“Emma,” Julian said.
She paused. Julian had been almost completely silent since they’d left the Institute. She couldn’t blame him. She couldn’t find words herself. She’d let the distraction of driving take her, the need to concentrate on the road. She’d been aware of him beside her the whole time, though, his head back against the seat, his eyes closed, his fist clenched against the knee of his jeans.
“Mark thought I was my father,” said Julian abruptly, and she could tell he was remembering that awful moment, the look of hope in his brother’s eyes, a hope that had nothing to do with him. “He didn’t recognize me.”
“He remembers you twelve,” Emma said. “He remembers all of you as so young.”
“And you, too.”
“I doubt he remembers me at all.”
He unsnapped his seat belt. Light sparked off the bracelet of sea glass he wore on his left wrist, turning it to bright colors: flame red, fire gold, Blackthorn blue.
“He does,” he said. “No one could forget you.”
She blinked at him in surprise. A moment later Julian was out of the car. She scrambled to follow him, slamming the driver’s side door as cars whizzed by just a lane away.
Jules was standing at the foot of Malcolm’s bridge, looking up toward the house. She could see his shoulder blades under the thin cotton of his T-shirt, the nape of his neck, a shade lighter than the rest of his skin where his hair had kept it from getting tanned.
“The Fair Folk are tricksters,” Julian said without turning. “They won’t want to give Mark up: Faerie blood and Shadowhunter blood together, that’s too valuable. There’ll be some clause that’ll allow them to take him back when we’re done.”
“Well, it’s up to him,” said Emma. “He gets to choose whether to stay or go.”
Julian shook his head. “A choice seems simple, I know,” he said. “But a lot of choices aren’t simple.”
They began to climb the stairs. The staircase was helical, twisting upward through the hills. It was glamoured, visible only to supernatural creatures. The first time Emma had visited, Malcolm had escorted her; she had looked down in wonder at all the mundanes speeding by below in their cars, entirely unaware that above them, a crystal staircase rose impossibly against the sky.
She was more used to it now. Once you’d seen the staircase, it would never be invisible to you again.
Julian didn’t say anything else as they walked, but Emma found she didn’t mind. What he’d said in the car—he’d meant it. His gaze had been level and direct as he’d spoken. It had been Julian talking, her Jules, the one who lived in her bones and her brain and at the base of her spine, the one who was threaded all through her like veins or nerves.
The staircase ended abruptly in a path to Malcolm’s front door. You were meant to climb down, but Emma jumped, her feet landing on the hard-packed dirt. A moment later Julian had landed beside her and reached out to steady her, his fingers five warm lines across her back. She didn’t need the help—of the two of them, she likely had the better balance—but, she realized, it was something he’d always done, unthinkingly. A protective reflex.
She glanced toward him, but he seemed lost in thought, barely noticing that they were touching. He moved away as the staircase behind them vanished back into its glamour.
They were standing in front of two obelisks that thrust up out of the dusty ground, forming a gateway. Each was carved with alchemical symbols: fire, earth, water, air. The path that led up to the warlock’s house was lined with desert plants: cactus, sagebrush, California lilacs. Bees buzzed among the flowers. The dirt turned to crushed seashells as they neared the brushed-metal front doors.
Emma knocked and the doors slid open with a near-silent hiss. The hallways inside Malcolm’s house were white, lined with pop-art reproductions, snaking off in a dozen different directions. Julian was at her side, unobtrusive; he hadn’t brought his crossbow with him, but she felt the ridge of a knife strapped to his wrist when he nudged her with his arm.
“Down the hall,” he said. “Voices.”
They moved toward the living room. It was all steel and glass, entirely circular, giving out onto views of the sea. Emma thought it looked like the sort of place a movie star might own—everything was modern, from the sound system that piped in classical music to the infinity-edged swimming pool that hung over the cliffs.
Malcolm was sprawled on the long couch that ran the length of the room, his back to the Pacific. He wore a black suit, very plain and clearly expensive. He was nodding and smiling agreeably as two men in much the same kind of dark suits stood over him with briefcases in hand, speaking in low, urgent voices.