"Dru, Mark's worried. The Riders are terribly dangerous. He needs to know you're all right."
"I'll go and tell him I'm fine in a second," Dru said. "But I need you to come with me."
"Dru--" They'd made it to the hallway where most of the spare bedrooms were.
"Look," said Dru. "I just need you to do this, okay? If you try yelling for Mark, I promise you there are places in this Institute I can hide where you won't find me for days."
Cristina couldn't help being curious. "How do you know the Institute so well?"
"You would too if every time you showed your face, someone tried to make you babysit," said Dru. They'd reached her bedroom. She stood hesitating, with her hand on the knob of her door.
"But we looked in your bedroom," Cristina protested.
"I'm telling you," said Dru. "Hiding places." She took a deep breath. "Okay. You go in here. And don't freak out."
Dru's small face was set and determined, as if she were nerving herself to do something unpleasant.
"Is everything all right?" Cristina said. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather talk to Mark than me?"
"It isn't me who wants to talk to you," Dru said, and pushed her bedroom door open. Cristina stepped inside, feeling more puzzled than ever.
She only saw a shadow first, a figure in front of the windowsill. Then he stood up and her heart caught in her throat.
Brown skin, tangled black hair, sharp features, long lashes. The faint slouch to the shoulders she remembered, that she used to tell him always made him look as if he was walking into a high wind.
"Jaime," she breathed.
He reached out his arms, and a moment later she was hugging him tightly. Jaime had always been skinny, but now he felt positively prickly with pointed collarbones and sharp elbows. He hugged her back, tightly, and Cristina heard the bedroom door close quietly, the lock clicking.
She pulled back and looked up into Jaime's face. He looked like he always did--bright-eyed, edged with mischief. "So," he said. "You really missed me."
All the nights she'd stayed up sobbing because of him--because he was missing, because she hated him, because he'd been her best friend and she hated hating him--burst. Her left palm cracked across his cheek, and then she was hitting him on the shoulders, the chest, wherever she could reach.
"Ow!" He writhed away. "That hurts!"
"!Me vale madre!" She hit him again. "How dare you disappear like that! Everyone was worried! I thought maybe you were dead. And now you turn up hiding in Drusilla Blackthorn's bedroom, which by the way if her brothers find out they will kill you dead--"
"It wasn't like that!" Jaime windmilled his arms as if to fend off her blows. "I was looking for you."
She put her hands on her hips. "After all this time avoiding me, suddenly you're looking for me?"
"It wasn't you I was avoiding," he said. He took a crumpled envelope out of his pocket and held it out to her. With a pang, she recognized Diego's handwriting.
"If Diego wants to write to me, he doesn't need the message hand-delivered," she said. "What does he think you are, a carrier pigeon?"
"He can't write to you," said Jaime. "Zara watches all his mail."
"So you know about Zara," Cristina said, taking the envelope. "How long?"
Jaime slouched back against a large oak desk, hands propped behind him. "How long have they been engaged? Since you two broke up the first time. But it's not a real engagement, Cristina."
She sat down on Dru's bed. "It seemed real enough."
Jaime ran a hand through his black hair. He looked only a little like Diego, maybe in the set of his mouth, the shape of his eyes. Jaime had always been playful where Diego was serious. Now, tired and skinny, he resembled the glum, style-conscious boys who hung around coffee shops in the Colonia Roma. "I know you probably hate me," he said. "You've got every reason. You think I wanted our branch of the family to take over the Institute because I wanted power and didn't care about you. But the fact is I had a good reason."
"I don't believe you," Cristina said.
Jaime made an impatient noise. "I'm not self-sacrificing, Tina," he said. "That's Diego, not me. I wanted our family out of trouble."
Cristina dug her hands into the bedspread. "What kind of trouble?"
"You know we've always had a connection with faeries," said Jaime. "It's where that necklace of yours comes from. But there's always been more than that. Most of it didn't matter, until the Cold Peace. Then the family was supposed to turn everything over to the Clave--all their information, anything the faeries had ever given them."
"But they didn't," Cristina guessed.
"They didn't," Jaime said. "They decided the relationship with the hadas was more important than the Cold Peace." He shrugged fluidly. "There's an heirloom. It has power even I don't understand. The Dearborns and the Cohort demanded it, and we told them only a Rosales could make the object work."
Realization came to Cristina with a hard shock. "So the fake engagement," she said. "So Zara could think she was becoming a Rosales."
"Exactly," said Jaime. "Diego ties himself to the Cohort. And I--I take the heirloom and run. So Diego can blame me--his bad little brother ran off with it. And the engagement drags on and they don't find the heirloom."
"Is that your only plan?" Cristina said. "Delay forever?"
Jaime frowned at her. "I don't think you entirely appreciate that I've been very bravely on the run for months now," he said. "Very bravely."
"We are Nephilim, Jaime. It's our job to be brave," Cristina said.
"Some of us are better at it than others," Jaime said. "Anyway. I would not say our whole plan is to delay, no. Diego works to find out what the Cohort's weaknesses are. And I work to find out what the heirloom does exactly."
"You don't know?"
He shook his head. "I know it helps you enter Faerie undetected."
"And the Cohort wants to be able to enter Faerie so they can start a war?" Cristina guessed.
"That would make sense," said Jaime. "To them, anyway."
Cristina sat on the bed in silence. Outside it had begun to rain. Water streaked the windowpanes. She thought of rain on the trees in the Bosque, and sitting there with Jaime, watching him eat bags of Dorilocos and lick the salt off his fingers. And talking--talking for hours, about literally everything, about what they would do when they were parabatai and could travel anywhere in the world.
"Where are you going to go?" she said finally, trying to keep her voice steady.
"I can't tell you." He pulled himself away from the desk. "I can't tell anyone. I am a good escape artist, Cristina, but only if I never tell where I'm hiding."
"You don't know, do you," she said. "You're going to improvise."
He smiled sideways. "No one knows me better than you."
"And Diego?" Cristina's voice shook. "Why didn't he ever tell me any of this?"
"People do stupid things when they're in love," said Jaime, in the voice of someone who never had been. "And besides, I asked him not to."
"So why are you telling me now?"
"Two things," he said. "In Downworld, they say the Blackthorns are going up against the Cohort. If it comes to a fight, I want to be in it. Send me a fire-message. I will come." His tone was earnest. "And secondly, to deliver Diego's message. He said you might be too angry to read it. But I was hoping that now--you would not be."
She looked down at the envelope in her hand. It had been bent and folded many times.
"I'll read it," she said quietly. "Won't you stay? Eat a meal with us. You look starved."
Jaime shook his head. "No one can know I was here, Tina. Promise me. On the fact that we were once going to be parabatai."
"That isn't fair," she whispered. "Besides, Drusilla knows."
"She won't tell anyone--" Jaime began.
"Cristina!" It was Mark's voice, echoing down the hallway. "Cristina, where are you?"
Jaime's arms were around her suddenly, wiry-strong as he hugged her hard. Whe
n he let go, she touched his face lightly. There were a million things she wanted to say--ten cuidado more than anything: Be safe, be careful. But he was already turning away from her, toward the window. He threw it open and ducked outside like a shadow, vanishing into the rain-streaked night.
25
START AND SIGH
Gwyn wouldn't come into the Institute.
Kit didn't know if it was principle or preference, but despite the fact that his arm was bleeding, soaking the side of his gray armor, the Wild Hunt leader only shook his head when Alec invited him cordially into the Institute.
"I am the head of the London Institute, however temporarily," Alec said. "I am empowered to invite whoever I want inside."