Lady Midnight (27 page)

He struggled upright, looking down dubiously at his shredded shirt. “Someone shot me with a crossbow bolt. The
iratzes
weren’t working.”

“Well, you look fine now.” Livvy eyed him, puzzled. “Bloody, but . . .”

“A little
parabatai
magic,” said Jules. “They weren’t working, then they were. Sorry to scare you.”

“It looks like a mad science lab back here.” There was relief on Livvy’s face. “Who shot you, anyway?”

“It’s a long story,” said Jules. “How did you get here?
You
didn’t drive, did you?”

Another head suddenly appeared beside Livvy’s. Mark, his blond hair haloed in the witchlight. “I drove,” he announced. “Upon a faerie steed.”

“What? But—but your faerie steed was shredded by demons!”

“There are as many faerie steeds as there are riders,” Mark said, looking pleased to be mysterious. “I did not say it was
my
faerie steed. Just
a
faerie steed.” Mark disappeared from his side of the car. Before Emma could determine where he’d gone, the door behind Julian flew open. Mark leaned in, picked up his younger brother bodily, and lifted him out of the car.

“What—?” Emma seized up her stele and scrambled out after them.

There were two more figures standing on the asphalt of the parking lot—Cristina and Ty, illuminated by the lights of a motorcycle. In fact, the whole motorcycle was glowing. It wasn’t Mark’s: It was black, with a painted design of horns on the chassis.

“Jules?” Ty looked blanched and frightened as Julian pulled free of Mark’s grip, yanking down the tattered remains of his shirt.

Cristina hurried over to Emma as Julian turned to his younger brother. “Ty, everything’s all right,” he said. “I’m fine.”

“But you’re covered in blood,” said Ty. He wasn’t looking directly at Julian, but Emma couldn’t help wondering if he was remembering—remembering the Dark War, and the blood and the dying all around him. “People have only so much blood they can lose before—”

“I’ll get some blood-replacement runes,” said Julian. “Remem
ber, Ty, we’re Shadowhunters. We can handle a lot.”

“You’re covered in blood too,” Cristina murmured to Emma, shrugging off her own jacket. She slung it around Emma’s shoulders, covering her bloody tank. She brushed her hands through Emma’s hair, looking at her worriedly. “You sure you’re not hurt?”

“Julian’s blood,” Emma whispered, and Cristina made a murmuring noise and pulled Emma into a hug. She patted Emma’s back and Emma hung on to her for dear life and decided there and then that if anyone ever tried to hurt Cristina she would grind them to a pulp and make amusing sand castles out of the remains.

Livvy had moved to stand next to Ty and was holding his hand, murmuring to him that the blood was just blood, Julian wasn’t hurt, everything was fine. Ty was breathing quickly, his hand opening and closing over Livvy’s.

“Here.” Mark shrugged out of his blue T-shirt. He was wearing another T-shirt under it, this one gray. Julian blinked at him. “Proper vestments.” He offered it to his brother.

“Why are you wearing a T-shirt under your other T-shirt?” Livvy asked, temporarily diverted.

“In case one of them is stolen,” Mark said, as if this were entirely normal. Everyone paused to stare at him, even Julian, who had stripped off the rags of his shirt and covered himself with Mark’s.

“Thanks,” Julian said, pulling Mark’s shirt down over his belt. He tossed the scraps of his old shirt on top of a Dumpster. Mark seemed pleased—and, Emma realized belatedly, looked different. His hair was no longer hanging past his shoulders, but was cut short—or shorter, curling around his ears. It made him look both younger and more modern, less incongruous in his jeans and boots.

More like a Shadowhunter.

Mark looked back. She could still see the wind in his eyes, and the stars, and vast fields of empty clouds. Wildness and freedom. She
wondered how deep his transformation back into a Shadowhunter ran. How deep it would ever run.

She put a hand to her head. “I feel dizzy.”

“You need food.” It was Livvy, grabbing her hand. “We all do. Nobody’s eaten tonight, and Jules, you’re forbidden from cooking. Let’s go to Canter’s, grab some dinner, and figure out what to do next.”

*   *   *

Everything inside Canter’s was yellow. The walls were yellow, the booths were yellow, and most of the food was a shade of yellow. Not that Emma minded; she’d been coming to Canter’s since she was four years old with her parents to eat their chocolate-chip pancakes and challah French toast.

They piled into a corner booth and for a few minutes everything was absolutely ordinary: The waitress, a tall woman with gray hair, came by to dump a pile of laminated menus on their table; Livvy and Ty shared one, and Cristina asked Emma in a whisper what
matzo brei
was. They were scrunched together in the booth, and Emma found herself pressed up against Julian’s side. He still felt hot against her, as if the
iratze
hadn’t worked its way out of his system yet.

Her skin still felt supersensitized too, as if she would jump or scream the moment someone touched her. She nearly did scream when the waitress returned to get their orders. She just stared until Julian ordered waffles and hot chocolate for her and handed the menu back hastily, looking at her worriedly.

A-R-E Y-O-U A-L-L R-I-G-H-T ?
he scribbled on her back.

She nodded, reaching for her plastic glass of ice water, just as Mark smiled at the waitress and ordered a plate of strawberries.

The waitress, whose name tag said
JEAN
, blinked. “We don’t have that on the menu.”

“But you do have strawberries on the menu,” said Mark. “And I have seen plates being carried to and fro. So it stands to reason that the strawberries could be placed upon a plate and brought to me.”

Jean stared.

“He has a point,” said Ty. “Strawberries are offered as a topping on several dishes. Surely you could separate them out.”

“A plate of strawberries,” Jean repeated.

“I would take them in a bowl,” said Mark with a winning gaze. “It has been many years since I have eaten freely at my choice, fair one, and a plate of strawberries is all that I desire.”

Jean looked dazed. “Right,” she said, and disappeared with the menus.

“Mark,” said Julian. “Was that necessary?”

“Was what necessary?”

“You don’t
have
to sound like a medieval faerie poem,” Julian said. “You sound perfectly normal half the time. Maybe we should discuss keeping a low profile.”

“I cannot help it,” Mark said with a small smile. “It’s something about mundanes. . . .”

“You need to act more like a normal human being,” said Jules. “When we’re out in public.”

“He doesn’t need to act normal,” said Ty sharply.

“He bumped into a pay phone and said, ‘Excuse me, miss,’ on our way in,” said Julian.

“It’s polite to apologize,” said Mark with the same small smile.

“Not to inanimate objects.”

“All right, enough,” said Emma. She filled them in quickly on the events at Stanley Wells’s house, including Ava’s body and the mysterious figure on the roof.

“So she was dead, but it was nothing like the other murders?” Livvy asked with a frown. “It seems unrelated—no markings, body dumped in a pool outside her own house, not at a ley line. . . .”

“What about the guy on the roof?” Cristina said. “Do you think he’s the killer?”

“Doubt it,” said Emma. “He had a crossbow, and none of them
have been killed with crossbows. But he hurt Jules, so when we track him down, I’m going to chop him up and feed him to my fish.”

“You don’t have fish,” Julian said.

“Well, I’m going to buy some,” said Emma. “I’m going to buy goldfish and feed them blood until they acquire a taste for human flesh.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Livvy. “Does this mean we still need to return to Wells’s house and search it?”

“As long as we check the roof first,” said Emma.

“We can’t,” Ty said. He held up his phone. “I was looking at the news. Someone called in the body. The mundane police are crawling all over the place. We won’t be able to get anywhere near it for a few days at least.”

Emma blew out an exasperated breath. “Well,” she said, “at least we have this,” and she reached behind her to grab Ava’s bag. She upended it on the table and the contents rattled out: wallet, makeup case, lip balm, mirror, hairbrush, and something flat, golden, and shiny.

“No phone,” Ty observed, a line of annoyance gathering between his brows. Emma didn’t blame him. He could have done a lot with the phone. Too bad; it was at the bottom of Wells’s pool.

“What’s this?” Livvy picked up the shining square. It was blank.

“Not sure.” Emma flicked through the wallet. Credit cards, driver’s license, about eleven dollars in cash that made her feel a little queasy. Taking evidence was one thing; taking cash was another. Not that they could have returned it to Ava.

“No photos or anything?” Julian asked, looking over her shoulder.

“I don’t think people keep photos in their wallets except in movies,” Emma said. “Not since iPhones.”

“Speaking of movies.” Livvy furrowed her brow, looking
briefly—as she did sometimes—like Ty. “This thing looks like the Golden Ticket. You know, from
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
” She waved the shining piece of laminated paper.

“Let me see it.” Cristina held out her hand. Livvy gave it to her as the waitress returned with their food: grilled cheese for Ty, a turkey sandwich for Cristina, a BLT for Julian, waffles for Emma and Livvy, and Mark’s plate of strawberries.

Cristina took out her stele and scribbled, humming, on a corner of the gold paper. Mark, looking beatific, took the dispenser of maple syrup off the table and upended it over his strawberries. He picked one up and put it in his mouth, stem and all. Julian stared at him.

“What?” Mark said. “This is a perfectly normal thing to eat.”

“Sure it is,” said Julian. “If you’re a hummingbird.”

Mark raised an eyebrow. “Look,” Cristina said, and pushed the golden paper toward the middle of the table. It was no longer blank. Instead it featured the shimmering photo of a building, and beside it words in block letters.

THE FOLLOWERS OF THE GUARDIAN

INVITE YOU TO THE LOTTERY

THIS MONTH
’
S PERFORMANCE: AUGUST 11, 7 P.M.

THE MIDNIGHT THEATER

This ticket admits one group. Semiformal attire.

“The Lottery?”
Julian echoed. “That’s the name of a famous horror story. Did they make it into a play or something?”

“It doesn’t sound like a play,” said Livvy. “It sounds creepy.”

“It could be a creepy play,” said Ty.

“It was a creepy story.” Julian picked up the ticket. There was paint under his fingernails, shimmering small crescents of blue.
“And the creepiest thing about this is that this theater is shut down. I know the place; it’s up past Highland Park. It’s been been shut down for years.”

“Sixteen years,” said Ty. He had mastered the art of using his phone one-handed and was squinting at the screen. “Shut down after a fire and never rebuilt.”

“I’ve driven past it,” Emma said. “It’s all boarded up, isn’t it?”

Julian nodded. “I painted it once. I was painting abandoned buildings, places like the Murphy Ranch, closed businesses. I remember that one. It had a ghostly feel.”

“It’s interesting,” Mark said. “But does it have anything to do with the investigation? The murders?”

Everyone looked mildly surprised that Mark had asked something so practical. “I think it might,” Emma said. “I was at the Shadow Market last week—”

“I wish you’d quit going to the Shadow Market,” Julian muttered. “It’s dangerous there—”

“Oh, NO,” Emma said. “Not
danger
, Mr. I-Just-Almost-Bled-Out-in-My-Car.”

Julian sighed and reached for his soda. “I can’t believe I ever complained about ‘Jules’ as a nickname.”

“Maybe we should talk about the Shadow Market,” said Cristina hastily. “It is where Emma first heard information about the murders.”

“Well, you can imagine how happy the Marketers were to see me and Cameron—”

“You went with
Cameron
?” Julian said.

Livvy held up a hand. “In Emma’s defense, Cameron’s annoying, but he’s hot.” Julian gave her a look. “I mean, if you like guys who look like a redheaded Captain America, which I . . . don’t?”

“Captain America is definitely the most handsome Avenger,” said Cristina. “But I like the Hulk. I would like to heal his broken heart.”

“We’re
Nephilim
,” said Julian. “We’re not even supposed to know about the Avengers. Besides,” he added, “Iron Man is obviously the best-looking.”

“Can I finish my story?” Emma demanded. “I was at the Market with Cameron, and I remember now, I saw a booth that had a placard up that said something like ‘Sign Up for the Lottery.’ So I think it’s something supernatural, not experimental theater or whatever.”

“I have no idea who the Avengers are,” observed Mark, who had finished his strawberries and was eating sugar out of a packet. Ty looked gratified—he had no time for superheroes. “But I agree with you. This is a lead. Someone murdered Stanley Wells, and now his girlfriend is dead too. Even if it is in a completely different way.”

“I think we can all agree it can’t be a coincidence,” said Emma. “Them both dying.”

“I don’t think it is,” said Mark. “But she could have been killed because she knew something, not because she was a sacrifice like he was or part of the same ritual. Death breeds death, after all.” He looked thoughtful. “She was invited to this Lottery performance. She thought it was important enough to carry the ticket around with her. I think it could be a thread to follow.”

“Or it could be nothing,” said Jules.

“We don’t have much else to investigate,” pointed out Emma.

“We do, actually,” said Jules. “We’ve still got your photos from the inside of the cave at the convergence. And now we have whoever was at Wells’s house and shot at me—we’ve still got my gear jacket with whatever poison he used on it. Maybe Malcolm could look into that, find out if it’s associated with a particular demon or warlock who might sell it.”