“Mae,” he said, and she looked down at his tanned arms with the shirtsleeves rolled up and went still. “I wish every day could be like today.”

“Hold off on the making out until I’m out of the car,” Jamie said hastily, diving for the car door.

They did not kiss. Mae sat staring at him.

Word on the street is that Gerald’s invented a whole different kind of mark, Jessica the messenger had said. Thorned snakes, eating their own tails.

You’ll find the answer on the body of a boy you know quite well, Liannan had said, and laughed.

Now she knew why Seb always wore long sleeves.

The mark that meant the wearer was a magician, and one of Gerald’s, was burnt black against the pale flesh inside Seb’s elbow.

18

The Girl’s Guide to Battle

Seb gave her one horrified look and then shoved her out of the car. Mae rolled into her driveway and sprang to her feet too late to catch Seb. All she got was a spray of gravel in the face.

She turned and ran into the house, up the stairs, and into the music room.

“Jamie!” she said, and he winced and looked up from the sofa with guilty eyes. “Did you know Seb was a magician?”

“Yeah.”

“And you didn’t tell me. Why?”

Mae could hear how hard her voice sounded, how unforgiving, and she could see how distressed Jamie looked, but she was so sick of being stupid, and he’d as good as lied to her.

Again.

“Same reason I didn’t tell you about me.”

“Well, I don’t understand that, either!” Mae said hotly. “You told me right away when you figured out you were g*y. I thought we told each other everything.”

“It’s not the same!” Jamie almost shouted. “Being g*y doesn’t hurt anybody. This does!” He took a deep breath as she stared at him, then swallowed and went on shakily, “I remember how scared I was you’d find out about me. I’d do something and I’d just freeze. I was so terrified. I thought there was nobody but me in all the world who could do magic, and I knew it could hurt someone if I wanted it to. I never, never wanted to hurt anyone. Then when I was fourteen Seb came to our school, and I knew. We can sense magic off each other, because magic to us is like air, it’s like meeting someone who breathes air when everyone else around you breathes water. I was so happy. And he was just awful to me, from day one. I hated him. He was such a jerk. Then there were all these other magicians, and it seemed like they all wanted to kill me, so that was actually a step down from Seb. After that there was Gerald, and he showed me that I could do amazing things. He said that I was really good and it’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at, and even Seb joined them and started hassling me about—about doing magic, being a magician, dropping the helpless act. Gerald said that if normal people found out, they’d hate us.”

“I don’t hate you,” Mae said. “I love you.”

“I know you do,” Jamie told her, eyes pleading. “But you didn’t love Seb. And I remembered how scared I used to be that you’d find out. I couldn’t tell you. I had no right.”

Mae let out a short, sharp breath and went to the sofa where Jamie sat. She’d thought she was being so clever, watching Seb in case he suspected something. He’d known everything from the start.

So much for having a normal boyfriend.

“Did you know Seb was a magician?” Mae asked Nick Monday at lunchtime.

Nick looked up. “No,” he said in a level voice. “And he can’t be much good, or I would have.”

“He’s not,” Jamie muttered. “I’m a lot better.”

He didn’t sound proud. He sounded as if it worried him.

Seb wasn’t at school. It was kind of worrying Mae.

He’d lied to her and maybe even laughed at her behind her back, but she’d heard him on the phone with his “foster parents,” obviously the Obsidian Circle, begging not to be sent away. She kept remembering Jamie’s pinched white face, talking about being a magician.

Jamie had her. Seb didn’t have anybody.

The way he’d sounded on the phone, maybe he felt like he had no other choice. Except that was stupid. There was always another choice.

If he’d told the Obsidian Circle that he had let slip what he was, he could be in trouble.

Seb wasn’t in school the next day, either.

She’d noticed him hiding his arms weeks ago. He’d been part of the Obsidian Circle for weeks and come to school every day. Mae was pretty sure he wanted to keep looking normal, to hang out with his friends.

He’d stayed with her out by the bike sheds.

Nick would probably be quite pleased if something terrible was happening to Seb. Jamie hated him. There was nobody who knew what was happening to Seb, and who might possibly care, but her.

Seb had mentioned his new foster family lived on Lennox Street. Mae could just pass by the house.

The magicians had been living only a few streets away from her and Jamie all this time.

Mae found Seb’s car parked in the driveway of a house next to a nursing home; the lawn looked smooth as icing, red tulips waving their heavy, waxy heads from a bright, trim bed. The house was white, three stories with an oriel window on the top floor at the center, flowers in the window, like a set piece in marzipan. A toy house, built to look cheerful and perfect, an idea of home dreamed up by someone who’d never had a home.

There was no sign of movement in any of the windows.

So that was that, Mae told herself. She’d come by. She couldn’t see Seb. She wasn’t going to risk investigating any farther.

That was when a black limousine sailed down the road, and Mae ducked behind the hedge just in time to see it stop in front of the house. Two women emerged from it.

Jessica the messenger, knives swinging in her ears. And Celeste Drake.

They disappeared inside the front door, and Mae headed for the garden gate. There was a rose trellis that scratched her as she went in, a white petal falling onto her shoulder. She brushed it off and was grateful there seemed to be no spells impeding her way; no guard dogs or, since these were magicians, guard zombies.

The back door was actually open, as if to let warm summer air filter into the kitchen, which had wooden countertops and a rosy red-tiled floor. Mae entered it cautiously, ready to bolt at any moment.

She heard Gerald’s voice raised in anger.

“We are doing perfectly well without your help.”

“Are you indeed?” said Celeste. “You live here under the demon’s eye, and I see you haven’t even managed to recruit the really interesting young magician.”

“I hear you had a bit of a run-in with the demon and the interesting young magician yourself,” Gerald remarked, returning to his usual mild tones. “Jamie doesn’t much fancy the Aventurine Circle. And neither do I.”

“I think you may both change your mind,” Celeste said. “And Jamie will be welcomed with open arms. But you and yours, Gerald? When you come crawling to us for help, the terms I offer then will not be nearly as attractive as they are now.”

“I’ll take that chance.”

“I’ll take everything you’ve got,” Celeste murmured.

“And I’ll show you out,” said a woman’s voice. Mae was pretty sure it was Gerald’s second, Laura.

Mae froze, listening for a step, ready to flee.

Seb had obviously been standing very close to the door. She heard nothing until she saw him walk right into the hall and they stood face-to-face, staring at each other.

Then Seb lunged. He came right at her and Mae backed into a door, and when he kept coming, she ran down the cellar steps.

Seb only followed her, of course, and then she was trapped in the cellar of the magicians’ house, Seb blocking her way out and a huge circle of stones in front of her shimmering with cold light.

“Mae,” Seb said. “What are you doing here? You have to get out!”

He was perfectly fine. He didn’t look like anyone had even said a harsh word to him.

On the other hand, he also hadn’t immediately started yelling for Gerald.

“What is this place?”

“This is the real obsidian circle,” Seb said. “All our demon’s circles are reflections of it. All our power comes from it. So believe me when I say you can’t be here. You have to go.”

“All your power,” Mae repeated. “So what if someone takes more than their share?”

“You can’t,” said Seb. “That’s not how the circle works. You all get an equal share, and your natural abilities do the rest.”

“Natural abilities?” Mae echoed. “I hear you don’t have much. Not a great magician, are you, Seb? But you are a magician.”

Even in the dim light of the cellar, filtering in from the top of the stairs, she saw Seb go dull red.

“Yeah,” he said. “I am. I’m sorry. But I don’t want to see you get hurt. Mae, please. They’ll kill you if they find you down here.”

He advanced on her and she flung up one hand, defensive. He grabbed her wrist and ran, dragging her behind him up the stairs and back into the hall.

“Seb?” Gerald’s voice said, sharp. “What are you doing?”

Mae and Seb stared at each other. Mae saw her own complete panic reflected on Seb’s face.

Then he hurled her bodily through an open door.

“Stay there,” Seb ordered her in a low voice. He went out, shutting the door softly behind him, and left Mae alone in what was clearly his bedroom.

The room was plain but big, with wood floors and a little cream-colored rug. Lying on a mahogany desk was the sketchbook Seb always carried, its green cover curling at the edges.

Where I am now is okay, Seb had told her.

He was living in a nice house and paying his rent by killing people.

Mae went over to the desk and picked up his sketchbook. There was always a chance there might be drawings of Gerald’s mark in it, details that could give her some clue how to deal with him.

She opened the book to a picture of Jamie laughing. It made her shaking fingers still for a moment. Seb’s pencil had been wielded carefully, light in a way that made Jamie’s spiky hair look soft; dark and clean to mark the line of his jaw, his hands that looked even in a picture as if they were in motion, and the crooked slope up of his mouth as he began to smile.

Mae started to feel angry all over again. The picture was so good. If Seb could create something like this, why did he have to be what he was?

Everything he’d ever said to her had been a lie.

She turned a page of the sketchbook with her hands shaking again.

Jamie was sitting at his desk this time, balancing a pencil on top of a schoolbook. He looked serious and intent, face turned away from Seb, earring winking above the collar of his shirt.

Mae turned another page. This time Jamie was leaning backward in his chair, talking to someone else. The person’s hair was dark and the features knife-edge clean, so she assumed it was Nick. When she turned another page, Jamie was walking with someone else, smaller than he was and softly curved, presumably herself, but all the people with him were ghosts. Only Jamie stood out, luminous and laughing and living on the page.

The door opened with a slow creak, the very hinges moaning Seb’s reluctance. Mae looked up and saw him standing there, looking tall and dark and humble, and she wanted to hit him very badly.

So she did. She strode over to him and whacked him on the chest with his sketchbook.

“Even if you weren’t a lying murderer,” she said, “I think this means we’re breaking up.”

“No,” Seb said, almost automatically, as if that was the noise that came out when you hit him. “No, look, Mae, you’ve got it wrong.”

He grabbed her by her elbows and jerked her toward him, landing a kiss on her mouth like a blow. He held her as if she was a giant doll, an awkward puppet he was trying desperately to learn how to manipulate. The taste of him she got between her tightly closed lips was bitter, already hopeless.