*
"She lies. She just sits there and lies like her opinions are facts," said Emma furiously. After dinner, she'd retreated with Cristina to the other girl's room; they were both sitting on the bed, Cristina worrying her dark hair between her fingers.
"I think they are, to her and those like her," said Cristina. "But we should not waste time on Zara. You said on the way upstairs that you had something to tell me?"
As concisely as she could, Emma caught Cristina up on the visit from Gwyn. As Emma talked, Cristina's face grew more and more pinched with worry. "Is Mark all right?"
"I think so--he can be really hard to read, sometimes."
"He's one of those people with a lot going on in his head," said Cristina. "Has he ever asked--about you and Julian?"
Emma shook her head violently. "I don't think it would ever cross his mind we had anything but parabatai feelings for each other. Jules and I have known each other so long." She rubbed at her temples. "Mark assumes Julian feels the same way about me that he does--brotherly."
"It's strange, the things that blind us," said Cristina. She drew her knees up, her hands looped around them.
"Have you tried to reach Jaime?" Emma asked.
Cristina leaned her cheek on the tops of her knees. "I sent a fire-message, but I haven't heard anything."
"He was your best friend," Emma said. "He'll respond." She twisted a piece of Cristina's woven blanket between her fingers. "You know what I miss most? About Jules? Just--being parabatai. Being Emma and Julian. I miss my best friend. I miss the person I told everything to, all the time. The person who knew everything about me. The good things and the bad things." She could see Julian in her mind's eye as she spoke, the way he had looked during the Dark War, all thin shoulders and determined eyes.
The sound of a knock on the door echoed through the room. Emma glanced at Cristina--was she expecting someone?--but the other girl looked as surprised as she did.
"Pasa," Cristina called.
It was Julian. Emma looked at him in surprise, the younger Julian of her memory blurring back into the Julian standing in front of her: a nearly grown-up Julian, tall and muscular, his curls unruly, a hint of stubble prickling along his jawline.
"Do you know where Mark is?" he asked, without preamble.
"Isn't he in his room?" Emma said. "He left during dinner, so I thought--"
Julian shook his head. "He's not there. Could he be in your room?"
It cost him visible effort to ask, Emma thought. She saw Cristina bite her lip and prayed Julian wouldn't notice. He could never find out how much Cristina knew.
"No," Emma said. "I locked my door." She shrugged. "I don't completely trust the Centurions."
Julian ran a hand distractedly through his hair. "Look--I'm worried about Mark. Come with me and I'll show you what I mean."
Cristina and Emma followed Julian to Mark's room; the door was propped wide open. Julian went in first, and then Emma and Cristina, both of them glancing around carefully as if Mark might be found hiding in a closet somewhere.
Mark's room had changed a great deal since he'd first come back from Faerie. Then it had been dusty, a clearly unused space kept empty for the sake of memory. All his things had been cleared out and put into storage, and the curtains, filmed with dust, had been always drawn.
It was very different now. Mark had folded his clothes in neat stacks at the foot of his bed; he'd told Emma once that he didn't see the point of a wardrobe or a dresser, since all they did was hide your clothes from you.
The windowsills were covered with small items from nature--flowers in various stages of drying, leaves and cactus needles, shells from the beach. The bed was made neatly; clearly he hadn't slept in it once.
Julian looked away from the too-orderly bed. "His boots are gone," he said. "He only had the one pair. They were supposed to ship more from Idris, but they haven't yet."
"His jacket, too," Emma said. It had been his only heavy one, denim lined with shearling. "His bag . . . he had a duffel bag, didn't he?"
Cristina gave a gasp. Emma and Julian both swung to look at her as she reached up for a piece of paper that had just appeared, floating at shoulder height. Glowing runes sealed it shut; they faded as she caught the fire-message out of the air. "Addressed to me," she said, tearing it open. "From Mark." Her eyes scanned the page; her cheeks paled, and she handed over the paper without a word.
Julian took the message, and Emma read over his shoulder as he studied it.
My dear Cristina,
I know you will show this to the right people at the right time. I can always trust you to do what is necessary when it needs to be done.
By now you know what has happened with Kieran's arrest. Though things ended badly between us, he was my protector for many Faerie years. I owe him and cannot leave him to die in the grim Court of his father. I take the moon's road for Faerie tonight. Tell my brothers and sisters I will return to them as soon as I can. Tell Emma I will be back. I returned to them from the Land Under the Hill once before. I will do it again.
Mark Blackthorn
Julian crumpled the paper viciously between unsteady fingers. "I'm going after him."
Emma started to reach for his arm before remembering, and dropping her hand to her side. "I'm going with you."
"No," Julian said. "Do you understand what Mark's trying to do? He can't invade the Unseelie Court by himself. The King of Shadows will have him killed before you can blink."
"Of course I understand," said Emma. "That's why we need to get to Mark before he makes it to an entrance to Faerie. Once he enters the Fair Folk's Lands, it'll be practically impossible to intercept him."
"There is also the issue of time," said Cristina. "Once he crosses the border, time will be different for him. He could come back in three days, or three weeks--"
"Or three years," said Emma grimly.
""Which is why I should go after him now," said Julian. "Before he makes it into Faerie and time starts being our enemy--"
"I can help with that," Cristina said.
Faeries had been Cristina's special field of study when she was growing up. She'd once confessed to Emma that this had been partly because of Mark, and what she'd learned about him as a child. He'd fascinated her, the Shadowhunter boy taken by faeries during the Dark War.
Cristina touched the pendant at her throat, the golden pendant that bore an image of Raziel. "This is a faerie-blessed charm. My family has . . ." She hesitated. "Many of them. Years ago, they were close with the Fair Folk. We still have many tokens of their regard. We speak of it little, though, as the Clave's attitude toward those who befriend Fair Folk is . . ." She glanced around Mark's room. "As you know it to be."
"What does the charm do?" said Emma.
"It keeps time from passing too quickly for mortals in the Fair Folk's realm." Cristina held the pendant between her fingers, gazing at Jules with quiet inquiry as if to say she had many more surprises up her neat sleeves, if he cared to hear them.
"It's only one pendant," said Julian. "How can it protect us all?"
"If I wear it into the realm, the protection will extend to you and Emma, and Mark, too, as long as you do not go too far away from me."
Julian leaned against the wall and sighed. "And I suppose you're not going to consider just giving it to me, so I can wear it into Faerie? By myself?"
"Absolutely not," Cristina said primly. "It's a family heirloom."
Emma could have kissed Cristina. She settled for winking at her. The corner of Cristina's lip curled up slightly.
"Then the three of us will go," Emma said, and Julian seemed to realize there would be no point in disagreement. He nodded at her, and there was a little of the old parabatai look in his eye, the look that said that he expected the two of them to enter into danger. Together.
"The pendant will also allow us take the moon's road," said Cristina. "Usually only those with faerie blood can access it." She squared her shoulders. "Mark will not imagine that
we could follow him; that is why he sent the note."
"The moon's road?" Julian said. "What is that, exactly?"
At that, Cristina did smile. It was an odd smile--not quite a look of happiness, and Emma expected that she was too worried for that--but there was a little bit of wonder in it, the look of someone who was getting to experience something they never thought they'd get a chance to do.
"I'll show you," she said.
*
They gathered their things swiftly. The house was dark, unusually alive with the untidy breathing of multiple sleepers. As Julian moved down the hallway, sliding the straps of his pack over his shoulders, he saw Ty asleep in front of Kit's room, half-sitting up, his chin in his hand. A book was open beside him on the floor.
Julian paused at the door to the attic. He hesitated. He could leave a note, walk away. That would be the easier thing to do. There wasn't much time; they had to get to Mark before he got to Faerie. It wouldn't be cowardly. Just practical. Just--
He shoved the door open and pounded up the stairs. Arthur was where he had left him, at his desk. Moonlight streamed in, angular, through the skylight.
Arthur dropped his pen and turned to look at Julian. Gray hair framed his tired Blackthorn eyes. It was like looking at a blurred picture of Julian's father, something that had been flawed in the development process, pulling the angles of his face out of familiar alignment.
"I have to leave for a few days," Julian said. "If you need anything, talk to Diana. Not to anyone else. Just Diana."
Arthur's eyes seemed glazed. "You are--where are you going, Julian?"
Julian considered lying. He was good at lying, and it came easily to him. But for some reason, he didn't want to.
"Mark went--back," he said. "I'm going to get him, hopefully before he crosses over into Faerie."
A shudder went through Arthur's body. "You're going after your brother in Faerie?" he said hoarsely, and Julian remembered the shreds of what he knew of his uncle's story--that he had been trapped with Julian's father, Andrew, in Faerie for years, that Andrew had fallen in love with a gentry woman and fathered Helen and Mark on her, but Arthur had been separated from him, locked away, tortured with enchantments.
"Yes." Julian shifted his pack to one shoulder.
Arthur reached his hand out, as if he meant to take Julian's, and Julian flinched back, startled. His uncle never touched him. Arthur dropped his hand. "In the republic of Rome," he said, "there was always a servant assigned to every general who won a war. When the general rode through the streets, accepting the thanks of the grateful people, the servant's task was to whisper in his ear, 'Respice post te. Hominem te esse memento. Memento mori.'"
"Look behind you," Julian translated. "Remember that you are a man. Remember that you will die." A faint shiver went up his spine.
"You're young, but you're not immortal," Arthur said. "If you find yourself in Faerie, and I pray that you do not, for it is Hell there if there ever was a Hell--if you find yourself there, listen to nothing the faeries tell you. Listen to none of their promises. Swear to me, Julian."
Julian exhaled. He thought of that long-ago general, being exhorted not to let the glory go to his head. To remember that everything passed. Everything went. Happiness went, and so did loss and pain.
Everything but love.
"I swear," he said.
*
"We have to wait for the moment," said Cristina. "Where the moon on the water seems solid. You can see it if you look--like the green flash."
She smiled at Emma, who stood between Jules and Cristina, the three of them in a line at the edge of the ocean. There was little wind and the ocean stretched out before them thick and black, edged with white where the water met the sand. Surges of sea foam where the waves had broken and spent themselves on the tideline pushed seaweed and bits of shells farther up the beach.
The sky had cleared from the earlier storm. The moon was high, casting a perfect, unbroken line of light across the water, reaching toward the horizon. The waves made a soft noise like whispers as they spilled around Emma's feet, the surf lapping at her waterproofed boots.
Jules had his gaze on his watch--it had been his father's, a large old-fashioned mechanical watch, gleaming on his wrist. Emma saw with a slight lurch that the sea-glass bracelet she'd fashioned for him once was still on his wrist beside it, shining in the moonlight.
"Almost midnight," he said. "I wonder how much of a head start Mark has."
"It depends how long he had to wait for the right moment to step on the path," said Cristina. "Such moments come and go. Midnight is only one of them."
"So how are we planning on capturing him?" Emma said. "Just your basic chase and tackle, or are we going to try to distract him with the power of dance, and then lasso his ankles?"
"Jokes not helping," said Julian, staring at the water.
"Jokes always help," said Emma. "Especially when we're not doing anything else but waiting for water to solidify--"
Cristina squeaked. "Go! Now!"
Emma went first, leaping over a small wave crashing at her feet. Half her brain was still telling her that she was throwing herself into water, that she'd splash down into it. The impact when her boots struck a hard surface was jarring.
She took a few running steps and spun around to face the beach. She was standing on a gleaming path that looked as if it were made of hard rock crystal, cut thin as glass. The moonlight on the water had become solid. Julian was already behind her, balanced on the shimmering line, and Cristina was leaping up onto the path behind him.
She heard Cristina gasp as she landed. As Shadowhunters, they had all seen wonders, but there was something distinctly Faerie about this kind of magic: It seemed to take place in the interstices of the normal world, between light and shadow, between one minute and another. As Nephilim they existed in their own space. This was Between.
"Let's move," Julian said, and Emma began to walk. The path was wide; it seemed to flex and curl under her feet with the motion and ripple of the tide. It was like walking on a bridge held suspended over a chasm.
Except that when she looked down, she didn't see empty space; she saw what she feared much more. The deep darkness of the ocean, where her parents' dead bodies had floated before they washed up on the shore. For years she had imagined them struggling, dying, underwater, miles of sea all around, totally alone. She knew more now about how they'd died, knew they'd been dead when Malcolm Fade had consigned their bodies to the sea. But you couldn't speak to fear, couldn't tell it the truth: Fear lived in your bones.
This far out, Emma would have expected the water to be so deep it was opaque. But the moonlight made it glow as if from within. She could gaze down into it as if into an aquarium.
She saw the fronds of seaweed, moving and dancing with the push and pull of the tides. The flutter of schools of fish. Darker shadows, too, bigger ones. Flickers of movement, heavy and enormous--a whale, perhaps, or something bigger and worse--water demons could grow to the size of football fields. She imagined the path breaking up suddenly, giving way, and all of them plunging into the darkness, the enormity all around them, cold and deathly and filled with blind-eyed, shark-toothed monsters, and the Angel knew what else rising up out of the deep . . . .
"Don't look down." It was Julian, approaching on the path. Cristina was a little behind them, looking around in wonder. "Look straight ahead at the horizon. Walk toward that."
She raised her chin. She could feel Jules next to her, feel the warmth coming off his skin, raising the hair along her arms. "I'm fine."
"You're not." He said it flatly. "I know how you feel about the ocean."
They were far out from shore now--it was a shining line in the distance, the highway a ribbon of moving lights, the houses and restaurants along the coastline glimmering. "Well, as it turns out, my parents didn't die in the ocean." She took a shuddering breath. "They didn't drown."
"Knowing that doesn't wipe out years of bad dreams." Julian glanced
toward her. The wind blew soft tendrils of his hair against his cheekbones. She remembered what it felt like to have her hands in that hair, how holding him had anchored her not just to the world, but to herself.
"I hate feeling like this," she said, and for a moment even she wasn't sure what she was talking about. "I hate being afraid. It makes me feel weak."
"Emma, everyone's afraid of something." Julian moved slightly closer; she felt his shoulder bump hers. "We fear things because we value them. We fear losing people because we love them. We fear dying because we value being alive. Don't wish you didn't fear anything. All that would mean is that you didn't feel anything."
"Jules--" She started to turn toward him in surprise at the intensity in his voice, but paused when she heard Cristina's footsteps quicken, and then her voice, raised in recognition, calling:
"Mark!"
8
NEAR THE RIVER
Emma saw Mark immediately. A shadow out on the gleaming path before them, the moonlight sparking off his pale hair. He didn't seem to have noticed them yet.
Emma began to run, Cristina and Jules at her heels. Though the path surged and dipped under her, she was used to running on the beach where the soft sand gave way under her feet. She could see Mark clearly now: He'd stopped walking, and turned to face them, looking astonished.
His gear was gone. He was wearing clothes similar to the ones he'd come to the Institute in, though clean and undamaged: linen and soft, tanned hide, high laced boots and a duffel bag slung over his back. Emma could see the stars reflected in his wide eyes as she drew closer to him.
He dropped the duffel bag at his feet, looking accusingly at his three pursuers. "What are you doing here?"
"Seriously?" Julian kicked Mark's duffel bag aside, grabbing hold of his brother's shoulders. "What are you doing here?"
Julian was taller than Mark, a fact that always struck Emma as odd--Mark had been taller for so many years. Taller and older. But he was neither now. He looked like a slim pale blade in the darkness, against Julian's more solid strength and height. He looked as if he might at any moment turn into moonlight on the waves and vanish.
He turned his gaze to Cristina. "You got my fire-message."
She nodded, tendrils of her dark hair, caught in a jeweled clip at the back of her head, curling around her face. "We all read it."