Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

"What?" Emma said.

"You said there were a million bedrooms here," he said, rising to his feet. "I'm going to find an empty one. And then I'm going to lock myself into it. And if anyone tries to break the door down, I'll kill them."

"Do you think he'll be all right?" Emma asked. "Kit, I mean?"

She was standing on the front steps with Jem, who was cradling Church in his arms. The cat had come running up a few moments after Jem had arrived, and practically launched his small furry body into Jem's arms. Jem was petting him now, rubbing absentmindedly under his chin and around his ears. The cat had gone limp under his ministrations, like a washcloth.

The ocean rose and fell at the horizon. Tessa had stepped away from the Institute to make a phone call. Emma could hear her voice in the distance, though not the individual words.

"You can help him," said Jem. "You lost your own parents. You know what it's like."

"But I don't think--" Emma was alarmed. "If he stays, I don't know--" She thought of Julian, of Uncle Arthur, of Diana, of the secrets they were all hiding. "Can't you stay?" she said, and was surprised at the wistfulness in her voice.

Jem smiled at her over Church's head. That smile she remembered from the first time she'd really seen Jem's face, the smile that reminded her, in a way she couldn't have described, of her father. Of the Carstairs blood that they shared. "I would like to stay," he said. "Since we met in Idris, I have missed you, and thought of you often. I would like to visit with you. Spend time with my old violin. But Tessa and I, we must go. We must find Malcolm's body, and the Black Volume, for even leagues underwater a book like that can still cause us trouble."

"Do you remember when we met at my parabatai ceremony? You told me you wished you could be watching over me, but there was something you and Tessa had to find. Was that something Kit?"

"Yes." Jem set Church down, and the cat wobbled off, purring, in search of a shady spot. Smiling, Jem looked so young, it was impossible for Emma to think of him as an ancestor--even an uncle. "We've been searching for him for years. We narrowed the search to this area, and then finally to the Shadow Market. But Johnny Rook was an expert at hiding." He sighed. "I wish he hadn't been. If he'd trusted us, he might be alive now." He pushed a hand distractedly through his dark hair. A lock of it was silver, the color of aluminum. He was looking over at Tessa, and Emma could see the expression in his eyes when he looked at her. The love that had never dimmed over a century.

Love is the weakness of human beings, and the angels despise them for it, and the Clave despises it too, and therefore they punish it. Do you know what happens to parabatai who fall in love? Do you know why it's forbidden?

"Malcolm--" she began.

Jem turned back toward her, the light of sympathy in his dark eyes. "We heard everything from Magnus. He told us that you were the one who killed Malcolm," he said. "That must have been hard. You knew him. It's not like killing demons."

"I knew him," Emma said. "At least, I thought I did."

"We knew him too. Tessa was heartbroken to hear that Malcolm believed that we all lied to him. Concealed from him that Annabel was not an Iron Sister, but was dead, murdered by her family. We believed the story, but he died thinking we all knew the truth. What a betrayal that must have felt like."

"It's strange to think he was your friend. Though I guess he was our friend too."

"People are more than one thing. Warlocks, no less. I would not even hesitate to say that Malcolm once did much good, before he did evil. It is one of the great lessons of growing up, learning that people can do both."

"His story--the one about Annabel--such terrible things happened to both of them, just because they fell in love. Malcolm said something--and I wondered if it was true. It just seemed so strange."

Jem looked puzzled. "What was it?"

"That the Clave despises love because love is something human beings feel. That that's why they make all those Laws, about people not falling in love with Downworlders or with their parabatai. . . . And the Laws don't make sense. . . ." Emma watched Jem out of the corner of her eye. Was she being too obvious?

"The Clave can be awful," he said. "Hidebound and cruel. But some of the things they do are rooted in history. The parabatai Law, for instance."

Emma felt as if her body temperature had dropped several degrees. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know if I should tell you," said Jem, looking off toward the ocean, and his expression was so somber that Emma felt her heart freeze inside her chest. "That's a secret--a secret even from parabatai themselves--only a few know: the Silent Brothers, the Consul . . . I took a vow."

"But you're not a Shadowhunter anymore," Emma said. "The vow doesn't hold." When he said nothing, she pressed on: "You owe me, you know. For not being around."

The corner of his mouth flicked up into a smile. "You drive a hard bargain, Emma Carstairs." He drew in a breath. Emma could hear Tessa's voice, faint on the wind. She was saying Jace's name. "The ritual of parabatai was created so that two Shadowhunters could be stronger together than they were apart. It has always been one of our most powerful weapons. Not everyone has a parabatai, but the fact that they exist is part of what makes Nephilim what they are. Without them, we would be infinitely weaker, in ways it is forbidden for me even to explain. Ideally, the ceremony increases each parabatai's power--runes given to each other are stronger--and the closer the personal bond, the greater the power."

Emma thought of the healing runes she'd drawn on Julian after the arrow poisoning. The way they'd glowed. The Endurance rune he'd given her. How it had behaved like no Endurance rune she'd ever known.

"It was not long after the ritual had been in use for some generations," Jem said, lowering his voice, "that it was discovered that if the bond was too close, if it tipped into romantic love--then it would begin to warp and change the kind of power that was generated by the spell. One-sided love, a crush even, all that seems to pass by the rule--but real, requited, romantic love? It had a terrible cost."

"They'd lose their power?" Emma guessed. "As Shadowhunters?"

"Their power would grow," Jem corrected. "The runes they created would be unlike any others. They would begin to wield magic as warlocks do. But Nephilim are not meant to be magicians. Eventually the power would make them mad, until they became as monsters. They would destroy their families, the others they loved. Death would surround them until eventually they died themselves."

Emma felt as if she were choking. "Why don't they tell us that? Why not warn Nephilim, so they know?"

"It's power, Emma," said Jem. "Some would have wisely avoided the bond, but many others would have rushed to take advantage of it for the wrong reasons. Power will always attract the greedy and the weak."

"I wouldn't want it," Emma said softly. "Not that kind of power."

"There is also human nature to take into account," Jem said, and smiled down at Tessa, who was off the phone and coming up the path toward them. "Being told that love is forbidden does not kill love. It strengthens it."

"What are you two talking about?" Tessa smiled up at them from the foot of the steps.

"Love," Jem said. "How to end it, I suppose."

"Oh, if we could end love just by willing it, life would be very different!" Tessa laughed. "It's easier to end someone else's love for you than kill your love for them. Convince them that you don't love them, or that you are someone they cannot respect--ideally both." Her eyes were wide and gray and youthful; it was hard to believe she was older than nineteen. "To change your own heart, that's nearly impossible."

>

There was a shimmer in the air. A Portal suddenly appeared, glowing like a ghost door, just above the ground. It opened, and Emma could see as if she were looking through a keyhole: Magnus Bane stood on the other side of the Portal, and beside him was Alec Lightwood, tall and dark-haired and holding a little boy in a white shirt, with navy-blue skin. Alec looked messy and happy, and the way he held Max reminded Emma of the way Julian used to hold Tavvy.

In the middle of raising a hand to greet Emma, Alec paused and turned his head, and said something that sounded like "Raphael." Odd, Emma thought. Alec handed Max over to Magnus and disappeared back into the shadows.

"Tessa Gray!" Magnus shouted, leaning out of the Portal as if he were leaning over a balcony. Max cooed and waved. "Jem Carstairs! Time to go!"

Someone was walking up the road from the beach. Emma could see only a silhouette. But she knew it was Julian. Julian, coming back from the beach where he had waited for her. She would always know it was Julian.

With the courtliness of a generation many years past, Jem bent over her hand in a gentle bow.

"If you need me, tell Church," he said, straightening up. "As you've seen, he can always find me. He'll make sure I come to you."

Then he turned and strode away toward the Portal. Tessa took his hand and smiled up at him, and a moment later they had stepped through the glowing door. It disappeared with a flash of pale gold light, and Emma, blinking, looked down to where Julian stood staring up at her from the foot of the steps.

"Emma?" Julian bounded up the stairs, reaching for her. "Emma, what happened? I waited on the beach--"

She drew away from his touch. A flicker of hurt crossed his face, then he glanced around, as if realizing where they were, and nodded.

"Come with me," he said in a low voice. Emma followed him, half in a daze, as they circled the Institute to the parking lot. He ducked out past the statues and the small garden, Emma behind him, until they were screened from the building by rows of scrub trees and cactus.

He turned so that they stood face-to-face. She could see the worry in his eyes. He reached to cup her cheek in his hand, and she felt her heart thrash against her rib cage.

"You can tell me," he said. "Why didn't you come?"

In a leaden voice, Emma told him about the panicked message from Kit, how she'd bolted immediately for the car. How after everything that the Institute had been through the day before, she hadn't been able to bear dragging anyone else along with her to Rook's. How Rook felt like her responsibility. How she'd tried to call Julian to tell him where she'd gone, but he hadn't picked up. About the Mantids at Rook's house, Jem and Tessa's arrival, the truth about Kit. Everything but what Jem had said to her about parabatai.