Lady Midnight Read online

  "I was thinking about what you said earlier," he said. "About all the dead ends. All the times we've thought we found something that pointed toward what happened to your parents, but it was nothing."

  She looked toward him. The moonlight made his profile sharp.

  "I was thinking maybe there was a meaning to it," he said. "That maybe finding out who it was had to wait until now. Until you were ready. I've watched you train, I've watched you get better. And better. Whoever it is, whatever it is, you're ready now. You can face it down. You can win."

  Something fluttered under Emma's rib cage. Familiarity, she thought. This was Jules, the Jules she knew, who had more faith in her than she had in herself.

  "I like to think things have a point," she said softly.

  "They do." He paused for a moment, eyes on the sky. "I've been counting stars. Sometimes I think it helps to set yourself a pointless task."

  "Remember, when we were younger, we used to talk about running away? Navigating by the North Star?" she said. "Before the war."

  He folded his arm behind his head. Moonlight spilled down, illuminating his eyelashes. "Right. I was going to run off, join the French Foreign Legion. Rename myself Julien."

  "Because no one was ever going to crack that code." She tipped her head to the side. "Jules. What's bothering you? I know something is."

  He was silent. Emma could see his chest rising and falling slowly. The sound of his breath was drowned out by the sound of the water.

  She reached over and laid her hand against his arm, her finger tracing lightly down the skin. W-H-A-T I-S I-T?

  He turned his face away from hers; she saw him shudder, as if a chill had passed over him. "It's Mark."

  Julian was still looking away from her; she could see only the curve of his throat and chin. "Mark?"

  "I've been thinking about him," Julian said. "More than usual. I mean, Helen is always there for me on the other end of the phone if I need her, even if she's on Wrangel Island. But Mark might as well have died."

  Emma sat up straight. "Don't say that. He's not dead."

  "I know. You know how I know?" Jules asked, his voice tightening. "I used to look for the Wild Hunt every night. But they never come. Statistically, they should have ridden by here at least once in the past five years. But they never have. I think Mark won't let them."

  "Why not?" Emma was staring at him now. Jules hardly ever talked like this. Not with this bitterness in his voice.

  "Because he doesn't want to see us. Any sign of us."

  "Because he loves you?"

  "Or because he hates us. I don't know." Julian dug restlessly at the sand. "I'd hate us, if I was him. I hate him, sometimes."

  Emma swallowed. "I hate my parents, too, for dying. Sometimes. It's not--it doesn't mean anything, Jules."

  He turned his face toward her at that. His eyes were huge, black rings around the blue-green irises. "That's not the kind of hate I mean." His voice was low. "If he was here, God, everything would be different. Would have been different. I wouldn't be the one who ought to be home now in case Tavvy wakes up. I wouldn't be doing an immoral thing, walking down to the beach because I needed to get away. Tavvy, Dru, Livvy, Ty--they would have had someone to raise them. Mark was sixteen. I was twelve."

  "Neither of you chose--"

  "No, we didn't." Julian sat up. The collar of his shirt hung loose, and there was sand on his skin and in his hair. "We didn't choose. Because if I'd ever been able to choose, I would have made really different decisions."

  Emma knew she shouldn't ask. Not when he was like this. But she had no experience of Julian like this; she didn't know how to react to him, how to be. "What would you have done differently?" she whispered.

  "I don't know if I would have wanted a parabatai." The words came out clear and precise and brutal.

  Emma flinched back. It felt like standing in knee-high water and being slapped in the face suddenly and unexpectedly by a wave. "Do you actually mean that?" she said. "You wouldn't have wanted it? This, with me?"

  He got to his feet. The moon had come out entirely from behind the clouds and it shone down undimmed, bright enough that she could see the color of the paint on his hands. The light freckles across his cheekbones. The tightness of the skin around his mouth and temples. The visceral color of his eyes. "I shouldn't want it," he said. "I absolutely shouldn't."

  "Jules," she said, baffled and hurt and angry, but he was already walking away, down toward the shoreline. By the time she'd scrambled to her feet, he'd reached the rocks. He was a long, lean shadow, climbing over them. And then he was gone.

  She could have caught up to him if she'd wanted to, she knew that. But she didn't want to. For the first time in her life, she didn't want to talk to Julian.

  Something brushed against her ankles. Looking down, she saw Church. His yellow eyes seemed sympathetic, so she picked him up and held him against her, listening to him purr as the tide came in.

  Idris, 2007, The Dark War

  When Julian Blackthorn was twelve years old, he killed his own father.

  There were, of course, extenuating circumstances. His father wasn't his father anymore, not really. More like a monster wearing his father's face. But when the nightmares came, in the dead of night, it didn't matter. Julian saw Andrew Blackthorn's face, and his own hand holding the blade, and the blade going into his father, and he knew.

  He was cursed.

  That was what happened when you killed your own father. The gods cursed you. His uncle had said it, and his uncle knew quite a lot of things, especially things that had to do with the curses of gods and the price of bloodshed.

  Julian had known a great deal of bloodshed, more than any twelve-year-old ought to know. It was Sebastian Morgenstern's fault. He was the Shadowhunter who had started the Dark War, who had used spells and tricks to turn ordinary Shadowhunters into mindless killing machines. An army at his disposal. An army meant to destroy all of the Nephilim who would not join him.

  Julian, his brothers and sisters, and Emma had been hiding in the Hall of Accords. The greatest hall in Idris, it was meant to be able to keep out any monster. But it could not keep out Shadowhunters, even those who had lost their souls.

  The huge double doors had cracked open and the Endarkened had surged into the room, and like a poison released into the air, where they went, death followed. They cut down the guards, and they cut down the children who were being guarded. They didn't care. They had no conscience.

  They were pressing farther into the Hall. Julian had tried to herd the children into a group: Ty and Livvy, the solemn twins; and Dru, who was only eight; and Tavvy, the baby. He stood in front of them with his arms outstretched as if he could protect them, as if he could make a wall with his body that would hold back death.

  And then death stepped out in front of him. A Dark Shadowhunter, demon runes blazing on his skin, with tangled brown hair and bloodshot blue-green eyes the same color as Julian's.

  Julian's father.

  Julian looked around for Emma but she was fighting a faerie warrior, fierce as fire, her sword, Cortana, flashing in her hands. Julian wanted to go to her, wanted it desperately, but he couldn't step away from the children. Someone had to protect them. His older sister was outside; his older brother taken by the Hunt. It would have to be him.

  That was when Andrew Blackthorn reached them. Bloody cuts scissored across his face. His skin was slack and gray, but his grip on his sword was tight, and his eyes were fixed on his children.

  "Ty," he said, his voice low and hoarse. And he looked at Tiberius, his son, and there was rapacious hunger in his eyes. "Tiberius. My Ty. Come here."

  Ty's gray eyes opened wide. His twin, Livia, clutched at him, but he strained forward, toward his father. "Dad?" he said.

  Andrew Blackthorn's face seemed to split with his grin, and Julian thought he could see through the split that tore it open, see the evil and darkness inside, the writhing pestilential core of horror and chaos that was all tha
t animated the body that had once been his father's. His father's voice rose in a croon. "Come here, my boy, my Tiberius . . ."

  Ty took another step forward, and Julian pulled the shortsword from his belt and threw it.

  He was twelve. He was not particularly strong or particularly skilled. But the gods who would soon hate him must have smiled on that throw, because the blade flew like an arrow, like a bullet, and plunged into Andrew Blackthorn's chest, knocking him to the ground. He was dead before he hit the marble floor, his blood spreading around him in a dark red pool.

  "I hate you!" Ty threw himself at Julian, and Julian threw his arms around his little brother, thanking the Angel over and over that Ty was all right, was breathing, was thrashing and pounding his chest and looking up at him with tearful, angry eyes. "You killed him, I hate you, I hate you--"

  Livvy had her hands on Ty's back, trying to pull him away. Julian could feel the blood rushing through Ty's veins, the rise and fall of his chest; he felt the force of his brother's hatred and knew it meant that Ty was alive. They were all alive. Livvy with her soft words and her soothing hands, Dru with her enormous, terrified eyes, and Tavvy with his uncomprehending tears.

  And Emma. His Emma.

  He had committed the most ancient and worst of sins: He had killed his own father, the person who gave him life.

  And he would do it again.

  What kind of person was he?

  "Now, when were the first Accords signed?" asked Diana. "And what was their effect?"

  It was a distractingly bright day. Sunlight poured in through the high windows of the schoolroom, illuminating the board in front of which Diana paced, tapping the palm of her left hand with a stele. Her lesson plan was scrawled on the board in nearly illegible handwriting: Emma could make out the words Accords, Cold Peace, and evolution of Law.

  She looked sideways at Jules, but he had his head bent over some papers. They hadn't really spoken so far today, aside from being polite to each other at breakfast. She had woken up with her stomach feeling hollow and her hands hurting from clenching the bedclothes.

  Also Church had abandoned her sometime during the night. Stupid cat.

  "They were signed in 1872," said Cristina. "They were a series of agreements between the species of the Shadow World and Nephilim, meant to keep the peace among them and establishing common rules for all of them to follow."

  "They also protect Downworlders," said Julian. "Before the Accords, if Downworlders harmed each other, Shadowhunters couldn't and wouldn't step in. The Accords gave Downworlders our protection." He paused. "At least until the Cold Peace."

  Emma remembered the first time she had heard of the Cold Peace. She and Julian had been in the Hall of Accords when it was proposed. The punishment of the faeries for their part in Sebastian Morgenstern's Dark War. She remembered the confusion of her feelings. Her parents had died because of that war, but how did Mark and Helen, who she loved, deserve to bear the brunt of that simply because of the faerie blood in their veins?

  "And where were the papers of the Cold Peace signed?" Diana asked.

  "In Idris," said Livvy. "At the Hall of Accords. Everyone who usually attends the Accords was supposed to be there, but the Seelie Queen and the Unseelie King never showed up to sign the treaty, so it was altered and signed without them."

  "And what does the Cold Peace mean for faeries?" Diana's look at Emma was pointed. Emma glared down at her desk.

  "Faeries aren't protected under the Accords anymore," said Ty. "It's forbidden to help them, and they're forbidden from contacting Shadowhunters. Only the Scholomance and the Centurions are meant to deal with faeries--and the Consul and Inquisitor."

  "A faerie who carries a weapon can be punished by death," Jules added. He looked exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes.

  Emma wished he would look at her. She and Julian didn't fight. They never fought. She wondered if he was as baffled as she was. She kept hearing what he'd said over and over: that he wouldn't have wanted a parabatai. Was it any parabatai he didn't want, or her specifically?

  "And what is the Clave, Tavvy?" It was a question too elementary for any of the rest of them, but Tavvy looked pleased to be able to answer something.

  "The government of the Shadowhunters," he said. "Active Shadowhunters are all in the Clave. The ones who make decisions are the Council. There are three Downworlders on the Council, each one representing a different Downworlder race. Warlocks, werewolves, and vampires. There hasn't been a faerie representative since the Dark War."

  "Very good," said Diana, and Tavvy beamed. "Can anyone tell me what other changes have been wrought by the Council since the end of the war?"

  "Well, the Shadowhunter Academy was reopened," said Emma. This was familiar territory for her--she had been invited by the Consul to be one of the first students. She'd chosen to stay with the Blackthorns instead. "A lot of Shadowhunters are trained there now, and of course they bring in a lot of Ascendant hopefuls--mundanes who want to become Nephilim."

  "The Scholomance was reestablished," said Julian. Wavy strands of his hair, dark and glossy, fell against his cheek as he lifted his head. "It existed before the first Accords were signed, and when the Council was betrayed by faeries, they insisted on opening it again. The Scholomance does research, trains Centurions . . ."

  "Think of what it must have been like in the Scholomance for all those years it was closed," said Dru, her eyes gleaming with horror-movie delight. "All the way up in the mountains, totally abandoned and dark, full of spiders and ghosts and shadows . . ."

  "If you want to think about somewhere scary, think about the Bone City," said Livvy. The City of Bones was where the Silent Brothers lived: It was an underground place of networked tunnels built out of the ashes of dead Shadowhunters.

  "I'd like to go to the Scholomance," interrupted Ty.

  "I wouldn't," said Livvy. "Centurions aren't allowed to have parabatai."

  "I'd like to go anyway," said Ty. "You could come too if you wanted."

  "I don't want to go to the Scholomance," said Livvy. "It's in the middle of the Carpathian Mountains. It's freezing there, and there are bears."

  Ty's face lit up as it often did at the mention of animals. "There are bears?"

  "Enough chatter," said Diana. "When was the Scholomance reopened?"

  Cristina, who had the seat closest to the window, raised her hand to interrupt. "There's someone coming up the path to the front door," she said. "Several someones, in fact."

  Emma glanced over at Jules again. It was rare that anyone paid an unscheduled visit to the Institute. There were only a few people who might, and even most of the members of the Conclave would have made an appointment with Arthur. Then again, maybe someone did have an appointment with Arthur. Though by the look on Julian's face, if they did, it was one he didn't know about.

  Cristina, who had risen to her feet, drew her breath in. "Please," she said. "Come and see."

  Everyone bolted to the one long window that ran across the main wall of the room. The window itself looked out onto the front of the Institute and the winding path that led from the doors down to the highway that divided them from the beach and the sea. The sky was high and blue and cloudless. The sunlight sparked off the silver bridles of three horses, each with a silent rider seated on its bare back.

  "Hadas," Cristina said, the word emerging on a staccato beat of astonishment. "Faeries."

  It was undeniably the case. The first horse was black, and the rider who sat on him wore black armor that looked like burned leaves. The second horse was black as well, and the rider who sat on him wore a robe the color of ivory. The third horse was brown, and its rider was wrapped head to toe in a hooded robe the color of earth. Emma couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, a child or an adult.

  "'So first let pass the horses black and then let pass the brown,'" Jules murmured, quoting an old faerie poem. "One robed in black, one brown, one white--it's an official delegation. From the Courts." Julian looked a
cross the room at Diana. "I didn't know Arthur had a meeting with a delegation from Faerie. Do you think he told the Clave?"

  She shook her head, clearly puzzled. "I don't know. He never mentioned it to me."

  Julian's body was taut like a bowstring; Emma could feel the tension coming off him. A delegation from Faerie was a rare, serious thing. Permission from the Clave had to be granted before a meeting could be held. Even by the head of an Institute. "Diana, I have to go."

  Frowning, Diana tapped her stele against one hand, then nodded. "Fine. Go ahead."

  "I'll come with you." Emma slid down from the window seat.

  Julian, already headed to the door, paused and turned. "No," he said. "It's all right. I'll take care of it."

  He walked out of the room. For a moment Emma didn't move.

  Normally if Julian told her he didn't need her with him, or that he had to do something alone, she wouldn't have given it a second thought. Sometimes events necessitated splitting up.

  But the night before had solidified her feeling of unease. She didn't know what was going on with Jules. She didn't know if he didn't want her with him, or did but was angry with her or angry with himself or both.

  She knew only that the Fair Folk were dangerous, and there was no way Julian was facing them alone.

  "I'm going," she said, and headed toward the door. She stopped to take down Cortana, which was hanging beside it.

  "Emma," said Diana, her voice tight with meaning. "Be careful."

  The last time faeries had been in the Institute, they had helped Sebastian Morgenstern wrench the soul from the body of Julian's father. They had taken Mark.

  Emma had carried Tavvy and Dru to safety. She had helped save the lives of Julian's younger brothers and sisters. They had barely escaped alive.

  But Emma hadn't had years of training then. She hadn't killed a single demon herself, not when she was twelve. She hadn't spent years training to fight and kill and defend.

  There was no way she was hanging back now.

  Faeries.

  Julian raced down the corridor and into his bedroom, his mind whirling.

  Faeries at the doors of the Institute. Three steeds: two black, one brown. A contingent from a Faerie Court, though Seelie or Unseelie, Julian couldn't have said. They seemed to have been flying no banner.