Lady Midnight (15 page)

“And when it’s done?” Julian said. “And Mark’s back? How do we explain that?”

Something in Diana’s eyes shifted. “We’ll worry about that when it happens.”

“So we’re racing the Clave and the Courts,” said Julian. “Fantastic. Maybe there’s someone else we can piss off. The Spiral Labyrinth? The Scholomance? Interpol?”

“No one’s pissed off yet,” said Diana. “Let’s just keep it that way.” She handed the papers to Emma. “Just to be clear: We can’t cooperate with the Fair Folk and we can’t harbor Mark without reporting it, except obviously we’re going to, so the upshot is that no one outside the building can know. And I refuse to lie to the Clave directly, so hopefully we can get this done with before they start asking questions.” She looked at them each in turn, her expression serious. “We have to work together. Emma, no more fighting me. Cristina, if you want to be reassigned to another Institute, we’ll understand. We’d just ask you to keep this to yourself.”

Emma gasped. “No!”

Cristina was already shaking her head. “I don’t need a new assignment,” she said. “I will keep your secret. I will make it my secret too.”

“Good,” Diana said. “Speaking of keeping things secret, don’t tell Malcolm how we got our hands on these papers. Don’t mention Mark, don’t mention the faerie delegation. If he says anything, he’ll have me to deal with.”

“Malcolm’s our friend,” said Julian. “We can trust him.”

“I’m trying to make sure he doesn’t get in trouble if anyone finds out,” she said. “He needs to be able to deny it.” She zipped up her jacket. “Okay, I’ll be back tomorrow. Good luck.”

“Threatening the High Warlock,” Julian muttered as Diana disappeared down the hall. “Better and better. Maybe we should head down to vampire clan headquarters and punch Anselm Nightshade in the face?”

“But think of the consequences,” Emma said. “No more pizza.”

Julian gave her a wry sideways-looking smile.

“I could go to Malcolm’s alone,” Emma said. “You could stay here, Jules, wait for Mark to—”

She didn’t finish. She wasn’t sure she knew what exactly they were waiting for Mark to do, that any of them knew.

“No,” Julian said. “Malcolm trusts me. I know him the best. I can convince him to keep this secret.” He straightened up. “We’ll both go.”

As
parabatai
. As we should.

Emma nodded and caught at Cristina’s hand. “We’ll make it as fast as we can,” she said. “You’ll be all right?”

Cristina nodded. Her hand was at her throat, her fingers resting on her necklace. “I will watch over Mark,” she said. “It will be all right.
Everything
will be all right.”

And Emma almost believed her.

*   *   *

Being a High Warlock must pay well, Emma thought, as she always did when she saw Malcolm Fade’s house. It looked like a castle.

Malcolm lived up the highway from the Institute, past Kanan Dume Road. It was a spot where the bluffs rose high above, threaded with green sea grass. The house was shrouded by glamour spells, hiding it from mundanes. If you were driving—which Emma was—you had to look hard at a spot between two bluffs, and a silvery bridge that climbed up into the hills would appear.

Emma pulled over to the side of the highway. Lines of cars were parked along the sides of the PCH here, most of them surfers drawn by the wide beach to the west.

Emma exhaled, turning the car off. “Okay,” she said. “We—”

“Emma,” Julian said.

She paused. Julian had been almost completely silent since they’d left the Institute. She couldn’t blame him. She couldn’t find words herself. She’d let the distraction of driving take her, the need to concentrate on the road. She’d been aware of him beside her the whole time, though, his head back against the seat, his eyes closed, his fist clenched against the knee of his jeans.

“Mark thought I was my father,” said Julian abruptly, and she could tell he was remembering that awful moment, the look of hope in his brother’s eyes, a hope that had nothing to do with him. “He didn’t recognize me.”

“He remembers you twelve,” Emma said. “He remembers all of you as so young.”

“And you, too.”

“I doubt he remembers me at all.”

He unsnapped his seat belt. Light sparked off the bracelet of sea glass he wore on his left wrist, turning it to bright colors: flame red, fire gold, Blackthorn blue.

“He does,” he said. “No one could forget you.”

She blinked at him in surprise. A moment later Julian was out
of the car. She scrambled to follow him, slamming the driver’s side door as cars whizzed by just a lane away.

Jules was standing at the foot of Malcolm’s bridge, looking up toward the house. She could see his shoulder blades under the thin cotton of his T-shirt, the nape of his neck, a shade lighter than the rest of his skin where his hair had kept it from getting tanned.

“The Fair Folk are tricksters,” Julian said without turning. “They won’t want to give Mark up: Faerie blood and Shadowhunter blood together, that’s too valuable. There’ll be some clause that’ll allow them to take him back when we’re done.”

“Well, it’s up to him,” said Emma. “He gets to choose whether to stay or go.”

Julian shook his head. “A choice seems simple, I know,” he said. “But a lot of choices aren’t simple.”

They began to climb the stairs. The staircase was helical, twisting upward through the hills. It was glamoured, visible only to supernatural creatures. The first time Emma had visited, Malcolm had escorted her; she had looked down in wonder at all the mundanes speeding by below in their cars, entirely unaware that above them, a crystal staircase rose impossibly against the sky.

She was more used to it now. Once you’d seen the staircase, it would never be invisible to you again.

Julian didn’t say anything else as they walked, but Emma found she didn’t mind. What he’d said in the car—he’d meant it. His gaze had been level and direct as he’d spoken. It had been
Julian
talking, her Jules, the one who lived in her bones and her brain and at the base of her spine, the one who was threaded all through her like veins or nerves.

The staircase ended abruptly in a path to Malcolm’s front door. You were meant to climb down, but Emma jumped, her feet landing on the hard-packed dirt. A moment later Julian had landed beside her and reached out to steady her, his fingers five warm lines across
her back. She didn’t need the help—of the two of them, she likely had the better balance—but, she realized, it was something he’d always done, unthinkingly. A protective reflex.

She glanced toward him, but he seemed lost in thought, barely noticing that they were touching. He moved away as the staircase behind them vanished back into its glamour.

They were standing in front of two obelisks that thrust up out of the dusty ground, forming a gateway. Each was carved with alchemical symbols: fire, earth, water, air. The path that led up to the warlock’s house was lined with desert plants: cactus, sagebrush, California lilacs. Bees buzzed among the flowers. The dirt turned to crushed seashells as they neared the brushed-metal front doors.

Emma knocked and the doors slid open with a near-silent hiss. The hallways inside Malcolm’s house were white, lined with pop-art reproductions, snaking off in a dozen different directions. Julian was at her side, unobtrusive; he hadn’t brought his crossbow with him, but she felt the ridge of a knife strapped to his wrist when he nudged her with his arm.

“Down the hall,” he said. “Voices.”

They moved toward the living room. It was all steel and glass, entirely circular, giving out onto views of the sea. Emma thought it looked like the sort of place a movie star might own—everything was modern, from the sound system that piped in classical music to the infinity-edged swimming pool that hung over the cliffs.

Malcolm was sprawled on the long couch that ran the length of the room, his back to the Pacific. He wore a black suit, very plain and clearly expensive. He was nodding and smiling agreeably as two men in much the same kind of dark suits stood over him with briefcases in hand, speaking in low, urgent voices.

Malcolm, seeing them, waved. The vistors were white men in their forties with nondescript faces. Malcolm made a nonchalant gesture with his fingers, and they froze in place, eyes staring blankly.

“It always creeps me out when you do that,” Emma said. She walked up to one of the frozen men and poked him thoughtfully. He tilted slightly.

“Don’t break the movie producer,” said Malcolm. “I’d have to hide the body in the rock garden.”

“You’re the one who froze him.” Julian sat down on the arm of the couch. Emma slumped down onto the cushions beside him, feet on the coffee table. She wiggled her toes in their sandals.

Malcolm blinked. “But how else am I meant to talk to you without them hearing?”

“You could ask us to wait till your meeting is over,” Julian said. “It probably wouldn’t be a major risk to any lives.”

“You’re Shadowhunters. It could always be life-or-death,” said Malcolm, not unreasonably. “Besides, I’m not sure I want the job. They’re movie producers and they want me to cast a spell to ensure the success of their new release. But it looks terrible.” He stared glumly at the poster on the sofa beside him. It showed several birds flying toward the viewer, with the caption
EAGLE EXPLOSION THREE: FEATHERS FLY
.

“Does anything happen in this movie that wasn’t adequately covered in
Eagle Explosion One
and
Two
?” Julian asked.

“More eagles.”

“Does it matter if it’s terrible? Terrible movies do well all the time,” Emma pointed out. She knew more about movies than she wished she did. Most Shadowhunters paid little attention to mundane culture, but you couldn’t live in Los Angeles and escape it.

“It means a stronger spell. More work for me. But it does pay well. And I’ve been thinking of installing a train in my house. It could bring me shrimp crackers from the kitchen.”

“A train?” Julian echoed. “How big a train?”

“Small. Medium. Like this.” Malcolm gestured, low to the ground. “It would go ‘choo-choo’—” He snapped his fingers to
punctuate the noise, and the movie producers jerked into life.

“Whoops,” Malcolm said as they blinked. “Didn’t mean to do that.”

“Mr. Fade,” said the older one. “You’ll consider our offer?”

Malcolm looked dispiritedly at the poster. “I’ll get in touch.”

The producers turned toward the front door, and the younger one jumped at the sight of Emma and Julian. Emma could hardly blame him. From his perspective, they must have appeared out of thin air.

“Sorry, gents,” said Malcolm. “My niece and nephew. Family day, you know.”

The mundanes looked from Malcolm to Jules and Emma and back again, clearly wondering how someone who looked twenty-seven could possibly have a niece and nephew in their teens. The older one shrugged.

“Enjoy the beach,” he said, and they marched out, brushing by Emma with a whiff of expensive cologne and the rattle of briefcases.

Malcolm stood up, listing a bit to one side—he had a slightly awkward way of walking that made Emma wonder if he’d once been injured and hadn’t completely healed. “Everything all right with Arthur?”

Julian tensed beside Emma, almost imperceptibly, but she felt it. “The family’s fine, thanks.”

Malcolm’s violet eyes, his warlock’s mark, darkened before clearing like a sky briefly touched by clouds. His expression as he ambled over to the bar that ran along one wall and poured himself a glass of clear liquid was amiable. “Then what can I help you with?”

Emma moved over toward the couch. They had made copies of the papers the faeries had given them. She set them down on the coffee table. “You remember what we were talking about the other night. . . .”

Malcolm put his glass aside and picked up the papers. “That demon language again,” he said. “The one that was on that body
you found in the alley, and on your parents’ bodies . . .” He paused to whistle through his teeth. “Look at that,” he said, stabbing his finger at the first page. “Someone’s translated the first line.
Fire to water
.”

“It’s a breakthrough, right?” Emma said.

Malcolm shook his bone-white head of hair. “Maybe, but I can’t do anything with this. Not if it’s a secret from Diana and Arthur. I can’t get involved in something like that.”

“It’s fine with Diana,” Emma said. Malcolm gave her a dubious look. “Seriously. Call her and ask—”

She broke off as a man ambled into the room, hands in his pockets. He looked about twenty, tall, with spiked black hair and cat’s eyes. He wore a white suit that contrasted crisply with his brown skin.

“Magnus!” Emma said, jumping to her feet. Magnus Bane was the High Warlock of Brooklyn, and also held the warlock’s seat on the Council of Shadowhunters. He was possibly the most famous warlock in the world, though you’d never guess it; he seemed young, and had been kind and friendly to Emma and the Blackthorns since he’d met them during the Dark War.

She’d always liked Magnus. He seemed to bring a sense of infinite possibility with him wherever he went. He looked the same as the last time she’d seen him, down to his sardonic smile and the heavy jeweled rings on his fingers. “Emma, Julian. A pleasure. What are you doing here?”

Emma darted her gaze toward Julian. They might have been fond of Magnus, but she could tell from Julian’s expression—it was quickly hidden, smoothed over by a look of mild interest, but she could still see it—that he wasn’t thrilled Magnus was there. This was already going to be a secret Malcolm needed to keep. Adding someone else in . . . especially someone on the Council . . .

“What are you doing in town?” Julian’s tone was casual.

“Ever since the Dark War, the Clave has been tracking incidences of the kind of magic Sebastian Morgenstern used,” said
Magnus. “Energy raised from evil sources, Hell dimensions and the like, to draw power and extend life.
Necyomanteis
, the Greeks called it.”

“Necromancy,” Emma translated.

Magnus nodded. “We built a map,” he said, “with help from the Spiral Labyrinth, from the Silent Brothers—even Zachariah—that reveals where necromantic magic is being used. We caught a flare of it here in Los Angeles, out by the desert, so I thought I’d stop by, see if Malcolm knew about it.”