Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices, #2)

She wasn’t there yet, but she wasn’t done trying, either.

Kit looked impressed despite himself, then scowled again. He looked very slight next to Jace. He was close to the same height as Ty, though less fit. The potential Shadowhunter strength was there, though, in the shape of his arms and shoulders. Emma had seen him fight, when in danger. She knew what he could do.

“You’ll be able to do that,” Jace said, pointing up at the rafter, and then at Kit. “As soon as you want to.”

Emma could recognize the look in Kit’s eye. I might never want to. “What’s the Nephilim motto again?”

“?‘We are dust and shadows,’?” said Ty, not looking up from his book.

“Some of us are very handsome dust,” Jace added, as the door flew open and Clary stuck her head in.

“Come to the library,” she announced. “The tentacle is starting to dissolve.”

“You drive me wild with your sexy talk,” said Jace, pulling on his gear jacket.

“Adults,” said Kit, with some disgust, and stalked out of the room. To Emma’s amusement, Ty and Livvy were instantly on their feet, following him. She wondered what exactly had sparked their interest in Kit—was it just that he was their age? Jace, she imagined, would have put it down to the famous Herondale charisma, though from what she knew, the Herondales who had immediately predated him had been pretty low on the stuff.

The library was in a certain amount of chaos. The tentacle was starting to dissolve, into a sticky puddle of green-pink goo that reminded Emma horribly of melted jelly beans. As Diana pointed out, this meant that the time left to identify the demon was shortening quickly. Since Magnus wasn’t picking up his phone and no one wanted to involve the Clave, this left good old-fashioned book research. Everyone was handed a pile of fat tomes on sea creatures, and they dispersed to various parts of the library to examine paintings, sketches, drawings, and the occasional clipped-in photo.

At some point during the passing hours, Jace decided that they required Chinese food. Apparently kung pao chicken and noodles in black bean sauce were a requirement every time the New York Institute team had to engage in research. He hauled Clary off to an empty office to conjure up a Portal—something no other Shadowhunter besides Clary could do—promising them all the best Chinese food Manhattan had to deliver.

“Got it!” Cristina announced, about twenty minutes after the door had closed behind Jace and Clary. She held up a massive copy of the Carta Marina.

The rest of them crowded around the main table as Diana confirmed that the tentacle belonged to the sea demon species Makara, which—according to the sketches between the maps in the Carta Marina—looked like a part-octopus, part-slug thing with an enormous bee head.

“The disturbing thing isn’t that it’s a sea demon,” said Diana, frowning. “It’s that Makara demon remains only survive on land for one to two days.”

Jace pushed the library door open. He and Clary were loaded down with green-and-white take-out boxes marked JADE WOLF. “A little help here?”

The research team disbanded briefly to lay out food on the long library tables. There was lo mein, the promised kung pao chicken, mapo tofu, zhajiangmian, egg fried rice, and delicious sesame balls that tasted like hot candy.

Everyone had a paper plate, even Tavvy, who was arranging toy soldiers behind a bookcase. Diego and Cristina occupied a love seat, and Jace and Clary were on the floor, sharing noodles. The Blackthorn kids were squabbling over the chicken, except for Mark, who was trying to figure out how to use his chopsticks. Emma guessed they didn’t have them in Faerie. Julian sat at the table across from Livvy and Ty, frowning at the nearly dissolved tentacle. Amazingly, it didn’t seem to be putting him off his food.

“You are friendly with the great Magnus Bane, aren’t you?” Diego said to Jace and Clary, after an affable few minutes of everyone chewing.

“The great Magnus Bane?” Jace choked on his fried rice. Church had taken up residence at his feet, alert for any evidence of dropped chicken.

“We’re friendly with him, yes,” Clary said, her mouth twitching at the corner. “Why?”

Jace was turning purple. Clary thumped him on the back. Church fell asleep, his feet waving in the air.

“I would like to interview him,” Diego said. “I think he would make a good subject for a paper for the Spiral Labyrinth.”

“He’s pretty busy right now, what with Max and Rafael,” said Clary. “I mean, you could ask . . .”

“Who’s Rafael?” Livvy asked.

“Their second son,” said Jace. “They just adopted a little boy in Argentina. A Shadowhunter who lost his parents in the Dark War.”

“In Buenos Aires!” Emma exclaimed, turning to Julian. “When we saw Magnus at Malcolm’s, he said Alec was in Buenos Aires, and that he was going to join him. That must have been what they were doing.”

Julian just nodded, but didn’t look up at her to acknowledge the shared memory. She shouldn’t expect him to, Emma reminded herself. Julian wasn’t going to be the way she remembered again for a long time, if ever.

She felt herself blush, though no one seemed to notice but Cristina, who shot her a look of concern. Diego had his arm around Cristina, but her hands were resting in her lap. She gave Emma a slight wave, more of a finger wiggle.

“Maybe we should get back to discussing the matter at hand,” Diana said. “If Makara remains only last a day or two on land . . .”

“Then that demon was at Malcolm’s house really recently,” said Livvy. “Like, well after he died.”

“Which is odd,” Julian said, glancing at the book. “It’s a deep-sea demon, pretty deadly and very big. You’d think someone would have noticed it. Plus, it can’t possibly have wanted anything from a collapsed house.”

“Who knows what desires a sea demon might possess?” said Mark.

“Assuming it wasn’t after Malcolm’s collection of elegant tentacle warmers,” said Julian, “we have to imagine that it was most likely summoned. Makara demons just don’t come up on land. They lurk on the ocean’s bottom and sometimes pull ships down.”

“Another warlock, then?” Jace suggested. “Someone Malcolm was working with?”

“Catarina doesn’t believe Malcolm worked with anyone else,” said Diana. “He was friendly with Magnus, but he was otherwise something of a loner—for obvious reasons, it now appears.”

“If he was working with another warlock, he wouldn’t be likely to advertise the fact, though,” said Diego.

“It certainly appears Malcolm was determined to cause mischief from beyond the grave if anything happened to him,” said Diana.

“Well, the tentacle wasn’t the only thing we found,” Cristina said. “Mark, show them the glove.”

Emma had already seen it, on their way back from Malcolm’s, but she leaned in along with everyone else as Mark drew it from his jacket pocket and laid it on the table.

“The sigil of the Unseelie King,” said Mark. “A glove such as this is rare. Kieran wore such when he came to the Hunt. I could identify his brothers, sometimes, at revels, by their cloaks and gloves or gauntlets such as these.”

“So it’s odd Malcolm would have one,” said Livvy. Emma didn’t see Ty beside her; had he gone into the book stacks?

“No faerie prince would part with such a thing willingly,” said Mark. “Save as a special mark of favor, or to bind a promise.”

Diana frowned. “We know Malcolm was working with Iarlath.”

“But he was not a prince. Not even gentry,” said Mark. “This would indicate that Malcolm had sworn some kind of a bargain with the Unseelie Court itself.”

“We know he went to the Unseelie King years ago,” said Emma. “It was the Unseelie King who gave him the rhyme he was supposed to use to raise Annabel. ‘First the flame and then the flood—’?”

“?‘In the end, it’s Blackthorn blood,’?” Julian finished for her.