Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

I have had to make do. Whose eyes had he been looking into, all those years? Cristina wondered as she leaned forward. She didn't know why she did it, exactly; maybe it was the way his eyes stayed fixed on hers, as if he couldn't imagine anything more fascinating than looking at her. His gaze didn't stray, either, not to the V of her shirt or her bare legs or even her hands, as she opened her eyes wide and looked directly back at him.

"Beautiful," he said finally.

"Do you mean your haircut?" she asked, trying for a teasing voice, but it wobbled in the middle. Maybe she shouldn't have offered to so intimately touch a complete stranger, even if he did seem harmless, even if she hadn't meant anything by it--had she?

"No," he said on a soft exhale. She felt his breath warm on her neck, and his hand slid over hers. His was rough and calloused, scarred along the palm. Her heart gave an uneven leap in her chest just as Mark's bedroom door opened.

She nearly jumped away from him as Ty and Livvy appeared in the doorway. Livvy was holding her phone, and her eyes were wide and worried. "It's Emma," she said, lifting the phone. "She texted nine-one-one. We need to go meet them right away."

Emma made a screeching right turn off Fairfax into a parking lot down the street from Canter's Delicatessen. It belonged to a paint store that was closed now. She wheeled around to the back, where the lot was totally empty, and pulled the car to a jerking stop, making Jules swear.

She looked back at him, unbuckling her belt. He was pale, clutching his side. She couldn't see much, given the darkness inside the car and the black clothes he was wearing, but blood was leaking through his fingers in slow pulses. Her stomach went cold.

When he'd fallen at Wells's house, the first thing she'd done was sketch a healing rune on his skin. The second was get him to his feet and half-drag him, the weapons, and Ava's purse into the backseat of the car.

It was only after they'd driven a few blocks that he'd moaned and she'd looked back to realize he was still bleeding. She'd pulled over and put on another healing rune, and then another. That would work. It had to.

There were very few kinds of wounds that healing runes couldn't help. Those made by demon poisons, and those bad enough to kill you. She'd felt her brain hitch and freeze up at the thought of either of those possibilities and had gone immediately for her phone. She'd texted Livvy the first location she could think of that was familiar--they all knew and loved Canter's--and then driven straight for it as fast as she could.

She turned the car off with a jerk of her wrist and climbed into the backseat beside Jules. He was wedged into the corner, pale and sweating with obvious pain. "Okay," she said in a shaking voice. "You have to let me look at you."

He was biting his lip. The streetlights from Fairfax illuminated the backseat, but not enough for Emma to see him well. He reached down for the hem of his shirt--and hesitated.

She took her witchlight out of her pocket and lit it, filling the car with bright light. Jules's shirt was soaked with blood, and worse, the healing runes she'd drawn had vanished from his skin.

They weren't working.

"Jules," she said. "I have to call the Silent Brothers. They can help you. I have to."

His eyes screwed shut with pain. "You can't," he said. "You know we can't call the Silent Brothers. They report directly to the Clave."

"So we'll lie to them. Say it was a routine demon patrol. I'm calling," she said, and reached for her phone.

"No!" Julian said, forcefully enough to stop her. "Silent Brothers know when you're lying! They have the Mortal Sword, Emma. They'll find out about the investigation. About Mark--"

"You're not going to bleed to death in a car for Mark!"

"No," he said, looking at her. His eyes were eerily blue-green, the only deep color in the witch-lit interior of the car. "You're going to fix me."

Emma could feel it when Jules was hurt, like a splinter lodged under her skin. The physical pain didn't bother her--it was the terror, the only terror worse than her fear of the ocean. The fear of Jules being hurt, of him dying. She would give up anything, sustain any wound, to prevent that from happening.

"Okay," she said. Her voice sounded dry and thin to her own ears. "Okay." She took a deep breath. "Hang on."

She unzipped her jacket, threw it aside. Leaned over the console between the seats to put her witchlight on the floorboard. Then she reached for Jules. The next few seconds were a blur of Jules's blood on her hands and his harsh breathing as she pulled him partly upright, wedging him against the back door. He didn't make a sound as she moved him, but she could see him biting his lip and the blood on his mouth and chin, and she felt as if her bones were popping inside her skin.

"Your jacket," she said through gritted teeth. "I have to cut it off."

He nodded, letting his head fall back. She reached for Cortana.

Despite the toughness of the material, the blade went through the gear jacket like a knife through paper. It fell away in pieces. Emma sliced down the front of his T-shirt and pulled it apart as if she were peeling open a fruit.

Emma had seen blood before, often, but this felt different. It was Julian's, and there seemed to be a lot of it. It was smeared up and down his chest and rib cage; she could see where the arrow had gone in and where the skin had torn when he'd yanked it out.

"Why did you pull the arrow out?" she demanded, pulling her sweater over her head. She had a tank top on under it. She patted his chest and side with the sweater, absorbing as much of the blood as she could.

Jules's breath was coming in harsh pants. "Because when someone--shoots you with an arrow--" he gasped, "your immediate response is not--'Thanks for the arrow, I think I'll keep it for a while.'"

"Good to know your sense of humor is intact."

"Like I said, it was burning," Julian said. "Not like a normal wound. Like there was something on the arrowhead, acid or something."

Emma had mopped away as much of the blood as she could. It was still welling from the puncture wound, running in thin streams down his stomach, gathering in the lines between his abdominal muscles. He had deep gaps above his hip bones, too, and his sides were hard and smooth to the touch.

She took a deep breath. "You're too skinny," she said as brightly as she could. "Too much

coffee, not enough pancakes."

"I hope they put that on my tombstone." He gasped as she shifted forward, and she realized abruptly that she was squarely in Julian's lap, her knees around his hips. It was a bizarrely intimate position.

"I--Am I hurting you?" she asked.

He swallowed visibly. "Try with the iratze again."

"Fine," she said. "Grab the panic bar."

"The what?" He opened his eyes and peered at her.

"The plastic handle! Up there, above the window!" She pointed. "It's for grabbing on to when the car is going around curves."

"Are you sure? I always thought it was for hanging things on," he said. "Like dry cleaning."

"Julian, now is not the time to be pedantic. Grab the bar or I swear--"

"All right!" He reached up, grabbed hold of it, and winced. "I'm ready."

She nodded and set Cortana aside, reaching for her stele. Maybe her previous iratzes had been too fast, too sloppy. She'd always focused on the physical aspects of Shadowhunting, not the more mental and artistic ones: seeing through glamours, drawing runes.

She set the tip of it to his shoulder and drew, carefully and slowly. She had to brace herself with her hand against his body. She tried to press as lightly as she could, but she could feel him tense under her fingers. The skin on his shoulder was smooth under her touch, and she wanted to get closer to him, put her hand over the wound on his side and heal it with the sheer force of her will--

Stop. She had finished the iratze. She sat back, her hand clamped around the stele. Julian straightened, the ragged remnants of his shirt hanging off his shoulders. He took a deep breath, glancing down at himself--and the iratze faded back into his skin, like black ice melting, spreading, being absorbed by the sea.

He looked up at Emma. She could see her own reflection in his eyes: She looked wrecked, panicked, blood on her neck and her white tank top. "It hurts less," he whispered.

The wound pulsed again; blood slid down the side of his rib cage, staining his leather belt and the waistband of his jeans. She put her hands on his bare skin, panic rising up inside her. His skin felt hot, too hot. Fever hot.

"You're lying," she said. "Jules. Enough. I'm going to get help--"