Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

f the car, he leaned over, put the tip of the stele to her skin, and began to draw. Emma could feel his hair brush against her cheek and neck, and smell the faint scent of cloves that hung around him.

She looked down, and as the black lines of runes spread across her skin, Emma remembered what Cristina had said about Jules: He has nice hands. She wondered if she'd ever really looked at them before. Were they nice? They were Julian's hands. They were hands that painted and fought; they had never failed him. In that way they were beautiful.

"All right." Jules sat back, admiring his handiwork. Neat runes of precision and stealth, soundlessness and balance decorated her forearms. Emma drew down her sleeves and reached for her own stele.

He shivered when the stele touched his skin. It must be cold. "Sorry," Emma whispered, bracing her hand on his shoulder. She could feel the edge of his collarbone under her thumb, the ribbed cotton of his T-shirt soft beneath her touch; she tightened her grip, her fingertips sliding against the bare skin at the edge of his collar. He drew in a sharp breath.

She stopped. "Did I hurt you?"

He shook his head. She couldn't see his face. "I'm fine." He reached behind himself and unlocked the driver's side door; a second later he was out of the car and shrugging on his jacket.

Emma followed him. "But I didn't finish the Sure-Strike rune--"

He had moved around to the trunk and opened it. He took out his runed crossbow and handed her Cortana and its sheath.

"It's fine." He closed the trunk. He didn't seem bothered: same Julian, same calm smile. "Besides, I don't need it."

He raised the crossbow casually and shot. The bolt flew through the air and plunged directly into the security camera over the gate. It blew apart with a whine of shattered metal and a wisp of smoke.

"Show-off," Emma said, sheathing her sword.

"I'm your parabatai. I have to show off occasionally. Otherwise no one would understand why you keep me around." An elderly couple appeared from a driveway near them, walking an Alsatian. Emma had to fight the urge to conceal Cortana, though she knew the weapon was glamoured. To the mundanes walking by, she and Julian would look like ordinary teenagers, long sleeves concealing their runes. They passed around the corner of the road and out of sight.

"I keep you around because I need an audience for my witty remarks," she said as they reached the gates and Jules took out his stele to draw an Open rune.

The gate popped open. Julian turned sideways to slide through the opening. "What witty remarks?"

"Oh, you are going to pay for that," Emma muttered, following him. "I am incredibly witty."

Julian chuckled. They had come to a lined pathway that led up to a large stucco house with enormous arched front doors, two huge panes of glass on either side. The lights lining the path were on, but the house was dark and silent.

Emma sprang up the steps and peered in through one of the windows; she could see nothing but dark, smudged shapes. "No one home--oh!" She jumped back a step as something flung itself against the window: a lumpy, hair-covered ball. Slime slicked the glass. Emma was already crouching, about to pull a stiletto from her boot. "What is it?" She straightened. "A Raum demon? A--"

"I think it's a minipoodle," said Julian, the corner of his mouth twitching. "And I don't think it's armed," he added as she glanced down to stare accusingly at what was, yes, definitely a small dog, its face pressed to the glass. "I'm almost positive, in fact."

Emma hit him on the shoulder, then drew an Open rune on the door. There was the snapping click of the lock, and the door swung open.

The dog left off licking the window and rushed out, barking. It darted around them in a circle, then lunged toward a fenced area at the far end of the yard. Julian darted off after the canine.

Emma followed him through ankle-high grass. It was a nice garden, but nobody had taken real care of it. The plants were running wild, the flowered hedges overgrown. There was a pool, bordered by a waist-high ironwork fence, the gate hanging open. As Emma neared it, she could see that Julian was standing by the side of it, very still. It was the kind of pool that had LED lights in it, cycling through a rainbow of garish colors. Rows of pool chairs surrounded it, made of white metal with white cushions, dusted with fallen pine needles and blown jacaranda blossoms.

Emma slowed as she reached the water. The dog was crouched by the pool ladder, not barking but whimpering. At first Emma thought she was looking at a shadow on the water; then she realized it was a body. A dead woman in a white bikini, floating on the surface of the pool. She was facedown, long black hair drifting around her head, arms dangling at her sides. The purple glow from the pool lights made her skin look bruised.

"By the Angel, Jules . . . ," Emma breathed.

It wasn't as if Emma hadn't seen dead bodies before. She'd seen plenty. Mundanes, Shadowhunters, murdered children in the Hall of Accords. Still, there was something plaintive about this body: the woman was tiny, so skinny you could see the lines of her spinal column.

There was a splash of red against one of the pool chairs. Emma moved toward it, thinking it was blood, then realized it was a Valentino handbag made of bright red intaglio leather, slightly unzipped. A gold wallet had spilled out of it, and a pink phone.

She glanced at the phone, then picked up the wallet and flicked through it. "Her name's Ava Leigh," she said. "She is--she was--twenty-two. Home address listed as here. Must have been his girlfriend."

The dog whimpered again and lay down, his paws by the pool's edge. "He thinks she's drowning," Julian said. "He wants us to save her."

"We couldn't have," Emma said softly. "Look at her phone. None of the calls have been answered in two days. I think she's been dead at least that long. We couldn't have done anything, Jules."

She put the wallet back into the bag. She was reaching for the handles when she heard it: the click of a crossbow loading.

Without looking or thinking, she threw herself at Jules, knocking him down. They hit the Spanish tile hard as a bolt whistled by them and vanished into the hedges.

Julian kicked off against the ground and spun them over, rolling between two of the chairs. The phone Emma had been carrying flew out of her hand; she heard it hit the pool water with a splash and cursed silently to herself. Julian levered himself up, his hands gripping her shoulders; his eyes were wild, his body pressing hers into the ground. "Are you all right? Were you hit?"

"I wasn't--I'm fine--" she gasped. The dog was huddled by the fence, howling, as another bolt whistled down and struck the corpse in the pool. Ava's body flipped over, baring her swollen, drowning-blackened face to the night sky. One of her arms floated up, as if she were raising it to protect herself. With a brief flash of horror, Emma saw that her right hand was missing; not just missing, but looked as if it had been hacked away, the skin around her wrist ragged and bloodless in the chlorinated water.

Emma rolled out from under Julian and sprang to her feet. There was a figure standing on the roof of the house; she could see it only in outline. Tall, most likely masculine, dressed all in black, crossbow in hand. He raised it and took aim. Another bolt whistled by.

Rage settled over Emma, cold and hard. How dare he shoot at them, how dare he shoot at Jules? She took a running jump and cleared the pool. She hurtled over the gate and ran at the house, leaping up to seize hold of the wrought-iron bars covering the lower windows. She levered herself higher, aware that Julian was shouting at her to get down, ignoring where the metal bit into her palms. She swung herself up, then up again, pushing off from the wall to flip herself onto the roof.

The shingles crunched under her feet as she landed in a crouch. She looked up and caught a quick glimpse of the black-clad figure on the rooftop; he was backing away from her. His face was covered with a mask.

Emma unsheathed Cortana. The blade glittered long and wicked in the dusk light.

"What are you?" she demanded. "A vampire? Downworlder? Did you kill Ava Leigh?" She took a step forward; the strange figure backed away. He moved wi

thout alarm, very deliberately, which only angered Emma more. There was a dead girl in the pool below them, and Emma had arrived too late to save her. Her body was thrumming with the desire to do something to fix it.

Emma narrowed her eyes. "Listen up. I'm a Shadowhunter. You can either surrender to the authority of the Clave, or I'll bury this blade in your heart. Your choice."

He took a step toward her and for a moment Emma thought it had worked; he was actually giving up. Then he dived suddenly to the side. She lunged forward as he tumbled backward off the roof. He fell silently as a star.

Emma cursed and ran to the edge of the roof. There was nothing. Silence, darkness; no sign of anything or anyone. She could see the glimmer of the pool. She moved around the side and saw Julian bending down, one of his hands on the dog's head.

Trust Jules to try to comfort a puppy at a time like this. She braced herself and jumped--the image of the training room flashed behind her eyelids--landing in the overgrown grass with only a slight sting.

"Jules?" she said, coming closer. With a whimper the dog darted away, into the shadows. "He got away."

"Yeah?" He straightened up, sounding preoccupied. "What do you think he was doing here?"

"I don't know; I guessed vampire, but Nightshade keeps a pretty tight leash on them and--Jules?" She heard her voice skip upward an octave as she drew close enough to see that he had one hand pressed against his side. His black gear jacket was torn. "Jules? Are you okay?"

He drew his hand away from his side. His palm was a welter of blood, black under the blue LED lighting of the pool. "I'm fine," he said. He rose to his feet and took a step toward her--and stumbled. "It's fine."

Her heart flipped over. He was holding something in his bloody hand, and her insides went cold as she saw what it was. A short metal crossbow bolt, with a wide triangular head like an arrow, wet with blood. He must have pulled it from his side.

You were never, never supposed to pull an arrow out of your skin: It did more damage coming out than going in. Julian knew that.

"What did you do?" Emma whispered. Her mouth had gone dry.

Blood was leaking steadily from the tear in his jacket. "It was burning," he said. "Not like a normal arrow. Emma--"