Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(82)

“My blood is not your concern,” Mark said.

“It is,” said Julian. “That’s what it means to be family.”

“Family,” Mark began bitterly, and then seemed to realize that his younger siblings were there and were looking at him, silent and still. Cristina, too, was quiet, gazing at Emma across the room, her gaze dark and worried.

Mark seemed to swallow back whatever he had been about to say. “If I had wanted to take orders, I would have stayed with the Hunt,” he said instead, in a low voice, and walked out the door.

“I think Ty’s doubled up on his detective reading,” Julian said with a smile. He had his window cranked down, and the air blowing into the car lifted his curling hair off his forehead. “He asked me if I thought the killings were an inside job.”

“Inside what?” Emma smiled.

She was leaning back in the passenger seat of the car, her booted feet up on the dashboard. The windows were open to the night, and Emma could hear the sounds of the city rising all around them as they idled at a red light.

They had turned up Sunset off the Coast Highway. At first as they wound through the canyons and into Beverly Hills and Bel Air, the suburbs were quiet, but they had moved into the heart of Hollywood now, the Sunset Strip, lined with expensive restaurants and massive, hundred-foot-high billboards plastered with ads for movies and TV shows. The streets were crowded and noisy: tourists posing for photos with celebrity imitators, street musicians collecting change, pedestrians hurrying back and forth from work.

Julian seemed more at ease than he had in the past few days, leaning back in his seat, his hands casual on the wheel. Emma knew exactly how he felt. Here, in gear jacket and jeans, with Julian beside her and Cortana in the trunk, she felt like she belonged.

Emma had tried to bring up Mark, briefly, when they had first settled into the car. Julian had only shaken his head and said, “He’s getting adjusted,” and that was all. She sensed he didn’t want to talk about Mark, and that was fine: She didn’t know that she had any solutions to offer. And it was easy, so easy, to slip back into their normal joking banter.

“I think he was asking if I thought the killer was a Shadowhunter.” Traffic was gathering as they reached the intersection of Sunset and Vine, and the car rolled slowly under the palm trees and neon. “I said no—it was obviously someone who knew magic, and I didn’t think a Shadowhunter would hire a warlock to murder for them. Mostly we do our own murdering.”

Emma giggled. “You told him Shadowhunters are DIY about their killing?”

“We’re DIY about everything.”

The traffic started up again; Emma glanced down, watching the play of muscle and tendon in Jules’s hand as he shifted gears. The car slid forward, and Emma glanced out the window at the people in line at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. She wondered idly what they would think if they knew the two teenagers in the Toyota were actually demon hunters with a trunk full of crossbows, polearms, daggers, katanas, and throwing knives.

“Everything all right with Diana?” Emma asked.

“She wanted to talk about Ty.” Julian’s voice was even, but Emma saw him swallow. “He wants so badly to go to the Scholomance and study. They have access to the libraries of the Spiral Labyrinth, the Silent Brothers’ archives—I mean, think of everything we don’t know about runes and rituals, the mysteries and puzzles he could solve. But at the same time . . .”

“He’d be the youngest person there,” said Emma. “That would be hard on anyone. Ty’s only ever been with us.” She touched Julian’s wrist, lightly. “I’m glad I never went to the Academy. And the Scholomance is supposed to be much harder. And lonelier. Some of the students have wound up failing out with—well, Clary called it nervous breakdowns. I think it’s a mundane term.”

Julian glanced down at the GPS and made a left turn, heading up toward the hills. “How often do you talk to Clary these days?”

“About once a month.” Clary had been calling her to check on her ever since they’d first met in Idris when Emma was twelve. It was one of the few things Emma didn’t talk about much with Jules: The conversations with Clary felt like something that belonged just to her.

“Is she still with Jace?”

Emma laughed, feeling her tension drain. Clary and Jace were an institution, a legend. They belonged together. “Who’d break up with him?”

“I might, if he was insufficiently attentive to my needs.”

“Well, she doesn’t talk about her love life to me. But yeah, they’re still together. If they broke up I might have to stop believing in love entirely.”

“I didn’t know you did believe in love,” said Jules, and paused, as if he realized what he’d said. “That came out wrong.”

Emma was indignant. “Just because I wasn’t in love with Cameron—”

“You weren’t?” Traffic sped up; the car lurched forward. Julian struck the wheel with the heel of his palm. “Look, none of this is my business. Forget it. Forget I asked about Jace and Clary, or Simon and Isabelle—”

“You didn’t ask about Simon and Isabelle.”

“I didn’t?” The side of his mouth quirked up. “Isabelle was my first crush, you know.”

“Of course I know.” She threw the cap of her water bottle at him. “It was so obvious! You were staring at her at the party after Aline and Helen’s wedding.”