The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan Page A

turned her attention to Nick.
    â€œWhich of your demons do you mean to call?”
    â€œAnzu,” Nick said.
    People used to laugh at him because he had only ever beenable to call two demons, but he was able to call them faster than anyone else, and he never made a mistake.
    â€œEr, excuse me, but how do you call a demon with dancing?” said Jamie, glancing from Merris back to her stall. He looked a lot less caught up in the glamour of it all than Mae did, and he was smiling the nervous smile that Nick was coming to recognize. “Do demons have disco fever?”
    He was so weird. Nick didn’t understand him at all.
    Merris Cromwell looked as if nobody had ever uttered the words “disco fever” in her presence before. She did not deign to respond to Jamie. Instead she nodded at the shadows and a man Nick did not recognize took her place at the stall. Merris walked through the Goblin Market, sweeping the rest of them in her wake, until they reached the place of the dancers.
    There was a spot where the stalls ended and the Market did not, a clearing full of light and music. There were dozens of little lights in the trees above, bright as stars that had somehow become tangled in the branches, and under the lights the grass looked silver and the night behind the dancers’ heads looked like a black velvet backdrop.
    There were about six couples already. The women wore bright colors, slashed skirts spinning out like vivid petals as if they were pansies who had come alive after dark. The men were their gliding shadows, all in black, and Nick was aware of Mae’s glance toward him.
    Nick gave her a sidelong smile and concentrated on the dancers, on the dark-haired girl wearing poppy red. When the men lifted the girls, she looked like she was flying, her partner’s hands trying to pull her back down to earth and him. She was fast the way a swordsman had to be fast and beautiful withit, a twist of crimson in the air like a trace of blood in water, and the tourists gathering began to resemble sharks.
    All the girls wore crowns of fever blossoms. The orange and red petals looked like tiny flames set in the swift dancer’s dark hair.
    If a dancer threw someone a fever blossom, it was a token of special favor.
    The crowd surrounding the dancers rustled and murmured as the dark-haired dancer drew a blossom from her crown. A slow smile curved her cherry-ripe, gleaming lips. The dancers all spun in perfect synchronized circles, shadow and light, and as she spun the girl in red blew on the blossom cupped in her palm.
    The petals burst into the air like a flurry of multicolored butterflies, flying to the winds. The crowd sighed with disappointment and the release of tension. The dancing ceased.
    The girl in red broke away from her partner and came toward them.
    Before anyone else could speak, Mae said eagerly, “That was amazing .”
    Nick laughed a soft, surprised laugh. Girls did not usually react to Sin like that. Mae turned to him with her face bright, her eyes dazzled, and he let her see him smile.
    â€œThat was just for the tourists,” he said. “Wait until you see the real thing.”

5
Dancing Up a Demon
    N ICK DID NOT SMILE AT M AE FOR LONG, BECAUSE HE WAS busy being kissed by another girl.
    Sin Davies, the best dancer in the Market, reached him and leaned up, resting her palms against his shoulders, to give him a kiss. It landed light as a butterfly, as a petal, in the area between Nick’s mouth and cheek. “You’re dressed for dancing,” she said in her throaty stage voice.
    â€œBeing undressed for dancing occurred to me, but I didn’t think Merris would like it.”
    Sin slid a look over to Merris, who did not look any more outraged by Nick than usual, and then laughed. Sin was the hot tip to succeed Merris as the unofficial leader of the Market, and Merris was the one who had looked after the Davies family since magicians had killed Sin’s