He knew he never would.
His phone trilled. He glanced down at the screen: It was Emma. She'd sent him a photo. No words, just the picture of her closet: the door open, the photographs and maps and string and notes spilling out.
He threw on jeans and a T-shirt and headed down the hall. The Insitute was dead silent, wrapped in sleep, the only sound the desert wind outside, soughing against glass and stone.
Emma was in her room, sitting up against the footboard of her bed, her phone on the floor beside her. She was wearing a nightgown, long with thin straps, pale white in the fading moonlight.
"Julian," she said, knowing he was there without looking up. "You were awake, right? I had a feeling you were awake."
She stood up, still looking at her closet.
"I don't know what to do with it," she said. "I spent such a long time collecting everything that seemed like evidence, making guesses, thinking about this and nothing but this. This was my big secret, the heart of everything I did." She looked toward him. "Now it's just a closet full of junk."
"I can't tell you what you should do with all that," he said. "But I can tell you, you don't need to think about it now."
Her hair was down, like spun light around her shoulders, tickling her face with the ends of curls, and he dug his fingers into his palms to keep himself from pulling her against him so he could bury his face and hands in it.
He looked instead at the healing cuts on her arms and hands, the fading red of her burned wrist, the evidence that tonight had not been easy.
Nothing they did ever was.
"Mark's staying," she said. "Right? There's nothing the Clave can do to take him away now?"
Mark. Her first thought is about Mark. Julian pushed the thought down, away: It was unworthy, ridiculous. They weren't twelve anymore.
"Nothing," Julian said. "He was never exiled. The rule was only that we couldn't look for him. We didn't. He found his way home and they can't change that. And I think, after the help he gave us with Malcolm, it would be a very unpopular move if they tried."
She flashed a faint smile at him before clambering up onto the bed, sliding her long bare legs under the coverlet. "I went to check on Diego and Cristina," she said. "He was passed out in her bed and she was asleep in the chair next to him. I'm going to make so much fun of her tomorrow."
"Is Cristina in love with him? Diego, I mean," Julian asked, sitting down on the side of Emma's bed.
"Not sure." Emma wiggled her fingers. "They have, you know. Stuff."
"No, I don't know." He copied her gesture. "What's that?"
"Unfinished romantic business," Emma said, pulling the blanket up.
"Finger wiggling means unfinished business? I'll have to keep that in mind." Julian felt a smile tug the corners of his mouth. Only Emma could make him smile after a night like the one they'd had.
She turned back a corner of the blanket. "Stay?"
There was nothing he wanted more than to crawl in beside her, to trace the shape of her face with his fingers: wide cheekbones, pointed chin, half-lidded eyes, eyelashes like lace against his fingertips. His body and mind were beyond exhausted, too worn out for desire, but the yearning for closeness and companionship remained. The touch of her hands, her skin, was a comfort nothing else could reproduce.
He remembered the beach, lying awake for hours, trying to memorize what it was like to hold Emma. They'd slept beside each other so many times, but he'd never realized how different it was when you could encompass the shape of someone else in your arms. Fit your breathing to their breathing.
He crawled into bed beside her, clothes still on, and slid under the covers. She was on her side, her head propped on her hand. Her expression was serious, intent. "The way you orchestrated everything tonight, Julian. You scared me a little."
He touched the edge of her hair, briefly, before dropping his hand. A slow ache was spreading through his body, a deep ache that seemed to come from the marrow of his bones.
"You should never be scared of me," he said. "Never. You're one of the people I would never hurt."
She reached out a hand and put her palm against his heart. The fabric of his T-shirt separated her hand and his chest, but he felt the touch as if it were on his bare skin. "Tell me what happened when we got back, with Arthur and Anselm," she said. "Because I don't think even I understand it."
So he told her. Told her about how for months he'd been emptying the dregs of the vials Malcolm gave him for Arthur into a bottle of wine, just in case. How he'd left the wine containing this super-dosage in the Sanctuary. How he'd realized at the convergence that they would need Arthur to be clearheaded when they returned, to be functioning. The way he'd called Arthur, telling him he needed to offer the wine to Anselm and drink some himself, knowing it would affect only his uncle. How he knew he'd done a terrible thing, dosing his uncle without his knowledge. How he'd planted the pizza boxes in the foyer the first time they'd ordered it, just in case; how he knew he'd done a terrible thing to Anselm, who did not deserve the punishment he was likely to get. How he didn't know who he was sometimes, how he was capable of doing the things he did, and yet how he couldn't not do them.
When he was done, she leaned in, touching his cheek gently. She smelled faintly of rosewater soap. "I know who you are," she said. "You're my parabatai. You're the boy who does what has to be done because no one else will."
Parabatai. He had never thought of the word with bitterness before, even feeling what he felt and knowing what he knew. And yet now, he thought of the years and years ahead of them in which there would be no time in which they felt fully safe together, no way to touch or kiss or reassure each other without fear of discovery, and a sudden emotion surged through him, uncontrollable.
"What if we ran away?" he said.
"Ran away?" she echoed. "And went where?"
"Somewhere they wouldn't find us. I could do it. I could find a place."
He saw the sympathy in her eyes. "They'd figure out why. We wouldn't be able to come back."
"They forgave us for breaking the Cold Peace," he said, and he knew he sounded desperate. He knew his words were tripping over themselves. But they were words he had wanted to say, not dared to say, for years: They were words that belonged to a part of himself that had been locked up so long he had wondered if it were even still living. "They need Shadowhunters. There aren't enough of us. They might forgive us for this, too."
"Julian--you wouldn't be able to live with yourself if you left the kids. And Mark, and Helen. I mean, you just got Mark back. There's no way."
He held back thought of them, of his brothers and sisters, as if he were Poseidon holding back the tide. "Are you saying this because you don't want to go away with me? Because if you don't want it--"
In the distance, down the hall, a thin cry rose: Tavvy.
Julian was out of the bed in seconds, the floor cold against his bare feet. "I'd better go."
Emma pushed herself up on her elbows. Her face was serious, dominated by her wide dark eyes. "I'll go with you."
They hurried down the hall to Tavvy's room. The door was propped open, a dim witchlight burning inside. Tavvy was curled up half in and half out of his tent, tossing and turning in his sleep.
Emma was on her knees next to him in moments, stroking his disarrayed brown hair. "Baby," she murmured. "Poor baby, by the Angel, what a night for you."
She lay down on her side, facing Tavvy, and Julian lay down on the little boy's other side. Tavvy gave a cry and curled back into Julian, his breath softening as he relaxed into sleep.
Julian looked across his little brother's curly head at Emma. "Do you remember?" he said.
He could see in her eyes that she did remember. The years they'd taken care of the others, the nights they stayed up with Tavvy or with Dru, with Ty and Livvy. He wondered if she'd spun fantasies, as he had, that they were married and these their children.
"I remember," she said. "That's why I said you couldn't ever leave them. Yo
u couldn't stand it." She propped her head on her hand, the scar on her forearm a white line in the dimness. "I don't want you to do something you'll spend your life regretting."
"I've already done something I'm going to spend my life regretting," he said, thinking of the circles of fire in the Silent City, the rune on his collarbone. "Now I'm trying to fix it."
She lowered her head gently to the floor beside Tavvy, her pale hair making a pillow. "Like you said about my closet," she said. "Let's talk about it tomorrow. Okay?"
He nodded, watching as she closed her eyes, as her breaths evened out into sleep. He'd waited this long, after all. He could wait another day.
After the dawn, Emma woke from a nightmare, crying the names of her parents--and of Malcolm--aloud. Julian picked her up in his arms and carried her down the hallway to her own bedroom.
The last time Kit Rook ever saw his father, it was an ordinary day and they were sitting in their living room. Kit was sprawled on the floor reading a book on cons and scams. According to Johnny Rook, it was time to "learn the classics"--which for most people would have meant Hemingway and Shakespeare, but for Kit meant memorizing things like the Spanish Prisoner and the Melon Drop.
Johnny was in his favorite chair, in his usual thinking pose--fingers templed under his chin, legs crossed. It was times like this, when the sun slanted through the window and lit up the fine, sharp bones of his father's face, that Kit wondered about all the things he didn't know: who his mother had been, if it was true, as was whispered in the Market, that Johnny's family was English aristocracy who'd tossed him out when he manifested his Sight. It wasn't that Kit yearned to be aristocracy so much as he wondered what it would be like to be in a family that had more than two people in it.
The ground suddenly seized up under him. Kit's book went flying and he slid several feet across the floor before slamming into the coffee table. He sat up, heart speeding, and saw his father already at the window.
Kit got to his feet. "Earthquake?" he said. When you lived in Southern California you got used to small shiftings of the fault lines in the earth, waking up in the night with the glasses rattling in the kitchen cupboards.
Johnny turned away from the window, his face deathly pale. "Something's happened to the Guardian," Johnny said. "The protection spells on the house have faded."
"What?" Kit was bewildered. Their house had been warded for as long as he could remember. His father had always spoken of the wards as if they were the roof or the foundation: essential, necessary, built into the fabric of their home.
He remembered, then, last year, his father saying something about demon protection spells, more powerful ones--
Johnny swore, a fluent string of curses, and whirled toward the bookcase. He seized a worn spell book. "Get downstairs, Kit," he said, moving to kick aside the rug in the middle of the room, revealing the protection circle there.
"But--"
"I said get downstairs!" Johnny took a step toward his son, as if he meant to reach out to him, to touch his shoulder perhaps. Then he dropped his arm. "Stay in the cellar and don't come out, no matter what happens," he barked, and turned back to the circle.
Kit began to back toward the stairs. He stumbled down one step, and then another, before pausing.
Johnny's phone was on a low shelf of the bookcase, reachable from the steps. Kit grabbed it up, looking for the name, her name. But if you change your mind, you have my number in your phone. Under Carstairs.
He barely had time to type out a message when the floor of the living room exploded upward. Things spilled up from the space below. They looked like massive praying mantises, their bodies the bitter green of poison. They had small triangular heads with wide mouths filled with jagged teeth, long bodies that gleamed with slime, and jagged, razored forelegs.
Kit's father stood frozen in the middle of his circle. A demon flung itself toward him, and bounced off the spell that surrounded him. Another followed, equally unsuccessful. The demons set up a loud chittering.
Kit couldn't move. He knew about demons, of course. He'd seen pictures, even smelled the scent of demonic magic. But this was different. He caught his father's eye: Johnny was glaring at him in a mixture of panic and fury. Get downstairs.
Kit tried to make his feet move, to carry him. They wouldn't. Panic made him freeze.
The largest demon seemed to catch the scent of him and buzzed in excitement. It began to scuttle toward him.
Kit looked at his father. But Johnny didn't move. He stayed in his circle, his eyes bulging. The demon lunged for Kit, razored forelegs extended.
And Kit jumped. He had no idea how he did it, or how his body knew what to do. He pushed off from the stairs and hurtled over the banister, landing in a crouch in the living room. The demon, which had been reaching for him, gave a loud screech as it lost its balance and toppled downstairs, smashing into the wall of the landing.
Kit whirled back around. For a moment he caught his father's eye. There was something in Johnny's expression that was almost sorrowful--a look Kit had never seen before--and then another chunk of the floor collapsed, taking a section of the protection circle with it.
Kit flung himself backward. He flipped into the air and came down balanced on the arms of a chair, just in time to see two of the demons seize his father and rip him in half.
Emma was in the middle of a very confusing dream about Magnus Bane and a troupe of clowns when she was awoken by a hand on her shoulder. She muttered and dug herself deeper into the bedclothes, but the hand was insistent. It stroked down her arm, which was actually very pleasant. A warm mouth brushed the edge of her lips.
"Emma?" Julian said.
Vague memories of him carrying her down the hall to her bedroom and then collapsing beside her drifted through the tired fog in her brain. Hmm, she thought. There really seemed to be no reason to get up at all, not when Julian was being affectionate. She feigned sleep as he kissed her cheek, and then along her jaw, and then--
She sat bolt upright, sputtering. "You stuck your tongue in my ear!"
"Yup." He grinned. "It did get you moving, didn't it?"
"Eugh!" She threw an I LOVE CALI pillow at him, which he nimbly ducked. He was wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt that made his eyes look lapis blue. He was clearly just awake and tousle-haired and so adorable that she could only keep herself from attacking him by putting her hands behind her back.
"Why are you putting your hands behind your back?" he asked.
"No reason." She wrinkled up her nose. "That ear thing was weird. Don't do it again."
"How about this?" he suggested, and leaned in to kiss the base of her throat.
Sensation spiraled out from the places his lips touched--her collarbone first, then her neck, then the side of her mouth.
She drew her hands out from behind her back and reached for him. His skin was sunshine-warm.
Their faces were so close that she could see the small starbursts of color inside his eyes: pale gold, paler blue. He wasn't smiling. His expression was too intent for that. There was a wanting in his eyes that made her feel like she was breaking apart.
Their legs tangled in the blankets as they came together, mouths seeking. He still wasn't an expert kisser, but she liked that. She liked being reminded that he hadn't been with anyone but her. That she was his first. She liked that something as simple as a kiss was still a source of amazement for him. She used her tongue to trace the corners of his mouth, the seam of his lips, until he sank back on the bed, pulling her on top of him. His body shuddered, arching up toward hers, his hands sliding down to grip her hips.
"Emma?" There was a knock on the door. They jerked away from each other, Julian rolling off the bed, Emma sitting upright, her heart pounding. "Emma, it's Dru. Have you seen Jules?"
"No," Emma croaked. "I haven't."
The door started to open.
"Don't," Emma called. "I'm--I'm getting dressed."
"Whatever," Dru said dismissively, but the door didn't open further
. Resolutely, Emma didn't look toward Julian. Everything's fine, she told herself. Calm, be calm. "Well, if you see him, can you tell him Tavvy and everyone need lunch? Livvy and Ty are making a mess in the kitchen, too."
Her voice held the satisfied tone of a sibling tattling on another sibling.
"Sure," said Emma. "Did you check the studio? He might be there."
There was a rustle. "No, I didn't. Good idea. See you later!"
"Bye," Emma said, faintly. Dru's footsteps were already receding down the hall.
Finally Emma let herself look at Julian. He was leaning against the wall, his chest rising and falling fast, his eyes half-lidded, teeth digging into his lip.
He exhaled. "Raziel," he whispered. "That was close."
Emma got to her feet, her nightgown swishing around her knees. She was shaking. "We can't," she started. "We can't--we'll get caught--"
Julian was already across the room, taking her in his arms. She could feel his heart slamming against his rib cage, but his voice was steady. "It's a stupid Law," he said. "It's a bad Law, Em."
There is a reason you can't fall in love with your parabatai, Emma. And when you find out what it is, you will feel the cruelty of the Shadowhunters just as I have.
Malcolm's voice, unwelcome and unavoidable, pushed its way into Emma's brain. She'd done all she could to forget it, forget what he'd said. He'd been lying--he'd lied about everything else. This had to be a lie, too.
And yet. She'd put it off, but she knew she had to tell Julian. He had the right to know.
"We have to talk," she said.
She felt his heart skip. "Don't say that. I know it's not good." He pulled her tighter against him. "Don't get scared, Emma," he whispered. "Don't let us go because you're frightened."
"I am frightened. Not for me, for you. Everything you've done, all the hiding and pretending, to keep the kids together--the situation hasn't changed, Julian. If I hurt any of you--
He kissed her, stemming the tide of words. Despite everything, she felt the kiss all through her body. "I used to read Law books," he said, drawing away from her. "The parts about parabatai. I read them a million times. There's never been a case of a pair of parabatai who fell in love and got caught and were forgiven. Only horror stories. And I can't lose my family. You were right. It would kill me. But the horror stories are about the ones who got caught." He breathed in deep, holding her gaze. "If we're careful, we won't be."