Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(142)

“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.”

For a moment Diana’s face was arrested midexpression, as if she had either suddenly realized or suddenly remembered something.

“Diana?” Julian said. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” She climbed down from the ladder and dusted off her clothes. “I need to make a call.”

“Who are you calling?” Julian asked, but Diana only shook her head, her hair brushing her shoulders.

“I’ll be back,” she said, and slipped out the library door.

“But what does it mean?” Emma said to the room at large. “In the end, Blackthorn blood what?”

“And if it’s a faerie rhyme, then shouldn’t they know if there’s more of it?” Dru spoke up from the corner where she was busy distracting Tavvy. “The Fair Folk, I mean. They’re meant to be on our side for this.”

“I have sent a message,” Mark said guardedly. “But I will tell you, I only ever heard those two lines of it.”

“The most significant thing it means is that somehow this situation—the murders, the bodies, the Followers—is tied to this family.” Julian looked around. “Somehow, it’s connected to us. To the Blackthorns.”

“That would explain why all this is happening in Los Angeles,” said Mark. “It is our home.”

Emma saw Julian’s expression flicker slightly, and knew what he was thinking: that Mark had spoken of Los Angeles as a place they all lived, not a place where everyone lived but him. That he had spoken of it as home.

There was a loud buzzing sound. The map of Los Angeles on the table had started to vibrate. What looked like a small red dot was moving across it. “Sterling’s left his house,” Cristina said, reaching for the map.

“Belinda Belle said he had two days,” said Julian. “That could mean the hunt starts tomorrow, or it could mean tonight, depending on how they’re counting. Anyway, we can’t assume.”

“Cristina and I will follow him,” Emma said. She was desperate to get out of the house suddenly, desperate to clear her head, desperate even to get away from Julian.

Mark frowned. “We should go with you—”

“No!” Emma said, hopping down from the table. Everyone turned to look at her in surprise; she had spoken with more force than she meant to—the truth was, she wanted to talk to Cristina alone. “We’re going to have to take it in shifts,” she said. “We’re going to have to tail Sterling twenty-four/seven until something happens, and if we all go every time, we’ll just end up with everyone exhausted. Cristina and I will go for a while, and then we can switch off with Julian and Mark, or Diana.”

“Or me and Ty,” suggested Livvy sweetly.

Julian’s eyes were troubled. “Emma, are you sure—”

“Emma is right,” Cristina said, unexpectedly. “Taking shifts is the cautious thing to do.”

Cautious. Emma couldn’t remember that word being applied to her in recent history. Julian glanced away, hiding his expression. At last, he said, “Fine. You win. You two go. But if you need any backup, swear that you’ll call right away.”

His gaze locked with Emma’s as he spoke. The others were talking, discussing how they should search the library, look back through books detailing different kinds of spells, how long it would take to finish the rest of the translation, whether Malcolm might come to help them, whether they should order vampire pizza.

“Come on, Emma,” said Cristina, rising to her feet and folding the map into her jacket pocket. “We should get going. We need to change into gear and catch up to Sterling—he’s heading toward the freeway.”

Emma nodded and turned to follow Cristina. She could feel Julian’s gaze on her, like a sharp point between her shoulder blades. Don’t turn back to look at him, she told herself, but she couldn’t help it; at the door, she turned, and the look on his face almost undid her.

He looked like she felt. Hollow and bled dry. It wasn’t that she was walking away from the boy she loved with a thousand words unsaid between them, Emma thought, though it was true that she was doing that. It was that she was terrified that a rift had opened between her and the person who had been her best friend as long as she could remember. And from the look of it, Julian was afraid of the same thing.