She drew away, and now the expression on her face was more confused than ever. She pressed her fingers to her lips. Her eyes searched his face, even as his heart beat unevenly in his chest. He stepped back, into the deeper shadows. She was starting to guess, he thought.
“I love you,” he told her. “So much. Someday you’ll know how much.”
“Jace,” she said, and then Simon honked the horn of the van.
Clary exhaled, her breath condensing to mist. “Go have fun. You’ve been working too hard,” she said, smiled a swift uncertain smile, and dashed away to Simon’s van.
Janus crumpled as the van peeled away, falling to his knees on the drenched and dirty cement. He kissed the ground where Clary had stood. He huddled there, face pressed against the stone, shuddering on his knees.
He wouldn’t be able to kill Jace easily and take his place by Clary’s side. They would all know. He knew none of their jokes, the way they interacted. He had barely been able to fool Clary for a few stolen moments in the dark. Even now, she suspected him, and later on, she might ask Jace why he’d been acting so strange. . . . Janus couldn’t bear to think of it. He could never fool them all in the light. Not yet.
He did not realize for some time that he was soaked to the skin, shaking with cold and rage. He hated them all. He hated Alec and Isabelle and Magnus and Simon. He hated and loved Clary in equal measure and it was like poison in his throat. For all these years he had been tortured and they had not noticed or cared or missed him.
He would show them what that darkness could be like, one day.
* * *
The woods and the gardens were full of memories, but so was their home. Jem and Tessa had put up pictures on the stone walls, black-and-white photographs carefully preserved: of Will, of James and Lucie, who were Mina’s half brother and half sister separated by a more than a century. Someday they could point out each face to Mina and tell her their names and that they would have loved her.
Memories were like love: wound and cure, both at once.
That night, they were all together in the nursery, reading Mina her bedtime story. Mina was in Tessa’s lap, gumming avidly at the edge of her rubber book. Tessa finished the story and looked down at Kit, who was lying on the carpet, propped up on his elbows.
“I transformed into your mother once,” Tessa told him in a low voice. “I know you never knew her.”
Kit stiffened but tried to pass it off casually, as he did most things.
“Yeah, I’m still absorbing the fact that I’m literally Rosemary’s baby,” he remarked.
“Read that book,” Tessa said with a faint smile.
“Saw that movie,” returned Kit.
“I have no idea what you two are talking about,” said Jem, as he usually did when they played Read that book/Saw that movie.
Later Tessa would give him the book, or Kit would cue up the movie on his laptop.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Tessa said. “I know I can’t replace her or make up for the loss of her. But I wanted to tell you that your mother, the lost Herondale, the descendant of the First Heir—she loved you. She never wanted to leave you. She spent her life running because she thought that was the best way to protect you. She’d always been running: it was the only way she knew. But the happiest time for her was the time when she returned to your father, and they lived together in hiding for a few years, and she had you. I don’t get memories as clearly as I once did, but I can remember being her, remember holding you when you were as small as my Mina is now. I know the song she used to sing to you.”
Kit scrambled up now. He sat at Tessa’s feet with his head bowed as she began to sing. Jem reached for his violin. He played a tune of love and loss, of searching and finding, a melody that ran like a river beneath the bridge of his wife’s voice, the melody he loved best in all the world.
“I gave my love a story that had no end. I gave my love a baby with no crying.”
She sang the song of Rosemary Herondale, and Jem thought of how impossibly lucky he had been. It could all have been darkness for him, and silence, forever, until he lost hope even for what came after death. If there had been no Tessa, if he had lost her, too, if she had not been immortal—but then she would not have been who she was. That might have been part of what drew him to her first, when he was a dying boy a century and more ago, and she was the loveliest girl he’d ever seen: a girl who had traveled to him across the sea, impossible and magical and beautiful beyond stories or music, a girl who would live forever.
At last, he was no longer doomed, and she was still so lovely.
Jem played a song for Will, for all those he loved on the farthest shore, and for his wife and his baby and the boy who was safe in his keeping, here together in this warm small room at home. One day they might be parted, but they could remember this moment and this melody.
“The story that I love you,” Tessa sang. “It has no end.”
Jem believed her.
* * *
Janus visited the Seelie Queen before he went back to Ash.
“You knew my plans had no chance of succeeding,” he said to her, his voice flat. “You knew that I could not pretend to be that—that arrogant fool.”
“He has the arrogance of luck and being loved,” said the Queen. “But would you really want all of them to love you and believe you were him? Or would you rather be loved as your own self?”
“You know what I would want,” he said.
Her smile was the curve of a cat’s tail. “And you can have it. Let us make new plans.”
The Queen had always wanted him to stay in the house of mirrors by the sea, he realized that now. She wanted him to be Ash’s guardian, Ash’s guard who nobody could pass.
Janus could do that. He wanted to do that. He would help her to her heart’s desire, if she would give him his. They talked for a long time. The Queen seemed pleased by the idea that they had someone in New York who would do Janus a favor. She said she could slip Lily a forgetting potion, until the time came for Janus to collect his favor. The Queen suggested several more ideas, and then said that Ash was waiting.
The Queen was right.
This time Janus did not catch Ash by surprise. Ash met him as Janus made his way up the winding road to home.
Ash had been out flying. Janus watched as Ash landed, alighting in the long grass of the cliff by the sea. His black wings folded down against his narrow back and his broadening shoulders, and there was a bright expectancy on Ash’s face that was almost like hope.
Ash had looked at his father, Sebastian, that way long ago, but it hadn’t lasted. He looked at his mother, the Queen, that way, but the brightness was beginning to fade now, as Ash learned how different his mother was from his childish memories and yearnings.
Ash only had Janus, but Janus would not fail him as his parents had.
“You’re back. I was watching out for you,” said Ash.
“How did you know I was coming?” Janus asked.
“I didn’t. I just sometimes look out to see if you might come. That’s all.”
Ash shrugged, but Janus didn’t think his shrug was as indifferent as Ash made it seem.
“I saw Clary,” Janus said quietly. “She’ll be with us, one day.”
“I thought . . .” Ash looked puzzled. “I thought you were going to live with her in the New York Institute.”
“Plans change,” said Janus.
“What’s the new plan?” Ash said. “Will you stay?”
My last hope, Janus wanted to say. I will always love you and never leave you. I knew this world must be better than ours, because you come from this one.
“What if I did?” Janus asked Ash. “What would you say if I said I would stay with you and train you?”
Ash kicked at a pebble. “I would say that I didn’t understand why,” he said. “I know you know you don’t have real feelings for me. You want to stay and protect me because the Dark Artifices make it so. You have to love me and be loyal to me.
But distance makes that feeling fade. I know my mother actually loves me, in her way, because she still missed me when I was gone. But I thought that you—once you started traveling to the human world so often—”
“I didn’t know that,” said Janus, thinking back to Sebastian’s long-ago words about Ash’s power to inspire love. “That distance makes it fade.”
“It does,” Ash said. “So if you want to go now—”
“I don’t,” said Janus, a swell of warmth, like a small tide, lifting his heart. “I never felt any differently about you in the mundane world than I do when you’re right next to me. You’re mine.”
Ash smiled. “Who else’s?”
The Queen’s son and Sebastian’s. Lilith’s blood and Valentine’s and Clary’s. He was well named, Sebastian had said once. He was born to rule over a land turned to ash.
Janus had seen what Sebastian had done to a world. Time to see what Ash did to this one. When Janus’s plans were complete—when the world became chaos and death—Janus and Ash could both belong.
This was a second chance. When the darkness came, Janus could protect Clary. He could keep his family safe. Everybody he loved, starting with Ash.
“If I teach you to be a Shadowhunter, if I teach you to bear runes, it will hurt.”
“That’s okay,” Ash replied. “The old Unseelie King hurt me. My father hurt me. I’m used to it.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” murmured Janus.
“I know,” said Ash. “That’s why it’s okay.”
Valentine had taught Janus through discipline that sometimes seemed harsh, and it had been right to teach Janus that way, but Ash was different. He was strong and smart and quick, and he would learn fast. Janus would never have to kill Ash or stand by and watch him be killed. Sebastian was dead, and Janus still breathed. Sebastian was dead, and Janus and Ash were free.
Ash hesitated. “What did you see out there? In the mundane world?”
His voice was fascinated and almost yearning. Ash had been a captive most of his life, a winged thing in a golden cage. Even now he could not go far from their home. There were too many dangers for the son of the Queen, and Ash had such a bright future ahead of him: so bright it was like the sun, impossible to contemplate. Janus shouldn’t have left Ash alone, but he’d make it up to him.
Janus would do better than tell Ash hollow words. Ash must be defended. If he had to, Janus would deal with anyone who posed a threat to Ash or his plans for Ash. This new Unseelie King might be a problem. Far worse, there were rumors about a danger the Queen would not speak of, but that Janus had heard about nonetheless: the descendant of someone called the First Heir. Whoever it was, if they dared threaten Ash, if anyone ever dared threaten Ash again, Janus would hunt them down and present Ash with their heads.
The blue waves crashed against the stones, miles down from the cliff at their feet. It made Janus recall a poem about the ocean in Faerieland.
For whatsoever from one place doth fall,
Is with the tide unto an other brought:
For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.
“It’s a beautiful world out there,” Janus answered. “I was thinking I’d wrap a bow around it and give it to you.”
Soon Janus would have Clary, and Ash would have the world. They only had to wait.
Ash smiled. Behind his green eyes, a predator lurked, like a tiger half-obscured by leaves. “I’d like that,” he said.
* * *
Tessa was putting Mina down for her nap. Jem lay in the long grass beneath the oak tree, with his cat curled against his chest, almost napping himself. Church pressed his flat, fuzzy face on the place where he could feel Jem’s heartbeat. Jem could feel the cat’s purr reverberating through his chest, as if his heart and the cat’s contentment were combining to form the same song.
“It took us a long, long time to be happy,” said Jem. “But here we are. I think it was worth it, don’t you?”
Church purred agreement.
They were waiting, as the sun dipped lower in the sky, for Kit to stop feinting and parrying, fighting intently with nothing but air, and notice they were there.
“Oh, hey, Jem,” said Kit at last, lowering his broadsword and wiping the sweat from his brow with one suntanned forearm. “Hey, bad cat.”
“He’s a sweet cat, really,” said Jem. “You have to learn how he likes to be petted.”
“I know how he likes to be petted,” said Kit. “By you and no one else. That cat is waiting for the chance to literally pee in my Cheerios.” He pointed the sword accusingly at Church. “I’m watching you.”
Church seemed unimpressed.
They’d cleared a training ground for Kit at the bottom of the garden. It had been the first request he made, hesitantly and with many assurances that it was fine if it wasn’t convenient, and Tessa had used magic and Jem a scythe to clear a space at once. Kit trained there every day.
“I saw you running laps at dawn,” Jem observed.
“Wow, that’s a horrible thing to say about anybody.” Kit shrugged uncomfortably, as if trying to shift the weight of a burden. “I’m not . . . very naturally gifted at this Shadowhunter thing. The Blackth—other people, they were born in Institutes, raised to it, but mostly my dad taught me card tricks. I don’t think demons will be impressed by my card tricks. Though they are pretty excellent.”
“You don’t have to be a Shadowhunter,” said Jem. “I’m not one. But I was. It was what I wanted, once. I know what it looks like, when you want something so much it almost breaks you.”
To fight. To be parabatai with Will. To kill demons and protect the innocent, to live the kind of life his parents would be proud of, when he saw them again. And the thought that carried Jem through the worst nights as he grew to manhood, to find love like his parents’ love, transforming and sanctifying. He had to last, until love came.
Love had been worth the wait.
“If you’re asking whether I’m working out my emotional pain through a punishing physical regimen,” said Kit, “my answer is obviously a manly yes. But I was hoping time would speed up when I did, and a rock soundtrack would start up, and I would get buff via a montage like in the movies. All the superhero movies and that one boxing movie have lied to me.”
“You’re getting better,” said Jem.
Kit grimaced. “I still get winded easily.”
“When I learned to fight, I was dying from slow poison,” said Jem. “. . . And I was, yes, still faster than you.”
Kit laughed. His eyes were Herondale eyes, but his laugh was all his own, mischievous and cynical and a little innocent, despite that.
“Train with me,” said Kit.
Jem smiled.
“What?” Kit asked anxiously. “Do you . . . not want to?”
“I said that to somebody once,” said Jem. “A long time ago. He did train with me. And now I’ll train you.”
Kit hesitated, then said, “Will?” and Jem nodded. “Do you . . .” Kit bit his lip. “Do you still think about him a lot?”
“I loved him better than I love myself,” said Jem. “I still do. I think about him every day.”
Kit blinked quickly. There was pain behind his eyes, the hidden kind, the sort Will had carried along with his secrets for so many years. Jem did not know its exact meaning or shape, but he could guess.
“Whoever you have loved, and however you loved them,” said Jem, “anyone you loved would be lucky.”
Kit was staring at the ground again, at the dust of the training ground. We are dust and shadows, Will used to say.
“Yeah, well, that’s a minority opinion,” Kit mumbled. Then he lifted his chin, blue eyes defiant, throwing a challenge at pain. “Tessa says my mom loved me, but I never knew her. She didn’t know me. My dad knew me, and he didn’t care. Don’t say he did. I know he didn’t. But he loved my mom, apparently, so it wasn’t that he couldn’t love anyone. It was that he couldn’t love me. And—and the—and—nobody else has, e
ither. I wasn’t enough, to stop—I wasn’t enough. I’ve never been enough, not for anyone, and I’m trying, but I don’t know if I ever will be.”
Jem didn’t know exactly what had happened at the Los Angeles Institute, where he and Tessa had left Kit believing he would be safe. It was clear Kit had been badly hurt, there with Emma and the Blackthorns. Jem believed the Blackthorns all had good and open hearts, but they had suffered great losses while Kit was with them, and sometimes when people were wounded they hurt others. They were all very young, and Kit had not been with them long.
Jem did know enough to see Johnny Rook must have done something truly wrong, if he’d had all Kit’s life to show him that he was loved and never convinced him.
“I loved my parents,” said Jem. “And they loved me.”
Kit blinked. “Um, good for you.”
“I had a happy childhood with them in Shanghai, the kind of childhood you should have had, the kind of childhood everyone should have. Then they were tortured and murdered in front of me, and I was tortured too, and the Shadowhunters told me I would die. I knew I would die. I could feel the poison coursing in my veins. And I remember lying curled in a cabin at the bottom of a boat, on my way to England, feeling utterly small, hollow and hopeless and miserable. I thought I might die that way, that I couldn’t bear the torture of loving and losing someone, not ever again. But then . . . there was Will, and I loved him, and he loved me. If your father’s heart was too little and wretched to love someone else after losing your mother, then I pity him, but I know it was his fault. None of yours.”
The wind went sighing through the leaves, but it was only a soft sigh. Summer was coming, and winter would not be for a while yet.
Kit laid his sword down and walked over to the tree where Jem was sitting. He came and sat in the grass in front of Jem, as he’d sat at Tessa’s feet while she told him about his mother.
“All this ‘being the descendant of the First Heir’ stuff,” said Kit. “I don’t know what to do about it, but I know I have to be ready. I think about evil faeries, and Herondales, and my dad, and I don’t know how to be anything but a big mess.”
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