Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices 2)

He grinned. Black hair flopped into his eyes. He shoved it back. "You like to be scared?"

"Horror movies don't scare me," said Dru.

"Aren't they supposed to?" He sounded genuinely interested. Dru couldn't remember the last time anyone had seemed genuinely interested in her love for slasher films and vintage horror. Julian had sometimes stayed up to watch Horror Hotel with her, but she knew that was just older-brother kindness.

"I remember the Dark War," she said. "I remember watching people die in front of me. My father was one of the Endarkened. He came back, but it wasn't--it wasn't him." She swallowed hard. "When I watch a scary movie, I know whatever happens, I'll be all right when it's over. I know the people in it were just actors and after everything was done, they walked away. The blood was fake and washed off."

Jaime's eyes were dark and fathomless. "It almost lets you believe none of those things exist," he said. "Imagine if they didn't."

She smiled a little sadly. "We're Shadowhunters," she said. "We don't get to imagine that."

*

"People will do anything to get out of housework," said Julian.

"Not you," Emma said. She was lying on the sofa with her legs hooked over the arm.

Since they couldn't follow Annabel to the church today, they'd decided to spend the afternoon reading through Malcolm's diaries and studying Annabel's drawings. By the time the sun began going down, they had a sizable amount of notes systematically arranged around the cottage in piles. Notes about timeline--when Malcolm had joined Annabel's family, how they, who ran the Cornwall Institute, had adopted him when he was a child. How intensely Annabel had loved Blackthorn Manor, the Blackthorns' ancestral home in the green hills of Idris, and how they had played in Brocelind Forest together. When Malcolm had started planning for their future, and built the cottage in Polperro, and how he and Annabel had hidden their relationship, exchanging all their messages through Annabel's raven. When Annabel's father had discovered them, and thrown his daughter out of the Blackthorn house, and Malcolm had found her the next morning, weeping alone on the beach.

Malcolm had determined then that he would need protection for them from the Clave. He had known of the collection of spell books at the Cornwall Institute. He would need a powerful patron, he had decided. Someone he could trade the Black Volume to, who in turn would keep the Council away from them.

Emma read aloud from the diaries, and Julian took notes. Every once in a while they would stop, take pictures with their phones of their notes and questions, and text them to the Institute. Sometimes they got questions back and scrambled to answer them; sometimes they got nothing. Once they got a picture of Ty, who had found an entire row of first-edition Sherlock Holmes books in the library and was beaming. Once they got a picture of Mark's foot. Neither of them knew what to make of that.

At some point Julian stretched, padded into the kitchen, and made them both toasted cheese sandwiches on the Aga, a massive iron stove that radiated warmth through the room.

This is bad, he thought, looking down at his hands as he settled the sandwiches onto plates and remembered that Emma liked hers with the crusts cut off. He'd made fun of her for it often. He reached for a knife, the gesture mechanical, habit.

He imagined doing this every day. Living in a house he'd designed himself--like this one, it would have a view of the sea. A massive studio where he could paint. A room for Emma to train. He imagined waking up every morning to find her beside him, or sitting at a table in the kitchen with her morning cereal, humming, raising her face to smile at him when he came in.

A wave of desire--not just for the physicality of her but for the dream of that life--swept through him, almost choking him. It was dangerous to dream, he reminded himself. As dangerous as it was for Sleeping Beauty in her castle, where she'd fallen into dreams that had devoured her for a century.

He went to join Emma by the fire. She was bright-eyed, smiling as she took the plate from him. "You know what I'm worried about?"

His heart did a slow curl inside his chest. "What?"

"Church," she said. "He's all alone in the Institute in L.A."

"No, he isn't. He's surrounded by Centurions."

"What if one of them tries to steal him?"

"Then they'll be appropriately punished," said Julian, moving slightly closer to the fire.

"What's the appropriate punishment for stealing a cat?" Emma asked around her sandwich.

"In Church's case, having to keep him," said Julian.

Emma made a face. "If there were any crusts on this sandwich, I'd throw them at you."

"Why don't you just throw the sandwich?"

She looked horrified. "And give up the tasty cheese? I would never, ever give up the tasty cheese."

"My mistake." Julian tossed another log onto the fire. A bubble of happiness swelled in his chest, sweet and unfamiliar.

"Cheese this tasty doesn't just come along every day," she informed him. "You know what would make it even better?"

"What?" He sat back on his heels.

"Another sandwich." She held out her empty plate, laughing. He took the plate, and it was a completely ordinary moment, but it was also everything he'd ever wanted and never let himself imagine. A house, with Emma; laughing by a fire together.

All that would make it better would be his brothers and sisters somewhere nearby, where he could see them every day, where he could fence with Livvy and watch movies with Dru and help Tavvy learn the crossbow. Where he could look for animals with Ty, hermit crabs down by the edge of the water, scuttling under their shells. Where he could cook massive dinners with Mark and Helen and Aline and they'd all eat them together, out under the stars in the desert air.

Where he could hear the sea, as he could hear it now. And where he could see Emma, always Emma, the better, brighter half of him, who tempered his ruthlessness, who forced him to acknowledge the light when he saw only darkness.

But they would all have to be together, he thought. Long ago the pieces of his soul had scattered, and every piece lived in one of his brothers or sisters. Except for the piece that lived in Emma, which had been burned into its home in her by the flame of the parabatai ceremony, and the pressure of his own heart.

It was impossible, though. An impossible thing that could never happen. Even if by some miracle his family came through all this unscathed and together--and if Helen and Aline could come back to them--even then, Emma, his Emma, would someday have her own family and her own life.

He wondered if he would be her suggenes, if he would give her away at her wedding. It was the usual thing, with parabatai.

The thought made him feel as if he was being cut up inside with razor blades.

"Do you remember," she was saying, in her soft, teasing voice, "when you said you could sneak Church into class without Diana noticing, and then he bit you in the middle of the lecture on Jonathan Shadowhunter?"

"Not at all." He settled back on the floor, one of the diaries by his hand. The warmth in the room, the smell of tea and burnt bread, the glow of the firelight on Emma's hair, were making him sleepy. He was as intensely happy as he was miserable, and it exhausted him to be pulled in two such different directions at once.

"You yelled," she said. "And then you told Diana it was because you were really excited to be learning."

"Is there a reason you remember every embarrassing thing that happens to me?" he wondered aloud.

"Someone has to," she said. The curve of her face was rosy in the firelight. The glass bracelet on his wrist glinted, cold against his cheek when he lowered his head.

He had been frightened that without Cristina here, they would fight and argue. That they would be bitter with each other. Instead everything was perfect. And in its own way, that was so much worse.

*

Pain woke Mark in the middle of the night, the feeling that his wrist was ringed with nails.

They'd worked in the library until late, Magnus fiddlin

g with the recipe for the binding spell antidote and the rest of them poring through old books about the Black Volume. Combining the memories from the aletheia crystal and the information from the notes Emma and Julian had sent was beginning to create a more complete picture of Annabel and Malcolm, but Mark couldn't help wondering if it was doing any good. What they needed was the Black Volume, and even if its story was woven in the past, would that help the Blackthorns find it in the present?

On the plus side, he'd managed to convince Kieran to eat almost an entire meal Alec had brought over from a cafe on Fleet Street, despite the fact that he spent the whole time complaining that the juice wasn't really juice and that chutney didn't exist. "It cannot possibly," he had said, glaring at his sandwich.

He was asleep now, curled in a tangle of blanket under Mark's window, his head propped on a stack of poetry books he'd brought from the library. Almost all of them had been inscribed on the inside cover by a James Herondale, who had neatly written out his favorite lines.

Mark's wrist throbbed again now, and with the pain came a sense of unease. Cristina, he thought. They'd barely spoken that day, both of them avoiding each other. It was partly Kieran, but even more the binding spell, the awful reality of it between them.

Mark scrambled to his feet and pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. He couldn't sleep, not like this, not worrying about her. Barefoot, he went down the hall to her room.

But it was empty. Her bed was made, the cover pulled flat, moonlight shining on it.

Perplexed, he moved down the hallway, letting the binding spell lead him. It was like following the music of a revel from a distance. He could almost hear her: She was in the Institute, somewhere.

He passed Kit's door and heard raised voices, and someone laugh--Ty. He thought of the way Ty had seemed to need him when he'd first come back, and now that was gone: Kit had worked an odd sort of magic, rounding out what the twins had into a threesome that balanced itself. Ty no longer looked at Mark the same way, as if he were looking for someone to understand him.

Which was good, Mark thought, as he took the stairs down, two at a time. Because he wasn't in much shape to understand anyone. He didn't even understand himself.

A long corridor took him to two white-painted double doors, one of them standing open. Inside was a massive, dusty, half-lit room.