Kit was kneeling, his hand clearly cradling his left arm. He was breathing hard as he looked around, taking in the entryway—the marble floor, carved with runes. The swords hanging on the walls. The mural of the Angel and the Mortal Instruments. “It’s impossible,” he said. “I can’t be.”
Ty’s look of astonishment faded. “Are you all right?”
“You,” Kit said, staring up at Ty. “You pointed a knife at me.”
Ty looked uncomfortable. He reached up to tug on a lock of his dark hair. “It was just work. Not personal.”
Kit started to laugh. Still laughing, he sank back onto the floor. Tessa knelt down next to him, putting her hands on his shoulders. Emma couldn’t help seeing herself, during the Dark War, breaking down when she realized her parents were dead.
Kit looked up at her. His expression was blurry. It was the expression of someone who was using every bit of his willpower not to cry. “A million bedrooms,” he said.
“What?” Emma said.
“You said there were a million bedrooms here,” he said, rising to his feet. “I’m going to find an empty one. And then I’m going to lock myself into it. And if anyone tries to break the door down, I’ll kill them.”
“Do you think he’ll be all right?” Emma asked. “Kit, I mean?”
She was standing on the front steps with Jem, who was cradling Church in his arms. The cat had come running up a few moments after Jem had arrived, and practically launched his small furry body into Jem’s arms. Jem was petting him now, rubbing absentmindedly under his chin and around his ears. The cat had gone limp under his ministrations, like a washcloth.
The ocean rose and fell at the horizon. Tessa had stepped away from the Institute to make a phone call. Emma could hear her voice in the distance, though not the individual words.
“You can help him,” said Jem. “You lost your own parents. You know what it’s like.”
“But I don’t think—” Emma was alarmed. “If he stays, I don’t know—” She thought of Julian, of Uncle Arthur, of Diana, of the secrets they were all hiding. “Can’t you stay?” she said, and was surprised at the wistfulness in her voice.
Jem smiled at her over Church’s head. That smile she remembered from the first time she’d really seen Jem’s face, the smile that reminded her, in a way she couldn’t have described, of her father. Of the Carstairs blood that they shared. “I would like to stay,” he said. “Since we met in Idris, I have missed you, and thought of you often. I would like to visit with you. Spend time with my old violin. But Tessa and I, we must go. We must find Malcolm’s body, and the Black Volume, for even leagues underwater a book like that can still cause us trouble.”
“Do you remember when we met at my parabatai ceremony? You told me you wished you could be watching over me, but there was something you and Tessa had to find. Was that something Kit?”
“Yes.” Jem set Church down, and the cat wobbled off, purring, in search of a shady spot. Smiling, Jem looked so young, it was impossible for Emma to think of him as an ancestor—even an uncle. “We’ve been searching for him for years. We narrowed the search to this area, and then finally to the Shadow Market. But Johnny Rook was an expert at hiding.” He sighed. “I wish he hadn’t been. If he’d trusted us, he might be alive now.” He pushed a hand distractedly through his dark hair. A lock of it was silver, the color of aluminum. He was looking over at Tessa, and Emma could see the expression in his eyes when he looked at her. The love that had never dimmed over a century.
Love is the weakness of human beings, and the angels despise them for it, and the Clave despises it too, and therefore they punish it. Do you know what happens to parabatai who fall in love? Do you know why it’s forbidden?
“Malcolm—” she began.
Jem turned back toward her, the light of sympathy in his dark eyes. “We heard everything from Magnus. He told us that you were the one who killed Malcolm,” he said. “That must have been hard. You knew him. It’s not like killing demons.”
“I knew him,” Emma said. “At least, I thought I did.”
“We knew him too. Tessa was heartbroken to hear that Malcolm believed that we all lied to him. Concealed from him that Annabel was not an Iron Sister, but was dead, murdered by her family. We believed the story, but he died thinking we all knew the truth. What a betrayal that must have felt like.”
“It’s strange to think he was your friend. Though I guess he was our friend too.”
“People are more than one thing. Warlocks, no less. I would not even hesitate to say that Malcolm once did much good, before he did evil. It is one of the great lessons of growing up, learning that people can do both.”
“His story—the one about Annabel—such terrible things happened to both of them, just because they fell in love. Malcolm said something—and I wondered if it was true. It just seemed so strange.”