The window behind Jace rose high and clear, so clear Mark sometimes imagined he could fly out of it. "Maybe if it was for his own good," Jace said.
Clary made an inelegant doubtful noise. "Mark," she said. "We need your help. We have some questions about Faerie and the Courts--their actual physical layout--and there don't seem to be any answers--not from the Spiral Labyrinth, not from the Scholomance."
"And honestly," Jace said, "we don't want to look too much like we're investigating, because this mission is secret."
"Your mission is to Faerie?" Mark guessed.
They both nodded.
Mark was astonished. Shadowhunters had never been comfortable in the actual Lands of Faerie, and since the Cold Peace they'd avoided them like poison. "Why?" He turned quickly from the claymore. "Is this some kind of revenge mission? Because Iarlath and some of the others cooperated with Malcolm? Or--because of what happened to Emma?"
Emma still sometimes needed help with the last of her bandages. Every time Mark looked at the red lines crossing her skin, he felt guilt and sickness. They were like a web of bloody threads that kept him bound to the deception they were both perpetrating.
Clary's eyes were kind. "We're not planning to hurt anyone," she said. "There's no revenge going on here. This is strictly about information."
"You think I'm worried about Kieran," realized Mark. The name lodged in his throat like a piece of snapped-off bone. He had loved Kieran, and Kieran had betrayed him and gone back to the Hunt, and whenever Mark thought about him, it felt as if he were bleeding from someplace inside. "I am not," he said, "worried about Kieran."
"Then you wouldn't mind if we talked to him," said Jace.
"I wouldn't be worried about him," said Mark. "I might be worried about you."
Clary laughed softly. "Thank you, Mark."
"He's the son of the Unseelie Court's King," said Mark. "The King has fifty sons. All of them vie for the throne. The King is tired of them. He owed Gwyn a favor, so he gave him Kieran in repayment. Like the gift of a sword or a dog."
"As I understand it," said Jace, "Kieran came to you, and offered to help you, against the wishes of the fey. He put himself in grave danger to assist you."
Mark supposed he shouldn't be surprised that Jace knew that. Emma often confided in Clary. "He owed me. It was thanks to him that those I love were badly hurt."
"Still," said Jace, "there is some chance he might prove amenable to our questions. Especially if we could tell him they were endorsed by you."
Mark said nothing. Clary kissed Jace on the cheek and murmured something in his ear before she headed out of the room. Jace watched her go, his expression momentarily soft. Mark felt a sharp stab of envy. He wondered if he would ever be like that with someone: the way they seemed to match, Clary's kind playfulness and Jace's sarcasm and strength. He wondered if he had ever matched with Kieran. If he would have matched with Cristina, had things been different.
"What is it you mean to ask Kieran?" he said.
"Some questions about the Queen, and about the King," said Jace. Noting Mark's impatient movement, he said, "I'll tell you a little, and remember I should be telling you nothing. The Clave would have my head for this." He sighed. "Sebastian Morgenstern left a weapon with one of the Courts of Faerie," he said. "A weapon that could destroy us all, destroy all Nephilim."
"What does the weapon do?" Mark asked.
"I don't know. That's part of what we need to find out. But we know it's deadly."
Mark nodded. "I think Kieran will help you," he said. "And I can give you a list of names of those in Faerie to look for who might be friendly to your cause, because it will not be a popular one. I do not think you know how much they hate you. If they have a weapon, I hope you find it, because they will not hesitate to use it, and they will have no mercy on you."
Jace looked up through golden lashes that were very like Kit's. His gaze was watchful and still. "Mercy on us?" he said. "You're one of us."
"That seems to depend on who you ask," Mark said. "Do you have a pen and paper? I'll start with the names . . . ."
*
It had been too long since Uncle Arthur had left the attic room where he slept, ate, and did his work. Julian wrinkled his nose as he and Diana climbed the narrow stairs--the air was staler than usual, rancid with old food and sweat. The shadows were thick. Arthur was a shadow himself, hunched over his desk, a witchlight burning in a dish on the windowsill above. He didn't react to Julian and Diana's presence.
"Arthur," Diana said, "we need to speak with you."
Arthur turned slowly in his chair. Julian felt his gaze skate over Diana, and then over himself. "Miss Wrayburn," he said, finally. "What can I do for you?"
Diana had accompanied Julian on trips to the attic before, but rarely. Now that the truth of their situation was known by Mark and Emma, Julian had been able to acknowledge to Diana what they had always both known but never spoken about.
For years, since he was twelve years old, Julian had borne alone the knowledge that his uncle Arthur was mad, his mind shattered during his imprisonment in the Seelie Court. He had periods of lucidity, helped by the medicine Malcolm Fade had provided, but they never lasted long.
If the Clave knew the truth, they would have ripped Arthur away from his position as Institute head in moments. It was quite likely he would end up locked in the Basilias, forbidden from leaving or having visitors. In his absence, with no Blackthorn adult to run the Institute, the children would be split up, sent to the Academy in Idris, scattered around the world. Julian's determination to never let that happen had led to five years of secret keeping, five years of hiding Arthur from the world and the world from Arthur.
Sometimes he wondered if he was doing the right thing for his uncle. But did it matter? Either way, he would protect his brothers and sisters. He would sacrifice Arthur for them if he had to, and if the moral consequences woke him up in the middle of the night sometimes, panicked and gasping, then he'd live with that.
He remembered Kieran's sharp faerie eyes on him: You have a ruthless heart.
Maybe it was true. Right now Julian's heart felt dead in his chest, a swollen, beatless lump. Everything seemed to be happening at a slight distance--he even felt as if he were moving more slowly through the world, as if he were pushing his way through water.
Still, it was a relief to have Diana with him. Arthur often mistook Julian for his dead father or grandfather, but Diana was no part of his past, and he seemed to have no choice but to recognize her.
"The medication that Malcolm made for you," said Diana. "Did he ever speak to you about it? What was in it?"
Arthur shook his head slightly. "The boy doesn't know?"
Julian knew that meant him. "No," he said. "Malcolm never spoke of it to me."
Arthur frowned. "Are there dregs, leftovers, that could be analyzed?"
"I used every drop I could find two weeks ago." Julian had drugged his uncle with a powerful cocktail of Malcolm's medicine the last time Jace, Clary, and the Inquisitor had been at the Institute. He hadn't dared take the chance that Arthur would be anything but steady on his feet and as clearheaded as possible.
Julian was fairly sure Jace and Clary would cover up Arthur's condition if they knew it. But it was an unfair burden to ask them to bear, and besides--he didn't trust the Inquisitor, Robert Lightwood. He hadn't trusted him since the time five years ago when Robert had forced him to endure a brutal trial by Mortal Sword because he hadn't believed Julian wouldn't lie.
"You haven't kept any of it, Arthur?" Diana asked. "Hidden some away?"
Arthur shook his head again. In the dim witchlight, he looked old--much older than he was, his hair salted with gray, his eyes washed out like the ocean in the early morning. His body under his straggling gray robe was skinny, the point of his shoulder bone visible through the material. "I didn't know Malcolm would turn out to be what he was," he said. A murderer, a killer, a traitor. "Besides, I depended on the boy." He cleared his throat. "Julian."
"Kentarchs," murmured Arthur, opening one of his desk drawers as if he meant to search for something inside. "That is what they were called in the Byzantine army. But a centurion was always the pillar of the army. He commanded a hundred men. A centurion could mete out punishment to a Roman citizen that the law usually protected them from. Centurions supersede the law."
Julian wasn't sure how much the original Roman centurions and the Centurions of the Scholomance had in common. But he suspected he got his uncle's point anyway. "Right, so that means we're going to have to be especially careful. With how you have to be around them. How you're going to have to act."
Arthur put his fingers to his temples. "I'm just so tired," he murmured. "Can we not . . . If we could ask Malcolm for a bit more medicine . . ."
"Malcolm's dead," Julian said. His uncle had been told, but it didn't seem to have quite sunk in. And it was exactly the sort of mistake he couldn't make around strangers.
"There are mundane drugs," said Diana, after a moment's hesitation.
"But the Clave," Julian said. "The punishment for seeking out mundane medical treatment is--"
"I know what it is," Diana said, surprisingly sharply. "But we're desperate."
"But we'd have no idea about what dosage or what pills. We have no idea how mundanes treat sicknesses like this."
"I am not ill." Arthur slammed the drawer of the desk shut. "The faeries shattered my mind. I felt it break. No mundane could understand or treat such a thing."
Diana exchanged a worried look with Julian. "Well, there are several paths we could go down. We'll leave you alone, Arthur, and discuss them. We know how important your work is."
"Yes," Julian's uncle murmured. "My work . . ." And he bent again over his papers, Diana and Julian instantly forgotten. As Julian followed Diana out of the room, he couldn't help but wonder what solace it was that his uncle found in old stories of gods and heroes, of an earlier time of the world, one where plugging your ears and refusing to listen to the sound of the music of sirens could keep you from madness.
At the foot of the stairs, Diana turned to Julian and spoke softly. "You'll have to go to the Shadow Market tonight."
"What?" Julian was thrown. The Shadow Market was off-limits to Nephilim unless they were on a mission, and always off-limits to underage Shadowhunters. "With you?"
Diana shook her head. "I can't go there."
Julian didn't ask. It was an unspoken fact between them that Diana had secrets and that Julian could not press her about them.
"But there'll be warlocks," she said. "Ones we don't know, ones who'll keep silent for a price. Ones who won't know your face. And faeries. This is a faerie-caused madness after all, not a natural state. Perhaps they would know how to reverse it." She was silent a moment, thinking. "Bring Kit with you," she said. "He knows the Shadow Market better than anyone else we could ask, and Downworlders there trust him."
"He's just a kid," Julian objected. "And he hasn't been out of the Institute since his father died." Was killed, actually. Ripped to pieces in front of his eyes. "It could be hard on him."
"He'll have to get used to things being hard on him," said Diana, her expression flinty. "He's a Shadowhunter now."
3
WHERE DWELL THE GHOULS
Vicious traffic meant it took Julian and Kit an hour to get from Malibu to Old Pasadena. By the time they found parking, Julian had a pounding headache, not helped by the fact that Kit had barely said a word to him since they'd left the Institute.
Even so long after sunset, the sky in the west was touched with feather-strokes of crimson and black. The wind was blowing from the east, which meant that even in the middle of the city you could breathe in desert: sand and grit, cactus and coyotes, the burning scent of sage.
Kit leaped out of the car the minute Julian turned the engine off, as if he couldn't stand spending another minute next to him. When they'd passed the freeway exit that went to the Rooks' old house, Kit had asked if he could swing by to pick up some of his clothes. Julian had said no, it wasn't safe, especially at night. Kit had looked at him as if Julian had driven a knife into his back.
Julian was used to pleading and sulks and protestations that someone hated you. He had four younger siblings. But there was a special artistry to Kit's glaring. He really meant it.
Now, as Julian locked the car behind them, Kit made a snorting sound. "You look like a Shadowhunter."
Julian glanced down at himself. Jeans, boots, a vintage blazer that had been a gift from Emma. Since glamour runes weren't much use at the Market, he'd had to fall back on pulling down his sleeve to cover his Voyance rune and flipping up his collar to conceal the very edges of Marks that would otherwise have peeked out from his shirt.
"What?" he said. "You can't see any Marks."
"You don't need to," said Kit, in a bored voice. "You look like a cop. All of you always look like cops."
Julian's headache intensified. "And your suggestion?"
"Let me go in alone," Kit said. "They know me, they trust me. They'll answer my questions and sell me whatever I want." He held out a hand. "I'll need some money, of course."
Julian looked at him in disbelief. "You didn't really think that would work, did you?"
Kit shrugged and retracted his hand. "It could've worked."
Julian started walking toward the alley that led to the entrance to the Shadow Market. He'd only been there once, years ago, but he remembered it well. Shadow Markets had sprung up in the aftermath of the Cold Peace, a way for Downworlders to do business away from the spotlight of the new Laws. "So, let me guess. Your plan was to take some money from me, pretend you were going to the Shadow Market, and hop a bus out of town?"
"Actually, my plan was to take some money from you, pretend I was going to the Shadow Market, and hop on the Metrolink," said Kit. "They have trains that leave this city now. Major development, I know. You should try to keep track of these things."
Julian wondered briefly what Jace would do if he strangled Kit. He considered voicing the thought aloud, but they'd reached the end of the alley, where a slight shimmer in the air was visible. He grabbed Kit by the arm, propelling them both through it at the same time.
They emerged on the other side into the heart of the Market. Light flared all around them, blotting out the stars overhead. Even the moon seemed a pale shell.
Julian was still gripping Kit's arm, but Kit was making no move to run. He was looking around with a wistfulness that made him look young--sometimes it was hard for Julian to remember that Kit was the same age as Ty. His blue eyes--clear and sky-colored, without the green tinge that characterized the Blackthorns' eyes--moved around the Market, taking it in.
Rows of booths were lit with torches whose fires blazed gold, blue, and poison green. Trellises of flowers richer and sweeter-smelling than white oleander or jacaranda blossoms cascaded down the sides of stalls. Beautiful faerie girls and boys danced to the music of reeds and pipes. Everywhere were voices clamoring for them to come buy, come buy. Weapons were on display, and jewelry, and vials of potions and powders.
"This way," said Kit, pulling his arm out of Julian's grip.
Julian followed. He could feel eyes on them, wondered if it was because Kit had been right: He looked like a cop, or the supernatural version, anyway. He was a Shadowhunter, had always been a Shadowhunter. You couldn't shed your nature.
They had reached one of the Market's edges, where the light was dimmer, and it was possible to see the white lines painted on the asphalt under them that revealed this place's daytime job as a parking lot.
Kit moved toward the closest booth, where a faerie woman sat in front of a sign that advertised fortune-telling and love potions. She looked up with a beaming smile as he approached.
"Kit!" she exclaimed. She wore a scrap of a white dress that set off her pale blue skin, and her pointed ears poked through lavende
r hair. Thin chains of gold and silver dangled around her neck and dripped from her wrists. She glared at Julian. "What is he doing here?"
"The Nephilim is all right, Hyacinth," Kit said. "I'll vouch for him. He just wants to buy something."
"Doesn't everyone," she murmured. She cast Julian a sly look. "You're a pretty one," she said. "Your eyes are almost the same color as me."
Julian moved closer to the booth. It was at times like this he wished he was any good at flirting. He wasn't. He had never in his life felt a flicker of desire for any girl who wasn't Emma, so it was something he'd never learned to do.
"I'm seeking a potion to cure madness in a Shadowhunter," he said. "Or at least to stop the symptoms for a while."
"What kind of madness?"
"He was tormented in the Courts," Julian said bluntly. "His mind was broken by the hallucinations and potions they forced on him."
"A Shadowhunter with faerie-caused madness? Oh my," she said, and there was skepticism in her tone. Julian began to explain about Uncle Arthur, without using his name: his situation and his condition. The fact that his lucid periods came and went. The fact that sometimes his moods made him bleak and cruel. That he recognized his family only part of the time. He described the potion Malcolm had made for Arthur, back when they trusted Malcolm and thought he was their friend.
Not that he mentioned Malcolm by name.
The faerie woman shook her head when he was done. "You should ask a warlock," she said. "They will deal with Shadowhunters. I will not. I have no desire to run afoul of the Courts or the Clave."
"No one needs to know about it," said Julian. "I'll pay you well."
"Child." There was an edge of pity in her voice. "You think you can keep secrets from all of Downworld? You think the Market hasn't been buzzing with the news of the fall of the Guardian and the death of Johnny Rook? The fact that we now no longer have a High Warlock? The disappearance of Anselm Nightshade--though he was a terrible man--" She shook her head. "You should never have come here," she said. "It's not safe for either of you."
Kit looked bewildered. "You mean him," he said, indicating Julian with a tilt of his head. "It's not safe for him."
"Not for you, either, baby boy," said a gravelly voice behind them.
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