Lady Midnight

“It’s going to be all right,” Emma said, reaching out to pat Dru’s soft arm. “Of course he’s angry—he has every right to be angry—but he’s not angry at any of you.” Emma stared over Drusilla’s head at Julian, trying to catch his gaze, to steady him. “It’s going to be fine.”

The door opened again, and Cristina came back into the room. Julian turned his gaze toward her sharply.

Cristina’s dark, glossy braids were coiled around her head; they shone as she shook her head. “He is all right,” she said, “but he has closed himself in his room, and I think it is best if we leave him alone. I can wait in the corridor, if you like.”

Julian shook his head. “Thanks,” he said. “But no one needs to keep a watch on him. He’s free to come and go.”

“But what if he hurts himself?” It was Tavvy. His voice was small and thin.

Julian bent down and lifted his brother up, arms around Tavvy, hugging him tightly, once, before setting him down again. Tavvy kept his hand fixed on Jules’s shirt. “He won’t,” Julian said.

“I want to go up to the studio,” Tavvy said. “I don’t want to be here.”

Julian hesitated, then nodded. The studio where he painted was somewhere that he often brought Tavvy when his little brother was frightened: Tavvy found the paints, the papers, even the brushes soothing. “I’ll bring you up,” he said. “There’s leftover pizza in the kitchen if anyone wants it, and sandwiches, and—”

“It’s okay, Jules,” Livvy said. She had seated herself on the table, by her twin; she was above Ty as he looked down at the ley line map, his mouth set. “We can handle dinner. We’ll be fine.”

“I’ll bring you up something to eat,” Emma said. “And for Tavvy, too.”

Thank you, Julian mouthed to her before he turned toward the door. Before he reached it, Ty, who had been quiet since Mark had left, spoke. “You won’t punish him,” he said, his cord wrapped tightly around the fingers of his left hand, “will you?”

Julian turned around, clearly surprised. “Punish Mark? For what?”

“For all the things he said.” Ty was flushed, unwinding the cord slowly as it slid through his fingers. Over years of watching his brother, and trying to learn, Julian had come to understand that where sounds and light were concerned, Ty was far more sensitive to them than most people. But where touch was concerned, it fascinated him. It was the way Julian had learned to create Ty’s distractions and hand tools, by watching him spend hours investigating the texture of silk or sandpaper, the corrugations of shells and the roughness of rocks. “They were true—they were the truth. He told us the truth and he helped with the investigation. He shouldn’t be punished for that.”

“Of course not,” said Julian. “None of us would punish him.”

“It’s not his fault if he doesn’t understand everything,” Ty said. “Or if things are too much for him. It’s not his fault.”

“Ty-Ty,” said Livvy. It had been Emma’s nickname for Tiberius when he was a baby. Since then, the whole family had adopted it. She reached to rub his shoulder. “It’ll be all right.”

“I don’t want Mark to leave again,” Ty said. “Do you understand, Julian?”

Emma watched as the weight of that, the responsibility of it, settled over Julian.

“I understand, Ty,” he said.

Emma shouldered open the door to Julian’s studio, trying hard not to spill any liquid out of the two overflowing mugs of soup she was carrying.

There were two rooms in Julian’s studio: the one Julian let people see, and the one he didn’t. His mother, Eleanor, had used the larger room as a studio and the smaller one as a darkroom to develop photographs. Ty had often voiced the question of whether the developing chemicals and setup were still intact, and whether he could use them.

But the second studio room was the only issue on which Julian didn’t bend to the will of his younger siblings or offer to give up what was his for them. The black-painted door stayed closed and locked, and even Emma wasn’t allowed inside.

Nor did she ask. Julian had so little privacy, she didn’t want to begrudge him the bit he could claim.

The main studio was beautiful. Two of the walls were glass, one facing the ocean and one the desert. The other two walls were painted creamy taupe, and Julian’s mother’s canvases—abstracts in bright colors—still adorned them.

Jules was standing by the central island, a massive block of granite whose surface was covered with sheafs of paper, boxes of watercolors, and piled tubes of paint with lyrical names: alazarin red, cardinal purple, cadmium orange, ultramarine blue.

He raised one hand and put a finger to his lips, glancing to the side. Seated at a small easel was Tavvy, armed with a box of open nontoxic paints. He was smearing them over a long sheet of butcher paper, seeming pleased with his multicolored creation. There was orange paint in his brown curls.

“I just got him calmed down,” Julian said as Emma approached and set the mugs on the island. “What’s going on? Has anyone talked to Mark?”

“His door’s still locked,” Emma said. “The others are in the library.” She pushed one of the mugs toward him. “Eat,” she said. “Cristina made it. Tortilla soup. Although she says we have the wrong chiles.”