“In December there are three kittens in a basket,” Dru said. “But you should really watch the movie—”
Kieran set the calendar down and gazed at the screen in some puzzlement. Then he sighed. “I just don’t understand,” he said. “I love them both, but it seems as if they cannot understand that. As if it is a torment or an insult.”
Dru hit the mute button and put down the remote. Finally, she thought, someone was talking to her like an adult. Admittedly, Kieran wasn’t making a lot of sense, but still.
“Shadowhunters are slow to love,” she said, “but once we love, we love forever.”
It was something she remembered Helen having said to her once, maybe at her wedding.
Kieran blinked and focused in on her, as if she’d said something clever. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that is true. I must trust in Mark’s love. But Cristina—she has never said she loves me. And they both feel so far away just now.”
“Everyone feels far away just now,” Dru said, thinking of how lonely the past few days had been. “But that’s because they’re worried. When they get worried, they pull inside themselves and sometimes they forget that you’re there.” She glanced down at her popcorn. “But it doesn’t mean they don’t care.”
Kieran leaned an elbow on his knee. “So what do I do, Drusilla?”
“Um,” Drusilla said. “Don’t remain silent about what you want, or you may never get it.”
“You are very wise,” Kieran said gravely.
“Well,” said Dru. “I actually saw that on a mug.”
“Mugs in this world are very wise.” Dru wasn’t entirely sure if Kieran was smiling or not, but by the way he sat back and crossed his arms, she sensed he was done with questions. She turned the TV volume back on.
* * *
Emma pulled out the pushpins, carefully taking down the different-colored string, the old newspaper clippings, the photos curling at the edges. Each one representing a clue, or what she’d thought was a clue, to the secret of her parents’ deaths: Who had killed them? Why had they died as they had?
Now Emma knew the answers. She had asked Julian some time ago what she should do with all the evidence she’d collected, but he’d indicated that it was her decision. He’d always called it her Wall of Crazy, but in a lot of ways Emma thought of it as a wall of sanity, because creating it had kept her sane during a time where she’d felt helpless, overwhelmed with missing her parents and the sure support of their love.
This was for you, Mom and Dad, she thought, dumping the last of the photos into shoe boxes. I know what happened to you now, and the person who killed you is dead. Maybe that makes a difference. Maybe not. I know it doesn’t mean I miss you any less.
She wondered if she should say more. That revenge wasn’t the panacea she had hoped for. That in fact she was a little frightened of it now: She knew how powerful it was, how it drove you. In Thule she had seen how the vengefulness of an abandoned, angry boy had burned down the world. But it hadn’t made Sebastian happy. Revenge had only made Sebastian in Thule miserable, though he had conquered all he saw.
There was a knock on the door. Emma shoved the boxes into her closet and went to answer it. To her surprise, it was Julian. She would have thought he would have been downstairs with the others. They’d had a big dinner in the library—delivery Thai food—and everyone was there, reminiscing and joking, Magnus dozing gently in Alec’s arms while they both sprawled on the couch. It was almost as if Jace and Clary didn’t have to leave on a dangerous mission at dawn, but that was the Shadowhunter way. There were always missions. There was always a dangerous dawn.
Emma had wanted to be with them, but to be around Julian and other people when he was like this hurt. It hurt to look at him, and to conceal what she knew, and to wonder if others noticed, and if so, what they thought.
Julian went to lean against the windowsill. The stars were just coming out, pinpointing the sky with scraps of light.
“I think I messed things up with Ty,” he said. “He wanted to talk to me, and I don’t think I responded the right way.”
Emma brushed off her knees. She was wearing a pale green vintage nightgown that doubled as a dress. “What did he want to talk to you about?”
A few loose curls of dark chocolate hair tumbled over Julian’s forehead. He was still beautiful, Emma thought. It didn’t make any difference what she knew; she ached at the sight of his painter’s hands, strong and articulate, the soft darkness of his hair, the cupid’s bow of his lip, the color of his eyes. The way he moved, his artist’s grace, the things about him that whispered Julian to her. “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t understand it. I would have understood it—I know I would have—if it weren’t for the spell.”
“You went up on that pyre for him,” she said.
“I know—I told you, it was like a survival instinct, something I had no control over. But this isn’t a matter of living and dying. It’s emotions. And so my mind won’t process them.”
Emotions can be matters of living and dying. Emma pointed to her closet. “Do you know why I took all that down?”
Julian’s brow furrowed. “You’re done with it,” he said. “You found out who killed your parents. You don’t need that stuff anymore.”
“Yes and no, I guess.”
“If everything goes well, hopefully Magnus can take the spell off me tomorrow, or the day after,” said Julian. “It depends how fast the cure works.”
“You could have talked to him about it already,” Emma said, moving to lean against the sill beside Julian. It reminded her of past, better times, when they’d both sit on the sill and read, or Julian would draw, silent and content for hours at a time. “Why wait?”
“I can’t tell him all of it,” Julian said. “I can’t show him what I wrote on my arm—he’d want to take the spell off right away, and he’s not strong enough. It could kill him.”
Emma turned to him in surprise. “That’s empathy, Julian. That’s you understanding what Magnus might feel. That’s good, right?”
“Maybe,” he said. “There’s something I’ve been doing when I’m not sure about how to handle something emotional. I try to imagine what you would do. What you would take into account. The conversation with Ty went too fast for me to do it, but it does help.”
“What I would do?”
“It all breaks apart when I’m with you, of course,” he said. “I can’t think of what you would want me to do about you, or around you. I can’t see you through your own eyes. I can’t even see me through your eyes.” He touched her bare arm lightly, where her parabatai rune was, tracing its edges.
She could see his reflection in the window: another Julian with the same sharp profile, the same shadowed lashes. “You have a talent, Emma,” he said. “A goodness that makes people happy. You assume people are not just capable of their best but that they want to be their best. You assume the same about me.” Emma tried to breathe normally. The feeling of his fingers on her rune was making her body tremble. “You believe in me more than I believe in myself.”
His fingers traced a path down her bare arm, to her wrist, and back up. They were light and clever fingers; he touched her as if he were sketching her body, tracing the lines of her collarbones. Grazing the notch at the base of her throat. Gliding down to run along the neckline of her dress, just grazing the upper curve of her breasts.
Emma shivered. She could lose herself in this sensation, she knew, could drown in it and forget, shield herself behind it. “If you’re going to do that,” she said, “you should kiss me.”
He folded her into his arms. His mouth on hers was warm and soft, a gentle kiss deepening into heat. Her hands moved over his body, the feel of it now familiar to her: the smooth muscles under his T-shirt, the roughness of scars, the delicacy of shoulder blades, the curving hollow of his spine. He murmured that she was beautiful, that he wanted her, that he always had.
Her heart was beating its way out of her chest; every one of her cells wa
s telling her that this was Julian, her Julian, that he felt, tasted, breathed the same and that she loved him.
“This is perfect,” he whispered against her mouth. “This is how we can be together and not hurt anyone.”
Her body screamed at her not to react, just to go along with it. But her mind betrayed her. “What do you mean, exactly?”
He looked at her with his dark hair half in his face. She wanted to pull him to her and cover his mouth with more kisses; she wanted to close her eyes and forget anything was wrong.
But she had never had to close her eyes with Julian before.
“It’s the emotions that matter, not the act,” he said. “If I’m not in love with you, we can do this, be together physically, and it won’t matter to the curse.”
If I’m not in love with you.
She stepped away from him. It felt as if she were tearing her own skin open, as if she would look down and see blood seeping from the wounds where she had ripped herself away from him.
“I can’t,” she said. “When you get your feelings back, we’ll both regret that we did this when you didn’t care.”