Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

"Cristina?"

She blinked into the dimness, though there was no mistaking the voice.

Mark.

He was sitting on the floor, his legs crossed. Tavvy was asleep beside him--on him, really, his head resting in the crook of Mark's arm, his small legs and arms curled up like a potato bug's. Mark's T-shirt and jeans were covered with powdered sugar.

Cristina slowly unwound her scarf and placed it on the table. "Has Emma returned yet?"

"I don't know," Mark said, his hand carefully stroking Tavvy's hair. "But if she has, she's probably gone to sleep."

Cristina sighed. She'd probably have to wait until tomorrow to see Emma, find out what she'd been doing. Tell her about Diego's phone call, if she could get up the nerve.

"Could you--if you don't mind--get me a glass of water?" Mark asked. He looked down half-apologetically at the boy in his lap. "I don't want to wake him."

"Of course." Cristina went to the sink, filled a glass, and returned, sitting down cross-legged opposite Mark. He took the glass with a grateful expression. "I'm sure Julian isn't that angry with you," she said.

Mark made an inelegant noise, finishing the water and setting the glass down.

"You could pick up Tavvy," Cristina suggested. "You could carry him to bed. If you want him to sleep."

"I like him here," Mark said, looking down at his own long, pale fingers tangled in the little boy's brown curls. "He just-- They all left, and he fell asleep on me." He sounded amazed, wondering.

"Of course he did," Cristina said. "He's your brother. He trusts you."

"Nobody trusts a Hunter," Mark said.

"You are not a Hunter in this house. You are a Blackthorn."

"I wish Julian agreed with you. I thought I was keeping the children happy. I thought that's what Julian would have wanted."

Tavvy shifted in Mark's arms and Mark moved too, so that the edge of his boot was touching the tip of Cristina's. She felt the contact like a small shock.

"You have to understand," she said. "Julian does everything for these children. Everything. I have never seen a brother who is so much like a parent. He cannot only tell them yes, he has to tell them no. He must deal in discipline and punishment and denial. Whereas you, you can give them anything. You can have fun with them."

"Julian can have fun with them," Mark said a little sulkily.

"He can't," said Cristina. "He is envious because he loves them but he cannot be their brother. He must be their father. In his mind, they dread him and adore you."

"Julian's jealous?" Mark looked astonished. "Of me?"

"I think so." Cristina met his eyes. At some point, in knowing him, the mismatch between his blue and his golden one had stopped seeming strange to her. The same way it had stopped seeming strange to be in the Blackthorns' kitchen, speaking English, instead of at home, where things were warm and familiar. "Be kind to him. He has a gentle soul. He is terrified you will leave and break the hearts of all these children he loves so very much."

Mark looked down at Tavvy. "I don't know what I will do," he said. "I did not realize how it would tear at my heart to be back among them. It was thinking of them, of my family, that helped me live through the first years I was in the Hunt. Every day we would ride, and steal from the dead. It was cold, a cold life. And at night I would lie down and conjure their faces to lull me to sleep. They were all I had until--"

He broke off. Tavvy sat up, scrubbing his small hands through his tangled hair. "Jules?" He yawned.

"No," said his brother quietly. "It's Mark."

"Oh, right." Tavvy gave him a blink-eyed smile. "Think I crashed from all the sugar."

"Well, you were inside a bag of it," Mark said. "That could have an effect on anyone."

Tavvy got to his feet and stretched, a full little-boy stretch with his arms outraised. Mark watched him, a look of wistfulness in his eyes. Cristina wondered if he was thinking about all the years and milestones he'd missed in Tavvy's life. Of all his siblings, his youngest had changed the most.

"Bed," Tavvy said, and wandered out of the kitchen, pausing at the door to say, "Night, Cristina!" shyly before scampering off.

Cristina turned back to Mark. He was still sitting with his back against the refrigerator. He looked exhausted, not just physically, but as if his soul were tired.

She could get up and go to bed, Cristina thought. She probably should. There was no reason for her to stay here and sit on the floor with a boy she barely knew, who would most likely disappear out of her life in months, and who was probably in love with someone else.

Which, she thought, might be exactly what drew her to him. She knew what it was like to leave someone you loved behind.

"Until?" she prompted.

Mark's eyelids lifted slowly, showing her the banked fire in gold and blue eyes. "What?"

"You said your family, the memory of your family, was all you had until something. Until Kieran?"

"Yes," Mark said.

"Was he the only one who was kind to you?"

"In the Hunt?" said Mark. "There is not kindness in the Hunt. There is respect, and a sort of camaraderie of brothers. They feared Kieran, of course. Kieran is gentry, a Prince of Faerie. His father, the King, gave him to the Hunt as a sign of goodwill to Gwyn, but he also demanded his good treatment. That good treatment was extended to me, but even before Kieran, they came slowly to respect me." His shoulders hunched. "It was worst when we attended the revels. Faeries from all over would come to those, and they did not appreciate a Shadowhunter's attendance. They would do their best to draw me aside, to taunt and torment me."

"Did no one intervene?"

Mark laughed shortly. "The ways of Faerie are brutal," he said. "Even for the greatest among them. The Queen of the Seelie Court can be deprived of her powers if her crown is stolen. Even Gwyn, who leads the Wild Hunt, must yield authority to any who steals his cloak. You cannot imagine they would show mercy to a half-Shadowhunter boy." His lip curled. "They even had a rhyme they would mock me with."

"A rhyme?" Cristina held up a hand. "Never mind, you do not need to tell it to me, not if you don't wish to."

"I no longer care," Mark said. "It was an odd bit of doggerel. First the flame and then the flood, in the end it's Blackthorn blood."

Cristina sat up straight. "What?"

"They claimed it meant Blackthorn blood was destructive, like flood or fire. That whoever made up the rhyme was saying Blackthorns were bad luck. Not that it matters. It's just a bit of nonsense."

"That isn't nonsense," Cristina exclaimed. "It means something. The words written on the bodies . . ." She frowned in concentration. "They are the same."

"What do you mean?"

"'Fire to water,'" she said. "It is the same--they are simply different translations. When English is not your first language, you understand the sense of the words differently. Believe me, 'Fire to water' and 'First the flame and then the flood,' they could be the same thing."

"But what does that mean?"

"I'm not sure." Cristina pushed her hands into her hair in frustration. "Please, promise me you'll mention it to Emma and Jules as soon as you can. I could be wrong, but . . ."

Mark looked baffled. "Yes, of course--"

"Promise."

"Tomorrow, I promise." His smile was bemused. "It occurs to me that you know a great deal about me, Cristina, and I know very little about you. I know your name, Mendoza Rosales. I know you left something behind in Mexico. What was it?"

"Not a something," she said. "Someone."

"Perfect Diego?"