There was a tightness in Julian's throat. He thought of Annabel's drawings, the lightness in them, the hope, the love for Blackthorn Manor in Idris and for Malcolm.
"Fast-forward almost a hundred years," said Emma. "Malcolm goes to the Unseelie King. He's found out that Annabel wasn't an Iron Sister, that she was murdered. He's out for bloody vengeance." She paused, combing her fingers back through her hair, still tangled from Cornish wind and rain. "The Unseelie King tells him how to raise Annabel, but there's a catch--Malcolm needs the Black Volume to do it, and now he doesn't have it. It's in the Cornwall Institute. He broke in there once, he doesn't dare do it again. So there it stays until the Blackthorns who run the Institute move to Los Angeles, and they take it with them."
Ty's eyes lit up. "Right. And Malcolm sees his chance when Sebastian Morgenstern attacks, and takes the book. He starts to raise Annabel, and finally he succeeds."
"Except she's pissed off and kills him," said Emma.
"How ungrateful," said Kieran.
"Ungrateful?" Emma said. "He was a murderer. She was right to kill him."
"He may have been a murderer," said Kieran, "but it sounds as if he became one for her. He killed to give her life."
"Maybe she didn't want life," said Alec. He shrugged. "He never did ask her what she wanted, did he?"
As if sensing the tense atmosphere at the table, Max began to wail. With a sigh, Alec picked him up and carried him out of the room.
"I'm sure it's useful to know all this," said Magnus. "But does it bring us closer to the Black Volume?"
"Maybe if we had more time, and the Riders weren't after us," said Julian.
"I think," said Kieran slowly, his gaze unfocused, "that it was my father."
Apparently it was his day for startling pronouncements. Everyone stared at him again. To Julian's surprise, it was Cristina who spoke.
"What do you mean, it was your father?"
"I think he was the one who wanted the book all those years ago, when Malcolm first stole it," said Kieran. "He is the thread that ties all this together. He wanted the book then and he wants it now."
"But why do you think he wanted it then?" Julian said. He kept his voice low and gentle. What Emma thought of as his leading-the-witness voice.
"Because of something Adaon said." Kieran was looking down at his hands. "He said my father had wanted the book since the First Heir was stolen. It is an old story in Faerie, the theft of my father's first child. It happened more than two hundred years ago."
Cristina looked stunned. "I didn't realize that's what he meant."
"The First Heir." Magnus's eyes looked unfocused. "I have heard that tale, or heard of it. The child was not just stolen, but murdered."
"So the story goes," said Kieran. "Perhaps my father wished to use necromancy to raise the child. I could not speak of his motives. But he could have offered Fade and Annabel protection in the Unseelie Lands. No Shadowhunter could touch them if they were safe in Faerie."
Emma set her fork down with a clang. "Pretentious hair prince is right."
Kieran blinked. "What did you call me?"
"I'm trying it out," Emma said, with a wave. "And I said you were right. Enjoy it, because I doubt I'll say it again."
Magnus nodded. "The King is one of the few beings on this earth who could have kidnapped Malcolm from the prisons of the Silent City. He must not have wanted him to reveal their connection to the Council."
"But why didn't he take Annabel, too?" Livvy asked, a forkful of pie halfway to her mouth.
"Maybe because Malcolm had disappointed him by getting caught," said Mark. "Maybe he wanted to punish them both."
"But Annabel could have told on them," said Livvy. "She could have said Malcolm was working for the King."
"Not if she didn't know," said Emma. "There was nothing in the diaries Malcolm kept that mentioned who he was stealing the book for, and I bet he didn't tell Annabel, either."
"They tortured her," said Ty, "and she still couldn't say who it was, just that she had no idea. It must have been the truth."
"That explains why when he found out Annabel wasn't an Iron Sister, that he'd been lied to, Malcolm went to the Unseelie King," said Julian. "Because he knew him."
"So once the King wanted the book for necromancy," Cristina said. "Now he wants it so he can destroy Shadowhunters?"
"Not all necromancy is raising the dead." Magnus was gazing at the glass of wine by his plate as if there was some kind of secret hidden in its depth. "One moment," he said, and scooped up Rafe from the chair beside him. He turned to Tavvy. "Would you like to come with us? And play with Alexander and Max?"
After a glance at Julian, Tavvy nodded. The group of them left the room, Magnus gesturing that he would be right back.
"This is just one meeting," said Emma. "First we need to get the Council to believe that the Unseelie Court is an immediate threat. Right now they can't tell good faeries from bad and aren't interesting in trying."
"Which is where Kieran's testimony comes in," said Mark. "And there is some evidence--there's the blight Diana said she saw in Brocelind Forest, and the report from the Shadowhunters who said they fought a band of faeries but their weapons malfunctioned."
"It's not a lot to go on," said Livvy. "Especially considering Zara and her nasty little band of bigots. They are going to try to seize power at this meeting. They're going to try to grab the Institute. They couldn't care less about some vague faerie threat."
"I can make the Clave fear my father," said Kieran. "But it may take all of us to make them understand that if they do not wish for a new era of darkness, they must abandon their dreams of extending the Cold Peace."
"No registering warlocks," said Ty. "No putting werewolves into camps."
"The Downworlders who have seats on the Council all know about the Cohort," said Magnus, returning without the children. "If it actually comes down to a vote about who heads the Los Angeles Institute, they'll have to bring in Maia and Lily, as well as me. We're entitled to vote." He threw himself down in the chair at the head of the table.
"That's still just three votes, even if you vote against the Cohort," said Julian.
"It's a tricky business," Magnus agreed. "According to Diana, Jia doesn't want Zara heading up the Los Angeles Institute any more than we do. She'll be hard to discredit at the moment--with her lie about killing Malcolm, she's pretty popular right now."
Emma made a growling noise low in her throat. Cristina patted her hand.
"Meanwhile what we have is the promise that the Queen will fight with us against a threat the Council is unlikely to believe in, and even then only if she gets a book that we don't currently have and wouldn't be allowed to give her if we did," Magnus said.
"Our bargain with the Seelie Queen is our business," said Julian. "Right now, we say that she's shown herself willing to cooperate under the right circumstances. Kieran's empowered to promise she'll help. He doesn't need to go into details."
"Brother, you think like a faerie," said Mark, in a tone that made Julian wonder if that was a good thing or not.
"Maybe the King wants to raise an army of the dead," said Dru hopefully. "I mean, it is a book of necromancy."
Magnus sighed, tapping a fingernail against his glass thoughtfully. "Necromancy is about doing magic that uses the energy of death to power it. All magic needs fuel. Death energy is incredibly powerful fuel. It's also incredibly destructive. The destruction of the land that you saw in Faerie, the blight in Brocelind--they are the scars left by terrible magic. The question remains--what is his ultimate goal?"
"You mean he needs more energy to spread those spells," said Julian. "The ones that Malcolm helped with, that cancel out Shadowhunter magic."
"I mean your magic is angelic in its nature," said Magnus. "It comes from light, from energy and life. The opposite of that is Sheol, Hell, whatever you want to call it. The absence of light and life. Of any kind of hope." He coughed. "When the Council voted for the Cold Peace, they w
ere voting for a time that never existed. Just as the Cohort wishes everything to return to a lost Golden Age when Shadowhunters walked the world like gods and Downworlders and mundanes bowed before them." Everyone stared at him. This was a Magnus Bane people rarely saw, Julian thought. A Magnus whose good cheer and casual optimism had deserted him. A Magnus who was remembering the darkness of all he had seen over the centuries: the death and the loss; the same Magnus Julian had seen in the Hall of Accords when he was twelve, begging the Council in vain not to pass the Cold Peace, knowing that they would. "The King wants the same. To unite two kingdoms that have always been separate but in his mind were one land once. We must stop the King, but in a way he is only doing what the Cohort would do. What we have to hope the Clave would not do."
"You mean," said Julian, "this is vengeance?"
Magnus shrugged. "It is the whirlwind," he said. "Let us hope we can stop it."
26
WALK IN SHADOW
Emma sat on Cristina's bed, brushing her friend's hair. She was beginning to understand why her mother had loved brushing her hair so much when she was a little girl: There was something oddly soothing about the smooth dark locks slipping through her fingers, the repetitive motion of the brush.
It soothed the ache in her head, her chest. The one that felt not just her own pain, but Julian's. She knew how much he hated saying good-bye to Tavvy, even if it was for Tavvy's own good, and she felt a hollowness inside herself where Julian was parting from his smallest brother now.
Being with Cristina helped. Emma had spilled everything that happened in Cornwall while clucking over Cristina's wrist and rubbing a mundane cream called Savlon into the red mark from the binding rune. Cristina ouched and complained that it stung, and handed Emma the hairbrush and told her to do something actually useful.
"So does anything help the binding?" said Emma. "Like if Mark came in here and lay down directly on top of you, would the pain go away?"
"Yes," Cristina said, sounding a bit muffled.
"Well, it's very inconsiderate of him not to, if you ask me."
Cristina gave a little wail that sounded like "Kieran."
"Right, Mark has to pretend he still cares about Kieran. I guess lying on top of you wouldn't do much for that."
"He does care about Kieran," Cristina said. "It's just--I think he cares about me, too." She half-turned to look at Emma. Her eyes were big and dark and worried. "I danced with him. With Mark. And we kissed."
"That's good! That is good, right?"
"It was, but then Kieran came in--"
"What?"
"But he wasn't angry, he just told Mark that he should dance better, and he danced with me. It was like dancing with fire."
"Whoa, sexy weirdness," said Emma. "This may be more sexy weirdness than I can handle."
"It is not weird!"
"It is," said Emma. "You are headed for a faerie threesome. Or some kind of war."
"Emma!"
"Hot faerie threesome," said Emma cheerfully. "I can say I knew you when."
Cristina groaned. "Fine. What about you and Julian? Do you have a plan, after what happened in Cornwall?"
Emma sighed and put the hairbrush down. It was a lovely old silver-backed Victorian object. She wondered if it had been in the room when Cristina got here or if she'd found it somewhere else in the Institute. Already Cristina's London room bore signs of her personality--pictures had been cleaned and straightened, she'd found a colorful coverlet for her bed somewhere, and her balisong hung on a new hook by the fireplace.
Emma began to braid Cristina's hair, plaiting the thick strands between her fingers. "We don't have a plan," she said. "It's always the same thing--we're together and we feel like we're invincible. And then we start to realize it's still all the same choices and they're all bad ones."
Cristina looked troubled. "It is always the same choices, isn't it? Separation from each other or ceasing to be Shadowhunters."
Emma had finished the braid. She leaned her chin on Cristina's shoulder, thinking about what Julian had learned from the Seelie Queen. The terrifying possibility of ending all parabatai bonds. But it was too horrible a thing to even voice aloud. "I used to think it would help, physical distance from Julian," she said. "But now I don't think it would. Nothing else has. I think no matter where I went, or for how long, I would always feel like this."
"Some loves are strong, like cords. They bind you," Cristina said. "The Bible says love is as strong as death. I believe that."
Emma scooted around to peer closer into her friend's face. "Cristina," she said. "There's something else going on, isn't there? Something about Diego, or Jaime?"
Cristina looked down. "I can't say."
"Let me help you," Emma said. "You're always so strong for everyone else. Let me be strong for you."
There was a knock on the door. They both looked up in surprise. Mark, Emma thought. There was something about the look on Cristina's face. It must be Mark.
But it was Kieran.
Emma froze in surprise. Though she'd grown somewhat used to Kieran being around, he still made the fine hairs on Emma's arms rise with tension. It wasn't that she blamed him, specifically, for the injuries she'd suffered at Iarlath's hands. But the sight of him still brought it back to her, all of it: the hot sun, the sound of the whip, the copper scent of blood.
It was true that he looked enormously different now. His black hair was a little wilder, more untidy, but otherwise he cut an incongruously human figure in his jeans. The wild hair hid the tops of his pointed ears, though his black and silver eyes were still startling.
He gave a small, courtly bow. "My ladies."
Cristina looked puzzled. Clearly she hadn't expected this visit either.
"I came to speak with Cristina, if she will permit it," Kieran added.
"Go ahead, then," Emma said. "Speak."
"I think he wishes to speak to me alone," said Cristina, in a whisper.
"Yes," said Kieran. "That is my request."
Cristina looked at Emma. "I'll see you in the morning, then?"
Humph, Emma thought. She'd missed Cristina, and now a brash faerie princeling was kicking her out of her friend's room. Kieran barely spared her a glance as she climbed off the bed and headed to the door.
As she passed Kieran on her way out, Emma paused, her shoulder almost touching his. "If you do anything to hurt or upset her," she said, in a voice low enough that she doubted Cristina could hear it, "I will pull off your ears and turn them into lock picks. Get it?"
Kieran glanced at her with his night-sky eyes, unreadable as clouds. "No," he said.
"Let me spell it out," Emma said sharply. "I love her. Don't mess around with her."
Kieran put his long, delicate hands in his pockets. He looked absolutely unnatural in his modern clothes. It was like seeing Alexander the Great in a biker jacket and leather pants. "She is easy to love."
Emma looked at him in surprise. It hadn't been what she'd expected him to say at all. Easy to love. Nene had behaved as if the concept was bizarre. But then what did the Fair Folk know about love, anyway?
*
"Would you like to sit down?" Cristina inquired. Then she wondered if she was turning into her mother, who had always claimed that the first thing one did with a guest was offer them a seat. Even if they are a murderer? Cristina had asked. Yes, even murderers, her mother had insisted. If you didn't want to offer a murderer a seat, you shouldn't have invited him in the first place.
"No," Kieran said. He moved across the room, hands in his pockets, his body language restless. Not unlike Mark's, Cristina thought. They both moved as if they had energy trapped beneath their skin. She wondered what it would be like to contain so much movement, and yet be forced to stay still.
"My lady," he said. "Because of what I swore to you in the Seelie Court, there is a bond between us. I think you have felt its force."
Cristina nodded. It wasn't the enchanted bond she had with Mark. But it was there anyway, a s
himmering energy when they danced, when they spoke.
"I think that force can help us do something together I could not do alone." Kieran came closer to the bed, drawing his hand out of his pocket. Something glimmered in his palm. He held it out to Cristina, and she saw the acorn there that Mark had used earlier, to summon Gwyn. It looked slightly dented, but it was whole, as if it had been sealed back together after breaking open.
"You want to summon Gwyn again?" Cristina shook her head. Her hair fell completely out of its unfastened braid, spilling down her back. She saw Kieran glance at it. "No. He won't interfere again. You want to speak to someone else in Faerie. Your brother?"
"As I thought." He inclined his head slightly. "You guess my intentions exactly."
"And you can do it? The acorn won't just call Gwyn?"
"The magic is a fairly simple one. Remember, you are not of the blood than can cast spells, but I am. It should bring a Projection of my brother to us. I will ask him of our father's plans. I shall ask him as well if he can stop the Riders."
Cristina was astonished. "Can anyone stop the Riders?"
"They are servants of the Court, and under its command."
"Why are you telling me this?" Cristina asked.
"Because to summon my brother, I must reach out with my mind into Faerie," said Kieran. "And it would be safer, should I wish to keep my mind intact, for me to have a connection here in the world. Something--someone--to keep me anchored while I seek my brother."
Cristina slid off the bed. Standing straight, she was only a little shorter than Kieran. Her eyes were level with his mouth. "Why me? Why not Mark?"
"I have asked enough of Mark," he said.
"Perhaps," she said, "but even if that is true, I do not think it is the whole truth."
"Few of us are lucky enough ever to know the whole truth of anything." She knew Kieran was young, but there was something ancient in his eyes when he spoke. "Will you put your hand in mine?"
She gave him the hand whose wrist bore the red mark of her bond with Mark. It seemed fitting, somehow. His fingers closed around hers, cool and dry, light as the touch of a leaf.
With his other hand, Kieran dashed the golden acorn against the wall beside the fireplace mantel.
For a moment, there was silence. Cristina could hear his ragged breathing. It seemed strange for a faerie--everything they did was at such a remove from ordinary human emotion, it was odd to hear Kieran gasp. But then she remembered his arms around her, the uneven thud of his heart. They were flesh and blood after all, weren't they? Bone and muscle, just as Shadowhunters were. And the flame of angelic blood burned in them, too . . . .