Lady Midnight
Page 9

Cristina snorted. It was remarkably unladylike.
“Can you come to my room after we get back?” Emma asked, flicking on the headlights. “I want to show you something.”
Cristina frowned. “It isn’t a strange birthmark or a wart, is it? My abuela said she wanted to show me something once, and it turned out to be a wart on her—”
“It’s not a wart!” As Emma pulled the car out and merged with the rest of the traffic, she sensed anxiety fizzing through her veins. Usually she felt exhausted after a fight as the adrenaline drained out of her.
Now, though, she was about to show Cristina something that no one but Julian had ever seen. Something she herself wasn’t exactly proud of. She couldn’t help wondering how Cristina would take it.
“Julian calls it my Wall of Crazy,” Emma said.
She and Cristina were standing in front of the closet in Emma’s bedroom, the door of which was propped wide open.
The closet was empty of clothes. Emma’s wardrobe, mostly vintage dresses and jeans she’d picked up in secondhand stores in Silver Lake and Santa Monica, was either hung in her armoire or folded in her dresser. The inside walls of the closet in her blue-painted room (the mural on the bedroom wall of swallows in flight over the towers of a castle had been done by Julian when she first moved in, a nod to the symbol of the Carstairs family) were covered in photographs, newspaper clippings, and sticky notes in Emma’s cramped handwriting.
“Everything is color coded,” she said, indicating the sticky notes. “Stories from mundane newspapers, research into spells, research into demonic languages, things I’ve managed to get out of Diana over the years . . . It’s everything I’ve ever found that connects to my parents’ deaths.”
Cristina moved closer to examine the walls, then swung around suddenly to stare at Emma. “Some of these look like official Clave files.”
“They are,” Emma said. “I stole them from the Consul’s office in Idris when I was twelve.”
“You stole these from Jia Penhallow?” Cristina looked horrified. Emma supposed she couldn’t blame her. The Consul was the highest elected official in the Clave—only the Inquisitor came close in terms of power and influence.
“Where else was I going to get photos of my parents’ bodies?” Emma asked, shrugging off her jacket and tossing it onto her bed. She wore a tank top underneath, the breeze from the wilderness cool on her bare arms.
“So the pictures I took tonight—where do they go?”
Cristina handed them to Emma. They were still damp with toner—the first thing they’d done when they’d gotten back to the Institute was print out the two clearest photos of the alleyway body from Cristina’s phone. Emma leaned in and pinned them carefully beside the Clave photos of her own parents’ bodies—dimmed with time now and curling at the edges.
She leaned back and looked from one to the other. The markings were ugly, spiky, hard to concentrate on. They seemed to push back against being viewed. They weren’t a demon language anyone had been able to identify to her, but they felt as if no human mind could have conceived of them.
“So now what?” Cristina said. “I mean, what is your plan for what to do next?”
“I’ll see what Diana says tomorrow,” Emma said. “If she found out anything. Do the Silent Brothers already know about the murders Rook was talking about? If they don’t, I’ll go back to the Shadow Market. I’ll dig up whatever money I’ve got, or owe Johnny Rook a favor—I don’t care. If someone’s killing people now and covering their bodies with this writing, then it means—it means Sebastian Morgenstern didn’t kill my parents five years ago. It means I’m right, and their deaths were something else.”
“It might not mean exactly that, Emma.” Cristina’s voice was gentle.
“I’m one of the few people alive who saw Sebastian Morgenstern attack an Institute,” said Emma. It was both one of her clearest memories and a blur: She remembered grabbing up baby Tavvy with Dru following, carrying him through the Institute as Sebastian’s Dark warriors howled, remembered the sight of Sebastian himself, all white hair and dead black demonic eyes, remembered the blood and Mark, remembered Julian waiting for her. “I saw him. Saw his face, his eyes when he looked at me. It’s not that I don’t think he could have killed my parents. He would have killed anyone who stood in his way. It’s just that I don’t think he would have bothered.” Her eyes stung. “I just have to get more proof. Convince the Clave. Because as long as this is laid at Sebastian’s door, the real murderer, the person responsible, won’t be punished. And I don’t think I could stand that.”
“Emma.” Cristina touched Emma’s arm lightly with her hand. “You know I think the Angel has a plan for us. For you. And whatever I can do to help you, I will.”
Emma did know that. To many Shadowhunters, the Angel who had created the race of Nephilim was a distant figure. To Cristina, Raziel was a living presence. Around her throat she wore a medallion consecrated to the Angel. Raziel was etched on the front, and there were words written in Latin on the back: Blessed be the Angel my strength, who teaches my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.
Cristina touched her medallion often: for strength, before an exam, before a battle. In many ways, Emma envied Cristina her faith. Sometimes she thought the only things she had faith in were revenge and Julian.
Emma leaned back against the wall, paper and sticky notes rough against her bare shoulder. “Even if it means breaking the rules? I know you hate that.”
“I am not as boring as you seem to think.” Cristina hit Emma’s shoulder lightly in mock offense. “Anyway, there is nothing more we can do tonight. What would take your mind off things? Bad movies? Ice cream?”
“Introducing you to the Blackthorns,” Emma said, pushing off the wall of the closet.
“But they’re not here.” Cristina looked at Emma as if worried she’d hit her head.
“They aren’t and they are.” Emma held out her hand. “Come with me.”
Cristina allowed herself to be led out into the corridor. It was all wood and glass, the windows giving out onto what during the daytime were vistas of sea and sand and desert. Emma had thought when she moved into the Institute that eventually the views would start to fade out of her consciousness, that she wouldn’t wake up every morning still startled by the blue of the ocean, the sky. That hadn’t happened. The sea still fascinated her with its ever-changing surface, and the desert with its shadows and flowers.
She could see the gleam of the moon off the sea now, through the night windows: silver and black.
Emma and Cristina made their way down the hall. Emma paused at the top of the enormous staircase that descended to the Institute’s entryway. It was located exactly in the middle of the Institute, splitting the north and south wings. Emma had deliberately chosen a bedroom, years ago, that was at the other end of the Institute from where the Blackthorns slept. It was a way of declaring silently that she knew she was still a Carstairs.
She leaned on the railing now and looked down, Cristina beside her. Institutes were built to impress: They were meeting places for Shadowhunters, the heart of Conclaves—communities of local Nephilim. The massive entryway, a square room whose focal point was the enormous staircase that led up to the landing and the second floor, had a black-and-white marble floor and was decorated with uncomfortable-looking furniture that no one ever sat in. It seemed like the entrance of a museum.