Lord of Shadows The Dark Artifices 2

21

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NCLOSED

Mark sat on the edge of his bed, examining his wrist. The wound that wrapped it appeared darker, crusted with blood at the edges, and the bruises that radiated out from it shaded from deep red to purple.

“Let me bandage it,” Kieran said. He sat on the nightstand, his feet half pulled up under him. His hair was tangled and he was barefoot. It looked as if a wild creature had alighted on some piece of civilization: a hawk balancing on the head of a statue. “At least let me do that for you.”

“Bandaging it won’t help,” Mark said. “Like Magnus said—it won’t heal until the spell’s off.”

“Then do it for me. I cannot bear looking at it.”

Mark looked at Kieran in surprise. In the Wild Hunt, they had seen their fair share of injuries and blood, and Kieran had never been squeamish.

“There are bandages in there.” Mark indicated the drawer of the nightstand. He watched as Kieran hopped down and retrieved what he needed, then returned to the bed and to him.

Kieran sat down and took Mark’s wrist. His hands were clever and capable, blunt-nailed, calloused from years of fighting and riding. (Cristina’s hands were calloused, too, but her wrists and fingertips were smooth and soft. Mark remembered the feel of them against his cheek in the faerie grove.)

“You are so distant, Mark,” Kieran said. “Further from me now than you were when I was in Faerie and you were in the human world.”

Mark looked steadfastly at his wrist, now wrapped in a bracelet of bandage. Kieran tied the knot expertly and set the box aside. “You can’t stay here forever, Kier,” Mark said. “And when you go, we will be separated. I can’t not think about that.”

Kieran gave a soft, impatient noise and flopped down on the bed, among the sheets. The blankets were already flung onto the floor. With his black hair tangled against the white linen, his body sprawled out with no regard for human modesty—his shirt had ridden up to the bottom of his rib cage, and his legs were flung wide apart—Kieran looked even more of a wild creature. “Come with me, then,” he said. “Stay with me. I saw the look on your face when you saw the horses of the Hunt. You would do anything to ride again.”

Suddenly furious, Mark leaned down over him. “Not anything,” he said. His voice throbbed with low anger.

Kieran gave a slight hiss. He caught at Mark’s shirt. “There,” he said. “Be angry with me, Mark Blackthorn. Shout at me. Feel something.”

Mark stayed where he was, frozen, just above Kieran. “You think I don’t feel?” he said, incredulously.

Something flickered in Kieran’s eyes. “Put your hands on me,” he said, and Mark did, feeling helpless to stop himself. Kieran clutched at the sheets as Mark touched him, pulling at his shirt, snapping the buttons. He moved his hands over Kieran’s body, as he had done on countless nights before, and a slow flame began in his own chest, the memory of desire becoming the immediate present.

It burned in him: a lambent, sorrowful heat, like a signal fire on a distant hill. Kieran’s shirt came up and over his head and his arms were tangled in it, so he reached for Mark with his legs, pulling him in, holding him with his knees. Kieran lifted up his mouth to Mark’s, and he tasted like the sweet ice of polar expanses under skies streaked with the northern lights. Mark couldn’t stop his hands: The shape of Kieran’s shoulder was like the rise of hills, his hair soft and dark as clouds; his eyes were stars and his body moved under Mark’s like the rush of a waterfall no human eye had ever seen. He was starlight and strangeness and freedom. He was a hundred arrows loosed from a hundred bows at the same time.

And Mark was lost; he was falling through dark skies, silvered with the diamond dust of stars. He was tangling his legs with Kieran’s, his hands were in Kieran’s hair, they were hurtling through mist over green pastures, they were riding a fire-shod horse over deserts where sand rose up in clouds of gold. He cried out, and then Kieran was rushing away from him as if he had been lifted up off the bed—it was all rushing away, and Mark opened his eyes and he was in the library.

He had fallen asleep, head on his arms, face against the wood of the table. He bolted upright with a gasp and saw Kieran, sitting in the embrasure of the windowsill, looking at him.

The library was otherwise empty, thank the Angel. No one was there except them.

Mark’s hand was throbbing. He must have struck it against the edge of the table; the sides of his fingers were already starting to swell.

“A pity,” said Kieran, looking at Mark’s hand thoughtfully. “Or you wouldn’t have woken up.”

“Where is everyone?” Mark said. He swallowed against the dryness in his throat.

“Some have gone to find ingredients to dissolve the binding spell,” said Kieran. “The children became restive, and Cristina went with them and Magnus’s lover.”

“You mean Alec,” said Mark. “His name is Alec.”

Kieran shrugged. “As for Magnus, he went to something called an Internet café to make printings of Emma and Julian’s messages. We were left to do research, but you promptly fell asleep.”

Mark chewed his lower lip. His body could still feel Kieran’s, though he knew Kieran hadn’t touched him. He knew it, but he had to ask anyway, despite dreading the answer. “And you made me dream,” he said.

It wasn’t the first time Kieran had ever done that: He had given Mark pleasant dreams a few times when he could not sleep during the nights of the Hunt. It was a faerie gift.

But this was different.

“Yes,” Kieran said. There were white threads in his dark hair, like lines of ore running through a mine shaft.

“Why?” Mark said. Anger was gathering in his veins. He felt it like a pressure in his chest. They’d had terrific fights while they were in the Hunt. The screaming sort you had when everything in the world seemed to be at stake because the other person was all you had. Mark remembered pushing Kieran partway down a glacier and then flinging himself after: catching him as they both rolled into a snowbank, gripping each other in the cold with wet, frozen fingers that slipped and slid on their skin.

The problem was that fights with Kieran usually led to kissing, and that, Mark felt, was not helpful. It probably wasn’t all that healthy, either.

“Because you are not truthful with me. Your heart is closed and shrouded. I cannot see it,” Kieran said. “I thought, in dreams, perhaps . . .”

“You think I’m lying to you?” Mark felt his heart give a thump of dread.

“I think you are lying to yourself,” said Kieran. “You were not born for this life, of politics and plots and lies. Your brother is. Julian thrives at it. But you do not wish to make these kinds of bargains, where you ruin your soul to serve a greater good. You are kinder than that.”

Mark let his head fall against the chair back. If only he could tell himself Kieran was wrong, but he wasn’t. Mark loathed himself every moment of every day for lying to Kieran, even if the lie was in a good cause.

Kieran said, “Your brother would burn the world if it saved his family. Some are like that. But you are not.”

“I understand you cannot believe this matters to me as much as it does, Kieran,” Mark said. “But it is the truth.”

“Remember,” Kieran whispered. Even now, in the mundane world, there was something proud and arrogant about Kieran’s gestures, his voice. Despite the jeans Mark had lent him, he looked as if he should be at the head of a faerie army, flinging out his arm in sweeping command. “Remember that none of it is real.”

And Mark did remember. He remembered a note written on parchment, wrapped in the shell of an acorn. The first message Kieran had sent him after he’d left the Hunt.

“It is real to me,” Mark said. “All of this is real to me.” He leaned forward. “I need to know you are here in this with me, Kieran.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means no more anger,” said Mark. “It means no more sending me dreams. I needed you for so long, Kieran. I needed you so much, and that kind of need, it bends you and warps you. It makes you desperate. It makes you not choose.”

Kieran had frozen. “You’re saying you didn’t choose me?”

“I’m saying the Wild Hunt chose us. I’m saying if you are finding strangeness in me, and distance, it is because I cannot help but ask myself, over and over: In another world, in another situation, would we still have chosen each other?” He looked hard at the other boy. “You are a gentry prince. And I am half-Nephilim, worse than the lowest chaff, tainted in blood and lineage.”

“Mark.”

“I am saying the choices we make in captivity are not always the choices we make in freedom. And thus we question them. We cannot help it.”

“It is different for me,” said Kieran. “After this, I return to the Hunt. You are the one with freedom.”

“I will not let you be forced back into the Hunt if you do not wish it.”

Kieran’s eyes softened. In that moment, Mark thought he would have promised him anything, no matter how rash.

“I would like us both to have freedom,” Mark said. “To laugh, to enjoy ourselves together, to love in the ordinary way. You are free here with me, and perhaps we could take that chance, that time.”

“Very well,” Kieran said, after a long pause. “I will stay with you. And I will help you with your dull books.” He smiled. “I am in this with you, Mark, if that is how we will learn what we mean to each other.”

“Thank you,” Mark said. Kieran, like most faeries, had no use for “you’re welcome”; instead he slid off the windowsill and went in search of a book on the shelves. Mark stared after him. He had said nothing to Kieran that was not true, and yet he felt as leaden inside as if every word he had spoken was a lie.

* * *

The sky over London was cloudless and blue and beautiful. The water of the Thames, parting on either side of the boat, was almost blue. Sort of the color of tea, Kit thought, if you put blue ink into it.

The place they were going—Ty had the address—was on Gill Street, Magnus had explained, in Limehouse. “Used to be a terrible neighborhood,” he said. “Full of opium dens and gambling houses. God, it was fun back then.”

Mark had looked immediately panicked.

“Don’t worry,” Magnus had added. “It’s very dull now. All fancy condos and gastropubs. Very safe.”

Julian would have forbidden this excursion, Kit was fairly sure. But Mark hadn’t hesitated—he seemed, far more than his brother, to regard Livvy and Ty as adult Shadowhunters who were simply expected to work like the others.

It was Ty who had hesitated for a moment, looking worriedly at his sister. Livvy seemed absolutely fine now—they were on the top level of the boat, open to the air, and she was raising her face into the wind with unabashed pleasure, letting it lift her hair and whip it around.

Ty was watching everything around them with that absorbed fascination of his, as if he were memorizing every building, every street. His fingers drummed a tattoo on the metal railing, but Kit didn’t think that indicated anxiety. He’d noticed that Ty’s gestures didn’t always correspond to a bad mood. Sometimes they corresponded to a good one: If he was feeling relaxed, he’d watch his own fingers make lazy patterns against the air, the way a meteorologist might watch the movement of clouds.

“If I became a Shadowhunter,” Kit said, to neither of the twins specifically, “would I have to do a lot of homework? Or could I just, sort of, start doing it?”

Livvy’s eyes sparkled. “You are doing it.”

“Yes, but this is a state of emergency,” said Ty. “He’s right—he’d have to catch up on some classes. It’s not as if you’re as ignorant as a mundane would be,” he added to Kit, “but there are some things you’d probably need to learn—classes of demons, languages, that sort of thing.”

Kit made a face. “I was really hoping I could learn on the job.”

Livvy laughed. “You could always go in front of the Council and make a case for it.”

“The Council?” said Kit. “How are they different from the Clave?”

Livvy laughed harder.

“I can see how your case might not be successful,” said Ty. “Though I suppose we could tutor you a bit.”

“A bit?” said Kit.

Ty smiled his rare, dazzling smile. “A bit. I do have important things to do.”

Kit thought of Ty on the roof the night before, how desperate he had seemed. He was back to his old self now, as if Livvy’s restoration had restored him, too. He rested his elbows on the rail as the boat chugged past an imposing fortress-like building that loomed over the riverbank.

“The Tower of London,” said Livvy, noticing Kit’s gaze.

“The stories say that six ravens must always guard the Tower,” said Ty, “or the monarchy will fall.”

“All the stories are true,” said Livvy in a soft voice, and a chill went up Kit’s spine.

Ty turned his head. “Wasn’t it a raven that carried Annabel and Malcolm’s messages?” he said. “I think that was in Emma and Julian’s notes.”

“Seems unreliable,” said Kit. “What if the raven got bored, or distracted, or met a hot falcon on the way?”

“Or was intercepted by faeries,” said Livvy.

“Not all faeries are bad,” said Ty.

“Some faeries are good, some are bad, like anyone,” said Kit. “But that might be too complicated for the Clave.”

“It’s too complicated for most people,” Ty said.

From anyone else, Kit would have thought that the comment was meant to be reproving. Ty, though, probably just meant it. Which was oddly pleasant to know.

“I don’t like what we’ve been hearing from Diana,” said Livvy. “About how Zara’s claiming she killed Malcolm.”

“My dad used to say that a big lie was often easier to carry off than a small one,” said Kit.

“Well, hopefully he was wrong,” said Livvy, a little sharply. “I can’t stand the idea that anyone thinks Zara and people like her are heroes. Even if they don’t know she’s lying about Malcolm, the Cohort’s plans are despicable.”

“It’s too bad none of you can just tell the Clave what Julian saw happen in the scrying glass,” said Kit.

“If they knew he’d gone to Faerie, he could be exiled,” said Livvy, and there was an edge of real fear in her voice. “Or have his Marks stripped.”

“I could pretend I’m the one who saw it—it matters a lot less if I get tossed out of the Nephilim,” Kit said.

Kit had meant to lighten the mood with an obvious joke, but the twins looked rattled. “Don’t you want to stay?” Ty’s question was direct and sharp as a knife.

Kit had no answer. There was a clamor of voices, and the boat jerked to a halt. It had docked at Limehouse, and the three of them hurried to get off—they were unglamoured, and as they pushed past several mundanes to get to the exit, Kit heard one of them mutter about kids getting tattooed way too young these days.

Ty had made a face at all the noise, and had his headphones on as they wove through the streets. The air smelled like river water, but Magnus had been right—the docks vanished quickly, replaced by winding roads full of massive old factory buildings that had been turned into lofts.

Ty had the map, and Livvy and Kit walked a little behind him, Livvy with her hand casually at her waist, where her weapons belt was hidden by her jacket. “He uses the headphones less when you’re around,” she said, her eyes on her brother, though her words were for Kit.

“Is that good?” Kit was surprised.

Livvy shrugged. “It isn’t good or bad. It’s just something I noticed. It’s not magic or anything.” She glanced sideways at him. “I think he just doesn’t want to miss anything you say.”

Kit felt an odd stab of emotion go through him. It surprised him. He glanced sideways at Livvy. Since they’d left Los Angeles, she’d done nothing to indicate she wanted to repeat their one kiss. And Kit had found that he didn’t either. Not that he didn’t like Livvy, or find her pretty. But something seemed off about it now—as if it were somehow wrong.

Maybe it was the fact that he didn’t know if he wanted to be a Shadowhunter at all.

“We’re here.” Ty had shoved his headphones down, the white band of them stark against his black hair. He alone among all the current Blackthorns had hair like that, though Kit had seen pictures in the Institute of their ancestors, some with the same dark hair and silver-gray eyes. “This should be illuminating. Shops like this have to abide by the Accords, unlike the Shadow Market, but they’re also run by specialists.” Ty looked enormously happy at the thought of all that specialized knowledge.

They had passed the wider thoroughfare of Narrow Street and were now on what was presumably Gill Street, across from a single open shop. It had dimly lit windows and the owner’s name spelled out in brass letters over the door. PROPRIETOR: F. SALLOWS. There was no description of what kind of shop it was, but Kit supposed that those who shopped there knew what they were shopping for.

Ty was already across the street, opening the door. Livvy hurried after him. Kit was last—cautious and a little less than eager. He had grown up around magic-sellers and their patrons, and was wary of both.

The inside of the shop didn’t offer much reason to improve his views. The frosted windows let in glare but not light. It was clean at least, with long shelves lined with some things he’d seen before—dragon’s teeth, holy water, blessed nails, enchanted beauty powders, luck charms—and quite a few he hadn’t. Clocks that ran backward, though he had no idea why. The wire-jointed skeletons of animals he’d never seen before. Shark teeth too big to belong to any shark on earth. Jar after jar of butterfly wings in explosive colors of hot pink, neon yellow, and lime green. Bottles of blue water whose surfaces rippled like tiny seas.

There was a dusty copper bell on the front counter. Livvy picked it up and rang it, while Ty studied the maps on the walls. The one he was staring at was marked with names Kit had never seen before—the Thorn Mountains, Hollow Town, the Shattered Forest.

“Faerie,” Ty said in an unusually subdued voice. “Hard to get maps of it, since the geography tends to change, but I looked at quite a few when Mark was missing.”

The tap-tap of heels on the floor announced the arrival of the shopkeeper. To Kit’s surprise, she was familiar—dark-skinned and bronze-haired, dressed today in a plain black sheath dress. Hypatia Vex.

“Nephilim,” she said with a sigh. “I hate Nephilim.”

“I take it this isn’t one of those places where the customer is always right,” Livvy said.

“You’re not Sallows,” said Ty. “You’re Hypatia Vex. We met you yesterday.”

“Sallows died years ago,” said Hypatia. “Killed by Nephilim, as it happens.”

Awkward, Kit thought.

“We have a list of things we need.” Livvy pushed a paper across the counter. “For Magnus Bane.”

Hypatia raised an eyebrow. “Ah, Bane, your great defender. What a pest that man is.” She took the paper. “Some of these will take at least a day to prepare. Can you come back tomorrow?”

“Do we have a choice?” said Livvy, with a winsome smile.

“No,” said Hypatia. “And you’ll pay in gold. I’m not interested in mundane money.”

“Just tell us how much,” said Ty, and she reached for a pen and began scribbling. “And also—there’s something I want to ask you.”

He looked over at Kit and Livvy. Livvy got the hint first, and drew Kit outside the shop until they were standing in the street. The sun was warm on his hair and skin; he wondered what mundanes saw when they looked at the shop. Maybe a dusty convenience store or a place that sold tombstones. Something you’d never want to go into.

“How long are you planning on being friends with my brother?” Livvy said abruptly.

Kit jumped. “I—what?”

“You heard me,” she said. Her eyes were much bluer than the Thames. Ty’s eyes were really more the river’s color.

“People don’t really think about friendship that way,” said Kit. “It depends how long you know the person—how long you’re in the same place.”

“It’s your choice,” she said, her eyes darkening. “You can stay with us as long as you want to.”

“Can I? What about the Academy? What about learning to be a Shadowhunter? How am I supposed to catch up with you when you’re all a million years ahead of me?”

“We don’t care about that—”

“Maybe I care about that.”

Livvy spoke in a steady voice. “When we were kids,” she said, “the Ashdowns used to come over to play. Our parents thought we should see more kids outside our family, and Paige Ashdown was about my age, so she got shoved together with me and Ty. And once he was talking to us about what he was obsessed with—it was cars back then, before Sherlock. And she said sarcastically that he ought to come over and tell her all about it because it was so interesting.”

“What happened?”

“He went over to her house to talk to her about cars, and she wasn’t there, and when she came home, she laughed at him and told him to go away, she hadn’t meant it, and was he stupid?”

Kit felt a slow boil of fury toward a girl he’d never met. “I’d never do that.”

“Look,” Livvy said. “Since then, Ty’s learned so much about the way people say things they don’t mean, about tone not matching expression, all that. But he trusts you, he’s let you in. He might not always remember to apply that stuff to you. I’m just saying—don’t lie to him. Don’t lead him on.”

“I haven’t—” Kit began, when the bell rang and the shop door opened. It was Ty, pulling his hood up against the gentle breeze.

“All done,” he said. “Let’s get back.”

If he noticed any atmosphere of tension, he didn’t say anything, and all the way home, they talked about unimportant things.

* * *

The piskies sat in an unhappy line on a row of stones at the edge of the cottage garden. After pulling them out of the pit, Emma and Jules had offered them food, but only one had accepted, and was currently facedown in a bowl of milk.

The tallest of the faerie creatures spoke in a piping voice. “Malcolm Fade? Where is Malcolm Fade?”

“Not here,” said Julian.

“Gone to visit a sick relative,” said Emma, gazing at the piskies in fascination.

“Warlocks don’t have relatives,” said the piskie.

“No one gets my references,” Emma muttered.

“We’re friends of Malcolm’s,” said Julian, after a moment. If Emma didn’t know him, she would have believed him. His face was entirely guileless when he lied. “He asked us to look after the place while he was away.”

The piskies whispered to each other in small, high voices. Emma strained her ears but couldn’t understand them. They weren’t speaking a gentry language of Faerie, but something much more simple and ancient-sounding. It had the murmur of water over rocks, the sharp acidity of green grass.

“Are you warlocks too?” said the tallest of the piskies, breaking away from the group. His eyes were marled with gray and silver, like Cornwall rock.

Julian shook his head and held his arm out, turning it so the Insight rune on his forearm was visible, stark against his skin. “We’re Nephilim.”

The piskies murmured among themselves again.

“We’re looking for Annabel Blackthorn,” said Julian. “We want to take her home where she’ll be protected.”

The piskies looked dubious.

“She said you knew where she was,” said Julian. “You’ve been talking to her?”

“We knew her and Malcolm years ago,” said the piskie. “It is not often a mortal lives so long. We were curious.”

“You might as well tell us,” said Emma. “We’ll let you go if you do.”

“And if we don’t?” said the smallest piskie.

“We won’t let you go,” said Julian.

“She’s in Porthallow Church,” said the smallest piskie, speaking up for the group. “It’s been empty these many years. She knows it and feels safe there, and there are few tallfolk in the area on most days.”

“Is Porthallow Church near here?” Julian demanded. “Is it close to the town?”

“Very close,” said the tallest piskie. “Killing close.” He raised his thin, pale hands, pointing. “But you cannot go today. It is Sunday, when the tallfolk come in groups to study the graveyard beside the church.”

“Thank you,” said Julian. “You’ve been very helpful, indeed.”

* * *

Dru pushed the door of her bedroom open. “Jaime?” she whispered.

There was no answer. She crept inside, shutting the door after her. She was carrying a plate of scones that Bridget had made. When she’d asked for a whole plate of them, Bridget had giggled at something it seemed clear only she remembered, then sharply told Dru not to eat them all or she’d get fatter.

Dru had long ago learned not to eat much in front of people she didn’t know, or seem as if she was hungry, or put too much food on her plate. She hated the way they looked at her if she did, as if to say, oh, that’s why she’s not thin.

But for Jaime, she’d been willing to do it. After he’d made himself at home in her room—flinging himself across her bed as if he’d been sleeping there for days, then bolting up and asking if he could use the shower—she’d asked if he was hungry and he’d lowered his eyelashes, smiling up at her. “I didn’t want to impose, but . . .”

She’d hurried off to the kitchen and didn’t want to return empty-handed. That was something a scared thirteen-year-old might do, but not a sixteen-year-old. Or however old he thought she was. She hadn’t been specific.

“Jaime?”

He came out of the bathroom in jeans, pulling his T-shirt on. She caught a glimpse of a black tattoo—not a Mark, but words in Roman letters—snaking across flat brown skin before the T-shirt covered his stomach. She stared at him without speaking as he approached her and grabbed a scone. He winked at her. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said faintly.

He sat on the bed, scattering crumbs, black hair damp and curling with the humidity. She placed the scones carefully on the top of the dresser. By the time she turned back around, he was asleep, head pillowed on his arm.

She perched herself on the nightstand table for a moment, her arms around herself. She could see Diego in the colors and curves of Jaime’s face. It was as if someone had taken Diego and sharpened him, made all his angles more acute. A tattoo of more script looped around one brown wrist and disappeared up Jaime’s shirtsleeve; she wished she knew enough Spanish to translate it.

She started to turn toward the door, meaning to leave him alone to rest. “Don’t go,” he said. She spun around and saw that his eyes were half-open, his lashes casting shadows on his too-sharp cheekbones. “It’s been a long time since I had anyone to talk to.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed. Jaime rolled over on his back, his arms folded behind his head. He was all long limbs and black hair and lashes like spider’s legs. Everything about him was slightly off-kilter, where everything about Diego had been even lines like a comic book. Dru tried not to stare.

“I was looking at the stickers on your nightstand,” he said. Dru had bought them in a store on Fleet Street when she’d been out with Diana picking up sandwiches. “They’re all horror movies.”

“I like horror movies.”

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 fiddling 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 café 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.

It clearly hadn’t been used in many years, though it was clean other than the dust. White sheets covered most of the furniture. Arched windows looked out onto the courtyard, and a night that sparkled with stars.

Cristina was there, in the middle of the room, looking up at one of the chandeliers. There was a row of three of them, unlit but glittering with crystal drops.

He let the door fall shut behind him and she turned. She didn’t look surprised to see him. She was wearing a simple black dress that looked as if it had been cut for someone shorter than her, and her hair was up off her face.

“Mark,” she said. “Couldn’t you sleep?”

“Not well.” He glanced ruefully down at his wrist, though the pain had gone now that he was with Cristina. “Did you feel the same?”

She nodded. Her eyes were bright. “My mother always said that the ballroom in the London Institute was the most beautiful room she’d ever seen.” She looked around, at the Edwardian striped wallpaper, the heavy velvet curtains looped back from the windows. “But she must have seen it very much alive and filled with people. It seems like Sleeping Beauty’s castle now. As if the Dark War surrounded it with thorns and since then it has slept.”

Mark held out his hand, the wound of the binding circling his wrist like Julian’s sea-glass bracelet circled his. “Let us wake it up,” he said. “Dance with me.”

“But there’s no music,” she said. She swayed a little toward him, though, as she spoke.

“I have danced at many a revel,” he said, “where there has been no pipe and no fiddle, where there has been only the music of the wind and stars. I can show you.”

She came toward him, the golden pendant at her throat glittering. “How magical,” she said, and her eyes were huge and dark and luminous with mischief. “Or I could do this.”

She took her phone out of her pocket and thumbed a few buttons. Music poured out of the small speakers: not loud, but Mark could feel it—not a tune he knew, but fast and energetic, thrumming down through his blood.

He held out his hands. Setting her phone down on a windowsill, she took them, laughing as he pulled her toward him. Their bodies touched once, lightly, and she spun away, making him follow her. If he’d thought he would be leading, he realized, he was wrong.

He paced after her as she moved like fire, always just ahead of him, spinning until her hair came down out of its fastening and flew around her face. The chandeliers glittered overhead like rain and Mark seized Cristina’s hand in his. He whirled her in a circle; her body brushed his as she turned, and he caught her hips and drew her toward him.

And now she was in his arms, moving, and everywhere her body touched his felt like a lit spark. Everything had been driven out of his head but Cristina. The light on her brown skin, her flushed face, the way her skirt flew up when she twirled, affording him a glimpse of the smooth thighs he’d imagined a hundred times.

He caught her by the waist and she swayed backward in his arms, boneless, her hair brushing the floor. When she rose up again, eyes half-lidded, he could no longer contain himself. He drew her into him and kissed her.

Her hands flew up and fastened in his hair, her fingers tugging and pulling him closer against her. She tasted like cold clear water and he drew on her mouth as if he were incredibly thirsty. His whole body felt like one desperate ache, and when she moved away from him, he groaned softly. But she was laughing, looking at him, dancing lightly backward with her hands held out. His skin felt tight all over; he was desperate to kiss her again, desperate to let his hands go where his eyes had gone earlier: sliding up the outsides of her long legs, under her skirt, along her waist, over her back where the muscles were smooth and long on either side of her spine.

He wanted her, and it was a very human want; not starlight and strangeness, but right here and right now. He strode after her, reaching for her hands. “Cristina—”

She froze, and for a moment of fear he thought it was because of him. But she was looking past him. He turned and saw Kieran in the doorway, leaning against it, gazing very steadily at them both.

Mark tensed. In a moment of delayed clarity he realized he had been stupid, alarmingly stupid to have done what he was doing. But none of it was Cristina’s fault. If Kieran brought his temper to bear on her—

But when Kieran spoke, it was lightly. “Mark,” he said. “You really have no idea, do you? You should show her how it is properly done.”

He walked toward them, a true prince of Faerie in all his grace. He wore a white shirt and breeches and his black hair fell partway to his shoulders. He reached the middle of the room and held a hand out to Cristina. “My lady,” he said, and bowed. “Favor me with a dance?”

Cristina hesitated a moment, and then nodded.

“You don’t have to,” Mark said in a whisper. She only gave him a long look, and then followed Kieran out to the middle of the floor.

“Now,” Kieran said, and he began to move.

Mark didn’t think he’d ever danced with Kieran before, not at a revel; they had always tried to conceal their relationship in front of the greater world of Faerie. And Kieran, if he could not dance with his chosen partner, would not dance with anyone.

But he was dancing now. And if Cristina had moved like fire, Kieran moved like lightning. After a moment of hesitation, Cristina followed him—he drew her into his arms—caught her, lifted her up into the air with easy faerie strength, whirling her around him. She gasped, and her face lit up with the pleasure of the music and the movement.

Mark stood where he was, feeling awkward and startled in equal measure. What was Kieran doing? What was he thinking? Was this a reproach of some sort? But it didn’t seem to be one. How much had Kieran seen? The kissing, or just the dancing?

He heard Cristina laugh. His eyes widened. Incredible. She and Kieran were like stars whirling together, just touching at the edges, but flaring up into a rain of sparks and fire when they did. And Kieran was smiling, actually smiling. It changed his face, made him look as young as he actually was.

The music ended. Cristina stopped dancing, looking suddenly shy. Kieran lifted his hand to touch her long dark hair, sweeping it back over her shoulder so he could lean in and kiss her cheek. Her eyes widened in surprise.

Only then, when he had drawn back, did he look at Mark. “There,” he said. “That is how the blood of Faerieland can dance.”

* * *

“Wake up.”

Kit groaned and rolled over. He’d finally been sleeping, and dreaming something pleasant about being at the beach with his dad. Not that his dad had ever actually taken him to the beach, but that was what dreams were for, weren’t they?

In the dream, his father had touched his shoulder and said, I always knew you’d make a good Shadowhunter.

Never mind that Johnny Rook would rather that his son became a serial killer than one of the Nephilim. Struggling up out of sleep, Kit remembered his father’s knowing smile and the last time he had seen it, on the morning when Malcolm Fade’s demons had torn Johnny Rook to shreds.

“Didn’t you hear me?” The voice rousing Kit out of sleep became more urgent. “Wake up!”

Kit opened his eyes. His room was full of the pale glow of witchlight, and there was a shadow hovering over his bed. With memories of Mantid demons fresh at the edge of his consciousness, he bolted upright.

The shadow moved swiftly backward, barely avoiding colliding with Kit. The witchlight beamed upward, illuminating Ty, his soft black hair a mess, as if he’d rolled out of bed and come to Kit’s room without brushing it. He wore a gray hoodie Julian had given him before he left for Cornwall, likely half for convenience and half for comfort. The cord of his headphones trailed from his pocket to wrap around his neck.

“Watson,” he said. “I want to see you.”

Kit groaned and scrubbed at his eyes. “What? What time is it?”

Ty spun the witchlight in his fingers. “Did you know that the first words ever spoken on the telephone were ‘Watson, come here, I want to see you’?”

“Totally different Watson, though,” Kit pointed out.

“I know,” said Ty. “I just thought it was interesting.” He tugged at the cord of his headphones. “I did want to see you. Or at least, I have something I have to do, and I’d rather you came with me. It was actually something you said that gave me the idea to do the research.”

Kit kicked the covers off. He’d been sleeping in his clothes anyway, a habit instilled in him during the times when some deal his father had been involved in had gone wrong, and they’d slept fully dressed for days in case they had to pick up and run. “Research?” he asked.

“It’s in the library,” Ty said. “I can show it to you before we go. If you want.”

“I’d like to see it.”

Kit slid out of bed and kicked on his shoes, grabbing up a jacket before following Ty down the hall. He knew he ought to feel exhausted, but there was something about Ty’s energy, the brightness and concentration of his focus, that worked on Kit like caffeine. It woke him up inside with a sense of promise, as if the moments in front of him suddenly held endless possibilities.

In the library, Ty had taken over one of the tables with the notes Emma and Julian had sent from Cornwall and printouts of Annabel’s drawings. It still looked like the same mess to Kit, but Ty glided his witchlight over the pages with confidence.

“Remember when we were talking about how a raven carried messages between Malcolm and Annabel? On the boat? And you said it seemed unreliable?”

“I remember,” said Kit.

“It gave me an idea,” said Ty. “You’re good at giving me ideas. I don’t know why.” He shrugged. “Anyway. We’re going to Cornwall.”

“Why? Are you going to exhume the bird and interrogate it?”

“Of course not.”

“That was a joke, Ty—” Kit broke off, the impact of Ty’s words hitting him belatedly. “What? We’re going where?”

“I know it was a joke,” said Ty, picking up one of the printouts of the drawings. “Livvy told me that when people tell jokes that aren’t that funny, the polite thing is to ignore them. Is that not true?”

He looked anxious, and Kit wanted to hug him, the way he had the other night on the roof. “No, it’s true,” he said, hurrying after Ty as they left the library. “It’s just that humor is subjective. Not everyone agrees the same things are funny, or not funny.”

Ty looked at him with sincere friendliness. “I’m sure many people find you hilarious.”

“They absolutely do.” They were hurrying down a set of steps now, into shadows. Kit wondered why they were going, but it almost didn’t matter—he felt excitement sparking at the tips of his fingers, the promise of adventure. “But Cornwall, seriously? How? And what about Livvy?”

Ty didn’t turn around. “I don’t want to bring her tonight.”

They’d reached the bottom of the steps. A door swung out from here into a massive open stone-bound room. The crypt of the cathedral. The floor and walls were made of massive dark slabs of stone, filed to smoothness, and there were brass fixtures attached to stone pillars that had probably once held lamps. Now the light came from Ty’s rune-stone, spilling between his cupped fingers.

“What are we doing, exactly?” said Kit.

“Remember when I stayed at the shop to talk to Hypatia Vex?” Ty said. “She told me there’s a permanent Portal down here. An old one, maybe one of the first ever, made around 1903. It only goes to the Cornwall Institute. The Clave doesn’t know about it or regulate it.”

“An unregulated Portal?” said Kit. Ty was moving around the room, shining his witchlight against the walls, into cracks and corners. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

Ty didn’t say anything. Long tapestries hung against the walls at intervals. He was glancing behind each one, running the light up and down the wall. It bounced off the stone, lighting up the room like fireflies.

“That’s why you didn’t want Livvy to come,” said Kit. “It is dangerous.”

Ty straightened up. His hair was a mess. “She already got hurt,” he said. “Because of me.”

“Ty—”

“I need to find the Portal.” Ty leaned against the wall, his fingers drumming against it. “I looked behind all the tapestries.”

“Maybe look in them?” Kit suggested.

Ty gave him a long, considering look, with a tinge of surprise to it. Kit caught just a flash of his gray eyes as he turned back to examine the tapestries again. Each one showed a scene from what looked like a medieval landscape: castles, long stone walls, towers and roads, horses and battle. Ty stopped in front of one that showed a high hedge, in the middle of which was an arched opening. Through the opening the sea was visible.

He put his hand against it, a hesitant, questioning gesture. There was a flare of light. Kit darted forward as the tapestry shimmered, turning glimmering and colorful as a slick of oil.

Ty glanced again at the drawing he held, then turned, his other hand outstretched to Kit. “Don’t be so slow.”

Kit reached for him. His fingers closed around Ty’s, warm and firm under his grasp. Ty stepped forward, into the Portal, the colors parting and re-forming around him—he was half invisible already—and his grip tightened on Kit’s, pulling him after.

Kit held on tightly. But somewhere in the whirling chaos of the Portal, his hand ripped free of Ty’s. An irrational panic seized him, and he shouted something out loud—he wasn’t sure what—before the Portal winds cartwheeled him through a shadowy doorway and spit him out into cold air, onto a slope of damp grass.

“Yes?” Ty was standing over him, witchlight in hand. The sky behind him was high and dark, shimmering with a million stars.

Kit stood up, wincing. He was getting used to Portal travel, but he still didn’t like it.

“What is it?” Ty’s gaze didn’t meet Kit’s, but he looked him over, as if checking for injuries. “You were saying my name.”

“Was I?” Kit glanced around. Green lawns sloped away in three directions, and rose in the fourth to meet a large gray church. “I think I was worried you were lost in the Portal.”

“That’s only happened a few times. It’s statistically very unlikely.” Ty raised his witchlight. “This is the Cornwall Institute.”

In the distance, Kit could see the glimmer of moonlight on black water. The sea. Above them the church was a heap of gray stone with broken black windows and a missing front door. The spire of the church stabbed upward into swirling clouds, lit from behind by the moon. He whistled through his teeth. “How long has it been abandoned?”

“Only a few years. Not enough Shadowhunters to man all the Institutes. Not since the Dark War.” Ty was glancing between the drawing in his hand and their surroundings. Kit could see the remains of a garden gone to seed: weeds growing up among dead rosebushes, grass far too long and in need of cutting, moss covering the dozens of statues that were scattered around the garden like victims of Medusa. A horse reared into the air beside a boy with a bird perched on his wrist. A stone woman held a dainty parasol. Tiny stone rabbits peeked through weeds.

“And we’re going inside?” Kit said dubiously. He didn’t like the look of the dark windows. “Wouldn’t we be better off coming during the day?”

“We’re not going inside.” Ty held up the drawing he’d brought. In the witchlight, Kit could see that it was an ink sketch of the Institute and the gardens, done during daylight hours. The place hadn’t changed much in the past two hundred years. The same rosebushes, the same statues. It looked as if the drawing had been done in winter, though, as the boughs of the trees were skeletal. “What we need is out here.”

“What do we need?” said Kit. “Indulge me. Explain what this has to do with my idle comment about ravens being unreliable.”

“It would be unreliable. The thing is, Malcolm didn’t say the raven was alive, or a real bird. We just assumed.”

“No, but—” Kit paused. He’d been about to say it didn’t make any sense to give your messages to a dead raven, but something about the look on Ty’s face silenced him.

“It actually makes more sense for them to have just left the messages in a hiding place,” said Ty. “One they could both get to easily.” He crossed the grass to the statue of the boy with the bird on his wrist.

A little jolt went through Kit. He didn’t know much about birds, but this one was carved out of glossy black stone. And it looked a lot like drawings he’d seen of ravens.

Ty reached around to run his fingers over the stone bird. There was a clicking noise, and a squeak of hinges. Kit hurried over to see Ty prying open a small opening in the bird’s back. “Is there anything in there?”

Ty shook his head. “It’s empty.” He reached into his pocket, retrieved a folded-up piece of paper, and dropped it into the opening before sealing it back up again.

Kit stopped in his tracks. “You left a message.”

Ty nodded. He’d folded up the drawing and put it in his pocket. His hand swung free at his side, the witchlight in it: Its light was dimmed, the moon providing enough illumination that they could both see.

“For Annabel?” said Kit.

Ty hesitated. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said finally. “It was just an idea I had.”

“It was smart,” said Kit. “Really smart—I don’t think anyone else would have guessed about the statue. I don’t think anyone else could have.”

“But it might not matter,” said Ty. “In which case I would have failed. And I’d rather no one know.” He began to murmur under his breath, the way he did sometimes.

“I’ll know.”

Ty paused in his murmuring. “I don’t mind,” he said, “if it’s you.”

Kit wanted to ask him why not, wanted to ask badly, but Ty looked as if he wasn’t sure he knew the answer himself. And he was still murmuring, the same soft stream of words that was somewhere between a whisper and a song. “What are you saying?” Kit asked finally, not sure if it was all right to ask, but unable to help his curiosity.

Ty glanced up at the moon through his lashes. They were thick and dark, almost childlike. They gave his face a look of innocence that made him look younger—a strange effect, at odds with his almost frighteningly sharp mind. “Just words I like,” he said. “If I say them to myself, it makes my mind—quieter. Does it bother you?”

“No!” Kit said quickly. “I was just curious what words you liked.”

Ty bit his lip. For a moment, Kit thought he wasn’t going to say anything at all. “It’s not the meaning, just the sound,” he said. “Glass, twin, apple, whisper, stars, crystal, shadow, lilt.” He glanced away from Kit, a shivering figure in his too-large hoodie, his black hair absorbing moonlight, giving none of it back.

“Whisper would be one of mine, too,” said Kit. He took a step toward Ty, touched his shoulder gently. “Cloud, secret, highway, hurricane, mirror, castle, thorns.”

“Blackthorns,” said Ty, with a dazzling smile, and Kit knew, in that instant, that whatever he’d been telling himself about running away for the past few days had been a lie. And maybe it had been that lie that Livvy had been responding to, when she’d snapped at him outside the magic store that day—the kernel inside his own heart that had told him he might still be leaving.

But he knew now that he could reassure her. He wasn’t leaving the Shadowhunters. He wasn’t going anywhere. Because where the Blackthorns were, was his home now.