Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(74)

Julian’s face had changed; he was looking down at her in the moonlight, the cupid’s bow of his lips parted. His hands came up and gently looped her upper arms. Sometimes, she thought, it was as if she were a kite, and Julian the flier: She soared above the ground, and he kept her tethered to the earth. Without him she would be lost among the clouds.

She lifted her head. She could feel his breath on her face. There was something in his eyes, something breaking open, not like a crack in a wall but like a door swinging wide, and she could see the light.

“I’m not testing you, Emma,” he said. “You’ve proved everything to me already.”

There was a wild feeling in Emma’s blood, the desire to seize Julian, to do something, something, crush his hands in hers, put her arms around him, cause them both pain, make them both taste the same seeking desperation. She couldn’t understand it, and it terrified her.

She moved aside, gently breaking Julian’s hold on her. “We should get back to Mark and Cristina,” she murmured. “It’s been a while.”

She turned away from him, but not before she saw the expression on his face shut, a slamming door. She felt it like a hollow in her stomach, the intractable certainly that no matter how many demons she had killed that night, her nerve had failed her when she needed it most.

When they got back to the front of the restaurant, they found Mark and Cristina seated on top of a picnic table, surrounded by cardboard boxes of french fries, buttered rolls, fried clams, and fish tacos. Cristina was holding a bottle of lime soda and smiling at something Mark had said.

The wind off the ocean had dried Mark’s hair. It blew around his face, highlighting how much he looked like a faerie and how little he seemed like Nephilim.

“Mark was telling me about the fight at the convergence point,” said Cristina as Emma clambered onto the table and reached for a fry. Julian climbed up after her and snagged a soda.

Emma launched into her own version of events, from their discovery of the cave and the wallet to the appearance of the Mantid demons. “They crushed Mark’s motorcycle so we couldn’t get away,” she said.

Mark looked glum.

“Thy steed is no more, methinks,” Emma said to him. “Will they get you another one?”

“Unlikely,” said Mark. “The Fair Folk are not generous.”

Julian looked at Emma with his eyebrows raised. “Methinks?” he echoed.

“I can’t help it.” She shrugged. “It’s catching.”

Cristina held out a hand. “Let’s see what you found,” she said. “Since you sacrificed so much to get it.”

Emma pulled the square leather object from her pocket and let them all pass it around. Next she retrieved her phone and held it out while she flipped through the photos of the inside of the cave with the odd languages scrawled on the walls.

“We can translate the Greek and Latin,” said Emma. “But we’ll need to hit the library for the other languages.”

“Stanley Wells,” said Julian, looking through the half-burned wallet. “Name sounds familiar.”

“When we get back, Ty and Livvy can find out who he is,” Emma said. “And we can figure out his address, see if there’s anything to find at his house. See if there’s a reason he might have been targeted for sacrifice.”

“They could be randomly chosen,” said Julian.

“They are not,” said Mark.

They all paused, Julian with a bottle halfway to his mouth. “What?” Emma said.

“Not everyone makes a fit subject to be sacrificed for a summoning spell,” said Mark. “It cannot be completely random.”

“They teach you much about dark magic in the Wild Hunt?” Julian asked.

“The Wild Hunt is dark magic,” said Mark. “I recognized the circle in the cave.” He tapped Emma’s phone. “This is a sacrificial circle. This is necromancy. The power of death harnessed to some purpose.”

They were all quiet for a moment. The cold wind off the ocean ruffled Emma’s damp hair. “The Mantids were guards,” she said finally. “Whoever the necromancer is doesn’t want anyone finding the secret ceremonial chamber.”

“Because he needs it,” said Jules.

“It could be a she,” said Emma. “It isn’t just men who get to be psycho magic serial killers.”

“Granted,” said Julian. “Either way, there’s nowhere else near the city with a ley line convergence like this. Necromancy that was done at a ley line extension would probably show up on Magnus’s map—but what if it was done at a convergence?”

“Then it might well be hidden from the Nephilim,” said Mark. “The killer could be doing the ceremonial killings at the convergence point—”

“And then dumping the bodies at the ley line extensions?” finished Cristina. “But why? Why not leave them in the cave?”

“Perhaps they want the bodies to be found,” said Mark. “After all, the marks on them are writing. It could be a message. A message they want to communicate.”

“Then they should have written the message in a language we know,” Emma muttered.

“Maybe the message isn’t for us,” said Mark.

“The convergence will have to be watched,” said Cristina. “Someone will have to monitor it. There is no other convergence point; the murderer will have to come back at some point.”