist with panic, hearing him say those words so casually, as if there were no consequences. "Hey," Jamie added, his voice soft, with a note to it like—like he was talking to a girl. "I don't like him. You know who I like."
He reached out and touched Mark's wrist. Mark looked down at him, felt his heart stutter in his chest, and thought about how Seb had just looked at Jamie and known. How long before that rubbed off on Mark, how long before everybody knew?
"Don't say things like that," Mark snapped, pulling away. "Just leave me alone."
Every time Mark had kissed Jamie, he'd told himself it was the last time.
He'd had no way of knowing, the morning Seb came to school, that it really had been the last time. But it was. He never kissed Jamie again.
He did push him, more times than he could count, to make him drop a book or have to grab at a banister. He made jokes about him while they were changing for gym, and he laughed at everyone else's jokes.
And slowly, Mark's greatest fear changed. He was still scared people would find out about him and Jamie behind the gym.
But he was even more scared someone would think back, remember the way he and Jamie had shared crayons back when they were little, gone on camping trips together, pushed their desks together and bent their heads together and laughed, for years. He was scared someone would think of all that, and look at Mark and how he behaved now, and think—what kind of person treats someone who used to be a friend like that?
He was scared of what Abby would think.
And he was still scared of what his friends would think. They were the only friends he had. Seb wasn't the untouchably cool idol he'd been to Mark when he was fourteen, but Mark still cared about his opinion.
So when Seb asked him to cut school after lunch, of course Mark did.
And of course Mark and Seb both wound up in detention the next day. That was no surprise.
The surprise was who else was there when Seb and Mark walked in.
*
The room contained Ms Sturridge, who after her divorce had thinned down until she was roughly the shape of a pencil, her features all coming to a point. Nobody looked down her blouse anymore.
It also contained Tim Graves, who was their friend, Nick Ryves, who was technically their friend, and Rachel and Erica, two girls in the class above them who were crazy Mae Crawford's crazy friends.
"Graves," Seb said, his voice low, as he took the desk beside Tim's and nodded for Mark to take the one beside his. "What're you doing here? If you had something planned, you could've let us in on it."
"Uh, no," Tim said, his eyes shifty. "I was, uh, I was caught smoking."
Mark and Seb both stared at him.
"Er – you don't smoke," Mark reminded him, trying to keep his voice tactful. Tim could sometimes be this way.
"I was trying it out!" Tim exclaimed. He eyeballed his own desk wildly.
Sometimes Mark wondered how on earth they'd all managed to hang onto their reputation as the dangerous troublemakers of the school.
Seb's voice became significantly cooler. "How about you, Ryves?"
Nick Ryves shrugged.
"What did you get detention for?" Seb pursued. His voice got colder and edgier with every word, like someone sharpening an icicle.
Nick didn't even look at him. "I don't know."
Seb's voice was incredulous. "You don't know?"
"Could be any one of a number of things."
Sometimes too, Mark wondered why they wanted a reputation like the one they had. The reality of it, of someone who did not care about anything or anyone, who might actually be dangerous, was Nick Ryves.
The guy who had taken one look at them and known they were the group he belonged to. Look at your life, Mark Skinner, Mark said to himself, like he had Abby Curtis's voice in his head. Look at your choices.
Frankly, the guy gave Mark the creeps. Even being in a room with him was unsettling. It wasn't just that he was big, though he was, his muscles and height making him look older than all of them, but that there was a sort of unpleasant cold feeling he dragged around with him.
Also, the guy was a jerk.
Mark didn't want to be anything like Nick Ryves. And he didn't know how to tell Seb, who so obviously did want to be just like that, to be so cold nothing could ever hurt him, that Mark preferred Seb the way he was.
It would sound totally gay if he tried.
"Skinner and I cut and got caught," Seb said, trying hard to sound offhand.
Nick Ryves had that effect on Seb: made him try too hard, which made all his failures more conspicuous. All he had to do was sit there and stare with those empty black eyes, and he won. Without even trying. Without even caring enough to try.
"Who's Skinner?" asked Nick.
"I am," Mark snapped. "I've had the same name for the past three weeks, every day of which you've been hanging out with us."
Nick glanced at Mark over his shoulder. The look was chilling, but that was pretty much Nick's normal look.
"Well, good for you," Nick drawled, sounding extremely bored, and turned away.
Mark rolled his eyes and took the desk between Seb and Rachel. He caught her eye and offered a smile.
"Don't even think about it, you miscreant," Rachel said, and stabbed her compass point into the surface of her desk.
Mark really just knew her as Mae Crawford's sulky dark satellite, while Erica was the smiling blond one. He hadn't realized she was actually insane.
He transferred the smile to Erica. "What're you in for?"
"What is this?" Erica's voice went high. "An interrogation? Stop acting like you are a member of the FBI, Mark Skinner! You aren't even American! Or Canadian. Can you join the FBI if you're Canadian?"
"I think so," Tim said thoughtfully.
"Don't talk to any of these guys, Erica," Rachel said. "If you had been unjustly imprisoned in a rubbish bin, would you strike up a conversation with the rats?"
"Settle down," Ms Sturridge said in a warning voice.
Mark was done talking anyway. He should've realized any friends of Mae Crawford were bound to be insane.
He opened his book and tried to concentrate on maths. He wasn't going to be able to make it to study group, again. He could at least get his homework done, so Abby wouldn't think he was a total loss.
Mark had basically been forced to join Abby Curtis's study group because he was failing maths, and it was that or a tutor. He always made a big production out of what a pain it was, having to go be cooped up with a bunch of nerds every Tuesday and Thursday.
He'd never have dared confess that he had more fun there than with his actual friends. Especially since Nick Ryves came to school.
Everyone was nice. Some of them followed football the same way Mark did. Eric always brought great snacks. It was all just—really nice.
And Abby was the nicest thing about it. She'd really tried to help Mark with his homework, not in a boring teacher way or a patronizing nerd way, but as if she really wanted to, and was genuinely pleased when he got it. She always helped everyone the same way, Abby did.
There was a girl in their group called Sophie who stammered, and Mark had made a joke about it. Not in front of Sophie – he wasn't being a jerk about it. Just to Abby, while he was packing up his books, maybe trying to make her laugh a bit because she had a nice laugh or whatever.
"Don't be a loser, Mark," she said, and he'd thought, what a bitch. He'd just been joking around. She didn't have to take things so seriously, and if she was going to hold it against him when he'd done nothing wrong, then to hell with her.
Only next study group, she'd acted just the same as she always did. And he saw her talk that way sometimes, to the others or about something, and he'd started to think—well, that he wished he could do that. Whenever he got that uncomfortable feeling, like something was a bit of a lousy thing to do or say. He wondered what it would be like to just say 'Cut it out' like Abby did, and not care what people thought of you for saying so.
And he started to notice stuff besides the fact that the buttons on her shirts strained when they were bending over their homework. Like the way her hair smelled like vanilla, and how she liked to wear penguin jewelry.
There was even stupid daydreaming about her and hanging around in hallways in case she might walk down them and say 'Oh, hey, Mark.' Because that was so useful.
Mark had been kind of happy to realize he really liked her, at first. Because that meant, well, that he didn't have to worry about the other stuff. It didn't matter if occasionally he'd hung around the bookshop and noticed that the new redheaded guy who worked there had amazing arms. It was Abby he wanted around, all the time as well as for—stuff, and she was a girl.
He was hanging around a shopping centre and saw a set of silver studs in the shape of penguins, and he'd bought them. Which was a totally ridiculous thing to do. He'd told the saleslady that they were for his little sister, like she cared.
That was before he realized something else.
He hadn't given the earrings to Abby. She'd probably never go for him anyway: she was smart, and it wasn't like he had a lot going for him.
Even if she did, if she got to know him better, and she heard all the jokes the guys made, or how they talked to Jamie—if, God forbid, Mark ever let anything slip about the stuff behind the gym—oh, Jesus, she'd just hate him. It wasn't any use.
And Seb and Tim and everyone, they were his friends. They were his only friends. Abby wasn't anything like the kind of girls they talked about, the kind of girlfriend Mark knew he should want. Mark didn't want to think about how they'd talk to her, or about her. He didn't want his friends to think any less of him.
So he couldn't give her penguin earrings. He couldn't even send her a text message telling her he had detention.
But he could do his maths homework. Mark bent his head over his book, and willed detention to be over soon.
*
Detention was finally over, even though Mark felt like an ice age or two had passed during it. Apparently Ms Sturridge felt the same way, because she basically bolted while they were all gathering up their books.
"Well, that was an enormous waste of my time," obviously crazy Rachel said, shoving her books into her bag as if they had personally offended her. "And an infringement of my right to free speech. All I did was point out that our gym shorts are too short."
"So short that it made you think someone on the school board was either a misogynist or a pervert," Erica reminded her gently.
"Mae said it first!"
"Not in front of our gym teacher," Erica pointed out.
Rachel sniffed. "You still haven't told me what you did."
Erica blushed a deep red. "I'm just late for class so much," she said. "I'm just so so late."
"You'd have to be pretty late for a lot of classes to get a detention!"
"I forget where the classrooms are," Erica claimed. "I get lost all the time." She laughed weakly. "I just wander – around and around."
Nick was first out of the classroom, not even looking at anyone else and shutting the door with a bang. Not to be outdone, Seb followed almost immediately, and Mark and Tim went after him.
When Mark saw Jamie standing at the bathroom, facing Seb and looking prickly and helpless as a hedgehog in the face of an oncoming car, Mark wished he'd stayed and talked to the crazy girls.
He felt a sharp stab of guilt. Looking at Jamie from a little way away, just him and Seb standing together, it was obvious how short and skinny Jamie was.
And it was obvious what he'd been doing. Mark was in the kind of group kids did their homework in bathrooms to get away from, waiting around just so they wouldn't be hassled as they went home.
Mark prayed for a distraction.
It was extremely unexpected when Nick Ryves answered his prayers.
He rattled the front doors of the school, and observed in his flat voice: "These are locked."
*
"What?" Seb said. "That's ridiculous. No they're not."
He strode over and pushed at the doors impatiently. Nick leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms as Seb pushed at the doors again, and then set his shoulder to them.
"Oh, you're probably right," Nick said as Seb shoved. "How embarrassing for me."
"What the hell?" Rachel said, and Mark turned around to see her and Erica at the classroom door. "Ms Sturridge knew we were still inside! This is teacher brutality."
"Not really brutality," Erica pointed out softly. "I mean she didn't like, throw rulers at us."
"Well, it's unlawful imprisonment!" Rachel said. "I'm calling my father. Who is also, I might add, a lawyer. I need his legal advice as well as his fatherly aid."
She whipped her phone out of her pocket, but instead of stabbing at the buttons as Mark had expected she just stared at it.
"I'm not getting any signal," she said, and her voice faltered, sounding as young as she was and not angry for the first time.
Mark dug in his pocket for a phone, as did everyone else around him. Even Nick Ryves put his hand in his pocket, though he did not take his phone out.
Mark stared at his phone blankly for a moment. He did not look up until Jamie spoke.
"Uh," said Jamie. "Well, we're trapped somewhere that our phones won't work. Does this seem unsettlingly like a horror movie to anyone else, or is it just me?" He paused for a brooding moment. "I always hated horror movies," he said finally. "I'm sure I'd die before the opening credits. Especially the ones with monsters or zombies in them. I am certain I would die straight away in the zombie apocalypse. Well, first pee myself and then die."
There was a silence after that. There often was when Jamie spoke. Jamie just kind of nodded his head at himself, earring flashing in the dim light, tucking his hands in his pockets and tilting a smile over at Erica and Rachel. They both smiled faintly back at him.
Mark saw, with a gathering sense of dread, Seb's shoulders bunch.
It was not a huge surprise when he wheeled on Jamie, green eyes narrowing, and said: "You're doing this. Aren't you?"
"Er, are you perhaps paranoid and delusional?" Rachel inquired. "How could Jamie possibly-"
Jamie laughed, the sound swift and cutting, not like Jamie's usual laugh at all. Not that Mark had heard Jamie actually laugh in years.
"Oh yes," he said. "It's totally me. I'm dying to be cooped up here with all of you people. Sorry, Erica and Rachel. You know it's always a pleasure. And okay, um, new guy, Nick, right? I don't really know you, though given the company you keep-"
"Are you in our class?" Nick asked.
Jamie looked at him for a moment. "Yeah," he said at last. "So I don't see us ever getting on."
"Good call," Nick told him.
Jamie shook his head fractionally and transferred his attention back to Seb.
"I have a point!" he announced. "And it is this. A desert island. A closet in which I am playing seven minutes in heaven. A party to which I am inviting people. My ideal life. Do you know what the common factor in all these scenarios would be, as far as I'm concerned? The fact that you would not be there, McFarlane. So if it involves you and me in a room together, you can be pretty sure it's not my idea." Jamie hunched his shoulders defensively, always trying to make himself look even smaller than he actually was, and added: "Are you doing this?"
"No!" Seb snapped.
"Pardon me," Jamie said. "Something happens to make my life miserable and I automatically think of you. It's like Pavlov's dog and the bell."
"Sorry, I don't know Pavlov," Tim said. "Is he in, like, the year above?"
"I don't think so," said Erica. "I'm pretty sure I'd know him then."
"Erica!" said Rachel.
Erica blinked. "Sorry, do you know him?"
"Yeah, um," said Mark. "Look, I don't mean to interrupt you guys or anything, but do you think it might be an idea to find a way to get out of here?"
The longer they stayed cooped up, the better the chances were that something really bad might happen. Seb and Jamie were both already wildly accusing each other of messing with people's phone signals.
It wasn't just that Seb got really angry sometimes, angry enough to make Mark worry.
It was the fact, which was really obvious and which nobody else ever seemed to realise, that Jamie Crawford was a crazy person.
*
The whole family was crazy. Crazy ran in the blood.
Well, not Jamie and Mae's dad. Mark supposed that was why he'd got out when he did.
Mark always remembered a garden party they had gone to when Mark and Jamie were six. They'd brought Mark along so the children could all play together, and it had been a huge house, way bigger even than Jamie's, which previously had been the biggest Mark had ever seen. Mark had been pretty excited. There was a marquee, which at the time he just thought of as a huge party tent, and a ton of the grown-ups were so fancily dressed Mark kept thinking this must be a wedding and looking out for the bride.
It was just a party. The Crawfords were rich, and so were their friends. After a while of hanging around the sides of the marquee and watching Mr and Mrs Crawford, both wearing white linen, wander around shaking people's hands and laughing at stuff that wasn't funny, Jamie and Mark got bored and wandered off to explore the garden holding hands, because you could still hold hands when you were six.
There was an ornamental lake, a weeping willow trailing its leaves on the crystal surface and goldfish surfacing occasionally from the depths. They were both fascinated. Mark just knelt at the edge, watching.
He looked up only when Jamie said, "I'd like to go swimming," held out his arms and, with a beatific smile, fell deliberately backward into the water.
He disappeared and Mark froze. He didn't have any idea what to do—they would get in trouble—everyone would look at them—
It was Jamie's big sister Mae, who had been wandering around the party as aimlessly as they were, who sounded the alarm. She charged across the water-smooth lawn, a small fury of dark hair and dungarees, and howled like a dungaree-clad banshee.
Then all the adults were pouring out of the marquee, a terrifying army in pale linen and fancy hat uniforms, and suddenly with longer legs and the same concentrated ferocity as Mae came Mrs Crawford. She kicked off her high, high ivory-colored heels with strange daintiness as she went, and dived into the pool, a perfect swimmer's dive with her hands over her head.
She emerged from the pool with Jamie clasped firmly to her, flicking her drenched blond hair out of her face with an economical little movement of her head. As she climbed out of the pool, her dress was dripping and streaked with green slime.
She did not look in the least concerned by anything, until Jamie started to cry and clutch at her. Then she looked discomposed, and looked to her husband.
He was staring at her, looking appalled by the scene they had created. He looked even more appalled when Mrs Crawford slid her heels back on, strode over to him and deposited Jamie in his arms.
Then she swanned off to change her clothes. She returned some time later looking cool and immaculate.
Mr Crawford looked around at the other people at the party, and awkwardly, half-heartedly patted Jamie on the back. He whispered "Hush!" into his ear with far more force than he put into comforting him.
And Mae's eyes narrowed. She sat on the ground, a big girl of almost eight, and howled her head off, drowning out Jamie's piteous sobs, embarrassing Mr Crawford completely.
The other guests remembered the Crawford girls making the scene, mostly. But Mark, still frozen with terror by the lake, remembered that Jamie had caused all the trouble in the first place, falling back fearless into the water as if drowning was not a possibility.
Jamie would never talk about it afterward, avoiding the subject as if he'd committed a crime.
Jamie was afraid of a lot, but never the things he should be afraid of.
And he just made things worse for himself.
When they'd been fourteen, Jamie had spent the first couple of weeks looking confused and hurt about how Mark was suddenly ignoring him. Then one of the comments one of them had made tipped him off, and he stopped looking confused, and tried to stop looking hurt.
But he didn't just do that. He started to dress differently. Nothing major, but—some of his shirts were purple now, or had purple in them. Sometimes they were made of different material, material like a girl might wear.
"You're just giving Seb the finger now," Mark said in a low voice to him, the day Jamie wore the purple thing with the buttons.
Jamie looked at him, that bright complicated upset-but-still-something-else look that Jamie used to have around him, the one that made Mark feel bad but angry too.
"I can wear what I want," he said. "That's the point. The other thing? That's just a bonus."
He gave Mark a small smile, crooked and upset and hopeful, and Mark hit Jamie's shoulder on purpose a little too hard going in the door.
It might have all been okay, if Jamie wasn't so stubborn.
A few months later, just after Mark's fifteenth birthday, when Mark hadn't—done anything weird in ages and he was starting to feel a bit more settled and calm, and a bit more horrible about the way Jamie looked sometimes, off by himself listening to music with his shoulders hunched in that way, Seb said at lunchtime in a very neutral voice: "You and Crawford used to hang out a bit once, right?"
Mark thought of how weird it had been, not having Jamie there to celebrate his birthday, and he swallowed down the instinctive denial and answered, desperately casual: "A bit."
Seb made a noncommittal sound, and he and Mark both busied themselves lighting cigarettes. Mark offered Seb his lighter and Seb took it, the light cast by the flame leaping from his cupped hand to lick at his dark lowered lashes and the caramel-tanned curve of his cheek.
Mark never really let himself acknowledge he'd had a bit of a crush on Seb, until it was gone.
"He seems an all-right guy, if he wasn't so, you know." Seb looked at Mark and rolled his eyes. They didn't need to say it. They understood you shouldn't.
Mark rolled his eyes as well. "Yeah. Bit of a laugh," he offered, very cautiously.
Seb shrugged, but not in a hostile way, and the next time Mark was passing Jamie in the halls—entirely coincidentally, he hadn't been looking for a chance, and it was when the halls were mostly empty so nobody would have to see—he said, quietly but fast so he'd be sure to get it out: "You know it doesn't have to be this way."
Jamie blinked about four times very quickly. "Be what way, what?"
"We could all hang out, maybe, I don't know," Mark said, still low and rapid. "If you weren't so-"
"Gay," Jamie said, and the word cracked out, like the sound of someone slapping someone else's face. Mark winced.
"No. I mean there's nothing wrong with it. But why do you have to shove it in people's faces? That's all, that's all I'm talking about. Like the shirts ant stuff."
"We both like football, am I right?" Jamie asked.
It was Mark's turn to blink. "Sure."
"And sometimes people who like football will wear football shirts, and sometimes they won't, and it never matters because nobody ever complains about someone liking football in public, or shoving football in their faces. Because people actually believe there's nothing wrong with that, nothing harmful or disgusting. You're right, there's nothing wrong with it. And that's what the shirts and stuff are about. Except it's way more important than football."
Mark had just been trying to point out a way to make life easier for Jamie, a way to make life easier for all of them. He'd basically said he wanted to be Jamie's friend again, and Jamie was getting angry with him about the way the world worked?
"Sorry, I hadn't realized you like being a freak with no friends," he muttered, and began to walk down the hall, turning his back on Jamie.
"Sure," Jamie said to his back. "If the alternative is being friends with Seb McFarlane. We could all hang out? Not in a million years."
The next day, Jamie came to school with an earring. He gave Seb and Mark both a bright smile as he walked in the classroom door, and honestly Mark thought Seb might explode.
One day someone was going to actually hit Jamie, and Mark didn't know what he would do, and some days Mark was afraid it was going to be him, because Jamie kept riling them up on purpose for no reason at all and there was always the abiding fear Jamie might tell someone about Mark, about the mistakes he'd made. Abby might believe in being honest, but what would she think of Mark then?
Everyone in school altered themselves in some way, to fit in better with your friends, to get along with people. There was no reason for Jamie to make life harder for himself and everyone else. He was crazy.
Cut for length, and part 2 up tomorrow, you guys! Sorry about that.
May 2, 2011
A Free Short Story
'Yes yes' the populace may say. 'The short stories set in the Demon's Lexicon universe are all well and good. But you keep speaking of anthologies. And yet anthologies are dodgy, how do we know we'll like the other stories? How do we know we'll like yours? How's about a short story not set in the Demon's Lexicon universe for sweet, sweet freesies?'
Your entirely imaginary wish is my command. ;)
The fabulous Gwenda Bond has put together a special YA edition of Subterranean magazine, and here it is!
The table of contents is as follows:
"Queen of Atlantis" by Sarah Rees Brennan
"Mirror, Mirror" by Tobias S. Buckell
"Younger Women" by Karen Joy Fowler
"Their Changing Bodies" by Alaya Dawn Johnson
"The Ghost Party" by Richard Larson
"Valley of the Girls" by Kelly Link
"The Fox" by Malinda Lo
"Seek-No-Further" by Tiffany Trent
"Demons, Your Body, and You" by Genevieve Valentine
Am I in some fancy company or what? The stories are released weekly, and Malinda Lo's and Karen Joy Fowler's awesome stories are already up.
As of today, so is mine.
I have constantly insisted that it is Undead Prejudice which leads to the vampire boyfriend being so much more popular than the zombie boyfriend. I search for zombie boyfriends all the time. (Um... in bookshops. Not in... cemeteries. Just so we're clear.) I seldom find them. Though Karen in Daniel Waters's Passing Strange is a pretty awesome zombie girlfriend.
Just because someone is a little more greeny-grey than glamorously pallid, should that be an obstacle to true love? No, I say! Brains, say the zombie boyfriends! But they mean no.
So, this is my story. Sort of Beauty and the Beast - and sort of high fantasy - and a sort of zombie boyfriend.
This is the adorable meet-cute.
The steps down to the cellar were dark and narrow. She tried to go down carefully, but when she missed her footing and grabbed at the wall to support herself her hands slid and found no purchase on the stone. She landed on her face in wet rubble, pulled herself up on her hands and knees and saw a rat scurrying away under a pile of fallen rafters and stones.
A rat. Mede gave a dry little laugh, strangled as soon as born.
"So," she said aloud. "You and I are the only ones alive in this place."
"That's not quite true," said a voice behind her.
Mede scrambled to sit up, to turn and see who was speaking, and her movement must have startled the rat. It streaked out of its hiding place and Mede saw its left side for the first time: saw the fur hanging like an open coat to show a flash of bone, the empty twisted blackness where an eye should have been.
The voice was dark and low, like polluted water running underground.
It said: "The rat's not alive."
I know, I know. So hot. How do I do it? You can read Queen of Atlantis right here. I hope you enjoy!
Your entirely imaginary wish is my command. ;)
The fabulous Gwenda Bond has put together a special YA edition of Subterranean magazine, and here it is!
The table of contents is as follows:
"Queen of Atlantis" by Sarah Rees Brennan
"Mirror, Mirror" by Tobias S. Buckell
"Younger Women" by Karen Joy Fowler
"Their Changing Bodies" by Alaya Dawn Johnson
"The Ghost Party" by Richard Larson
"Valley of the Girls" by Kelly Link
"The Fox" by Malinda Lo
"Seek-No-Further" by Tiffany Trent
"Demons, Your Body, and You" by Genevieve Valentine
Am I in some fancy company or what? The stories are released weekly, and Malinda Lo's and Karen Joy Fowler's awesome stories are already up.
As of today, so is mine.
I have constantly insisted that it is Undead Prejudice which leads to the vampire boyfriend being so much more popular than the zombie boyfriend. I search for zombie boyfriends all the time. (Um... in bookshops. Not in... cemeteries. Just so we're clear.) I seldom find them. Though Karen in Daniel Waters's Passing Strange is a pretty awesome zombie girlfriend.
Just because someone is a little more greeny-grey than glamorously pallid, should that be an obstacle to true love? No, I say! Brains, say the zombie boyfriends! But they mean no.
So, this is my story. Sort of Beauty and the Beast - and sort of high fantasy - and a sort of zombie boyfriend.
This is the adorable meet-cute.
The steps down to the cellar were dark and narrow. She tried to go down carefully, but when she missed her footing and grabbed at the wall to support herself her hands slid and found no purchase on the stone. She landed on her face in wet rubble, pulled herself up on her hands and knees and saw a rat scurrying away under a pile of fallen rafters and stones.
A rat. Mede gave a dry little laugh, strangled as soon as born.
"So," she said aloud. "You and I are the only ones alive in this place."
"That's not quite true," said a voice behind her.
Mede scrambled to sit up, to turn and see who was speaking, and her movement must have startled the rat. It streaked out of its hiding place and Mede saw its left side for the first time: saw the fur hanging like an open coat to show a flash of bone, the empty twisted blackness where an eye should have been.
The voice was dark and low, like polluted water running underground.
It said: "The rat's not alive."
I know, I know. So hot. How do I do it? You can read Queen of Atlantis right here. I hope you enjoy!
