Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(101)

“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!”