Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

"I know about Malcolm Fade," Kieran gasped. "I know he took your brother."

Julian made a guttural noise. Mark's hand, on the knife, went bloodless. "Let him go, Mark," Julian said. "If he knows anything about Tavvy--we have to find out what it is. Let him go."

Mark hesitated.

"Mark," Cristina said softly, and with a violent gesture, Mark flung himself off Kieran and stood up, backing away until he was nearly beside Julian. Julian, whose grip on his own knife looked agonizingly tight.

Slowly, painfully, Kieran rose to his feet and faced the room.

He was a far cry from the arrogant gentry warrior Emma had first seen in the Sanctuary. His shirt and loose trousers were bloodstained and torn, his face bruised. He did not cower or look frightened, but that seemed less an act of bravery than almost one of hopelessness: Everything about him, from the way he was dressed to the way he stood to the way he looked at Mark, said that here was someone who did not care what became of him.

The door of the library burst open and Ty and Livvy spilled in. "Everything's knocked out," Livvy exclaimed. "All the phones, the computer, even the radios--"

She broke off, staring, as she took in the scene in front of her: Kieran facing the other occupants of the room.

Kieran gave a tiny bow. "I am Kieran of the Wild Hunt."

"One of the faerie convoy?" Livvy looked from Mark to Julian. "One of the ones who whipped Emma?"

Julian nodded.

Ty looked at Mark, and then the others. His face was pale and cold. "Why is he still alive?"

"He knows about Tavvy," said Drusilla. "Julian, make him tell us--"

Julian flung his dagger. It flew past Kieran's head, close enough to graze his hair, and embedded itself in the frame of the window behind him. "You will tell us now," he said in a deadly quiet voice, "everything you know about where Octavian is, what's going on, and how we can get him back. Or I will spill your blood on the floor of this library. I've spilled faerie blood before. Don't think I won't do it again."

Kieran didn't drop his eyes. "There is no need to threaten me," he said, "though if it pleases you, do it; it makes no difference to me. I came to tell you what you want to know. That is why I am here. The black light you just saw was faerie magic. It was meant to knock out all communication, so that you could not call for help from the Clave or Conclave. So that you could not seek help or save your brother."

"We could try to find a pay phone," Livvy said uncertainly, "or a restaurant phone, down on the highway--"

"You will discover that phone lines have been knocked out for several miles," said Kieran. There was urgency in his voice. "I beg you not to waste time. Fade has taken your brother, already, to the ley line convergence. It is the place where he performs his sacrifices. The place he plans to kill him. If you wish to rescue the boy, you must take up your weapons and go after him now."

Julian threw open the door of the weapons room. "Everyone, arm yourselves. If you're not in gear, get in gear. Diego, Cristina, there's gear hanging on the east wall. Take it, it'll be faster than going back to your rooms. Use any weapons you want. Kieran, you stay right there." He pointed toward the table in the middle of the room. "Where I can see you. Don't move or the next blade I throw at you won't miss."

Kieran gave him a look. A little of his visible despair seemed to have ebbed, and there was arrogance in his quick glance. "I believe it," he said, and moved toward the table as everyone scurried around arming themselves and buckling gear on over their clothes. Not patrol gear, which was lighter, but the heavy dark gear you wore when you thought you were going to fight.

When you knew you were going to fight.

There had been some discussion of whether all of them were going to go to the convergence, or whether Dru at least should stay back at the Institute. Dru had protested vociferously, and Julian hadn't fought it--the Institute didn't feel safe at the moment, with the oculus smashed open. Kieran had gotten in, and who knew what else could? He wanted his family where he could see them. And there wasn't much he could say to Dru about her age: He and Emma had fought and killed during the Dark War, and they'd been younger than she was now.

He had taken Ty aside, separately, and told him that if he wanted to stay behind from the fight because he was wounded, there was nothing shameful about that. He could lock himself in the car while they went into the convergence.

"Do you think I have nothing to contribute to a fight?" Ty had asked.

"No," Julian had said, and meant it. "But you're hurt, and I--"

"It's a fight. We might all get hurt." Ty had looked directly into Julian's eyes. He could tell that Ty was doing it for him, because he remembered that Julian had told him that people often looked directly into each other's eyes to show that they were telling the truth. "I want to go. I want to be there to help Tavvy, and I want you to let me. It's what I want, and that should matter."

Ty was in the weapons room with them now. It was a cavernous space with no windows. Every spare inch of the walls was hung with swords, axes, and maces. Gear, belts, and boots were stacked in piles. There was a ceramic tile bowl full of steles, and a table covered with a long cloth held seraph blades.

Julian could sense them all around him, his friends and family. He knew Mark was at his side, toeing off his shoes and kicking his feet into boots. He knew Emma was at the counter, lining up seraph blades that had already been named and prepared, sliding some into her belt and distributing the rest. His awareness of her swung as she moved around the room like the needle on a compass.

Above all, though, he was aware of Tavvy, out there somewhere, needing him. There was a cold terror in him that threatened to pull the determination out of his bones and sap his concentration. Pushing it away to focus on what was happening here and now was one of the hardest things he'd ever done. He bitterly wished that things were different, that they had the cooperation of the Clave, that they could have gotten to Magnus and asked for a Portal.

But it was no use wishing.

"Talk," he snapped at Kieran, pulling down a weapons belt from a shelf. "That black light, you said it was 'faerie magic.' Did you mean dark magic?"

Now that Mark was no longer looking directly at him, Kieran seemed bored and annoyed. He leaned against the central table, taking care not to come in contact with any of the weapons--not, his expression made clear, because they were sharp or frightening but because they were Nephilim weapons and therefore repellent.

"The question is whether it will show up on the Clave's map," said Ty, buckling on protective gauntlets. He was already in his gear, and the slight outline of the bandage on his calf was barely visible under the thick fabric. "The one Magnus uses to track dark magic use. Or is that blocked like the cell phones?"

"It was Unseelie magic, but not dark in nature," said Kieran. "It will not show itself on the map. They were very sure of that."

Julian frowned. "Who is they? In fact, how do you know so much about Malcolm?"

"Because of Iarlath," said Kieran.

Mark turned to stare. "Iarlath? What has he to do with this?"

"I thought you knew that at least," Kieran muttered. "Iarlath and Malcolm have been in this together since the attack on the Institute five years ago."

"They're allies?" Mark demanded. "How long have you known?"

"Only a short time," said Kieran. "I became suspicious when Iarlath so strongly refused to allow you to come back to Faerie. He wished you to stay here, so much so that he staged that charade of punishment with the whipping so that you would not return with us. After that I realized there was more to the plan of having you here at the Institute than f

inding the murderer who had taken faerie lives. It was about preventing anyone in your family from being able to go to the Clave until it was too late."

Emma had a seraph blade in each hand and Cortana on her back; she had paused, her face stiff with shock. "Iarlath said something to me when he was--when he was whipping me," she said. "That Shadowhunters don't know who to trust. He meant Malcolm, didn't he?"

"Most likely," said Kieran. "Malcolm's is the shadow hand that has guided the Followers, and Malcolm killed your parents five years ago."

"Why?" Emma was rigid. Julian wanted to go to her so badly it hurt. "Why did he kill my parents?"

"As I understand it?" Kieran said, and there was a tinge of pity to his voice. "It was an experiment. To see if the spell worked."

Emma stood speechless. Julian asked it for her, the question she couldn't voice. "What do you mean, an experiment?"

"Years ago, Iarlath was one of the Fair Folk who allied themselves with Sebastian Morgenstern," said Kieran. "He was also a friend to Malcolm. As you probably know, there are certain books warlocks are forbidden to own, but which can be found in some Shadowhunter libraries. Necromantic tomes and the like. One of those is the Black Volume of the Dead."

"The one that the poem talked about," said Dru. Though her face was still tearstained, she had put on her gear and was braiding her hair carefully back from her face. It hurt Julian's heart, to see her like that. "'Find the black book at any cost.'"

"There are many black books," said Kieran. "But this was one Malcolm specifically wanted. Once the Institute was cleared of Shadowhunters and Sebastian departed, Malcolm took the opportunity to slip in and steal the book from the library. After all, when else was the Institute going to be unguarded, the door open? He took it, and he found the spell he wanted, and he saw that it required the sacrifice of Shadowhunter life. That was when your parents returned to the Institute, Emma."

"So he killed them," Emma said. "For a spell." She gave a short, bitter laugh. "Did it at least work?"

"It didn't," said Kieran. "It failed, and so he left their bodies in the ocean, knowing that the murders would be taken to be Sebastian's work."

"Iarlath told you all this?" There was suspicion on Mark's face.

"I followed Iarlath to the Unseelie Court and listened to what he said there." Kieran tried to meet Mark's gaze. Mark looked away. "The rest is what I demanded he tell me at knifepoint. Malcolm was to misdirect and confuse you so that you would not realize what he was doing--he used Johnny Rook for some of that. He wanted you to engage yourself in an investigation that would prove fruitless. Mark's presence here would deter you from asking the Clave or the Silent Brothers to help you, thus protecting Malcolm's work with the Followers, his attempts to raise his old love from the dead. When Malcolm had done what he needed to do, he would take a Blackthorn, for the death of a Blackthorn would be the last key to the enchantment."