9
THESE LANDS
Kit soon had a new item to add to his list of things he didn't like about Shadowhunters. They wake me up in the middle of the night.
It was Livvy who woke him up specifically, shaking him out of a dream of Mantid demons. He sat up, gasping, a knife in his hand-one of the daggers he'd taken from the weapons room. It had been on his nightstand and he had no recollection of picking it up.
"Not bad," Livvy said. She was hovering over his bed, her hair tied back, her gear half-invisible in the darkness. "Fast reflexes."
The knife was about an inch from her chest, but she didn't move. Kit let it clatter back to the nightstand. "You have got to be kidding me."
"Get up," she said. "Ty just saw Zara sneak out the front door. We're Tracking her."
"You're what?" Kit got yawning out of bed, only to be handed a pile of dark clothes by Livvy. She raised her eyebrows at the sight of his boxers but made no other comment.
"Put your gear on," she said. "We'll explain on the way."
She headed out of the room, leaving Kit to change. He had always wondered what Shadowhunter gear would feel like. The boots, pants, shirt, and jacket of sturdy, dark material and heavy weapons belt looked uncomfortable, but-they weren't. The gear was light and flexible on, despite being so tough that when he took the dagger from his bedside and tried to cut the arm of the jacket, the blade didn't even part the material. The boots seemed to fit immediately, like the ring, and the weapons belt sat light and snug around his hips.
"Do I look all right?" he asked, appearing in the hall. Ty was gazing thoughtfully at his closed right hand, a rune glimmering on the back of it.
Livvy gave Kit a thumbs-up. "You absolutely could have been rejected from the yearly Hot Shadowhunters Calendar."
"Rejected?" Kit demanded as they started downstairs.
Her eyes were dancing. "For being too young, of course."
"There is no Hot Shadowhunters Calendar," said Ty. "Both of you be quiet; we need to get out of the house without being spotted."
They crept out the back way and down the road toward the beach, careful to avoid the night patrol. Livvy whispered to Kit that Ty was holding a hair clip that Zara had left on a table: It worked as a sort of homing beacon, pulling him in her direction. She seemed to have gone down to the beach and then walked along the sand. Livvy pointed to her footprints, in the process of being washed away by the rising tide.
"It could have been a mundane," said Kit, for argument's sake.
"Following this exact path?" Livvy said. "Look, we're even zigging and zagging where she did."
Kit couldn't really argue. He set his mind to keeping up with Ty, who was practically flying over the dunes of sand and the boulders and uneven rocks that dotted the coastline more thickly as they moved north. He scaled an alarmingly tall wall of pitted rock and dropped down on the other side; Kit, following, almost tripped and landed face-first in the sand.
He managed to regain his footing and was relieved. He wasn't sure who he least wanted to look like a fool in front of, Livvy or Ty. Maybe it was an equal split.
"There," Ty said in a whisper, pointing to where a dark hole opened up in the rocky wall of the bluff that rose to divide the beach from the highway. Tumbled piles of rock jutted out into the ocean, where waves broke around them, casting silvery-white spray high into the air.
The sand had given way to rocky reef. They picked their way carefully across it, even Ty, who bent to examine something in a tide pool. He straightened with a smile and a starfish in his hand.
"Ty," said Livvy. "Put it back, unless you're planning on throwing it at Zara."
"Waste of a perfectly good starfish," muttered Kit, and Ty laughed. The salt air had tangled his arrow-straight black hair, and his eyes glowed like the moonlight on the water. Kit just stared, unable to think of anything else clever to say, as Ty gently placed the starfish back in its tide pool.
They made it to the cave opening without any other stops for wildlife. Livvy went in first, with Ty and Kit following. Kit paused as the darkness of the cave enveloped him.
"I can't see," he said, trying to fight his rising panic. He hated the pitch dark, but then who didn't?
Light burst around him like the sudden appearance of a falling star. It was witchlight; Ty was holding it. "Do you want a Night Vision rune?" Livvy asked, her hand on her stele.
Kit shook his head. "No runes," he said. He wasn't sure why he was insisting. It wasn't as if the iratze had hurt. It just seemed like the final hurdle, the last admission that he was a Shadowhunter, not just a boy with Shadowhunter blood who had decided to make the Institute a way station while he figured out a better plan.