Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

Ty had taken one of his hand toys out of his pocket, a mass of intermingled pipe cleaners, and was untangling it. Ty had one of the fastest-working minds of anyone Emma knew, and it calmed him to have a way to use his hands to diffuse some of that quickness and intensity. "The bodies have all been dumped at ley lines. All of them," he said, and Emma could hear the excitement in his voice.

"Ley lines?" Dru furrowed her brow.

"There's a network, circling the world, of ancient magical pathways," said Malcolm. "They amplify magic, so for centuries Downworlders have used them to create entrances into Faerie, that sort of thing. Alicante is built on a convergence of ley lines. They're invisible, but some can train themselves to sense them." He frowned, staring at the computer screen, where one of the images Cristina had taken of the dead body at the Sepulchre was displayed. "Can you do that thing?" he said. "You know, where you make the picture bigger?"

"You mean zoom in?" said Ty.

Before Malcolm could answer, the doorbell of the Institute rang. It was no ordinary, shrilling doorbell. It sounded like a gong being struck through the building, shivering the glass and stone and plaster.

Emma was up and on her feet in a second. "I'll get it," she said, and hurried downstairs, even as Julian half-rose from his seat to follow her.

But she wanted to be alone, just for a second. Wanted to process the fact that these killings dated back to the year of her parents' death. They had started then. Her father and mother had been the first.

These murders were connected. She could see the threads coming together, forming a pattern she could only begin to glimpse but knew was real. Someone had done these things. Someone had tortured and killed her parents, had carved evil markings on their skin and dumped them in the ocean to rot. Someone had taken Emma's childhood, torn away the roof and walls of the house of her life, leaving her cold and exposed.

And that someone would pay. Revenge is a cold bedfellow, Diana had said, but Emma didn't believe that. Revenge would give her the air back in her lungs. Revenge would let her think about her parents without a cold knot forming in her stomach. She would be able to dream without seeing their drowned faces and hearing their voices cry out for her help.

She reached the front door of the Institute and threw it open. The sun had just set. A glum vampire stood in the doorway, carrying several stacked boxes. He looked like a teenager with short brown hair and freckled skin, but that didn't mean much. "Pizza delivery," he said in a tone that suggested that most of his closest relatives had just died.

"Seriously?" Emma said. "Malcolm wasn't making that up? You really deliver pizza?"

He looked at her blankly. "Why wouldn't I deliver pizza?"

Emma fumbled at the small table near the door for the cash they usually kept there. "I don't know. You're a vampire. I figured you'd have something better to do with your life. Your unlife. Whatever."

The vampire looked aggrieved. "You know how hard it is to get a job when your ID says you're a hundred and fifty years old and you can only go out at night?"

"No," Emma admitted, taking the boxes. "I hadn't considered that."

"Nephilim never do." As he tucked a fifty into his jeans, Emma noticed that he was wearing a gray T-shirt that said TMI across the front. "Too much information?" she said.

He brightened. "The Mortal Instruments. They're a band. From Brooklyn. You heard of them?"

Emma had. Clary's best friend and parabatai, Simon, had belonged to them when he was a mundane. That was how they'd wound up named after the three most holy objects in the Shadowhunter world. Now Simon, too, was a Shadowhunter. She wondered how he felt about the band going on without him. About everything going on without him.

She made her way back up the stairs, her mind on Clary and the others in the New York Institute. Clary had found out she was a Shadowhunter when she was fifteen years old. There had been a time when she thought she'd lead a mundane life. She'd talked about it before, around Emma, the way anyone might talk about a road not taken. She'd carried a lot with her into her Shadowhunter life, including her best friend, Simon. But she could have chosen differently. She could have been a mundane.

Emma wanted to talk to her, suddenly, about what that might have meant. Simon had been Clary's best friend for her whole life, like Jules had been Emma's. Then they had been parabatai, once Simon was a Shadowhunter. What had changed? Emma wondered. What did it feel like to go from best friend to parabatai without having always known you were going to do it, how was it different?

And why didn't she know the answer to that herself?

When she arrived back in the computer room, Malcolm was standing near the desk, violet eyes snapping. "You see, it's not a protection circle at all," he was saying, then broke off as Emma came in. "It's pizza!"

"It can't be pizza," said Ty, staring perplexedly at the screen. His long fingers had nearly untangled all the pipe cleaners; when he was done, he'd tangle them back up and start again.

"All right, enough," said Jules. "We're taking a break from killings and profiles for dinner." He took the boxes from Emma, shooting her a grateful look, and set them down on the coffee table. "I don't care what you all want to talk about, it just can't involve murder or blood. Any blood."

"But it's vampire pizza," Livvy pointed out.

"Immaterial," Julian said. "Couch. Now."

"Can we watch a movie?" Malcolm piped up, sounding remarkably like Tavvy.

"We can watch a movie," Julian said. "Now, Malcolm, I don't care if you are the High Warlock of Los Angeles, sit your butt down."

The vampire pizza was shockingly good. Emma decided fairly quickly that she didn't care what was in the sauce. Mouse heads, stewed people parts, whatever. It was amazing. It had a crispy crust and just the right amount of fresh mozzerella. She sucked the cheese off her fingers and made faces at Jules, who had excellent table manners.

The film was much more puzzling. It appeared to be about a man who owned a bookstore and was in love with a famous woman, except Emma recognized neither of them and wasn't sure if she was supposed to. Cristina watched in large-eyed bafflement, Ty put his headphones on and closed his eyes, and Dru and Livvy sat on either side of Malcolm, patting him gently while he wept.

"Love is beautiful," he said while the man on-screen ran through traffic.

"That's not love," said Julian, leaning back against the couch. The flickering light from the screen played over his skin, making it seem unfamiliar, adding frecklings of darkness to the smooth, pale places and lighting the shadows under his cheekbones, at the hollow of his throat. "That's movies."

"I came to Los Angeles to bring back love," Malcolm said, his dark violet eyes mournful. "All great movies are about love. Love lost, found, destroyed, regained, bought, sold, dying, and being born. I love movies, but they've forgotten what they're about. Explosions, effects, that wasn't what it meant when I first got here. It was about lighting cigarette smoke so it looked like heavenly fire and lighting women so they looked like angels." Malcolm sighed. "I came here to bring true love back from the dead."

"Oh, Malcolm," said Drusilla, and burst into tears. Livvy handed her a napkin from the pizza place. "Why don't you have a boyfriend?"

"I'm straight," Malcolm said, looking surprised.

"Well, all right, then a girlfriend. You should find a nice Downworlder girl, maybe a vampire, so she'll live forever."

"Leave Malcolm's love life alone, Dru," said Livvy.

"True love is hard to find," Malcolm said, gesturing at the people kissing on-screen.

"Movie love is hard to find," said Julian. "Because it's not real."

"What do you mean?" said Cristina. "Are you saying there is no true love? I don't believe that."

"Love isn't chasing someone to the airport," said Julian. He leaned forward, and Emma could see just the edge of the parabatai Mark on his collarbone, escaping above the neck of his T-shirt. "Love means you see someone. That's all."

"You see them?" Ty echoed, sounding dubio

us. He'd turned the music down on his player, but his headphones were still on, his black hair scrunched up around them.

Julian took hold of the remote. The movie had ended; white credits scrolled down the screen. "When you love someone, they become a part of who you are. They're in everything you do. They're in the air you breathe and the water you drink and the blood in your veins. Their touch stays on your skin and their voice stays in your ears and their thoughts stay in your mind. You know their dreams because their nightmares pierce your heart and their good dreams are your dreams too. And you don't think they're perfect, but you know their flaws, the deep-down truth of them, and the shadows of all their secrets, and they don't frighten you away; in fact you love them more for it, because you don't want perfect. You want them. You want--"

He broke off then, as if realizing everyone was looking at him.

"You want what?" said Dru with enormous eyes.

"Nothing," Julian said. "I'm just talking." And he shut off the TV and picked up the pizza boxes. "I'm going to throw these away," he said, and left.

"When he falls in love," said Dru, looking after him, "it's going to be like . . . wow."