Lady Midnight
Page 14

Emma felt the tension in her chest easing. Malcolm Fade, the head of the warlocks of Los Angeles, was a family friend, and his eccentricity was an old joke between her and Jules.
“Then he accidentally Portaled us to London instead of here,” Livvy announced, bounding forward to hug Emma. “And we had to hunt someone down to open another Portal—Diana!”
Livvy detached herself from Emma and went to greet her tutor. For a few moments, everything was welcoming hubbub: questions and hellos and hugs. Tavvy had woken up and was wandering around sleepily, tugging on people’s sleeves. Emma ruffled his hair.
Thy people shall be my people. Julian’s family had become Emma’s when they had made themselves parabatai. It was almost like marriage in that way.
Emma looked over at Julian. He was watching his family, his expression intent. As if he’d forgotten she was there. And in that moment her mind suddenly seemed to wake up and present her with a catalog of the ways in which he seemed different.
He’d always kept his hair short and practical, but he must have forgotten to cut it in England: It had grown out, in thick, luscious, curly Blackthorn waves. The tips hung down past his ears. He was tanned, and it wasn’t as if she didn’t know the color of his eyes, but now they seemed suddenly both brighter and darker at once, the intense blue-green of the ocean a mile down from the surface. The shape of his face had changed as well, resettling into more adult lines, losing the softness of childhood, revealing the clean sweep of jawbone that peaked at his slightly sharp chin, an echo of the wing shape of his collarbone, visible just beneath the collar of his T-shirt.
She looked away. To her surprise, her heart was beating fast, as if she was nervous. Flustered, she knelt down to hug Tavvy. “You’re missing teeth,” she told him when he grinned at her. “Careless of you.”
“Dru told me that faeries steal your teeth while you’re sleeping,” Tavvy said.
“That’s because that’s what I told her,” Emma said, rising to her feet. She felt a light touch on her arm.
It was Julian. With his finger he began to trace words against her skin—it was something they had been doing their whole lives, ever since they realized they needed a way to silently communicate during boring study sessions or time with adults. A-R-E Y-O-U A-L-L R-I-G-H-T?
She nodded at him. He was looking at her with faint concern, which was a relief. It felt familiar. Did he really look so different? He was less thin, more muscular, though it was a slender sort of muscle. He looked like the swimmers she had always admired for their spare beauty. He still wore the same arrangement of leather and shell and sea-glass bracelets around his wrists, though. His hands were still spotted with paint. He was still Julian.
“You’re all so tanned,” Diana was saying. “How are you all so tanned? I thought it rained all the time in England!”
“I don’t have a tan,” said Tiberius matter-of-factly. It was true, he didn’t. Ty detested the sun. When they all went to the beach he was usually to be found under a terrifyingly huge umbrella, reading a detective story.
“Great-Aunt Marjorie made us train outside all day,” Livvy said. “Well, not Tavvy. She kept him inside and fed him bramble jelly.”
“Tiberius hid,” said Drusilla. “In the barn.”
“It wasn’t hiding,” said Ty. “It was a strategic retreat.”
“It was hiding,” said Dru, a scowl spreading across her round face. Her braids stuck out on either side of her head like Pippi Longstocking’s. Emma tugged on one of them affectionately.
“Don’t argue with your brother,” said Julian, and turned to Ty. “Don’t argue with your sister. You’re both tired.”
“What does being tired have to do with not arguing?” asked Ty.
“Julian means you should all be asleep,” Diana said.
“It’s only eight o’clock,” Emma protested. “They just got here!”
Diana pointed. Tavvy had curled up on the floor and was asleep in the angled beam of light from a lamp, exactly like a cat. “It’s considerably later in England.”
Livvy stepped forward and picked up Tavvy gently. His head lolled against her neck. “I’ll put him to bed.”
Julian’s eyes met Diana’s briefly. “Thanks, Livvy,” he said. “I’ll go tell Uncle Arthur we got in all right.” He looked around and sighed. “We can deal with luggage in the morning. Everybody, bedtime.”
Livvy grumbled something; Emma didn’t hear it. She felt puzzled; more than puzzled. Even though Julian had answered her texts and calls with short, neutral missives, she hadn’t been prepared for a Julian who looked different, who seemed different. She wanted him to look at her the way he always had, with the smile that seemed reserved for their interactions.
Diana was saying good night, picking up her keys and handbag. Taking advantage of the distraction, Emma reached out to trace lightly against Julian’s skin with her finger.
I N-E-E-D T-O T-A-L-K T-O Y-O-U, she wrote.
Without looking at her, Julian dropped his own hand and wrote along her forearm. W-H-A-T A-B-O-U-T ?
The foyer door opened and closed behind Diana, letting in a chilly gust of wind and rain. Water splashed on Emma’s cheek as she turned to look at Julian. “It’s important,” she said. She wondered if she sounded incredulous. She’d never had to tell him something was important before. If she said she needed to talk to him, he knew she meant it. “Just—” She dropped her voice. “Come to my room after you see Arthur.”
He hesitated, just for a moment; the glass and shells on his wristbands rattled as he pushed his hair out of his face. Livvy was already headed upstairs with Tavvy, the others in her wake. Emma felt her annoyance soften immediately into guilt. Jules was exhausted, obviously. That was all.
“Unless you’re too tired,” she said.
He shook his head, his face unreadable—and Emma had always been able to read his face. “I’ll come,” he said, and then he put a hand on her shoulder. Lightly, a casual gesture. As if they hadn’t been separated for two months. “It’s good to see you again,” he said, and turned to head up the stairs after Livvy.
Of course he would have to go see Arthur, Emma thought. Someone had to tell their eccentric guardian that the Blackthorns were home. And of course he was tired. And of course he seemed different: people did, when you hadn’t seen them in a while. It could take a day or two to get back to the way they used to be: Comfortable. Inseparable. Secure.
She put her hand against her chest. Though the pain she had felt while Julian was in England, the stretched-rubber-band feeling she’d hated, was gone, she now felt a new strange ache near her heart.
The attic of the Institute was dim. Two skylights were built into the roof, but Uncle Arthur had covered them with butcher paper when he had first moved his books and papers into this room, saying that he was worried the sunlight would damage the delicate instruments of his studies.
Arthur and his brother, Julian’s father Andrew, had been brought up by parents obsessed with the classical period: with Ancient Greek and Latin, with the lays of heroes, the mythology and history of Greece and Rome.
Julian had grown up knowing the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey, of the Argonauts and the Aeneid, of men and monsters, gods and heroes. But while Andrew had retained only a fondness for the classics (one that extended, admittedly, to naming his children after emperors and queens—Julian was still grateful to his mother for the fact that he was a Julian and not a Julius, which was what his father had wanted), Arthur was obsessed.