Queen of Air and Darkness
Page 104

Emma threw a pillow at him.
It was nice to have their banter back, she thought, as they headed downstairs. Strange how humor and the ability to joke were tied to emotions; a Julian who didn’t feel was a Julian whose humor was a dark and bitter one.
The mess hall was crowded and smelled like coffee. Werewolves, vampires, and former Shadowhunters sat at long tables, eating and drinking from chipped and mismatched bowls and mugs. It was an oddly unified scene, Emma thought. She couldn’t imagine a situation in her world where a big group of Shadowhunters and Downworlders would be seated together for a casual meal. Maybe Alec and Magnus’s Downworlder-Shadowhunter Alliance ate together, but she had to admit she knew shamefully little about them.
“Hey.” It was Maia, showing them to a long table where Bat and Cameron were sitting. Two bowls of oatmeal and mugs of coffee had been put out for them. Emma glared at the coffee as she sat down. Even in Thule, everyone assumed she drank the stuff.
“Eat,” said Maia, sliding into a chair next to Bat. “We all need the energy.”
“Where’s Livvy?” said Julian, taking a bite of oatmeal.
“Over there.” Cameron pointed with his spoon. “Running around putting out fires as usual.”
Emma tried the oatmeal. It tasted like cooked paper.
“Here.” Maia handed her a small chipped bowl. “Cinnamon. Makes it taste better.”
As Emma took the bowl, she noticed that there were other tattoos on Maia’s arm alongside the lily—a fletched arrow, a lick of blue flame, and a sage leaf.
“Do those mean something?” she asked. Julian was chatting with Cameron, something Emma couldn’t have imagined happening in her world. She was a little surprised it was happening here. “Your tattoos, I mean.”
Maia touched the small illustrations with light fingers. “They honor my fallen friends,” she said quietly. “The sage leaf is for Clary. The arrow and flame are for Alec and Magnus. The lily . . .”
“Lily Chen,” Emma said, thinking of Raphael’s expression when she’d said Lily’s name.
“Yes,” Maia said. “We became friends in New York after the Battle of the Burren.”
“I’m so sorry about your friends.”
Maia sat back. “Don’t be sorry, Emma Carstairs,” she said. “You and Julian have brought us hope. This—today—this is the first move we’ve made against Sebastian, the first thing we’ve done that hasn’t been just about surviving. So thank you for that.”
The backs of Emma’s eyes stung. She looked down and took another bite of oatmeal. Maia was right—it was better with cinnamon.
“Do you not want your coffee?” Diana said, appearing at their table. She was dressed entirely in black from head to toe, two bullet belts lashed around her waist. “I’ll drink it.”
Emma shuddered. “Take it away. I’d be grateful.”
A group of people dressed in black like Diana, carrying guns, marched out the door in formation. “Snipers,” Diana said. “They’ll be covering us from above.”
“Diana, we will be going on ahead now,” said Raphael, appearing out of nowhere in that irritating way vampires had. He hadn’t bothered with any kind of military clothes; he wore jeans and a T-shirt and looked about fifteen.
“You’re scouting?” Emma said.
“That’s my excuse for not traveling with you humans, yes,” said Raphael.
It was somewhat mysterious, Emma thought, that Magnus and Alec had liked this guy enough to name their kid after him. “But I was so looking forward to playing I Spy,” she said.
“You would have lost,” said Raphael. “Vampires excel at I Spy.”
As he stalked away, he paused to talk to someone. Livvy. She patted him on the shoulder, and to Emma’s surprise he didn’t glare—he nodded, an almost friendly nod, and went to join his group of vampire scouts. They headed out the door as Livvy approached Emma and Julian’s table.
“Everybody’s ready,” she said. She looked a lot like she had when they’d first seen her in Thule. Tough and ready for anything. Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail; she bent over to kiss Cameron on the cheek and patted Julian’s shoulder. “Jules, you and Emma come with me. We’ve got fog today.”
“Fog doesn’t seem so bad,” Emma said.
Livvy sighed. “You’ll see.”
* * *
Emma did see. Fog in Thule was like everything else in Thule: surprisingly horrible.
They left the Bradbury in a small group: Emma, Julian, Livvy, Cameron, Bat, Maia, Divya, Rayan, and a few other rebels Emma didn’t know by name. And the fog had hit them like a wall: thick columns of mist rising from the ground and drifting through the air, turning everything more than a few feet ahead into a blur. It smelled like burning, like the smoke from a deep fire.
“It’ll make your eyes sting, and your throat, too, but it doesn’t hurt you,” Livvy said as they split up into smaller groups, spreading out across Broadway. “Sucks for the snipers, though. No visibility.”
She was walking with Emma and Julian in the gutter next to the pavement. They followed Livvy, since she seemed to know where she was going. The fog cut the dim light of the dying sun almost completely; Livvy had taken out a flashlight and was aiming the beam into the mist ahead.
“At least there won’t be any cars,” Livvy said. “Sometimes the Endarkened try to run you over if they think you’re unsworn. But no one drives around in the fog.”
“Does it ever rain?” asked Emma.
“Believe me,” said Livvy, “you do not want to be here when it rains.”
Her tone suggested both that Emma shouldn’t inquire further and that it probably rained knives or rabid frogs.
The white fog seemed to shroud sound as well as sight. They padded along, their footsteps muffled, following Livvy’s flashlight beam. Julian seemed lost in thought; Livvy glanced at him, and then at Emma. “I have something I want you to take,” she said in a voice so low Emma had to lean in to hear it. “It’s a letter I wrote for Ty.”
She slipped the envelope into Emma’s hand; Emma tucked it into her inside pocket after glancing at the scrawled name on the envelope. Tiberius.
“Okay.” Emma looked straight ahead. “But if you aren’t coming back through the Portal with us, you have to tell Julian.”
“The Portal’s not really a sure thing, is it?” Livvy said mildly.
“We’re going to get back,” Emma said. “Somehow.”
Livvy inclined her head, acknowledging Emma’s determination. “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“Look,” Julian said. He seemed to sharpen around the edges as he came closer to them, no longer blurred by the fog. “We’re there.”
Angels Flight loomed up above them, its bulk cutting through the mist. The railway itself had been fenced off long ago, back when people cared about things like safety, but the fencing had been trampled down, and torn strips of chain link lay scattered on the pavement. Two wooden trolley cars lay on their sides halfway up the hill, toppled from the tracks like broken toys. An ornate orange-and-black archway with the words ANGELS FLIGHT towered over the railway entrance.
Standing in front of one of the pillars holding up the archway was Tessa.
She wasn’t disguised as Jem today. Nor was she dressed like a Shadowhunter or a Silent Brother. She wore a plain black dress, her hair loose and straight. She looked about Clary’s age.
“You’re here,” she said.
Livvy had stopped in her tracks; she held out a hand indicating Julian and Emma should stop as well. She flicked off her flashlight as several dozen figures emerged from the mist. Emma tensed, then relaxed as she recognized them—Diana. Bat. Cameron. Raphael. Maia. And dozens more rebels, clad in black and green.
They stood in silence in two long rows. Military formation. None of them moved.
Tessa looked at Livvy wonderingly. “Are all of these people your people?”
“Yes,” Livvy said. She was regarding Tessa with a mix of distrust and hope. “These are my people.”