"Mark," Julian breathed out, and Emma thought of the nightmares Jules had woken up from over the years, screaming for his brother, for Mark, and how hopeless he had sounded, and how lost. He was pale now, but his eyes were shining as if he were looking at a miracle. And it was a sort of miracle, Emma thought: The faeries didn't give back what they had taken.
Or at least, they never gave it back unchanged.
A chill ran suddenly up Emma's veins, but she didn't make a sound. She didn't move as Julian took a step toward his brother, and then another one, and then spoke, his voice breaking. "Mark," he whispered. "Mark. It's me."
Mark looked Julian straight in the face. There was something about his two-colored eyes; both eyes had been blue when Emma had last seen him, and the bifurcation seemed to speak to something broken inside him, like a piece of pottery cracked along the glaze. He looked at Julian--taking in his height, his broad shoulders and lanky frame, his tousled brown hair, his Blackthorn eyes-- and he spoke for the first time.
His voice sounded rough, scraped, as if he had not used it in days.
"Father?" he said, and then, as Julian drew in a startled breath, Mark's eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed to the floor in a dead faint.
Mark's bedroom was full of dust.
They had left it untouched for years after he disappeared. Finally, on what would have been his eighteenth birthday, Julian had thrown the door of the room open and cleared it out in a savage spree. Mark's clothes, toys, games, all had gone into storage. The room was cleaned out and stripped down, a bare, empty space waiting for decoration.
Emma moved around, pushing back dusty curtains and opening windows, letting in light, while Julian, who had carried his brother up the stairs, set Mark down on the bed.
The blankets were pulled tight, a thin layer of dust across the coverlet. It puffed up as he set Mark down; Mark coughed but didn't stir.
Emma turned away from the windows; open, they flooded the room with light and turned the dust motes in the air into dancing creatures.
"He's so thin," Julian said. "He hardly weighs anything at all."
Someone who didn't know him might have thought he was expressionless: His face betrayed only a kind of tightening of the muscles, his soft mouth compressed into a hard line. It was the way he looked when he was struck to the heart with some strong emotion and was trying to hide it usually from his younger siblings.
Emma came over to the bed. For a moment they both stood looking down at Mark. Indeed, the curves of elbows and knees and collarbone were painfully sharp under the clothes he wore: ragged jeans and a T-shirt gone almost transparent with years and washing. Tangled blond hair half-covered his face.
"Is it true?" said a small voice from the doorway.
Emma whirled around. Ty and Livia had come into the room, only a little way. Cristina was in the doorway behind them; she looked at Emma as if to say she'd tried to hold them back. Emma shook her head. She knew how impossible it was to stop the twins when they wanted to be part of something.
It was Livvy who had spoken. She looked across the room now, past Emma, to where Mark lay on the bed. She sucked in a breath. "It is true."
"It can't be." Ty's hands were fluttering at his sides. He was counting on his fingers, one to ten, ten to one. The gaze he fixed on his unconscious brother was full of disbelief. "The Fair Folk don't give back what they take."
"No," Julian said, his voice gentle, and Emma wondered not for the first time how he could be so gentle when she knew he must feel like screaming and flying apart into a thousand pieces. "But sometimes they give you back what belongs to you."
Ty said nothing. His hands were still fluttering in their repetitive movements. There had been a time when Ty's father had tried to train him to immobility, had held his son's hands tightly at his sides when he was upset and said, "Still, still." It had panicked Ty into throwing up. Julian never did that. He just said everyone got butterflies when they were nervous; some people got them in their stomachs, and Ty showed his in his hands. Ty had been pleased by that. He loved moths, butterflies, bees--anything with wings.
"He doesn't look like I remember," said a tiny voice. It was Dru, who had edged into the room around Cristina. She was holding hands with Tavvy.
"Well," said Emma. "Mark is five years older now."
"He doesn't look older," said Dru. "He just looks different."
There was a silence. Dru was right. Mark didn't look older, certainly not five years older. Partly it was because he was so thin, but there was more to it than that.
"He's been in Faerie all these years," Julian said. "And time-- time works differently there."
Ty stepped forward. His gaze raked the bed, examining his brother. Drusilla hung back. She'd been eight when Mark had gone; Emma couldn't imagine what her memories of him were like-- cloudy and blurred, probably. And as for Tavvy--Tavvy had been two. To him the boy in the bed would be a total stranger.
But Ty. Ty would remember. Ty moved closer to the bed, and Emma could almost see the quick mind working behind his gray eyes. "That would make sense. There are all sorts of stories about people vanishing for a night with the faeries and coming back to find a hundred years have passed. Five years could have been like two years for him. He looks about the same age as you, Jules."
Julian cleared his throat. "Yeah. Yeah, he does."
Ty cocked his head to the side. "Why did they bring him back?"
Julian hesitated. Emma didn't move; she didn't know, any more than he did, how to tell the children who were looking at them with wide eyes that the lost brother who appeared to have been returned to them forever might be here only temporarily.
"He's bleeding," Dru said.
"What?" Julian tapped the witchlight lamp at the side of the bed and the glow in the room intensified to a hot brightness. Emma drew in her breath. The side of Mark's ragged white T-shirt, at his shoulder, was red with blood--a patch that was slowly spreading.
"Stele," Julian barked, holding out his hand. He was already pulling at his brother's shirt, baring his shoulder and collarbone, where a half-healed gash had opened. Blood was trickling from the wound, not fast, but Tavvy made an inarticulate sound of distress.
Emma pulled her stele from her belt and threw it. She didn't say anything; she didn't need to. Julian's hand came up and he caught it out of the air. He bent to press the tip to Mark's skin, to begin the healing rune--
Mark screamed.
His eyes flew open, bright and crazed, and he thrashed out at the air with his stained, dirty, bloody hands.
"Get it away," he snarled, struggling upright. "Get it away, get that thing away from me!"
"Mark--"
Julian reached for his brother, but Mark batted him away. He might have been thin, but he was strong; Julian stumbled, and Emma felt it like a burst of pain in the back of her head. She dashed forward, putting herself between the two brothers.
She was about to shout at Mark, to tell him to stop, when she caught sight of his face. His eyes were wide and white with fear, his hand clutched to his chest--there was something there, something that glittered at the end of a cord around his throat--and then he hurled himself off the bed, his body jerking, hands and feet scrabbling at the hardwood.
"Move back," Julian said to his siblings, not shouting, but his voice quick and authoritative. They scrambled away, scattering. Emma caught a glimpse of Tavvy's unhappy face as Dru lifted him off his feet and carried him out of the room.
Mark had darted into the corner of the bedroom, where he froze, his hands wrapped around his knees, his back pressed hard to the wall. Julian started after his brother, then stopped, the stele dangling helplessly from his hand.
"Don't touch me with that," Mark said, and his voice--very recognizably Mark's voice, and very cold and precise--was shockingly at odds with the filthy scarecrow look of him. He held them at bay with his glare.
"What's wrong with him?" Livvy asked in a near whisper.
"It's the stele
." It was Julian, voice soft.
"But why?" said Emma. "How can a Shadowhunter be afraid of a stele?"
"You call me afraid?" demanded Mark. "Insult me again and find your blood spilled, girl."
"Mark, this is Emma," Julian said. "Emma Carstairs."
Mark pressed himself farther back into the wall. "Lies," he said. "Lies and dreams."
"I'm Julian," Jules said. "Your brother Julian. And that's Tiberius--"
"My brother Tiberius is a child!" Mark shouted, suddenly livid, his hands clawing behind him at the wall. "He is a little boy!"
There was a horrified silence. "I'm not," said Ty, finally, into the quiet. His hands were fluttering at his sides, pale butterflies in the dim light. "I'm not a child."
Mark said nothing. He closed his eyes, and tears slid out from beneath his lids, tracking down his face, mixing with the dirt.
"Enough." To everyone's surprise, it was Cristina who had spoken. She looked embarrassed as everyone turned to look at her, but stood her ground, chin up, straight-backed. "Can't you see this is tormenting him? If we were to go into the hall--"
"You go," said Julian, looking at Mark. "I'll stay here."
Cristina shook her head. "No." She sounded apologetic but firm. "All of us." She paused as Julian hesitated.
"Please," she said.
She crossed the room and opened the door. Emma watched in amazement as the Blackthorns, one by one, filed out of the room; a moment later they were all standing in the corridor, and Cristina was shutting the door of Mark's room behind her.
"I don't know," Julian said immediately as the door clicked shut. "Leaving him alone in there--"
"It's his room," Cristina said. Emma stared at her in amazement; how could she be so calm?
"But he doesn't remember it," Livvy said, looking agitated. "He doesn't remember--anything."
"He does remember," Emma said, laying a hand on Livvy's shoulder. "It's just that everything he remembers has changed."
"We haven't." Livvy looked so woebegone that Emma pulled her close and kissed the top of her head, which was no mean feat since Livvy was only an inch shorter than her.
"Oh, you have," she said. "We all have. And so has Mark."
Ty looked agitated. "But the room is dusty," he said. "We threw out his things. He'll think we forgot him, that we don't care."
Julian winced. "I kept his things. They're in one of the storerooms on the ground floor."
"Good." Cristina brought her hands together sharply. "He'll need them. And more. Clothes to replace the ones he's wearing. Anything of his that was kept. Anything that'll seem familiar. Photos, or things he might remember."
"We can get those," said Livvy. "Me and Ty."
Ty looked relieved to have been given a specific task. He and Livvy headed downstairs, their voices a low murmur.
Julian, looking after them, exhaled raggedly--mingled tension and relief. "Thanks for giving them something to do."
Emma reached out to squeeze Cristina's hand. She felt oddly proud, as if she wanted to point to Cristina and say: "Look, my friend knows exactly what to do!"
"How do you know exactly what to do?" she asked aloud, and Cristina blinked.
"This is my field of study, remember," Cristina said. "Faerie and the results of the Cold Peace. Of course the Folk have returned him to you with demands, that is part of their cruelty. He needs time to recover, to begin to recognize this world and his life again. Instead they would thrust him back into it as if it would be easy for him to be a Shadowhunter again."
Julian leaned back against the wall beside the door. Emma could see the dark fire in his eyes, banked under his lowered eyelids. "They injured him," he said. "Why?"
"So you would do what you did," said Emma. "So you would get a stele."
He cursed, short and harsh. "So I would see what they did to him, how he hates me?"
"He doesn't hate you," said Cristina. "He hates himself. He hates that he is Nephilim, because they would have taught that to him. Hate for hate. They are an old people and that is their idea of justice."
"How is Mark?" It was Diana, emerging at the top of the stairs. She hurried toward them, her skirts whispering around her ankles. "Is someone in there with him?"
As Julian explained what had happened, Diana listened silently. She was buckling on her weapons belt. She had put on boots, and her hair was tied back. A leather satchel was slung over her shoulder.
"Hopefully he can rest," she said when Julian finished. "Kieran said the journey here took them two days through Faerie, no sleep, he's probably exhausted."
"Kieran?" said Emma. "It's weird calling gentry faeries by their first names. He is gentry, right?"
Diana nodded. "Kieran's a prince of Faerie; he didn't say so, but it's obvious. Iarlath is from the Unseelie Court, not a prince, but some sort of Court member. You can tell."
Julian glanced toward the door of his brother's room. "I should go back in there--"
"No," Diana said. "You and Emma are going to Malcolm Fade's." She fished into her satchel and came out with the faerie documents that Kieran had given to her earlier. Up close Emma could see that they were two sheets of parchment, thin as onionskin. The ink on them looked as if it had been carved there. "Take this to him. See what he can make of it."
"Now?" Emma said. "But--"
"Now," said Diana flatly. "The Folk have given you--given us-- three weeks. Three weeks with Mark to solve this. Then they take him back."
"Three weeks?" Julian echoed. "That's not nearly enough time."
"I could go with them," Cristina said.
"I need you here, Cristina," said Diana. "Someone has to watch over Mark, and it can't be one of the children. And it can't be me. I have to go."
"Go where?" Emma demanded.
But Diana only shook her head, unforthcoming. It was a familiar wall. Emma had crashed against it more than once. "It's important," was all Diana said. "You'll have to trust me."
Julian said nothing. Emma suspected Diana's aloofness bothered him as much, if not more, than it bothered her, but he never showed it.
"But this changes things," Emma said, and she fought down the emotion in her voice, the spark of relief, even triumph, that she knew she shouldn't feel. "Because of Mark. Because of Mark, you're willing to let us try to find out who did this."
"Yes." For the first time since she'd come into the hallway, Diana looked directly at Emma. "You must be pleased," she said. "You got exactly what you wanted. We've got no choice now. We'll have to investigate these killings, and we'll have to do it without the knowledge of the Clave."
"I didn't make this happen," Emma protested.
"No situation in which you have no choice is a good one, Emma," Diana said. "Which you will eventually learn. I only hope it isn't too late. You might think this is a good thing that's happened, but I can assure you it isn't." She turned away from Emma, fixing her attention on Julian. "As you well know, Julian, this is an illegal investigation. The Cold Peace forbids cooperation with the Fair Folk, and certainly forbids what amounts to working for them, no matter the inducement. It's to our advantage to figure this out as quickly and cleanly as we can, so the Clave has as little opportunity as possible to find out what we're doing."
"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 se
rious. "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.
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