Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(22)

One day. But not quite yet.

When Emma woke, Julian was gone.

She sat up groggily. It was midmorning, later than she usually rose, and the room was lit with a pinkish-gold tinge. Julian’s navy-blue sheets and blanket were tangled down at the foot of the bed. When Emma put her hand against his pillow, it was still warm—he must have just left.

She pushed down her feeling of uneasiness that he’d gone without saying anything. He probably just hadn’t wanted to wake her; Julian had always been an uneasy sleeper, and the time difference couldn’t be helping. Telling herself it was no big deal, she went back to her room and changed into leggings and a T-shirt, and slid her feet into flip-flops.

Normally she would have checked Julian’s studio first, but she could see from a glance out the window that it was a bright, brilliant summer day. The sky was filled with the light brushstrokes of white cloud. The sea glimmered, the surface dancing with flecks of gold. In the distance Emma could see the black dots of surfers bobbing on the surface.

She knew he’d missed the ocean—knew it from the few brief, infrequent texts and fire-messages he’d sent her while he was in England. She made her way through the Institute and down the path that led to the highway, then darted across it, dodging surfers’ vans and luxury convertibles on their way to Nobu.

He was exactly where she’d thought he’d be when she reached the beach: facing the water and the sun, the salt air lifting his hair and rippling the cloth of his T-shirt. She wondered how long he’d been standing there, hands in the pockets of his jeans.

She took a hesitant step onto the damp sand. “Jules?”

He turned to look at her. For a moment he looked dazzled, as if he were looking into the sun, though it was above them—Emma could feel its warmth, bright and hot on her back.

He smiled. A wave of relief went through her. It was Julian’s familiar smile, the one that lit up his face. She jogged down to the waterline: The tide was coming in, sliding up the beach to reach the tips of Julian’s shoes. “You woke up early,” she said, splashing through the shallows toward him. The water made silvery inroads into the sand.

“It’s almost noon,” he said. His voice sounded ordinary, but he still looked different to Emma, strangely different: the shape of his face, his shoulders under his T-shirt. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“What?” Emma was caught temporarily off guard, both by the difference in him and the sudden question.

“Last night,” he said. “You said you wanted to talk to me. How about now?”

“Okay.” Emma looked up at the gulls wheeling overhead. “Let’s go sit down. I don’t want to get washed away when the tide comes in.”

They settled in farther up the beach, where the sand was warm from the sunlight. Emma kicked her shoes off to dig her toes in, exulting in the grainy feeling. Julian laughed.

She looked at him sideways. “What is it?”

“You and the beach,” he said. “You love the sand, but you hate the water.”

“I know,” she said, widening her eyes at him. “Isn’t it ironic?”

“It’s not ironic. Irony is the unexpected outcome of an expected situation. This is just one of your quirks.”

“You shock me,” Emma said, pulling out her phone. “I am shocked.”

“Sarcasm noted,” he said, turning the phone over in his right hand. Cristina’s photos from the previous night had loaded. As he ran his eyes over them, she explained how she’d followed the tip from Johnny Rook to the Sepulchre, the way she’d found the body, and Diana’s scolding following Rook’s visit to the Institute. As she spoke, she relaxed, her odd new awareness of Julian fading. This was normal, this was them the way they always were: talking, listening, working as parabatai. “I know these are the same markings,” she finished. “I’m not out of my mind, am I?”

Julian looked up at her. “No,” he said. “But Diana thinks that if you look into this, it’ll compromise the Clave’s willingness to let Helen come home?”

“Yeah.” Emma hesitated, then reached out and took his hand. The sea-glass bracelet on his left wrist clinked musically. She felt his calluses against her fingers, as familiar to her as a map of her own bedroom. “I would never do anything to hurt Helen, or Mark, or you,” she said. “If you think Diana’s right, I won’t—” She swallowed. “I’ll leave it alone.”

Julian glanced down at their entwined fingers. He was still, but a pulse had started up at the base of his throat; she could see it beating, hard. It must have been the mention of his sister.

“It’s been five years,” he said, and drew his hand back. He didn’t yank it out of her grip or anything like that, just drew it back as he turned toward the water. A completely natural movement that nevertheless left her feeling awkward. “The Clave hasn’t budged on letting Helen come home. They haven’t budged on looking for Mark. And they haven’t budged on considering that maybe your parents weren’t killed by Sebastian either. It seems wrong to sacrifice finding out what happened to your family for a doomed hope.”

“Don’t say it’s doomed, Jules—”

“There’s another way of thinking about this too,” he said, and she could practically see the gears turning in his quick brain. “If you actually solved this, if we solved this, the Clave would owe us. I believe you that whoever killed your parents, it wasn’t Sebastian Morgenstern. We’re looking at a demon or some other force that has the power to murder Shadowhunters and get away with it. If we defeated something like that . . .”