Lady Midnight

by Cassandra Clare

  "We never get to do anything fun," protested Livvy.

  "I should be allowed to examine the house," Ty said. "You'll miss everything important. All the clues."

  "Thanks for the vote of confidence," Julian said dryly. "Look, Livs, Ty-Ty, we really need you here to go over the photos from the convergence cave. See if you can identify the languages, translate them--"

  "More translating," Livvy said. "Sounds thrilling."

  "It will be fun," Cristina said. "We can make hot chocolate and work in the library." She smiled, and Julian shot her a second grateful look.

  "It's not busywork," Julian promised. "It's because you guys can genuinely do things we can't." He nodded toward the computer. Livvy flushed, and Ty looked pleased.

  Mark, however, didn't. "I should go with you," he said to Jules. "The Courts wished me to be part of the investigation. To accompany you."

  Julian shook his head. "Not tonight. We need to figure out what to do about not being able to use runes on you."

  "I don't need them--" Mark began.

  "You do." There was steel in Julian's voice. "You need glamour runes, if you want to blend in. And you're still injured from last night. Even if you do heal quickly, I saw you reopened your wound in the training room--you were bleeding--"

  "My blood is not your concern," Mark said.

  "It is," said Julian. "That's what it means to be family."

  "Family," Mark began bitterly, and then seemed to realize that his younger siblings were there and were looking at him, silent and still. Cristina, too, was quiet, gazing at Emma across the room, her gaze dark and worried.

  Mark seemed to swallow back whatever he had been about to say. "If I had wanted to take orders, I would have stayed with the Hunt," he said instead, in a low voice, and walked out the door.

  "I think Ty's doubled up on his detective reading," Julian said with a smile. He had his window cranked down, and the air blowing into the car lifted his curling hair off his forehead. "He asked me if I thought the killings were an inside job."

  "Inside what?" Emma smiled.

  She was leaning back in the passenger seat of the car, her booted feet up on the dashboard. The windows were open to the night, and Emma could hear the sounds of the city rising all around them as they idled at a red light.

  They had turned up Sunset off the Coast Highway. At first as they wound through the canyons and into Beverly Hills and Bel Air, the suburbs were quiet, but they had moved into the heart of Hollywood now, the Sunset Strip, lined with expensive restaurants and massive, hundred-foot-high billboards plastered with ads for movies and TV shows. The streets were crowded and noisy: tourists posing for photos with celebrity imitators, street musicians collecting change, pedestrians hurrying back and forth from work.

  Julian seemed more at ease than he had in the past few days, leaning back in his seat, his hands casual on the wheel. Emma knew exactly how he felt. Here, in gear jacket and jeans, with Julian beside her and Cortana in the trunk, she felt like she belonged.

  Emma had tried to bring up Mark, briefly, when they had first settled into the car. Julian had only shaken his head and said, "He's getting adjusted," and that was all. She sensed he didn't want to talk about Mark, and that was fine: She didn't know that she had any solutions to offer. And it was easy, so easy, to slip back into their normal joking banter.

  "I think he was asking if I thought the killer was a Shadowhunter." Traffic was gathering as they reached the intersection of Sunset and Vine, and the car rolled slowly under the palm trees and neon. "I said no--it was obviously someone who knew magic, and I didn't think a Shadowhunter would hire a warlock to murder for them. Mostly we do our own murdering."

  Emma giggled. "You told him Shadowhunters are DIY about their killing?"

  "We're DIY about everything."

  The traffic started up again; Emma glanced down, watching the play of muscle and tendon in Jules's hand as he shifted gears. The car slid forward, and Emma glanced out the window at the people in line at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. She wondered idly what they would think if they knew the two teenagers in the Toyota were actually demon hunters with a trunk full of crossbows, polearms, daggers, katanas, and throwing knives.

  "Everything all right with Diana?" Emma asked.

  "She wanted to talk about Ty." Julian's voice was even, but Emma saw him swallow. "He wants so badly to go to the Scholomance and study. They have access to the libraries of the Spiral Labyrinth, the Silent Brothers' archives--I mean, think of everything we don't know about runes and rituals, the mysteries and puzzles he could solve. But at the same time . . ."

  "He'd be the youngest person there," said Emma. "That would be hard on anyone. Ty's only ever been with us." She touched Julian's wrist, lightly. "I'm glad I never went to the Academy. And the Scholomance is supposed to be much harder. And lonelier. Some of the students have wound up failing out with--well, Clary called it nervous breakdowns. I think it's a mundane term."

  Julian glanced down at the GPS and made a left turn, heading up toward the hills. "How often do you talk to Clary these days?"

  "About once a month." Clary had been calling her to check on her ever since they'd first met in Idris when Emma was twelve. It was one of the few things Emma didn't talk about much with Jules: The conversations with Clary felt like something that belonged just to her.

  "Is she still with Jace?"

  Emma laughed, feeling her tension drain. Clary and Jace were an institution, a legend. They belonged together. "Who'd break up with him?"

  "I might, if he was insufficiently attentive to my needs."

  "Well, she doesn't talk about her love life to me. But yeah, they're still together. If they broke up I might have to stop believing in love entirely."

  "I didn't know you did believe in love," said Jules, and paused, as if he realized what he'd said. "That came out wrong."

  Emma was indignant. "Just because I wasn't in love with Cameron--"

  "You weren't?" Traffic sped up; the car lurched forward. Julian struck the wheel with the heel of his palm. "Look, none of this is my business. Forget it. Forget I asked about Jace and Clary, or Simon and Isabelle--"

  "You didn't ask about Simon and Isabelle."

  "I didn't?" The side of his mouth quirked up. "Isabelle was my first crush, you know."

  "Of course I know." She threw the cap of her water bottle at him. "It was so obvious! You were staring at her at the party after Aline and Helen's wedding."

  He ducked the bottle cap. "I was not."

  "You so were," she said. "Do we need to talk about what we're looking for at Wells's place?"

  "I think we should play it by ear."

  "'The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon, which enables it to strike and destroy its victim,'" said Emma.

  Julian looked at her incredulously. "Was that a quote from The Art of War?"

  "Maybe." Emma felt a happiness so intense it was almost sorrow: She was with Jules, they were joking, everything was the way it should be between parabatai. They had turned onto a series of residential streets: wide mansions twined with flowers rose above high hedges, cocooned behind sweeping driveways.

  "Are you being pithy? You know how I feel about pithiness in my car," Julian said.

  "It's not your car."

  "Either way, we're here," Jules said, pulling the car up to the curb and killing the engine. It was twilight now, not quite full dark, and Emma could see Wells's house, looking like it had in the satellite photos on the computer: the peaks of the roof just rising over the massive wall that surrounded it, covered with draped trellises of bougainvillea.

  Julian hit the button that raised the car windows. Emma looked over at him. "Just about dark. We worried about demonic activity?"

  He checked the glove compartment. "Nothing on the Sensor, but just to be sure, let's rune up."

  "Okay." Emma pushed up her sleeves, holding out her bare arms as Julian drew the pale-white, glimmering stele from his pocket. In the dark o
f the car, he leaned over, put the tip of the stele to her skin, and began to draw. Emma could feel his hair brush against her cheek and neck, and smell the faint scent of cloves that hung around him.

  She looked down, and as the black lines of runes spread across her skin, Emma remembered what Cristina had said about Jules: He has nice hands. She wondered if she'd ever really looked at them before. Were they nice? They were Julian's hands. They were hands that painted and fought; they had never failed him. In that way they were beautiful.

  "All right." Jules sat back, admiring his handiwork. Neat runes of precision and stealth, soundlessness and balance decorated her forearms. Emma drew down her sleeves and reached for her own stele.

  He shivered when the stele touched his skin. It must be cold. "Sorry," Emma whispered, bracing her hand on his shoulder. She could feel the edge of his collarbone under her thumb, the ribbed cotton of his T-shirt soft beneath her touch; she tightened her grip, her fingertips sliding against the bare skin at the edge of his collar. He drew in a sharp breath.

  She stopped. "Did I hurt you?"

  He shook his head. She couldn't see his face. "I'm fine." He reached behind himself and unlocked the driver's side door; a second later he was out of the car and shrugging on his jacket.

  Emma followed him. "But I didn't finish the Sure-Strike rune--"

  He had moved around to the trunk and opened it. He took out his runed crossbow and handed her Cortana and its sheath.

  "It's fine." He closed the trunk. He didn't seem bothered: same Julian, same calm smile. "Besides, I don't need it."

  He raised the crossbow casually and shot. The bolt flew through the air and plunged directly into the security camera over the gate. It blew apart with a whine of shattered metal and a wisp of smoke.

  "Show-off," Emma said, sheathing her sword.

  "I'm your parabatai. I have to show off occasionally. Otherwise no one would understand why you keep me around." An elderly couple appeared from a driveway near them, walking an Alsatian. Emma had to fight the urge to conceal Cortana, though she knew the weapon was glamoured. To the mundanes walking by, she and Julian would look like ordinary teenagers, long sleeves concealing their runes. They passed around the corner of the road and out of sight.

  "I keep you around because I need an audience for my witty remarks," she said as they reached the gates and Jules took out his stele to draw an Open rune.

  The gate popped open. Julian turned sideways to slide through the opening. "What witty remarks?"

  "Oh, you are going to pay for that," Emma muttered, following him. "I am incredibly witty."

  Julian chuckled. They had come to a lined pathway that led up to a large stucco house with enormous arched front doors, two huge panes of glass on either side. The lights lining the path were on, but the house was dark and silent.

  Emma sprang up the steps and peered in through one of the windows; she could see nothing but dark, smudged shapes. "No one home--oh!" She jumped back a step as something flung itself against the window: a lumpy, hair-covered ball. Slime slicked the glass. Emma was already crouching, about to pull a stiletto from her boot. "What is it?" She straightened. "A Raum demon? A--"

  "I think it's a minipoodle," said Julian, the corner of his mouth twitching. "And I don't think it's armed," he added as she glanced down to stare accusingly at what was, yes, definitely a small dog, its face pressed to the glass. "I'm almost positive, in fact."

  Emma hit him on the shoulder, then drew an Open rune on the door. There was the snapping click of the lock, and the door swung open.

  The dog left off licking the window and rushed out, barking. It darted around them in a circle, then lunged toward a fenced area at the far end of the yard. Julian darted off after the canine.

  Emma followed him through ankle-high grass. It was a nice garden, but nobody had taken real care of it. The plants were running wild, the flowered hedges overgrown. There was a pool, bordered by a waist-high ironwork fence, the gate hanging open. As Emma neared it, she could see that Julian was standing by the side of it, very still. It was the kind of pool that had LED lights in it, cycling through a rainbow of garish colors. Rows of pool chairs surrounded it, made of white metal with white cushions, dusted with fallen pine needles and blown jacaranda blossoms.

  Emma slowed as she reached the water. The dog was crouched by the pool ladder, not barking but whimpering. At first Emma thought she was looking at a shadow on the water; then she realized it was a body. A dead woman in a white bikini, floating on the surface of the pool. She was facedown, long black hair drifting around her head, arms dangling at her sides. The purple glow from the pool lights made her skin look bruised.

  "By the Angel, Jules . . . ," Emma breathed.

  It wasn't as if Emma hadn't seen dead bodies before. She'd seen plenty. Mundanes, Shadowhunters, murdered children in the Hall of Accords. Still, there was something plaintive about this body: the woman was tiny, so skinny you could see the lines of her spinal column.

  There was a splash of red against one of the pool chairs. Emma moved toward it, thinking it was blood, then realized it was a Valentino handbag made of bright red intaglio leather, slightly unzipped. A gold wallet had spilled out of it, and a pink phone.

  She glanced at the phone, then picked up the wallet and flicked through it. "Her name's Ava Leigh," she said. "She is--she was--twenty-two. Home address listed as here. Must have been his girlfriend."

  The dog whimpered again and lay down, his paws by the pool's edge. "He thinks she's drowning," Julian said. "He wants us to save her."

  "We couldn't have," Emma said softly. "Look at her phone. None of the calls have been answered in two days. I think she's been dead at least that long. We couldn't have done anything, Jules."

  She put the wallet back into the bag. She was reaching for the handles when she heard it: the click of a crossbow loading.

  Without looking or thinking, she threw herself at Jules, knocking him down. They hit the Spanish tile hard as a bolt whistled by them and vanished into the hedges.

  Julian kicked off against the ground and spun them over, rolling between two of the chairs. The phone Emma had been carrying flew out of her hand; she heard it hit the pool water with a splash and cursed silently to herself. Julian levered himself up, his hands gripping her shoulders; his eyes were wild, his body pressing hers into the ground. "Are you all right? Were you hit?"

  "I wasn't--I'm fine--" she gasped. The dog was huddled by the fence, howling, as another bolt whistled down and struck the corpse in the pool. Ava's body flipped over, baring her swollen, drowning-blackened face to the night sky. One of her arms floated up, as if she were raising it to protect herself. With a brief flash of horror, Emma saw that her right hand was missing; not just missing, but looked as if it had been hacked away, the skin around her wrist ragged and bloodless in the chlorinated water.

  Emma rolled out from under Julian and sprang to her feet. There was a figure standing on the roof of the house; she could see it only in outline. Tall, most likely masculine, dressed all in black, crossbow in hand. He raised it and took aim. Another bolt whistled by.

  Rage settled over Emma, cold and hard. How dare he shoot at them, how dare he shoot at Jules? She took a running jump and cleared the pool. She hurtled over the gate and ran at the house, leaping up to seize hold of the wrought-iron bars covering the lower windows. She levered herself higher, aware that Julian was shouting at her to get down, ignoring where the metal bit into her palms. She swung herself up, then up again, pushing off from the wall to flip herself onto the roof.

  The shingles crunched under her feet as she landed in a crouch. She looked up and caught a quick glimpse of the black-clad figure on the rooftop; he was backing away from her. His face was covered with a mask.

  Emma unsheathed Cortana. The blade glittered long and wicked in the dusk light.

  "What are you?" she demanded. "A vampire? Downworlder? Did you kill Ava Leigh?" She took a step forward; the strange figure backed away. He moved wi
thout alarm, very deliberately, which only angered Emma more. There was a dead girl in the pool below them, and Emma had arrived too late to save her. Her body was thrumming with the desire to do something to fix it.

  Emma narrowed her eyes. "Listen up. I'm a Shadowhunter. You can either surrender to the authority of the Clave, or I'll bury this blade in your heart. Your choice."

  He took a step toward her and for a moment Emma thought it had worked; he was actually giving up. Then he dived suddenly to the side. She lunged forward as he tumbled backward off the roof. He fell silently as a star.

  Emma cursed and ran to the edge of the roof. There was nothing. Silence, darkness; no sign of anything or anyone. She could see the glimmer of the pool. She moved around the side and saw Julian bending down, one of his hands on the dog's head.

  Trust Jules to try to comfort a puppy at a time like this. She braced herself and jumped--the image of the training room flashed behind her eyelids--landing in the overgrown grass with only a slight sting.

  "Jules?" she said, coming closer. With a whimper the dog darted away, into the shadows. "He got away."

  "Yeah?" He straightened up, sounding preoccupied. "What do you think he was doing here?"

  "I don't know; I guessed vampire, but Nightshade keeps a pretty tight leash on them and--Jules?" She heard her voice skip upward an octave as she drew close enough to see that he had one hand pressed against his side. His black gear jacket was torn. "Jules? Are you okay?"

  He drew his hand away from his side. His palm was a welter of blood, black under the blue LED lighting of the pool. "I'm fine," he said. He rose to his feet and took a step toward her--and stumbled. "It's fine."

  Her heart flipped over. He was holding something in his bloody hand, and her insides went cold as she saw what it was. A short metal crossbow bolt, with a wide triangular head like an arrow, wet with blood. He must have pulled it from his side.

  You were never, never supposed to pull an arrow out of your skin: It did more damage coming out than going in. Julian knew that.

  "What did you do?" Emma whispered. Her mouth had gone dry.

  Blood was leaking steadily from the tear in his jacket. "It was burning," he said. "Not like a normal arrow. Emma--"