Sarah Rees Brennan's Blog, page 16

Hang Up the Fedora: Reviewers and the YA Mafia

So a couple days ago Holly Black made a post assuring the world there was no group of writers out to get people, since some bloggers were concerned based on conversations about book bloggers and the effect of bad reviews. I thought it was a very valuable post to make, since I don't want book reviewers to be scared, and I don't think there's any reason that they should be.

Then the conversation, as conversations do, got bigger and more convoluted, and many things were brought up, and I ended up with so many thing to say I thought I'd make a post. About all of them. So without further ado...

Writers Are Coming For You!

It is a myth that writers can do anything to you at all. Most writers are frantically trying to make a living with the made-up people in their head. They really don't have the time, energy, power or desire to do something to you.

If reviewers are feeling intimidated, they absolutely shouldn't be. We couldn't do anything to them if we wanted to.

And I don't want to. I have read reviews that made me mad, made me despair at the world and its inherent grossness, made me wonder what cruel practical joker had slipped an entirely different book into my book cover. But I still think people talking about books in any way is awesome. Because I think engaging with and caring about books is awesome.

Here is a promise: no matter what you say about my books on the internet, I will never do anything to harm you in any way. No matter what you say about me on the internet, I will never do anything to harm you in any way.

Because I am bone idle and incapable of arranging to get wet in a rainstorm. Because if I tried to do so, everyone would be like 'Man, the Irish, they really are drunk all the time, aren't they?' and nothing else would happen. (John Scalzi describes several imaginary conversations along these lines.) And because I believe it to be morally wrong.

Naturally all you need is my word, as I am the soul of honour! But also, I could not possibly do it. None of us could.

Something I've heard brought up is that this is a feminist issue.

Won't Somebody Think of the Ladies?

Okay. Books should be reviewed with close attention to serious issues like feminism, sexism, racism, and classism. Because these issues are important. Absolutely. Nobody agrees more than me: if I did not agree I'd be a huge hypocrite, since I have written crazy scads on fictional ladies and everyone's approach to them, to a point where people have said 'Lord, enough with the endless yapping about ladies' to me. To which I have said: Lo, this is my journal, and I will endlessly yap about what I please.

Feminism is a huge deal for me, and I talk about it all the time. I do not, however, single out specific writers and say they are huge anti-feminists. Just because I think a book is anti-feminist does not necessarily mean the writer is. Also, it would not be an effective way to make my points about feminism in books.

Let's take, for instance, an office workplace. Say there is a real problem with laziness in the filing at the office. Say I work in this office. I do not get me a microphone and walk through the office yelling 'CAROLINE! Your filing is an affront to the eyes of God! CAROLINE! Every day and night I think of your filing and how terrible it is! CAROLINE, CAROLINE! Your filing makes me sure that in your domestic life you are a slattern, which is bound to result in your husband leaving you! Also, CAROLINE, I bet nobody in the office really likes you - how could they with filing like yours? - so please CAROLINE, just own up to the fact you're a bad person.'

This is a bad idea for several reasons. For one thing Sally, Bob and Jeff will all go 'Heh heh heh, it's all on Caroline' and they will keep messing up the filing. For another, everyone in the office will think I am just bullying Caroline and will not pay attention to this speech or other things that I say. For another, Caroline will think 'What a jerk! My filing is totally fine!' Basically, if I were to go around slagging off my colleagues by name, I would literally accomplish nothing but making myself look bad. I will not make people think about the issue I've raised, and that's a shame, because that is my goal.

So: nobody is saying 'don't discuss feminism on the internet.' I am here to say 'please, please discuss feminism on the internet, because it's important and because I want to talk about it.' But I am saying getting a microphone and saying 'CAROLINE - or someone else specific - is disgusting' while you can totally do it, won't be a productive thing to say.

The Problem Of Being A Person On The Internet

Justine Larbalestier brings up the issue of online disinhibition effect (otherwise known as people are mean on the internet).

I have said stuff on the internet that I wouldn't have said in person (and regretted it). I have had stuff said to me on the internet that I truly believe people would never have said to my face in a million, trillion years.

The fact that book reviews are casual and are on the internet means bad stuff gets said not only about books (which again - I am glad bad book reviews exist. I am glad my bad book reviews exist. I think bad book reviews can be very valuable) but about authors.

When has someone called me a plagiarist to my face? Never.
When has a professional review called me a plagiarist? Never.
When has a blog called me a plagiarist? Several times, notably once this week.

Sucks to read, and I don't think it's right to write (unless it was true, in which case someone should take out a full-page ad). But it happens. It'd be nice if people didn't say bad stuff about other people on the internet! But people do and probably always will say bad stuff about other people on the internet, and we all have to learn to deal or stay off the internet.

The Problem of Being A Writer And Also Being A Person (Curse You, Alien Overlord Writers)

Ilona Andrews made a great post here about how people views writers as non-people. It is a thing.

So another point raised about writers is that, well, some writers know each other, as you do get to know your colleagues. Think of the office environment again: some you are very good friends with, some you're friendly acquaintances with, some you secretly hate, some you can't remember their name for the life of you and it's so awkward! Some you are carrying on hot affairs with! (Sometimes. I hear. Not me, and I don't know how that rumour got started.)

A blogger called Cleolinda discussed this using the office environment analogy and Ally Carter discussed this saying 'Well... but I really value my writer friends, as anyone values their friends.'

So writers are sometimes friends. But here's the thing: that's okay, because though writers can help each other with their actual writing, and can help each other stay sane, writers cannot really help each others' careers. An agent or an editor might give you a look because your friend is edited or agented by them, and they trust their judgement. They won't take you on if they think your book sucks, because they want to make money. Publishing's a business: money trumps most every concern.

I have writer friends who are very successful. I have writer friends who are not very successful at all. None of them have been able to affect each other's careers even slightly.

Sometimes the thought that someone could 'make or break' my career, or that a good book would guarantee success, sounds like an alluring one as compared to the terrifying reality that everything is kind of a crapshoot. But the reality is what it is.

Writers can blurb books, you might say! ('I would rock that sickly blond sociopath hero like a neurasthenic hurricane - Sarah Rees Brennan') Well, blurbs are great to have, but sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. I have some great blurbs, all of which I was thrilled to get, but they don't appear to have helped my sales. Stephenie Meyer has blurbed books that didn't sell. Blurbs matter about one thousandth as much as covers, and no writer has any control over your cover. Or indeed their own. That's all down to the cruel cover gods.

Also, almost every writer I have ever met cares deeply about books. They will not recommend books they don't like, because they don't want to have people think poorly of their judgement. Sometimes, you will think poorly of their judgement anyway, because they like a book you don't like. But this happens with everyone. My best friend and I don't agree on all books. Another friend of mine and I had an argument about books that led to me kicking a hole in a wall in frustration. (All hail Queen Sarah of OverInvestedInBooksLandia!)

That's why there should be loads of different reviews for books around: because there are always going to be loads of different opinions about books.

Basically, as I already said in Holly Black's post, the only conclusion that can be reached is that authors and reviewers are people, and dealing with people will always be complicated. Some authors are going to behave badly and some reviewers are going to behave badly - but them's the breaks, and at least nobody's career can be destroyed.

Really. If you take away nothing else from these debates, take away that. Everybody's going to be okay.

Guest Post & Giveaway: The Vespertine by Saundra Mitchell

It struck me that you guys have had to read about me yammering on for a while now, without a Break for Sanity or at least a book giveaway to make it worth your while. So I asked the lovely Saundra Mitchell, whose the Vespertine reminds me of a YA Sarah Waters's Affinity (tragic, romantic, magical, historical) to come make a post. And she brought unto us a post which shows off all the fancy American historical details with lovely pictures! (The pictures are important to the contest, so I decided not to put anything under a cut - hence for those who don't want a lovely free book, scroll my pretties scroll! And now without further ado, Ms Mitchell takes the stage...)

One of the things I love best about THE DEMON'S LEXICON series is that you can walk where the characters walk. You can see the characters' sights. And in Sarah's case, you can almost fall off the Millennium Bridge exactly where Nick jumps up to wield his sword.

So when Sarah invited me to talk about THE VESPERTINE, I thought it would be fun to talk about the reality I borrowed, to make my universe come to life.

When you're creating a world where some people are born imbued with elemental gifts, it's important to make sure everything else is solidly grounded in reality.

Coming from a filmmaking background, I made contact sheets to organize the elements of my Baltimore, 1889. In filmmaking, you have contact sheets for EVERYTHING—pictures of the type of actor you want to play a role, pictures of the kinds of clothes you want the characters to wear, pictures of neighborhoods, pictures of random moody objects that evoke the atmosphere, and on and on.

Of course, the first contact sheet has to be of the cast. I actually have actors in mind for most of the characters in the book, but let me introduce you to the four main characters:



















Malese Jow is my Amelia van den Broek, the Dutch-Chinese Mainer who comes to Baltimore to find a husband, and discovers she can see the future in the fires of sunset. Kristen Stewart is my Zora Stewart, Amelia's cousin and best friend. (The last names are coincidence, I swear it!)

For Nathaniel Witherspoon, the mysterious painter and Fourteenth that captures Amelia's heart, I had Ed Westwick in mind. To balance Nathaniel, I picked Zac Efron as my mental image of Thomas Rea, doctor's son and Zora's sweetheart.

Once I had real faces, I needed to build the real time and places. Fortunately, there are loads of amazing historical resources online. All of the streets and landmarks in THE VESPERTINE, you can find standing in Baltimore today. (Well, not the Old Drury, they demolished it in 1917—but you can go to the corner where it once stood!)










This is Druid Hill Park, where my characters go to practice archery and to socialize. It's a large garden park in Downtown Baltimore, popular in 1889, as you can see from this photo from the Maryland Historical Society. It's still popular now, hosting music festivals, the Caribbean Carnival, and housing The Maryland Zoo and The Botanic Gardens of Baltimore.









This is Eutaw Place, where the Stewarts live- featuring the very distinctive Baltimore row house. They're tall and narrow, and they have white marble steps that lead up to each front door. If you've ever seen an episode of THE WIRE, you've see Eutaw Place; people still live in these rowhouses, and call this street home. (This photo is also courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society.)

So that's my cast, and my setting. One of the most fun parts of writing a book set in 1889 was digging into the period clothing. Because my characters are middle class, all of their clothes are a few years behind in fashion, but they're still absolutely gorgeous.

During the course of the book Amelia and Zora both get brand new ball gowns for their season—and like everything else, they come from a real source, the 1885 Harper's Bazar. Zora's gown called for 12 yards of Irish lace; Amelia's is wildly heavy with beading on the hems.











In my quest to make Amelia and Zora's world as real as possible, I spent a lot of time immersed in 1889. I read period cookbooks, and learned how the school system worked. I researched what plants and animals are local and native to Baltimore, so nothing would be out of place. I even snuck an actual historical figure into the book—Judge Bonds, an abolitionist and activist.

I can't tell you how much fun I had creating a world full of magic in the middle of a rich and real historical city. Probably not as much fun as Sarah has on her research jaunts, but I'm a lot clumsier. It's best for everybody if my research stays safely on the page!












(I added this last picture myself so you could see the picture that covers these fine pages. Isn't it an amazing cover? I would cheerfully eat a kitten's head to get one like it.

But how to get the pages into your hands? There is Option A, instantly buy the Vespertine! And also Option B, which is to comment to this post with a picture - or a link to a picture - that makes you think of a book you love. I will choose the winner at random and send them a copy of the Vespertine!)

I hope you enjoyed this lovely post, for it is the last sanity you will get for a while. Next up an account of my writers' retreat, including actual staking and acted out love scenes, and Monday 7th stay tuned for a chance to win another book: an advance copy of the Demon's Surrender.

February Cookie

'Tis the ninth, and that means it is cookie time! And it is Alan's turn to have a cookie of his very own.

Alan dropped his bow at her feet.

"I've got to go," he said, his voice tight.

"What?" Sin asked. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," Alan snapped, and turned on his heel. Sin noticed that he was not heading for his car.

She might not know Alan well enough to recognize when he was lying. Probably nobody knew him well enough for that.

But she could always recognize a bad performance. And Alan was excellent at pretending everything was all right: if he was turning in a bad performance, then something was really wrong.

Sin intended to find out what.

She couldn't think of what she wanted first, though. Toby and Lydie came first. She ran over to Jonas and asked him to watch the kids for a minute, bring them to Trish if she was gone too long, make sure they were fed. Toby was playing with a tiny bow and looked happy, so she didn't disturb him, but she stopped and hugged Lydie and told her she was just going to ask Alan if he would like to stay for dinner, after all.

Then and only then was she allowed to run, and she ran, sure and fleet, legs carrying her in easy motion over the fields in the direction Alan had gone. There were a few fences in her way: she ran at them, sometimes clearing them, sometimes hooking a foot in them and launching herself over them without breaking stride. She knew where she was going and what she was doing. Chasing Alan was easy.

Catching up with Alan was hard, because she had no plan of action for what to do when she drew level with him as he limped determinedly along another fence.

He whirled on her, face very pale, and demanded: "What do you want?"

"What did you think you were doing, running off like that?" Sin asked. "You should've known I'd come after you."

Alan's mouth twisted. "And of course, I can't outrun you."

"Nobody can outrun me," said Sin.

It was just the truth. But it seemed to knock Alan back a little. He almost smiled, and ran one hand roughly through his hair. It made his hair stand up on end, a glinting riot of curls.

"Cynthia," Alan said. "Trust me, you don't want to be here. Will you just go?"

"Trust you?" Sin echoed. "Aren't you, like, a compulsive liar? No, I think I'm going to stay right here."

She illustrated her point by perching herself on the fence.

Alan almost smiled again, but insisted: "You really don't want to-"

He'd been pale before, but now he went grey, his face locked in a spasm of pain. He gritted his teeth for a moment, lips skinned back, grimacing helplessly, and then he fell face forward on the grass.

Sin scrambled off the fence and onto her knees.

"Alan," she said. "Oh my God, Alan-"

He could not answer, that much was clear. He was moaning into the grass, but they didn't sound like conscious moans. They sounded like the long guttural cries of an animal in agony.

Sin manhandled him onto his back, careless of his leg, too desperate to be careful of anything. He screamed once when she was doing it, but she was a dancer and that meant never hesitating once you were committed to a course of action.

When she had his head in her lap, she realized that she'd trapped herself there, but it wasn't like she could have abandoned Alan while he had some sort of fit. She couldn't leave him, not like this, not all alone. So she couldn't get help.

All she could do was watch his body seizing with what seemed like hundreds of separate convulsions, shaking with another rush of pain before the first had completely passed, face turning away from her even as she stroked his hair. The terrible moaning sound seemed to be ripped right from his chest after a while. It went on and on, helpless and exhausted.

She thought it would never end, and then it did. The sky was grey with evening, and Alan's skin looked ashen as the fading light. His body was still shuddering a little with the aftershocks of pain, but the terrible strained tautness had finally gone out of it.

He blinked up at her. His glasses had gone crooked and he looked a little confused.

"Cynthia?"

"What," Sin said, "the hell was that?"

I hope you enjoyed. :)

Demon's Lexicon in Spanish

I am currently in Mexico at a writing retreat, about which more anon! But I thought I would emerge from my land of sunshine, mangos and frantic typing to show you the cover of the Demon's Lexicon in Spanish. It comes out from Versatil next month, and I am super excited!
















I always like to see another of the Many Faces of Nick, and this Nick has both his sword, his talisman and a most excellent atmospheric background! (Also, the ravens. Ravens follow him wherever he goes. Why do birds suddenly appear, every time he draws near?)

I hope you guys like it too!

Write The Change You Want To See In The World

There is a picture I look at when I am feeling generally useless, or terrible, or unmotivated, or despairing, wishing that I had depth perception so I could be a truck driver or you know, any sort of mathematical ability so I could be an accountant.

I find anger very motivating - look at that!

Ms. Magazine did a piece on young adult literature and feminism in their fall edition, and they interviewed me (I felt so fancy. Mum, Ms. Magazine, check me out, are you proud?) They also interviewed smarter people than me, including the editor of the Demon's Lexicon series, Karen Wojtyla. She also edits Holly Black's books, so you can see she is clearly a fabulous editor and all mistakes I make are on me and not her.

I haven't read the piece yet (curse you Irish postal system, always losing my things) but I do remember saying at one point that I loved young adult books the best, and was proud to be writing them at this time, because it was thrilling that teenage girls, who are pretty often denigrated - seen as silly, shrieky, with girly being an insult, and so on - have created this golden age of a genre by loving literature. (Which is not to knock the guy or the grown-up readers of young adult, of course!) It makes me happy to think about people getting profoundly engaged and profoundly influenced by media.

I myself am very influenced by media. Okay, so let me admit to being gross sometimes. I think we all are, sometimes: the last time I realised I was being gross (both sexist and racist, actually) was... earlier today. But let me admit to a time I was specifically gross. At one time in my late teens/early twenties I wouldn't have thought I could be sexist. Because I was a feminist, and all! And yet I clearly remember discussing the female characters in the Harry Potter series and saying such things as 'She's too perfect - but I don't like the faults she has.' It took seeing people say the exact same things I'd said, but about girl characters in books/movies/TV shows I really loved, for me to realise 'Oh, wow. I was being pretty sexist, right about then.' And then I felt awful. But I'm really glad I got to read and watch the girls in books, movies and TV shows that I loved, just the same.

(Memo: this is not to say criticising fictional girls is bad! But one rule for me is seeing different criteria applied to guys than girls - if a guy character never gets criticised for being too perfect/who he's dating/what he's wearing, for instance, that's an indication that Younger Sarah might be doing it wrong.)

The thing about the picture that makes me angry - it doesn't make me angry just because it's sexist, which hey, it is. (Gentlemen: a world of adventure awaits! Ladies: well, you're ladies, right? That is your ONE ONLY POSSIBLE job? Leaving alone the fact that, say, schemer or match-maker might be a better description of what Emma actually does with her time.)

What this picture is really about to me is a portrayal of limitations placed on awesomeness. (I'm not making a call about the shows it portrays, just talking about the portrayal.) And the fiction I like the most is that which says 'There is no limit on awesomeness.' Because, and this seems a ridiculously obvious thing to say, having no limit on awesomeness means more awesomeness.

Like, my very, very first fantasy novel of all time was Tamora Pierce's In the Hand of the Goddess (I think my mother thought it was historical) and I didn't think much about the way the heroine being the action-heroine star of the show, who uses contraception and has sex with several dudes and it's all good. I just thought 'that is an awesome book.' Because I didn't have to trip on any limits to awesomeness put there.

Another example of limits put on awesomeness: books like What Katy Did and The Secret Garden. I love them. I love The Secret Garden so much it's kind of embarrassing. But in both of them a main character gets a seemingly-almost-magically complete healing, and that's a limit placed on awesomeness because it does tend to suggest a character cannot reach their full awesomeness without said healing. But those books were written a while ago, whereas R.J. Anderson's Knife (Spell Hunter in the US) was written quite recently. The wheelchair-using hero, Paul, is offered magical healing, and he says 'Yeah, thanks, but no, there's something else I want.'

The past is another country. We're learning to do things better here.

In Cindy Pon's Silver Phoenix I learned stuff about Asian myth that I didn't know, and that was awesome. I spent a good deal of time explaining and doing imitations for a monster made out of the bits of dead people to my increasingly upset friends.

There is a lot of room for improvement in media. I was horrified to read this post on Elizabeth Scott's blog talking about the LGBTQ landscape in YA - less than ten per cent of submissions have books with gay characters? Not even protagonists, though there should be more - less than ten per cent have them even there existing at all in a whole cast of characters? Methuselah on a bicycle.

But one of the most popular YA series in the world right now (The Hunger Games) centres on an action heroine. I saw a whole crowd of (mostly teenage girl) readers let out a spontaneous cheer at the mention of the gay couple in Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments books. There are books like Malinda Lo's Ash with a lesbian romance front and centre, and also teens can watch a video of someone saying 'hey, I'm okay, I'm awesome, I have this great partner, I wrote a book!' And that matters. (And since I have mentioned both Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo, I wish to link to their Diversity in YA, because I think it's an excellent thing that I am really proud to be part of.)

So, I've got to believe it's getting better, it's getting better all the time. And I look at Awesomeness-Limiting portrayals of media and I think 'that's not all there is, there is going to be more and more awesomeness until the awesomeness-limiting is eliminated.' And creating (to the best of one's ability, which I do, though I've been deliberately not mentioning my own stuff in this post) and appreciating awesomeness?

That's really important. So I think about that, and I feel better.

In fact, I feel awesome.

Surrender to the Magic of SONG!

I am blue and not really capable of forming coherent sentences (some might argue that I never had this power!) so I thought it might be fun to be a bit silly and also to anticipate the run-up to Demon's Surrender. I did a soundtrack for the Demon's Lexicon here and talked about my Demon's Covenant songs basically all over the place.

Hence, this post, which is about songs I listened to while writing Demon's Surrender. (I have left out... some of the country songs. Because people don't always understand about Patty Loveless and Reba McEntire. But it would just be base lies to leave out Taylor Swift.)

Help I'm Alive, Metric

I tremble/They're going to eat me alive/If I stumble

Sin, and demons in general, and Anzu in particular.

Centre of Attention, Jackson Waters

You think you're the sun/The whole world revolves around you/The centre of attention/And everyone is drawn to you

You have to believe in the performance to fool the audience. Sin knows that.

I'd Lie, Taylor Swift

If you asked me if I love him/I'd lie

Taylor Swift is my MUSE. I don't know why! But also, this song is about love, and lies, and so obviously it fit in.

London Calling, the Clash

London calling to the faraway towns/now war is declared and battle come down/London calling to the underworld

Almost the entirety of Surrender is set in London: though I love skimming around England, in this book I thought it was best to have a crisis point and a focus point.

When You Love Someone, Bethany Dillon

Never felt like such a fool in front of anyone/I guess that's what you do when you love someone/If I fall I try a little harder and get back up/There's no way to ever really know/How to protect yourself or predict the outcome/You do anything when you love someone

The nature of love, as the characters are learning it: how painful and humiliating it can be, how stubborn about it you have to be.

Gotta Be Somebody, Nickelback

I'll be holding my breath/Right up til the end/Everyone wants to feel like someone cares/Someone to love with my life in their hands/There's got to be somebody for me like that

Alan being a hopeless romantic, emphasis on the hopeless, pining for and idealising human love: Mae, his aunt Natasha, and how he betrays it.

He's Not A Boy, The Like

He's not a boy that you can tame/He's not a boy that you can save

Nick, man. He's not really a boy at all, is the whole problem.

Short Skirt Long Jacket, Cake

I want a girl with a mind like a diamond/I want a girl who knows what's best/Who's fast, and thorough, and sharp as a tack/She's playing with her jewellery/She's putting up her hair/She's touring the facilities and picking up slack

This is cheating, as I used it for Covenant too, but while in Covenant it was for Mae, Annabel and Nick wishing someone would tell him what to do, in Surrender it's all those things and Sin's combined resentment, admiration and empathy with a take-charge lady (Mae) and ambition to be one (Merris)

Jack the Giant Killer, The Nields

Go lock your door/I'm strong I'm sure/I'll knock you down

Sin - Mae being a heroine without magical or asskicking powers is important to me, but I also love asskicking, and it was tremendous fun to write from the point of view of a heroine who could do it. More than that, who's an athlete - her body her weapon, in several ways. (So much ballet and gymnastics watched!) And then there's the fact that with Sin I got to explore a very different sibling bond - when your siblings are much younger than you and they're all you have, you have to be so strong for them.

Tanglewood Tree, Tracy Grammer & Dave Carter

Love is a light in the sky, and an unspoken lie/And a half-whispered prayer/Love is... cold when the summer is spent/In the jade heart's lament/For the faith of a child

About kids growing up really fast, and that love, the light in the sky, may be a city burning.

Love Remains The Same, Gavin Rossdale

Half the time the world is ending/Truth is I am done pretending/I never thought that I had any more to give/You're pushing me so far/That here I am without you

What do you do when you lose someone you love - does the love still count? Do you change back, to who you were before that person? If not, how do you change?

Everything Changes, Staind

I am the mess you chose/The closet you cannot close/The devil in you, I suppose

Or, Demons Will Ruin Your Life Forever, Signed, Alan, Jamie, Mae and Sin.

The Book of Love, Peter Gabriel

The book of love is long and boring/And written very long ago/It's full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes/And things we're all too young to know

Part of the joy and tragedy of YA is that it's all about horrible things happening to really young people! And seeing what they do about it, and what gets them through.

Shattered, Trading Yesterday

Yesterday I died/Tomorrow's bleeding/The future's open wide/Beyond believing/And I've lost who I am/And I can't understand

Some... bad... stuff... is going to happen? And some... everybody... is going to be pretty upset!

So, who has songs for particular books? I remember I had a playlist for L.J. Smith, back in the day. (She was my Stephenie Meyer in all ways possible!)

The Big News

Well, I have several pieces of news I have been forbidden to tell you guys for some time, but now I am finally allowed to tell you one very exciting bit of news!

If you have seen me at a signing, I have probably already told you, since I have no discretion whatsoever.

FILM RIGHTS

Film rights to Sarah Rees Brennan's THE DEMON'S LEXICON, about two brothers hunted by a powerful magician's circle after their mother steals a charm and when the eldest is marked by a demon, the younger must save him but unwittingly uncovers the darkest of secrets, optioned to Parallel films (Triage starring Colin Farrell) by Kassie Evashevski at United Talent Agency, on behalf of Kristin Nelson at Nelson Literary Agency.

Ally Carter has done an awesome blog post on how movies are made, and what terms mean, but basically an option is Parallel saying 'Hmm, we would like to reserve the right to think about making Demon's Lexicon into a movie. It'll be our property to make for a year or so, how about that?' And if you are me, you say 'Sure!' and are delighted.

Parallel Films is amazing, and their films include Breakfast on Pluto and Intermission both of which star Cillian Murphy. They also do TV programs and miniseries...eses, one of which is Neverland, directed by Nick Willing (who directed SyFy's Alice, my favourite miniseries of the decade). Which is to say, I think if they do make a film (or hey, TV show or a miniseries) it will be amazing, and they won't skimp on any of the dark or risky bits of the book.

So I'm thrilled! But of course, another important factor is the fact I am super curious regarding who you guys think would be good to play the characters.

Parallel seems to like working with Cillian Murphy. I must say I am all for that. He can play any role he likes.

He can play Nick. He can play Alan. He can play Mae.
























See? It would be awesome.

In timing that seems meant to be, I found a fanvid for possible Demon's Lexicon casting last night, which I thought was awesome. So: tell me your thoughts, ask me your questions about the process, and show me your pictures! I'd love to know what you think, and will tell you anything I know.

The First Surrender Cookie of the New Year

I just realised it was the ninth and went scrambling through my PDF of The Demon's Surrender to find you guys your rightful January cookie! Nick came second in the Main Characters Poll, which meant it was time for a Nick cookie, and the hasty vote I took on twitter indicated that people would rather see Nick Maybe Exposing Some Sort of Emotion rather than Exposing His Chest. (Though chest got a few votes as well...)

I will be posting again tomorrow, because I have some NEWS to announce!

This cookie needs a sentence of explanation first, but for those entirely opposed to spoilers, it lies beneath the cut in italics.


Sin, Nick and Alan are in Nick and Alan's flat in London. Alan has just had what looks more or less like a fit. Or like, say, being invisibly tortured...

Nick acted, grabbing hold of both Alan's arms and almost throwing him into one of the chairs by their small round kitchen table.

"Now," Nick said. "Tell me what's going on."

Sin slipped in, eel-swift, to block Alan from Nick's view. "Leave him alone. Have you no pity?"

Nick put a hand to Sin's throat, forcing her head back. The demon's attention was on her now, his eyes glittering.

"Don't stand between me and my brother," Nick said softly. "And no."

"Don't touch her," Alan commanded, his voice thin and hoarse.

Nick released Sin's throat and stepped back, until he was behind the counter, as if he did not trust himself not to lash out unless there was a barrier in his way.

Sin didn't trust him either.

"She knows what's going on," Nick observed. "Obviously. How many people know? Why did you lie to me? Why do you always lie?"

"It's in my nature," Alan said in a low voice, and then more clearly: "I didn't want you to get upset. There was no point in telling you."

"No point," Nick echoed.

"No," said Alan. "There's nothing you can do. It's just Gerald demonstrating his power over me. He wants you to be upset, so when he comes to you with demands, you'll do what he wants."

Alan had decided not to mention that there had already been demands, Sin noticed. She turned towards Alan, joining him in this conspiracy almost without a thought. She bowed her head as if she was fussing over him, making sure Nick could not see her face.

Her eyes and Alan's met in perfect understanding.

In his nature, indeed.

"And you didn't think I should know this," Nick said.

"I didn't feel like giving him the satisfaction," Alan returned.

"He was trying to keep it from everyone," Sin added. "I happened to see him have another attack, the day I was teaching him archery up on the hill. If I'd thought it would do you any good to know, I would have told you."

Perfectly true, as far as it went.

She looked up to see if Nick was buying it. He was standing with his arms braced on the counter and his head bowed.

"What are we going to do?" he asked, and then louder, his voice furious: "What's the plan?"

"Oh, well," Alan said, his voice gentle and tired. "That's the problem. There isn't one."

"What do you mean, there isn't one?"

"Think about it, Nick," said Alan. "I can't make a plan. If there was a plan, I couldn't know it. Gerald could torture it out of me anytime he liked."

Nick's shoulders bunched as Alan spoke. His head stayed bowed.

"What are we meant to do then," he snarled. "Just sit and wait until he comes with his demands? Or until he pushes you too far and kills you?"

"The second would be preferable," Alan said. "I won't have you a magician's slave."

"Why not?" Nick demanded. "What does it matter? I was one before."

"That was before you were mine," Alan said. His voice was steadier, now. "Nick. If I do die. If it happens, I hope it won't, but if it does. It's all right. I'll feel all right about it, if I can leave you behind safe, with Mae and Jamie. It will be like leaving behind a life's work. Do you know something? I remember snatches of things before you came, bits and pieces about my mother. But as far back as I can think in a straight line, from that point of my life to this, there's you, and wanting to take care of you. That's what I remember. It's all right."

Nick did look up then.

"I remember my life, before you," he said, his voice chilly and distant. "Don't make me live like that again."

"Nick," Alan said.

"Nick," Nick repeated, viciously. "What was that, in the beginning, but some baby name you used because you heard Olivia call me Hnikarr. A demon's name in a child's mouth. Until you turned it into the biggest lie you ever told. Nicholas Ryves. As if there was such a person. As if I was a person. Who do you think I'll be, when you die?"

Hope you enjoyed! Tomorrow, NEWS!

Hey, 2011! Hey, y'all!

Blog posts were a bit light on the ground in December, though I am super pleased you guys liked the Christmas present! I hope you all had a good holiday season, whatever you celebrate ('Off Work Celebration Week' being a fine festive time). And I hope you got good presents.

I was in fact blogging a bit during December, but not on my blog. Here are some blog posts I did make!

Christmas Couple

Money Island

Magic And Milk Bottles

I Am Totally Team Team

And okay, I didn't make this blog post, but YOU GUYS: Mae is a KITTEN! I love cats, and I love seeing my girl get some love.

Now I have been thinking about blog posts I would like to make, about Times I Have Been A Bad Feminist and Demon's Surrender and favourite couples and a Voyage of the Dawn Treader parody and news I will be able to tell you soon and pictures! I thought I'd start by showing you some excellent pictures and then think of what to do next! (Votes welcome.)

Fabulous artist Hanna Osadko drew me some illustrations for the Ukrainian edition of Demon's Lexicon, and I have been given permission to show you all some of them, with thanks to her, my translator and Bohdan publishing house!
































Ain't they cool? I feel very lucky to have such awesomeness from 2010. It isn't the only illustrated edition of Demon's Lexicon out there. The Czech edition, published by Zoner Press, has saucy, naked demons. What more could one ask for?

The Second Half of the Christmas Present

And now the second half of the Christmas present, even more shockingly long than the first! And with my thanks to all those who have read The Demon's Lexicon and The Demon's Covenant. (This story, as I should perhaps have warned last time but I thought it was implicit, is actually set during the Demon's Covenant, and thus spoils it a ton.)

Stuff that will make Sarah cry: saying 'I wish book three was from Jamie's pov' is kind of like saying 'Man, I wish this short story/hat was a book/coat' and is a sad thing for any present-giver to hear! And while this story is on the world wide web and thus free to all, a) written for fans and b) I tend to assume people reading the blog are fans, so taking the time to tell me in the Present For Fans post 'Oh, I'm not a fan, I haven't read your books' is kind of upsetting also! Unless followed by 'but now I want to' which is nice, but I am still distressed you have been spoiled so much. ;)

If this present has made you say to yourself 'Self, what I need is more lovely Christmas presents by writer folk' I have a link for you! The December Lights Project is a collection of Christmas short stories written by fabulous people like Sherwood Smith ( sartorias ) and Karen Healey ( karenhealey ).

Part 1 of Nick and Jamie Go to the Movies is here.

Without further ado, I hope you enjoy:

On the next day, Gerald sent a message saying to meet him after school in the art room.

Seb always stayed late after his art class, so Jamie was fully aware of who was going to be there, and he told himself all day that he wasn't going.

He was seriously annoyed with himself when he went anyway.

Gerald and Seb were having a discussion in low, sharp voices, but when Gerald saw Jamie leaning in the doorway he straightened up and gave him one of his beautiful smiles.

"I'm glad you're here," he said.

Jamie could feel himself flushing. He stared at the floor. "Yeah, hi," he mumbled, which was not 'Wicked magician, your blandishments are useless against me.'

"I'd like it if we got on better," Seb exclaimed awkwardly.

"It's such a coincidence that you developed that wish at the same time the magicians came to town," Jamie said. "Not that I suspect your motives at all, not at all. For I know you are an honourable gentleman."

"I told you this was useless," Seb snapped at Gerald.

"Give us a moment," Gerald suggested, and Seb slunk out, exchanging nasty glances with Jamie as he went by.

"What would you do if I said that I'd go with you, but I wanted you to leave Seb behind?" Jamie asked, and wanted to bite out his tongue. It sounded so petty, and besides that it wasn't like Jamie would sign up to be a magician as long as everything was just the way he wanted.

"I wouldn't do it," Gerald said. "And you wouldn't want me to. I mean it when I tell you that our kind has to stick together. Everyone in the circle is under my care. I want you to be able to trust that."

"You always say the right thing," Jamie said slowly. "Are there classes for that, too? 'Teaching Magicians How To Be Totally Smooth'? I could use a class like that."

"You're fine the way you are," Gerald said. "That's what I keep trying to tell you."

Jamie looked back at the floor. He refused to betray himself too much.

He was terrified sometimes, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Gerald who always seemed like he genuinely cared to betray that he was just a liar, like Alan, like Jamie. He had to be.

He was terrified sometimes that if he did betray himself, Gerald might actually respond, and Jamie would never know if it was a way to make him join the Circle.

Jamie didn't have a lot of pride, but he had enough for that idea to be horrifying.

"I'm not asking you to become any different," Gerald continued. "I'm just asking you to be who you really are."

"I think being a murderer might make me different," Jamie said in a low voice.

"We don't kill people," Gerald said. "Demons kill people."

"If you open the door of a tiger's cage and it gets out and kills people, though, you're a bit responsible."

"I thought you and Nick were spending time together," Gerald observed. "Do you think he's nothing but a tiger, or some other bloodthirsty animal? Or does he have a mind?"

"Of course he has a mind!" Jamie said.

"Then it's the demon's responsibility," Gerald continued. "Not ours."

Jamie opened his mouth and then shut it again. He shouldn't keep flattering himself with the delusion that he could make the right argument, and rescue Gerald from his evil ways. He knew, intellectually he did know, that it was dumb, and that Gerald didn't want to be saved.

He saw Gerald's feet cross the piece of floor he was concentrating on, and looked up into his eyes.

"I know it's not quite as simple as that," Gerald said. "That's the world. It's all shades of gray, and it all hurts. But we're in this together, all of us magicians. You and me. Things will be easier than this. Things will be better than this, when you come with me. I promise you that."

Jamie suppressed a shiver, and looked away to another patch of the floor. Gerald said nothing more. He just left, quietly, leaving the door open with the light streaming through it.

Left alone but with Seb and Gerald presumably outside the outbuilding where art class was held, Jamie felt a bit uncertain of how to proceed. He looked at the easel where Seb had been drawing, and saw a landscape done all in green and gold, hills and hanging leaves that looked as if they could drift right out of the picture.

Jamie went over to it and looked at it more closely, and then flipped over the heavy white page to see the page that lay beneath. It was a quick, clever sketch, all in black and white, of the entrance hallway in the magicians' house. There were shadows spilling out of one door, almost forming shapes.

"Hey!" Seb said from the doorway. "What do you think you're doing?"

Naturally, he shoved Jamie out of the way and seized the big notepad jealously in his ungracious arms.

"Just looking," Jamie said mildly.

"Well, what did you see? And it doesn't mean anything. And they're private."

"I only saw a couple of pictures," Jamie said. "And they're amazing."

"Oh," Seb said.

Jamie was stunned to see Seb's eyes drop. He kept clutching the notepad like it was his firstborn child, but he also blushed a bit.

"I can't believe someone our age drew them," Jamie said. "You total idiot."

Seb's mouth fell open. "Hey. What are – you make no sense. If you – if you really like them, why are you insulting me?"

"I was always insulting you, I just talk a lot and it took me a minute to get round to it," Jamie snapped. "You're really talented! Why do you spend all your time mooching around the bike shed and joining up with evil magic gangs when you could be focusing on this?"

Seb bit his lip. "If you really like them," he said, "you can-"

"You make me sick," Jamie told him, and walked out.

Except Jamie couldn't even make a dramatic exit, because Seb spoke and for some reason Jamie stopped to listen to him.

"So it's Gerald, is it?"

Jamie said nothing, but he could feel the blood rushing hot up into his face, betraying him quite sufficiently.

"I can't believe it," Seb said after a moment, his voice thickening and twisting. "After all that you've said, after your great moral stance. You're such a hypocrite."

"Takes one," said Jamie, and took off.

That's the world, and it hurts, Gerald had said. But that didn't seem to be the world for everyone. Jamie loved music and he hadn't been any good at the recorder, let alone the guitar. He loved dancing and he wasn't ever going to be as good at it as Mae or Nick. He loved art, and someone as hateful as Seb was brilliant at it. He loved all the stuff that made the world beautiful, that people made and that made the world nicer.

And he couldn't do any of it. The only thing Jamie was good at was magic, and magic killed.

*

He was a little surprised to find Nick there when he got home, and more than a little anxious. He remembered Mum's reaction to Darren very well.

He was more than a little stunned when Mum seemed to rather take to Nick, based on shared love for fencing or something equally inexplicable, and invited him to stay the night.

It was fine for Mum. Nick wasn't staying in her room.

Not that Nick staying in Mum's room would have been any better. Oh, horrible thoughts, terrible mental image.

Nick slept in a funny way. He didn't make any sounds, or move at all. Jamie kept peeping over the edge of his bed to check Nick was still alive.

Nick had taken a pillow and a blanket, and apparently just gone to sleep. Creepy, quiet sleep.

Jamie could only see Nick's ice-pale profile, tucked against a pillow, and the curve of his shoulder where the blanket had slipped down. Shoulders did not tell you if someone was breathing.

Jamie reached tentatively down from the mattress, with intent to poke Nick in the shoulder and check if he moved in his sleep. Dead people did not move.

His hand never connected. Before the gesture was half complete, Nick moved. He went from sleeping to attacking in one smooth silent move, and Jamie froze with black bleak eyes staring up into his, and a knife glittering in the moonlight a whisper away from the exposed veins running along the inside of Jamie's arm.

Nick's eyes narrowed, slants of shadows, like a door ajar with shadows spilling out instead of light. Jamie thought of Seb's picture of the magicians' house, and the shadows waiting there.

"Sorry," he whispered.

"No more sudden moves," Nick said.

Jamie drew his arm carefully away, and lay back down on the bed. He curled under the covers and realised that he'd been lying to himself again: lie number five thousand and forty-six, and if he wasn't actually himself he would think about leaving… himself.

He hadn't been worried about Nick. He'd just been scared.

There was a demon in his bedroom, again.

Jamie lay and watched the moonlight cast shapes like ghosts on his ceiling, and thought about the cold weight of the demon's mark on his arm, and knowing he was going to die.

Gerald could chop logic about whose responsibility it was, but he didn't know what Jamie knew. Jamie wanted no hand in making people feel fear like that.

Eventually he got out of bed, not because he'd decided to face his fears – Jamie was a big fan of running away from his fears at speed – but because he needed to go to the bathroom.

He saw Nick's eyes were open, blank as a doll's, fixed on the ceiling, and sank to the floor with a sigh, drawing his knees up to his chest.

"Don't take this the wrong way," he said. "But what are you doing here?"

Nick levered himself up on his elbows and gave Jamie the same blank look he'd been aiming at the ceiling. Muscle rippled under his skin as he moved, but because it was Nick, even the view of a really amazing chest was spoiled by the fact he had a scar there because he was a demon who wore an anti-demon talisman. It was like a bad smell wearing air freshener around its neck, if smells had necks.

"I thought friends were supposed to do stuff like this," he grated out.

"Sleepovers," said Jamie, and did not say: well, yes, when you are ten. "Sure," he said weakly.

"If you want me to do things differently, you have to tell me what to do," Nick said in his flat voice.

"I'm not really the issuing commands type," Jamie said.

"Mae can tell me what to do," Nick observed.

There might be a hint of wistfulness beneath the impassivity there, Jamie thought, and wondered if Nick had a demonic version of a crush on his sister because she was bossier than God.

He employed the language of a past teacher of Mae's, and said tactfully: "Mae is a commendably though sometimes excessively forthright soul. I can't do that. Where are you keeping your knife when you have hardly any clothes on?"

"That one I was keeping under my pillow," Nick said.

"There are other – I have no further questions," Jamie told him hastily. "None at all."

Nick seemed to take this as a signal to lie back. Wow, with abs like that, who needed basic morality?

"I don't want you to think I don't, like, appreciate the friendship gestures," Jamie said, snapping out of the brief moment of distraction. Nick was silent, so Jamie decided to reach out despite the knives of last time. He patted Nick gingerly on the shoulder.

Nick flinched. "What are you doing?"

"I was expressing a measured amount of friendly affection," Jamie explained.

"Are you done with the affection now?" Nick asked. "Can I go to sleep?"

He rolled over onto his stomach, throwing an arm over the back of his messy hair. Jamie stood.

When he got back from the bathroom Nick woke up, tackled him and held a knife to his throat, but aside from that it was a beautiful moment.

*

"I don't even believe this," Jamie said. "Lunchtime is a sacred time for relaxing. Also I think it is illegal for us to leave school grounds!"

"It's not illegal, it's just forbidden." Nick frowned. "I'm pretty sure."

"Oh, that's amazing, I'm going to prison," Jamie said. "Do you think it will be worse than school? Is there homework in prison? Do you have to do it in your cell? Do they have desks in prison cells?"

"Just throw the knife," Nick said.

Jamie threw the knife. He kept his eyes open and winged one of the tree branches, at which point the knife went sailing over the neighbour's fence.

Jamie went indoors to wash his hands free of knife taint while Nick went to collect the knife, and found Alan in the kitchen making himself a sandwich.

"Hey again, Jamie," Alan said, mouth curving. "Nice to see you back. Sandwich?"

"Yes, please," Jamie said, collapsing into a kitchen chair. "Nick is getting his knife back. Don't ask questions."

"Wasn't going to," Alan said equably, but his mouth went flat at the mention of Nick's name.

Jamie straightened up in his chair. There was a window covered with one of those big, blurry see-through yellow stickers behind Alan, touching his red hair with muted gold, like a tarnishing halo.

"Something happened to you guys when you were gone," Jamie ventured. "Whose fault was it?"

He was pretty sure he only felt brave enough to ask because he thought chances were Alan would lie to him.

"My fault," Alan said, staring at the dull blade of his knife. "Sometimes you make a decision. And it feels like the only decision you can make. And then, without quite realising how it happened or feeling very different, you know you've done evil. You're evil." He glanced over at Jamie, and then sent him a rueful, sideways smile. "Is that ominous and cryptic enough for you? I'm sorry. You must be totally confused."

"No," Jamie said, his mouth dry, and offered Alan a tremulous, tragic smile back. "I understand some of it."

Alan gave Jamie his sandwich, and gave Jamie's shoulder a little squeeze as he did so. Jamie leaned into the touch and felt more sympathy for Alan than he had since Black Arthur's house.

"What do you think about evil?" Jamie asked Nick as they drove back to school.

"I don't think about abstract concepts much."

Jamie swallowed. Just this once, he felt it would be really helpful if Nick's voice showed some expression.

"Do you think you're evil?" he asked, a little desperately.

He looked imploringly over at Nick, who was looking straight ahead because he was driving, and because it would never have occurred to him to look over at Jamie anyway.

"Probably," Nick said at last. "It wouldn't matter, except that Alan minds."

"Right," Jamie said, and rubbed his knuckles hard against his forehead, feeling the points of bone roll beneath his skin. "I think I'd like to get drunk."

"Not a good idea," Nick said. "Messes up your reflexes."

"My reflexes are terrible anyway!" Jamie shouted.

"That is a point."

"And I think it might make me feel better," Jamie said. "Or at least – at least feel less bad. I don't know. And it's not like you would know."

"About feelings?" Nick asked. "Not so much. Where do you want to get drunk, then?"

Jamie decided later that this counted as Nick enabling him. Fortunately Mae rescued him, though not before he'd almost fallen down the stairs, got sick, told Mae he was crazy about Gerald, and been not-entirely-rude to Seb, which was against Jamie's personal policy.

But at least on Saturday Mae found out Seb was a magician, and there was one person in the world he didn't have to lie to anymore.

*

The way Mum liked Nick was wrong, sick and wrong, especially when they conspired to make Jamie exercise, not just on Saturday when he was hung over, but on the Sunday following as well.

"A daily exercise regime is very beneficial to the constitution in all sorts of ways," Mum said, looking approvingly at Nick while Nick made her an omelette.

Mae was upstairs sleeping late, like all rational people on Sunday mornings. Like Jamie himself had been, before demonic invasion of his home.

"But not on Sunday," Jamie protested. "Resting on Sunday is holy. It's like the Bible says. Restliness is next to cleanliness is next to godliness. I'm pretty certain of this."

"Daily means every day," Nick said in a bored voice, adding salt and pepper.

"Oh, you think you're fancy because you got a B minus on the last English test," Jamie accused. "And you are a venial woman, accepting bribes of food to betray your only son, like a food Judas."

"Perhaps we should wake Mavis," Mum said, glancing at the ceiling.

"I wouldn't," Jamie advised. Matricide on a Sunday was probably extra sinful, he thought.

"She could stand to exercise more as well," Mum said. "Get her figure in trim."

"Mae looks as if she's intelligent enough to find things to eat," Nick said, and shoved a plate across the kitchen island at Mum. "That's not a bad thing. You two don't eat."

"I have a dietary plan," Mum said, and began eating the omelette. "This is really excellent," she added.

"I tried to grate some cheese for myself one time and I had to go to hospital," Jamie said. "Can I have an omelette?"

"No," Nick said. "Come on."

"Always a pleasure, Nicholas," Mum said, with a warmer smile than Jamie had seen her bestow on anyone since Cliff. "You're welcome back anytime."

Jamie really wasn't sure how Nick had done it. Mum had called the police and reported a dangerous-looking trespasser when she'd found Darren watching TV in the parlour. It wouldn't have been so bad if she hadn't met Darren five times already.

*

Mum's rash words came back to haunt them that very evening. Mum was sitting in the dining room with papers spread out before her, looking intent and absorbed, which was Mum's version of being happy, and Mae was at the kitchen table reading Sylvia Plath and listening to something on her iPod so loud that Jamie could faintly hear the drums.

Jamie vacillated between one room and the other, one table and the other, and one occupied family member and the other.

"James, could you stop hovering, I have work to do," Mum said sharply after his fifth drift by the open doors.

Jamie took a step back. "Right," he said. "Of course. No. Sorry."

Mum pulled the thin gold bracelet around her wrist taut: for a moment Jamie thought it might snap.

"I apologise, James, but I really do have work," she said, the edges of her voice smoothed away. She looked back at her work, then looked back up with a visible effort. "In a couple of weeks a few clients and I are planning a trip to a Handel concert. I did wonder if you might like to accompany us. But you would probably find it dull."

"No," Jamie said. "I wouldn't. I mean, I'd like to go."

"Excellent," Mum told him, and then gave him a slightly fixed stare and smile. Jamie took the hint and gently closed the door.

He wandered back out to Mae, who lifted her pink head from her book and smiled at him. Jamie came and took the seat beside her, and Mae silently offered him an earbud.

He accepted it. He didn't much fancy this kind of music: it made him think of the Goblin Market, that hidden night-time place wheeling out of control, with magic rough and unfinished, not tamed like it could be. But he listened because Mae was listening, and their fingers on the tabletop tapped out the same rhythm. He leaned against her soft shoulder.

"Are you still mad at me for lying?" he asked, in a muted voice.

"I CAN'T HEAR YOU," Mae said, and then pressed pause on her iPod.

"Are you still mad at me?" Jamie repeated.

Mae looked at him for a moment, her stubborn mouth screwed up with thought and lingering hurt. Jamie had always been able to read everything she felt on her face: he guessed most people could.

"I don't get mad at you," Mae said eventually, and put her arm around him. "I just, you know. When you rile me I go into your room and steal your stuff, and sell it on ebay."

"Seems fair," Jamie responded, and sank lower on his seat so he could rest his head on Mae's shoulder, even though he was quite a bit taller than her by now. She leaned her cheek against his forehead, and pressed play on the iPod again, and he sat there listening to drums with a pink fringe obscuring his vision.

Eventually he became aware of the doorbell ringing, and he got up to get the Chinese food.

Except Mum had already answered the door, and it wasn't the delivery guy. It was Nick.

He and Mum seemed to be having a chat.

"-just not a very demonstrative person," Mum said. "I don't see why society demands that we all have to wander around discussing our private emotions and making displays."

Nick, arms crossed, and leaning against the doorframe, nodded vigorously.

"You should call me Annabel," Mum told him. "Oh James, there you are. I called for you."

"I was listening to Mae's music," Jamie explained. "Nick, I am not going to exercise any more, and if you try to make me, I will begin sobbing uncontrollably and talk to you about my feelings incessantly. For hours."

"There's no need to get nasty," Nick drawled. "We're going to the movies."

Jamie blinked. "We are-"

"I said if you threw the-"

"OH YES I REMEMBER NOW," Jamie shouted before Nick could say 'knife' in front of his mother, though the way things were going she would probably just nod and murmur approvingly about the ancient and noble knife-throwing art. "We totally are. Come on then!"

Nick wheeled and disappeared into darkness. He could be a bit abrupt like that. Not to say mannerless.

"Oh great," Jamie muttered.

"Have fun, James," Mum said. "I like that boy. I think he's a rough diamond."

She patted Jamie, with extreme awkwardness, on his shoulder, and Jamie realised with incredulous horror that she was giving him her blessing.

"I'm not going out with Nick, thank you," he said. "I have enough problems! You go out with him if you like him so much."

He ventured out into the darkness, because he had learned from trying to hide in the cupboard from jogging that Nick just came back and started providing incentives to move like knives.

Then he dashed back and said: "But seriously no, don't go out with him, because that would be disturbing."

Mum gave him a look that said he was being a little too unique again. "Enjoy the movie, James," she said firmly, and shut the door.

Leaving Jamie alone out in the dark, about to have to negotiate a new sort of social engagement with Nick. Oh how sharper than a serpent's tooth it was to have a mother who tried to set you up with demons. Or something.

"So what do you want to see?" Jamie asked once he was in the car.

"I don't know," Nick answered.

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"I've never been to the movies before," Nick said.

"You've never seen a movie before?"

"I've seen movies," Nick said. "Alan likes costume dramas."

Things were worse than Jamie had feared. "Do you like costume dramas?" Jamie asked carefully.

"No," said Nick.

"I'll just choose the movie, then," Jamie decided.

"All right," Nick said. After a moment, he offered: "Your mother seems to be a nice sort of mother to have."

"Don't sleep with my mother, Nick!" Jamie commanded.

"All right," Nick said.

Nick's mother Olivia had looked a lot like Nick, although her face had formed expressions on account of she'd been human. She'd been tall, dark and terrifying like Nick: at the time Jamie had thought she seemed just the kind of mother Nick would have. She'd been very dramatic, which Nick was all the time.

He didn't exactly mean to be, though, Jamie supposed. Olivia had been demonstrative enough, though what she'd displayed toward Nick was horror and hatred. Jamie could sort of see why a mother who wasn't demonstrative might appeal to Nick.

Jamie chose the movie mostly based on the fact some guy was holding a sword in the poster.

His virtue was rewarded when the movie opened with the sword-wielding guy having some sort of wrestling match in the sand which involved having his shirt wrestled right off.

Jamie leaned over to where Nick sat, still and cold as a statue in the flickering darkness, and whispered: "This movie is awesome."

*

"That movie was ridiculous," Nick said in the parking lot afterward.

"Oh, no," Jamie said. "Well, some of the wrestling methods I did suspect were a little unorthodox."

"That was meant to be a broadsword," Nick said. "They're heavy. You don't handle them that way. The grip was all wrong. He'd have cut his own leg off."

"When will people learn to concentrate on the important bits of a movie," Jamie said. "By which I mean the, uh, sword-y bits."

Nick opened the boot of the car and said: "Look, I'll show you."

"Oh no, Nick, honestly, I – for God's sake put it away."

Jamie looked away from the horrifying sight of Nick brandishing a sword in the night to the even-more-horrifying-in-context sight of the public parking lot, well-lit with streetlights casting burning orange points and shedding pools of white light on the tarmac.

"Oi," said a voice, and Jamie turned to see the person watching them narrowly over the low wall between the parking lot and the street.

Of course it was a policeman. Of course it was.

"Run," Nick ordered, and Jamie hurtled after him to the other end of the parking lot, where there was a wire mesh fence that Nick scaled as if he was flying.

Jamie climbed it with a lot of low moaning, plus the fence trembling and swaying alarmingly. (Jamie was pretty sure it was the fence.)

It started to rain while he was climbing down the other side, and at the first touch of cold drops sliding down his neck Jamie squawked and let go of the fence. Fortunately there wasn't that far to fall.

"Took you long enough," Nick observed.

Jamie turned around to look at the place where he'd jumped (a dark, filthy alleyway. Of course. Obviously.) and saw Nick, crouched and waiting with his sword in hand, eyeing the fence like a cat might eye a mousehole.

A monster, waiting in the dark.

"I thought our plan was fleeing," Jamie said. "I liked that plan! Nick, you cannot just go around murdering policemen!"

"Be quiet," Nick said.

"I don't want to be quiet!"

"What a surprise," Nick muttered.

"I don't want to be a very quiet accessory to murder!"

"Jamie," Nick said. "Shut up."

Jamie watched the fence shiver and shift, a man's shadow superimposed on the metal mesh. Oh God, he was in the company of an armed felon, and they were being pursued by the police.

When the policeman jumped lightly down onto the wet, broken pavement, Jamie felt a wave of recognition pass over him, something that had nothing to do with the man's face.

"Sorry, Nick," he said. "I was too preoccupied with all the terror to notice he was a magician. Oh, but please don't kill him!"

Nick's lunge was checked. The policeman's (policemagician's? Jamie was uncertain about the correct terminology) eyes were fixed on the demon, and there was magic rising like colored light in the centre of his palms, wrapping around his fingers and wrists like smoke. Jamie's whole body yearned toward the sight of magic, the thought that he could have it and the gnawing ache always inside him, that he could have more, that he could have enough, that he could finally feel and be all right.

"Put that away, dude," he said. "Let's all be nice. How about nobody was brandishing weapons in a parking lot, and nobody was an officer of the law who secretly kills people, and everybody goes home happy and innocent of crime?"

In answer the policemagician raised his hands. Jamie glanced nervously at Nick, and saw his eyes narrow.

The light in the magician's hands died, like two candles caught in a sudden rush of cold wind, and Nick came at the magician and his empty hands.

That could be me, Jamie thought, in another life, in a different set of circumstances, that could be me-

"Nick!" he shouted. "Don't!"

Nick glanced at him and snarled something. There was a blur of movement and the swing of a sword.

Nick was crouching behind the magician with a hand in his hair, pulling his hair back and forcing him to his knees. He looked across the distance between them at Jamie, the night air thick with silver points of rain, black eyes narrowed in his white face and the edge of his sword gleaming against the man's throat. Jamie could hear his own breathing, coming harsh and fast.

"You live because he wants it," Nick said. "No other reason. Don't come after me again."

He pulled the magician to his feet and shoved him contemptuously: the man almost slipped on the wet cement. Jamie thought about saying that shoving was rude, but didn't want to push his luck.

Nick sheathed his sword and and turned back to the fence, setting a foot in the wire mesh.

"Oh, we're going back over the fence?" Jamie asked.

Nick just looked at him.

"Back over the fence, excellent!" Jamie said. "What fun."

Jamie was staring wistfully out of the other end of the alley, plotting an alternate route, which was why he was the one who saw the magician turn around in the torrential rain. The magic rose in his hands like a snake.

"Nick, watch out!" Jamie said, and threw the magic like a shout at the man.

Magic went loose from his hands, as if it was a stolen animal set loose from a leash and coming back to Jamie.

The man let out a strangled sound. Jamie hadn't needed to shout. Nick had not even looked back to see the attack, or where the man moved. He'd just moved himself with efficient ferocity, throwing a knife over his shoulder.

Blood spilled out of the magician's cut throat as the last of the magic spilled from his hands.

Nick walked down the alleyway and retrieved his knife. Jamie swallowed and looked away from the dead man, watching the rain splash and shatter against the broken pavement.

"He was a full magician," Nick observed. "Part of a Circle, wearing a sigil. And you were able to take his magic."

Jamie nodded, as if they were reversed suddenly, and Jamie was the one who didn't talk.

"You're really strong," Nick said, so much a statement of fact that Jamie didn't even nod. "The Goblin Market would never take you. They'd consider you a magician already."

"I know," said Jamie.

I'm asking you to be who you really are, Gerald had said. And maybe he was.

Jamie looked at Nick, who was looking back at him, totally careless of the dead body at his feet. The rain had turned Nick's hair into a slick wet shadow over his face, almost hiding the black endless eyes, turning his white T-shirt basically transparent so it was like an anatomy lesson: here are all the muscles you need to murder someone with the minimum of effort. Drops of rain were chasing down his strong bare arms, not washing the traces of blood from his hands.

He looked totally the opposite sort of being to Gerald, sunny and rumpled and normal, and he was the one Jamie could be sure was telling him the truth. And that meant the world might be nothing but pain.

Maybe that was why Alan had looked so sad, in his kitchen. He already knew the choice was between pain and lies, and in the end you always got both.

"Could we go?" Jamie asked.

Nick nodded. Jamie wasn't going to step over the body, so he followed Nick over the fence after all. His hands were cold enough on the wire links that he slipped halfway down, but Nick steadied him when he landed hard.

"Are you scared of something?" Nick inquired abruptly.

"What would you know about fear?" Jamie asked.

Nick paused. "I'm looking into it," he said at last.

Jamie didn't ask what that meant, because he found the idea slightly terrifying.

"Do demons hate us?" he asked.

"Short people?" Nick responded.

"Oh ha ha," said Jamie, but he felt a little better because jokes were his language. "Magicians. The other demon – Anzu – I mean, he picked me because he could tell I could do magic. We make you do what we want. It would make sense if you hate us. When I look back on it – he hated me."

"Tip for the future," Nick said. "If someone seems like they hate you, don't invite them into your bedroom. Bad idea, unless you're into that sort of thing. Which you're not."

Jamie was about to demand how he knew that, and realised it was probably something horrifying like sexy demonic radar.

"Well I only realised in retrospect," Jamie said. "He was very plausible at the time." He paused. "You know what?" he said. "I bet you were terrible at it."

"At what?" Nick asked, as they finally reached the car.

"All that persuading and seducing and destroying people demons do," Jamie said. "I mean, you're not likely to have been very good at it. You don't have any finesse."

"I was awesome," Nick said, and got into the car. When Jamie did likewise Nick scowled over at him.

"I'm just calling the demon lovers like I see them," Jamie said.

"Anzu was always the best at playing nice," Nick conceded. "He's the nice one."

Jamie refused to think about Anzu, except in the dark moments just before sleep, but it sent cold shivers through him to think that the nightmare creature that had come so close to killing him was the nice one of the three demons who had formed Nick's first gang.

Jamie told himself it was just being wet.

"Do you hate us?" he repeated.

"We hate everything," Nick said, and started the car.

"But particularly, specially," Jamie said. "If this is you trying to lie, Nick, it's really obvious. Do demons hate us?"

"Yes." Nick bit off the word.

Jamie felt the urge to promise Nick that he wouldn't: wouldn't join the magicians, wouldn't call the demons to his circle and enslave them. He was almost certain he wouldn't, almost determined.

But not quite. And he didn't want to keep lying.

"I used to have a friend called Mark who had a pet tortoise," Jamie said. "His name was Sinbad. I'm not sure why. Mark totally made us all play with the tortoise like it was another kid. And he used to say things like 'Sinbad's feeling a bit under the weather today' or 'Sinbad doesn't like this game.' And there was obviously no way he could tell, because the thing is, tortoises are like rocks with legs and teeny tiny heads. They are pet rocks. But Mark really did believe Sinbad the tortoise had a tortured psyche. The point of this story is that I worry you're my tortoise. I don't think you are. But people don't really know with their own tortoise, do they?"

"I suppose you make sense to yourself," Nick observed.

"Sometimes," Jamie admitted. "Not always."

They drove in silence for a while, until Jamie got bored and turned on the country music station. He really liked country music: people often seemed really cheerful about being unhappy, and Jamie felt like he got that.

Nick pulled up outside the gates, and Jamie looked at his house, big and pearl-white, glowing in the floodlights Mum or Mae had left on because Jamie wasn't home.

"See you at school," he said finally to Nick. "I'm sorry the people in the movie weren't using their swords right.

"I don't hate you," Nick said, face turned away. "Now get out of the car, I have to go back and dispose of a body."

"Oh Nick," Jamie said. "You should be like a professional ruiner of moments."

He got out of the car, and no sooner had the lights of Nick's car disappeared around the corner that Jamie noticed someone standing by their wall.

Standing kind of lurkily, as if hoping to be concealed by the trees and bushes that spilled artistic fountains of leaves over the wall.

"Oi," said Jamie, thinking that it would be typical of his life if it was a cat burglar.

It was Seb. On the whole, Jamie would've preferred a cat burglar.

"Oh my actual God," Jamie said, and stormed down the street toward him. "My sister doesn't like stalkers! What is wrong with you?"

Seb flinched and didn't meet his eyes, but instead of apologising he said, "Was that Nick Ryves's car?"

"Creepy trespasser doesn't get to ask the questions!" Jamie exclaimed.

"I wasn't trespassing, I'm outside the wall."

"You're still creepy," Jamie said severely. "This is no way to get a girl to like you. Actually I think that is a lost cause anyway because she knows you're part of the Obsidian Circle and she has this irrational prejudice against them because they tried to kill me."

Seb's eyes glinted, green and watchful, in the street light. "You seem to have got over that all right yourself."

"Also, that isn't even her window?" Jamie stormed on. "I think it's the pantry. So you look stupid now. Which is pretty much par for the course with you, isn't it?"

"You're stupid," Seb said.

"Oh gosh," Jamie said. "But if I were to riposte with 'I know you are, but what am I?' where would this deadly battle of wits ever end? I guess now that Mae's dumped you, the little truce is over and all the fun bullying can re-commence."

"Look," Seb said, and crossed the stretch of pavement between them.

He was a lot taller than Jamie, and a lot stronger. When he reached for him, Jamie understood what was going on.

"Physical intimidation isn't going to work," he told Seb. "It never did work."

Seb frowned at him as if he didn't know what he was talking about. Jamie's patience snapped.

He lashed out, like he'd lashed out with Darren, and threw Seb with invisible hands up against his garden wall.

"You think it wasn't really bullying, because you never laid a hand on me?" Jamie inquired. "I'd like to see you try. It doesn't matter if anyone's bigger than me, or stronger than me. I've known that all my life. I'm not scared of anyone hurting me."

Seb made another move toward him, Jamie knocked him back again. It was easy, easy as making the streetlight reflect into a pattern that looked like aurora borealis in the sky, easy as making the wind rise to his will. It was all so easy.

"I'm scared of hurting other people," Jamie said, voice lower than the wind. "I always have been. And if you weren't so stupid, you'd be scared of that as well."

He turned and went into the house, walking through the floodlights and the shadows that made tiger's stripes of the driveway. He called Nick as he walked.

"What is it?" was how Nick answered his phone.

"It's nothing. I mean, nothing's wrong," Jamie clarified. "Actually I am having a break from teenage angst, both normal and abnormal, to enjoy an illusory moment of triumph."

"You do seem to be enjoying a moment of triumph," Nick said at last. "You're talking like Mae does."

"I just totally menaced Seb," Jamie said proudly, and let himself in the door.

"I don't get the joke."

"It's not a joke," Jamie said. "And you know, I shouldn't feel good about it, obviously menacing people is wrong, but it was a little bit cathartic."

He wandered in through the hall and to the dining room where his mother was still working. He opened the glass door a few inches and looked inside.

"I'm home," he said, covering the phone with his hand as he spoke.

She lifted her head and blinked at him, obviously miles away and with the faint air of surprise she sometimes got on recalling her children existed.

"I hope the film was educational," she said.

"Totally," Jamie answered. "Hey. I hear you're a nice kind of mother to have."

Mum looked politely baffled, which she sometimes did around Jamie. "I'm glad you're back safe," she offered at last.

Jamie smiled at her blond head, bowed again over her work, and closed the door and sat down with his back against it so he wouldn't disturb her but could look over his shoulder and see her.

"I was just wondering," he said to Nick. "Do you have full control of the muscles in your face?"

"What," Nick said.

"Well, have you possessed them all?" Jamie asked. "There are like teeny muscles in there, and I wondered if you might have overlooked some of them. That would explain why you make some of the obvious expressions, but not like, a lot of the little ones. What's that noise?"

"I am putting you on speakerphone," Nick told him. "Because I have to work on my car. But I am listening."

"I know," Jamie said.

"Though it seems like a bad idea."

"I think it's an ingenious theory," Jamie argued. "I'm just trying to help understand your demony ways."

"I am in full control of all my muscles," said Nick, and Jamie heard the sound of mysterious metal things happening to cars.

Above his head he could hear the beat of Mae's music playing loudly in her room, and over his shoulder his mother was working, but there. The night was over, and everyone was home safe for now.