The Demon's Covenant

1

Magic on Burnt House Lane

Any minute now,” Rachel said, “something terrible is going to happen to us.”

The area around Burnt House Lane was deserted at this time of night. The cracks in the pavement that Mae hardly noticed by day had turned into shadowy scars along the cement, tracing jagged paths that led into the dark of yet another dead-end alley. They peered down into the alley and made the silent mutual decision to walk on extremely fast. Mae was in the lead.

“Come on, this is an adventure.”

Rachel muttered behind her, “I’m pretty sure that’s what I just said.”

Mae had to concede that this might not have been one of her better ideas. She’d just wanted something different now that she was finally able to leave the house, something a little exciting, and a party in an empty warehouse near Burnt House Lane had seemed the perfect plan.

A streetlamp above slowly winked its single evil orange eye, and night swallowed them at a gulp. The light sputtered back on with a grudging crackle and night spat them up, but by then Rachel and Erica had both walked into Mae’s back and were huddling together.

Rachel was shivering. “I think this may be the worst situation I have ever been in.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” said Mae. “I’ve been in much worse situations than this.”

She shivered and thought of the knife sliding in her sweaty grasp, the terrible resistance as she had sunk it into skin. She remembered the blood on her hands.

Rachel and Erica didn’t know anything about what had happened last month. They still thought she’d run off to London with her poor misguided brother on some crazy impulse.

Her mother thought that too, which was why Mae had been grounded for two weeks, picked up outside school in Annabel’s car like one of the younger kids who ran from school to car, frantic to exchange one cage for another.

Mae closed her eyes, more desperate to escape than any of them, and the dying streetlamps and broken lane faded away. She remembered bright lanterns flooding the forest with gold, dancing with an edge of danger so she wasn’t sure if she was sweating from exhilaration or fear, and black eyes on hers.

She’d seen magic. And now she’d lost it.

She wasn’t thinking about that, though. She was finally out for the night and she was going to have a good time. She was going to see Seb, and she wasn’t going to think about anyone else.

There was a clatter and movement in the shadows. Mae jumped and Erica grabbed her arm, five sharp fingernails biting like a small scared animal.

“It’s fine,” Mae said loudly, more to herself than her friends. She’d walked around Burnt House Lane after dark hundreds of times. She’d never been scared before. She wasn’t going to start being scared now just because she knew exactly what could be watching.

Mae walked on, keeping her stride measured and sure, and nothing followed them that she could hear.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” she told Erica. “Nothing.”

They reached the next alley and saw the warehouse where the party was being held, its windows streaming steady yellow light. Erica took a deep breath, and Mae grinned.

“See,” she said. “What did I tell you?”

“Sorry I got freaked out,” said Erica, who had not said a word all this time, who was always the angel on Mae’s shoulder saying, “Sounds great!” while Rachel on the other said, “We’re all doomed.” “I know the Lane’s safe enough, really. After all, Jamie hangs around here. Can’t really see Jamie strolling through a crime den.”

She laughed, and Rachel on Mae’s other side did too, both of them towering over Mae in their heels, fear melting away in the light.

The warehouse suddenly looked a lot less inviting.

“Jamie’s been hanging around the Lane?” Mae asked. “Since when?”

Jamie hadn’t been grounded. Annabel had assumed Mae was responsible for the whole thing, and Mae had let her. It wasn’t as if they could tell anyone the truth.

Mae had taken the blame and waved Jamie out of the house every night for weeks. He’d said he was going to the library to study; after all, it was his GCSE year, and the tests were coming up soon.

She didn’t know why she’d believed him. He’d lied to her before.

Erica looked uncertain about how Mae would take this, but she said, “Tim’s seen him around there almost every night for weeks.”

Erica’s boyfriend Tim was in Seb’s gang of guys, who weren’t Laners but liked to hang around Burnt House Lane anyway. The Lane was mostly just kids messing around, but far too many of those kids thought hassling Jamie was a good time.

Wandering Burnt House Lane after dark . . . Jamie did not take chances like that. She always told him he needed to take more risks, have a little fun, and Jamie always smiled his lopsided smile and said that he felt he got all the danger he needed in his life eating school lunches.

Mae thought about the very real danger Jamie had been in, less than a month ago. She thought about seeing a black mark on Jamie’s skin and hearing two strangers tell her that her baby brother was going to die.

She could hear the music coming out of the warehouse by now, not calling to her and promising her magic, but steady and reassuring as a heartbeat. She wanted to have fun with her friends again, to find Seb and see where that was going. She wanted to return to her normal life.

And she would, as soon as she knew her brother was safe.

“You guys go ahead, I just need to check something out.”

Mae had already sprinted a few steps away, so when she looked back her friends were superimposed against the light and music, staring at her with identically wide eyes.

“You just need to check something out in the pitch dark, in a dodgy part of town?” Rachel asked.

Mae didn’t need to be told it was dangerous. If it was dangerous for her, it would be twice as dangerous for Jamie, and every minute she spent talking was another minute he could be getting deeper into trouble.

“You’re barely even wearing a shirt! What are you going to do if a mugger jumps out at you, flash them?”

“That’s the basic plan,” Mae told her, and ran.

Mae had walked around Burnt House Lane at night plenty of times before, stumbling out of clubs with a guy who always turned out to be less interesting in the light of day. It was different now, alone with the night air running cool sharp fingers along her bare shoulders, her whole body tense. The moonlight was casting spiderweb graffiti on already scrawled-on walls and the night was full of potential danger.

People who thought it was funny to write “Gaz was here” on the walls might think it was funny to hurt Jamie. Mae was almost stumbling in her hurry through the night, so intent on her search that she put her foot into a slimy puddle. The plastic bag half-sunk in the dirty water clung to her laces as if it was a drowning swimmer. She shook her foot until it slipped off and into its watery, oily grave.

As she shook, she heard a boy’s voice say, “Crawford?” and she turned, wet shoe squishing as she ran toward an alley.

Lurking in alleys around the Lane, Mae thought in outrage. What did Jamie think he was doing?

She was mad about his stupidity right up until she turned the corner and actually saw him: skinny, small, his blond hair standing up in spikes that didn’t make him look any taller. Jamie always seemed a little fragile, and he seemed a whole lot more fragile when he was backed against an alley wall, staring up at three taller boys. The alley looked forlorn, the walls dirty and the dented, lopsided bins leaning against one another like drunks. It looked like the perfect setting for some petty crime.

Then she recognized the other boys.

Apparently Seb McFarlane wasn’t waiting to dance with Mae in the warehouse. Instead he’d decided it would be better fun to corner her brother in an alley.

The other boys were two guys she knew vaguely, part of a crowd who liked to smoke behind the bike shed and grab at clubs without asking.

Seb was tall, dark, and a little dangerous, but he never grabbed. Mae had really thought he was a possibility.

Now he was stalking toward Jamie, and Jamie was shrinking away, and the only possibility in Seb’s future was the possibility of being bitch-slapped by a girl.

He wasn’t that close to Jamie yet, so that meant Jamie had backed into a wall all by himself. Which was just like Jamie.

“Out here all alone?” Seb asked. “You sure that’s good thinking, Crawford? What if you get into trouble?”

Jamie blinked. “That is a concern. I’m glad I have you big strong men here to protect me!”

Seb shoved Jamie hard. “Your helpless act isn’t convincing me.”

“I don’t know,” another boy said lazily. “I think it’s pretty convincing, myself.”

The two boys Mae didn’t really know just seemed bored and ready to mess around, which wouldn’t have been a problem; Mae could have strolled in and made it all seem like a joke until she could whisk Jamie out of there. It was different with Seb, his big shoulders set and his voice intense. He seemed angry.

“It’s an act,” he insisted. “And you should drop it. Or maybe …” He leaned in, very focused, his eyes sharp and his voice soft. “Maybe I’ll make you drop it.”

Jamie swallowed and spoke, his voice equally soft. “I think I’m beginning to understand. Are you, um,” he said, and grinned suddenly, “are you hitting on me? Because I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re not really my type.”

Seb stepped away from Jamie as if he’d just been informed Jamie was radioactive. “You’re not funny,” he snapped. “You’re just pathetic.”

Jamie kept grinning. “I like to think I’m maybe a little of both.”

Seb’s face twisted and his hand moved, clenched in a fist. Mae moved too, but her wet shoe slid and she almost fell. Her heart was beating hard with surprise and rage, absolute rage, because to keep Jamie safe she had killed someone—she kept remembering the knife and all the blood and that magician’s surprised face—and now this stupid boy dared touch him. Why didn’t Jamie do something?

That was when she felt the warm hand at the back of her neck. It was a light clasp, as if a friend or a boyfriend were passing by and wished to alert her to their presence, fingers trailing over the delicate skin. The talisman she wore tucked in her corset flared into life, pain bursting like a small star against her skin. She found she could not move, not even to shiver. She was held frozen in place, like a butterfly gently caught between two fingers and then abruptly transfixed by the cruel steel point of a pin.

Her heart was beating harder than ever, loud in her ears and in her enforced stillness. She thought and almost thrilled to the thought: magic. Magic here, magic in Burnt House Lane, when she had thought it would never enter her life again.

She felt a presence brush by her and heard a voice ring out in the night close to her ear, almost echoing her own thoughts.

“Jamie,” said Gerald, “why don’t you do something?”

The last time Mae had heard that voice, he’d been promising to come back for their lives.

Seb and the other boys turned their heads and stared, the tension in their bodies easing as they took in the sight of Gerald. He was hardly an awe-inspiring sight, Mae remembered, though all she could see of him was a blue shirt and sandy hair going in every direction.

She recalled the mild, freckled face under the sandy hair; the shy voice, the sweet smile, and those clever, watching eyes.

Gerald lifted a hand, and the lid of a bin rose and spun in midair like a ninja’s star, missing one of the boys by an inch and striking sparks off the wall.

“Funny how these freak winds happen,” he observed in his friendly way.

The boy who the bin lid had almost hit took several steps back. Gerald gestured easily and the lid rose again, quivering in the air.