Bred in the Bone
Saturday night was just getting started, and it already sucked.
For one thing, Emma Carstairs—savior of the world (two of them, actually), fiercest Shadowhunter of her generation (ask anyone, except Zara Dearborn), indefatigable warrior for the cause of the Nephilim (and against Anyone Who Betrayed Her Friends)—was suffering a serious wardrobe malfunction.
She looked in horror at the deep red stain blooming across her vintage Blondie tee.
Helen Blackthorn gasped at the sight of it. “Is that blood?”
“Worse.” Emma groaned, and sniffed at the ruined shirt. “Ketchup.”
Helen reached out a hand and helped Emma to her feet.
Usually Shadowhunters wore gear to work, and Emma had to admit black was better at hiding stains.
Tonight, though, had called for a T-shirt and jeans (and various deadly weapons hidden underneath, but that was par for the course).
She and Helen were undercover on Venice Beach, on the trail of a warlock supposedly using a burger shack as a front for his demonic blood cult.
There wasn’t supposed to be any fighting, just spying and milkshakes.
(London’s chocolate shakes couldn’t measure up to the ones in Los Angeles, so the latter had, frankly, been as big a draw for Emma as the whole warlock thing.) But then the warlock had raised a Palpis demon and the giant caterpillar-like creature had swallowed him whole.
Which, unsurprisingly, had led to a lot of screaming cultists and flying cutlery.
It only took five minutes or so for Emma to slice off the demon’s swollen head, but it turned out a Palpis demon (not to mention a bunch of panicked demon-worshipping idiots on Rollerblades) could do a lot of damage in five minutes.
The burger shack was wrecked. From the distant sound of sirens, she guessed the mundane police were on their way, which was never ideal.
And the vintage Blondie T-shirt was definitely a lost cause.
“Would you say you miss this kind of thing when you’re in England?” Helen said, as they walked back to the car.
Emma liked Venice at night. The crowds faded away, the tacky tourist storefronts closed, and the dark made it easier to look past the trash littering the beach.
At night, it was easier to imagine it was still the Venice of her childhood, where she’d lived before the Dark War took her childhood away.
And okay, it still smelled a little like weed and grease, but beneath that was the familiar scent of the ocean: brine, salt, eternity.
Wherever Emma could smell the ocean felt like home.
“There are plenty of demons in England,” Emma protested. Just the other month, in fact, she and Julian had taken out a whole hive of Eluthieds making mischief at Borough Market. “But I have to admit, the milkshakes here are far superior.”
“I believe you,” Helen said, “but surely now and then the demons offer you a full English breakfast before settling into combat?”
“Tea, actually,” Emma replied somberly. “At four o’clock all fighting is paused for half an hour for tea and biscuits.”
“Now that’s civilized.” Helen smiled.
Emma was, of course, joking, but honestly she wouldn’t be surprised.
In London, tea came with everything. She wasn’t quite sure why the country was so obsessed, since it was pretty much just mildly (very, very mildly) flavored water.
But it was at least less bitter than coffee.
Which qualified it for Emma’s running list of Things to Like About Living in England.
She’d started it when she and Julian first decided to make a life at Blackthorn Hall, for real.
These days they were living half their time on the British estate and half in Malibu.
Which, when you put it like that, sounded like a pretty ideal way to live.
Thanks to Magnus and his Portals, the travel was a snap.
The part that involved logistics was, anyway.
Two weeks into this current LA stint, she was still feeling a bit of existential jet lag.
“Seriously, though,” Helen said, “how is it, being so far away from home? I haven’t really had the chance to ask.”
Emma hesitated. Helen shot her a sideways glance, a spark of concern in her eyes.
“Or maybe you think of London as home now?”
They’d reached the car, lonely in its deserted lot.
The moon hung low over the ocean, its reflection shimmering on the water.
So strange, how Emma could love and fear the ocean in equal amounts.
Or maybe not so strange at all. The ocean was a beautiful, murderous thing, but so was Julian.
So were all Shadowhunters, in some way or another.
“This will always be my home,” Emma said. “But being in a totally new place kind of makes it easier to forget…all the stuff you’d rather not think about.”
Helen nodded somberly; she understood what Emma meant.
The renegade Shadowhunters known as the Cohort, still in possession of Idris and presumably plotting their evil plots there.
The battles Emma and her loved ones had waged and the losses they’d suffered.
The pain and terror she and Julian had endured, fearing that their love would destroy them and everyone they held dear.
The alternate dimension of Thule, ruled by Endarkened Shadowhunters; the losses of the Dark War. Livvy.
Not that Emma could ever forget Livvy; not that she would ever want to.
But it was nice to lounge on the couch with Julian, eating chocolate digestive biscuits, listening to the rain.
Life in Blackthorn Hall—now that they’d dealt with the whole evil-Blackthorn-ancestor-dark-magic-curse situation—was calm.
Cozy. The kind of life she and Julian had once been certain they could never have together.
It still thrilled Emma that they’d been wrong.
“I’m having a hard time getting a sense of how Jules is feeling,” Helen said. “I mean, other than that he’s crazy about you. But I more meant, he spent so long taking care of all the younger kids, and now they’re scattered all over.”
“I think it’s a little hard for him, them growing up. On one hand, having this huge responsibility taken off him is a relief. On the other hand…”
Emma trailed off without saying what they both knew.
The LA Institute looked the same (although Aline had added a lot of very embroidered curtains).
But these days, Dru was at Shadowhunter Academy, which had shifted operations from Idris to Upstate New York.
Ty was at the Scholomance, probably learning to recite Newton’s laws of motion in Ancient Chthonian.
Mark was either in New York with Cristina running the Downworlder-Shadowhunter Alliance or in the Polyamorous Cottage, with Cristina and Kieran, doing whatever you did when your hot faerie threesome was reunited.
(Emma tried not to speculate.) Even Tavvy was on vacation with Magnus and Alec and their two kids, having some kind of adventure in Bolivia that was, according to Magnus, “absolutely safe and will take us nowhere near Peru.” These days it seemed like they saw as much (or more) of the family in London as they did in Los Angeles—Blackthorns dropped by for a visit whenever they could, and Tessa, Jem, Kit, and the impossibly adorable Mina were close by.
But Emma missed having everyone in one house.
Those chaotic breakfasts. The joyful noise.
But of course, she wasn’t the same Emma she used to be either.
She was no longer that orphan driven by rage and pain, grateful to be taken in by the Blackthorns but still so conscious of her separateness, her Carstairs-ness, that sometimes she felt like the loneliest person in the world.
She wasn’t even the same Emma she’d been a couple of years ago, certain that the only future open to her was one of exile and endless despair.
Last night, she’d woken up around three a.m. to discover Julian wasn’t beside her.
In London, they shared a bedroom, but in Los Angeles they couldn’t quite bring themselves to abandon either of their childhood bedrooms. So they switched back and forth as the mood struck them.
That night, they were sleeping in Emma’s old room.
She woke up alone, briefly unmoored. For one bleary moment, she was seventeen again, longing for Julian, drowning in agonizing yearning. Then she remembered.
She had found Julian on the roof, and sat down beside him. He gave her a small smile.
Julian, too, was different than he used to be.
Same wavy dark hair, ocean-colored Blackthorn eyes, artist’s hands stained with paint.
But for so many years, he’d been like a violin string pulled taut, vibrating with tension.
Part of it was keeping the family together, part of it was keeping Arthur’s secret.
Part of it, she hated to remember, was Emma herself, the impossible strain of trying to extinguish his feelings for her, feelings he didn’t know she shared.
But now the secrets had lost their power, the obligations had faded away, the impossible had been made possible. Julian, finally, had come to rest.
But Julian was still Julian—he still kept a locked safe inside himself. It was where he hid the secrets that made him hurt, or that might hurt the people he loved.
“I dreamed Livvy was having a nightmare,” he had said. “Not our Livvy. The one in Thule.”
Emma had leaned lightly against his shoulder. Just enough that he could feel her presence. “Oh, Jules.”