Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

Cristina hesitated. "Well, he borrowed that motorcycle tonight from someone. I just hope he hasn't gotten himself in any trouble."

"Mark's clever," said Emma. "I doubt he bartered his soul for the temporary use of a motorbike or anything."

"I'm sure you're right," Cristina murmured, and glanced toward Emma's wardrobe. "Can I borrow a dress?"

"Right now?" Emma said. "Have you got a midnight date?"

"No, for tomorrow night." Cristina got to her feet to peer into the wardrobe. Several badly folded rayon dresses fell out. "It is meant to be formal. I didn't bring any formal dresses with me from home."

"You won't fit into anything of mine," Emma said as Cristina held up a black dress with a design of rockets and frowned at it. "We're different shapes. You're way more--boom-chicka-boom."

"Is that even English?" Cristina frowned, tossing the rocket dress onto a shelf and shutting the wardrobe door. "I don't think that's English."

Emma smiled at her. "I'll take you shopping tomorrow," she said. "Deal?"

"That seems so normal." Cristina smoothed her braids back. "After tonight . . ."

"Cameron called me," Emma said.

"I know," Cristina said. "I was in the kitchen. Why are you telling me now? Are you back together?"

Emma rocked backward on the bed. "No! He was warning me. He told me that there were people who didn't want me investigating these murders."

"Emma." Cristina sighed. "And you didn't say anything to us?"

"He said it about me," Emma said. "I figured any danger would be my danger."

"But Julian got hurt," said Cristina, knowing what Emma was going to say before she said it. "So you are worrying it was your fault."

Emma picked at the fringe on the edge of her blanket. "Isn't it? I mean, Cameron warned me, he said he heard it at the Shadow Market, so I don't know if it was mundanes talking or faeries or warlocks or what, but the fact is, he warned me and I ignored it."

"It was not your fault. We already know there's someone, a necromancer most likely, killing and sacrificing mundanes and Downworlders. We already know he has an army of Mantid demons at his beck and call. It isn't as if Julian wasn't expecting and prepared for danger."

"He almost died on me," Emma said. "There was so much blood."

"And you fixed him. He's fine. You saved his life." Cristina waved a hand--her nails were perfect, shining ovals, where Emma's were ragged from sparring and training. "Why are you second-guessing yourself, Emma? Is it because Julian was hurt and that frightened you? Because you have taken risks since the first time I ever met you. It is part of who you are. And Julian knows that. He doesn't just know it, he likes it."

"Does he? He's always telling me not to risk myself--"

"He has to," said Cristina. "You are the two halves of a whole. You must be different, like light and shadow--he brings you caution to temper your recklessness, and you bring him recklessness to temper his caution. Without each other you would not function as well as you do. That is what parabatai means." She tugged lightly on the ends of Emma's wet hair. "I do not think it is Cameron that is bothering you. That is just an excuse to berate yourself. I think it is that Julian was hurt."

"Maybe," Emma said in a tight voice.

"Are you sure you're all right?" Cristina's dark brown eyes were worried.

"I'm fine." Emma sat back against the pillows. She collected kitschy California pillows: some looked like postcards, some were shaped like the state or said I LOVE CALI.

"You don't look fine," Cristina said. "You look like--my mother used to say there was a look people got when they realized something. You look like someone who has realized something."

Emma wanted to close her eyes, to hide her thoughts from Cristina. Thoughts that were treacherous, dangerous, wrong to have.

"Just shock," she said. "I came close to losing Julian and--it threw me off. I'll be fine tomorrow." She forced a smile.

"If you say so, manita." Cristina sighed. "If you say so."

After Julian cleaned himself up, washed the blood off, and arranged to send the shreds of his poison-burned gear jacket to Malcolm, he walked down the hall to Emma's room.

And stopped halfway. He'd wanted to lie down on the bed beside her, and for them to talk over the night's events, and to close their eyes together, with the sound of her breathing like the sound of the ocean, measuring out the steps toward sleep.

But. When he thought of that night in the back of the car, of Emma hovering over him, panic on her face and blood on her hands, he didn't feel what he knew he should feel: fear, the memory of pain, relief that he'd healed.

Instead he felt a tightening in his body that sent an ache down to the center of his bones. When he closed his eyes, he saw Emma in the witchlight, her hair tumbling out of its fastening, the light of the streetlamps shining through the stra

nds and turning them to a sheet of pale summer-frozen ice.

Emma's hair. Maybe because she took it down so rarely, maybe because Emma with her hair down was one of the first things he'd ever wanted to paint, but the long, looping pale strands of it had always been like cords that connected directly to his nerves.

His head hurt, and his body ached unreasonably, wanting to be back in that car with her. It made no sense, so he forced his steps away from her door, down the hall, to the library. It was dark in there and cold and smelled of old paper. Still, Julian didn't need a light; he knew exactly what section of the room he was headed toward.

Law.

Julian was pulling down a red-bound book from a high shelf when a reedy cry drifted down the hall. He grabbed hold of the tome and was out of the room in an instant, rushing down the corridor. He rounded the corner and saw Drusilla's door open. She was leaning out of it, witchlight in hand, her round face illuminated. Her pajamas were covered in a pattern of frightening masks.

"Tavvy's been crying," she said. "He stopped for a while, but then he started again."

"Thanks for telling me." He dropped a kiss on her forehead. "Go back to bed, I'll deal with it."

Drusilla withdrew, and Julian slipped into Tavvy's room, closing the door behind him.

Tavvy was a curled-up ball under the covers of his bed. He was asleep, his body curved around one of his pillows, his mouth open on a gasp. Tears ran down his face.

Julian sat down on the bed and put a hand on Tavvy's shoulder. "Octavian," he said. "Wake up; you're having a nightmare, wake up."

Tavvy shot upright, his brown hair in wild disarray. When he saw Julian, he hiccuped and flung himself at his older brother, arms wrapping around his neck.

Jules held Tavvy and rubbed his back, gently patting the sharp knobs of his spine. Too small, too skinny, his mind said. It had been a battle to get Tavvy to eat and sleep ever since the Dark War.

He remembered running through the streets of Alicante with Tavvy in his arms, stumbling on the cracked paving, trying to keep his little brother's face mashed against his shoulder so that he wouldn't see the blood and the death all around him. Thinking that if they could just get through everything without Tavvy seeing what was happening, it would be all right. He wouldn't remember. He wouldn't know.