Lord of Shadows
Page 134

“Magnus,” Julian said. He didn’t follow up his greeting by saying it wasn’t like that, or Magnus was getting the wrong idea. Julian didn’t say things like that. “What’s going on? Is something wrong at home?”
Magnus looked, at that moment, like he was feeling his age. “Parabatai,” he said, and sighed. “Yes, something’s wrong. We need to get you back to the Institute. Grab your things and get ready to leave.”
He leaned back against the kitchen island, crossing his arms. He was wearing a sort of greatcoat with several layers of short capes in the back. He was dry—he must have Portaled from inside the Institute.
“There’s blood on your sword, Emma,” he said, looking at where Cortana was propped against the wall.
“Faerie blood,” said Emma. Julian was yanking on a sweater and running his fingers through his wild hair.
“When you say faerie blood,” Magnus said, “you mean the Riders, don’t you?”
Emma saw Julian start. “They were looking for us—how would you know?”
“They weren’t just looking for you. The King sent them to find the Black Volume. He instructed them to hunt all of you—all the Blackthorns.”
“To hunt us?” Julian demanded. “Is anyone hurt?” He strode across the room to Magnus, almost as if he meant to grab the warlock by his shirt and shake him. “Is anyone in my family hurt?”
“Julian.” Magnus’s voice was firm. “Everyone’s fine. But the Riders did come. They attacked Kit, Ty, and Livvy.”
“And they’re all right?” Emma demanded anxiously, shoving her feet into boots.
“Yes—I got a fire-message from Alec,” Magnus said. “Kit got a bump on the head. Ty and Livvy, not a scratch. But they were lucky—Gwyn and Diana intervened.”
“Diana and Gwyn? Together?” Emma was baffled.
“Emma killed one of the Riders,” Julian said. He was gathering up Annabel’s portfolio, Malcolm’s diaries, shoving them into his bag. “We hid his body up on the cliff, but we probably shouldn’t leave it there.”
Magnus whistled between his teeth. “No one’s killed one of Mannan’s Riders in—well, in all the history I know.”
Emma shuddered, remembering the cold feeling as the blade had gone into Fal’s body. “It was horrible.”
“The rest of them are not gone forever,” said Magnus. “They will come back.”
Julian zipped his bag and Emma’s. “Then we need to take the children somewhere safe. Somewhere the Riders won’t find them.”
“Right now, the Institute is the safest place outside Idris,” said Magnus. “It’s warded, and I’ll ward it again.”
“The cottage is safe too,” Emma said, hoisting her bag over her shoulder. It was twice as heavy as it had been before with the addition of Malcolm’s books. “The Riders can’t come near it; they said so.”
“Thoughtful of Malcolm,” said Magnus. “But you’d be trapped in the house if you stayed, and I can’t imagine you’d want to be unable to leave these four walls.”
“No,” Julian said, but he said it quietly. Emma could see Magnus raking his gaze over the interior of the cottage—the mess of teacups they hadn’t cleaned up, the signs of Julian’s cooking, the disarray of the bedcovers, the remains of the fire in the grate. A place built by and for two people who loved each other yet weren’t allowed to, and that had sheltered two more such people two hundred years later. “I suppose we wouldn’t.”
There was sympathy in Magnus’s eyes when he looked back at Julian, and at Emma, too. “All dreams end when you wake,” he said. “Now, come. I’ll Portal us home.”
* * *
Dru watched the rain streak her bedroom windows. Outside, London was a blur, the glow of streetlights expanding in the rain to become yellow dandelion clocks of light perched on elongated metal posts.
She had been in the library long enough to tell Mark that she was fine, before he’d gotten worried about Cristina and gone looking for her. When they’d both returned, Dru’s stomach had tightened with fear. She’d been sure Cristina was going to tell—tell everyone about Jaime, spill her secret, spill his.
The expression on Cristina’s face wasn’t comforting, either. “Can I talk to you in the hall, Dru?” she had said.
Dru nodded and put her book down. She hadn’t been reading it anyway. Mark had gone over to Kieran and the children, and Dru followed Cristina out into the hall.
“Thank you,” Cristina said, as soon as the door was shut. “For helping Jaime.”
Dru cleared her throat. Being thanked seemed like a good sign. At least a sign that Cristina wasn’t mad. Maybe.
Cristina smiled. She had dimples. Dru immediately wished she had them too. Did she? She’d have to check. Though smiling at herself in the mirror sounded a little bizarre. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone he was here, or that you helped him. It must not have been easy, putting up with him as you did.”
“I didn’t mind,” Dru said. “He listened to me.”
Cristina’s dark eyes were sad. “He used to listen to me, once, too.”
“Is he going to be all right?” Dru asked.
“I think so,” Cristina said. “He has always been smart and careful.” She touched Dru’s cheek. “I’ll let you know if I hear from him.”
And that was that. Dru had gone back to her bedroom, feeling hollow. She knew she’d been supposed to stay in the library, but she needed to be where she could think.
She’d sat on the edge of her bed, kicking her legs listlessly. She wanted Jaime to be there so she’d have someone to talk to. She wanted to talk about the fact that Magnus looked tired, that Mark was stressed, that she was worried about Emma and Jules. She wanted to talk about how she missed home, the smell of the ocean and desert.
She swung her legs harder—and her heel collided with something. Bending down, she saw with surprise that Jaime’s duffel bag was still stuffed under her bed. She pulled it out from under the mattress, trying not to spill the contents. It was already unzipped.
He must have shoved it there in a hurry when Cristina came in, but why would he leave it? Did it mean he was planning on coming back? Or had he just left behind the stuff he didn’t need?
She didn’t mean to look inside, or at least that was what she told herself later. It wasn’t that she needed to know if he was coming back. It was just an accident.
Stuffed inside were a jumble of boy’s clothes, a bunch of jeans and shirts, and a few books, spare steles, unactivated seraph blades, a balisong not unlike Cristina’s, and some photographs. And something else, something that shone so brightly that she thought for a moment it was a witchlight—but the illumination was less white than that. It glowed with a dim, deep gold color, like the surface of the ocean. Before she knew it, her hand was on it—
She felt herself jerked off her feet, as if she were being sucked into a Portal. She yanked her hand back, but she was no longer touching anything. She was no longer in her room at all.
She was underground, in a long corridor dug out of the earth. The roots of trees grew down into the space, like the curling ribbon on expensively wrapped gifts. The corridor stretched away on either side of her into shadows that deepened like no shadows above ground.