As the door closed behind her, Tavvy-who was staring at the air next to his chair in a way Kit found frankly alarming-giggled. They all turned to look in surprise. The youngest Blackthorn hadn't been laughing much lately.
He supposed he didn't blame the kid. Julian was all Tavvy had in the way of a father. Kit knew what missing your father was like, and he wasn't seven years old.
"Jessie," Evelyn scolded, and for a moment Kit actually looked around, as if the person she was addressing was in the room with them. "Leave the child alone. He doesn't even know you." She glanced around the table. "Everyone thinks they're good with children. Few know when they are not." She took a bite of carrot. "I am not," she said, around the food. "I have never been able to stand children."
Kit rolled his eyes. Tavvy looked at Evelyn as if he was considering throwing a plate at her.
"You might as well take Tavvy to bed, Dru," said Livvy hastily. "I think we're all done with dinner here."
"Sure, why not? It's not like I didn't find clothes for him this morning or put him to bed last night. I might as well be a servant," Dru snapped, then snatched Tavvy out of his chair and stalked out of the room, dragging her younger brother behind her.
Livvy put her head into her hands. Ty looked over at her and said, "You don't have to take care of everyone, you know."
Livvy sniffled and looked sideways at her twin. "It's just-without Jules here, I'm the oldest. By a few minutes, anyway."
"Diana's the oldest," said Ty. Nobody mentioned Evelyn, who had placed a pair of spectacles on her nose and was reading a newspaper.
"But she's got so much more to do than look after us-I mean, look after the little things," said Livvy. "I never really thought about it before, all the stuff Julian does for us, but it's so much. He always holds it together and takes care of us and I don't even get how-"
There was a sound like an explosion overhead. Ty's face drained. It was clear he was hearing a noise he'd heard before.
"Livvy," Ty said. "The Accords Hall-"
The noise sounded less like an explosion now, and more like thunder, a rushing thunder that was taking over the sky. A sound like clouds being ripped apart as if cloth were tearing.
Dru burst into the room, Tavvy just behind her. "It's them," she said. "You won't believe it, but you have to come, quickly. I saw them flying-I went up to the roof-"
"Who?" Livvy was on her feet; they all were, except Evelyn, who was still reading the paper. "Who's on the roof, Dru?"
Dru swept Tavvy up into her arms.
"Everyone," she said, her eyes shining.
* * *
The roof of the Institute was shingle, stretching out wide and flat to a waist-high wrought-iron railing. The finials of the railings were tipped with iron lilies. In the distance, Kit could see the glimmering dome of St. Paul's, familiar from a thousand movies and TV shows.
The clouds were heavy, iron-colored, surrounding the top of the Institute like clouds around a mountain. Kit could barely see down to the streets below. The air was acrid with summer thunder.
They had all spilled up onto the roof, everyone but Evelyn and Bridget. Diana was here, her arm carefully cradled. Ty's gray eyes were fixed on the sky.
"There," Dru said, pointing. "Do you see?"
As Kit stared, the glamour peeled away. Suddenly it was as if a painting or a movie had come to life. Only movies didn't give you this, this visceral tangle of wonder and fear. Movies didn't give you the smell of magic in the air, crackling like lightning, or the shadows cast by a host of impossibly soaring creatures against the sky above it. They didn't give you starlight on a girl's blond hair as she slid shrieking in excitement and happiness from the back of a flying horse and landed on a roof in London. They didn't give you the look on the Blackthorns' faces as they saw their brothers and friends coming back to them.
Livvy leaped at Julian, hurling her arms around his neck. Mark flung himself from his horse and half-tumbled down to find himself being hugged tightly by Dru and Tavvy. Ty came more quietly, but with the same incandescent happiness on his face. He waited for Livvy to be done nearly strangling her brother and then stepped in to take Julian's hands.
And Julian, who Kit had always thought of as an almost frightening model of control and distance, grabbed his brother and yanked him close, his hands twisting in the back of Ty's shirt. His eyes were shut, and Kit had to look away from the expression on his face.
He had never had anyone but his father, and he was sure beyond any words that his father had never loved him like that.