Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(14)

On the bedside table were his most beloved books: Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Beside them were a collection of small toys. Julian had made them for Ty years before when he found that having something in his hand calmed Ty down and helped him focus. There was a squiggly ball of pipe cleaners, and a black plastic cube made up of clicking parts that could be twisted into different patterns.

Cristina cast a look at Emma’s wry-fond expression and said, “You’ve talked about Tiberius before. He’s the one who loves animals.”

Emma nodded. “He’s always outside, bothering lizards and squirrels.” She waved her arm to indicate the desert that spread out behind the Institute—unspoiled land, without houses or human occupation, that stretched to the ridge of mountains that separated the beach from the Valley. “Hopefully he’s having fun in England, collecting tadpoles and frogs and toads-in-the-hole. . . .”

“That’s a kind of food!”

“Can’t be,” Emma said, moving down the hall.

“It’s pudding!” Cristina objected as Emma found the next door and opened it. The room inside was painted almost the exact same blue as the sea and sky outside. During the day it looked as if it were part of them, floating in a blue forever. Murals covered the walls— intricate patterns, and along the whole wall that faced the desert, the outline of a castle wrapped by a high wall of thorns. A prince rode toward it, his head down, his sword broken.

“La Bella Durmiente,” said Cristina. Sleeping Beauty. “But I did not remember it being so sad, or the prince so defeated.” She glanced at Emma. “Is he a sorrowful boy, Julian?”

“No,” Emma said, only half paying attention. She hadn’t come into Jules’s room since he’d gone. It looked like he hadn’t cleaned up before he left, and there were clothes on the floor, half-done sketches scattered over the desk, even a mug on the nightstand that probably held coffee that had long since molded. “Not depressed or anything like that.”

“Depressed is not the same as sad,” Cristina observed.

But Emma didn’t want to think about Julian being sad, not now, not when he was so close to coming home. Now that it was past midnight, he was technically coming home tomorrow. She felt a shiver of excitement and relief.

“Come on.” She went out of the room and across the hall, Cristina following. Emma put her hand against a closed door. It was wood, like the others, the surface chipped as if no one had cleaned or sanded it in a long time.

“This was Mark’s room,” she said.

Every Shadowhunter knew Mark Blackthorn’s name. The half-faerie, half-Shadowhunter boy who had been taken during the Dark War and made a part of the Wild Hunt, the most vicious of the fey. The ones who rode through the sky once a month, preying on humans, visiting the scenes of battle, feeding on fear and death like murderous hawks.

Mark had always been gentle. Emma wondered whether he still was anymore.

“Mark Blackthorn was part of the reason I came here,” Cristina said, a little shyly. “It has always been my hope that one day I might be part of brokering a better treaty than the Cold Peace. Something more fair to Downworlders and those Shadowhunters who might love them.”

Emma felt her eyes widen. “I didn’t know. You never told me that.”

Cristina gestured around them. “You have shared something with me,” she said. “You have shared the Blackthorns. I thought I should share something with you.”

“I’m glad you came here,” Emma said impulsively, and Cristina blushed. “Even if it was partly for Mark. And even if you won’t tell me anything else about why.”

Cristina shrugged. “I like Los Angeles.” She gave Emma a sly sideways smile. “Are you absolutely sure you don’t want bad movies and ice cream?”

Emma took a deep breath. She remembered Julian telling her once that when things got to be too much, he imagined locking certain situations and emotions away in a box. Shut them away, he’d said, and they won’t bother you. They’re gone.

She imagined, now, taking her memories of the body in the alley, of Sebastian Morgenstern and the Clave, her breakup with Cameron, her need for answers, her anger at the world over her parents’ deaths, and her eagerness to see Julian and the others tomorrow, and locking them up in a box. She imagined placing the box somewhere she could get to it easily, somewhere she could find it and open it again.

“Emma?” Cristina said anxiously. “Are you all right? You look a little as if you might throw up.”

Click went the lock on the box. In her mind, Emma set it aside; back in the world, she smiled at Cristina. “Ice cream and bad movies sounds great,” she said. “Let’s go.”

The sky above the ocean was streaked with the pink and rose of sunset. Emma slowed from a run to a jog, gasping, her heart pounding in her chest.

Usually Emma trained in the afternoon and evening and ran in the early morning, but she’d woken up late after staying up nearly all night with Cristina. She’d spent the day feverishly rearranging her evidence, calling Johnny Rook to cajole further details about the murders out of him, writing up notes for her wall, and waiting impatiently for Diana to turn up.

Unlike most tutors, Diana didn’t live in the Institute with the Blackthorns—she had her own house in Santa Monica. Technically, Diana didn’t need to be at the Institute at all today, but Emma’d sent her at least six texts. Maybe seven. Cristina had stopped her from sending eight, and suggested she go for a run to get rid of her anxiety.