The Demon's Covenant Read Online Free

like old-fashioned soap. She would have seemed washed-out and easy to overlook except for how polished she was, always perfectly put together with her hair so glossy it looked lacquered. Somehow that lent her an icy luster that was more noticeable than color, and she was actually almost impossible to overlook.
    â€œJames,” she said, her hands folded in front of her. “Mavis. Did you have fun tonight?”
    Her cool gaze traveled over Mae, making Mae acutely aware that her jeans were slimy from falling in that alley. Annabel probably didn’t like the corset top with the black lace and the pink ribbons that spelled out ALL WRAPPED UP IN ME either.
    Mae lifted her chin. “Yeah, it had everything I ask for in a party. Hard drugs. Casual sex. Ritual animal sacrifice.”
    â€œDancing,” said Jamie, and advanced on Annabel with intent. “Would you like to dance, Mum?”
    Annabel looked as if she would prefer to eat dirt, but she put her perfectly manicured hands in Jamie’s anyway. When they started to dance, she caught him a nasty blow with one of her high heels.
    Mae was pretty sure it wasn’t the actual dancing that was tripping her up. Annabel loved sports as much as Roger did, so much that they’d forced Jamie and Mae to take a million classes, though only the dance lessons had stuck. It was spending time with her kids that Annabel was having trouble with.
    Ever since Mae and Jamie had returned from what Annabel thought was a cry-for-help mission of mad truancy to London, Annabel had been trying to spend quality time with them. She wasn’t very good at bonding, but that didn’t matter to Jamie. He was eating it up with a spoon.
    Mae appreciated the thought, especially since Roger’s response to the whole affair was to decide that Mae and Jamie needed a more settled environment, and cancel all visits to his place. But Mae got along just fine without parental supervision. Annabel didn’t need to strain herself.
    â€œWhere did you learn to dance?” Jamie asked playfully.
    â€œEr, I took ballet lessons for several years,” Annabel responded, and got Jamie again with her heel.
    Mae went and sat on the window seat of the bay window, hands clasped around one slimy knee.
    When the magicians had put a demon’s mark on her brother, she’d killed one of them to get it off. Almost every night since then she had woken remembering the shocking heat of blood spilling over her fingers. She’d lain awake feeling the ghost of that warmth, looking at her clean hands painted gray by the dim light, remembering.
    She wasn’t sorry. She would have done it again without a second’s thought, but tonight she had been helpless and had seen Jamie laughing with the magicians’ leader.
    Jamie came to stand beside her when the song was done, a warm presence at her side. Mae pressed her cheek against the night-cold pane of glass.
    â€œSo is there?” he asked quietly. “Something you’re not telling me?”
    â€œMaybe,” Mae told him. “We all have our secrets.”

2
A Demon in View
    Nick and Alan arrived two days later. Mae took the day off school to welcome them back.
    By now she and the secretary had almost made a game of this.
    â€œHello, this is Annabel Crawford. I’m afraid Mavis simply can’t come in today,” Mae said in a flawless imitation of her mother’s voice, perfectly modulated and reeking of both tennis and law courts. “I fear she caught a chill at one of the soirees we so enjoy attending.”
    â€œReally. I hope it doesn’t turn into strep throat, like it did the last time the college held a rave.”
    That was when Mae saw the battered car pull up outside the gates. They’d got a new car since the last one had been abandoned on Tower Bridge, but she knew it was them.
    It didn’t look like a vehicle for people who knew magical secrets. It was blue and scarred, and the brown