Lady Midnight Read online

  "I had a feeling," Emma went on, "that something bigger and worse was happening. I followed the faerie when he ran. I know I shouldn't have, but--I found that body. And it's covered in the same marks my parents' bodies were. The same markings, Diana."

  Diana turned to Cristina. "Could you give us a moment alone, please, Tina?"

  Cristina hesitated. But as a guest of the Los Angeles Institute, a young Shadowhunter on Leave, she was required to do as the senior staff of the Institute requested. With a glance at Emma, she moved away, toward the spot where the body still lay. It was surrounded by a ring of Silent Brothers, like a flock of pale birds in their parchment robes. They were sprinkling a sort of shimmering powder over the markings, or at least that's how it looked. Emma wished she were closer and could see properly.

  Diana exhaled. "Emma, are you sure?"

  Emma bit back an angry retort. She understood why Diana was asking. Over the years there had been so many false leads--so many times Emma had thought she had found a clue or a translation for the markings or a story in a mundane newspaper--and every time she had been wrong.

  "I just don't want you to get your hopes up," Diana said.

  "I know," Emma said. "But I shouldn't ignore it. I can't ignore it. You believe me. You've always believed me, right?"

  "That Sebastian Morgenstern didn't kill your parents? Oh, honey, you know I do." Diana patted Emma's shoulder lightly. "I just don't want you to get hurt, and with Julian not here . . ."

  Emma waited for her to go on.

  "Well, with Julian not here, you get hurt more easily. Parabatai buffer each other. I know you're strong, you are, but this is something that cut you so deeply when you were just a child. It's twelve-year-old Emma that reacts to anything to do with your parents, not almost-adult Emma." Diana winced and touched the side of her head. "Brother Enoch is calling me over," she said. Silent Brothers were able to communicate with Shadowhunters using telepathy only they could hear, though they were also able to project to groups if the need arose. "Can you make it back to the Institute?"

  "I can, but if I could just see the body again--"

  "The Silent Brothers say no," Diana said firmly. "I'll find out what I can, and I'll share it with you? Deal?"

  Emma nodded reluctantly. "Deal."

  Diana headed off toward the Silent Brothers, stopping to talk briefly to Cristina. By the time Emma reached the car she had parked, Cristina had joined her, and they both climbed in silently.

  Emma sat where she was for a moment, drained, the car keys dangling from her hand. In the rearview mirror she could see the alleyway behind them, lit up like a baseball stadium by the truck's powerful headlights. Diana was moving among the parchment-robed Silent Brothers. The powder on the ground was white in the glare.

  "Are you all right?" Cristina said.

  Emma turned to her. "You have to tell me what you saw," she begged. "You were close to the body. Did you hear Diana say anything to the Brothers? Are they definitely the same markings?"

  "I don't need to tell you," Cristina said.

  "I--" Emma broke off. She felt wretched. She'd messed up the whole plan for the night, lost their faerie criminal, lost her chance of examining the body, probably hurt Cristina's feelings. "I know you don't. I'm really sorry, Cristina. I didn't mean to get you in trouble. It's just that--"

  "I didn't say that." Cristina fumbled in the pocket of her gear. "I said I didn't need to tell you, because I meant I could show you. Here. Look at these." She held out her phone, and Emma's heart leaped--Cristina was scrolling through picture after picture she'd taken of the body and the Brothers, the alley, the blood. Everything.

  "Cristina, I love you," Emma said. "I will marry you. Marry you."

  Cristina giggled. "My mother's already picked out who I'm going to marry, remember? Imagine what she'd say if I brought you home."

  "You don't think she'd like me more than Perfect Diego?"

  "I think you would be able to hear her screaming in Idris."

  Idris was the home country of the Shadowhunters, where they had first been created, where the Clave held its seat. It was tucked away at the intersection of France, Germany, and Switzerland, hidden by spells from mundane eyes. The Dark War had ravaged its capital city of Alicante, which was still being rebuilt.

  Emma laughed. Relief was coursing through her. They had something after all. A clue, as Tiberius would say, head stuck in a detective novel.

  Missing Ty suddenly, she reached to start up the car.

  "Did you really tell that faerie that you broke up with Cameron and not the other way around?" Cristina said.

  "Please don't bring that up," Emma said. "I'm not proud of it."

  Cristina snorted. It was remarkably unladylike.

  "Can you come to my room after we get back?" Emma asked, flicking on the headlights. "I want to show you something."

  Cristina frowned. "It isn't a strange birthmark or a wart, is it? My abuela said she wanted to show me something once, and it turned out to be a wart on her--"

  "It's not a wart!" As Emma pulled the car out and merged with the rest of the traffic, she sensed anxiety fizzing through her veins. Usually she felt exhausted after a fight as the adrenaline drained out of her.

  Now, though, she was about to show Cristina something that no one but Julian had ever seen. Something she herself wasn't exactly proud of. She couldn't help wondering how Cristina would take it.

  "Julian calls it my Wall of Crazy," Emma said.

  She and Cristina were standing in front of the closet in Emma's bedroom, the door of which was propped wide open.

  The closet was empty of clothes. Emma's wardrobe, mostly vintage dresses and jeans she'd picked up in secondhand stores in Silver Lake and Santa Monica, was either hung in her armoire or folded in her dresser. The inside walls of the closet in her blue-painted room (the mural on the bedroom wall of swallows in flight over the towers of a castle had been done by Julian when she first moved in, a nod to the symbol of the Carstairs family) were covered in photographs, newspaper clippings, and sticky notes in Emma's cramped handwriting.

  "Everything is color coded," she said, indicating the sticky notes. "Stories from mundane newspapers, research into spells, research into demonic languages, things I've managed to get out of Diana over the years . . . It's everything I've ever found that connects to my parents' deaths."

  Cristina moved closer to examine the walls, then swung around suddenly to stare at Emma. "Some of these look like official Clave files."

  "They are," Emma said. "I stole them from the Consul's office in Idris when I was twelve."

  "You stole these from Jia Penhallow?" Cristina looked horrified. Emma supposed she couldn't blame her. The Consul was the highest elected official in the Clave--only the Inquisitor came close in terms of power and influence.

  "Where else was I going to get photos of my parents' bodies?" Emma asked, shrugging off her jacket and tossing it onto her bed. She wore a tank top underneath, the breeze from the wilderness cool on her bare arms.

  "So the pictures I took tonight--where do they go?"

  Cristina handed them to Emma. They were still damp with toner--the first thing they'd done when they'd gotten back to the Institute was print out the two clearest photos of the alleyway body from Cristina's phone. Emma leaned in and pinned them carefully beside the Clave photos of her own parents' bodies--dimmed with time now and curling at the edges.

  She leaned back and looked from one to the other. The markings were ugly, spiky, hard to concentrate on. They seemed to push back against being viewed. They weren't a demon language anyone had been able to identify to her, but they felt as if no human mind could have conceived of them.

  "So now what?" Cristina said. "I mean, what is your plan for what to do next?"

  "I'll see what Diana says tomorrow," Emma said. "If she found out anything. Do the Silent Brothers already know about the murders Rook was talking about? If they don't, I'll go back to the Shadow Market. I'll dig up whatever money
I've got, or owe Johnny Rook a favor--I don't care. If someone's killing people now and covering their bodies with this writing, then it means--it means Sebastian Morgenstern didn't kill my parents five years ago. It means I'm right, and their deaths were something else."

  "It might not mean exactly that, Emma." Cristina's voice was gentle.

  "I'm one of the few people alive who saw Sebastian Morgenstern attack an Institute," said Emma. It was both one of her clearest memories and a blur: She remembered grabbing up baby Tavvy with Dru following, carrying him through the Institute as Sebastian's Dark warriors howled, remembered the sight of Sebastian himself, all white hair and dead black demonic eyes, remembered the blood and Mark, remembered Julian waiting for her. "I saw him. Saw his face, his eyes when he looked at me. It's not that I don't think he could have killed my parents. He would have killed anyone who stood in his way. It's just that I don't think he would have bothered." Her eyes stung. "I just have to get more proof. Convince the Clave. Because as long as this is laid at Sebastian's door, the real murderer, the person responsible, won't be punished. And I don't think I could stand that."

  "Emma." Cristina touched Emma's arm lightly with her hand. "You know I think the Angel has a plan for us. For you. And whatever I can do to help you, I will."

  Emma did know that. To many Shadowhunters, the Angel who had created the race of Nephilim was a distant figure. To Cristina, Raziel was a living presence. Around her throat she wore a medallion consecrated to the Angel. Raziel was etched on the front, and there were words written in Latin on the back: Blessed be the Angel my strength, who teaches my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.

  Cristina touched her medallion often: for strength, before an exam, before a battle. In many ways, Emma envied Cristina her faith. Sometimes she thought the only things she had faith in were revenge and Julian.

  Emma leaned back against the wall, paper and sticky notes rough against her bare shoulder. "Even if it means breaking the rules? I know you hate that."

  "I am not as boring as you seem to think." Cristina hit Emma's shoulder lightly in mock offense. "Anyway, there is nothing more we can do tonight. What would take your mind off things? Bad movies? Ice cream?"

  "Introducing you to the Blackthorns," Emma said, pushing off the wall of the closet.

  "But they're not here." Cristina looked at Emma as if worried she'd hit her head.

  "They aren't and they are." Emma held out her hand. "Come with me."

  Cristina allowed herself to be led out into the corridor. It was all wood and glass, the windows giving out onto what during the daytime were vistas of sea and sand and desert. Emma had thought when she moved into the Institute that eventually the views would start to fade out of her consciousness, that she wouldn't wake up every morning still startled by the blue of the ocean, the sky. That hadn't happened. The sea still fascinated her with its ever-changing surface, and the desert with its shadows and flowers.

  She could see the gleam of the moon off the sea now, through the night windows: silver and black.

  Emma and Cristina made their way down the hall. Emma paused at the top of the enormous staircase that descended to the Institute's entryway. It was located exactly in the middle of the Institute, splitting the north and south wings. Emma had deliberately chosen a bedroom, years ago, that was at the other end of the Institute from where the Blackthorns slept. It was a way of declaring silently that she knew she was still a Carstairs.

  She leaned on the railing now and looked down, Cristina beside her. Institutes were built to impress: They were meeting places for Shadowhunters, the heart of Conclaves--communities of local Nephilim. The massive entryway, a square room whose focal point was the enormous staircase that led up to the landing and the second floor, had a black-and-white marble floor and was decorated with uncomfortable-looking furniture that no one ever sat in. It seemed like the entrance of a museum.

  From the landing you could see that the white and black tiles that patterned the floor formed the shape of the Angel Raziel, rising from the waters of Lake Lyn in Idris, holding two of the Mortal Instruments--a flashing sword and a gold-encrusted cup.

  It was an image every Shadowhunter child knew. A thousand years ago the Angel Raziel had been summoned by Jonathan Shadowhunter, the father of all Nephilim, to put down a plague of demons. Raziel had gifted Jonathan with the Mortal Instruments and the Gray Book, in which all runes were inscribed. He had also mixed his blood with human blood and given it to Jonathan and his followers to drink, allowing their skin to bear runes and creating the first of the Nephilim. The image of Raziel rising was sacred to Nephilim: It was called the Triptych and was found in places where Shadowhunters met or where they had died.

  The image on the floor of the Institute's entryway was a memorial. When Sebastian Morgenstern and his faerie army had stormed the Institute, the floor had been plain marble. After the Dark War, the Blackthorn children had returned to the Institute to find that the room where so many had died was already being torn up. The stones where Shadowhunters had bled were replaced, and the mural put in to commemorate those who had been lost.

  Every time Emma walked on it, she was reminded of her parents and of Julian's father. She didn't mind--she didn't want to forget.

  "When you said they are and they aren't, did you mean because Arthur was here?" Cristina asked. She was looking thoughtfully down on the Angel.

  "Definitely not." Arthur Blackthorn was the head of the Los Angeles Institute. At least, that was his title. He was a classicist, obsessed with the mythology of Greece and Rome, constantly locked in the attic with bits of old pottery, moldering books, and endless essays and monographs. Emma didn't think she'd ever seen him take a direct interest in a Shadowhunter issue. She could count on one hand the number of times she and Cristina had seen him since Cristina's arrival at the Institute. "Although I'm impressed you remember he lives here."

  Cristina rolled her eyes.

  "Don't roll your eyes. It punctures my dramatic moment. I want my dramatic moment unpunctured."

  "What dramatic moment?" Cristina demanded. "Why have you dragged me out here when I want to shower and change out of this gear? Besides, I need coffee."

  "You always need coffee," said Emma, moving back toward the corridor and the other wing of the house. "It's a debilitating addiction."

  Cristina said something uncomplimentary under her breath in Spanish, but she followed Emma nonetheless, her curiosity clearly winning out. Emma spun around so she could walk backward, like a tour guide.

  "Okay, most of the family is in the south wing," she said. "First stop, Tavvy's room." The door of Octavian Blackthorn's room was already open. He wasn't that invested in privacy, being only seven. Emma leaned in, and Cristina, looking puzzled, leaned in beside her.

  The room contained a small bed with a brightly striped coverlet, a playhouse nearly as tall as Emma, and a tent full of books and toys. "Tavvy has nightmares," Emma said. "Sometimes Julian comes and sleeps in the tent with him."

  Cristina smiled. "Di--my mother used to do that for me when I was a little girl."

  The next room was Drusilla's. Dru was thirteen and obsessed with horror movies. Books about slasher films and serial killers littered the floor. The walls were black, and vintage horror posters were pasted up over the windows. "Dru loves horror movies," said Emma. "Anything with the word 'blood' or 'terror' or 'prom' in it. Why do they call it a prom, I wonder--"

  "It's short for 'promenade,'" said Cristina.

  "Why do you speak English so much better than I do?"

  "That wasn't English," Cristina pointed out, as Emma darted farther down the hall. "That was French."

  "The twins have rooms across from each other." Emma gestured at two closed doors. "This is Livvy." She swung a door open to reveal a beautifully clean and decorated bedroom. Someone had artfully covered the headboard with whimsical fabric decorated with a pattern of teacups. Bright costume jewelry hung from screens nailed to the wall. Books about computers and programm
ing languages were stacked in careful rows by her bed.

  "Programming languages," Cristina exclaimed. "Does she like computers?"

  "She and Ty," said Emma. "Ty likes computers, he likes the way they organize patterns so that he can analyze them, but he's actually not great at math. Livvy does the math and they tag team."

  The next room was Ty's. "Tiberius Nero Blackthorn," said Emma. "I think his parents may have gone a little overboard with the name. It's like naming someone Magnificent Bastard."

  Cristina giggled. Ty's room was neat, with books lined up not in alphabetical order but by color. Colors that Ty liked the most, like blue and gold and green, were at the front of the room and near the bed. Colors he didn't like--orange and purple--were relegated to nooks and spaces by the window. It might have looked haphazard to someone else, but Emma knew that Ty was aware of the location of every volume.

  On the bedside table were his most beloved books: Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Beside them were a collection of small toys. Julian had made them for Ty years before when he found that having something in his hand calmed Ty down and helped him focus. There was a squiggly ball of pipe cleaners, and a black plastic cube made up of clicking parts that could be twisted into different patterns.

  Cristina cast a look at Emma's wry-fond expression and said, "You've talked about Tiberius before. He's the one who loves animals."

  Emma nodded. "He's always outside, bothering lizards and squirrels." She waved her arm to indicate the desert that spread out behind the Institute--unspoiled land, without houses or human occupation, that stretched to the ridge of mountains that separated the beach from the Valley. "Hopefully he's having fun in England, collecting tadpoles and frogs and toads-in-the-hole. . . ."

  "That's a kind of food!"

  "Can't be," Emma said, moving down the hall.

  "It's pudding!" Cristina objected as Emma found the next door and opened it. The room inside was painted almost the exact same blue as the sea and sky outside. During the day it looked as if it were part of them, floating in a blue forever. Murals covered the walls-- intricate patterns, and along the whole wall that faced the desert, the outline of a castle wrapped by a high wall of thorns. A prince rode toward it, his head down, his sword broken.