“Cristina! Stay still!”

It was Kieran shouting. Kieran was behind her, one arm lashing around her waist to pull her against him. What felt like an electric charge shot through her. Kieran was wild-eyed, his hair deep blue-black, and she realized suddenly that the horse was Windspear, even as the stallion shot downward through the crowd of Harpyia toward Mark.

“Kieran—look out—” she cried, as the Harpyia demons turned their attention to Windspear, their popping yellow eyes swiveling like flashlights.

Kieran flung his arm out, and Cristina felt the sharp electric charge go through her again. White fire flashed and the Harpyia demons recoiled as Windspear landed lightly in front of Mark.

“Mark! To me!” Kieran shouted. Mark looked over at him and grinned—a Hunter’s grin, a battle grin, all teeth—before decapitating a last Harpyia with a jerk of his whip. Splattered with blood and ichor, Mark leaped onto the horse behind Kieran, latching his arms around Kieran’s waist. Windspear sprang into the air and the Harpyia followed, their grinning mouths open to show rows of sharklike teeth.

Kieran shouted something in a Faerie language Cristina didn’t know, and Windspear tilted up at an impossible angle. The horse shot upward like an arrow, just as the truck below them finally exploded, swallowing the Harpyia demons in a massive corona of flames.

Diana’s going to be really angry about her truck, Cristina thought, and slumped down against Windspear’s mane as the faerie horse circled below the clouds, turned, and flew toward the ocean.

*

Kit had never been up on the roof of the Los Angeles Institute before. He had to admit it had a better view than the London Institute, unless you were a sucker for skyscrapers. Here you could see the desert stretching out behind the house, all the way to the mountains. Their tops were touched by light reflected from the city on the other side of the range, their valleys in deep shadow. The sky was brilliant with stars.

In front of the house was the ocean, its immensity terrifying and glorious. Tonight the wind was like light fingers stroking its surface, leaving trails of silver ripples behind.

“You seem sad,” said Ty. “Are you?”

They were sitting on the edge of the roof, their legs dangling into empty space. This was probably the way he was supposed to live his high school years, Kit thought, climbing up onto high places, doing dumb and dangerous things that would worry his parents. Only he had no parents to worry, and the dangerous things he was doing were truly dangerous.

He wasn’t worried for himself, but he was worried for Ty. Ty, who was looking at him with concern, his gray gaze skating over Kit’s face as if it were a book he was having trouble reading.

Yes, I’m sad, Kit thought. I’m stuck and frustrated. I wanted to impress you at the Shadow Market and I got so caught up in that I forgot about everything else. About how we really shouldn’t be doing this. About how I can’t tell you we shouldn’t be doing this.

Ty reached out and brushed Kit’s hair away from his face, an absent sort of gesture that sent a shot of something through Kit, a feeling like he’d touched a live electrical fence. He stared, and Ty said, “You ought to get your hair cut. Julian cuts Tavvy’s hair.”

“Julian’s not here,” said Kit. “And I don’t know if I want him cutting my hair.”

“He’s not bad at it.” Ty dropped his hand. “You said your dad had stuff hidden all over Los Angeles. Is there anything that could help us?”

Your dad. As if Julian was Ty’s father. Then again, he was in a way. “Nothing necromantic,” said Kit.

Ty looked disappointed. Still dizzy from the electric-fence shock, Kit couldn’t stand it. He had to fix it, that look on Ty’s face. “Look—we tried the straightforward approach. Now we have to try the con.”

“I don’t really get cons,” said Ty. “I read a book about them, but I don’t understand how people let themselves get tricked like that.”

Kit’s eyes dropped to the gold locket around Ty’s neck. There was still blood on it. It looked like patches of rust. “It’s not about making people believe what you want them to believe. It’s about letting them believe what they want to believe. About giving them what they think they need.”

Ty raised his eyes; though they didn’t meet Kit’s, Kit could read the expression in them, the dawning awareness. Does he realize? Kit thought, in mingled relief and apprehension.

Ty sprang to his feet. “I have to send a fire-message to Hypatia Vex,” he said.

This was not at all what Kit had expected him to say. “Why? She already said no to helping us.”

“She did. But Shade says she’s always wanted to run the Shadow Market herself.” Ty smiled sideways, and in that moment, despite their difference in coloring, he looked like Julian. “It’s what she thinks she needs.”

*

The sky was a road and the stars made pathways; the moon was a watchtower, a lighthouse that led you home.

Being on Windspear’s back was both utterly strange and utterly familiar to Mark. So was having his arms around Kieran. He had flown through so many skies holding Kieran, and the feeling of Kieran’s body against his, the whipcord strength of him, the faint ocean-salt scent of his skin and hair, was mapped into Mark’s blood.

At the same time he could hear Cristina, hear her laughing, see her as she bent to point out landmarks flashing by beneath them. She had asked Kieran if they could fly over the Hollywood sign and he had obliged; Kieran, who made a point of being disobliging.

And Mark’s heart stirred at her laugh; it stirred as he touched Kieran; he was between them again, as he had been in London, and though agitation prickled his nerves at the thought, he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t glad to have Kieran back again.

Kieran brought Windspear down in the lot behind the Institute. Everything was still, broken only by the sound of chirping cicadas. It was hard to believe that ten minutes previously they had been in a fight to the death with Harpyia demons.

“Are you all right?” Cristina said with a frown, as she slid from the horse’s back. “You don’t look well.”

With a start, Mark realized she was talking to Kieran. And that she was right. Kieran had arrived at the Vasquez Rocks almost crackling with energy. It was a kind of wild, numinous magic Mark associated with the royal family but had never seen Kieran employ before.

But the energy seemed to have left him; he leaned a hand against Windspear’s side, breathing hard. There was blood on his hands, his collar and skin; his face was drained of color.

Mark stepped forward, hesitated. He remembered Kieran telling him that they were done. “I didn’t know you were hurt at the rocks, Kier,” he said.

“No. This happened at the Scholomance.”

“Why did you leave?” Cristina asked.

“There’s something I need to tell you.” Kieran winced, and slapped Windspear on the flank. The horse whickered and trotted into the shadows, melting into the darkness.

“First we must get you upstairs.” Cristina glanced at Mark as if she expected him to step forward to help Kieran. When he didn’t, she moved to Kieran’s side, curving his arm around her shoulder. “We must see how badly you are wounded.”

“It is important—” Kieran began.

“So is this.” Cristina moved forward with Kieran leaning on her. Mark could no longer stand it; he swung around to Kieran’s other side, and together they went into the house, Kieran limping between them.

“Thank you, Mark,” Kieran said in a low voice. When Mark chanced a glance sideways, he saw no anger in Kieran’s eyes, but hadn’t Kieran been angry the last time they had been together? Had Kieran forgotten Mark had wronged him? It was not in the nature of princes to forget wrongs or forgive them.

Cristina was saying something about water and food; Mark’s mind was in a whirl, and for a moment, when they stepped into the kitchen, he blinked around in confusion. He’d thought they were going to one of their rooms. Cristina helped Mark get Kieran settled into a chair before going to the sink to get damp towels and soap.

“I must speak to you of what I have learned,” Kieran was saying; he was perched on the chair, all long limbs and dark, odd clothes and burning eyes. His hair shimmered deep blue. He looked like a faerie out of place in the human world, and it stabbed Mark through with a painful sympathy mixed with a fear that he might look like that himself.

“Let me see your face.” Cristina brushed Kieran with gentle fingers; he leaned into her touch, and Mark could not blame him.

“What’s going on?” Light blazed up in the kitchen; it was Helen, carrying a rune-stone in one hand. “Is someone hurt?”

Mark and Cristina exchanged startled looks; Kieran looked between Mark and Helen, his lips parting in realization.

“Were you waiting up for us?” Mark demanded. “It’s past midnight.”