“Clary brought Jace back from the dead,” Ty said.
“Clary asked Raziel to bring Jace back from the dead. Think about it—Raziel himself. You are messing about in magic reserved for gods, Ty. There are reasons necromancy is something people hate. If you bring back a life, you must pay with something of equal consequence. What if it had been another life? Would you have wanted to kill someone to keep Livvy with you?”
Ty lifted his head. “What if it was Horace? What if it was someone bad? We kill people in battle. I don’t see the difference.”
Magnus looked at Ty for a long time; Dru was afraid he might say something harsh to him, but the lines of Magnus’s face had softened. “Tiberius,” he said at last. “When your sister died, she didn’t deserve it. Life and death aren’t doled out by a judge who decides what is fair, and if it were, would you want to be that judge? Every life at your fingertips, and also every death?”
Ty squeezed his eyes shut. “No,” he whispered. “I just want my sister back. I miss her all the time. It feels like there’s a hole in me that will never be filled up.”
Oh, Dru thought. How odd that it would be Ty who would most accurately describe what it felt like to lose Livvy. She pressed her hand to her side. A hole where my sister should be.
“I know,” Magnus said gently. “And I know that you’ve spent a lot of your life knowing you’re different and that’s true. You are. So am I.”
Ty looked up at him.
“So you think this feeling you have, of missing half of yourself, must be fixed. That it can’t be what everyone else is feeling when they lose someone. But it is. Grief can be so bad you can’t breathe, but that’s what it means to be human. We lose, we suffer, but we have to keep breathing.”
“Are you going to tell everyone?” Ty said in a near whisper.
“No,” Magnus said. “Provided you promise never to do anything like that again.”
Ty looked nauseated. “I never would.”
“I believe it. But, Ty, there’s something else I’d like you to do. I can’t order you to do it. I can only suggest it.”
Ty had picked up a pillow; he was running his hand over the rough, textured side of it, over and over, his palm reading messages in the fabric.
“I know you always wanted to go to the Scholomance,” said Magnus.
Ty started to protest. Magnus held up a hand.
“Just let me finish, and then you can say anything you want to,” Magnus said. “At the L.A. Institute, Helen and Aline can keep you safe and love you, and I know you might not want to leave your family. But what you need is mysteries to solve to keep your mind busy and your soul filled. I’ve known people like you before—they don’t rest until their minds are flying free and solving problems. I knew Conan Doyle back in the day. He loved to travel. Spent his third year of medical school on a whaling boat.”
Ty stared.
Magnus seemed to realize he’d veered off course. “All I’m saying is that you have a curious mind,” he said. “You want to solve mysteries, to be a detective of life—that’s why you always wanted to go to the Scholomance. But you didn’t think you could. Because your twin wanted to be parabatai with you, and you couldn’t do both.”
“I would have given up the Scholomance for her,” Ty said. “Besides, everyone I met who went there—Zara and the others—was awful.”
“The Scholomance is going to be quite different now,” said Magnus. “The Cohort poisoned it, but they’ll be gone. I think it would be a wonderful place for you.” His voice gentled. “Grief is hard. Change can be all that helps.”
“Thanks,” Ty said. “Can I think about it?”
“Of course.” Magnus looked weary and a little regretful. As if he wished things could have been different; as if he wished there were something else to say than the things he’d said. He turned toward the door—Dru shrank back—and paused.
“You understand that from now on you’re tied to the ghost of your sister,” Magnus said.
Tied to the ghost of your sister?
Livvy’s ghost?
“I do understand,” Ty said.
Magnus stared at the door of the bedroom as if he were seeing through into the past. “You think you do,” he said. “But you don’t really see it. I know she set you free in the forest. Right now this feels better than nothing, better than being without her. You don’t yet understand the price. And I hope you never have to pay it.”
He touched Ty’s shoulder lightly, without looking at him, and left. Dru ducked into the next bedroom until Magnus’s footsteps had disappeared down the stairs.
Then she took a deep breath and went in to talk to Ty.
He hadn’t moved from the end of the bed in the empty room. He stared into the gathering shadows, his face pale as he looked up at her. “Dru?” he said haltingly.
“You should have told me,” Dru said.
He furrowed his arched eyebrows. “You were listening?”
She nodded.
“I know,” he said. “I didn’t want you to stop me. And I’m not good at lying. It’s easier for me to just not say.”
“Kit lied to me,” she said. She was furious at Kit, though she tried not to show it. Maybe it was better that he wasn’t coming back with them. Even if he had shown her how to pick locks. “Livvy’s ghost—is she really around?”
“I saw her today. She was in the Basilias when Emma and Julian woke up. She was sitting on one of the bureaus. I never know when she’s going to be there or not be there. Magnus said she’s tied to me, so . . .”
“Maybe you can teach me to see her.” Dru knelt down and put her arms aroun
d Ty. She could feel the slight vibrations going through his body; he was shaking. “Maybe we can see her together.”
“We can’t tell anyone,” Ty said, but he had put his arms around Dru, too; he was hugging her, his hair against her cheek as soft and fine as Tavvy’s. “No one can know.”
“I won’t say anything.” She held on to her brother, held on hard, as if she could keep him tethered to the earth. “I’ll never tell.”
* * *
Emma lay atop the covers of her bed, the only light in the room the reflected radiance of the demon towers as it shone through the window.
She supposed it wasn’t surprising that she couldn’t sleep. She’d slept for three days and awakened to a series of shocks: realizing what had happened, Jem’s explanation, the house full of people. The odd feeling that followed her constantly that she’d forgotten something, that she’d put something down in the other room and needed to remember to get it.
It was the parabatai bond, she knew. Her body and her brain hadn’t caught up to the fact that it was gone. She was missing it the way people who lost limbs sometimes still felt them there.
She was missing Julian. They’d been together all day, but always surrounded by other people. When the house had finally emptied of strangers, Julian had taken Tavvy up to bed, bidding her an awkward good night in front of the others.
She’d gone up to bed herself not long after, and had been lying there worrying for hours. Would everything be awkward now that they weren’t parabatai? Now that they floated in a new, foreign place between being friends and lovers? They had never declared themselves because words like “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” seemed banal in the face of curses and giant monsters. What if everything that had happened was so devastating that they could never reach a place of normalcy?
She couldn’t stand it. She rolled out of bed, got to her feet, and smoothed down her nightgown. She flung open her bedroom door, ready to march across the hall to Julian’s room and make him talk to her, no matter how awkward it might be.
Just outside her door stood Julian, his hand outstretched, looking as surprised to see her as she was to see him.