Lady Midnight (67 page)

“No,” Mark said, and his mouth twitched up at the corner. “That would be impractical.”

“If you’re not going to do it, tell me,” Emma said. “Or tell me what I can say to convince you. This isn’t for me, Mark, this is for Julian. This could well save his life. I can’t tell you more than that. I have to ask you to trust me. I’ve protected him all these years. This—this is part of that.”

The sun was setting. The room was suffused with a reddish light. It cast a rosy glow over Mark’s hair and skin. Emma remembered her twelve-year-old self, how she’d thought Mark was handsome. It hadn’t gone so far as a crush, but she could see another past for herself, one where Mark wasn’t taken from them. One where he’d been there, and so she’d fallen in love with him and not his brother. One where she’d been Julian’s
parabatai
and married to his brother, and they’d been in each other’s lives, bound permanently in every way people could be bound, and it would have been everything they should have wanted.

“You want me to tell him, tell everyone, that we are falling in love,” he said. “Not that we are in love already?”

She flushed. “It needs to be believable.”

“There is much that you are not telling me.” His eyes were bright. He was looking less human and more faerie now, she thought, sizing up the situation, positioning himself within the careful dance of deception. “I assume you will want everyone to know we have kissed. Perhaps done more.”

She nodded. She could definitely feel her cheeks burning.

“I swear to you, I’ll explain as much as I can,” she said, “if you agree. And I swear it could save Julian’s life. I hate to ask you to lie, but—”

“But for the ones you love, you’d do anything,” he said, and she
had no answer to that. He was definitely smiling now, his mouth curved in amusement. She couldn’t quite tell if it was human amusement or the amusement of Faerie, which thrived on chaos. “I can see why you chose me. I am here, and close, and it would have been easy for us to begin a relationship. We are neither of us attached to someone else. And you are, as I said, a beautiful girl, and hopefully you don’t find me hideous.”

“No,” Emma said. Relief and a thousand other emotions sang through her veins. “Not hideous.”

“So I suppose I only have one more question,” Mark said. “But first—” He turned around, and very deliberately closed her door.

When he faced her again, he had never looked to her so much like one of the Fair Folk. His eyes were full of a feral amusement, a carelessness that spoke of a world where there was no human Law. He seemed to bring the wildness of Faerie into the room with him: a cold, sweet magic that was nevertheless bitter at the roots.

The storm calls you as it calls me, does it not?

He held out a hand to her, half-beckoning, half-offering.

“Why lie?” he said.

E
PILOGUE

Annabel

For years her coffin had
been dry. Now seawater dripped in through the fine, porous holes in the wood and stone, and with the seawater, blood.

It fell onto parched bones and dry sinew, and soaked her winding shroud. It moistened her withered lips. It brought with it the magic of the ocean, and with it the blood of the one who had loved her, a stranger magic still.

In her tomb by the sounding sea, Annabel’s eyes opened.

N
OTES ON THE
T
EXT

“Water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits” is from Swinburne’s “Hymn to Proserpine.”

“Your heart is a weapon the size of your fist” is real graffiti, made famous by being written first on a wall in Palestine. Now you can find it everywhere.

“All the blood that’s shed on earth runs through the springs of that country” is from the ballad “Tam Lin.”

All chapter titles are taken from the poem “Annabel Lee.”

Many of the places Emma goes are real or based on real places in Los Angeles, but some are imaginary. Canter’s Deli exists, but the Midnight Theater doesn’t. Poseidon’s Trident is based on the seafood shack Neptune’s Net, but the Net doesn’t have showers out back. Malcolm’s house and Wells’s are based on real houses. I grew up in Los Angeles, so in many ways this is the L.A. I always imagined as a child, full of magic.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

It takes a village to keep a book from falling apart. Sarah Rees Brennan, Holly Black, Leigh Bardugo, Gwenda Bond and Christopher Rowe, Stephanie Perkins, Morgan Matson, Kelly Link, and Jon Skovron all helped and advised. Maureen Johnson, Tessa Gratton, Natalie Parker, Ally Carter, Sarah Cross, Elka Cloke, Holly and Jeffrey Rowland, and Marie Lu all cheered from the sidelines. Viviene Hebel did my Spanish translations, for which I will always be grateful. I may have grown up in L.A., but my Spanish, like Emma’s, is terrible. I owe Emily Houk, Cassandra Piedra, Catrin Langer, and Andrea Davenport an inestimable debt.

My always-gratitude to my agent, Russell Galen; my editor, Karen Wojtyla, and the team at Simon & Schuster for making it all happen. And lastly, my thanks to Josh, the true MVP.

Lady Midnight
was written in Los Angeles, California; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; and Menton, France.

Also by Cassandra Clare

City of Bones

City of Bones

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

City of Ashes

City of Ashes

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

City of Glass

City of Glass

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

City of Fallen Angels

City of Fallen Angels

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

City of Lost Souls

City of Lost Souls

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

City of Heavenly Fire

City of Heavenly Fire

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

Clockwork Angel

Clockwork Angel

CLICK HERE TO ORDER