Jace’s expression went blank. He turned away from Sebastian and went to Ash, leaning over the back of his chair to point out something on his game screen. Ash nodded.
It would almost have looked like a sweet brotherly moment if it hadn’t been so screwed up and awful. If the chandelier overhead hadn’t been made of frozen human arms, each one gripping a torch that spat demonic light. If Emma could forget the faces beneath the floor.
“What Emma means is that Livvy’s always been cunning,” said Julian. “In a low sort of way.”
“Interesting,” said Sebastian. “I tend to approve of low cunning, though not when directed at me, of course.”
“We know her very well,” said Julian. “I’m sure we can suss out her little rebellion’s location without much trouble.”
Sebastian smirked. “I like your confidence,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe what I—” He broke off with a frown. “Is that damn dog barking again?”
It was a dog barking. A few seconds later, a black-and-white terrier bounded into the room on the end of a long leash. At the other end of the leash was a woman with long dark hair.
It was Annabel Blackthorn.
She wore a red dress without sleeves, though she must have been freezing in the cold air. Her skin was dead white.
Seeing Emma and Julian, she went even whiter. Her grip tightened on the dog’s leash.
Adrenaline spilled through Emma’s veins. Annabel was going to spill, she was going to turn them in. She had no reason not to. And then Sebastian would kill them. I swear, Emma thought, I will find a way to make him bleed before I die.
I will find a way to make them both bleed.
“I’m sorry,” Annabel said petulantly. “He wanted to see Ash. Didn’t you, Malcolm?”
Even Julian’s expression flickered at that. Emma watched in horror as Annabel bent down to rub the dog’s ears. It looked up at her with wide lavender eyes and barked again.
Malcolm Fade, High Warlock of Los Angeles, was now a demon terrier.
“Get your nasty familiar out of here,” Sebastian snapped. “I’m doing business. If Ash needs something, he’ll call on you, Annabel. He’s practically a grown man. He no longer requires a nursemaid.”
“Everyone needs a mother,” Annabel said. “Don’t you, Ash?”
Ash said nothing. He was immersed in his game. With an irritated sigh, Annabel stalked out of the room, Malcolm trotting behind her.
“As I was saying.” Sebastian’s face was tight with annoyance. “Annabel is one of my best torturers—you wouldn’t believe the creative skill she can display with a single knife and a Shadowhunter—but like the rest of those around me, she is too vulnerable to her emotions. I don’t know why people don’t just understand what’s best for them.”
“If they did, they wouldn’t need leaders,” said Julian. “Like you.”
Sebastian gave him a considering look. “I suppose that’s true. But it is like a weight of responsibility. Crushing me. You understand.”
“Let us seek out Livia for you,” Julian said. “We’ll go take care of the threat and bring you back her head.”
Sebastian looked pleased. He glanced at Emma. “You don’t talk much, do you?”
I can’t, Emma thought. I can’t stand here and lie and pretend like Julian. I can’t.
But the warmth of Julian’s hand was still in hers, the strength of their bond—even when it was no longer magical—lifting her chin, setting her jaw hard. She took her hand out of Julian’s and slowly, deliberately, cracked her knuckles.
“I prefer killing,” she said. “ ‘Say it with bullets,’ that’s my motto.”
Sebastian actually laughed, and for a moment Emma remembered Clary on the roof of the Institute, talking about a green-eyed brother who had never existed, but could have. Maybe in some other world, a better one than Thule.
“Very well,” Sebastian said. “You will be well rewarded if you succeed in this. There might even be a Bel Air house in it for you. Especially if you find any pretty redheads among the rebels and bring them back for Jace and me to play with.” He grinned. “Run along now, before you freeze to death.”
He flicked a dismissive gesture at them. There was a force behind it—Emma felt herself spun around as if by a hand on her shoulder. She nearly staggered, regained her footing, and found they were almost at the doors of the club. She didn’t even remember passing the mirrors.
Then they were out on the street, and she was gasping in lungfuls of the hot, dirty air, the warmth of the humid night suddenly welcome. They reclaimed their motorcycle from the lizard guard and rode several blocks without speaking a word until Julian leaned forward and said, through gritted teeth, “Pull over.”
The block they were on was nearly deserted, the streetlights smashed and the pavement dark. As soon as Emma pulled to a stop, Julian swung himself off the cycle and staggered over to the storefront of a destroyed Starbucks. Emma could hear him throwing up in the shadows. Her stomach tightened in sympathy. She wanted to go to him but was afraid to leave the cycle. It was their only way back to the Bradbury. Without it they were dead.
When Julian returned, his face smudged with shadow and bruises, Emma handed him a bottle of water.
“You were amazing in the nightclub,” she said.
He took a swig from the bottle. “I felt like I was being torn apart inside,” he said matter-of-factly. “To stand there and say those things about Livvy—to call that bastard monster ‘sir’—to keep from ripping Annabel limb from limb—”
“Do it now, then,” said a voice from the shadows. “Rip me apart, if you can.”
Emma’s Glock was already out as she turned, lowering it to point directly at the pale woman in the shadows. Her red dress was a smear of blood against the night.
Annabel’s colorless lips curled into a smile. “That gun won’t hurt me,” she said. “And the shot, the screams, will bring the Endarkened running. Chance it if you wish. I wouldn’t.”
Julian dropped the bottle. Water splashed over his boots. Emma prayed he wouldn’t launch himself at Annabel; his hands were shaking. “We can hurt you,” he said. “We can make you bleed.”
It was so close to what Emma herself had thought inside the nightclub that she was taken aback for a moment.
“The Endarkened will come,” Annabel said. “All I have to do is scream.” Her Marks had faded, just like all the other Shadowhunters’; her skin was pale as milk, without a single design. Emma was startled by how calm she seemed. How sane. But then, several years had passed here, for her. “I knew who you were the moment I saw you. You look just as you did in the Unseelie Court. The marks of the battle on your faces haven’t even healed.”
“Then why didn’t you tell Sebastian?” Emma spat. “If you wanted to get rid of us—”
“I don’t want to get rid of you. I want to make a deal with you.”
Julian yanked up his right sleeve with enough force to tear the fabric. There on his wrist was the rag he had worn all through Faerie, still crusted with dried blood. “This is my sister’s blood,” he ground out. “Blood you spilled. Why would I ever want to make a deal with you?”
Annabel looked unmoved at the sight of Livvy’s blood. “Because you want to get home,” she said. “Because you can’t stop thinking of what could be happening to the rest of your family. I am still possessed of powerful dark magics, you know. The Black Volume works even better here. I can open a Portal to take you home. I’m the only one in this world who can.”
“Why would you do that for us?” said Emma.
Annabel gave an odd little smile. In her red dress, she seemed to float suspended like a drop of blood in water. “The Inquisitor sent you into Faerie to die,” she said. “The Clave despises you and wants you dead. All because you wanted to protect what you loved. How would I not understand what that’s like?”
This, Emma felt, was pretty twisted logic. Julian, though, was staring at Annabel as if she were a nightmare he could not look away from.
&nb
sp; “You enspelled yourself,” Annabel went on, her gaze fixed on Julian. “To feel nothing. I sensed the spell when I saw you in Faerie. I saw it, and I felt joy.” She twirled, her red skirt spinning out around her. “You made yourself like Malcolm. He cut himself away from emotions to get me back.”
“No,” Emma said, unable to bear the look on Julian’s face. “He tried to get you back because he loved you. Because he felt emotions.”
“Maybe at first.” Annabel stopped twirling. “But it was no longer the case by the time he raised me, was it? He had kept me trapped and tortured all those years, so he could bring me back for him, not for me. That is not love, to sacrifice your beloved’s happiness for your own needs. By the time he was able to get me back, he was so divorced from the world that he cared about his goal more than he cared about the kinds of love that matter. A thing that was true and pure and beautiful became corrupt and evil.” She smiled, and her teeth shone like underwater pearls. “Once you no longer feel empathy, you become a monster. You may not be under the spell here, Julian Blackthorn, but what about when you return? What will you do then, when you cannot bear to feel what you feel?”
“Shut up,” Emma said through her teeth. “You don’t understand anything.” She turned to Julian. “Let’s get away from here.”
But Julian was still staring at Annabel. “You want something,” he said in a deadly flat voice. “What?”
“Ah.” Annabel was still smiling. “When I open the Portal, take Ash with you. He is in danger.”
“Ash?” Julian repeated, incredulous.
“Ash seems to be doing fine here,” said Emma, lowering her Glock. “I mean, maybe he’s getting bored with his video game selection since, you know, Sebastian killed all the people who make video games. Or he could be running out of batteries. But I’m not sure that qualifies as danger.”
Annabel’s face darkened. “He is too good for this place,” she said. “And more than that—when we first found ourselves here, I brought him to Sebastian. I believed Sebastian would take care of Ash because he is his father. And for a time, he did. But rumors are circulating that the energy drain of maintaining so many Endarkened is slowly tearing Sebastian apart. The life forces of the Endarkened are poisoned. Useless. But Ash’s is not. I believe eventually he will kill Ash and use his considerable life force to rejuvenate himself.”
“No one’s safe, huh?” said Julian. He sounded distinctly unimpressed.
“This is a good world for me,” said Annabel. “I hate the Nephilim, and I am powerful enough to be safe from demons.”
“And Sebastian lets you torture Nephilim,” Emma said.
“Indeed. I visit upon them the wounds that were once visited upon me by the Council.” There was no emotion in her voice, not even a faint hint of gloating, only a deadly dullness that was even worse. “But it is not a good place for Ash. We cannot hide—Sebastian would hunt him down anywhere. He will be better off in your world.”
“Then why don’t you take him there yourself?” said Emma.
“I would if I could. It sickens me to be parted from him,” Annabel said. “I have given all my life these years to his care.”
Perfect loyalty, Emma thought. Was it that loyalty that had made Annabel so haggard, so sick-looking? Always putting Ash before herself, following him from place to place, ready to die for him at any moment, and never really knowing why?
“But in your world,” Annabel went on, “I would be hunted, and torn from Ash. He would have no one to protect him. This way, he will have you.”
“You seem to have a lot of trust in us,” said Julian, “given that you know we hate you.”
“But you don’t hate Ash,” Annabel said. “He is innocent, and you have always protected the innocent. It is what you do.” She smiled, a knowing smile, as if she felt in her heart that she had caught them in a net. “Besides. You are desperate to get home, and desperation always has a price. So how about it, Nephilim? Do we have a deal?”
* * *
Ash scooped the piece of paper that had fallen from Julian Blackthorn’s jacket off the floor of the nightclub. He was careful not to let Sebastian see him do it. He’d been in Thule long enough to know that it was never a good idea to catch Sebastian’s attention unawares.
Not that Sebastian was always cruel. He was generous in fits and starts, when he remembered Ash existed. He’d hand him weapons or games he found in raids on rebel homes. He ensured that Ash dressed nicely, since he considered Ash a reflection of himself. Jace was the only one who was ever actually kind, though, seeming to find in Ash somewhere to put the frustrated, bottled-up feelings he still carried for Clary Fairchild and Alexander and Isabelle Lightwood.
And then there was Annabel. But Ash didn’t want to think about Annabel.
Ash unfolded the paper. A jolt went through his body. He turned away quickly so that Jace and Sebastian, deep in conversation, wouldn’t see his expression.
It was her, the strange human girl he’d once seen in the Unseelie weapons room. Dark hair, eyes the color of the sky he only partially remembered. A murder of crows circled in the sky behind her. Not a photograph, but a drawing, done with a wistful hand, a sense of love and longing emanating from the page. A name was scribbled in a corner: Drusilla Blackthorn.
Drusilla. She looked lonely, Ash thought, but determined as well, as if a hope lived behind those summer-blue eyes, a hope that could not be quenched by loss, a hope too strong to feel despair.
Ash’s heart was pounding, though he could not have said why. Hastily, he folded the drawing and thrust it into his pocket.
* * *
Diana was waiting for them outside the Bradbury, leaning against the closed garage door with a shotgun over her shoulder. She lowered the weapon with a look of visible relief as Emma and Julian’s motorcycle puttered to a stop in front of her.
“I knew you’d make it,” she said as Julian swung himself off the bike.
“Aw,” said Emma, dismounting. “You were worried about us!”
Diana tapped on the garage door with the tip of her shotgun. She said something to Emma that was lost in the grinding of the gears as the door opened.
Julian watched Emma answer Diana with a smile and wondered how she did it. Somehow Emma could always find lightness or a joke even under the greatest stress. Maybe it was the same way he could stand in front of Sebastian and pretend to be the Endarkened version of himself without even feeling his hands shake. That started only when it was over.
“I’m sorry I had to take off,” Diana said once the door was shut and bolted and their bike stowed back under Raphael’s tarp. “If I’d stuck around and you’d been caught—”
“There’s nothing you could have done for us,” said Julian. “And they would have killed you, once they figured out who we really were.”
“At least this way someone was bringing the news about Tessa back to Livvy. We get it,” Emma added. “Have you told her yet?”
“I was waiting for you.” She grinned sideways. “And I didn’t want to have to tell Livvy I’d lost her brother.”
Her brother. The words were like dream words, half-true, however Julian might want them to be fully real.
“So what did Sebastian want from you?” Diana asked as she let them back into the building. They must have come in very late the night before, Julian realized—at this hour, the corridors were still full of people, hurrying back and forth. They passed the open door of a pantry, full of canned and jarred goods. The kitchen was probably nearby; the air smelled like tomato soup.
“He offered us a house in Bel Air,” said Emma.
Diana clucked her tongue. “Fancy. Bel Air is where Sebastian lives, and the more favored Endarkened. The moat protects it.”
“The one made of giant bones?” said Julian.
“Yeah, that moat,” said Diana. They’d reached the door of Livvy’s office; Diana bumped it open with her hip and ushered them inside.
Somehow Julian had thought Livvy would be alone, wa
iting for them, but she wasn’t. She was standing at one of the long architectural tables with Bat and Maia, looking at a map of Los Angeles. Cameron was pacing up and down the room.
Livvy looked up as the door opened, and relief washed across her face. For a moment Julian was watching a small Livvy at the beach, trapped on a rock by the tide, the same look of desperate relief on her face when he came to pick her up and carry her back to shore.
But this Livvy was not the same little girl. She was not a little girl at all. She covered the look of relief quickly. “Glad you’re back,” she said. “Any luck?”
Julian filled them in on the meeting with Tessa—leaving out, for now, the part where she’d asked them to kill Sebastian—while Emma went to the coffeemaker in the corner and collected hot coffee for them both. It was bitter and black and stung when he swallowed it.
“I guess I owe you five thousand bucks,” Cameron said to Livvy when Julian was done. “I didn’t think Tessa was still alive, much less that she’d be able to get us into the Silent City.”
“This is great news,” Maia said. She was leaning back against the edge of the map table. One hand was casually looped around her opposing elbow, and Julian could glimpse a tattoo of a lily on Maia’s forearm. “We should start a strategy session. Assign groups. Some can circle the entrance to the Silent City, some can be on sniper watch, some can guard the warlock, some—”
“There’s also some bad news,” Julian said. “On the way back from the beach we were stopped at a checkpoint. Sebastian wanted to see us.”
Livvy tensed all over. “What? Why?”
“He thought we were the Endarkened versions of ourselves. Emma and Julian from this world,” Emma said.
“He knows you’ve got something going on here downtown,” said Julian. “He even knows your name, Livvy.”
There was a moment of grim silence.
“I told her to go by a nickname like ‘The Masked Avenger,’ but she wouldn’t listen to me,” said Bat with a forced smile.
“Ah,” said Emma. “Laughing in the face of danger. I approve.”
Livvy pinched the bridge of her nose. “That means we don’t have any time to lose. Can you get in touch with Tessa?”
Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices #3) Page 45
