“How long have you been eavesdropping?” Julian asked, though there was no hostility in the question. He glanced at his watch. “It’s awfully late for you to be here.”
Diana sighed. She did look bone weary. Her hair was untidy and she was uncharacteristically dressed down in a sweatshirt and jeans. There was a long scrape across one of her cheeks.
“I went by the convergence on my way back from Ojai,” she said. “I got in and out fast. Only had to kill one Mantid.” She sighed again. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s been back there since the night you went. I’m worried our necromancer’s found a new place.”
“Well, if he doesn’t use a convergence, the next time he uses dark magic, he’ll show up on Magnus’s map,” said Ty.
“Did you find anything useful in Ojai?” Emma asked. “What warlock is up there? It’s not anyone we know, is it?”
“No.” Diana leaned against the doorjamb, clearly not planning on saying anything else. “I did hear about the Followers; I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you were tracking them down here. I wish you’d told me, but—”
“You’d already left,” said Jules. He leaned back on his hands. His dress shirt stretched across his chest. Knowing what his body looked like under the cotton was not helping Emma’s concentration. She looked away, hating her uncontrolled thoughts. “But I can give you the summary.”
As he started to talk, Emma quietly turned and walked out of the room. She could hear Julian’s voice behind her, recounting the events of the evening. She knew he’d tell the story exactly right; she knew she didn’t have to worry. But right now there were two people she urgently needed to talk to, and she needed to do it alone.
“Mom,” Emma whispered. “Dad. I need your help.”
She had taken off her dress and boots and stashed them in a corner with her weapons. The weather had worsened: Gusts tore around the Institute, rattling the copper gutters, streaking the panes of glass with feathery patterns of silver. In the distance, lightning flashed over the water, illuminating it like a sheet of glass. In her pajamas, Emma sat cross-legged, facing her open closet.
To a stranger the closet might look like a jumble of photos and string and scribbled notes, but to her it was a love letter. A love letter to her parents, whose photograph was at the center of the compilation. A photo of them smiling at each other, her dad caught in the middle of laughing, his blond hair shining in the sun.
“I feel lost,” she said. “I started this because I thought there was some connection between these murders and what happened to you. But if there is, I think I’m losing it. Nothing connects to the attack on the Institute. I feel like I’m wandering through fog and I can’t see anything clearly.”
It felt like there was something stuck in her throat, something hard and painful. Part of her wanted nothing more than to run out into the rain, feel it spill down over her. Walk or run down to the beach, where the sea and the sky would be melding into one, and let her screams be drowned out by thunder.
“There’s more,” she whispered. “I think I’m messing up. As—as a Shadowhunter. Ever since the night Jules got hurt, when I healed him, ever since then when I look at him, I feel—things I shouldn’t. I think about him the way you aren’t supposed to think about your parabatai. I’m sure he doesn’t feel the same way, but just for a few minutes tonight, when we were dancing, I was . . . happy.” She closed her eyes. “Love’s supposed to make you happy, isn’t it? It’s not supposed to hurt?”
There was a knock on her door.
Jules, she thought. She scrambled up just as the door opened.
It was Mark.
He was still in his formal clothes. They were very dark against his blond hair. Anyone else would have seemed awkward, she thought as he moved into the room and glanced at her closet, then at her. Anyone else would have asked if they were barging in or interrupting, considering she was in pajamas. But Mark behaved as if he’d arrived for an appointment.
“The day I was taken,” he said. “It was the same day your parents were killed.”
She nodded, glancing at the closet. Having it open made her feel strangely exposed.
“I told you I was sorry about what happened to them,” he said. “But that isn’t enough. I didn’t realize that this investigation would become about me. About my family trying to keep me here. That my presence would be stealing from you the meaning of what you were doing.”
Emma sat down on the foot of the bed. “Mark . . . It’s not like that.”
“It is like that,” he said. His eyes were luminous in the strange light—her window was open, and the illumination that streamed in was touched by the glow of lightning-infused clouds. “They should not be working on this only to keep me, when I might not stay.”
“You wouldn’t go back to Faerie. You wouldn’t.”