Lord of Shadows The Dark Artifices 2

4

A W

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W

EIRD

C

LIME

Cristina stood atop the hill where Malcolm Fade’s house had once been, and gazed around at the ruins.

Malcolm Fade. She hadn’t known him the way the Blackthorns had. He’d been their friend, or so they’d thought, for five years, living only a few miles away in his formidable glass-and-steel home in the dry Malibu hills. Cristina had visited it once before, with Diana, and had been charmed by Malcolm’s easy manner and humor. She’d found herself wishing the High Warlock of Mexico City was like Malcolm—young-seeming and charming, rather than a grouchy old woman with bat ears who lived in the Parque Lincoln.

Then Malcolm had turned out to be a murderer, and it had all come apart. The lies revealed, their faith in him broken, even Tavvy’s safety at risk until they’d managed to get him back and Emma had dispatched Malcolm with a sword to the gut.

Cristina could hear cars whizzing by on the highway below. They’d climbed up the side of the hill to get here, and she felt sweaty and itchy. Clary Fairchild was standing atop the rubble of Malcolm’s house, wielding an odd-looking object that looked like a cross between a seraph blade and one of those machines mundanes used to find metal hidden under sand. Mark, Julian, and Emma were ranged around different parts of the collapsed house, picking through the metal and glass.

Jace had opted to spend the day with Kit in the training room at the Institute. Cristina admired that. She’d been raised to believe nothing was more important than family, and Kit and Jace were the only Shadowhunters of the Herondale bloodline alive in the world. Plus, the boy needed friends—he was an odd little thing, too young to be handsome but with big blue eyes that made you want to trust him even as he was picking your pocket. He had a gleam of mischief about him, a little like Jaime, her childhood best friend, had once had—the sort that could tip over easily into criminality.

“¿En que piensas?” asked Diego, coming up behind her. He wore jeans and work boots. Cristina wished it didn’t annoy her that he insisted on pinning his Centurion badge even to the sleeve of a completely ordinary black T-shirt.

He was very handsome. Much handsomer than Mark, really, if you were being completely objective. His features were more regular, his jaw squarer, his chest and shoulders broader.

Cristina shoved aside a few chunks of painted plaster. She and Diego had been assigned the eastern segment of the house, which she was fairly sure had been Malcolm’s bedroom and closet. She kept turning up shreds of clothes. “I was thinking of Jaime, actually.”

“Oh.” His dark eyes were sympathetic. “It’s all right to miss him. I miss him too.”

“Then you should talk to him.” Cristina knew she sounded short. She couldn’t help it. She wasn’t sure why Diego was driving her crazy, and not in a good way. Maybe it was that she’d blamed him for betraying her for so long that it was hard to let go of that anger. Maybe it was that no longer blaming him meant more blame laid on Jaime, which seemed unfair, as Jaime wasn’t around to defend himself.

“I don’t know where he is,” Diego said.

“At all? You don’t know where he is in the world or how to contact him?” Somehow Cristina had missed this part. Probably because Diego hadn’t mentioned it.

“He doesn’t want to be bothered by me,” said Diego. “All my fire-messages come back blocked. He hasn’t talked to our father.” Their mother was dead. “Or any of our cousins.”

“How do you know he’s even alive?” Cristina asked, and instantly regretted it. Diego’s eyes flashed.

“He is my little brother, still,” he said. “I would know if he was dead.”

“Centurion!” It was Clary, gesturing from the top of the hill. Diego began to jog up the ruins toward her without looking back. Cristina was conscious that she’d upset him; guilt spilled through her and she kicked at a heavy chunk of plaster with a bolt of rebar stuck through it like a toothpick.

It rolled to the side. She blinked at the object revealed under it, then bent to pick it up. A glove—a man’s glove, made of leather, soft as silk but a thousand times tougher. The leather was printed with the image of a golden crown snapped in half.

“Mark!” she called. “¡Necesito que veas algo!”

A moment later she realized she’d been so startled she’d actually called out in Spanish, but it didn’t seem to matter. Mark had come leaping nimbly down the stones toward her. He stood just above her, the wind lifting his airy, pale-gold curls away from the slight points of his ears. He looked alarmed. “What is it?”

She handed him the glove. “Isn’t that the emblem of one of the Faerie Courts?”

Mark turned it over in his hands. “The broken crown is the Unseelie King’s symbol,” he murmured. “He believes himself to be true King of both the Seelie and the Unseelie Courts, and until he rules both, the crown will remain snapped in half.” He tilted his head to the side like a bird studying a cat from a safe distance. “But these kind of gloves—Kieran had them when he arrived at the Hunt. They are fine workmanship. Few but the gentry would wear them. In fact, few but the King’s sons would wear them.”

“You don’t think this is Kieran’s?” Cristina said.

Mark shook his head. “His were . . . destroyed. In the Hunt. But it does mean that whoever visited Malcolm here, and left this glove, was either high in the Court, or the King himself.”

Cristina frowned. “It’s very odd that it’s here.”

Her hair had escaped from its braids and was blowing in long curls around her face. Mark reached up to tuck one back behind her ear. His fingers skimmed her cheek. His eyes were dreamy, distant. She shivered a little at the intimacy of the gesture.

“Mark,” she said. “Don’t.”

He dropped his hand. He didn’t look angry, the way a lot of boys tended to when asked not to touch a girl. He looked puzzled and a little sad. “Because of Diego?”

“And Emma,” she said, her voice very low.

His puzzlement increased. “But you know that’s—”

“Mark! Cristina!” It was Emma, calling to them from where she and Julian had joined Diego and Clary. Cristina was grateful not to have to answer Mark; she raced up the pile of rocks and glass, glad her Shadowhunter boots and gear protected her from stray sharp edges.

“Did you find something?” she asked as she approached the small group.

“Have you ever wanted a really up-close look at a gross tentacle?” Emma asked.

“No,” said Cristina, drawing closer warily. Clary did appear to have something unpleasantly floppy speared on the end of her odd weapon. It wriggled a bit, showing pink suckers against green, mottled skin.

“No one ever seems to say yes to that question,” said Emma sadly.

“Magnus introduced me to a warlock with tentacles like this once,” Clary said. “His name was Marvin.”

“I assume these aren’t Marvin’s remains,” Julian said.

“I’m not sure they’re anyone’s remains,” said Clary. “To command sea demons, you’d need either the Mortal Cup or something like this—a piece of a powerful demon you could enchant. I think we have some definite evidence that Malcolm’s death is tied to the recent Teuthida attacks.”

“Now what?” said Emma, side-eyeing the tentacle. She wasn’t a huge fan of the ocean, or the monsters that lived in it, though she’d fight anything or anyone on dry land.

“Now we go back to the Institute,” said Clary, “and decide what our next step is. Who wants to carry the tentacle?”

There were no volunteers.

* * *

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Kit said. “There’s no way I’m jumping off that.”

“Just consider it.” Jace leaned down from a rafter. “It’s surprisingly easy.”

“Give it a try,” Emma called. She had come to the training room when they’d gotten back from Malcolm’s, curious to see how it was going. She had found Ty and Livvy sitting on the floor, watching as Jace tried to convince Kit to throw a few knives (which he was willing to do) and then to learn jumping and falling (which he wasn’t).

“My father warned me you people would try to kill me,” Kit said.

Jace sighed. He was in training gear, balanced on one of the intricate network of rafters that intersected the interior of the training room’s pitched roof. They ranged from thirty to twenty feet above the floor. Emma had taught herself to fall from those exact rafters over the years, sometimes breaking bones.

A Shadowhunter had to know how to climb—demons were fast and often multi-legged, scurrying up the sides of buildings like spiders. But learning how to fall was just as important.

“You can do it,” Emma called now.

“Yeah? And what happens if I splatter myself all over the floor?” asked Kit.

“You get a big state funeral,” Emma said. “We put your body in a boat and shove you over a waterfall like a Viking.”

Kit glared at her. “That’s from a movie.”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

Jace, losing patience, launched himself from the highest rafter. He somersaulted gracefully in the air before landing in a soundless crouch. He straightened up and winked at Kit.

Emma hid a smile. She’d had a horrendous crush on Jace when she was twelve. Later that had turned into wanting to be Jace—the best there was: the best fighter, the best survivor, the best Shadowhunter.

She wasn’t there yet, but she wasn’t done trying, either.

Kit looked impressed despite himself, then scowled again. He looked very slight next to Jace. He was close to the same height as Ty, though less fit. The potential Shadowhunter strength was there, though, in the shape of his arms and shoulders. Emma had seen him fight, when in danger. She knew what he could do.

“You’ll be able to do that,” Jace said, pointing up at the rafter, and then at Kit. “As soon as you want to.”

Emma could recognize the look in Kit’s eye. I might never want to. “What’s the Nephilim motto again?”

“ ‘We are dust and shadows,’ ” said Ty, not looking up from his book.

“Some of us are very handsome dust,” Jace added, as the door flew open and Clary stuck her head in.

“Come to the library,” she announced. “The tentacle is starting to dissolve.”

“You drive me wild with your sexy talk,” said Jace, pulling on his gear jacket.

“Adults,” said Kit, with some disgust, and stalked out of the room. To Emma’s amusement, Ty and Livvy were instantly on their feet, following him. She wondered what exactly had sparked their interest in Kit—was it just that he was their age? Jace, she imagined, would have put it down to the famous Herondale charisma, though from what she knew, the Herondales who had immediately predated him had been pretty low on the stuff.

The library was in a certain amount of chaos. The tentacle was starting to dissolve, into a sticky puddle of green-pink goo that reminded Emma horribly of melted jelly beans. As Diana pointed out, this meant that the time left to identify the demon was shortening quickly. Since Magnus wasn’t picking up his phone and no one wanted to involve the Clave, this left good old-fashioned book research. Everyone was handed a pile of fat tomes on sea creatures, and they dispersed to various parts of the library to examine paintings, sketches, drawings, and the occasional clipped-in photo.

At some point during the passing hours, Jace decided that they required Chinese food. Apparently kung pao chicken and noodles in black bean sauce were a requirement every time the New York Institute team had to engage in research. He hauled Clary off to an empty office to conjure up a Portal—something no other Shadowhunter besides Clary could do—promising them all the best Chinese food Manhattan had to deliver.

“Got it!” Cristina announced, about twenty minutes after the door had closed behind Jace and Clary. She held up a massive copy of the Carta Marina.

The rest of them crowded around the main table as Diana confirmed that the tentacle belonged to the sea demon species Makara, which—according to the sketches between the maps in the Carta Marina—looked like a part-octopus, part-slug thing with an enormous bee head.

“The disturbing thing isn’t that it’s a sea demon,” said Diana, frowning. “It’s that Makara demon remains only survive on land for one to two days.”

Jace pushed the library door open. He and Clary were loaded down with green-and-white take-out boxes marked JADE WOLF. “A little help here?”

The research team disbanded briefly to lay out food on the long library tables. There was lo mein, the promised kung pao chicken, mapo tofu, zhajiangmian, egg fried rice, and delicious sesame balls that tasted like hot candy.

Everyone had a paper plate, even Tavvy, who was arranging toy soldiers behind a bookcase. Diego and Cristina occupied a love seat, and Jace and Clary were on the floor, sharing noodles. The Blackthorn kids were squabbling over the chicken, except for Mark, who was trying to figure out how to use his chopsticks. Emma guessed they didn’t have them in Faerie. Julian sat at the table across from Livvy and Ty, frowning at the nearly dissolved tentacle. Amazingly, it didn’t seem to be putting him off his food.

“You are friendly with the great Magnus Bane, aren’t you?” Diego said to Jace and Clary, after an affable few minutes of everyone chewing.

“The great Magnus Bane?” Jace choked on his fried rice. Church had taken up residence at his feet, alert for any evidence of dropped chicken.

“We’re friendly with him, yes,” Clary said, her mouth twitching at the corner. “Why?”

Jace was turning purple. Clary thumped him on the back. Church fell asleep, his feet waving in the air.

“I would like to interview him,” Diego said. “I think he would make a good subject for a paper for the Spiral Labyrinth.”

“He’s pretty busy right now, what with Max and Rafael,” said Clary. “I mean, you could ask . . .”

“Who’s Rafael?” Livvy asked.

“Their second son,” said Jace. “They just adopted a little boy in Argentina. A Shadowhunter who lost his parents in the Dark War.”

“In Buenos Aires!” Emma exclaimed, turning to Julian. “When we saw Magnus at Malcolm’s, he said Alec was in Buenos Aires, and that he was going to join him. That must have been what they were doing.”

Julian just nodded, but didn’t look up at her to acknowledge the shared memory. She shouldn’t expect him to, Emma reminded herself. Julian wasn’t going to be the way she remembered again for a long time, if ever.

She felt herself blush, though no one seemed to notice but Cristina, who shot her a look of concern. Diego had his arm around Cristina, but her hands were resting in her lap. She gave Emma a slight wave, more of a finger wiggle.

“Maybe we should get back to discussing the matter at hand,” Diana said. “If Makara remains only last a day or two on land . . .”

“Then that demon was at Malcolm’s house really recently,” said Livvy. “Like, well after he died.”

“Which is odd,” Julian said, glancing at the book. “It’s a deep-sea demon, pretty deadly and very big. You’d think someone would have noticed it. Plus, it can’t possibly have wanted anything from a collapsed house.”

“Who knows what desires a sea demon might possess?” said Mark.

“Assuming it wasn’t after Malcolm’s collection of elegant tentacle warmers,” said Julian, “we have to imagine that it was most likely summoned. Makara demons just don’t come up on land. They lurk on the ocean’s bottom and sometimes pull ships down.”

“Another warlock, then?” Jace suggested. “Someone Malcolm was working with?”

“Catarina doesn’t believe Malcolm worked with anyone else,” said Diana. “He was friendly with Magnus, but he was otherwise something of a loner—for obvious reasons, it now appears.”

“If he was working with another warlock, he wouldn’t be likely to advertise the fact, though,” said Diego.

“It certainly appears Malcolm was determined to cause mischief from beyond the grave if anything happened to him,” said Diana.

“Well, the tentacle wasn’t the only thing we found,” Cristina said. “Mark, show them the glove.”

Emma had already seen it, on their way back from Malcolm’s, but she leaned in along with everyone else as Mark drew it from his jacket pocket and laid it on the table.

“The sigil of the Unseelie King,” said Mark. “A glove such as this is rare. Kieran wore such when he came to the Hunt. I could identify his brothers, sometimes, at revels, by their cloaks and gloves or gauntlets such as these.”

“So it’s odd Malcolm would have one,” said Livvy. Emma didn’t see Ty beside her; had he gone into the book stacks?

“No faerie prince would part with such a thing willingly,” said Mark. “Save as a special mark of favor, or to bind a promise.”

Diana frowned. “We know Malcolm was working with Iarlath.”

“But he was not a prince. Not even gentry,” said Mark. “This would indicate that Malcolm had sworn some kind of a bargain with the Unseelie Court itself.”

“We know he went to the Unseelie King years ago,” said Emma. “It was the Unseelie King who gave him the rhyme he was supposed to use to raise Annabel. ‘First the flame and then the flood—’ ”

“ ‘In the end, it’s Blackthorn blood,’ ” Julian finished for her.

And it nearly had been. In order to raise Annabel, Malcolm had required the sacrifice and blood of a Blackthorn. He had kidnapped Tavvy and nearly killed him. Just the memory of it made Emma shiver.

“But this was not the sigil of the King that long ago,” said Mark. “This dates from the beginning of the Cold Peace. Time works differently in Faerie, but—” He shook his head, as if to say not that differently. “I am afraid.”

Jace and Clary exchanged a look. They were on their way to Faerie, weren’t they, to look for a weapon? Emma leaned forward, meaning to ask them what they knew, but before she could get the words out, the Institute doorbell rang, echoing through the house.

They all looked at each other, surprised. But it was Tavvy who spoke first, looking up from the corner where he was playing. “Who’s here?”

* * *

If there was one thing Kit was good at, it was slipping out of rooms unnoticed. He’d been doing it all his life, while his father held meetings in the living room with impatient warlocks or jumpy werewolves.

So it wasn’t too much of a challenge to creep out of the library while everyone else was talking and eating Chinese food. Clary was doing an imitation of someone called the Inquisitor, and everyone was laughing. Kit wondered if it occurred to them that it was weird to endorse a governmental position that sounded like it was all about torture.

He’d been in the kitchen a few times before. It was one of the rooms he liked best in the house—homey, with its blue walls and farmhouse sink. The fridge wasn’t badly stocked either. He guessed Shadowhunters were probably hungry pretty frequently, considering how often they worked out.

He wondered if he’d have to work out all the time too, if he became a Shadowhunter. He wondered if he’d end up with muscles and abs and all that stuff, like Julian and Jace. At the moment, he was more on the skinny side, like Mark. He lifted his T-shirt and gazed at his flat, undefined stomach for a moment. Definitely no abs.

He let the shirt fall and grabbed a Tupperware container of cookies out of the fridge. Maybe he could frustrate the Shadowhunters by refusing to work out and sitting around eating carbs. I defy you, Shadowhunters, he thought, thumbing the top off the container and popping a cookie in his mouth. I mock you with my sugar cravings.

He let the door of the fridge fall shut, and nearly yelled out loud. Reflexively, he swallowed his cookie and stared.

Ty Blackthorn stood in the middle of the kitchen, his headphones dangling around his neck, his hands shoved into his pockets.

“Those are pretty good,” he said, “but I like the butterscotch ones better.”

Thoughts of cookie-related rebellion floated out of Kit’s head. Despite sleeping in front of his room, Ty had hardly ever spoken to him before. The most he’d probably ever said at once was when he was holding Kit at knifepoint in the Rooks’ house, and Kit didn’t think that counted as social interaction.

Kit set the Tupperware down on the counter. He was once again conscious of the sense that Ty was studying him, maybe counting up his pluses and minuses or something like that. If Ty was someone else, Kit would have tried to catch his eye, but he knew Ty wouldn’t look at him directly. It was kind of restful not to worry about it.

“You have blood on your hand,” Ty said. “I noticed it earlier.”

“Oh. Right.” Kit glanced down at his split knuckles. “I hurt my hand at the Shadow Market.”

“How?” Ty asked, leaning against the edge of the counter.

“I punched a board,” Kit said. “I was angry.”

Ty’s eyebrows went up. He had interesting eyebrows, slightly pointed at the tops, like inverted Vs, and very black. “Did it make you feel better?”

“No,” Kit admitted.

“I can fix it,” Ty said, taking one of the Shadowhunters’ magic pencils out of his jeans pocket. Steles, they were called. He held out his hand.

Kit supposed he could have refused to accept the offer, the way he had when Julian had suggested healing him in the car. But he didn’t. He held his forearm out trustingly, wrist turned upward so the blue veins were exposed to the boy who’d held a knife to his throat not that long ago.

Ty’s fingers were cool and careful as he took hold of Kit’s arm to steady it. He had long fingers—all the Shadowhunters did, Kit had noticed. Maybe it had something to do with the need to handle a variety of weapons. Kit was caught up enough in wondering about it to only flinch slightly when the stele moved across his forearm, leaving a feeling of heat as if his skin had passed over a candle flame.

Ty’s head was down. His black hair slanted across his face. He drew the stele back when he was finished, letting go of Kit.

“Look at your hand,” he said.

Kit turned his hand over and watched as the tears over his knuckles sealed themselves together, the red patches turning back to smooth skin. He stared down at the black mark that spread across his forearm. He wondered when it would start fading. It weirded him out, stark evidence that it really was all true. He really was a Shadowhunter.

“That is pretty cool,” he admitted. “Can you heal literally anything? Like what about diabetes and cancer?”

“Some diseases. Not always cancer. My mother died of that.” Ty put his stele away. “What about your mother? Was she a Shadowhunter too?”

“I don’t think so,” Kit said. His father had sometimes told him his mother was a Vegas showgirl who’d taken off after Kit was born, but it had occurred to him in the past two weeks that his father might not have been entirely truthful about that. He certainly hadn’t been about anything else. “She’s dead,” he added, not because he thought that was likely the case but because he realized he didn’t want to talk about her.

“So we both have dead mothers,” Ty said. “Do you think you’ll want to stay here? And become a Shadowhunter?”

Kit started to answer—and stopped, as a sound like a low, sweet bell tolling echoed through the house. “What’s that?”

Ty raised his head. Kit got a quick flash of the color of his eyes: true gray, that gray that was almost silver.

Before he could answer, the kitchen door swung open. It was Livvy, a soda can in her left hand. She looked unsurprised to see Kit and Ty; pushing between them, she jumped up onto the table, crossing her long legs.

“The Centurions are here,” she said. “Everyone’s running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Diana went to welcome them, Julian looks like he wants to kill someone . . . .”

“And you want to know if I’ll go and spy on them with you,” said Ty. “Right?”

She nodded. “I’d suggest somewhere that we won’t be seen, because if Diana catches us, we’ll be making up beds and folding towels for Centurions for the next two hours.”

That seemed to decide things; Ty nodded and headed for the kitchen door. Livvy jumped off the table and followed him.

She paused with a hand on the doorframe, looking back over her shoulder at Kit. “You coming?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure you want me to?” It hadn’t occurred to him to invite himself—the twins seemed like such a perfect unit, as if they needed no one but each other.

She grinned. He smiled hesitantly back; he was plenty used to girls, even pretty girls, but something about Livvy made him feel nervous.

“Sure,” she said. “One warning—rude and catty comments about the people we’re spying on are required. Members of our family exempted, of course.”

“If you make Livvy laugh, you get double points,” Ty added, from the hallway.

“Well, in that case . . .” Kit started after them. What was it Jace had said, after all? Herondales couldn’t resist a challenge.

* * *

Cristina looked with dismay at the group of twenty or so Centurions milling around the massive entryway of the Institute. She’d only had a short time to prepare herself for the idea of meeting Diego’s Scholomance friends, and she certainly hadn’t planned to do it wearing dusty gear, with her hair in braids.

Oh well. She straightened her back. Shadowhunter work was often dirty; surely they wouldn’t be expecting her to look pristine. Though, she realized as she glanced around, they certainly did. Their uniforms were like regular gear, but with military-style jackets over them, bright with metal buttons and sashed crossways with a pattern of vine staffs. The back of each jacket bore the symbol of the Centurion’s family name: a sandy-haired boy had a wolf on his back, a girl with deep brown skin had a circle of stars. The boys had short hair; the girls wore their hair braided or tied back. They looked clean, efficient, and a little alarming.

Diana was chatting with two Centurions by the door to the Sanctuary: a dark-skinned boy with a Primi Ordines insignia, and the boy with the wolf jacket. They turned to wave at Diego as he came down the stairs, followed by Cristina and the others.

“I can’t believe they’re here already,” Emma muttered.

“Be gracious,” said Diana in a low voice, sweeping up to them. Easy for her to say, thought Cristina. She wasn’t covered in dust. She took hold of Emma by the wrist, seized Julian with her other hand, and marched them off to mingle with the Centurions, thrusting Julian toward a pretty Indian girl with a gold stud in her nose, and depositing Emma in front of a dark-haired girl and boy—very clearly twins—who regarded her with arched eyebrows.

The sight of them made Cristina think of Livvy and Ty, though, and she glanced around to see if they were peering down from the second floor as they often did. If they were, she couldn’t see them; they’d probably gone off to hide, and she didn’t blame them. Luggage was strewn all around the floor: Someone was going to have to show the Centurions to their rooms, welcome them, figure out how to feed them . . . .

“I didn’t realize,” Mark said.

“Didn’t realize what?” Diego said; he had returned the greeting of the two boys who had been talking to Diana earlier. The boys started across the room toward them.

“How much like soldiers Centurions look,” said Mark. “I suppose I was thinking of them as students.”

“We are students,” Diego said sharply. “Even after we graduate, we remain scholars.” The other two Centurions arrived before Mark could say anything else; Diego clapped them both on the back and turned to introduce them. “Manuel, Rayan. This is Cristina and Mark.”

“Gracias,” said the boy with the sandy hair—it was a light brown, streaked and bleached by the sun. He had an easy, sideways grin. “Un placer conocerte.”

Cristina gave a little gasp. “You speak Spanish?”

“Es mi lengua materna.” Manuel laughed. “I was born in Madrid and grew up in the Institute there.”

He did have what Cristina thought of as a Spanish accent—the softening of the c sound, the way gracias sounded like grathiath when he thanked her. It was charming.

Across the room, she saw Dru, holding Tavvy by the hand—they’d asked her to stay in the library and watch him, but she’d wanted to see the Centurions—come up to Emma and tug on her sleeve, whispering something in her ear.

Cristina smiled at Manuel. “I almost did my study year in Madrid.”

“But the beaches are better here.” He winked.

Out of the corner of her eye, Cristina saw Emma go up to Julian and awkwardly tap his shoulder. She said something to him that made him nod and follow her out of the room. Where were they going? She itched to follow them, not to stay here and make conversation with Diego’s friends, even if they were nice.

“I wanted the challenge of speaking English all the time—” Cristina began, and saw Manuel’s expression change—then Rayan took her sleeve and drew her out of the way as someone hurtled up to Diego and grabbed his arm. It was a white girl, pale and round-cheeked, with thick brown hair pulled back in a tight bun.

She crashed into Diego’s chest, and he went a sort of watery color, as if all the blood had drained from his face. “Zara?”

“Surprise!” The girl kissed his cheek.

Cristina was starting to feel a little dizzy. Maybe she’d gotten too much sun out at Malcolm’s. But really, it hadn’t been that much sun.

“I didn’t think you were coming,” Diego said. He still seemed starkly shocked. Rayan and Manuel were starting to look uncomfortable. “You said—you said you’d be in Hungary—”

“Oh, that.” Zara dismissed Hungary with a wave. “Turned out to be completely ridiculous. A bunch of Nephilim claiming their steles and seraph blades were malfunctioning; really it was just incompetence. So much more important to be here!” She looped her arm through Diego’s and turned to Cristina and Mark, smiling brightly. She had her hand tucked into Diego’s elbow, but the smile on her face turned stiff as Cristina and Mark stood in silence, staring, and Diego looked increasingly as if he were going to throw up.

“I’m Zara Dearborn,” she said, finally, rolling her eyes. “I’m sure you’ve heard about me. I’m Diego’s fiancée.”