Lady Midnight

by Cassandra Clare

  Her bones felt as if they had turned to glass. They seemed to be shattering all through her body; she crumpled backward, pulling Julian with her, letting the weight of his body push them both down into the sand. She clutched at his shoulders, thought of the disoriented moment when he'd pulled her out of the water, the moment she hadn't quite known who he was. He was stronger, bigger than she remembered. More grown-up than she had let herself know, though every kiss was burning away her memories of the boy he had been.

  When he leaned closer into her, she jumped in surprise at the wet coldness of his shirt. He reached down and grasped the collar, tearing it over his head. When he leaned back down over her, the expanse of his bare skin stunned her, and her hands slid up his sides, over the wings of his shoulder blades, as if she were articulating the shape of him, creating him with the touch of her palms and fingers. The light scars of his old Marks; the heat of his skin, filmed with salty ocean water; the feel of his smooth sea-glass bracelet--he took her breath away with the Julian-ness of him. There was no one else he could be. She knew him by touch, by the way he breathed, by the beat of his heart against hers.

  The touch of her hands was undoing him. She could see him unraveling, piece by piece. Her knees came up to clasp his hips; her hand cupped the bare skin above the waistband of his jeans, gently as the ocean at low tide, and he shuddered against her as if he were dying. She had never seen him like this, not even when he was painting.

  Gasping, he tore his mouth away from hers, forcing himself still, forcing his body to stop moving. She could see what it cost him in his eyes, black with hunger and impatience. In the way that when he drew his hands away, they dug into the sand on either side of her, fingers clawing into the ground. "Emma," he whispered. "You're sure?"

  She nodded and reached for him. He made a sound of desperate relief and gratitude and caught her against him, and this time there was no hesitation. Her arms were open; he went into them and gathered her up against him, shivering down to his bones as she locked her ankles behind his calves, pinning him against her. As she opened herself, making her body a cradle for him to lie against.

  He found her mouth with his again, and as if her lips were connected to every nerve ending in her body, her whole self seemed to spark and dance. So this was what it was supposed to be like, what kissing was supposed to be like, what all of it was supposed to be like. This.

  He leaned in to outline her mouth, her cheek, the sandy curve of her jaw with kisses. He kissed his way down her throat, his breath warm on her skin. Tangling her hands in his wet curls, she stared up in wonder at the sky above them, wheeling with stars, shimmering and cold, and thought that this couldn't be happening, people didn't get things they wanted like this.

  "Jules," she whispered. "My Julian."

  "Always," he whispered, returning to her mouth, "always," and they fell into each other with the inevitability of a wave crashing against the beach. Fire raced up and down Emma's veins as the barriers between them vanished; she tried to press each moment, each gesture into her memory--the feel of his hands closing on her shoulders, the drowning gasp he made, the way he dissolved into her as he lost himself. To the last moment of her life, she thought, she would recall the way he buried his face against her neck and said her name over and over as if every other word had been forgotten forever in the depths of the ocean. To the last hour.

  When the stars stopped spinning, Emma was lying in the curve of Julian's arm, looking up. His dry flannel jacket was spread over them. He was gazing at her, head propped up on one hand. He looked dazed, his eyes half-lidded. His fingers traced slow circles on her bare shoulder. His heart was still racing, slamming against hers. She loved him so much it felt like her chest was cracking open.

  She wanted to tell him so, but the words stuck in her throat. "Was that--" she began. "Was that your first kiss?"

  "No, I've been practicing on random strangers." He grinned, wild and beautiful in the moonlight. "Yes. That was my first kiss."

  A shiver went through Emma. She thought, I love you, Julian Blackthorn. I love you more than starlight.

  "It really wasn't that bad," she said, and smiled at him.

  He laughed and pulled her closer against him. She relaxed into the curve of his body. The air was cold, but she was warm here, in this small circle with Julian, hidden by the outcroppings of rock, wrapped in the flannel jacket that smelled like him. His hand was gentle in her hair. "Shh, Emma. Go to sleep."

  She closed her eyes.

  Emma slept, by the side of the ocean. And she had no nightmares.

  "Emma." There was a hand on her shoulder, shaking her. "Emma, wake up."

  She rolled over and blinked, then froze in surprise. There was no ceiling over her, only bright blue sky. She felt stiff and sore, her skin abraded by sand.

  Julian was hovering over her. He was fully dressed, his face gray-white like scattered ash. His hands fluttered around her, not quite touching her, like Ty's butterflies. "Someone was here."

  At that she did sit up. She was sitting on the beach--a small, bare half circle of a beach, hemmed in on either side by fingers of stone reaching into the ocean. The sand around her was thoroughly churned up, and she blushed, memory crashing into her like a wave. It looked like it was at least midday, though thankfully the beach was deserted. It was familiar, too. They were close to the Institute, closer than she'd thought. Not that she'd thought much.

  She dragged air into her lungs. "Oh," she said. "Oh my God."

  Julian didn't say anything. His clothes were wet, crusted with sand where they folded. Her own clothes were on, Emma realized belatedly. Julian must have dressed her. Only her feet were bare.

  The tide was low, seaweed lying exposed at the waterline. Their footsteps from the night before had long been washed away, but there were other footsteps embedded in the sand. It looked as if someone had climbed over one of the rock walls, walked up to them, and then doubled back and walked away. Two lines of footsteps. Emma stared at them in horror.

  "Someone saw us?" she said.

  "While we were sleeping," said Julian. "I didn't wake up either." His hands knotted at his sides. "Some mundane, I hope, just figuring we were a dumb teenage couple." He let out a breath. "I hope," he said again.

  Flashes of memory of the night before shot through Emma's mind--the cold water, the demons, Julian carrying her, Julian kissing her. Julian and her, lying entwined on the sand.

  Julian. She didn't think she could think of him as Jules again. Jules was her childhood name for him. And they had left their childhood behind.

  He turned to look at her, and she saw the anguish in his sea-colored eyes. "I am so sorry," he whispered. "Emma, I am so, so sorry."

  "Why are you sorry?" she asked.

  "I didn't think." He was pacing, his feet kicking up sand. "About--being safe. Protection. I didn't think about it."

  "I'm protected," she said.

  He whirled to face her. "What?"

  "I have the rune," she said. "And I don't have any diseases, and neither do you, do you?"

  "I--no." The relief on his face was palpable and for some reason made her stomach ache. "That was my first time, Emma."

  "I know," she said in a whisper. "Anyway, you don't need to apologize."

  "I do," he said. "I mean, this is good. We're lucky. But I should have thought of it. I don't have an excuse. I was out of my mind."

  She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

  "I must have been, to do that," he said.

  "To do what?" She was impressed by how clearly and calmly each word came out. Anxiety beat through her like a drum.

  "What we did." He exhaled. "You know what I mean."

  "You're saying what we did was wrong."

  "I meant--" He looked as if he were trying to contain something that wanted to tear its way out of him. "There's nothing wrong with it morally," he said. "It's a stupid Law. But it is a Law. And we can't break it. It's one of the oldest Laws there is."

  "But
it doesn't make sense."

  He looked at her without seeing her, blindly. "The Law is hard, but it is the Law."

  Emma got to her feet. "No," she said. "No Law can control our feelings."

  "I didn't say anything about feelings," said Julian.

  Her throat felt dry. "What do you mean?"

  "We shouldn't have slept together," he said. "I know it meant something to me, I'd be lying if I said it didn't, but the Law doesn't forbid sex, it forbids love. Being in love."

  "I'm pretty sure sleeping together is against the rules too."

  "Yeah, but it's not what they exile you for! It's not what they strip your Marks for!" He raked a hand through his snarled hair. "It's against the rules because--being intimate like that, physically intimate, it opens you up to be emotionally intimate and that's what they care about."

  "We are emotionally intimate."

  "You know what I mean. Don't pretend you don't." There are different kinds of closeness, intimacy. They want us to be close. But they don't want this." He gestured around at the beach as if to encompass all of the night before.

  Emma was shaking. "Eros," she said. "Instead of philia or agape."

  He looked relieved, as if her explanation meant she understood, she agreed. As if they had made some decision together. Emma wanted to scream. "Philia," he said. "That's what we have--friendship love--and I'm sorry if I did anything to screw that up--"

  "I was there too," Emma said, and her voice was as cold as the water.

  He looked at her levelly.

  "We love each other," he said. "We're parabatai, love is part of the bond. And I'm attracted to you. How could I not be? You're beautiful. And it's not like--"

  He broke off, but Emma filled the rest in for him, the words so painful they almost seemed to cut at the inside of her head. It's not like I can meet other girls, not like I can date, you're what there is, you're what's around, Cristina's probably still in love with someone in Mexico, there isn't anyone for me. There's just you.

  "It's not like I'm blind," he said. "I can see you, and I want you, but--we can't. If we do, we'll end up falling in love, and that would be a disaster."

  "Falling in love," Emma echoed. How could he not see she was already fallen, in every way you could be? "Didn't I tell you I loved you? Last night?"

  He shook his head. "We never said we loved each other," he said. "Not once."

  That couldn't be true. Emma searched her memories, as if she were rummaging desperately through her pockets for a lost key. She'd thought it. Julian Blackthorn, I love you more than starlight. She'd thought it but she hadn't said it. And neither had he. We're bound together, he'd said. But not: I love you.

  She waited for him to say, I was out of my mind because you risked your life or You almost died and it made me crazy or any variety of It was your fault. She thought that if he did, she would blow up like an activated land mine.

  But he didn't. He stood looking at her, his flannel jacket shoved up to his elbows, his exposed bare skin red from cold water and scratched with sand.

  She had never seen him look so sad.

  She lifted her chin. "You're right. It's better if we forget it."

  He winced at that. "I do love you, Emma."

  She rubbed her hands together for warmth, thought of the way the ocean wore down even stone walls over the years, wringing fragments out of what had once been impregnable. "I know," she said. "Just not like that."

  The first thing Emma saw when they returned to the Institute--having told Julian the story of her experience at the convergence on their way back from the beach--was that the car she'd left at the cave entrance the night before was parked at the foot of the front steps. The second was that Diana was sitting on the car's hood, looking madder than a hornet.

  "What were you thinking?" she demanded as Emma and Julian stopped dead in their tracks. "Seriously, Emma, have you lost your mind?"

  For a moment Emma felt actually dizzy--Diana couldn't be talking about her and Julian, could she? She wasn't the one who'd found them on the beach? She glanced sideways at Julian, but he was as white-faced with shock as she felt.

  Diana's dark eyes bored into her. "I'm waiting for an explanation," she said. "What made you think it was a good idea to go to the convergence by yourselves?"

  Emma was too surprised to formulate a comeback. "What?"

  Diana's eyes flicked from Julian to Emma and back again. "I didn't get the message about the convergence until this morning," she said. "I raced over there and found the car, empty. Abandoned. I thought--you don't know what I thought, but . . ." Emma felt a stab of guilt. Diana had been worried about her. And about Julian, who had never even gone to the convergence.

  "I'm sorry," Emma said, meaning it. Her conviction of the night before, her resolve that she was doing the right thing in going to the convergence, had evaporated. She felt weary now, and no closer to an answer. "I got the message and just went--I didn't want to wait. And please don't be angry at Julian. He wasn't with me. He found me later."

  "Found you?" Diana looked puzzled. "Found you where?"

  "On the beach," said Emma. "There are doorways in the cave--sort of Portals--and one of them empties right out into the ocean."

  Now Diana's expression was truly concerned. "Emma, you ended up in the water? But you hate the ocean. How did you--"

  "Julian came and pulled me out," said Emma. "He felt me panicking in the water. Parabatai thing." She glanced sideways at Julian, whose gaze was clear and open. Trustworthy. Not hiding anything. "It took us a long time to walk back."

  "Well, finding the seawater is interesting," said Diana, sliding off the car's hood. "I assume it's the same water found with the bodies."

  "How did you get the car back?" Emma asked as they started up the stairs.

  "What you mean, of course, is 'thank you, Diana, for bringing the car back,'" Diana said as they came inside the Institute. She glanced critically up and down Julian's and Emma's wet, sandy clothes, scraped skin, and matted hair. "How about I gather everyone in the library. It's past time for an information exchange."

  Julian cleared his throat. "Why didn't you?"

  Diana and Emma both looked at him in puzzlement. "Why didn't who, what?" Diana asked finally.

  "Why didn't you get the message about the convergence until this morning? My phone was dead, which was stupid of me, but--what about you?"

  "Nothing you need concern yourself with," Diana said shortly. "Anyway, go shower. I get that you have important information, but until you clean off the sand, I don't think I could concentrate on anything but how badly you two must itch."

  Emma meant to change when she got back to her room. She genuinely did. But despite her hours of sleep on the beach, she was exhausted enough that the moment she sat down on the bed, she collapsed.

  Hours later, after a fast shower, she threw on clean jeans and a tank top and raced out into the hallway, feeling like a mundane teenager late for class. She flew down the hall to the library to find everyone else already there; in fact, they looked as if they'd been there for a while. Ty was sitting at one end of the longest library table in a pool of afternoon sunshine, a pile of papers in front of him. Mark was by his side; Livvy was balanced on top of the table, barefoot, dancing back and forth with her saber. Diana and Dru were amusing Tavvy with a book.

  "Diana said you went to the convergence," said Livvy, waving her saber as Emma came in. Cristina, who had been standing by a shelf of books, gave her an uncharacteristically cool look.

  "Fighting Mantids without me," Mark said, and smiled. "Hardly fair."

  "There weren't any Mantids," said Emma. She hopped up onto the table across from Ty, who was still scribbling, and launched into the story of what she had found in the cave. Halfway through her recitation, Julian came in, his hair as damp as Emma's. He was wearing a jade-colored T-shirt that turned his eyes dark green. Their eyes met, and Emma forgot what she was saying.

  "Emma?" Cristina prompted after a long pause. "You wer
e saying? You found a dress?"

  "This doesn't sound very likely," said Livvy. "Who keeps a dress in a cave?"

  "It might have been a ceremonial outfit," Emma said. "It was an elaborate robe--and very elaborate jewels."

  "So maybe the necromancer is a woman," said Cristina. "Maybe it really is Belinda."

  "She didn't strike me as that powerful," said Mark.

  "You can sense power?" asked Emma. "Is that a faerie thing?"

  Mark shook his head, but the half smile he gave felt to Emma like a sliver of Faerie. "Just a feeling."

  "But speaking of faerie things, Mark did give us the key to translate more of the markings," said Livvy.

  "Really?" said Emma. "What do they say?"

  Ty looked up from the papers. "He gave us the second line, and after that it was easier. Livvy and I worked out most of the third. From looking at the patterns of the markings, it seems to be about five or six lines, repeated."

  "Is it a spell?" Emma said. "Malcolm said it was probably a summoning spell."

  Ty rubbed at his face, leaving a smear of ink across one cheekbone. "It doesn't look like a summoning spell. Maybe Malcolm made a mistake. We've done a lot better than him on the translation," he added proudly as Livvy put her saber away and crouched down on the table beside him. She reached out to rub the ink from his cheek with her sleeve.

  "Malcolm doesn't have Mark," said Julian, and Mark gave Julian a quick, surprised smile of gratitude.

  "Or Cristina," said Mark. "I would never have figured out the connection if Cristina had not realized it was an issue of translation."

  Cristina blushed. "So how does the third line go, Tiberius?"

  Ty batted Livvy's hand away and recited:

  First the flame and then the flood,

  In the end, it's Blackthorn blood.

  Seek thou to forget what's past--

  "That's it," he finished. "That's what we have so far."

  "Blackthorn blood?" echoed Diana. She had climbed up onto a library ladder to hand a book down to Tavvy.

  Emma frowned. "I don't really love the sound of that."

  "There's no indication of traditional blood magic," said Julian. "None of the bodies had those kinds of cuts or wounds."

  "I wonder about the mention of the past," said Mark. "These kind of rhymes, in Faerie, often encode a spell--like the ballad of 'Thomas the Rhymer.' It is both a story and instructions on how to break someone free of Faerie."