Emma shook her head. “I’m—I’m dating Mark.”
“Mark?” Clary looked as if Emma had handed her a two-headed lizard. “Mark Blackthorn?”
“No, a different Mark. Yes, Mark Blackthorn.” A touch of defensiveness crept into Emma’s voice. “Why not?”
“I just—I never would have pictured you together.” Clary looked legitimately stunned.
“Well, who did you picture me with? Cameron?”
“No, not him.” Clary pulled her legs up to her chest and rested her chin on her knees. “That’s just the thing,” she said. “I—I mean, who I pictured you with, it doesn’t make any sense.” She met Emma’s confused look with a lowering of her eyes. “I guess it was nothing. If you’re happy with Mark, I’m happy for you.”
“Clary, what are you not telling me?”
There was a long silence. Clary looked out toward the dark water. Finally she spoke. “Jace asked me to marry him.”
“Oh!” Emma had already begun opening her arms to hug the other girl when she caught sight of Clary’s expression. She froze. “What’s wrong?”
“I said no.”
“You said no?” Emma dropped her arms. “But you’re here—together—are you not still . . . ?”
Clary rose to her feet. She stood at the roof’s edge, looking out toward the sea. “We’re still together,” she said. “I told Jace I needed more time to think about it. I’m sure he thinks I’m out of my mind, or—well, I don’t know what he thinks.”
“Do you?” Emma asked. “Need more time?”
“To decide if I want to marry Jace? No.” Clary’s voice was tense with an emotion Emma couldn’t decipher. “No. I know the answer. Of course I want to. There’s never going to be anyone else for me. That’s just how it is.”
Something in the matter-of-factness of her voice sent a slight shiver through Emma. There’s never going to be anyone else for me. There was a recognition of kinship in that shiver, and a bit of fear, too. “Then why did you say it?”
“I used to have dreams,” Clary said. She was staring out at the path the moon left across the dark water, like a slash of white bisecting a black canvas. “When I was your age. Dreams of things that were going to happen, dreams of angels and prophecies. After the Dark War was over, they stopped. I thought they wouldn’t start again, but just these past six months, they have.”
Emma felt a bit lost. “Dreams?”
“They’re not as clear as they used to be. But there’s a sense—a knowing something awful is coming. Like a wall of darkness and blood. A shadow that spreads out over the world and blots out everything.” She swallowed. “There’s more, though. Not so much an image of something happening, but a knowledge.”
Emma stood up. She wanted to put a hand on Clary’s shoulder, but something held her back. This wasn’t Clary, the girl who’d comforted her when her parents had died. This was Clary who’d gone into the demon realm of Edom and killed Sebastian Morgenstern. Clary who’d faced down Raziel. “A knowledge of what?”
“That I’m going to die,” Clary said. “Not a long time from now. Soon.”
“Is this about your mission? Do you think something’s going to happen to you?”
“No—no, nothing like that,” Clary said. “It’s hard to explain. It’s a knowledge that it will happen, but not exactly when, or how.”
“Everyone’s afraid of dying,” Emma said.
“Everyone isn’t,” said Clary, “and I’m not, but I am afraid of leaving Jace. I’m afraid of what it would do to him. And I think being married would make it worse. It alters things, being married. It’s a promise to stay with someone else. But I couldn’t promise to stay for very long—” She looked down. “I realize it sounds ridiculous. But I know what I know.”
There was a long silence. The sound of the ocean rushed under the quiet between them, and the sound of the wind in the desert. “Have you told him?” Emma asked.
“I haven’t told anyone but you.” Clary turned and looked at Emma anxiously. “I’m asking you for a favor. A huge one.” She took a deep breath. “If I do die, I want you to tell them—Jace and the others—that I knew. I knew I was going to die and I wasn’t scared. And tell Jace this is why I said no.”
“I—but why me?”
“There isn’t anyone else I know I could tell this to without them freaking out or thinking I was having a breakdown and needed a therapist—well, in Simon’s case, that’s what he’d say.” Clary’s eyes were suspiciously bright as she said her parabatai’s name. “And I trust you, Emma.”
“I’ll do it,” Emma said. “And of course you can trust me, I won’t tell anyone, but—”
“I didn’t mean I trusted you to keep it a secret,” Clary said. “Though I do. In my dreams, I see you with Cortana in your hand.” She stretched upward, nearly on her tiptoes, and kissed Emma on the forehead. It was almost a motherly gesture. “I trust you to always keep fighting, Emma. I trust you not to ever give up.”
* * *
It wasn’t until they got back into the car that Kit noticed that his knuckles were bleeding. He hadn’t felt the pain when he punched the sign, but he felt it now.
Julian, about to start the car, hesitated. “I could heal you,” he said. “With an iratze.”
“A what now?”
“A healing rune,” said Julian. “It’s one of the gentlest. So it would make sense if it was your first.”
A thousand snide remarks ran through Kit’s head, but he was too tired to make them. “Don’t poke me with any of your weird little magic wands,” he said. “I just want to go”—he almost said home, but stopped himself—“back.”
As they drove, Kit was silent, looking out the window. The freeway was nearly empty, and stretched ahead of them, gray and deserted. Signs for Crenshaw and Fairfax flashed by. This wasn’t the beautiful Los Angeles of mountains and beaches, green lawns and mansions. This was the L.A. of cracked pavement and struggling trees and skies leaden with smog.
It had always been Kit’s home, but he felt detached as he looked at it now. As if already the Shadowhunters were pulling him away from everything he knew, into their weird orbit. “So what happens to me?” he said suddenly, breaking the silence.
“What?” Julian frowned at the traffic in the rearview mirror. Kit could see his eyes, the blue-green of them. It was almost a shocking color, and all the Blackthorns seemed to have it—well, Mark had one—except for Ty.
“So Jace is my actual family,” Kit said. “But I can’t go live with him, because him and his hot girlfriend are going off on some sort of secret mission.”
“Guess you Herondales have a type,” Julian muttered.
“What?”
“Her name’s Clary. But basically, yes. He can’t take you in right now, so we’ll do it. It’s not a problem. Shadowhunters take in Shadowhunters. It’s what we do.”
“You really think that’s such a good idea?” Kit said. “I mean, your house is pretty screwed up, what with your agoraphobic uncle and your weird brother.”
Julian’s hands tightened on the wheel, but the only thing he said was, “Ty isn’t weird.”
“I meant Mark,” said Kit. There was an odd pause. “Ty isn’t weird,” Kit added. “He’s just autistic.”
The pause stretched out longer. Kit wondered if he’d offended Julian somehow. “It’s not a big deal,” he said finally. “Back when I went to mundane school, I knew some kids who were on the spectrum. Ty has some things in common with them.”
“What spectrum?” Julian said.
Kit looked at him in surprise. “You really don’t know what I mean?”
Julian shook his head. “You may not have noticed this, but we don’t involve ourselves much with mundane culture.”