Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices 3)

“I’ll show you. Take a clip.”

She picked one up.

“Bend it into an L shape,” he instructed. “The straight part is the top part. Okay, good.” Her face was screwed up with concentration. She was wearing a black T-shirt that said FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE on it and featured a cracked tombstone.

Kit picked up a second clip and straightened it completely. “This is your pick,” he said. “What you’re holding is the tension wrench.”

“Okay,” she said. “Now how do you pick the lock?”

He laughed. “Hold your horses. Okay, pick up the padlock—you’re going to take the tension wrench and insert it into the bottom of the keyhole, which is called the shear line.”

Dru did as he’d instructed. Her tongue poked out one corner of her mouth: She looked like a little girl concentrating on a book.

“Turn it in the direction that the lock would turn,” he said. “Not left—there you go. Like that. Now take the pick with your other hand.”

“No, wait—” She laughed. “That’s confusing.”

“Okay, I’ll show you.” He slid the second clip into the lock itself and began to rake it back and forth, trying to push the pins up. His father had taught him how to feel the pins with his lock pick—this lock had five—and he began to fiddle gently, raising one pin after another. “Turn your wrench,” he said suddenly, and Dru jumped. “Turn it to the right.”

She twisted, and the padlock popped open. Dru gave a muted scream. “That’s so cool!”

Kit felt like smiling at her—it had never occurred to him to want a little sister, but there was something nice about having someone to teach things to.

“Does Ty know how to do this?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” Kit said, relocking the padlock and handing it to her. “But he’d probably learn fast.” He handed her the pick next and sat back. “Now you do it.”

She groaned. “Not fair.”

“You only learn by doing.” It was something Kit’s father had always said.

“You sound like Julian.” Dru puffed out a little laugh and started in on the padlock. Her fingernails were painted with chipped black polish. Kit was impressed with the delicacy with which she handled the pick and wrench.

“I never thought anyone would say I sounded like Julian Blackthorn.”

Dru looked up. “You know what I mean. Dad-ish.” She twisted the tension wrench. “I’m glad you’re friends with Ty,” she said unexpectedly. Kit felt his heart give a sudden sharp bump in his chest. “I mean, he always had Livvy. So he didn’t need any other friends. It was like a little club and no one could get in, and then you came along and you did.”

She had paused, still holding the padlock. She was looking at him with eyes so much like Livvy’s, that wide blue-green fringed with dark lashes.

“I’m sorry?” he said.

“Don’t be. I’m too young. Ty would never have let me in, even if you hadn’t showed up.” She said it matter-of-factly. “I love Julian. He’s like—the best father. You know he’ll always put you first. But Ty was always my cool brother. He had such awesome stuff in his room, and animals liked him, and he knew everything—”

She broke off, her cheeks turning pink. Ty had come in, his damp hair in soft, humid curls, and Kit felt a slow flip inside him, like his stomach turning over. He told himself he probably felt awkward because Ty had walked in on them talking about him.

“I’m learning how to pick locks,” Dru said.

“Okay.” Ty spared her a cursory glance. “I need to talk to Kit now, though.”

Kit slid hastily off the table, nearly knocking over the pile of paper clips. “Dru did really well,” he said.

“Okay,” Ty said again. “But I need to talk to you.”

“So talk,” said Dru. She’d put the lock-picking equipment down on the table and was glaring at Ty.

“Not with you here,” he said.

It had been pretty obvious, but Dru made a hurt noise anyway and jumped off the table. She stalked out of the library, slamming the door behind her.

“That wasn’t—she wasn’t—” Kit started. He couldn’t finish, though; he couldn’t scold Ty. Not now.

Ty unzipped his hoodie and reached brusquely into an inner pocket. “We need to go to the Shadow Market tonight,” he said.

Kit yanked his brain back to the present. “I’m forbidden from entering the Market. I suspect you are too.”

“We can petition at the gate,” said Ty. “I read about people doing that. Shadow Markets have gates, right?”

“Yeah, there are gates. They’re marked off. They don’t keep people out or in; they’re more like meeting points. And yeah, you can petition the head of the Market, except in this case it’s Barnabas and he hates me.”

Ty picked up a paper clip from the table and looked at it with interest. There were bruises on his neck, Kit noticed suddenly. He didn’t remember them, which struck him as strange, but then, who noticed every bruise on someone else’s skin? Ty must have gotten them when they’d fought the Riders in London. “We just have to convince him it’s in his interest to let us in.”

“How do you plan to do that? We’re not exactly master negotiators.”

Ty, who had been straightening the paper clip, gave Kit one of his rare sunrise-over-the-water smiles. “You are.”

“I—” Kit realized he was grinning, and broke off. He’d always had a sarcastic edge to his tongue, never been someone to take a compliment gracefully, but it was as if there was something about Ty Blackthorn that reached into him and untied all the careful knots of protection holding him together. He wondered if that was what people meant when they said they felt undone.

Ty frowned as if he hadn’t noticed Kit’s stupid smile. “The problem is,” he said, “neither of us drive. We have no way of getting to the Market.”

“But you have an iPhone,” said Kit. “In fact, there’s several in the Institute. I’ve seen them.”

“Sure,” said Ty, “but—”

“I’m going to introduce you to a wonderful invention called Uber,” said Kit. “Your life will be changed, Ty Blackthorn.”

“Ah, Watson,” said Ty, shoving the clip into his pocket. “You may not yourself be luminous, but you are an extraordinary conductor of light.”

* * *

Diego had been surprised that Gladstone wanted to lock them in the library. He’d never thought of it as a particularly secure room. Once they were both inside, Diego stripped of his weapons and stele, and the solid oak door had been locked behind them, Diego began to realize the advantages the library had as a prison.

The walls were thick and there were no windows save for the massive glass ceiling many feet up. The sheer walls made it impossible to climb up and break it, and nothing in the room yielded a useful weapon—they could throw books, Diego supposed, or try to flip the tables, but he didn’t figure that would do much good.

He stalked over to where Kieran sat slumped at the foot of the massive tree that grew up out of the floor. If only it reached up high enough to get to the ceiling, Diego thought.

Kieran was hunched against the trunk. He had jammed the palms of his hands into his eyes, as if he could blind himself.

“Are you all right?” Diego said.

Kieran dropped his hands. “I am sorry.” He looked up at Diego, who could see the marks of Kieran’s palms against his cheekbones.

“It’s fine. You were injured. I can look for ways out by myself,” Diego said, deliberately misunderstanding him.

“No, I mean I am sorry,” Kieran choked out. “I cannot.”

“You cannot what?”

“Get away from it. I feel guilt like a curtain of thorns in which I am entangled. Every which way I turn I am pierced again.”

The pool makes you feel every hurt you have ever caused others. “We are none of us without guilt,” said Diego, and he thought of his family, of Cristina. “Every one of us has hurt another, inadvertently or not.”

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“You do not understand.” Kieran was shaking his head. A lock of hair fell across his forehead, silver darkening to blue. “When I was in the Hunt, I was a straw floating in wind or water. All I could do was clutch at other straws. I believed I had no effect in the world. That I mattered so little I could neither help nor harm.” He tensed his hands into fists. “Now I have felt the pain that was Emma’s and the sorrow that was Mark’s, the pain of everyone I harmed in the Hunt, even Erec’s pain as he died. But how could I have been the person who caused such pain when I am someone whose actions are written in water?”