Lady Midnight (39 page)

She got out, reaching back inside to pull out weapons. She had left Cortana back at the Institute. It had caused her a pang, but walking out with it strapped to her back would have invited questions. At least there were seraph blades. She tucked one into her belt and thumbed her witchlight stone out of her pocket, glancing around as she did—it was oddly quiet here, with no sound of insects, small animals, or birdsong. Only the wind in the grass.

The Mantid demons.
At night they probably came out and ate everything living. She shuddered and strode toward the cave. The convergence entrance was opening, a thick black line against the granite.

She glanced back once, worriedly—the sun was lower than she would have liked, dying the ocean water bloody. She’d parked as close as she could to the cave entrance so that if it was dark when she emerged, she could get to the car quickly. It was looking more and more likely that she’d have to kill some Mantids on the way, though.

As she strode toward the sheer wall of rock, the black line widened a little more, as if welcoming her. She leaned against the rock with one hand, peering into the gap. It smelled oddly of seawater.

She thought of her parents.
Please let me find something
, she prayed.
Please let me find a clue, discover how this connects to what was done to you. Please let me avenge you.

So I can sleep at night.

Inside the gap, Emma could see the dim gleam of the rock corridor leading into the cave’s heart.

Gripping her witchlight, Emma plunged into the convergence.

*   *   *

Night had nearly fallen—the sky was shading from blue to indigo, the first stars twinkling out above the distant mountains. Cristina sat with her legs up on the dashboard of the truck, her eyes fixed on the two-story ranch house that belonged to Casper Sterling.

The Jeep she recognized was parked in the court in front of the house, under an old-growth olive tree. A low wall ran around the property; the neighborhood, just beside Hancock Park, was full of expensive but not particularly showy houses. Sterling’s was closed, shuttered and dark. The only evidence she had that he was home was the car in the driveway.

She thought of Mark, then wished she hadn’t. She was doing that a lot these days—thinking of Mark and then regretting it. She had worked hard to return her life to normal after she left Mexico. No more romances with brooding and troubled men, no matter how handsome.

Mark Blackthorn wasn’t brooding or troubled exactly. But Mark Blackthorn belonged to Kieran and the Wild Hunt. Mark Blackthorn had a divided heart.

He also had a soft, husky voice, startling eyes, and a habit of saying things that turned her world backward. And he was an excellent dancer, from what she’d seen. Cristina rated dancing highly. Boys who could dance well, kissed well—that was what her mother always said.

A dark shadow ran across the roof of Sterling’s house.

Cristina was up and out of the car in seconds, her seraph blade in her hand.
“Miguel,”
she whispered, and it blazed up. She was heavily glamoured enough that she knew no mundane could see her, but the blade provided precious light.

She moved forward carefully, her heart pounding. She remembered what Emma had told her about the night Julian had been shot: the shadow on the roof, the man in black. She eased up to
the house itself. The windows were dark, the curtains motionless. Everything was still and silent.

She moved toward the Jeep. She slipped her stele out of her pocket just as a shape dropped to the ground beside her with an
oomph.
Cristina leaped out of the way as the shadow unfolded; it was Sterling, dressed in what Cristina imagined mundanes thought gear looked like. Black pants, black boots, a tailored black jacket.

He stared at her, and his face turned slowly purple.
“You,”
he snarled.

“I can help you,” Cristina said, keeping her voice and her blade steady. “Please let me help you.”

The hatred in his eyes startled her. “Get
away
,” he hissed, and yanked something out of his pocket.

A gun. A handgun, small caliber, but enough to make Cristina step back. Guns were something that rarely entered Shadowhunter life; they belonged to mundanes, to their world of ordinary human crime.

But they could still spill Shadowhunter blood and split Shadowhunter bones. He backed away, pointing the gun at her, until he reached the end of his driveway. Then he turned and ran.

Cristina bolted after him, but by the time she’d reached the end of the driveway, he was disappearing around the corner of the street. Apparently he hadn’t exaggerated—weres really were faster than humans. Faster, even, than Shadowhunters.

Cristina muttered a mild curse and trudged back to the Jeep. She drew her stele from her belt with her free hand and, crouching down, carefully marked a small tracking rune into the side of the vehicle, just above the wheel.

It wasn’t a total disaster, she thought, trudging back to the truck. As Emma had said, they were still within the two-day window before the “hunt” began. And having put a tracking rune on Sterling’s car was sure to help. If they just stayed away from his house, let him
think they’d given up, hopefully he’d get careless and start driving.

Only when she climbed into the truck and slammed the door behind her did she see that her phone was flashing. She’d missed a call. She picked it up and her heart fell into her stomach.

Diego Rocio Rosales.

She dropped the phone as if it had turned into a scorpion. Why, why,
why
would Diego call her? She’d told him never to speak to her again.

Her hand stole to the charm at her throat and she clutched it, her lips moving in a silent prayer.
Give me the strength not to call him back.

*   *   *

“Are you feeling better, Uncle?” Julian said.

Arthur, slumped behind the desk in his office, looked up with faded, distant eyes.

“Julian,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”

“I know. You said.” Julian leaned back against a wall. “Do you remember what it was about?”

He felt exhausted, scraped out, hollow as a dry bone. He knew he should regret what he’d said in the kitchen about Mark. He knew he should be sympathetic to his uncle. But he couldn’t dredge up the emotion.

He didn’t really remember leaving the kitchen: He recalled handing Tavvy off, as much as you could hand off a sugarcoated seven-year-old; he recalled them all promising they would clean up their dinner of cheese and chocolate and brownies and burned things. Even Dru, once she’d stopped throwing up into the sink, had sworn she’d scrub the floor
and
get the ketchup off the windows.

Not that Julian had realized until that moment that there was ketchup on the windows.

He’d nodded and gone to leave the room, and then stopped to look around for Emma. But at some point Emma had left with Cristina. Presumably they were somewhere talking about Cameron
Ashdown. And there was nothing Julian wanted less than to join in on that.

He didn’t know when that had happened, that the thought of Cameron made him not want to see Emma.
His
Emma. You always wanted to see your
parabatai.
They were the most welcome face in the world to you. There was a wrongness about not wanting it, as if the earth had suddenly started spinning in the other direction.

“I don’t think I do,” Arthur said after a moment. “There was something I wanted to help with. Something about the investigation. You are still investigating, aren’t you?”

“The murders? The ones the faerie convoy came to us about? Yes.”

“I think it was about the poem,” Arthur said. “The one Livia was reciting in the kitchen.” He rubbed at his eyes, obviously tired. “I was passing by and I heard it.”

“The poem?” Julian echoed, confused. “‘Annabel Lee’?”

Arthur spoke in his deep, rumbling voice, sounding out the lines of poetry as if they were the lines of a spell.

“But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee—”

“I know the poem,” Julian interrupted. “But I don’t—”

“‘Those who were older,’” Arthur said. “I’ve heard the phrase before. In London. I can’t remember what it was in connection with.” He picked up a pen from the desk, tapped it against the wood. “I’m sorry. I just—I can’t remember.”

“Those Who Are Older,” murmured Julian. He remembered Belinda, back at the theater, smiling with her blood-red lips.
May Those Who Are Older grant us all good fortune
, she’d said.

An idea bloomed in the back of Julian’s mind, but, elusive, disappeared when he tried to chase it.

He needed to go to his studio. He wanted to be alone, and painting would unlock his thoughts. He turned to go and only paused when Uncle Arthur’s voice cut through the dusty air.

“Did I help you, boy?” he said.

“Yes,” said Julian. “You helped.”

*   *   *

When Cristina returned to the Institute, it was dark and silent. The entryway lights were off, and only a few windows glowed—Julian’s studio, the bright spot of the attic, the square that was the kitchen.

Frowning, Cristina went directly there, wondering if Emma had returned yet from her mysterious errand. If the others had managed to clean up the mess they’d made.

At first glance the kitchen seemed deserted, only a single light on. Dishes were piled in the sink, and though someone had clearly scrubbed the walls and counters, there was still food crusted onto the stove, and two large trash bags, stuffed full and half-spilling their contents, propped against the wall.

“Cristina?”

She blinked into the dimness, though there was no mistaking the voice.

Mark.

He was sitting on the floor, his legs crossed. Tavvy was asleep beside him—on him, really, his head resting in the crook of Mark’s arm, his small legs and arms curled up like a potato bug’s. Mark’s T-shirt and jeans were covered with powdered sugar.

Cristina slowly unwound her scarf and placed it on the table. “Has Emma returned yet?”

“I don’t know,” Mark said, his hand carefully stroking Tavvy’s hair. “But if she has, she’s probably gone to sleep.”

Cristina sighed. She’d probably have to wait until tomorrow to see Emma, find out what she’d been doing. Tell her about Diego’s phone call, if she could get up the nerve.

“Could you—if you don’t mind—get me a glass of water?” Mark asked. He looked down half-apologetically at the boy in his lap. “I don’t want to wake him.”

“Of course.” Cristina went to the sink, filled a glass, and returned, sitting down cross-legged opposite Mark. He took the glass with a grateful expression. “I’m sure Julian isn’t that angry with you,” she said.

Mark made an inelegant noise, finishing the water and setting the glass down.

“You could pick up Tavvy,” Cristina suggested. “You could carry him to bed. If you want him to sleep.”

“I like him here,” Mark said, looking down at his own long, pale fingers tangled in the little boy’s brown curls. “He just— They all left, and he fell asleep on me.” He sounded amazed, wondering.

“Of course he did,” Cristina said. “He’s your brother. He trusts you.”

“Nobody trusts a Hunter,” Mark said.

“You are not a Hunter in this house. You are a Blackthorn.”

“I wish Julian agreed with you. I thought I was keeping the children happy. I thought that’s what Julian would have wanted.”

Tavvy shifted in Mark’s arms and Mark moved too, so that the edge of his boot was touching the tip of Cristina’s. She felt the contact like a small shock.

“You have to understand,” she said. “Julian does everything for these children. Everything. I have never seen a brother who is so much like a parent. He cannot only tell them yes, he has to tell them no. He must deal in discipline and punishment and denial. Whereas
you, you can give them anything. You can have fun with them.”

“Julian can have fun with them,” Mark said a little sulkily.

“He can’t,” said Cristina. “He is envious because he loves them but he cannot be their brother. He must be their father. In his mind, they dread him and adore you.”

“Julian’s jealous?” Mark looked astonished. “Of me?”

“I think so.” Cristina met his eyes. At some point, in knowing him, the mismatch between his blue and his golden one had stopped seeming strange to her. The same way it had stopped seeming strange to be in the Blackthorns’ kitchen, speaking English, instead of at home, where things were warm and familiar. “Be kind to him. He has a gentle soul. He is terrified you will leave and break the hearts of all these children he loves so very much.”

Mark looked down at Tavvy. “I don’t know what I will do,” he said. “I did not realize how it would tear at my heart to be back among them. It was thinking of them, of my family, that helped me live through the first years I was in the Hunt. Every day we would ride, and steal from the dead. It was cold, a cold life. And at night I would lie down and conjure their faces to lull me to sleep. They were all I had until—”

He broke off. Tavvy sat up, scrubbing his small hands through his tangled hair. “Jules?” He yawned.

“No,” said his brother quietly. “It’s Mark.”

“Oh, right.” Tavvy gave him a blink-eyed smile. “Think I crashed from all the sugar.”

“Well, you were inside a bag of it,” Mark said. “That could have an effect on anyone.”

Tavvy got to his feet and stretched, a full little-boy stretch with his arms outraised. Mark watched him, a look of wistfulness in his eyes. Cristina wondered if he was thinking about all the years and milestones he’d missed in Tavvy’s life. Of all his siblings, his youngest had changed the most.

“Bed,” Tavvy said, and wandered out of the kitchen, pausing at the door to say, “Night, Cristina!” shyly before scampering off.

Cristina turned back to Mark. He was still sitting with his back against the refrigerator. He looked exhausted, not just physically, but as if his soul were tired.