“Well, either you’ve been out fighting the forces of evil or you’ve come from a much wilder party than we have,” Jace said. “Hello, there, Blackthorns.”
Livvy sighed. She was looking at Jace the way Emma had when she was twelve. Dru, loyal to her crush on Diego, just glared.
“Why are you here?” Julian asked, though he knew the answer. Still, it was better to build up the idea that you were surprised. People trusted your answers more when they thought they weren’t rehearsed.
“Dark magic,” said Magnus. “A huge flare of it on the map. At the convergence site.” He slid his gaze toward Emma. “I thought you might do something with that bit of information I gave you. Where ley lines are concerned, the convergence is always key.”
“Why didn’t you go there, then?” Emma asked. “To the convergence?”
“Magnus checked it out with a spell,” Clary said. “There was nothing there but some wreckage, so we Portaled here.”
“From my sister’s engagement party, to be precise,” said Jace. “There was an open bar.”
“Oh!” A look of happiness flitted across Emma’s face. “Isabelle’s marrying Simon?”
As far as Julian was concerned, no girl had ever been born who could compare to Emma, but when Clary smiled, she was very pretty. Her whole face lit up. It was something she and Emma had in common, actually. “Yeah,” Clary said. “He’s really happy.”
“Mazel tov to them,” said Jace, leaning against the banister rail. “Anyway, we were at the party, and Magnus got this alert about necromantic magic near the L.A. Institute, and he tried to reach Malcolm, but no luck. So we snuck out, just the four of us. Which is a big loss to the party if you ask me, because I was going to give a toast and it was going to be glorious. Simon would never be able to show his face in public again.”
“Not really the point of an engagement toast, Jace,” Clary said.
She was looking worriedly at Diego—he was awfully pale.
“Four of you?” Emma looked around the room. “Is Alec here?”
Magnus opened his mouth to answer, but at that moment the doors of the Sanctuary burst open, and a tall, stocky man with dark hair emerged: Robert Lightwood, the current Inquisitor, second in command to the Consul of Idris, and in charge of investigating Shadowhunters who had broken the Law.
Julian had met the Inquisitor exactly once before, when he’d been forced to stand up in front of the Council and give his account of Sebastian’s attack on the Institute. He remembered holding the Mortal Sword in his hand. The feeling of the truth being dragged out of you with knives and hooks, of your internal organs tearing apart.
He had never lied when he was asked about the attack, had never wanted or planned to. But it hurt just the same. And bearing the Mortal Sword, even for such a short time, had forged an indelible bond in his mind between truth and pain.
The Inquisitor strode toward him. He was a little older than the Robert Lightwood Julian remembered, his hair more liberally streaked with gray. But the look in his dark blue eyes was the same: hard and cold.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded. “There was a flare of necromantic magic traced to this Institute several hours ago and your uncle claims to know nothing about it. More troubling, he refused to tell us where you disappeared to.” He spun around, his eyes raking their group—and landing on Mark. “Mark Blackthorn?”
“I already said that,” said Clary. Julian had the feeling she wasn’t overly fond of her prospective father-in-law—if he was that. He realized he didn’t know if Jace and Clary had plans to get married.
“Yes,” Mark said. He was standing upright as if facing a firing squad. He met Robert Lightwood’s eyes, and Julian saw the Inquisitor flinch at the sight of Wild Hunt eyes in a Shadowhunter’s face.
They were an accusation against the Clave, those eyes. They said, You abandoned me. You did not protect me. I was alone.
“I have come back,” Mark said.
“The Wild Hunt would never have released you,” said the Inquisitor. “You were far too valuable to them. And faeries don’t give back what they take.”
“Robert—” Magnus began.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” Robert Lightwood said. “Magnus? Anyone?”
Magnus was silent, his unhappiness evident. Jace’s gold eyes were unreadable.
Dru made a frightened, stifled sound. Clary whirled on Robert.
“It’s not fair to interrogate them,” she said. “They’re just kids.”
“Don’t you think I remember the trouble you and Jace got into when you were ‘just kids’?”
“He has a point.” Jace smiled at Julian and Emma, and the smile was like gold melted over steel. You could see how the softness was a disguise, and how what lay under it had won Jace the title of best Shadowhunter of his generation.