Emma glanced around. It took her a moment before she located the cat, perched on top of a rock. He was licking his paw. “He came back,” she said, sitting down on the sand next to Jules. “You know, for a visit.”
“I saw you coming around the rocks.” He gave her a half smile. “I thought I was dreaming.”
“Couldn’t sleep?”
He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. His knuckles were splattered with paint. “You could say that.” He shook his head. “Weird nightmares. Demons, faeries—”
“Pretty standard Shadowhunter stuff,” Emma pointed out. “I mean, that just sounds like a Tuesday.”
“Helpful, Emma.” He flopped back down on the sand, his hair making a dark halo around his head.
“I’m all about being helpful.” She flopped down next to him, looking up at the sky. Light pollution from Los Angeles spilled out to the beach, too, and the stars were dim but visible. The moon moved in and out behind clouds. A strange sense of peace had fallen over Emma, a sense that she was where she belonged. She hadn’t felt it since Julian and the others had left for England.
“I was thinking about what you said earlier,” he said. “About all the dead ends. All the times we’ve thought we found something that pointed toward what happened to your parents, but it was nothing.”
She looked toward him. The moonlight made his profile sharp.
“I was thinking maybe there was a meaning to it,” he said. “That maybe finding out who it was had to wait until now. Until you were ready. I’ve watched you train, I’ve watched you get better. And better. Whoever it is, whatever it is, you’re ready now. You can face it down. You can win.”
Something fluttered under Emma’s rib cage. Familiarity, she thought. This was Jules, the Jules she knew, who had more faith in her than she had in herself.
“I like to think things have a point,” she said softly.
“They do.” He paused for a moment, eyes on the sky. “I’ve been counting stars. Sometimes I think it helps to set yourself a pointless task.”
“Remember, when we were younger, we used to talk about running away? Navigating by the North Star?” she said. “Before the war.”
He folded his arm behind his head. Moonlight spilled down, illuminating his eyelashes. “Right. I was going to run off, join the French Foreign Legion. Rename myself Julien.”
“Because no one was ever going to crack that code.” She tipped her head to the side. “Jules. What’s bothering you? I know something is.”
He was silent. Emma could see his chest rising and falling slowly. The sound of his breath was drowned out by the sound of the water.
She reached over and laid her hand against his arm, her finger tracing lightly down the skin. W-H-A-T I-S I-T?
He turned his face away from hers; she saw him shudder, as if a chill had passed over him. “It’s Mark.”
Julian was still looking away from her; she could see only the curve of his throat and chin. “Mark?”
“I’ve been thinking about him,” Julian said. “More than usual. I mean, Helen is always there for me on the other end of the phone if I need her, even if she’s on Wrangel Island. But Mark might as well have died.”
Emma sat up straight. “Don’t say that. He’s not dead.”
“I know. You know how I know?” Jules asked, his voice tightening. “I used to look for the Wild Hunt every night. But they never come. Statistically, they should have ridden by here at least once in the past five years. But they never have. I think Mark won’t let them.”
“Why not?” Emma was staring at him now. Jules hardly ever talked like this. Not with this bitterness in his voice.
“Because he doesn’t want to see us. Any sign of us.”
“Because he loves you?”
“Or because he hates us. I don’t know.” Julian dug restlessly at the sand. “I’d hate us, if I was him. I hate him, sometimes.”
Emma swallowed. “I hate my parents, too, for dying. Sometimes. It’s not—it doesn’t mean anything, Jules.”
He turned his face toward her at that. His eyes were huge, black rings around the blue-green irises. “That’s not the kind of hate I mean.” His voice was low. “If he was here, God, everything would be different. Would have been different. I wouldn’t be the one who ought to be home now in case Tavvy wakes up. I wouldn’t be doing an immoral thing, walking down to the beach because I needed to get away. Tavvy, Dru, Livvy, Ty—they would have had someone to raise them. Mark was sixteen. I was twelve.”
“Neither of you chose—”
“No, we didn’t.” Julian sat up. The collar of his shirt hung loose, and there was sand on his skin and in his hair. “We didn’t choose. Because if I’d ever been able to choose, I would have made really different decisions.”
Emma knew she shouldn’t ask. Not when he was like this. But she had no experience of Julian like this; she didn’t know how to react to him, how to be. “What would you have done differently?” she whispered.