Lady Midnight (23 page)

He didn’t finish the sentence.
You know what happens to someone when their
parabatai
dies.

They stood, staring at each other, breathing hard. “When you
were away, I felt it here,” Emma said finally, touching her upper arm, where the
parabatai
rune was etched. “Did you feel it?” She splayed her hand over the front of his T-shirt, warm from his body. Julian’s rune was at the outside edge of his collarbone, about five inches above his heart.

“Yeah,” he said, eyelashes lowering as his gaze traced the movement of her fingers. “It hurt me being away from you. It feels like there’s a hook dug in under my ribs, and there’s something pulling at the other end. Like I’m tethered to you, no matter the distance.”

Emma inhaled sharply. She was remembering Julian, fourteen years old, in the overlapping circles of fire in the Silent City, where the
parabatai
ritual was performed. The look on his face as they each stepped into the central circle and the fire rose up around them, and he unbuttoned his shirt to let her touch the stele to his skin and carve the rune that would bind them together for their whole lives. She knew if she just moved her hand now, she could touch the rune cut into his chest, the rune she had put there. . . .

She reached out and touched his collarbone. She could feel the warmth of his skin through his shirt. He half-closed his eyes, as if her touch hurt.
Please don’t be angry, Jules
, she thought.
Please.

“I’m not a Blackthorn,” she said, her voice ragged.

“What?”

“I’m not a Blackthorn,” she said again. The words hurt to say: They came from a deep place of truth, one she hesitated to look at too closely. “I don’t belong in the Institute. I’m there because of you, because I’m your
parabatai
, so they had to let me stay. The rest of you don’t have to prove you’re giving back. I do. Everything I do is a—is a test.”

Julian’s face had changed; he was looking down at her in the moonlight, the cupid’s bow of his lips parted. His hands came up and gently looped her upper arms. Sometimes, she thought, it was as if she were a kite, and Julian the flier: She soared above the
ground, and he kept her tethered to the earth. Without him she would be lost among the clouds.

She lifted her head. She could feel his breath on her face. There was something in his eyes, something breaking open, not like a crack in a wall but like a door swinging wide, and she could see the light.

“I’m not testing you, Emma,” he said. “You’ve proved everything to me already.”

There was a wild feeling in Emma’s blood, the desire to seize Julian, to do something,
something
, crush his hands in hers, put her arms around him, cause them both pain, make them both taste the same seeking desperation. She couldn’t understand it, and it terrified her.

She moved aside, gently breaking Julian’s hold on her. “We should get back to Mark and Cristina,” she murmured. “It’s been a while.”

She turned away from him, but not before she saw the expression on his face shut, a slamming door. She felt it like a hollow in her stomach, the intractable certainly that no matter how many demons she had killed that night, her nerve had failed her when she needed it most.

*   *   *

When they got back to the front of the restaurant, they found Mark and Cristina seated on top of a picnic table, surrounded by cardboard boxes of french fries, buttered rolls, fried clams, and fish tacos. Cristina was holding a bottle of lime soda and smiling at something Mark had said.

The wind off the ocean had dried Mark’s hair. It blew around his face, highlighting how much he looked like a faerie and how little he seemed like Nephilim.

“Mark was telling me about the fight at the convergence point,” said Cristina as Emma clambered onto the table and reached for a fry. Julian climbed up after her and snagged a soda.

Emma launched into her own version of events, from their
discovery of the cave and the wallet to the appearance of the Mantid demons. “They crushed Mark’s motorcycle so we couldn’t get away,” she said.

Mark looked glum.

“Thy steed is no more, methinks,” Emma said to him. “Will they get you another one?”

“Unlikely,” said Mark. “The Fair Folk are not generous.”

Julian looked at Emma with his eyebrows raised. “Methinks?” he echoed.

“I can’t help it.” She shrugged. “It’s catching.”

Cristina held out a hand. “Let’s see what you found,” she said. “Since you sacrificed so much to get it.”

Emma pulled the square leather object from her pocket and let them all pass it around. Next she retrieved her phone and held it out while she flipped through the photos of the inside of the cave with the odd languages scrawled on the walls.

“We can translate the Greek and Latin,” said Emma. “But we’ll need to hit the library for the other languages.”

“Stanley Wells,” said Julian, looking through the half-burned wallet. “Name sounds familiar.”

“When we get back, Ty and Livvy can find out who he is,” Emma said. “And we can figure out his address, see if there’s anything to find at his house. See if there’s a reason he might have been targeted for sacrifice.”

“They could be randomly chosen,” said Julian.

“They are not,” said Mark.

They all paused, Julian with a bottle halfway to his mouth. “What?” Emma said.

“Not everyone makes a fit subject to be sacrificed for a summoning spell,” said Mark. “It cannot be completely random.”

“They teach you much about dark magic in the Wild Hunt?” Julian asked.

“The Wild Hunt
is
dark magic,” said Mark. “I recognized the circle in the cave.” He tapped Emma’s phone. “This is a sacrificial circle. This is necromancy. The power of death harnessed to some purpose.”

They were all quiet for a moment. The cold wind off the ocean ruffled Emma’s damp hair. “The Mantids were guards,” she said finally. “Whoever the necromancer is doesn’t want anyone finding the secret ceremonial chamber.”

“Because he needs it,” said Jules.

“It could be a she,” said Emma. “It isn’t just men who get to be psycho magic serial killers.”

“Granted,” said Julian. “Either way, there’s nowhere else near the city with a ley line convergence like this. Necromancy that was done at a ley line extension would probably show up on Magnus’s map—but what if it was done at a
convergence
?”

“Then it might well be hidden from the Nephilim,” said Mark. “The killer could be doing the ceremonial killings at the convergence point—”

“And then dumping the bodies at the ley line extensions?” finished Cristina. “But why? Why not leave them in the cave?”

“Perhaps they want the bodies to be found,” said Mark. “After all, the marks on them are writing. It could be a message. A message they want to communicate.”

“Then they should have written the message in a language we know,” Emma muttered.

“Maybe the message isn’t for us,” said Mark.

“The convergence will have to be watched,” said Cristina. “Someone will have to monitor it. There is no other convergence point; the murderer will have to come back at some point.”

“Agreed,” Julian said. “We’ll need to set up something at the convergence. Something that’ll warn us.”

“Tomorrow, during the day,” Emma said. “The Mantid demons ought to be inactive—”

Julian laughed. “You know what we have tomorrow? Testing,” he said. Twice a year Diana was required to test them on certain basics, from rune drawing to training to languages, and report back to the Clave on their progress.

There was a chorus of protest. Julian held his hands up. “I’ll text Diana about it,” he said. “But if we don’t do it, the Clave will get suspicious.”

Mark said something unprintable about what the Clave could do with its suspicions.

“I don’t think I know that word,” Cristina said, looking amused.

“I’m not sure I do either,” Emma said. “And I know a lot of bad words.”

Mark leaned back with the beginning of a smile, then sucked in his breath. He pulled his bloody shirt collar away from his neck and glanced down gingerly at his injured chest.

Julian set his bottle down. “Let me see.”

Mark let go of his collar. “There is nothing you can do. It will heal.”

“It’s a demon injury,” said Julian. “Let me see it.”

Mark looked at him, startled. The waves made a soft soughing sound around them. There was no one left outside the restaurant except them; the other tables had emptied. Mark hadn’t heard that voice of Julian’s before, Emma thought, the one that brooked no argument, the one that sounded like a grown man’s. The kind of man you listened to.

Mark lifted the front of his shirt. The cut ran jaggedly across his chest. It was no longer bleeding, but the sight of the ragged pale flesh made Emma grit her teeth.

“Let me—” Julian began.

Mark sprang off the table. “I am
fine
,” he said. “I do not need your healing magic. I do not need your runes of safety.” He touched his shoulder, where a black Mark bloomed like a butterfly: a permanent
rune of protection. “I have had this since I was ten,” he said. “I had this when they took me, and this when they broke me and made me one of them. Never has it helped me. The runes of the Angel are lies cast into the teeth of Heaven.”

Hurt bloomed and faded in Julian’s eyes. “They’re not perfect,” he said. “Nothing is perfect. But they do help. I just don’t want to see you hurt.”

“Mark,” Cristina said in a soft voice. But Mark had gone somewhere else, somewhere where none of their voices could reach him. He stood with his eyes blazing, his hands opening and closing into fists.

Slowly, his hand came up, caught the hem of his shirt. Pulled it up and over his head. He shrugged the shirt off, dropping it to the sand. Emma saw pale skin, much paler than hers, a hard chest and a narrow waist cut with the fine lines of old scars. Then he turned around.

His back was covered in runes, from nape to waist. But not like a normal Shadowhunter’s, where the black Marks faded eventually to a thin white line against the skin. These were raised and thick and livid.

Julian had gone white around the mouth. “What . . . ?”

“When I first came to Faerie, they mocked me for my Nephilim blood,” Mark said. “The Folk of the Unseelie Court took my stele and broke it, they said it was nothing but a dirty stick. And when I fought back for it, they used knives to cut the Angel’s runes into my skin. After that I stopped fighting with them about Shadowhunters. And I swore no other rune would touch my skin.”

He bent down and picked up his bloody, wet shirt, and stood facing them, his rage gone, vulnerable again.

“Maybe they could still be healed,” Emma said. “The Silent Brothers—”

“I don’t need them healed,” said Mark. “They serve as a reminder.”

Julian slid off the table. “A reminder of what?”

“Not to trust,” said Mark.

Cristina looked at Emma across the boys’ heads. There was a terrible sadness on her face.

“I am sorry your protection rune failed you,” Julian said, and his voice was low and careful, and Emma had never wanted to put her arms around him so much as she did then, as he faced his brother in the ocean-washed moonlight, his heart in his eyes. His hair was a tangle, his soft curls like question marks against his forehead. “But there are other kinds of protection. Your family protects you. We will always protect you, Mark. We won’t let them make you go back.”

Mark smiled, the oddest, sad smile. “I know,” he said. “My gentle little brother. I know.”

10

A
ND
S
HE
W
AS A
C
HILD

“It’s done,” Diana said, tossing
her duffel bag onto the kitchen island with a clanking sound.

Emma looked up. She’d been over by the window with Cristina, testing the bandages on her hands. Julian’s healing runes had taken care of most of her injuries, but there were some ichor burns that were still sore.

Livvy, Dru, and Tavvy were crowded around the kitchen table, fighting over who got the chocolate milk. Ty had his headphones on and was reading, calm in his own world. Julian was at the stove, making bacon and toast and eggs—with burned bits in them, the way Dru liked.

Diana went over to the sink and rinsed off her hands. She was in jeans and a T-shirt, dirt on her clothes and streaking her face. Her hair was pulled back in a tightly knotted bun.

“You set it up?” Emma asked. “The monitor on the convergence?”

Diana nodded, reaching for a dish towel to dry her hands. “Julian texted me about it. Did you think I was about to let you get out of the Clave testing?”

There were groans.

“Thought, no,” said Emma. “Hoped, maybe.”

“Anyway, I did it myself,” Diana said. “If anyone goes in and out of that cave, we’ll get a call on the Institute’s phone.”

“And if we’re not home?” Julian asked.

“Texts,” Diana said, turning around so that her back was to the sink. “Texts go to Julian, Emma, and myself.”

“Why not Arthur?” Cristina said. “Does he not have a cell phone?”

He didn’t, as far as Emma knew, but Diana didn’t answer that. “Now here’s the other thing,” she said. “Mantid demons guard the convergence during the night, but as you know, demons are inactive outside during the day. They can’t stand sunlight.”

“I wondered,” said Emma. “It didn’t make sense that whoever’s doing this would leave the convergence unguarded for half the day.”

“You were right to wonder,” Diana said. Her voice was neutral; Emma searched her face in vain for a clue to whether she was still angry. “During the day the door to the cave seals itself closed. I watched the entrance disappear when the sun rose. It didn’t interfere with setting up the monitoring runes and wards—I did that outside the cave—but no one’s going into that convergence while the sun’s up.”

“All the murders, the body dumping, all of them
have
happened at night,” Livvy said. “Maybe there’s a demon behind this after all?”

Diana sighed. “We just don’t know. By the Angel, I need coffee.”

Cristina hurried to get her a mug, while Diana brushed at the dirt on her clothes, frowning.

“Did Malcolm help set it up?” Julian asked.

Diana took the coffee gratefully from Cristina and smiled. “All you need to know is that it’s taken care of,” she said. “Now, you’ve got testing today, so I’ll see you in the classroom after breakfast.”

She left, taking her bag and her coffee with her. Dru looked glum. “I can’t believe we have class,” she said. She was wearing
jeans and a T-shirt that had a picture of a screaming face and the words
DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS
across the front.

“We’re in the middle of an investigation,” Livvy said. “We shouldn’t have to take tests.”

“It’s an affront,” said Ty. “I am affronted.” He had pushed his headphones down, but his hand was under the table. She could hear him clicking a retractable pen—it was something he had done often before Julian had built him better focus tools, but it was still something he did when anxious.

Against a background of grumbling from everyone, Emma’s phone trilled. She glanced down and saw the screen flash.
CAMERON ASHDOWN
.

Julian looked over for a moment, then went briskly back to stirring the eggs. He was in a combination of gear, apron, and torn T-shirt that at another time would have had Emma teasing him. Now she just edged toward the window and picked up the call.

“Cam?” Emma said. “Is something going on?”

Livvy looked over and rolled her eyes, then got up to start ferrying plates back and forth between the stove and the table. The rest of the kids were still arguing, though Tavvy had wound up with the chocolate milk.

“I didn’t call to ask you to get back together, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Cameron said. She pictured him as his voice came down the phone: frowning, his red hair messy and askew as it always was in the morning.

“Wow,” said Emma. “Good morning to you, too.”

“Milk thief,” Dru said to Tavvy, and put a piece of toast on his head. Emma stifled a smile.

“I was at the Shadow Market,” said Cam. “Yesterday.”

“Gasp! Shame on you.”

“I heard some gossip around Johnny Rook’s table,” he said. “It was about you. He said he’d argued with you a few days ago.”
His voice lowered. “You shouldn’t be seeing him outside the Market, Em.”

Emma leaned back against the wall. Cristina gave her a pointed look, then sat down with the others; soon everyone was buttering toast and forking up eggs. “I know, I know. Johnny Rook is a criminal who does crime. I got the lecture already.”

Cam sounded put out. “Someone else said you were poking your nose into something that wasn’t any of your business. And that if you kept doing it, they’d hurt you. Not the guy who said it—I shook him down a little, and he said he meant someone else. That he’d heard things. What are you poking around in, Emma?”

Julian was still at the stove; Emma could tell by the set of his shoulders that he was listening. “It could be so many things.”

Cameron sighed. “Fine, be flip about it. I was worried about you. Be careful.”

“Always am,” she said, and hung up.

Silently, Julian handed her a plate of eggs. Emma accepted it, conscious that everyone was looking at her. She put the eggs down on the kitchen island and perched herself on one of the stools, poking at her breakfast with a spoon.

“Okay,” Livvy said. “If no one else asks, I will. What was that about?”

Emma looked up, about to give an annoyed answer, when the words died in her throat.

Mark was standing in the doorway. The tension of last night’s altercation in the library seemed to reappear, dropping a heavy silence over the kitchen. The Blackthorns looked at their brother, wide-eyed; Cristina stared down at her coffee.

Mark looked—normal. He wore a clean blue henley shirt and dark jeans that actually fit, along with a weapons belt around his waist, though there were no weapons in it. Still, it was unmistakably
a Shadowhunter belt, runes of angelic power and precision punched into the leather. There were gauntlets on his wrists.

They all stared at him, Julian with his spatula in midair. Mark put his shoulders back and for a moment Emma thought he was going to sweep another bow, the way he had last night. Instead he spoke.

“I apologize for yesterday evening,” he said. “I should not have blamed you, my family. The politics of the Clave are complex and often dark, and not your fault. I would like to, with your permission, start over and introduce myself to you.”

“But we know who you are,” Ty said. Livvy leaned over and whispered in his ear, her hand brushing his shoulder. Ty looked back at Mark, clearly still puzzled, but also expectant.

Mark took a step forward. “I am Mark Antony Blackthorn,” he said. “I come from a long line of proud Shadowhunters. I have served with the Wild Hunt for years I cannot count. I have ridden through the air on a white horse made of smoke, and gathered up the bodies of the dead, and brought them to Faerie, where their bones and skin have fed the savage land. I have never felt guilty, but perhaps I should.” He let his hands, which had been clasped behind his back, fall to his sides. “I don’t know where I belong,” he said. “But if you let me, I will try to belong here.”

There was a moment of silence. The kids at the table stared; Emma sat with her spoon poised, holding her breath. Mark looked toward Jules.

Julian reached up to rub the back of his neck. “Why don’t you sit down, Mark,” he said a little hoarsely. “I’ll make you some eggs.”

*   *   *

Mark was quiet all through breakfast, as Julian, Emma, and Cristina filled in the others on what they’d discovered the previous night. Emma kept the details of the Mantid attack minimal; she didn’t want to give Tavvy nightmares.

Stanley Wells’s wallet was passed over to Ty, who looked thrilled to be handling a clue. He promised a full investigation of the unfortunate Stanley after the testing. Since Mark had no need to participate in the testing, Julian asked him if he would look after Tavvy in the library.

“I will not feed him to a tree, as is done in the Unseelie Court with unruly children,” Mark promised.

“That’s a relief,” Julian said dryly.

Mark bent down toward Tavvy, whose eyes were sparkling. “Come with me, little one,” Mark said. “There are books in the library, that I remember, that I loved as a child. I could show them to you.”

Tavvy nodded and placed his hand in Mark’s with total trust. Something went through Mark’s eyes then, a lightning flash of emotion. He went out of the room with Tavvy without another word.

Cameron’s warning stayed with Emma through the rest of the meal, as they cleaned up, and after they all filed to the classroom to find Diana there, holding a heavy stack of testing papers. She couldn’t get his words off her mind, and as a result scored dismally on languages and memorization of the classes of various demons and Downworlders. She mixed up Azazel and Asmodeus, Purgatic and Cthonian, and nixies and pixies. Diana glared at her as she marked the paper with Emma’s name on it with a fat red pen.

Everyone else scored high, and the few that Julian missed were ones Emma suspected he had gotten wrong on purpose to make her feel better.

Emma was grateful when they finished up the written and oral parts of the test. They took a break for lunch before moving down the hall to the training room. Diana had already set up the space. There were targets for knife throwing, swords of various sizes, and, in the middle of the room, a large training dummy. It had a wooden
trunk, several arms that could be positioned and repositioned, and a stuffed cloth head like a scarecrow.

A circle of black-and-white powder surrounded the dummy—rock salt mixed with ash. “Attacking from a distance, with care and precision,” Diana said. “Disrupt the ash circle and you fail.” She moved toward the black box on the floor and flipped a switch. It was a radio. Noise exploded into the room, harsh and discordant. It sounded as if someone had recorded a mob in action, shouting and yelling and smashing windows.

Livvy looked horrified. Ty winced and reached for his headphones, dropping them over his ears.

“Distraction,” said Diana loudly. “You have to work past it—”

Before she could finish, there was a knock at the door: It was Mark, looking diffident. “Tavvy is busy with his books,” he said to Diana, who had reached to turn the noise down slightly, “and you had asked if I could join this part of the testing. I thought it best to oblige.”

“But Mark doesn’t need to be tested,” objected Julian. “It’s not as if his scores can be reported to the Clave.”

“Cristina doesn’t need her scores reported either,” Diana said. “But she’s joining in. I want to see how you all do. If you’re going to work together, it would be best if you all knew each other’s skill levels.”

“I can fight,” Mark said. He didn’t add anything about the night before, the fact that he’d held off Mantid demons on his own, without new runes. “The Wild Hunt are warriors.”

“Yes, but they fight differently than Shadowhunters,” Diana said, gesturing around the training room, at the runed blades, the
adamas
swords. “These are the weapons of your people.” She turned back to the others. “Each of you must choose one.”

Mark’s expression flattened at that, but he said nothing. Nor did he move as the rest of them scattered—Emma went for Cortana,
Cristina for her butterfly knives, Livvy for her saber, and Dru for a long, thin misericord. Julian chose a pair of
chakhrams
, circular razored throwing stars.

Ty hung back. Emma couldn’t help but wonder if Diana noticed that it was Livvy who picked up a dagger for Ty and pressed it into his palm. Emma had seen Ty throw knives before: He was good at it, sometimes excellent, but only when he felt like it. When he didn’t, there was no moving him.

“Julian,” Diana said, turning the music back up. “You first.”

Julian stepped back and threw, the
chakhrams
spinning from his hands like circles of light. One sheared off the training dummy’s right arm, the other its left, before they buried themselves in the wall.

“Your target isn’t dead,” Diana pointed out. “Just armless.”

“Exactly,” said Julian. “So I can question him. Or
it
, you know, if it’s a demon.”

“Very strategic.” Diana tried to hide a smile as she made a note in her book. She picked up the dummy’s arms and fastened them back on. “Livvy?”

Livvy dispatched the dummy with a swing of her saber without passing the ash barrier. Dru acquitted herself decently with a thrown misericord, and Cristina flipped open her balisongs and hurled them so that one point of each blade stuck into the dummy’s head exactly where its eyes would have been.

“Gross,” said Livvy admiringly. “I like it.”

Cristina retrieved her knives and winked at Emma, who had climbed partway up the rope ladder, Cortana in her free hand.

“Emma?” Diana said, craning her head up. “What are you doing?”

Emma flung herself from the ladder. It wasn’t the cold fury of battle, but there was a moment of falling freedom that was pure pleasure, that drove the annoyance of Cameron’s warning out of her mind. She landed on the dummy, feet planted on its shoulders,
and slashed down, driving Cortana’s hilt deep into its trunk. Then she flipped herself backward, over and down, landing on her feet inches outside the circle of ash.

“That was showing off,” Diana said, but she was smiling as she made another note. She glanced up. “Tiberius? It’s your turn.”

Ty took a step toward the circle. The white band of his headphones was stark against his black hair. He was as tall as the dummy, Emma realized with a jolt. She often thought of Ty as the child he had been. But he wasn’t—he was fifteen years old, older than she’d been when she and Julian had undergone the
parabatai
ceremony. His face wasn’t a little boy’s face anymore. Sharpness had replaced the softness.