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Mae cleared her throat, pulling absently at one of her necklaces. The movement almost drew Nick’s eyes to the tangle of talismans and chains around his mother’s neck, but he stopped his instinctive glance. These two knew enough about his family already. They didn’t need to see him looking at Mum’s charms.

He looked at Alan instead, expecting to find steadiness there, expecting sanity and familiarity.

He saw fear.

He saw Alan draw his gun out in the open, out in their front garden where anyone could see. Nick didn’t hesitate. He drew his sword and held that sharp, glittering barrier between his brother and the rest of the world, and then he looked around to see what was threatening them.

She was coming down the road toward them, her high heels clicking on the cement. She looked to be in her forties, with a sleek brown bob and large earrings that caught the sun, s.h.i.+ning perfect circles with a knife in the center of each one.

The knives danced jauntily in their circles as she turned and smiled at them.

“h.e.l.lo, boys. How are you today?”

Nick strode toward her, Alan a pace behind him. He wheeled behind the woman, and after a moment Alan came to stand in front of her. She swung around, briefly teetering on her heels, unable to keep them both in her range of vision and unsure who to focus on.

Nick claimed her full attention by stepping in to her as if they were about to dance. She stopped, facing him, then looked down to see that he was holding each end of his sword and pressing the length of the blade lightly against her stomach. He gazed down at her and smiled a little.

“All the better for seeing you.”

There were as many types of magic user in this world as there were colors in white light. On one end of the spectrum were the magicians, and on the other end was the Goblin Market.

There were a lot of people who wanted more power than the Market offered, and who didn’t quite have the stomach for feeding their own kind to demons. There were the necromancers and the messengers, the pied pipers and the soul tasters, and a dozen others, and Market people trusted none of them.

They trusted the messengers least of all. Every messenger wore the sign of a knife through a circle. It was a sign from the magicians. It meant that the messenger was attached to a Circle of magicians, and if you crossed the messenger, you crossed the Circle.

The knife more or less indicated how things would go from there.

Messengers were closely a.s.sociated with magicians. They carried information back and forth between Circles, and between magicians and the outside world, and in return they were paid with demons’ magic. Magic bought in blood.

As far as Nick was concerned, they were magicians without the guts.

Over the messenger’s shoulder he saw Mae and Jamie, looking alarmed by the sudden appearance of weapons and a stranger. He saw Mum standing by the car, her face a complete blank.

The messenger smiled, a small, wary smile like a concerned parent watching her child. She looked far more like a mother than Mum. Possibly Nick should hire her for his next parent-teacher meeting.

“You’re looking very grown-up, Nick.”

“It’s true, I’m entering on manhood,” Nick said. “You’re a stylish, sophisticated, ever so slightly evil woman of the world. Do you think we could make it work?”

She looked much less like a mother when her smile went sharp like that. “Probably not.”

Nick adjusted his grip on the sword, held it at the precise point where her ribs ended. “Pity.”

Alan interrupted, his face grave and his gun at the small of her back. “What’s your message?”

“Oh yes,” said the messenger. “That.”

She twisted lightly around, ending up with Nick’s sword against her spine and Alan’s gun against her stomach. Nick met Alan’s eyes over her shoulder and watched for any signal.

The messenger’s voice was calm. “Black Arthur says that now’s the time. He wants it back.”

In the silence there was a small, sharp sound. Alan had released the safety catch.

Nick could only see the back of her head, but the messenger sounded like she was smiling. “You can give it to me now, or Black Arthur can come and take it.”

There was very little in Nick’s life that stayed around long enough to be familiar. There had been a statue in one place, a building in another, but taking his whole life into account, Alan’s face was the only reliable landmark he had.

He had never seen Alan look like this before.

“Let me ask you this,” Alan said, his voice dangerous and shaky at once, like a knife held in a trembling hand. “What d’you think would be the best message to send Black Arthur? Maybe I should let you go back and tell him that he can come and try? He’s been chasing us for years. What makes him think he can catch us now?”

The woman tilted her face toward Alan’s, as if they were going to kiss.

“He’s serious now,” she murmured, sounding as if she was about to laugh. “Hadn’t you noticed, Alan? We did send you a sign.”

Alan went perfectly, terribly white.

The demon’s mark. Nick heard his own voice saying, They can track you once that first mark is made.

“Sweet Alan, so devoted, so much trouble. We won’t be chasing after you blind now, will we? Wherever your little family goes, you’ll lead us right to them.”

Nick could see the gun shaking in Alan’s hand now, in tight, terrified spasms. “Last night we put a magician in the river,” Alan said, his voice low and intense as if he was making a promise. “Maybe we should send you to join him.”

“You know the rules,” the woman whispered. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

Nick interrupted, leaning down to speak in her ear. “Do they say, ‘Don’t cut the messenger in half with your great big sword’?”