Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(49)

“And when it’s done?” Julian said. “And Mark’s back? How do we explain that?”

Something in Diana’s eyes shifted. “We’ll worry about that when it happens.”

“So we’re racing the Clave and the Courts,” said Julian. “Fantastic. Maybe there’s someone else we can piss off. The Spiral Labyrinth? The Scholomance? Interpol?”

“No one’s pissed off yet,” said Diana. “Let’s just keep it that way.” She handed the papers to Emma. “Just to be clear: We can’t cooperate with the Fair Folk and we can’t harbor Mark without reporting it, except obviously we’re going to, so the upshot is that no one outside the building can know. And I refuse to lie to the Clave directly, so hopefully we can get this done with before they start asking questions.” She looked at them each in turn, her expression serious. “We have to work together. Emma, no more fighting me. Cristina, if you want to be reassigned to another Institute, we’ll understand. We’d just ask you to keep this to yourself.”

Emma gasped. “No!”

Cristina was already shaking her head. “I don’t need a new assignment,” she said. “I will keep your secret. I will make it my secret too.”

“Good,” Diana said. “Speaking of keeping things secret, don’t tell Malcolm how we got our hands on these papers. Don’t mention Mark, don’t mention the faerie delegation. If he says anything, he’ll have me to deal with.”

“Malcolm’s our friend,” said Julian. “We can trust him.”

“I’m trying to make sure he doesn’t get in trouble if anyone finds out,” she said. “He needs to be able to deny it.” She zipped up her jacket. “Okay, I’ll be back tomorrow. Good luck.”

“Threatening the High Warlock,” Julian muttered as Diana disappeared down the hall. “Better and better. Maybe we should head down to vampire clan headquarters and punch Anselm Nightshade in the face?”

“But think of the consequences,” Emma said. “No more pizza.”

Julian gave her a wry sideways-looking smile.

“I could go to Malcolm’s alone,” Emma said. “You could stay here, Jules, wait for Mark to—”

She didn’t finish. She wasn’t sure she knew what exactly they were waiting for Mark to do, that any of them knew.

“No,” Julian said. “Malcolm trusts me. I know him the best. I can convince him to keep this secret.” He straightened up. “We’ll both go.”

As parabatai. As we should.

Emma nodded and caught at Cristina’s hand. “We’ll make it as fast as we can,” she said. “You’ll be all right?”

Cristina nodded. Her hand was at her throat, her fingers resting on her necklace. “I will watch over Mark,” she said. “It will be all right. Everything will be all right.”

And Emma almost believed her.

Being a High Warlock must pay well, Emma thought, as she always did when she saw Malcolm Fade’s house. It looked like a castle.

Malcolm lived up the highway from the Institute, past Kanan Dume Road. It was a spot where the bluffs rose high above, threaded with green sea grass. The house was shrouded by glamour spells, hiding it from mundanes. If you were driving—which Emma was— you had to look hard at a spot between two bluffs, and a silvery bridge that climbed up into the hills would appear.

Emma pulled over to the side of the highway. Lines of cars were parked along the sides of the PCH here, most of them surfers drawn by the wide beach to the west.

Emma exhaled, turning the car off. “Okay,” she said. “We—”

“Emma,” Julian said.

She paused. Julian had been almost completely silent since they’d left the Institute. She couldn’t blame him. She couldn’t find words herself. She’d let the distraction of driving take her, the need to concentrate on the road. She’d been aware of him beside her the whole time, though, his head back against the seat, his eyes closed, his fist clenched against the knee of his jeans.

“Mark thought I was my father,” said Julian abruptly, and she could tell he was remembering that awful moment, the look of hope in his brother’s eyes, a hope that had nothing to do with him. “He didn’t recognize me.”

“He remembers you twelve,” Emma said. “He remembers all of you as so young.”

“And you, too.”

“I doubt he remembers me at all.”

He unsnapped his seat belt. Light sparked off the bracelet of sea glass he wore on his left wrist, turning it to bright colors: flame red, fire gold, Blackthorn blue.

“He does,” he said. “No one could forget you.”

She blinked at him in surprise. A moment later Julian was out of the car. She scrambled to follow him, slamming the driver’s side door as cars whizzed by just a lane away.

Jules was standing at the foot of Malcolm’s bridge, looking up toward the house. She could see his shoulder blades under the thin cotton of his T-shirt, the nape of his neck, a shade lighter than the rest of his skin where his hair had kept it from getting tanned.

“The Fair Folk are tricksters,” Julian said without turning. “They won’t want to give Mark up: Faerie blood and Shadowhunter blood together, that’s too valuable. There’ll be some clause that’ll allow them to take him back when we’re done.”