The Demon's Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan Page B

human world fall away.
    â€œThe one you’re giving a chance to or feeling up behind the bike sheds or whatever. The one Alan was talking about. Who is it?”
    â€œWell,” Mae said, and felt a blush creep up her neck. “Well, Seb McFarlane.”
    Nick threw back his head and burst out laughing. Mae stared at him in outrage.
    â€œWhat?” she demanded. “What, why are you laughing? Lots of people think he’s good-looking! Lots of girls want to go out with him—he’s very—just stop!”
    Nick stopped. Mae shoved her hands in her pockets, fingers curled tight into her palms, and made for home.
    When she was at her front gate, on her own turf, she stopped and spoke again.
    â€œWhy do you even want to know?” she asked, her voice quiet.
    â€œI didn’t mean for you to take that laughing thing the wrong way,” Nick said, doing an enormously bad job of mimicking her own voice advising him.
    His deep voice didn’t even seem to go high, but she stopped at her gate and grinned at him anyway. He grinned back, catching his ringed hand in the looping iron pattern of her gate and leaning down toward her.
    â€œMcFarlane’s good-looking,” he admitted. “But if you choose him over my brother, you’re crazy.”
    â€œOh,” said Mae.
    The word popped out of her mouth, blank and stunned. She wanted to snatch it back out of the air and swallow it to hide the evidence. Nick was still looking at her, his hunter’s eyes missing nothing. The morning light cut down his profile into stark lines, something that could have been on a coin.
    Mae took a deep breath. “It’s not some kind of tragically stupid love triangle. I’m not going to choose one guy out of two and settle down. It doesn’t have to be either of them for me, or have to be me for either of them. The world’s full of people, if you hadn’t noticed. I could ask any of a dozen guys out, and any of them could ask me out. I didn’t ask for your advice on my love life,” she added. “And it’s not necessary.”
    â€œGlad to hear it,” Nick told her. “One last thing.”
    He leaned in closer, his hand held up to screen their faces, as if he didn’t want anyone watching to even read his lips. His fingers were curled about half an inch from her cheek.
    â€œI’m sure you’re right,” he said, his voice a whisper that seemed to curl in the air like smoke, to find a way into her stomach and twist there, low. “I’m sure there are a dozen guys who will ask you out if McFarlane loses his chance. I just want you to know something.”
    â€œWhat?” Mae asked, whispering because he was whispering, tilting her face up because he was leaning down, and for no other reason.
    Nick looked down at her, his face obscuring the rest of the world, stripping everything else away until she was left with cold black eyes instead of a summer sky.
    â€œI never will,” he said.
    Then he turned and walked off, leaving her standing at the garden gate. He didn’t look back.

    The leader of the Aventurine Circle would only agree to meet them over running water.
    â€œSo we’re meeting them on the Millennium Bridge,” Alan explained as he drove around more tall gray office buildings than even London should have been able to hold, until they found a five-story car park near the Bankside and parked the car on the fourth level.
    Mae was simply glad to get out of the car, after hours of driving with the boy who’d just asked her out and the boy who had just announced that he’d never ask her.
    Not to mention the brother who was apparently not talking to her. Jamie avoided Mae’s gaze when she tried to catch his eye, standing close to Alan, as if Alan was his only possible ally out of the whole group.
    His and Nick’s little knife-throwing bonding session had obviously not been a resounding success. Nick was