Lady Midnight (30 page)

“An emergency?” With a concerned look, he thumbed off the water and turned to face her.

Emma set her bottled drink down. Soap suds were clinging to Jules’s forearms, and his T-shirt was damp from the hot water. She couldn’t help a flash of memory: Jules in the back of the car, looking up at her with gritted teeth. The way his skin had felt, under her hands, the slipperiness of his blood.

“Is it Diana?” he said, reaching for paper towels.

“What?” That snapped her out of her reverie. “Is Diana all right?”

“Presumably,” he said. “She left a note saying she was going to be gone today. Back to Ojai to see her warlock friend.”

“She doesn’t know about tonight.” Emma leaned on the counter. “Does she?”

Jules shook his head. A damp curl stuck to his cheekbone. “Didn’t exactly get a chance to tell her.”

“You could text,” Emma pointed out. “Or call.”

“I could,” he said neutrally. “But then I’d feel like I needed to tell her about me getting hurt last night.”

“Maybe you should.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I mean, really, fine. Like nothing ever happened.” He shook his head. “I don’t want her insisting I stay back from tonight. The theater could be nothing, but if it’s something, I want to be there.” He dropped the paper towels in the trash. “If
you’re
there, I want to be there.”

“I like it when you’re deceptive.” Emma stretched up on her toes, arms behind her head, trying to work out the kinks in her back
muscles. Cool air touched the bare skin of her stomach as her tank pulled up. “If you’re totally fine, though, maybe you don’t ever have to tell Diana? Just a suggestion.”

When Julian didn’t answer, she glanced up at him.

He was arrested midmotion, looking at her. Each of his lashes was a perfect dark line; he was expressionless, his gaze shuttered, as if caught in a peculiar stillness.

He was beautiful. The most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She wanted to crawl inside his skin, live where he breathed. She
wanted
.

She was terrified. She had never
wanted
like this around Julian before. It was because he’d almost died, she told herself. Her whole system was wired to monitor his survival. She needed him to live. He’d nearly died, and everything inside her was short-circuiting.

He would be horrified, she told herself. If he knew how she was feeling—he’d be disgusted. Things would go back to the way they were when he’d first come back from England, when she’d thought that he was angry at her. That maybe he hated her.

He knew even then
, said a small voice at the back of her mind.
He knew about your feelings. He knew what you didn’t know.

She pressed her hands hard against the counter, the marble digging into her palms, the pain clearing her head.
Shut up
, she told the voice in her head.
Shut up.

“An emergency.” His voice was low. “You said there was an emergency?”

“A fashion emergency—Cristina needs a dress to blend in tonight, and there’s literally nothing in the house.” She glanced at her watch. “It should take us thirty minutes, tops.”

He relaxed, clearly relieved. “Hidden Treasures?” he asked. It was a good guess: Emma’s favorite vintage store was well known to the family. Every time she went she picked things up for them: a bow tie for Tavvy, a flowered headband for Livvy, an old horror movie poster for Dru.

“Yep. Do you want anything?”

“I’ve always kind of wanted a Batman clock that says ‘WAKE UP, BOY WONDER’ when it goes off,” he said. “It would liven up my room.”

“We’ve got it!” Livvy said, bounding into the kitchen. “Well, some of it, anyway. But it’s weird.”

Emma turned to her with relief. “Got what?”

“In English, Livvy,” said Julian. “What’s weird?”

“We translated some of the lines in the cave,” said Ty, trailing in on Livvy’s heels. He was wearing an oversize gray hooded sweater that swallowed up his hands. His dark hair spilled over the edge of the hood. “But they don’t make sense.”

“Are they a message?” Emma said.

Livvy shook her head. “Lines from a poem,” she said, unfolding the paper she held.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee. . . .

“ ‘Annabel Lee,’ ” said Julian. “Edgar Allan Poe.”

“I know the poem,” Livvy said, scrunching up her eyebrows. “I just don’t know why it was written on the walls of the cave.”

“I thought maybe it was a book cipher,” said Ty. “But that would mean there was a second half of it. Something in another location, maybe. Might be worth checking with Malcolm.”

“I’ll add it to the list,” said Julian.

Cristina stuck her head in through the kitchen door. “Emma?” she said. “Are you ready to go?”

“You look worried,” said Livvy. “Is Emma taking you somewhere to kill you?”

“Worse,” Emma said, heading over to join Cristina at the door. “Shopping.”

“For tonight? First, I am so jealous, and second, don’t let her take you to that place in Topanga Canyon—”

“That’s enough!” Emma clapped her hands over Cristina’s ears. “Don’t listen to her. She’s lost her mind from all that code breaking.”

“Pick me up some cuff links,” Jules called, heading back toward the sink.

“What color?” Emma paused halfway out the door with Cristina.

“I don’t care as long as they hold my cuffs together. Otherwise they’ll be sad and unlinked,” Jules said. “And get back as quick as you can.” The sound of the water running in the sink was drowned out by Livvy, who had already begun reciting more of the poem.

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea . . .

“This is where you want to buy clothes?” Cristina asked, her eyebrows arched, as Emma pulled the Toyota into a dirt parking lot surrounded by trees.

“It’s the closest place,” Emma said, turning off the car. In front of them was a single freestanding building with a sign boasting foot-high letters in glitter that spelled out the words
HIDDEN TREASURES
. A massive red-and-white popcorn machine stood next to the store, along with a painted model of a curtained caravan, advertising the services of Gargantua the Great. “And besides, it’s awesome.”

“This does not look like a place you buy glamorous dresses,” Cristina said, wrinkling up her nose. “This looks like a place where you are kidnapped and sold to the circus.”

Emma grabbed her by the wrist. “Don’t you trust me?” she wheedled.

“Of course not,” Cristina said. “You’re crazy.”

But she let Emma drag her into the store, which was filled with kitschy knickknacks: Fiestaware platters, old china dolls, and, up by the register, racks of vintage jewelry and watches. A second room opened off the first. It was full of clothes—amazing clothes. Secondhand vintage Levi’s, fifties pencil skirts in tweed and bombazine, and tops in silk and lace and crushed velvet.

And in a smaller second room off the main one, the dresses. They looked like hanging butterflies: sheets of red organza, watercolor-printed charmeuse, the hem of a Balmain gown, the froth of a tulle petticoat, like foam on water.

“Didn’t Julian say he needed cuff links?” Cristina said, pulling Emma to a stop by the counter. The salesgirl behind it, wearing a pair of cat’s-eye glasses and a name tag that said
SARAH
, studiously ignored them.

Emma ran her eyes over the display of men’s cuff links—most were joke items, shaped like dice or guns or cats, but there was a section of nicer ones: consignment Paul Smith and Burberry and Lanvin.

As she ran her gaze over them, she felt suddenly shy. Picking out cuff links seemed like something a girlfriend would do. Not that she’d ever done it for Cameron, or anyone else she’d dated even briefly, but she’d never cared enough to want to. When Julian had a girlfriend, Emma knew, she would absolutely be the sort of girl who would pick out cuff links for him. Who would remember his birthday and call him every day. She would adore him. How could she not?

Emma picked up a pair of gold-plated cuff links with black stones set in them, almost blindly. The thought of Julian with a girlfriend sent a pain through her that she couldn’t comprehend.

Setting the cuff links down on the counter, she walked into the small room full of dresses. Cristina followed her, looking worried.

I used to come here with my mom
, Emma thought, running the back of her hand across the rack of satins and silks and bright rayons.
She loved crazy vintage things, old Chanel jackets, beaded flapper dresses
. But out loud all she said was “We have to hurry—we shouldn’t be spending so much time away from the Institute while the investigation’s happening.”

Cristina grabbed up a shimmering cocktail dress in pink brocade sprinkled with tiny gold flowers. “I’m going to try this on.”

She disappeared into a changing booth with a curtain made from a Star Wars bedsheet. Emma pulled another dress from the rack: pale silk with beaded silver straps. Looking at it made her feel the way she did when she looked at a gorgeous sunset or one of Julian’s paintings or his hands moving over the brushes and bottles of paint.

She went into the dressing room to change. When she came out, Cristina was standing in the middle of the room, scowling down at her pink dress. It clung like Saran Wrap to her every curve. “I think it’s too tight,” she said.

“I think it’s supposed to be that tight,” said Emma. “It makes your boobs look great.”

“Emma!” Cristina looked up, scandalized, then gasped. “Oh, you look so lovely!”

Emma touched the ivory-and-silver material of the dress with uncertain hands. White meant death and mourning to Shadowhunters; they rarely wore it casually, though the fact that it was ivory meant she could get away with it. “You think?”

Cristina was smiling at her. “You know, sometimes you are just like I thought you would be, and sometimes you are so different.”

Emma moved to look in the mirror. “What do you mean, what you thought I would be like?”

Cristina picked up a snow globe and frowned at it. “You know, it wasn’t just Mark I heard about before I came here. I heard about you. Everyone said you would be the next Jace Herondale. The next great Shadowhunter warrior.”

“I’m not going to be that,” said Emma. Her own voice sounded calm and small and distant in her ears. She couldn’t believe she was saying what she was saying. The words seemed to be coming out without her thoughts forming them first, as if they were creating their own reality by being spoken. “I’m not special, Cristina. I don’t have extra Angel blood or special powers. I’m an ordinary Shadowhunter.”

“You are not ordinary.”

“I am. I don’t have magic powers, I’m not cursed or blessed. I can do exactly what everyone else can do. The only reason I’m good is because I train.”

The salesgirl, Sarah, stuck her head back around the door, her eyes saucer wide. Emma had forgotten she was there. “Do you need any help?”

“I need so much help, you have no idea,” Emma said. Alarmed, Sarah retreated to her counter.

“This is embarrassing,” Cristina said in a whispered hiss. “She probably thinks we are lunatics. We should go.”

Emma sighed. “I’m sorry, Tina,” she said. “I’ll pay for everything.”

“But I don’t even know if I want this dress!” Cristina called as Emma vanished back into the changing cubicle.

Emma whirled around and pointed at her. “Yes, you do. I was serious about your boobs. They look amazing. I don’t even think I’ve ever seen that much of your boobs before. If I had boobs like that, you better believe I’d show them off.”

“Please stop saying ‘boobs,’” Cristina wailed. “It’s a terrible word. It sounds ridiculous.”

“Maybe,” said Emma, yanking the dressing room door shut. “But they look great.”

Ten minutes later, dresses in shopping bags, they were driving back down the canyon road toward the ocean. Cristina, in the seat next to Emma, sat with her legs crossed demurely at the ankles, not propped up on the dashboard like Emma’s would have been.

All around them the familiar scenery of the canyon rose up: gray rock, green scrub, and chaparral. Oak trees and Queen Anne’s lace. Once, Emma had climbed up into these mountains with Jules and found an eagle’s nest, a tiny cache of the bones of mice and bats inside it.

“You are wrong about why you are good at what you do,” Cristina said. “It is not just training. Everyone trains, Emma.”

“Yeah, but I kill myself training,” Emma said. “It’s just about all I do. I get up and train, and run, and I split my hands on the punching bag, and I train for hours into the night, and I have to, because there is nothing else special about me and nothing else that matters. All there is, is training and finding out who killed my parents. Because they were the ones who thought I was special, and whoever took them away from me—”

“Other people think you are special, Emma,” said Cristina, sounding more like an older sister than ever.

“What I have is
trying
,” said Emma, her voice tinged with bitterness. She was thinking of the tiny bones in the nest, how fragile they’d been, how easily snapped between a pair of fingers. “I can try harder than anyone else in the world. I can make revenge the only thing I have in my life. I can do that, because I have to. But it means it’s all I have.”

“It’s not all you have,” Cristina said. “What you haven’t had is your moment. Your chance to be great. Jace Herondale and Clary Fairchild weren’t heroes in a vacuum—there was a war. They were forced to make choices. Those moments come for all of us. They will come for you, too.” She laced her fingers together. “The Angel has a plan for you. I promise it. You are more prepared than
you think. You have stayed strong not just through training but through the people around you—loving them and being loved. Julian and the others, they have not let you isolate yourself, alone with your revenge and your bitter thoughts. The sea wears down cliffs, Emma, and turns them into sand; so love wears us down and breaks our defenses. You only do not know how much it means, to have people who will fight for you when it goes wrong—”