Toby turned at his name and helpfully pulled Lydie’s fringe.
“Thank you for offering, but I’d only be worried about you and do stupid stuff,” Sin said. “You understand what’s happened to Alan, don’t you?”
Lydie nodded, head-butting Sin in the arm.
“I want you guys safe,” Sin whispered as their train rattled into Brixton.
It was a long walk to the house, and they had to sit down on the pavement a few times. A blond woman gave Sin a silent, reproachful look as she passed them, obviously thinking Sin was the worst babysitter in the world.
The fallen leaves along Dad’s road had been rained on and had turned into soggy solid brown banks.
Sin held on tight to Lydie’s hand so Lydie couldn’t slip, and they made their way through the gate and knocked on the blue-painted door. At this hour of the morning, Sin figured Grandma Tess would be catching up with the news and Dad would be in his home office. It was fifty-fifty on who would go for the door.
When the door opened, it was both of them. Grandma Tess was on the stairs, but Dad was at the door, right in front of her.
Sin was shocked to find herself shaking.
“Thea, honey,” Dad said. “What’s wrong?”
“Whose are those children?” Grandma Tess asked from the stairs, her voice accusing, and Sin had had enough.
“They’re mine!” she shouted, and then stopped, horrified at herself. She had meant to come here and bargain and beg, Toby and Lydie’s safety depended on it, and instead she had started by yelling on the doorstep so all the neighbors could hear. “I’m sorry,” she said immediately, squeezing Lydie’s hand. “I’m sorry for yelling. But they’re mine.”
Dad was looking at Lydie.
“They’re Stella’s,” he said, soft and a little sad. “Aren’t they? Come in.”
“Stella’s?” Grandma Tess said from the stairs.
“They’re mine,” Sin said fiercely. “My brother and sister. This is Lydie, and this is Toby.”
“Come in,” Dad said for the second time. “All of you.”
Grandma Tess beckoned, Dad stood aside, and Sin came in. She had to bump against Lydie as she came, Lydie orbiting her like a small anxious moon around a planet until they both stopped at the foot of the stairs.
“Your name’s Lydia?” Sin’s grandmother asked.
“Lydie,” Lydie said firmly.
“Your face is a sight. Who’s been looking after you?”
“Sin looks after us,” Lydie answered, chin up. “Sin looks after us very well.”
Which was not at all the speech Sin had trained her to give if anyone ever came asking. That speech included vague references to Merris as their guardian; it shamed Sin that a sister of hers had such a bad memory for her part.
“Well,” Grandma Tess said, and held out her hand. “Let’s get your face washed. I still have some of Thea’s clothes from when she was your size. Would you like to find a pretty dress?”
She descended the stairs, and after a moment’s thought Lydie accepted her hand.
Grandma Tess had liked Sin best when Sin was Lydie’s size, when Sin’s parents were still together and she could fuss over her and fix family meals and expect more grandchildren.
“Thea, give me that child, I don’t know what way you think you’re holding him,” said Grandma Tess, and took Toby in her arms. Toby looked uncertain for a moment, then made a grab for her glasses.
Sin had not expected Grandma Tess’s desire for more grandchildren might outweigh everything else.
Behind her, Dad asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Relief washed away, and there was nothing left but this moment she did not know how to escape. There were no demons watching. Lydie and Toby were upstairs and did not need to be reassured.
“I’m sorry,” Sin said, staring at the shadowy stairs, not wanting to look around and see his face. “I thought—I thought you never had to know. I thought it would be best for you, and I know I hurt you all those times I wouldn’t even stay for dinner—but I had to be with them, I was all they had, I was responsible. I didn’t have anything more fun to do. I did care about you. I did. I’m sorry.”
She felt him touch her shoulders, gently, and turn her around. He touched her face with soft hands, accountant’s hands that had never held a knife or a gun, and she realized she was crying.
“My brave girl,” he said. “You should have told me, so I could have helped you.”
“Could you keep them?” Sin asked. “I’ll come back, I promise. I’m going to get a flat. I can take care of them. It’s just I don’t know how to keep them safe, and I don’t know what else to do, but I’ll make them safe. Can you keep them for just a little while?”
“Of course,” Dad said. “But you’re not getting a flat. Cynthia, you’re sixteen years old! They can stay with us. We’ll all live together. You’re safe now.”
She inched forward. He was the same height as she was, but she could stoop down and put her head on his shoulder, his shirt warm and woolen against her cheek, and suddenly he was the father of her childhood again, the still center she and Mama had whirled around, the anchor without whom Mama had drifted and been lost.
It was that easy, then. She would never have believed it. Dad had left and Victor had left and now Merris had left too, and Sin had not known how to count on anyone but herself. If she had come to Dad after that time in Mezentius House, they could all have been safe in this house for a year.
It would all have been so easy. But she wouldn’t have known all she could do, if she had done that. She was her father’s daughter as well as her mother’s. She could be her own anchor.
And it was too late to accept help for herself now. There was a demon waiting.
“I can’t stay with you, Dad,” she whispered into his shoulder. “The kids wouldn’t be safe. There’s a demon and—and he’s out, he has a body. There was this guy I loved and now this demon has him and I don’t know what the demon wants with me. I have to go.”
“I can’t let you,” Dad said. “I’m your father. It will be all right.”
Sin put her arm around his neck and held on for a moment. Then she drew back, and she drew her knives.
“You’re a tourist. You can’t defend yourself. And think of Grandma Tess, and the kids. I can get myself out of danger, but I can’t put you in it.”He was a tourist, but he’d loved a Market girl. He did not start or back away from the knives. He just stood staring at her at the foot of the stairs in his lovely house, where she was so glad, so painfully glad that he would be keeping the kids. He looked miserable.
“Thank you,” she told him. “Thank you so much. I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Dad said. “Nothing at all.”
The kids would have gone crazy if she had left without telling them, so they had to say a last good-bye on the doorstep. Sin was desperate to be gone by then. She didn’t know how patient Anzu was going to be, and she dreaded leading him to them, and dreaded almost as much leaving them and thinking about what the demon would do next.
But at least she would be with Alan, for all the good that would do. At least she could be with him at the last, the same way she’d been with Mama. He would not be lonely or scared when he died, not if she could help it.
“Nick will take care of you,” Lydie offered at the door, wanting comfort for Sin and to be comforted as well.
“I’m sure Nick will do his best,” Sin lied, holding her tight. “But I can take care of myself.”
On her way back alone, she thought that she could return to the Market now. Merris was not going to stay, Lydie was safe, and they wouldn’t want a young tourist in charge at a time like this. She might be able to win the Market right now.
Then she remembered Anzu’s air when she left, the way he had looked like a hunting bird. She could not let him come hurtling down from the sky to attack the Market. If she was his target, she had to be alone.
And she didn’t even know if she had the energy to win the Market back. She was so tired.
Her shoulders slumped, but as the train rattled through a space of open air, her phone buzzed in her pocket. She dug it out.
“Sin,” Mae said. “A messenger just called me. She says she wants to meet, and she has an important message for me.”
There was no point asking Mae if she might refuse to see the woman. Sin knew Mae well enough by now to know that.
“I’ll see her with you,” Sin said.
Mae sighed. “Thanks. I don’t want to meet her at my aunt’s house. Aunt Edith might come back unexpectedly. Do you think maybe a hotel—”
“Don’t be stupid,” Sin said. “Tell her to meet you at Nick’s place.”
There was a brief, taut pause.
“I don’t much feel like seeing Nick,” Mae told her in a brittle voice.
“I don’t care,” Sin said. “You don’t know what this messenger has to say to you, but one thing we both know: It’s always best to seem strong. You want backup, and what’s better backup than a demon on your side? Personal stuff doesn’t matter. What matters is this: Do you want to lead?”
“You know I do,” Mae snapped.
“Do you want to lead well?”
“Of course I do!”
“Do you want it more than your pride?” Sin demanded.
The train went back into the underground even as she asked the question, and whatever reply Mae would have made was lost.
Sin knew Mae well enough by now. She was pretty confident that continuing on her way back to Nick’s was the right way to go.
There would be no time to rest. She hadn’t really expected it.
A boy sat on the seat across from her, eyeing her with something between hope and speculation. Sin bared her teeth at him.
“Don’t even think about it,” she advised, and closed her eyes and felt the train thunder beneath her, carrying her inexorably to her destination.
As Sin opened the door to Nick and Alan’s flat, she heard a strange woman’s voice. Sin tried to push the door open quietly, but the door to the sitting room was open. She found Nick, Mae, and the messenger all staring at her as she came into the hall.
The woman was not quite a stranger after all. Sin recognized her from a few Market nights, when she had bought expensive trinkets.
The only trinkets the woman was wearing now, though, were her earrings. The silver knives in silver circles, the token of a messenger.
Sin supposed it was a sign she was here on business.
“Sin Davies,” the woman murmured, as if she had the advantage over her.
Sin raised her eyebrows.
“Jessica, isn’t it?”
She gave her a dazzling cursory smile, which the woman returned. Jessica had dark hair and an expensive suit, and she looked like a businesswoman who helped with charities in her spare time.
In what was left of her spare time after she was done carrying messages for the magicians.
Mae was sitting in the armchair, which she must have moved so it was as distant from both sofas as it could be while still being in the same room. She was regarding the messenger with a remote air, like a queen.
Nick was sitting in the other sofa, scowling across at the messenger. Anzu was not there.
Nick said, “You’re just in time.”
“For what?”
“To hear me finish delivering my message,” Jessica replied. “Which Nick seems to find so amusing.”
“It’s the way you tell it,” Nick assured her.
“Apparently Gerald wants me to meet with him,” Mae said in a colorless voice. “He says he wants to make a bargain with me.”