She started to turn toward the door, meaning to leave him alone to rest. "Don't go," he said. She spun around and saw that his eyes were half-open, his lashes casting shadows on his too-sharp cheekbones. "It's been a long time since I had anyone to talk to."
She sat down on the edge of the bed. Jaime rolled over on his back, his arms folded behind his head. He was all long limbs and black hair and lashes like spider's legs. Everything about him was slightly off-kilter, where everything about Diego had been even lines like a comic book. Dru tried not to stare.
"I was looking at the stickers on your nightstand," he said. Dru had bought them in a store on Fleet Street when she'd been out with Diana picking up sandwiches. "They're all horror movies."
"I like horror movies."
He grinned. Black hair flopped into his eyes. He shoved it back. "You like to be scared?"
"Horror movies don't scare me," said Dru.
"Aren't they supposed to?" He sounded genuinely interested. Dru couldn't remember the last time anyone had seemed genuinely interested in her love for slasher films and vintage horror. Julian had sometimes stayed up to watch Horror Hotel with her, but she knew that was just older-brother kindness.
"I remember the Dark War," she said. "I remember watching people die in front of me. My father was one of the Endarkened. He came back, but it wasn't-it wasn't him." She swallowed hard. "When I watch a scary movie, I know whatever happens, I'll be all right when it's over. I know the people in it were just actors and after everything was done, they walked away. The blood was fake and washed off."
Jaime's eyes were dark and fathomless. "It almost lets you believe none of those things exist," he said. "Imagine if they didn't."
She smiled a little sadly. "We're Shadowhunters," she said. "We don't get to imagine that."
* * *
"People will do anything to get out of housework," said Julian.
"Not you," Emma said. She was lying on the sofa with her legs hooked over the arm.
Since they couldn't follow Annabel to the church today, they'd decided to spend the afternoon reading through Malcolm's diaries and studying Annabel's drawings. By the time the sun began going down, they had a sizable amount of notes systematically arranged around the cottage in piles. Notes about timeline-when Malcolm had joined Annabel's family, how they, who ran the Cornwall Institute, had adopted him when he was a child. How intensely Annabel had loved Blackthorn Manor, the Blackthorns' ancestral home in the green hills of Idris, and how they had played in Brocelind Forest together. When Malcolm had started planning for their future, and built the cottage in Polperro, and how he and Annabel had hidden their relationship, exchanging all their messages through Annabel's raven. When Annabel's father had discovered them, and thrown his daughter out of the Blackthorn house, and Malcolm had found her the next morning, weeping alone on the beach.
Malcolm had determined then that he would need protection for them from the Clave. He had known of the collection of spell books at the Cornwall Institute. He would need a powerful patron, he had decided. Someone he could trade the Black Volume to, who in turn would keep the Council away from them.
Emma read aloud from the diaries, and Julian took notes. Every once in a while they would stop, take pictures with their phones of their notes and questions, and text them to the Institute. Sometimes they got questions back and scrambled to answer them; sometimes they got nothing. Once they got a picture of Ty, who had found an entire row of first-edition Sherlock Holmes books in the library and was beaming. Once they got a picture of Mark's foot. Neither of them knew what to make of that.
At some point Julian stretched, padded into the kitchen, and made them both toasted cheese sandwiches on the Aga, a massive iron stove that radiated warmth through the room.
This is bad, he thought, looking down at his hands as he settled the sandwiches onto plates and remembered that Emma liked hers with the crusts cut off. He'd made fun of her for it often. He reached for a knife, the gesture mechanical, habit.
He imagined doing this every day. Living in a house he'd designed himself-like this one, it would have a view of the sea. A massive studio where he could paint. A room for Emma to train. He imagined waking up every morning to find her beside him, or sitting at a table in the kitchen with her morning cereal, humming, raising her face to smile at him when he came in.
A wave of desire-not just for the physicality of her but for the dream of that life-swept through him, almost choking him. It was dangerous to dream, he reminded himself. As dangerous as it was for Sleeping Beauty in her castle, where she'd fallen into dreams that had devoured her for a century.