Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices, #2)

Neither of them spoke, but Kit could see curiosity in Ty’s gray eyes.

“Come on,” he said, pitching his voice low, the way his father had taught him, the tone you used when you wanted to convince people you really meant something. “When you’re home, Julian never lets you go anywhere. Now’s your chance. Haven’t you always wanted to see a Shadow Market?”

Livvy broke first. “Okay,” she said, casting a quick look at her brother to see if he agreed with her. “Okay, if you know where it is.”

Ty’s pale face lit with excitement. Kit felt the same spark transfer to him. The Shadow Market. His home, his sanctuary, the place he’d been raised.

Trailing around after demons and artifacts with Livvy and Ty, they were the ones who knew everything while he knew nothing. But at the Shadow Market, he could shine. He’d shock them. Impress them.

And then, maybe, he’d cut and run away.

*

The shadows were lengthening by the time Julian and Emma finished their lunch. Julian bought some food and supplies at a small grocer’s shop, while Emma darted next door to pick up pajamas and T-shirts at a small New Age shop that sold tarot cards and crystal gnomes. When she emerged, she was grinning. She produced a blue-and-purple T-shirt emblazoned with a smiling unicorn for Jules, who stared at it in horror. She tucked it into his pack carefully before they started across the town to find the beginning of the path that led up and around the coast.

The hills sloped up steeply from the water; it wasn’t an easy climb. Marked only as TO THE CLIFFS, the path wound up through the outskirts of the town and the precariously perched houses, all of which looked as if they might at any moment tumble down into the half-moon harbor.

Shadowhunters were trained for much more than this kind of exertion, though, and they made good time. Soon they were out of the town proper and walking along a narrow path, the hill rising farther on their right, falling down toward the sea on their left.

The sea itself was a luminous deep blue, glowing like a lamp. Clouds the color of seashells twined across the sky. It was beautiful in a completely different way than sunset over the Pacific. Instead of the stark colors of sea and desert, everything here was soft pastels: greens and blues and pinks.

What was stark was the cliffs themselves. They were climbing closer to the Chapel part of Chapel Cliff, the rocky promontory that jutted out into the ocean, the spikes of gray stone that crowned it ominously black against the rosy sky. The hill was gone; they were out on the spit of land itself: Long gray slate shingles that looked like a pack of playing cards shuffled and then scattered tumbled steeply away on either side, down toward the sea.

The house they had seen from town was nestled among the rocks, the spiked crown of the stone chapel rising behind it. As Emma neared it, she felt the force of its glamour almost as a wall, pushing her back.

Jules had slowed too. “There’s a placard here,” he said. “Says this place belongs to the National Trust. No trespassers.”

Emma made a face. “No trespassers usually means the local kids have made it into a hangout and the whole place is covered with empty candy wrappers and booze bottles.”

“I don’t know. The glamour here is really strong—it’s not just visual, but emotional. You can feel it, right?”

Emma nodded. The cottage was giving off waves of stay away and danger and nothing here you want to see. It was a bit like being shouted at by an angry stranger on the bus.

“Take my hand,” Julian said.

“What?” She turned in surprise: He was holding his hand out. She could see the faint smatter of colored pencil on his skin. He flexed his fingers.

“We can get through this better together,” he said. “Concentrate on pushing it back.”

Emma took his hand, accepting the shock that went through her at his touch. His skin was warm and soft, rough where there were calluses. He tightened his fingers around hers.

They moved forward, past the gate and onto the path leading up to the front door. Emma imagined the glamour as a curtain, as something she could touch. She imagined drawing it aside. It was hard, like lifting a weight with her mind, but strength flowed through her from Julian, through her fingers and wrist, up her arm, into her heart and lungs.

Her concentration snapped into focus. Almost casually, she let herself draw the glamour away, lifting it lightly aside. The cottage sprang into clearer view: The windows weren’t boarded up at all, but clean and whole, the front door freshly painted a bright blue. Even the knob looked recently polished to a shiny bronze. Julian took hold of it and pushed and the door swung open, welcoming them inside.

The sense of something ordering them away from the cottage was gone. Emma let go of Julian’s hand and stepped inside; it was too dark to see. She took her witchlight out of her pocket and let its light rise up and around them.

Julian, behind her, gave a low whistle of surprise. “This doesn’t look deserted. Not by a long shot.”

It was a small, pretty room. A wooden four-poster bed stood beneath a window with a view out to the village below. Furniture that looked as if it had been hand-painted in blues, grays, and soft seaside colors was scattered about among a profusion of rag rugs.

Two walls were taken up by a kitchen with all the modern conveniences: a coffeemaker, a stove, a dishwasher, and granite-topped counters. Neat stacks of firewood rose on either side of a stone-bound fireplace. Two doors led off the main room: Emma investigated and found a small office with a hand-painted desk, and a blue-tiled bathroom with a tub and shower and a basin sink. She turned the shower faucets half in disbelief and yelped as water sprayed her. Everything seemed to be completely in working order, as if someone who lived in the cottage and took loving care of it had only just left.

“I guess we might as well stay here,” Emma said, returning to the living room, where Julian had flicked on the electric lights.

“Way ahead of you, Carstairs,” he said, opening a kitchen cabinet and starting to put the groceries away. “Nice place, no rent, and it’ll be easier to search if we’re here anyway.”

Emma set her witchlight down on the table and looked around wonderingly. “I know this seems far-fetched,” she said, “but do you think Malcolm had a secret second life as a renter of adorably furnished holiday cottages?”

“Or,” Julian said, “there’s an even stronger glamour on this place than we realized and it only looks like an adorably furnished holiday cottage, while actually it’s a hole in the ground full of rats.”

Emma threw herself down on the bed. The blanket felt like a cloud, and the mattress was heavenly after the lumpy one in the London Institute. “Best rats ever,” she announced, glad they weren’t going to have to stay in a bed-and-breakfast after all.

“Imagine their tiny, furry bodies wiggling around you.” Julian had turned back and was facing her, a half grin on his face. When Emma had been small, she’d been horrified by rats and rodents.

She sat up and glared at him. “Why are you trying to ruin my good time?”

“Well, to be fair, this isn’t a holiday. Not for us. This is a mission. We’re supposed to be looking for anything that might give us an idea where Annabel might have gone.”

“I don’t know,” Emma said. “This place looks like it’s been stripped down and totally renovated. It was built so long ago, how do we know what’s left of the original house? And wouldn’t Malcolm have taken anything that was important to him to his house in L.A.?”

“Not necessarily. I think this cottage was special to him.” Julian hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans. “Look at the way he’s taken care of it. This house is personal. It feels like a home. Not like that glass-and-steel thing he lived in in L.A.”