“Are you all right?” Cristina asked. Emma was leaning back against the brick wall of the alley—which smelled very questionable and was covered in spray paint—and glaring laser beams at the dead body of the mundane and the Silent Brothers surrounding it.
The first thing Emma had done as soon as she’d been able to think clearly was summon the Brothers and Diana. Now she was second-guessing that decision. The Silent Brothers had arrived instantly and were all over the body, sometimes turning to speak to each other in their soundless voices as they searched and examined and took notes. They had put up warding runes to give themselves time to work before the mundane police arrived, but—politely, firmly, requiring only a slight use of telepathic force—they prevented Emma from coming anywhere near the body.
“I’m furious,” Emma said. “I have to see those markings. I have to take photos of them. It’s my parents that were killed. Not that the Silent Brothers care. I only ever knew one decent Silent Brother and he quit being one.”
Cristina’s eyes widened. Somehow she had managed to keep her gear clean through all of this, and she looked fresh and pink-cheeked. Emma imagined she herself, with her hair sticking out in every direction and alley dirt smeared on her clothes, looked like an eldritch horror. “I didn’t think it was something you could just stop doing.”
The Silent Brothers were Shadowhunters who had chosen to retreat from the world, like monks, and devote themselves to study and healing. They occupied the Silent City, the vast underground caverns where most Shadowhunters were buried when they died. Their terrible scars were the result of runes too strong for most human flesh, even that of Shadowhunters, but it was also the runes that made them nearly immortal. They served as advisers, archivists, and healers—and they could also wield the power of the Mortal Sword.
They were the ones who had performed Emma and Julian’s parabatai ceremony. They were there for weddings, there when Nephilim children were born, and there when they died. Every important event of a Shadowhunter’s life was marked with the appearance of a Silent Brother.
Emma thought of the one Silent Brother she’d ever liked. She missed him still, sometimes.
The alley suddenly lit up like daylight. Blinking, Emma turned to see that a familiar pickup truck had pulled into the alley’s entrance. It came to a stop, headlights still on, and Diana Wrayburn jumped down from the driver’s seat.
When Diana had come to work as the tutor to the children of the Los Angeles Institute five years ago, Emma had thought she was the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. She was tall and spare and elegant, with the silvery tattoo of a koi fish standing out across the dark skin of one arched cheekbone. Her eyes were brown with flecks of green in them, and right now they were flashing with angry fire. She was wearing an ankle-length black dress that fell around her long body in elegant folds. She looked like the dangerous Roman goddess of the hunt she was named for.
“Emma! Cristina!” She hurried toward them. “What happened?
Are you all right?”
For a moment Emma paused the glaring and let herself enjoy being hugged fiercely. Diana had always been too young for Emma to think of her as a mother, but an older sister, maybe. Someone protective. Diana let go of her and hugged Cristina too, who looked startled. Emma had long had the suspicion that there hadn’t been much hugging in Cristina’s home. “What happened? Why are you trying to burn a hole through Brother Enoch with your eyeballs?”
“We were patrolling—” Emma began.
“We saw a fey stealing from humans,” Cristina added quickly.
“Yes, and I stopped him and told him to turn out his pockets—”
“A faerie?” A look of disquiet came over Diana’s face. “Emma, you know you shouldn’t confront one of the Fair Folk, even when Cristina’s with you—”
“I’ve fought Fair Folk before,” Emma said. It was true. Both she and Diana had fought in the Shadowhunter city of Alicante when Sebastian’s forces had attacked. The streets had been full of faerie warriors. The adults had taken the children and walled them up in the fortresslike Hall of Accords, where they were meant to be safe. But the faeries had broken the locks. . . .
Diana had been there, laying to the right and left of her with her deadly sword, saving dozens of children. Emma had been one of those saved. She had loved Diana since then.
“I had a feeling,” Emma went on, “that something bigger and worse was happening. I followed the faerie when he ran. I know I shouldn’t have, but—I found that body. And it’s covered in the same marks my parents’ bodies were. The same markings, Diana.”
Diana turned to Cristina. “Could you give us a moment alone, please, Tina?”
Cristina hesitated. But as a guest of the Los Angeles Institute, a young Shadowhunter on Leave, she was required to do as the senior staff of the Institute requested. With a glance at Emma, she moved away, toward the spot where the body still lay. It was surrounded by a ring of Silent Brothers, like a flock of pale birds in their parchment robes. They were sprinkling a sort of shimmering powder over the markings, or at least that’s how it looked. Emma wished she were closer and could see properly.
Diana exhaled. “Emma, are you sure?”
Emma bit back an angry retort. She understood why Diana was asking. Over the years there had been so many false leads—so many times Emma had thought she had found a clue or a translation for the markings or a story in a mundane newspaper—and every time she had been wrong.