Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices #2)(23)

Julian shook his head. "You may not have noticed this, but we don't involve ourselves much with mundane culture."

"It's not mundane culture. It's-" Neurobiology. Science. Medicine. "Don't you have X-rays? Antibiotics?"

"No," Julian said. "For minor stuff, like headaches, healing runes work. For major things, the Silent Brothers are our doctors. Mundane medicine is strictly forbidden. But if there's something you think I should know about Ty . . ."

Kit wanted to hate Julian sometimes. He really did. Julian seemed to love rules; he was unbending, annoyingly calm, and as emotionless as everyone had always said Shadowhunters were. Except he wasn't, really. The love that was audible in his voice when he said his brother's name put the lie to that.

Kit felt a sudden tightness through his body. Talking to Jace earlier had eased some of the anxiety he'd felt ever since his father had died. Jace had made everything seem like maybe it would be easy. That they were still in a world where you could give things chances and see how they worked out.

Now, staring at the gray freeway ahead of him, he wondered how he could possibly have thought he could live in a world where everything he knew was considered wrong knowledge to have, where every one of his values-such as they were, having grown up with a father who was nicknamed Rook the Crook-was turned upside down.

Where associating with the people his blood said he belonged to meant that the people he'd grown up with would hate him.

"Never mind," he said. "I didn't mean anything about Ty. Just meaningless mundane stuff."

"I'm sorry, Kit," Julian said. They'd made it to the coast highway now. The water stretched away in the distance, the moon high and round, casting a perfect white path down the center of the sea. "About what happened at the Market."

"They hate me now," Kit said. "Everyone I used to know."

"No," said Julian. "They're afraid of you. There's a difference."

Maybe there was, Kit thought. But right now, he wasn't sure if it mattered.





4


A WILD WEIRD CLIME


Cristina stood atop the hill where Malcolm Fade's house had once been, and gazed around at the ruins.

Malcolm Fade. She hadn't known him the way the Blackthorns had. He'd been their friend, or so they'd thought, for five years, living only a few miles away in his formidable glass-and-steel home in the dry Malibu hills. Cristina had visited it once before, with Diana, and had been charmed by Malcolm's easy manner and humor. She'd found herself wishing the High Warlock of Mexico City was like Malcolm-young-seeming and charming, rather than a grouchy old woman with bat ears who lived in the Parque Lincoln.

Then Malcolm had turned out to be a murderer, and it had all come apart. The lies revealed, their faith in him broken, even Tavvy's safety at risk until they'd managed to get him back and Emma had dispatched Malcolm with a sword to the gut.

Cristina could hear cars whizzing by on the highway below. They'd climbed up the side of the hill to get here, and she felt sweaty and itchy. Clary Fairchild was standing atop the rubble of Malcolm's house, wielding an odd-looking object that looked like a cross between a seraph blade and one of those machines mundanes used to find metal hidden under sand. Mark, Julian, and Emma were ranged around different parts of the collapsed house, picking through the metal and glass.

Jace had opted to spend the day with Kit in the training room at the Institute. Cristina admired that. She'd been raised to believe nothing was more important than family, and Kit and Jace were the only Shadowhunters of the Herondale bloodline alive in the world. Plus, the boy needed friends-he was an odd little thing, too young to be handsome but with big blue eyes that made you want to trust him even as he was picking your pocket. He had a gleam of mischief about him, a little like Jaime, her childhood best friend, had once had-the sort that could tip over easily into criminality.



       
         
       
        

"¿En que piensas?" asked Diego, coming up behind her. He wore jeans and work boots. Cristina wished it didn't annoy her that he insisted on pinning his Centurion badge even to the sleeve of a completely ordinary black T-shirt.

He was very handsome. Much handsomer than Mark, really, if you were being completely objective. His features were more regular, his jaw squarer, his chest and shoulders broader.

Cristina shoved aside a few chunks of painted plaster. She and Diego had been assigned the eastern segment of the house, which she was fairly sure had been Malcolm's bedroom and closet. She kept turning up shreds of clothes. "I was thinking of Jaime, actually."