But he didn’t sound convinced. He spoke as if the words were dead leaves, blowing across some hollow and aching space inside him. And in that moment Cristina yearned toward him more than she ever had, for she knew that feeling, to be so hollowed out by loss that you felt as if the wind could blow through you.
“That is not love,” Cristina said. “That is debt.”
Mark set his jaw. He had never looked more like a Blackthorn. “If there is one thing I have learned in my life, and I grant I have not learned much, it is this: Neither Fair Folk nor mortals know what love is or is not. No one does.”
“So, basically, you kind of solved the investigation,” said Livvy. She was lying on the rug in Julian’s room. They were all sprawled around his bedroom: Cristina perched neatly on a chair, Ty sitting against a wall with his headphones on, Julian cross-legged on his bed. He’d taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. The cuff links Emma had given him gleamed on the nightstand. Mark lay on his stomach across the foot of the bed, eye to eye with Church, who’d decided to pay them a visit, probably because of the weather. “I mean, now we know who did it. The murders.”
“Not exactly,” said Emma. She was sitting on the floor, leaning her back against the nightstand. “I mean, here’s what we do know. This group, these Followers or whatever they call themselves, they’re responsible for Stanley Wells’s murder. The Followers are mostly people who’ve had some brush with the supernatural. They have the Sight, they’re part faerie—Sterling’s sort of a werewolf. Every month they hold a Lottery. Someone gets picked, and that someone becomes a sacrifice.”
“Wells was a sacrifice,” said Julian. “So it stands to reason that the other eleven murders have been because of this cult too.”
“It also explains the fey bodies,” said Cristina. “Since so many of them are half-fey, it makes sense that they’ve been picked for the sacrifices.”
Julian glanced at Mark. “Do you think the Courts know if the bodies were half-fey or full-blooded?”
“Hard to say,” said Mark, still staring at the cat. “They often cannot tell just by looking, and some of the Followers are full-blood faeries.”
“It seems like full-blood faeries would have better things to do.” It was Ty, having pulled the headphones from his ears. Emma could faintly hear classical music drifting from them. “Why would they join something like this?”
“It is a place for lost souls,” said Mark. “And since the Cold Peace, many of the Fair Folk are lost. It makes sense.”
“I saw them advertising at the Shadow Market,” said Emma. “I saw Belinda there too. They seemed to be specifically looking for anyone with the Sight, anyone who seemed frightened or alone. Having a group to belong to, being promised good luck and wealth, getting strength from the sacrifices—you can see how it would be appealing.”
“They do seem very confident,” Cristina said. “How much do they know about the existence of Nephilim, I wonder?”
“Sterling seemed afraid of us,” said Emma. “It’s weird. He got picked, so that means they’re going to sacrifice him. You’d think he’d want any help he could get, even from Shadowhunters.”
“But getting help is forbidden, right?” said Livvy. “If they caught him accepting it, they could torture him. Do worse than kill him.”
Cristina shuddered. “Or he could be a true believer. Maybe he thinks it would be a sin to accept help.”
“Men have gone to their deaths for less,” said Mark.
“How many of them do you think there were? The Followers?”
“About three hundred,” said Julian.
“Well, if we can’t go to the faeries yet, we’ve got two options,” said Emma. “One, we track down every one of those three hundred losers and beat them up until they tell us who did the actual killing.”
“That seems impractical,” said Ty. “And time-consuming.”
“Or we could go straight to finding out who the leader is,” Emma said. “If anyone knows, it’s that Belinda girl.”
Julian ran a hand through his hair. “Belinda’s not her real name—”
“I’m telling you, Johnny Rook knows her,” Emma said. “In fact, he probably knows a lot, given that information about the Shadow World is his business. We’re asking him.”
“Yes, you agreed to this already in the car,” Mark said, and frowned. “This cat is looking at me with judgment.”
“He’s not,” said Jules. “That’s just his face.”
“You look at me the same way,” Mark said, glancing at Julian. “Judgy face.”
“This is still progress,” Livvy said stubbornly. She glanced at Mark sideways, and Emma saw anxiety in her gaze. It was so rare for Livvy to show the worry she felt that Emma sat up straight. “We should go to the faerie convoy, tell them the Followers are responsible—”
“We can’t,” said Diana, appearing in the doorway. “The fey were very specific. ‘The one with blood on his hands.’ You might think they want progress reports, but I don’t think they do. They want results, and that’s all.”