Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

Cristina snorted without turning around.

"Tina," Perfect Diego said, and his voice was filled with longing. "Tina, please."

Emma looked awkwardly out the windshield. They were almost in view of the ocean. She tried to concentrate on that and not the tension between the two other conscious occupants of the car.

Cristina clenched her medallion tighter, but said nothing.

"Rook said you were investigating because you believed the murders were tied to your parents' death," Perfect Diego said to Emma. "For what it is worth, I am sorry for your loss."

"That was a long time ago." Emma could see Perfect Diego in the rearview mirror. He had a delicate chain of runes that circled his neck, like a torque. His hair curled, not Julian's waves but ringlets that fell over the tops of his ears.

He was hot. And he seemed nice. And he had some serious badass moves. He really was Perfect Diego, she thought wryly. No wonder Cristina had been so hurt.

"What are you doing here?" Cristina demanded. "Emma has a reason to be investigating the murders, but you?"

"You know I was at the Scholomance," Perfect Diego said. "And you know Centurions are often sent to investigate matters that don't fall strictly under Shadowhunter mandate--"

There was a hoarse yell. Sterling had jerked awake and was flailing in the backseat. Perfect Diego's knife flashed in the darkness. Cars honked as Emma jerked the wheel to the right and they careened onto Ocean Avenue.

"Let me go!" Sterling jerked and flailed against the wire wrapping his wrists. "Let me go!"

He yelped in pain as Perfect Diego flung him hard against the backseat of the car, pressing the knife against his jugular. "Get off me," Sterling yelled. "Goddammit, get off me--"

Sterling shrieked as Perfect Diego dug his knee into his thigh. "Settle," Diego said in a flat, deadly voice, "down."

They were still hurtling down Ocean. Palm trees fringed either side of the street like eyelashes. Emma cut wildly in front of the left-hand turn lane and shot down the ramp to the coast highway amid a furious chorus of blaring horns.

"Jesus Christ!" Sterling shouted. "Where'd you learn to drive?"

"Nobody asked you for commentary!" Emma yelled back as they hurtled into the moving traffic. Luckily it was late and the lanes were mostly empty.

"I don't want to die on the Pacific Coast Highway!" Sterling wailed.

"Oh, I'm sorry." Emma's voice dripped acid. "Is there a different highway you'd like to die on? BECAUSE WE CAN ARRANGE THAT."

"Bitch," Sterling hissed.

Cristina whirled around in her seat. There was a cracking sound like a gunshot; a second later, as they hurtled past a group of surfers walking along the highway's edge, Emma realized she'd slapped Sterling across the face.

"Don't you call my friend a bitch," Cristina said. "You understand?"

Sterling rubbed his jaw. His eyes were slits. "You've got no right to touch me." There was a whine in his voice. "Nephilim only deal with issues that break the Accords."

"Wrong," Perfect Diego said. "We deal with any issues we feel like."

"But Belinda told us--"

"Yeah, about that," Cristina said. "How did you end up joining that cult or whatever it is at the Midnight Theater?"

Sterling exhaled a shaky breath. "We're sworn to secrecy," he said finally. "If I tell you everything I know, are you going to protect me?"

"Maybe," said Emma. "But you're tied up and we're all heavily armed. You really fancy your chances if you don't tell?"

Sterling glanced at Perfect Diego, who was holding the dagger idly, as if it were a pen. Nevertheless, there was a sense of coiled power about him, as if he could explode into action in under a second. If Sterling had any brains he'd be terrified. "I got into it through a producer friend of mine. He said he'd found a way to guarantee that everything you touched turned to gold. Not literally," Sterling hastened to add.

"No one thought you meant literally, idiot," said Emma.

Sterling made an angry noise, cut off quickly by Diego pressing the knife tighter against his throat.

"Who's the Guardian?" Cristina demanded. "Who leads the Followers at the theater?"

"I've got no idea," Sterling said sulkily. "Nobody knows. Not even Belinda."

"I saw Belinda at the Shadow Market, shilling for your little cult," Emma said. "I'm guessing they promised money and luck if you came to their meetings. You just had to risk the lotteries. Am I right?"

"They didn't seem like that big a risk," said Sterling. "They were only once in a while. If you got picked, no one could touch you. No one could interfere until you took a life."

Cristina's face twisted in disgust. "And those who took lives? What happened to them?"

"They got whatever they wanted," Sterling said. "To be rich. Beautiful. After a sacrifice, everyone gets stronger, but the one who performs the sacrifice gets stronger than the rest."

"How do you know?" said Cristina. "Had any of the people at the theater been picked in the Lottery before?"

"Belinda," said Sterling promptly. "She was the first. Most of the others didn't stick around. They're probably off somewhere, living it up. Well, except Ava."

"Ava Leigh was a Lottery winner?" asked Emma. "The one who lived with Stanley Wells?"

Perfect Diego jammed his knife harder against Sterling's throat. "What did you know about Ava?"

Sterling winced away from the knife. "Yeah, she was a Lottery winner. Look, it didn't matter who winners picked to kill--no Downworlders except faeries, that was the only rule. Some of the Lottery winners chose people they knew. Ava decided to kill her sugar-daddy boyfriend. She was tired of him. But it freaked her out. She killed herself after. Drowned herself in his pool. It was stupid of her. She could have had anything she wanted."

"She didn't commit suicide," Emma said. "She was murdered."

He shrugged. "Nah, she offed herself. That's what everyone said."

Cristina looked as if she was struggling to stay calm. "You knew her," she said. "Don't you care? Do you feel anything? What about guilt over the girl you killed?"

"Some girl from the Shadow Market," said Sterling with a shrug. "Used to sell jewelry there. I told her I could get her designs into department stores. Make her rich, if she'd just meet me." He snorted. "Everyone's greedy."

They had passed the initial highway clutter and reached a stretch of beach, dotted with blue lifeguard towers.

"That blue fire," Emma said, thinking out loud. "The Guardian was in it. They took the body to the convergence. You stabbed her, but the Guardian grabbed her before she died. So the deaths happen at the convergence, and everything else too--the burning, submerging the body in seawater, carving the runes, the whole ritual?"

"Yeah. And I was supposed to be taken to the convergence too," Sterling said, resentment coloring his voice. "It's where the Guardian would have thanked me--given me anything I wanted. I could have seen the ritual. One death strengthens us all."

Emma and Cristina exchanged looks. Sterling wasn't clearing things up; he was making them more confusing.

"You said she was the last," said Diego. "What happens after this? What's the payoff?"

Sterling grunted. "No idea. I didn't get where I am in life by asking questions I don't need the answers to."

"Get where you are in life?" Emma snorted. "You mean tied up in the back of a car?"

Emma could see the lights of the Malibu Pier up ahead. They shone against the dark water. "None of that matters. The Guardian will find me," Sterling said.

"I wouldn't count on it," said Perfect Diego in his low voice.

Emma turned off the highway onto their familiar road. She could see the lights of the Institute in the distance, illuminating the rutted track under her wheels. "And when he does find you?" she said. "The Guardian? What do you think he'll do, just welcome you back after you told us all this? You don't think he'll make you pay?"

"There's one more thing I have to give him," Sterling said. "Belinda did. And even Ava

did. One last, last thing. And then--"

Sterling broke off with a yowl of terror. The Institute loomed up in front of them. Perfect Diego swore.