Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(88)

“Your jacket,” she said through gritted teeth. “I have to cut it off.”

He nodded, letting his head fall back. She reached for Cortana.

Despite the toughness of the material, the blade went through the gear jacket like a knife through paper. It fell away in pieces. Emma sliced down the front of his T-shirt and pulled it apart as if she were peeling open a fruit.

Emma had seen blood before, often, but this felt different. It was Julian’s, and there seemed to be a lot of it. It was smeared up and down his chest and rib cage; she could see where the arrow had gone in and where the skin had torn when he’d yanked it out.

“Why did you pull the arrow out?” she demanded, pulling her sweater over her head. She had a tank top on under it. She patted his chest and side with the sweater, absorbing as much of the blood as she could.

Jules’s breath was coming in harsh pants. “Because when someone—shoots you with an arrow—” he gasped, “your immediate response is not—‘Thanks for the arrow, I think I’ll keep it for a while.’”

“Good to know your sense of humor is intact.”

“Like I said, it was burning,” Julian said. “Not like a normal wound. Like there was something on the arrowhead, acid or something.”

Emma had mopped away as much of the blood as she could. It was still welling from the puncture wound, running in thin streams down his stomach, gathering in the lines between his abdominal muscles. He had deep gaps above his hip bones, too, and his sides were hard and smooth to the touch.

She took a deep breath. “You’re too skinny,” she said as brightly as she could. “Too much coffee, not enough pancakes.”

“I hope they put that on my tombstone.” He gasped as she shifted forward, and she realized abruptly that she was squarely in Julian’s lap, her knees around his hips. It was a bizarrely intimate position.

“I—Am I hurting you?” she asked.

He swallowed visibly. “Try with the iratze again.”

“Fine,” she said. “Grab the panic bar.”

“The what?” He opened his eyes and peered at her.

“The plastic handle! Up there, above the window!” She pointed. “It’s for grabbing on to when the car is going around curves.”

“Are you sure? I always thought it was for hanging things on,” he said. “Like dry cleaning.”

“Julian, now is not the time to be pedantic. Grab the bar or I swear—”

“All right!” He reached up, grabbed hold of it, and winced. “I’m ready.”

She nodded and set Cortana aside, reaching for her stele. Maybe her previous iratzes had been too fast, too sloppy. She’d always focused on the physical aspects of Shadowhunting, not the more mental and artistic ones: seeing through glamours, drawing runes.

She set the tip of it to his shoulder and drew, carefully and slowly. She had to brace herself with her hand against his body. She tried to press as lightly as she could, but she could feel him tense under her fingers. The skin on his shoulder was smooth under her touch, and she wanted to get closer to him, put her hand over the wound on his side and heal it with the sheer force of her will—

Stop. She had finished the iratze. She sat back, her hand clamped around the stele. Julian straightened, the ragged remnants of his shirt hanging off his shoulders. He took a deep breath, glancing down at himself—and the iratze faded back into his skin, like black ice melting, spreading, being absorbed by the sea.

He looked up at Emma. She could see her own reflection in his eyes: She looked wrecked, panicked, blood on her neck and her white tank top. “It hurts less,” he whispered.

The wound pulsed again; blood slid down the side of his rib cage, staining his leather belt and the waistband of his jeans. She put her hands on his bare skin, panic rising up inside her. His skin felt hot, too hot. Fever hot.

“You’re lying,” she said. “Jules. Enough. I’m going to get help—”

She moved to climb off him, but his hand shot out and clamped over her wrist. “Em,” he said. “Emma, look at me.”

She looked. There was a little blood on his cheek and his hair hung in sweaty dark curls, but otherwise he just looked like Jules, like he always did. His left hand was pressed to his side, but his right came up, his fingers curling around the back of her neck. “Em,” he said again, his eyes wide and dark blue in the dim light. “Did you kiss Mark the other night?”

“What?” Emma stared. “Okay, you’ve definitely lost too much blood.”

He shifted minutely under her, keeping his hand where it was, gentle, tickling the fine hairs at the nape of her neck. “I saw the way you looked at him,” he said. “Outside Poseidon’s.”

“If you’re worried about Mark’s well-being, you shouldn’t be. He’s a mess. I know that. I don’t think he needs to be more confused.”

“It wasn’t that. I wasn’t worried about Mark.” He closed his eyes, as if he were counting silently inside his head. When he opened them again his pupils were wide black circles sketched onto his irises. “Maybe it should have been that. But it wasn’t.”

Was he actually hallucinating? Emma thought in a panic. It wasn’t like him to ramble like this, to make no sense at all. “I have to call the Silent Brothers,” she said. “I don’t care if you hate me forever or the investigation gets canceled—”