Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(13)

She leaned on the railing now and looked down, Cristina beside her. Institutes were built to impress: They were meeting places for Shadowhunters, the heart of Conclaves—communities of local Nephilim. The massive entryway, a square room whose focal point was the enormous staircase that led up to the landing and the second floor, had a black-and-white marble floor and was decorated with uncomfortable-looking furniture that no one ever sat in. It seemed like the entrance of a museum.

From the landing you could see that the white and black tiles that patterned the floor formed the shape of the Angel Raziel, rising from the waters of Lake Lyn in Idris, holding two of the Mortal Instruments—a flashing sword and a gold-encrusted cup.

It was an image every Shadowhunter child knew. A thousand years ago the Angel Raziel had been summoned by Jonathan Shadowhunter, the father of all Nephilim, to put down a plague of demons. Raziel had gifted Jonathan with the Mortal Instruments and the Gray Book, in which all runes were inscribed. He had also mixed his blood with human blood and given it to Jonathan and his followers to drink, allowing their skin to bear runes and creating the first of the Nephilim. The image of Raziel rising was sacred to Nephilim: It was called the Triptych and was found in places where Shadowhunters met or where they had died.

The image on the floor of the Institute’s entryway was a memorial. When Sebastian Morgenstern and his faerie army had stormed the Institute, the floor had been plain marble. After the Dark War, the Blackthorn children had returned to the Institute to find that the room where so many had died was already being torn up. The stones where Shadowhunters had bled were replaced, and the mural put in to commemorate those who had been lost.

Every time Emma walked on it, she was reminded of her parents and of Julian’s father. She didn’t mind—she didn’t want to forget.

“When you said they are and they aren’t, did you mean because Arthur was here?” Cristina asked. She was looking thoughtfully down on the Angel.

“Definitely not.” Arthur Blackthorn was the head of the Los Angeles Institute. At least, that was his title. He was a classicist, obsessed with the mythology of Greece and Rome, constantly locked in the attic with bits of old pottery, moldering books, and endless essays and monographs. Emma didn’t think she’d ever seen him take a direct interest in a Shadowhunter issue. She could count on one hand the number of times she and Cristina had seen him since Cristina’s arrival at the Institute. “Although I’m impressed you remember he lives here.”

Cristina rolled her eyes.

“Don’t roll your eyes. It punctures my dramatic moment. I want my dramatic moment unpunctured.”

“What dramatic moment?” Cristina demanded. “Why have you dragged me out here when I want to shower and change out of this gear? Besides, I need coffee.”

“You always need coffee,” said Emma, moving back toward the corridor and the other wing of the house. “It’s a debilitating addiction.”

Cristina said something uncomplimentary under her breath in Spanish, but she followed Emma nonetheless, her curiosity clearly winning out. Emma spun around so she could walk backward, like a tour guide.

“Okay, most of the family is in the south wing,” she said. “First stop, Tavvy’s room.” The door of Octavian Blackthorn’s room was already open. He wasn’t that invested in privacy, being only seven. Emma leaned in, and Cristina, looking puzzled, leaned in beside her.

The room contained a small bed with a brightly striped coverlet, a playhouse nearly as tall as Emma, and a tent full of books and toys. “Tavvy has nightmares,” Emma said. “Sometimes Julian comes and sleeps in the tent with him.”

Cristina smiled. “Di—my mother used to do that for me when I was a little girl.”

The next room was Drusilla’s. Dru was thirteen and obsessed with horror movies. Books about slasher films and serial killers littered the floor. The walls were black, and vintage horror posters were pasted up over the windows. “Dru loves horror movies,” said Emma. “Anything with the word ‘blood’ or ‘terror’ or ‘prom’ in it. Why do they call it a prom, I wonder—”

“It’s short for ‘promenade,’” said Cristina.

“Why do you speak English so much better than I do?”

“That wasn’t English,” Cristina pointed out, as Emma darted farther down the hall. “That was French.”

“The twins have rooms across from each other.” Emma gestured at two closed doors. “This is Livvy.” She swung a door open to reveal a beautifully clean and decorated bedroom. Someone had artfully covered the headboard with whimsical fabric decorated with a pattern of teacups. Bright costume jewelry hung from screens nailed to the wall. Books about computers and programming languages were stacked in careful rows by her bed.

“Programming languages,” Cristina exclaimed. “Does she like computers?”

“She and Ty,” said Emma. “Ty likes computers, he likes the way they organize patterns so that he can analyze them, but he’s actually not great at math. Livvy does the math and they tag team.”

The next room was Ty’s. “Tiberius Nero Blackthorn,” said Emma. “I think his parents may have gone a little overboard with the name. It’s like naming someone Magnificent Bastard.”

Cristina giggled. Ty’s room was neat, with books lined up not in alphabetical order but by color. Colors that Ty liked the most, like blue and gold and green, were at the front of the room and near the bed. Colors he didn’t like—orange and purple—were relegated to nooks and spaces by the window. It might have looked haphazard to someone else, but Emma knew that Ty was aware of the location of every volume.