“Really?” Julian tried to look shocked. They already knew the language was an ancient one of Faerie, though they hadn’t been able to tell Malcolm that.
On the other hand, this was a chance to check and see if the Fair Folk had been telling them the truth. Julian eyed Malcolm with renewed interest.
“Wait, maybe this isn’t the markings.” Malcolm eyed the papers. “It seems to be a recipe for orange cake.”
Julian crossed his arms over his chest. “No, it isn’t.”
Malcolm frowned. “I definitely remember looking at a recipe for orange cake recently.”
Julian rolled his eyes silently. Sometimes with Malcolm you just had to be patient.
“Never mind,” Malcolm said. “That was in a copy of O magazine. This—” He tapped the paper. “An ancient language of Faerie—you were right; it predates Shadowhunters. Anyway, that’s the language origin. I can probably get more done in the next few days. But that’s not why I came by.”
Julian brightened.
“I did some examining of the poison on that fabric you sent me last night. I checked it against different toxins. It was a cataplasm—a concentrate of a rare type of the belladonna plant with demon poisons. It should have killed you.”
“But Emma healed me,” said Julian. “With an iratze. So are you saying we should be looking for—”
“I wasn’t saying anything about looking,” Malcolm interrupted. “I’m just telling you. No iratze should have been able to fix you. Even accounting for the strength of parabatai runes, you absolutely shouldn’t have survived.” His odd violet eyes fixed on Julian. “I don’t know if it’s something you did, or something Emma did, but whatever it was—was impossible. You shouldn’t be breathing right now.”
Julian trailed up the stairs slowly. He could hear yelling from above him, but not the sort that sounded as if anyone was in actual trouble. Telling the difference between play yelling and actual yelling was an absolute necessity when you were in charge of four kids.
His mind was still on what Malcolm had told him, about the cataplasm. It was unnerving to be told that you should be dead. There was always the possibility that Malcolm was wrong, but somehow Julian doubted it. Hadn’t Emma said something about finding belladonna plants near the convergence?
Thoughts of poison and convergences vanished from his mind as he turned down the corridor from the stairs. The room they kept Tiberius’s computer in was filled with light and noise. Julian moved into the doorway and stared.
There was a video game alive and flickering on the computer screen. Mark was sitting in front of it, mashing rather desperately at the buttons on a controller as a truck sped toward him on-screen. It crushed his character with a splat, and he tossed the controller aside. “The box serves the Lord of Lies!” he announced indignantly.
Ty laughed, and Julian felt something tug at his heart. The sound of his brother laughing was one of Julian’s favorite noises, in part because Ty did it so sincerely, without any attempt to cover up his laughter or any sense he should hide it. Wordplay and irony often weren’t funny to Ty, but people acting silly was, and he had an absolute and sincere amusement at the behavior of animals—Church falling off a table and trying to regain his dignity—that was beautiful to Julian.
In the dead of night, lying in bed staring at his murals of thorns, Julian sometimes wished he could put down the role that required him to always be the one telling Ty he couldn’t have skunks in his room or reminding him it was time to study or coming in to shut his lights off when he was reading instead of sleeping. What if, like a normal brother, he could watch Sherlock Holmes movies with Ty and help him collect lizards without worrying that they were going to escape and run through the Institute? What if?
Julian’s mother had always stressed the difference between doing something for someone and giving them the tools to do it themselves. It was how she had taught Julian to paint. Julian had always tried to do that for Ty, too, though it had often seemed like he was feeling his way in the dark: making books, toys, lessons that seemed tailored to the special way Ty thought—was it the right thing to do? He thought it had helped. He hoped. Sometimes hope was all you had.
Hope, and watching Ty. There was a pleasure in seeing Ty become more himself, need help and guidance less and less. Yet there was a sadness, too, for the day his brother wouldn’t need him anymore. Sometimes, in the depths of his heart, Julian wondered if Ty would want to spend time with him at all, once that day had come—with the brother who was always making him do things and was no fun at all.
“It’s not a box,” Ty said. “It’s a controller.”