Cristina muttered a mild curse and trudged back to the Jeep. She drew her stele from her belt with her free hand and, crouching down, carefully marked a small tracking rune into the side of the vehicle, just above the wheel.
It wasn’t a total disaster, she thought, trudging back to the truck. As Emma had said, they were still within the two-day window before the “hunt” began. And having put a tracking rune on Sterling’s car was sure to help. If they just stayed away from his house, let him think they’d given up, hopefully he’d get careless and start driving.
Only when she climbed into the truck and slammed the door behind her did she see that her phone was flashing. She’d missed a call. She picked it up and her heart fell into her stomach.
Diego Rocio Rosales.
She dropped the phone as if it had turned into a scorpion. Why, why, why would Diego call her? She’d told him never to speak to her again.
Her hand stole to the charm at her throat and she clutched it, her lips moving in a silent prayer. Give me the strength not to call him back.
“Are you feeling better, Uncle?” Julian said.
Arthur, slumped behind the desk in his office, looked up with faded, distant eyes.
“Julian,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”
“I know. You said.” Julian leaned back against a wall. “Do you remember what it was about?”
He felt exhausted, scraped out, hollow as a dry bone. He knew he should regret what he’d said in the kitchen about Mark. He knew he should be sympathetic to his uncle. But he couldn’t dredge up the emotion.
He didn’t really remember leaving the kitchen: He recalled handing Tavvy off, as much as you could hand off a sugarcoated seven-year-old; he recalled them all promising they would clean up their dinner of cheese and chocolate and brownies and burned things. Even Dru, once she’d stopped throwing up into the sink, had sworn she’d scrub the floor and get the ketchup off the windows.
Not that Julian had realized until that moment that there was ketchup on the windows.
He’d nodded and gone to leave the room, and then stopped to look around for Emma. But at some point Emma had left with Cristina. Presumably they were somewhere talking about Cameron Ashdown. And there was nothing Julian wanted less than to join in on that.
He didn’t know when that had happened, that the thought of Cameron made him not want to see Emma. His Emma. You always wanted to see your parabatai. They were the most welcome face in the world to you. There was a wrongness about not wanting it, as if the earth had suddenly started spinning in the other direction.
“I don’t think I do,” Arthur said after a moment. “There was something I wanted to help with. Something about the investigation. You are still investigating, aren’t you?”
“The murders? The ones the faerie convoy came to us about? Yes.”
“I think it was about the poem,” Arthur said. “The one Livia was reciting in the kitchen.” He rubbed at his eyes, obviously tired. “I was passing by and I heard it.”
“The poem?” Julian echoed, confused. “‘Annabel Lee’?”
Arthur spoke in his deep, rumbling voice, sounding out the lines of poetry as if they were the lines of a spell.
“But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee—”
“I know the poem,” Julian interrupted. “But I don’t—”
“‘Those who were older,’” Arthur said. “I’ve heard the phrase before. In London. I can’t remember what it was in connection with.” He picked up a pen from the desk, tapped it against the wood. “I’m sorry. I just—I can’t remember.”
“Those Who Are Older,” murmured Julian. He remembered Belinda, back at the theater, smiling with her blood-red lips. May Those Who Are Older grant us all good fortune, she’d said.
An idea bloomed in the back of Julian’s mind, but, elusive, disappeared when he tried to chase it.
He needed to go to his studio. He wanted to be alone, and painting would unlock his thoughts. He turned to go and only paused when Uncle Arthur’s voice cut through the dusty air.
“Did I help you, boy?” he said.
“Yes,” said Julian. “You helped.”
When Cristina returned to the Institute, it was dark and silent. The entryway lights were off, and only a few windows glowed—Julian’s studio, the bright spot of the attic, the square that was the kitchen.
Frowning, Cristina went directly there, wondering if Emma had returned yet from her mysterious errand. If the others had managed to clean up the mess they’d made.
At first glance the kitchen seemed deserted, only a single light on. Dishes were piled in the sink, and though someone had clearly scrubbed the walls and counters, there was still food crusted onto the stove, and two large trash bags, stuffed full and half-spilling their contents, propped against the wall.
“Cristina?”
She blinked into the dimness, though there was no mistaking the voice.