Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

She moved to climb off him, but his hand shot out and clamped over her wrist. "Em," he said. "Emma, look at me."

She looked. There was a little blood on his cheek and his hair hung in sweaty dark curls, but otherwise he just looked like Jules, like he always did. His left hand was pressed to his side, but his right came up, his fingers curling around the back of her neck. "Em," he said again, his eyes wide and dark blue in the dim light. "Did you kiss Mark the other night?"

"What?" Emma stared. "Okay, you've definitely lost too much blood."

He shifted minutely under her, keeping his hand where it was, gentle, tickling the fine hairs at the nape of her neck. "I saw the way you looked at him," he said. "Outside Poseidon's."

"If you're worried about Mark's well-being, you shouldn't be. He's a mess. I know that. I don't think he needs to be more confused."

"It wasn't that. I wasn't worried about Mark." He closed his eyes, as if he were counting silently inside his head. When he opened them again his pupils were wide black circles sketched onto his irises. "Maybe it should have been that. But it wasn't."

Was he actually hallucinating? Emma thought in a panic. It wasn't like him to ramble like this, to make no sense at all. "I have to call the Silent Brothers," she said. "I don't care if you hate me forever or the investigation gets canceled--"

"Please," he said, desperation clear in his voice. "Just--just one more try."

"One more?" she echoed.

"You'll fix this. You'll fix me, because we're parabatai. We're forever. I said that to you once, do you remember?"

She nodded warily, hand on the phone.

"And the strength of a rune your parabatai gives you is special. Whatever was on that arrowhead was meant to prevent healing magic, but Emma, you can do it. You can heal me. We're parabatai and that means the things we can do together are . . . extraordinary."

There was blood on her jeans now, blood on her hands and her tank top, and he was still bleeding, the wound still open, an incongruous tear in the smooth skin all around it.

"Try," Jules said in a dry whisper. "For me, try?"

His voice went up on the question, and in it she heard the voice of the boy he had been once, remembered him smaller, skinnier, younger, standing upright before his siblings in the Great Hall in Alicante as his father advanced on him with his blade unsheathed.

And she remembered what Julian had done then. Done to protect her, to protect all of them, because he always would do everything to protect them.

She took her hand off the phone and gripped the stele, so tightly she felt it dig into her damp palm. "Look at me, Jules," she said, and he met her eyes with his. She placed the stele against his skin, and for a moment she held still, just breathing, breathing and remembering.

Julian. A presence in her life for as long as she could recall, splashing water at each other in the ocean, digging in the sand together, him putting his hand over hers and them marveling at the difference in the shape and length of their fingers. Julian singing, terribly and off-key, while he drove, his fingers in her hair carefully freeing a trapped leaf, his hands catching her in the training room when she fell, and fell, and fell. The first time after their parabatai ceremony when she'd smashed her hand into a wall in rage at not being able to get a sword maneuver right, and he'd come up to her, taken her still-shaking body in his arms, and said, "Emma, Emma, don't hurt yourself. When you do, I feel it too."

Something in her chest seemed to split and crack; she marveled that it wasn't audible. Energy raced along her veins and the stele moved in her hand, tracing the graceful outline of a healing rune across Julian's chest. She heard him gasp, his eyes flying open. His hand slid down her back and he pressed her against him, his teeth gritted.

"Don't stop," he said.

Emma couldn't have stopped if she'd wanted to. The stele seemed to be moving of its own accord; she was blinded with memories, a kaleidoscope of them, all of Julian. Sun in her eyes and Julian asleep on the beach in an old T-shirt and her not wanting to wake him, but he'd woken anyway when the sun went down and looked for her, immediately, not smiling till his eyes found her and he knew she was there. Falling asleep talking and waking up with their hands interlocked; they'd been children in the dark together once but now they were something else, something intimate and powerful, something Emma felt she was touching only the very edge of as she finished the rune and the stele fell from her fingers.

"Oh," she said softly. The rune seemed lit from within by a soft glow. Julian was breathing hard, his stomach muscles rising and falling quickly, but the bleeding had stopped. The wound was closing, sealing itself up like an envelope. "Does it--does it hurt?"

A smile was spreading across Julian's face. His hand was still on Emma's hip, gripping hard; he must have forgotten. "No," he said. His voice was hushed, soft, as if he were speaking inside a church. "You did it; you fixed it." He was looking at her like she was a rare miracle. "Emma, my God, Emma."

Emma slumped against his shoulder as the tension drained out of her. She let her head rest there as his arms circled her body.

"It's all right." He slid his hands down her back, clearly able to tell that she was shaking. "Everything's fine, I'm fine."

"Jules," she whispered. His face was close to hers; she could see the light freckles across his cheekbones, under the smears of blood. Could feel his body against hers, vividly alive, the slamming of his heart in his rib cage, the heat of his skin, as if on fire from the power of the iratze. Her own heart was beating hard as her hands found his shoulders--

The front door of the car flew open. Light streamed in and Emma jerked away from Julian as Livvy clambered into the front seat.

Livvy was holding a witchlight in her right hand, and its irregular beams illuminated the strange scene in the back of the Toyota: Emma in her bloody clothes; Julian, shirtless, jammed against the rear door. His hands fell away from Emma.

"Is everything okay?" Livvy demanded. She was gripping her phone in one hand; she must have been waiting for more messages, Emma thought guiltily. "You texted nine-one-one--"

"Everything's fine." Emma slid across the bench seat, away from Jules.

He struggled upright, looking down dubiously at his shredded shirt. "Someone shot me with a crossbow bolt. The iratzes weren't working."

"Well, you look fine now." Livvy eyed him, puzzled. "Bloody, but . . ."

"A little parabatai magic," said Jules. "They weren't working, then they were. Sorry to scare you."

"It looks like a mad science lab back here." There was relief on Livvy's face. "Who shot you, anyway?"

"It's a long story," said Jules. "How did you get here? You didn't drive, did you?"

Another head suddenly appeared beside Livvy's. Mark, his blond hair haloed in the witchlight. "I drove," he announced. "Upon a faerie steed."

"What? But--but your faerie steed was shredded by demons!"

"There are as many faerie steeds as there are riders," Mark said, looking pleased to be mysterious. "I did not say it was my faerie steed. Just a faerie steed." Mark disappeared from his side of the car. Before Emma could determine where he'd gone, the door behind Julian flew open. Mark leaned in, picked up his younger brother bodily, and lifted him out of the car.

"What--?" Emma seized up her stele and scrambled out after them.

There were two more figures standing on the asphalt of the parking lot--Cristina and Ty, illuminated by the lights of a motorcycle. In fact, the whole motorcycle was glowing. It wasn't Mark's: It was black, with a painted design of horns on the chassis.

"Jules?" Ty looked blanched and frightened as Julian pulled free of Mark's grip, yanking down the tattered remains of his shirt.

Cristina hurried over to Emma as Julian turned to his younger brother. "Ty, everything's all right," he said. "I'm fine."

"But you're covered in blood," said Ty. He wasn't looking directly at Julian, but Emma couldn't help wondering if he was remembering--remembering the Dark War, and the blood and the

dying all around him. "People have only so much blood they can lose before--"

"I'll get some blood-replacement runes," said Julian. "Remember, Ty, we're Shadowhunters. We can handle a lot."

"You're covered in blood too," Cristina murmured to Emma, shrugging off her own jacket. She slung it around Emma's shoulders, covering her bloody tank. She brushed her hands through Emma's hair, looking at her worriedly. "You sure you're not hurt?"

"Julian's blood," Emma whispered, and Cristina made a murmuring noise and pulled Emma into a hug. She patted Emma's back and Emma hung on to her for dear life and decided there and then that if anyone ever tried to hurt Cristina she would grind them to a pulp and make amusing sand castles out of the remains.

Livvy had moved to stand next to Ty and was holding his hand, murmuring to him that the blood was just blood, Julian wasn't hurt, everything was fine. Ty was breathing quickly, his hand opening and closing over Livvy's.

"Here." Mark shrugged out of his blue T-shirt. He was wearing another T-shirt under it, this one gray. Julian blinked at him. "Proper vestments." He offered it to his brother.

"Why are you wearing a T-shirt under your other T-shirt?" Livvy asked, temporarily diverted.

"In case one of them is stolen," Mark said, as if this were entirely normal. Everyone paused to stare at him, even Julian, who had stripped off the rags of his shirt and covered himself with Mark's.

"Thanks," Julian said, pulling Mark's shirt down over his belt. He tossed the scraps of his old shirt on top of a Dumpster. Mark seemed pleased--and, Emma realized belatedly, looked different. His hair was no longer hanging past his shoulders, but was cut short--or shorter, curling around his ears. It made him look both younger and more modern, less incongruous in his jeans and boots.

More like a Shadowhunter.

Mark looked back. She could still see the wind in his eyes, and the stars, and vast fields of empty clouds. Wildness and freedom. She wondered how deep his transformation back into a Shadowhunter ran. How deep it would ever run.

She put a hand to her head. "I feel dizzy."

"You need food." It was Livvy, grabbing her hand. "We all do. Nobody's eaten tonight, and Jules, you're forbidden from cooking. Let's go to Canter's, grab some dinner, and figure out what to do next."

Everything inside Canter's was yellow. The walls were yellow, the booths were yellow, and most of the food was a shade of yellow. Not that Emma minded; she'd been coming to Canter's since she was four years old with her parents to eat their chocolate-chip pancakes and challah French toast.

They piled into a corner booth and for a few minutes everything was absolutely ordinary: The waitress, a tall woman with gray hair, came by to dump a pile of laminated menus on their table; Livvy and Ty shared one, and Cristina asked Emma in a whisper what matzo brei was. They were scrunched together in the booth, and Emma found herself pressed up against Julian's side. He still felt hot against her, as if the iratze hadn't worked its way out of his system yet.

Her skin still felt supersensitized too, as if she would jump or scream the moment someone touched her. She nearly did scream when the waitress returned to get their orders. She just stared until Julian ordered waffles and hot chocolate for her and handed the menu back hastily, looking at her worriedly.

A-R-E Y-O-U A-L-L R-I-G-H-T? he scribbled on her back.

She nodded, reaching for her plastic glass of ice water, just as Mark smiled at the waitress and ordered a plate of strawberries.

The waitress, whose name tag said JEAN, blinked. "We don't have that on the menu."