Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

The office was sparsely decorated. On the desk was a photograph of a tall man with his arm around a small girl who resembled Diana despite her youth. They stood in front of a shop whose sign read DIANA'S ARROW.

There were flowers on the windowsill that Diana had placed there to brighten the room. She folded her arms across the top of the desk and looked at Emma levelly.

"You lied to me last night," she said.

"I didn't," Emma said, "not exactly. I--"

"Don't say you omitted, Emma," said Diana. "You know better than that."

"What did Johnny Rook tell you?" Emma said, and was immediately sorry she'd said it. Diana's expression darkened.

"Why don't you tell me?" she said. "In fact, tell me what you did and what your punishment should be. Does that seem fair?"

Emma crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. She hated being caught, and Diana was good at catching her. Diana was smart, which was often awesome, but not when she was angry.

Emma could either fill in for Diana what she thought Diana was angry about, thus possibly revealing more than Diana already knew, or she could stay silent, thus possibly annoying Diana further. After a moment's deliberation, she said, "I should have to take care of a box of kittens. You know how cruel kittens are, with their tiny little claws and terrible attitudes."

"Speaking of terrible attitudes," Diana said. She was idly playing with a pencil. "You went to the Shadow Market, against specific rules. You talked to Johnny Rook. He tipped you off that there'd be a body dump at the Sepulchre that might be connected to your parents' deaths. You didn't just happen to be there. You weren't patrolling."

"I paid Rook not to say anything," Emma muttered. "I trusted him!"

Diana threw her pencil down. "Emma, the guy is known as Rook the Crook. In fact, he's not just a crook, he's on the Clave's watch list because he works with faeries without permission. Any Downworlder or mundane who works in secret with faeries is locked out of business with Shadowhunters and forfeits their protection; you know that."

Emma threw up her hands. "But those are some of the most useful people out there! Cutting them off isn't helping the Clave, it's punishing Shadowhunters!"

Diana shook her head. "The rules are the rules for a reason. Being a Shadowhunter, a good one, is about more than just training fourteen hours a day and knowing sixty-five ways of killing a man with salad tongs."

"Sixty-seven," Emma said automatically. "Diana, I'm sorry. I really am, especially for dragging Cristina into this. It's not her fault."

"Oh, I know that." Diana was still frowning. Emma plunged ahead.

"Last night," she said, "you told me you believed me. About Sebastian not killing my parents. About there being more to it. Their deaths weren't just--just Sebastian wiping out the Conclave. Someone wanted them dead. Their deaths meant something--"

"Everyone's death means something," Diana said in a clipped tone. She passed a hand across her eyes. "I talked to the Silent Brothers last night. I found out what they know. And God, I've been telling myself I ought to lie to you about it--I've been struggling with it all day--"

"Please," Emma whispered. "Please, don't lie."

"But I can't. I remember when I came here, and you were this little girl, you were twelve years old, and you were wrecked. You'd lost everything. All you had to hang on to was Julian and your need for revenge. For Sebastian not to have been the reason your parents died, because if he was, then how could you punish him?" She took a deep breath. "I know Johnny Rook told you there've been a rash of murders. He's right. Twelve total, counting the one last night. No trace of the murderer left behind. All of the victims unidentified. Their teeth broken, wallets missing, fingerprints sanded off."

"And the Silent Brothers didn't know about this? The Clave, the Council--?"

"They did know. And this is the part you're not going to like." Diana's fingernails tapped on the glass of her desk. "Several of the dead were Fair Folk. That makes this a matter for the Scholomance, the Centurions, and the Silent Brothers. Not for Institutes. The Silent Brothers knew. The Clave knew. They didn't tell us, deliberately, because they don't want us involved."

"The Scholomance?"

The Scholomance was a piece of Shadowhunter history come to life. A cold castle of towers and corridors carved into the side of a mountain in the Carpathians, it had existed for centuries as a place where the most elite of Shadowhunters were trained to deal with the double menaces of demons and Downworlders. It had been closed when the first Accords were signed: a show of faith that Downworlders and Shadowhunters were no longer at war.

Now with the advent of the Cold Peace, it had been reopened and was operational again. One had to pass a series of harsh tests to be admitted, and what was learned at the school was not to be shared with others. Those who graduated were called Centurions, scholars and legendary warriors; Emma had never met one in person.

"It might not be fair, but it's the truth."

"But the markings. They admitted they were the same markings that were on my parents' bodies?"

"They didn't admit anything," Diana said. "They said they'd handle it. They said not to get involved, that the rule had come down from the Council itself."

"The bodies?" Emma said. "Did the bodies dissolve when they tried to move them, like my parents' bodies?"

"Emma!" Diana rose to her feet. Her hair was a dark, lovely cloud around her face. "We don't interfere with what happens to the fey, not anymore. That's what the Cold Peace means. The Clave hasn't just suggested we don't do this. It's forbidden to interfere with faerie business. If you involve yourself, it could have consequences not just for you but for Julian."

It was as if Diana had picked up one of the heavy paperweights from the desk and smashed it into Emma's chest. "Julian?"

"What does he do every year? On the anniversary of the Cold Peace?"

Emma thought of Julian, sitting here, in this office. Year after year, from the time he was twelve and all scraped elbows and torn jeans. He would sit patiently with pen and ink, writing his letter to the Clave, petitioning them to let his sister Helen come home from Wrangel Island.

Wrangel Island was the seat of all the world's wards, a set of magical spells that had been set up to protect the earth from certain demons a thousand years ago. It was also a tiny ice floe thousands of miles away in the Arctic Sea. When the Cold Peace had been declared, Helen had been sent there; the Clave had said it was in order that she study the wards, but no one believed it was anything other than an exile.

She had been allowed a few trips home since then, including the one to Idris when she had married Aline Penhallow, the daughter of t

he Consul. But even that powerful connection couldn't free her. Every year Julian wrote. And every year he was denied.

Diana spoke in a softer voice. "Every year the Clave says no because Helen's loyalty might be to the Fair Folk. How will it look if they think we're investigating faerie killings against their orders? How would it affect the chance that they might let her go?"

"Julian would want me to--" Emma started.

"Julian would cut off his hand if you asked him to. That doesn't mean you should." Diana rubbed her temples as if they ached. "Revenge isn't family, Emma. It isn't a friend, and it's a cold bedfellow." She dropped her hand and moved toward the window, glancing back over her shoulder at Emma. "Do you know why I took this job, here at the Institute? And don't give me a sarcastic answer."

Emma looked down at the floor. It was made up of alternating blue and white tiles; inside the white tiles were drawings: a rose, a castle, a church spire, an angel wing, a flock of birds, each one different.

"Because you were there in Alicante during the Dark War," said Emma, a catch in her voice. "You were there when Julian had to--to stop his father. You saw us fight, and you thought we were brave and you wanted to help. That's what you've always said."

"I had someone when I was younger who helped me become who I really am," said Diana. Emma's ears perked. Diana rarely spoke about her life. The Wrayburns had been a famous Shadowhunter family for generations, but Diana was the last. She never talked about her childhood, her family. It was as if her life had started when she'd taken over her father's weapons shop in Alicante. "I wanted to help you become who you really are."

"Which is?"

"The best Shadowhunter of your generation," said Diana. "You train and fight like no one I've ever seen. Which is exactly why I don't want to see you throw your potential away in the pursuit of something that won't heal your wounds."

Throw my potential away? Diana didn't know, didn't understand. None of her family had died in the Dark War. And Emma's parents hadn't died fighting; they'd been murdered, tortured and mutilated. Crying out for her, maybe, in those moments, short or long or endless, between life and death.