Lady Midnight
Page 78

“Hello, Arthur,” he said.
Arthur nodded decidedly. He placed his open palm against Julian’s chest. “I have a meeting with Anselm Nightshade,” he said in a deep voice.
“Good to know,” Julian said. It was good to know. Arthur and Anselm were friends, sharing a love of the classics. Anything that kept Arthur busy was an asset.
Arthur turned with almost military precision and marched across the foyer and through the doors of the Sanctuary. They clanged shut behind him.
Laughter floated down into the entryway. Julian turned away from the mirror just in time to see Cristina coming down the steps. Her brown skin glowed against the old-fashioned pink brocade of her dress. Gold chandelier earrings swung from her ears.
After her came Emma. He registered her dress, but barely—that it was pale ivory, that it floated around her like angel wings. The hem brushed her ankles, and he could see the tips of white boots underneath, knew there were knives tucked into the tops, their handles pressed against her calves.
Her hair was loose, and it rippled down her back in dark gold waves. There was a movement, a softness to it that he knew he could never capture in paint. Gold leaf, maybe, if he painted like Klimt, but even then it would be a pale comparison to the real thing.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and he realized that the material of her dress was just fine enough that he could see the shape and suggestion of her body through it. His pulse started a hard beat against the inside of his cuffs. His suit felt too tight, his skin hot and scratchy.
She smiled at him. Her brown eyes were outlined with gold; it picked up the lighter flecks in her irises, those circles of copper he had spent his childhood counting, memorizing.
“I brought them,” she said, and for a moment he forgot what she was talking about. Then he remembered and held out his wrists.
Emma unfurled her fingers. Gold cuff links set with black stones glimmered in her palm. Her touch was gentle as she took each of his hands in hers, turned it over, and carefully fastened the French cuffs of his shirt. She was quick, efficient, but he felt each glide and movement of her fingertips against the skin of his inner wrist like the touch of hot wires.
She dropped his hands, stepped back, and pretended to survey him thoughtfully.
“I guess you’ll do,” she said.
Cristina gave a gasp. She was looking up, toward the top of the stairs; Julian followed her gaze.
Mark was descending the staircase. Julian blinked, not quite believing his eyes. His older brother seemed to be wearing a long, slightly ratty fake-fur coat—and nothing else.
“Mark,” he said. “What are you wearing?”
Mark paused halfway down the stairs. His legs were bare. His feet were bare. Julian was 99 percent sure all of him was bare except for the coat, which was fairly loose. It was more of Mark than Julian had seen since they’d shared a bedroom when he was two.
Mark looked puzzled. “Ty and Livvy told me this was semiformal.”
It was then that Julian became aware of the pealing laughter from above. Ty and Livvy were seated along the upstairs railing of the staircase, giggling. “And I told you not to trust them!”
Emma’s lips were twitching. “Mark, just—” She held out a hand. Cristina was standing looking up at Mark with both her cheeks bright red, her hands clapped over her mouth. “Go back up to the landing, okay?” She turned to Jules and dropped her voice. “You have to find him something else to wear!”
“You think?”
Emma raised her eyes in exasperation. “Jules. Go into my room, okay? Trunk at the foot of the bed, there’s some of my parents’ old clothes. My dad wore a tux at his wedding. There were rune bands around the cuffs but we can rip those off.”
“But your dad’s tux—”
She looked up at him, sideways. “Don’t worry about it.”
A dozen flecks of gold in her left eye, only seven in her right. Each one like a tiny starburst.
“I’ll be right back,” Julian said, and jogged up the stairs toward his brother. Mark was on the landing, his arms held out in front of him as if he were examining the sleeves of his fur coat and deciding that they, in fact, were the problem.
Dru, holding Tavvy’s hand, had joined the twins. They were all giggling. The glow on Ty’s face when he looked at Mark made Julian warm and cold all at once.
What if Mark decided not to stay? What if they couldn’t find the killer and he was taken back to the Wild Hunt? What if?
“Would you say I’m overdressed or underdressed?” Mark inquired, arching his eyebrows.
Emma burst out laughing. She collapsed onto the bottom step of the staircase. A moment later Cristina had joined her. They clutched each other, helpless with laughter.
Julian wanted to laugh too. He wished he could. He wished he could forget the darkness that flickered at the edge of his vision. He wished he could close his eyes and fall, forgetting for one moment that there was no net stretched out below to catch him.
“Are you ready yet?” Julian asked the closed door of the bathroom. He’d retrieved John Carstairs’s suit from Emma’s trunk and dragged Mark back to his own bedroom to change. The thought of his brother being naked in Emma’s room didn’t sit well with him, even if Emma wasn’t there.
The door to the bathroom opened and Mark stepped out. The tux was black, simple. It was impossible to see where the runed bands of fabric had been snipped away. The elegant lines of it seemed to sweep upward, making Mark appear taller, more polished. For the first time since his return, every bit of the feral faerie child in him appeared to have been brushed away like cobwebs. He looked human. Like someone who’d always been human.
“Why do you bite your nails?” he said.
Julian, who hadn’t even been conscious that he was gnawing on the side of his thumb—the satisfying pain of skin between his teeth, the metal of the blood in his mouth—dropped his hands into his lap. “Bad habit.”
“It’s something people do when they’re stressed,” said Mark. “Even I know that.” His fingers scrabbled uselessly at his tie. He frowned down at it.
Julian got to his feet and went over to his brother, taking the loops of the tie in his hands. He couldn’t remember who had taught him how to knot a tie. Malcolm, he thought. It had almost certainly been Malcolm.
“But what do you have to be stressed about, little brother?” Mark said. “You weren’t carried away by the faeries. You’ve spent your life here. Not that the life of a Shadowhunter isn’t stressful, but why are you the one with the bloody hands?”
Julian’s fingers faltered for a moment. “You don’t know everything about me, Mark. Just like I’m willing to bet I don’t know everything about you.”
Mark’s blue-and-gold eyes were wide and guileless. “Ask me.”
“I’d rather learn in my own time.” Julian gave the tie a final tug and stepped back to examine his handiwork. Mark looked as if he might have stepped out of a catalog advertising tuxedoes—if male catalog models had pointed ears.
“I wouldn’t,” said Mark. “Tell me one thing I don’t know about you that makes you bite your fingers.”
Julian turned toward the door, then paused, hand on the knob. “Our father,” he said. “You know what happened to him?”