Learn About Loss (Ghosts of the Shadow Market 4)

"Then if you were cured," Sister Emilia said, "you would choose not to be what you are?"

Brother Zachariah said, Without hesitation. Though not without gratitude for what my Brothers in the Silent City have done for me. And you? Will you regret choosing a life in the Iron Citadel?

Sister Emilia said, "How can I know that? But no. I am being given an opportunity to become what I have always known I was meant to be. Come on. We've done what we were sent to do."

Not quite, Brother Zachariah said. Tonight is a full moon, and we don't know whether or not the werewolves have gone back into the mountains. As long as there are mundanes here, we must wait and watch. The Silent Brothers have sent messages to the Praetor Lupus. They take a hardline Prohibitionist stance, not to mention they crack down hard on eating mundanes.

"Seems a little harsh," Sister Emilia said. "The Prohibitionist stance. I get that eating people is wrong, generally."

Werewolves live by a harsh code, Brother Zachariah said. She could not tell, by looking at his face, whether or not he was joking. But she was fairly sure that he was.

He said, Though now that you have passed your test, I know you must be anxious to return to the Iron Citadel. I'm sorry to keep you here.

He wasn't wrong. She longed with all of her heart to go to the only place that had ever truly felt like home to her. And she knew, too, that some part of Brother Zachariah must dread returning to the Silent City. She had seen enough in the mirrors to know where his home and his heart was.

She said, "I'm not sorry to tarry here a little longer with you, Brother Zachariah. And I'm not sorry that I met you. If we never meet again, I will hope that one day a weapon made by my hand may yet prove useful to you in some way." Then she yawned. Iron Sisters, unlike Silent Brothers, required things like sleep and food.

Brother Zachariah hoisted himself up onto the edge of the stage and then patted the space beside him. I'll keep watch. If you grow weary, sleep. No harm will come while I keep vigil.

Sister Emilia said, "Brother Zachariah? If something strange happens tonight. If you should see something that you thought you would not see again, don't be alarmed. No harm will come of it."

What do you mean? Brother Zachariah said. What did you and Belial discuss when I had gone?

In the back of his mind, his brothers murmured: be careful, be careful, be careful. Oh, be careful.

Sister Emilia said, "Nothing of any great importance. But I think he is a little afraid of me now, and he should be. He offered me something so that I would not become his nemesis."

Tell me what you mean, Brother Zachariah said.

"I'll tell you later," Sister Emilia said firmly. "Right now I'm so tired I can barely talk at all."

Sister Emilia was hungry as well as tired, but she was so very tired she couldn't be bothered to eat. She would sleep first. She climbed up on the stage beside Brother Zachariah and took off her cloak and made it into a pillow. The evening was still warm, and if she grew cold, well, then she would wake up, and she and Brother Zachariah could keep watch together companionably.

She hoped that her brothers, now grown men all, were as kind and stout-hearted as this man was. She fell asleep remembering how she and they had played at fighting before they were old enough to train, laughing and tumbling and vowing to be great heroes. Her dreams were very sweet, though she did not remember them in the morning when she woke.

Silent Brothers do not sleep as mortals do, but nevertheless Brother Zachariah, as he sat and watched and listened in the deserted carnival, felt as the night drew on that he was in a dream. Silent Brothers do not dream, and yet slowly the voices of Brother Enoch and the others in his head dissipated and blew away and were replaced by music. Not carnival music, but the sound of a qinqin. There should not have been a qinqin anywhere on the mountain above Chattanooga, and yet he heard it. Listening to the sound of it, he discovered that he was no longer Brother Zachariah at all. He was only Jem. He did not sit upon a stage. Instead, he was perched on a tiled roof, and the sounds and smells and sights around him were all familiar ones. Not the Silent City. Not London. He was Jem again, and he was in the city where he had been born. Shanghai. Someone said, "Jem? Am I dreaming?"

Even before he turned his head, Jem knew who would be sitting there beside him. "Will?" he said.

And it was Will. Not Will old and tired and wasted as Jem had last seen him, and not even Will as he had been when they'd first met Tessa Gray. No, this was Will as he had been in the first few years when they had lived and trained together in the London Institute. As he had been when they made their oath and become parabatai. Thinking this, Jem looked at his shoulder, where his parabatai rune had been inscribed. The flesh there was unmarked. He saw that Will was doing the same thing, looking under his collar for the rune on his chest.

Jem said, "How is this possible?"

Will said, "This is the time between when we had pledged to become parabatai and when we went through the ritual. Look. See the scar here?" He showed Jem a distinctive mark on his wrist.

"You got that from an Iblis demon," Jem said. "I remember. It was two nights after we had decided. It was the first fight we had once we'd made up our minds."

"So that is when we are," Will said. "But what I don't know is where we are. Or how this is happening."

"I think," Jem said, "that a friend has made a bargain for me. I think that we are here together because the demon Belial is afraid of her, and she asked this for me. Because I would not ask for myself."

"Belial!" Will said. "Well, if he's afraid of this friend of yours, I hope I never meet her."

"I wish you could," Jem said. "But let's not waste whatever time we have talking about people you don't have any interest in. You may not know where we are, but I do. And I am afraid that the span of time that we have together may not be long."

"That has always been the case with us," Will said. "But let us be grateful to your terrifying friend, because however long we have, here we are together and I see no sign of yin fen on you, and we are in possession of the knowledge that there was never any curse on me. For however long, there is no shadow on us."

"There is no shadow," Jem agreed. "And we are in a place that I long wished to go with you. This is Shanghai, where I was born. Remember when we used to talk about traveling here together? There were so many places I wanted to show you."

"I remember you thought very highly of a temple or two," Will said. "You promised me gardens, although why you think I care for gardens, I don't know. And there were some vistas or famous rock formations or things."

"Forget the rock formations," Jem said. "There's a dumpling place down the street, and I haven't eaten human food in almost a century. Let's go see who can eat the most dumplings in the shortest amount of time. And duck! You really ought to try pressed duck! It's a great delicacy."

Jem looked at Will, suppressing a smile. His friend glared back, but at last neither of them could hold back their laughter. Will said, "There is nothing so sweet as feasting upon the bones of my enemies. Especially with you at my side."

There was a lightness in Jem's chest that Jem realized, finally, was joy. He saw that joy mirrored in his parabatai's face. The face of the one you love is the best mirror of all. It shows you your own happiness and your own pain and it helps you to bear both, because to bear either alone is to be overwhelmed by the flood.

Jem stood up and held out his hand to Will. Without realizing it, he held his breath. Perhaps this was a dream after all, and when Jem touched him Will would vanish away again. But Will's hand was warm and solid and strong, and Jem drew him up easily. Together they began to run lightly over the tiles of the roof.

The night was very beautiful and warm, and they were both young.

Read on for a snippet from the fourth Ghosts of the Shadow Market story, "A Deeper Love," by Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson:

A Deeper Love excerpt

December 29, 1940

"I think first," Catarina said,