“You cannot stop it,” said Kieran. “The opening and the path inside were made by Malcolm. This hill does not naturally hold within it tunnels and caves. Now that he is dead, his enchantments are failing. There may perhaps be another entrance into this space, at some other ley line convergence. But this door will not open again.”
“How did you know he was dead?” Emma said.
“Lights going on in the city below,” said Kieran. “The—I don’t know what your mundane word is for it—”
“Blackout,” said Mark. “The blackout’s over. And Malcolm cast the spell that was responsible for the blackout, so—yeah.”
“Does that mean we can get a signal on our phones?” Ty wondered.
“I’ll check,” Julian said, and walked away to press his phone to his ear. Emma thought she heard him say Uncle Arthur’s name, but she couldn’t be sure, and he moved out of earshot before she could hear another word.
Diego and Cristina had joined Livvy, Ty, and Dru. Cristina was bending down over Tavvy, and Diego was reaching for something inside his gear jacket. Emma moved to join them; as she drew closer, she saw that Diego was holding a silver flask.
“Not giving him booze, are you?” Emma said. “He’s a little young for it.”
Diego rolled his eyes. “It’s an energy draught. Made by the Silent Brothers. Might counteract whatever Malcolm gave him to make him sleepy.”
Livvy took the flask from Diego and tasted the contents; with a nod, she tipped the fluid into her little brother’s mouth. Tavvy drank gratefully as Emma knelt down and put her hand to his cheek.
“Hey, sweetheart,” she said. “Are you all right?”
He smiled up at her, blinking. He looked like Julian when he and Emma were children. Before the world had changed him. My best friend and my best love.
She thought of Malcolm. The parabatai curse. Her heart aching, she kissed Tavvy’s baby-soft cheek and rose to her feet to find Cristina behind her.
“Your left arm,” Cristina said gently, and led her a few feet away. “Hold it out?”
Emma obeyed and saw that the skin of her hand and wrist was red and blistered, as if she’d been burned.
Cristina shook her head, drawing her stele from her jacket. “There were a few minutes there, when you were behind that wall Malcolm made, where I thought you weren’t coming out.”
Emma bumped her head against Cristina’s shoulder. “Sorry.”
“I know.” Cristina turned brisk, pushing up Emma’s sleeve. “You need healing runes.”
Emma leaned into Cristina as the stele ran over her skin, taking comfort in the fact that she was there. “It was weird, being trapped in there with Malcolm,” she said. “Mostly he just wanted to tell me about Annabel. And the thing is—I actually felt bad for him.”
“It’s not weird,” said Cristina. “It’s a terrible story. Neither he nor Annabel did anything wrong. To see someone you love so horribly punished and tortured—to think they’d abandoned you only to find out that you abandoned them—” She shuddered.
“I hadn’t thought about it that way,” Emma said. “You think he felt guilty?”
“I’m sure he did. Anyone would.”
Emma thought of Annabel with a pang. She had been blameless, a victim. Hopefully she had never been aware of anything, never been aware of Malcolm’s efforts to revive her. “I told him he was as bad as the Clave and he actually seemed surprised.”
“No one is ever the villain of their own story.” Cristina released Emma, pausing to examine her healing handiwork. Already the pain in Emma’s arm was receding. She knew a rune from Julian would most likely have worked more quickly, but after what had happened with the Endurance rune, she didn’t dare let him rune her in front of everyone else.
Julian. Past Cristina’s shoulder, she could see him, near the car. He was holding his phone to his ear. As she watched, he tapped the screen and slid it back into his pocket.
“So are the signals working again?” Ty asked. “Who were you calling?”
“Pizza,” Julian said.
They all stared at him. Like the rest of them, he was filthy, a long scratch along his cheek, his hair tangled. In the moonlight his eyes were the color of an underground river.
“Thought we might all be hungry,” he said with that deceptive mildness that Emma now knew meant that whatever was happening on the surface didn’t match what was going on in Julian’s mind.
“We should go,” he said. “The convergence’s collapse means the Clave is going to be able to see the dark magic emanating from this place on their map. When we get back, I don’t think we’ll be alone.”
They hurried to get everyone ready to go: Livvy carrying Octavian on her lap in the backseat of the Toyota, Diana taking Cristina and Diego in the truck, which she had hidden among some scrub brush. Kieran offered the use of Windspear again to Mark, but Mark declined.
“I wish to ride with my brothers and sisters,” he said simply.
Julian turned to Kieran. The faerie’s eyes were flat, unreflective. Julian wished he could see what his brother had loved: a Kieran who had been warm toward Mark or kind. He wished he could thank Kieran for not leaving Mark alone among the Hunt.