Queen of Air and Darkness Read online

  Cameron barged back in without knocking again. “Got what you asked for,” he said, and dumped a pile of pencils and a Canson sketch pad into Julian’s lap. “Have to admit, it’s a first. Most newbies ask for chocolate.”

  “Do you have chocolate?” Emma said.

  “No,” said Cameron, and stomped back out of the room. Emma watched him go with a bemused expression.

  “I really like this new Cameron,” she said. “Who knew he had it in him to be such a badass? He was such a nice guy, but . . .”

  “He always had kind of a secret side,” Julian said. He wondered if there was something about suddenly getting his emotions back that meant he didn’t feel like covering things up. Maybe he’d regret it later. “A while ago, he approached Diana, because he was pretty sure Anselm Nightshade was murdering werewolf children. He couldn’t prove it, but he had some good reasons for thinking it. His family kept telling him to drop it, that Nightshade had powerful friends. So he brought it to us—to the Institute.”

  “That’s why you had Nightshade arrested,” said Emma, realizing. “You wanted the Clave to be able to search his house.”

  “Diana told me they found a basement full of bones,” said Julian. “Werewolf children, just like Cameron said. They tested the stuff in the restaurant and there was death magic all over the place. Cameron was right, and he stood up to his family, in his own way. And he did it for Downworlders that he didn’t know.”

  “You never said anything,” Emma said. “Not about Cameron, or about you—why you really got Anselm arrested. There are people who still blame you.”

  He gave her a rueful smile. “Sometimes you have to let people blame you. When the only other option is letting bad things happen, it doesn’t matter what people think.”

  She didn’t reply. When he glanced over at her, she looked as if she’d forgotten all about Cameron and Nightshade. Her eyes were wide and luminous as she reached out to touch a few of the Prismacolors that had rolled onto the bed.

  “You asked for art supplies?” she whispered.

  Julian looked down at his hands. “All this time, since the spell, I’ve been walking around missing the whole center of myself, but the thing is—I didn’t even notice. Not consciously. But I felt it. I was living in black and white and now the color is back.” He exhaled. “I’m saying it all wrong.”

  “No,” Emma said, “I think I get it. You mean that the part of you that feels is also the part of you that creates things.”

  “They always say faeries steal human children because they can’t make art or music of their own. Neither can warlocks or vampires. It requires mortality to make art. The knowledge of death, of things limited. There is fire inside us, Emma, and as it blazes, it burns us, and the burning causes pain—but without its light, I cannot see to draw.”

  “Then draw now,” she said, her voice husky. She pressed several pencils into his open hand and began to turn away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I shouldn’t burden you.”

  “You’re not burdening me,” she said, still facing away. “You’re reminding me why I love you.”

  The words caught at his heart, sharp with a painful joy.

  “You’re not off the hook, though,” she added, and went over to the wardrobe. He left her alone to rifle through the pairs of socks and shoes, looking for something that might fit. He wanted to talk to her—talk to her forever, about everything—but that had to be at her discretion. Not his.

  Instead he put pencil to paper and let his imagination go, let the images that rose up inside him and captured his brain flow out in Alicante silver and Seelie green, in Unseelie black and blood red. He drew the King on his throne, pale and powerful and unhappy. He drew Annabel holding Ash’s hand. He drew Emma with Cortana, surrounded by thorns. He drew Drusilla, all in black, a murder of crows circling behind her.

  He was conscious that Emma had come to lie down beside him and was watching him with quiet curiosity, her head propped on her arm. She was half-asleep, lips parted, when the door banged open again. Julian threw the sketchbook down. “Look, Cameron—”

  But it wasn’t Cameron. It was Livvy.

  She had taken off her Sam Browne ammo belt, but otherwise looked much the same. In the brighter light of the bedroom, Julian could see the shadows smudged under her eyes. “Cameron said you asked for a sketch pad and pencils,” she said in a near whisper.

  Julian didn’t move. He half felt as if any movement would spook her, as if he were trying to lure a nervous forest creature closer. “Do you want to see?”

  Julian held out the sketch pad; she took it and flipped through it, slowly and then faster. Emma was sitting up now, clutching one of the pillows.

  Livvy thrust the sketch pad back at Julian. She was looking down; he couldn’t see her face, only twin fringes of dark lashes. He felt a twinge of disappointment. She doesn’t believe me; the pictures meant nothing to her. I’m nothing to her.

  “No one draws like my brother,” she said, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. She lifted her head and looked directly at Julian with a sort of bewilderment that was half hurt, half hope. “But you do.”

  “You remember when I tried to teach you to draw, when you were nine?” said Julian. “And you snapped all my pencils?”

  Something almost like a smile touched the edge of Livvy’s mouth. For a moment, she was familiar Livvy, despite the scars and black leather. A second later it was as if a mask had passed across her face, and she was a different Livia, a rebel leader, a scarred warrior. “You don’t need to try to convince me anymore,” she said. She turned away, her movements precise and military. “Finish getting cleaned up. I’ll meet you two in the main office in an hour.”

  * * *

  “Did we ever date in this world?” Emma said. “You know, you and me.”

  Cameron nearly fell down several metal steps. They were in the maze of stairs and catwalks that crisscrossed the inside of the Bradbury Building. “Of course not!”

  Emma felt mildly stung. She knew it wasn’t a big deal, considering, but sometimes you wanted to focus on something trivial to take your mind off the apocalypse. Cameron in her world had been almost embarrassingly devoted, always coming back after they broke up, sending love notes and flowers and sad llama pictures.

  “You were always with Julian,” Cameron added. “Aren’t you together in your world?”

  “I’m right here,” Julian said in the deceptively mild tone that meant he was annoyed.

  “I mean, yes,” Emma said. “At least, we’re on and off. Sometimes very on, sometimes very off. You and I dated briefly, is all.”

  “We don’t really have time for that kind of personal drama here,” Cameron said. “It’s hard to focus on your love life when giant spiders are chasing you.”

  Cameron was pretty funny here, Emma thought. If he’d been this amusing at home, their relationship might have lasted longer.

  “When you say ‘giant,’ how giant exactly?” she said. “Bigger than Dumpsters?”

  “Not the babies,” Cameron said, and gave them a horrible smile. “We’re here—go on in, and don’t tell Livvy we dated in your world, because it’s weird.”

  They found Livvy in another repurposed office—this one had clearly once been more of a loft, big and airy and probably full of light before the windows had been covered. Strips of brick alternated with polished wood on the walls, and dozens of vintage fruit labels advertising California apples, pears, and oranges hung between the boarded-up windows. A group of four sleek, modern couches formed a square around a glass coffee table. Livvy was lounging on one of the couches, drinking a glass of something dark brown.

  “That’s not alcohol, is it?” Julian sounded appalled. “You shouldn’t be drinking.”

  “You’ll be drinking tomorrow,” Livvy said, and pointed at a bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the glass table. “Just saying.” She waved a hand. “Sit down.”

  They settled themselves on the couch opposite he
r. There was a fireplace in the room too, but the grate had been plugged with metal some time ago. Someone with a sense of humor had painted flames on the metal. It was too bad. Emma would have liked a fire. It would have felt like something natural.

  Livvy turned her glass around in her scarred hands. “So I believe you,” she said. “You are who you say you are. Which means I know what you want to ask me.”

  “Yeah,” Julian said. He cleared his throat. “Mark?” he said. “Ty? Helen, and Dru—”

  “But you also probably want to get out of here,” Livvy interrupted. “Since you ended up here by accident and your world sounds like a much better place.”

  “We have to leave,” Emma said. “There are people at home who could be hurt or even killed if we don’t come back—”

  “But we want to take you with us,” Julian said. Emma had known he was going to say it; they hadn’t discussed it, but it had never been a question. Of course Julian would want Livvy to come back with them.

  Livvy gave a long, slow nod. “Right,” she said. “Do you have a reason to think that there’s any way you can get back at all? Interdimensional travel isn’t exactly easy.”

  “We’d only just started to discuss it,” Emma said. “But we’ll think of something.” She spoke with more confidence than she felt.

  Livvy held up a hand. “If there’s any chance you can get away, are you really sure that you want to know what happened to—to everyone? Because I wish every single day that I didn’t.”

  Without taking his eyes off Livvy, Julian said, “What I wish is that I could’ve been here for you.”

  Livvy’s gaze was distant. “You were, I guess. Both of you.” She pulled her knees up under her. “You saved our lives when you sacrificed yourselves to get us out of Manhattan the day it fell.”

  Emma shivered. “New York? Why were we in New York?”

  “The Battle of the Burren was when everything went wrong,” said Livvy. “Clary was there, Alec and Isabelle Lightwood, Magnus Bane—and Helen and Aline, of course. They were winning. Jace was under Sebastian’s thrall, but Clary was wielding Glorious, the sword of the Angel of Paradise. She was about to break him free when Lilith appeared. She cast the sword into Hell and cut Clary down. Helen and the others were lucky to escape with their lives.

  “That was Sebastian’s great victory. After that he joined forces with the Fair Folk. They stormed Alicante while we hid in the Hall of Accords. The Shadowhunters fought—our father fought—but Sebastian was too powerful. As Alicante fell to his forces, a group of warlocks opened up a Portal for the children. Just people under fifteen. We had to leave Helen and Mark behind. Dru was screaming as they ripped her out of Helen’s arms and drove us through the Portal to Manhattan.

  “Catarina Loss and Magnus Bane had set up a temporary shelter there. The war raged on in Idris. We got a message from Helen. Mark had been taken by the Fair Folk. She didn’t know what they would do to him. I still don’t know. I hope he’s in Faerie and it’s green and bright and he’s forgotten all of us.”

  “He hasn’t,” Julian said in a low voice. “Mark doesn’t forget.”

  Livvy just blinked, fast, as if her eyes stung. “Helen and Aline hung on, fighting. Sometimes we got a fire-message from them. We heard that strange gray patches started to appear in Brocelind Forest. They called them the ‘blight.’ They turned out to be doorways for demons.”

  “Doorways for demons?” Emma demanded, sitting up straight, but Livvy was caught up in her story, turning her glass over and over in her hands so fast Emma was surprised it hadn’t started sparking.

  “Demons flooded into Idris. The Fair Folk and Endarkened drove the Shadowhunters out of Alicante, and the demons finished them off. We were in New York when we learned Idris had fallen. Everyone wanted to know the names of the dead, but there was no information. We couldn’t find out what had happened to Helen and Aline, if they’d lived or been Endarkened—we didn’t know.

  “We did know we wouldn’t be safe for long. Sebastian didn’t care about keeping secrets from the human world. He wanted to burn it all down. Demons began to appear everywhere, running rampant, slaughtering humans in the streets. The blight spread, appearing all over the world. It poisoned everything it touched and the warlocks started to sicken.

  “After two months the shelter was destroyed. The streets were full of monsters, and the warlocks were getting sicker and sicker. The more powerful they were, the more magic they’d used, the quicker they got sick and the more likely they were to turn into demons. Catarina fled so she wouldn’t hurt anyone. You heard what happened to Alec and Magnus. The shelter collapsed and the kids spilled into the streets.” She looked at Julian. “It was winter. We had nowhere to go. But you kept us together. You said, at all costs, we stay together. We live because we’re together. We never leave each other.”

  Julian cleared his throat. “That sounds right.”

  Livvy’s eyes bored into him. “Before she left, Catarina Loss arranged for a bunch of trains to take Shadowhunter and Downworlder kids across the country. The demons were spreading east to west, and the rumor was that California was pretty clear. We left from White Plains station—we walked all night, and you carried Tavvy. He was so hungry. We were all hungry. You kept trying to give us your food, especially Ty. We got to the station and the last train was leaving. That’s when we saw them. The Endarkened. They came for us in their red gear, like a rain of blood. They were going to kill us all before we got on that train.

  “You didn’t even kiss us good-bye,” Livvy said, her voice remote. “You just shoved us toward the trains. You shouted at us to get on, told me to look after the younger ones. And you went for the Endarkened with your swords out. We could see you fighting them as the train pulled out—just the two of you and fifty Endarkened, in the snow.”

  At least we went down protecting them, Emma thought. It was cold comfort.

  “And then there were four,” Livvy said, and reached for the whiskey bottle. “Me and Ty, Dru and Tavvy. I did what you said. I looked after them. The trains inched through the winter. We met Cameron somewhere around Chicago—we’d all started going from train to train by then, trading food for matches, that sort of thing. Cameron said we should go to L.A., that his sister was there and she said things were okay.

  “Of course when we hit Union Station, it turned out Paige Ashdown had joined the Legion of the Star. That’s what they were calling themselves. Traitors, we called them. She was standing there grinning bloody murder with a dozen Endarkened around her. Cameron gave me a shove, and Ty and I ran. We were dragging Dru and Tavvy with us. They were crying and screaming. They’d thought they were coming home.

  “I don’t think we realized until then how bad things had gotten. Demons hunted unsworn humans through the streets, and there was nothing we could do. Our Marks were fading. We were getting weaker every day. Runes and seraph blades didn’t work. We had nothing to fight demons with, so we hid. Like cowards.”

  “By the Angel, Livvy, you can’t have been expected to do anything else. You were ten,” Emma said.

  “No one says ‘By the Angel’ anymore.” Livvy poured out a measure of Jack Daniel’s and recapped the bottle. “At least it wasn’t cold. I remembered what you’d said, Jules, to take care of the younger ones. Ty isn’t—he wasn’t—really younger than me, but he was shattered. His whole heart was broken when we lost you. He loved you so much, Jules.”

  Julian didn’t speak. He was pale as the snow in Livvy’s story. Emma slid her hand across the couch, touched her fingers to his. They were icy. This world was the pure distilled essence of his nightmares, Emma thought. A place where his siblings had been ripped from him, where he couldn’t protect them as the world fell down around them in darkness and flame.

  “We slept in alleys, in the abandoned houses of murdered humans,” Livvy said. “We scrounged for food in supermarkets. We never stayed in the same place for more than two nights. Tavvy screamed himself to sleep in my arms every night, b
ut we were careful. I thought we were careful. We slept inside rings of salt and iron. I tried, but . . .” She took a swallow of whiskey. Emma would have choked; Livvy seemed used to it. “One night we were sleeping on the street. In the ruins of the Grove. There were still stores with food and clothes there. I’d surrounded us with salt, but a Shinagami demon came from above—it was a fast blur with wings and talons like knives. It snatched Tavvy away from me—we were both screaming.” She took a ragged breath. “There was this stupid ornamental fountain. Ty jumped up onto the side and attacked the Shinagami with a throwing knife. I think he hit it, but without runes, there’s just—you can’t hurt them. It was still holding Tavvy. It just turned around and slashed out with a talon and cut Ty-Ty’s throat.” She didn’t seem to notice or care that she’d called him by his baby name. She was gripping her glass tightly, her eyes blank and haunted. “My Ty, he fell into the fountain and it was all water and blood. The Shinagami was gone. Tavvy was gone. I hauled Ty out, but he was dead in my arms.”

  Dead in my arms. Emma tightened her grip on Julian’s hand, seeing him on the Council Hall dais, holding Livvy as the life and the blood went out of her.

  “I kissed him. I told him I loved him. And I went and got a jug of gasoline and burned his body so the demons wouldn’t find it.” Livvy’s mouth twisted. “And then it was just me and Dru.”

  “Livia . . .” Julian leaned forward, but his sister held up a hand as if to ward off whatever he was going to say next.

  “Let me finish,” she said. “I’ve gotten this far.” She took another drink and closed her eyes. “After that, Dru stopped talking. I told her we were going to go to the Institute and get help. She didn’t say anything. I knew there wasn’t any help there. But I thought maybe we could join the Legion of the Star—I didn’t care anymore. We were walking along the highway when a car pulled up. It was Cameron.