Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

Emma and Julian ripped themselves away from each other in a panic. They were both disheveled, their hair mussed, their lips kiss-swollen. Nor could Emma imagine how they'd explain why they'd locked themselves into Julian's private room.

"Juuules!" Livvy was yelling now, good-naturedly. "We're in the library and Ty sent me to get you. . . ." Livvy paused, most likely looking around the room. "Seriously, Julian, where are you?"

The knob of the door turned.

Julian stood frozen. The knob jiggled again, the door rattling against its lock.

Emma tensed.

There was the sound of a sigh. The knob stopped jiggling. Footsteps moved away from them, and then the studio door banged closed.

Emma looked at Julian. She felt as if her blood had frozen and then unthawed suddenly; it was pounding through her veins like a spring torrent. "It's okay," she breathed.

Julian caught her and hugged her fiercely, his bitten-nailed hands digging into her shoulders. He gripped her so tightly she could barely breathe.

Then he let go. He did it as if he was forcing himself, as if he were starving and he was putting aside the last piece of food he had. But he did it.

"We'd better go," he said.

Back in her bedroom, Emma showered and changed as quickly as she could. She slid on jeans and couldn't help a wince as her T-shirt came down over her head, scraping against the bandages on her back. She was going to need new ones soon, and probably another iratze.

She headed out, only to discover that the hallway was already occupied.

"Emma," Mark said, unhitching himself from the wall. His voice sounded tired. "Julian said you were all right. I--I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault, Mark," she said.

"It is," he said. "I trusted Kieran."

"You trusted him because you loved him."

He glanced at her, surprised. He looked off-kilter, and not just because of his eyes: It was as if someone had reached inside him and shaken the roots of his beliefs. She could still hear him screaming as Iarlath whipped first Julian and then her. "It was that clear?"

"You looked at him like--" Like I look at Julian. "Like you look at someone you love," she said. "I'm sorry I didn't realize it before. I thought you . . ." Liked Cristina, maybe? Kieran sure seemed jealous of her. "Liked girls," she finished. "Teach me to make assumptions."

"I do," he said quizzically. "Like girls."

"Oh," she said. "You're bisexual?"

"Last time I checked, that's what you call it," he said with a brief look of amusement. "There are no real words for these things in Faerie, so . . ."

She winced. "Double sorry on the assumptions."

"It's all right," he said. "You are correct about Kieran. He was all I had for a long time."

"If it makes any difference, he does love you," said Emma. "I could see it on his face. I don't think he expected any of us to be hurt. I think he thought they'd bring you back to Faerie, where you could be with him. He would never have thought--"

But at that, at the memory of the whip coming down not just on her back but on Julian's, her throat closed.

"Emma," Mark said. "The day that I was taken by the Hunt--the last thing I said to Julian was that he should stay with you. I thought of you, even when I was gone, as this delicate girl, this little thing with blond braids. I knew if anything happened to you, even then, Julian would be heartbroken."

Emma felt her own heart skip a beat, but if Mark meant anything out of the ordinary by "heartbroken," it wasn't evident.

"Today, you protected him," Mark said. "You took the whipping that was meant for him. It was not easy to watch what they did to you. I wish it had been me. I wish it a thousand times. But I know why my brother wanted to protect me. And I am grateful to you for protecting him in turn."

Emma breathed past the tightness in her throat. "I had to do it."

"I will always owe you," Mark said, and his voice was the voice of a prince of Faerie, whose promises were more than promises. "Anything you want, I will give it to you."

"That's quite a promise. You don't have to--"

"I want to," he said with finality.

After a moment Emma nodded, and the strangeness was broken. Mark the faerie lapsed back into being Mark Blackthorn, filling her in on the progress of the investigation as they headed down to join the others. In order to keep Uncle Arthur from finding out about what had happened with Emma and the faerie convoy, Julian had arranged for Arthur to attend a meeting with Anselm Nightshade at the pizza place on Cross Creek Road. Nightshade had sent a car for Arthur earlier, promising they both would return when night fell.

The rest of the family had been in the library. They had torn through piles of books in search of information about Lady Midnight.

"Did they learn anything?" she asked.

"I'm not sure. I was just on my way to the library when Mr. Hot and Sexy showed up and said he had information."

"Whoa." Emma held up her hand. "Mr. Hot and Sexy?"

"Perfect Diego," Mark grumbled.

"Okay, look, I know you haven't been back from Faerie all that long, but here in the human world, Mr. Hot and Sexy is not an effective insult."

Mark didn't get a chance to reply; they had reached the library. The moment they went inside, Emma was nearly knocked off her feet by a rushing figure with a determined hug--it was Livvy, who promptly burst into tears.

"Ouuuch," Emma said, glancing around. The whole room was covered in stacks of paper, piles of books. "Liv, mind the bandages."

"I can't believe you let those faeries whip you, oh, I hate them, I hate the Courts, I'll kill all of them--"

"'Let' is maybe not the word," Emma said. "Anyway, I'm all right. It was fine. It didn't even hurt that much."

"Ooh, you liar!" said Cristina, emerging from behind a stack of books with Diego beside her. Interesting, Emma thought. "It was very heroic, what you did, but also very stupid."

Diego looked at Emma with serious brown eyes. "If I had known what was to happen, I would have stayed and volunteered to be whipped myself. I am more muscular and larger than you, and I probably could have taken it better."

"I took it fine," said Emma, annoyed. "But thanks for the reminder that you're an enormous hulk. I might have forgotten otherwise."

"Argh! Stop it!" Cristina dissolved into a torrent of Spanish.

Emma held her hands up. "Cristina, slow down."

"Would it help?" said Diego. "Do you speak Spanish?"

"Not much," Emma said.

He gave a small smile. "Ah, well, in that case, she's complimenting us."

"I know those weren't compliments," Emma said, but then the door opened and it was Julian, and suddenly everyone was deputized to help carry books and line them up on the table and sort papers. Ty was sitting at the head of the table as if he were leading a board meeting. He didn't smile at Emma exactly, but gave her a sideways glance that Emma knew meant affection, and then looked back down at what he was doing.

Emma didn't look at Julian, no more than a glance, at least. She didn't think she could. She was aware of his presence as she crossed the room to the long table, though. He came and stood at Ty's left, looking down at his notes.

"Where are Tavvy and Dru?" she asked, lifting the top volume from a stack of books.

"Tavvy was getting stir-crazy. Dru took him down to the beach," said Livvy. "Ty thinks he might have figured something out."

"Who she was," Ty said. "Our Lady Midnight. Tavvy's book reminded me of a story I read in one of the Blackthorn history books--"

"But we've looked through all the Blackthorn history books," Julian said.

Ty gave him a superior look. "We looked at everything going back a hundred years," he said. "But Tavvy's book said Lady Midnight was in love with someone she was forbidden to love."

"And so we thought, what's a forbidden love?" said Livvy eagerly. "I mean, people who are related, gross, and people who are way younger or older than each other, which is also gross, and

people who are sworn enemies, which is not gross but is sort of sad . . ."

"People who like Star Wars and people who like Star Trek," said Emma. "Et cetera. Where are you going with this, Livs?"

"Or parabatai, like Silas Pangborn and Eloisa Ravenscar," Livvy went on, and Emma was instantly sorry she'd made a joke. She felt herself become very, very aware of where Julian was standing, how close he was to her, how much he had tensed. "But that doesn't seem likely. So then we thought--it was totally forbidden to fall in love with Downworlders before the Accords. It would have been a big scandal."

"So we dug into the earlier histories," said Ty. "And we found something. There was a family of Blackthorns who had a daughter who fell in love with a warlock. They were going to run off together, but her family caught them. She was sent to be an Iron Sister."