Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

Julian shook his head. "Thanks," he said. "But no one needs to keep a watch on him. He's free to come and go."

"But what if he hurts himself?" It was Tavvy. His voice was small and thin.

Julian bent down and lifted his brother up, arms around Tavvy, hugging him tightly, once, before setting him down again. Tavvy kept his hand fixed on Jules's shirt. "He won't," Julian said.

"I want to go up to the studio," Tavvy said. "I don't want to be here."

Julian hesitated, then nodded. The studio where he painted was somewhere that he often brought Tavvy when his little brother was frightened: Tavvy found the paints, the papers, even the brushes soothing. "I'll bring you up," he said. "There's leftover pizza in the kitchen if anyone wants it, and sandwiches, and--"

"It's okay, Jules," Livvy said. She had seated herself on the table, by her twin; she was above Ty as he looked down at the ley line map, his mouth set. "We can handle dinner. We'll be fine."

"I'll bring you up something to eat," Emma said. "And for Tavvy, too."

Thank you, Julian mouthed to her before he turned toward the door. Before he reached it, Ty, who had been quiet since Mark had left, spoke. "You won't punish him," he said, his cord wrapped tightly around the fingers of his left hand, "will you?"

Julian turned around, clearly surprised. "Punish Mark? For what?"

"For all the things he said." Ty was flushed, unwinding the cord slowly as it slid through his fingers. Over years of watching his brother, and trying to learn, Julian had come to understand that where sounds and light were concerned, Ty was far more sensitive to them than most people. But where touch was concerned, it fascinated him. It was the way Julian had learned to create Ty's distractions and hand tools, by watching him spend hours investigating the texture of silk or sandpaper, the corrugations of shells and the roughness of rocks. "They were true--they were the truth. He told us the truth and he helped with the investigation. He shouldn't be punished for that."

"Of course not," said Julian. "None of us would punish him."

"It's not his fault if he doesn't understand everything," Ty said. "Or if things are too much for him. It's not his fault."

"Ty-Ty," said Livvy. It had been Emma's nickname for Tiberius when he was a baby. Since then, the whole family had adopted it. She reached to rub his shoulder. "It'll be all right."

"I don't want Mark to leave again," Ty said. "Do you understand, Julian?"

Emma watched as the weight of that, the responsibility of it, settled over Julian.

"I understand, Ty," he said.

Emma shouldered open the door to Julian's studio, trying hard not to spill any liquid out of the two overflowing mugs of soup she was carrying.

There were two rooms in Julian's studio: the one Julian let people see, and the one he didn't. His mother, Eleanor, had used the larger room as a studio and the smaller one as a darkroom to develop photographs. Ty had often voiced the question of whether the developing chemicals and setup were still intact, and whether he could use them.

But the second studio room was the only issue on which Julian didn't bend to the will of his younger siblings or offer to give up what was his for them. The black-painted door stayed closed and locked, and even Emma wasn't allowed inside.

Nor did she ask. Julian had so little privacy, she didn't want to begrudge him the bit he could claim.

The main studio was beautiful. Two of the walls were glass, one facing the ocean and one the desert. The other two walls were painted creamy taupe, and Julian's mother's canvases--abstracts in bright colors--still adorned them.

Jules was standing by the central island, a massive block of granite whose surface was covered with sheafs of paper, boxes of watercolors, and piled tubes of paint with lyrical names: alazarin red, cardinal purple, cadmium orange, ultramarine blue.

He raised one hand and put a finger to his lips, glancing to the side. Seated at a small easel was Tavvy, armed with a box of open nontoxic paints. He was smearing them over a long sheet of butcher paper, seeming pleased with his multicolored creation. There was orange paint in his brown curls.

"I just got him calmed down," Julian said as Emma approached and set the mugs on the island. "What's going on? Has anyone talked to Mark?"

"His door's still locked," Emma said. "The others are in the library." She pushed one of the mugs toward him. "Eat," she said. "Cristina made it. Tortilla soup. Although she says we have the wrong chiles."

Julian picked up a mug and knelt down to place it next to Tavvy. His little brother looked up and blinked at Emma as if he'd just noticed she was there. "Did Jules show you the pictures?" he demanded. Blue had joined the orange and yellow in his hair. He looked like a sunset.

"Which pictures?" Emma asked as Julian straightened up.

"The ones of us. The card ones."

She raised an eyebrow at Jules. "The card what?"

He flushed. "Portraits," he said. "I did them in the Rider-Waite style, like the tarot."

"The mundane tarot?" Emma said as Jules reached for a portfolio book. Shadowhunters tended to eschew the objects of mundane superstition: palmistry, astrology, crystal balls, tarot cards. They weren't forbidden to own or touch, but they were associated with unsavory dwellers on the fringes of magic, like Johnny Rook.

"I made some changes to it," Julian said, opening the book to show a flutter of papers, each sporting a colorful, distinctive illustration. There was Livvy with her saber, hair flying, but instead of her name beneath, it read THE PROTECTOR. As always, Julian's paintings seemed to reach out, a direct line to her heart, making her feel as if she understood what Julian had felt while he was painting. Looking at the picture of Livvy, Emma felt a flash of admiration, love, a fear of loss, even--Julian would never speak of it, but she suspected he was watching Livvy and Ty become adults with more than a little terror.

Then there was Tiberius, a death's-head moth fluttering on his hand, his pretty face turned down and away from the viewer. The painting gave Emma a sense of fierce love, intelligence, and vulnerability mixed together. Beneath him it said THE GENIUS.

Then there was THE DREAMER--Dru with her head in a book--and THE INNOCENT, Tavvy in his pajamas, sleepy head cradled in his hand. The colors were warm, affectionate, caressing.

And then there was Mark. Arms crossed over his chest, hair as blond as straw, he wore a shirt that bore the design of spread wings. Each wing sported an eye: one gold, one blue. A rope circled his ankle, trailing out of the frame.

THE PRISONER, it said.

Jules's shoulder brushed against Emma's as she leaned in to study the image. Like all Julian's drawings, it seemed to whisper to her in a silent language: loss, it said, and sorrow, and years that you could not recapture.

"Is this what you were working on in England?" she asked.

"Yes. I was hoping to do the whole set." He reached back and scrubbed at his tangled brown curls. "I might have to change the title of Mark's card," said Julian. "Now that he's free."

"If he stays free.

" Emma brushed the drawing of Mark aside and saw that the next portrait was of Helen, standing among ice floes, her pale hair covered by a knitted cap. THE SEPARATED, it said. There was another card, THE DEVOTED, for her wife, Aline, whose dark hair made a cloud around her. She wore the Blackthorn ring on her hand. And the last was of Arthur, sitting at his desk. A red ribbon ran along the floor beneath him, the color of blood. There was no title.

Julian reached out and shuffled them back into the notebook. "They're not finished yet."

"Am I going to get a card?" Emma teased. "Or is it just Blackthorns and Blackthorns-by-marriage?"

"Why don't you draw Emma?" Tavvy asked, looking at his brother. "You never draw Emma."

Emma saw Julian tense. It was true. Julian rarely drew people, but even when he did, he'd stopped sketching Emma years ago. The last time she remembered him drawing her was the family portrait at Aline and Helen's wedding.

"Are you all right?" she said, her voice low enough that she hoped Tavvy couldn't hear.

He exhaled, hard, and opened his eyes, his muscles unclenching. His eyes met hers and the curl of anger that had begun unfurling in her stomach vanished. His gaze was open, vulnerable. "I'm sorry," he said. "It's just, I always thought when he got back--when Mark got back--he'd help. That he'd take over, take care of everything. I never thought he'd be something else I had to deal with."

Emma was carried back in that moment to all the weeks, the months, after Mark had first been taken and Helen sent away, when Julian had woken up screaming for the older brother and sister who weren't there, who would never be there again. She remembered the panic that sent him stumbling to the bathroom to throw up, the nights she'd held him on the cold tiled floor while he shook as if he had a fever.

I can't, he'd said. I can't do this alone. I can't bring them up. I can't raise four children.

Emma felt the anger uncurl in her stomach again, but this time it was directed at Mark.

"Jules?" Tavvy asked, sounding nervous, and Julian passed a hand over his face. It was a nervous habit, as if he were wiping an easel free of paint; when he dropped his hand, the fear and emotion had gone from his eyes.

"I'm here," he said, and went over to pick up Tavvy. Tavvy put his head down on Jules's shoulder, looking sleepy, and getting paint all over Jules's T-shirt. But Jules didn't seem to care. He put his chin down in his younger brother's curls and smiled at Emma.