Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(20)

“Hello, Uncle,” Julian said. He hefted the tray he was carrying, on which he’d placed a hastily assembled dinner. “We’ve come back.”

Arthur turned slowly, like an old dog cocking its head warily at the sound of a shout. “Andrew, good to see you,” he said. “I was pondering the Greek ideals of love. Agape, of course, the highest love, the love that Gods feel. Then eros, romantic love; and philia, the love of friends; and storge, the love of family. Which would you say it is that our parabatai feel? Is it closer to philia or to agape—eros, of course, being forbidden? And if so, are we gifted with something, as Nephilim, that mundanes can never understand—and so how did the Greeks know of it? A paradox, Andrew . . .”

Julian exhaled. The last thing he wanted to talk about was the kind of love parabatai felt for each other. And he did not want to be called by his dead father’s name. He wished he were somewhere, anywhere else, but he came forward anyway into where the light was stronger, where his uncle could see his face. “It’s Julian. I said that we’re back. All of us. Tavvy, Dru, the twins . . .”

Arthur stared at him with uncomprehending blue-green eyes, and Julian fought against the sinking of his heart. He hadn’t wanted to come up here at all; he’d wanted to go with Emma. But he could tell from the last fire-message he’d gotten from Diana that a trip to the attic would be necessary the moment he got back.

It had always been his job. It always would be.

He set the tray on the desk, careful to avoid the piles of paper. There was a stack of outgoing mail and scrawled patrol notes beside Arthur’s elbow. Not enormous, but not as diminished as Julian had hoped it would be. “I brought you dinner.”

Arthur gazed at the tray of food as if it were a distant object barely seen through fog, his brows crinkling. It was a bowl of soup, quickly heated in the kitchen, now cooling in the chilly attic air. Julian had carefully wrapped the cutlery in napkins and placed a basket of bread on the tray, though he knew that when he returned in the morning to collect the remains, the food would be nearly untouched.

“Do you think it’s a clue?” Uncle Arthur said.

“Do I think what’s a clue?”

“The cithara and the phorminx. They fit into the pattern, but the pattern is so large. . . .” Uncle Arthur leaned back with a sigh, gazing up at the wall in front of him, where hundreds of pieces of paper covered in spidery handwriting had been glued or tacked. “Life is short, and wisdom long to learn,” he whispered.

“Life’s not that short,” Julian said. “Or at least, it doesn’t have to be.” It had been for his parents, he supposed. It often was for Shadowhunters. But what was likely to harm Arthur, hidden away in his cloistered attic? He’d probably outlive all of them.

He thought of Emma, the risks she took, the scars on her body that he saw when they swam or practiced. She had that in her, the blood of Shadowhunters who had risked their lives down through the generations, who lived off the oxygen of adrenaline and fighting. But he pushed away the thought of her dying as her parents had; it was not a thought he could bear.

“No man under the sky lives twice,” Arthur murmured, probably quoting something. He usually was. He was looking down at the desk again, and seemed lost in thought. Julian remembered years ago and the floor of the attic covered in Arthur’s bloody handprints. That was the night he had first called on Malcolm Fade.

“If you have everything you need, Uncle,” Julian said, starting to move away.

Arthur’s head snapped up. For a moment his gaze was clear and focused. “You’re a good boy,” he said to Julian. “But it won’t help you, in the end.”

Julian froze. “What?”

But Arthur had already gone back to his papers.

Julian turned and went down the attic steps. They creaked familiarly under his weight. The Los Angeles Institute wasn’t particularly old, certainly not as old as other Institutes, but something about the attic felt ancient and dusty and cut off from the rest of the place.

He reached the door at the foot of the stairs. He leaned for a moment against the wall, in the dimness and silence.

Silence was something he had rarely, unless he was going to sleep. He was usually surrounded by the constant chatter of his siblings. He had them around him always, wanting his attention, needing his help.

He thought too of the cottage in England, the quiet buzzing of the bees in the garden, the hush under the trees. Everything green and blue, so different from the desert and its dry browns and sere golds. He hadn’t wanted to leave Emma, but at the same time he’d thought it would help. Like an addict getting away from the source of his addiction.

Enough. There were some things there was no point thinking about. In the dark and the shadows where secrets lived, that was where Julian survived. It was how he had managed for years. Taking a deep breath, he went back out into the hallway.

Emma was standing on the beach. There was no one else there; it was entirely deserted. Vast tracts of sand spread out on either side of her, dully sparkling with shards of mica underneath a clouded sun.

The ocean was before her. It was as beautiful and deadly as the creatures who lived inside it; the great white sharks with their rough, pale sides, the killer whales striped in black and white like an Edwardian garden chaise. Emma looked at the ocean and felt what she always felt: a mixture of yearning and terror, a desire to throw herself into the green cold that was like the desire to drive too fast, jump too high, leap into battle unarmed.