Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(2)

“Hey, Wren,” he said. He doubted it was her real name, but it was what everyone at the Market called her.

“Hey, pretty boy.” She moved aside to make room for him, her bracelets and anklets jingling. “What brings you to my humble abode?”

He slid down beside her on the ground. His jeans were worn, holes in the knees. He wished he could keep the cash his father had given him to buy himself a few new clothes. “Dad needed me to break two fifties.”

“Shh.” She waved a hand at him. “There are people here who’d cut your throat for two fifties and sell your blood as dragon fire.”

“Not me,” Kit said confidently. “No one here would touch me.” He leaned back. “Unless I wanted them to.”

“And here I thought I was all out of shameless flirting charms.”

“I am your shameless flirting charm.” He smiled at two people walking by: a tall, good-looking boy with a streak of white in his dark hair and a brunette girl whose eyes were shaded by sunglasses. They ignored him. But Wren perked up at the sight of the two Market-goers behind them: a burly man and a woman with brown hair hanging in a rope down her back.

“Protection charms?” Wren said winningly. “Guaranteed to keep you safe. I’ve got gold and brass too, not just silver.”

The woman bought a ring with a moonstone in it and moved on, chattering to her partner. “How’d you know they were werewolves?” Kit asked.

“The look in her eye,” said Wren. “Werewolves are impulse buyers. And their glances skip right over anything silver.” She sighed. “I’m doing a bang-up business in protection charms since those murders started up.”

“What murders?”

Wren made a face. “Some kind of crazy magic thing. Dead bodies turning up all covered in demon languages. Burned, drowned, hands chopped off—all sorts of rumors. How have you not heard about it? Don’t you pay attention to gossip?”

“No,” Kit said. “Not really.” He was watching the werewolf couple as they made their way toward the north end of the Market, where the lycanthropes tended to gather to buy whatever it was they needed—tableware made out of wood and iron, wolfsbane, tear-away pants (he hoped).

Even though the Market was meant to be a place where Downworlders mingled, they tended to group together by type. There was the area where vampires gathered to buy flavored blood or seek out new subjugates from among those who’d lost their masters. There were the vine-and-flower pavilions where faeries drifted, trading charms and whispering fortunes. They kept back from the rest of the Market, forbidden to do business like the others. Warlocks, rare and feared, occupied stalls at the very end of the Market. Every warlock bore a mark proclaiming their demonic heritage: some had tails, some wings or curling horns. Kit had once glimpsed a warlock woman who had been entirely blue-skinned, like a fish.

Then there were those with the Sight, like Kit and his father, ordinary folk gifted with the ability to see the Shadow World, to pierce through glamours. Wren was one of them: a self-taught witch who’d paid a warlock for a course of training in basic spells, but she kept a low profile. Humans weren’t supposed to practice magic, but there was a thriving underground trade in teaching it. You could make good money, provided you weren’t caught by the—

“Shadowhunters,” Wren said.

“How did you know I was thinking about them?”

“Because they’re right over there. Two of them.” She jerked her chin to the right, her eyes bright with alarm.

In fact the whole Market was tensing up, people moving to casually slide their bottles and boxes of poisons and potions and death’s-head charms out of sight. Leashed djinn crept behind their masters. The peris had stopped dancing and were watching the Shadowhunters, their pretty faces gone cold and hard.

There were two of them, a boy and a girl, probably seventeen or eighteen. The boy was red-haired, tall, and athletic-looking; Kit couldn’t see the girl’s face, just masses of blond hair, cascading to her waist. She wore a golden sword strapped across her back and walked with the kind of confidence you couldn’t fake.

They both wore gear, the tough black protective clothing that marked them out as Nephilim: part-human, part-angel, the uncontested rulers over every supernatural creature on earth. They had Institutes—like massive police stations—in nearly every big city on the planet, from Rio to Baghdad to Lahore to Los Angeles. Most Shadowhunters were born what they were, but they could make humans into Shadowhunters too if they felt like it. They’d been desperate to fill out their ranks since they’d lost so many lives in the Dark War. The word was they’d kidnap anyone under nineteen who showed any sign of being decent potential Shadowhunter material.

Anyone, in other words, who had the Sight.

“They’re heading to your dad’s booth,” Wren whispered. She was right. Kit tensed as he saw them turn down the row of stalls and head unerringly toward the sign that read JOHNNY ROOK’S.

“Get up.” Wren was on her feet, shooing Kit into a standing position. She leaned down to fold up her merch inside the cloth they’d been sitting on. Kit noticed an odd drawing on the back of her hand, a symbol like lines of water running underneath a flame. Maybe she’d been doodling on herself. “I’ve got to go.”

“Because of the Shadowhunters?” he said in surprise, standing back to allow her to pack up.