Also by Cassandra Clare

An acorn. Cristina’s eyes widened. Acorns were one of the ways faeries sent messages to each
other. Hidden in leaves, flowers, and other wild things.
“Already?” she said, unable to help it. They couldn’t leave him even for this long, alone with his
family, in his home?
Looking pale and strained, Mark crushed the acorn in his fist. A twist of pale parchment fell out.
He caught it and read the message silently.
His hand opened. He slid to the floor, pulling his knees up against his chest, dropping his head in
his hands. His long pale hair fell forward as the parchment fluttered to the ground. A low sound
issued from his throat, halfway between a groan and a wail of pain.
Cristina picked up the parchment. On it was written, in a delicate script, Remember your promises.
Remember that none of it is real.
“Fire to water,” said Emma as they sped down the highway toward the Institute. “After all these
years, I finally know what some of those markings mean.”
Julian was driving. Emma had her feet propped on the dashboard, her window down, the seasoftened
air filling the car and lifting the light hair around her temples. This was how she’d always
ridden in cars with Julian, with her feet up and the wind in her hair.
It was something Julian loved, Emma beside him in the car, driving with the blue sky overhead and
the blue sea to the west. It was an image that felt full of infinite possibility, as if they could simply
keep driving forever, the horizon their only destination.
It was a fantasy that played out sometimes when he was falling asleep. That he and Emma packed
their things into the trunk of a car and left the Institute, in a world where he had no children and there
was no Law and no Cameron Ashdown, where nothing held them back but the limits of their love and
imagination.
And if there were two things he believed were limitless, it was love and imagination.
“It does sound like a spell,” Julian said, wrenching his mind back to the present moment. He
revved the engine, the wind rushing in through Emma’s window as they gathered speed. Her hair
lifted, pale corn silk spilling out from the neatness of her braids, making her look young and
vulnerable.
“But why would the spell be recorded on the bodies?” Emma asked. The thought of anything
hurting her made an ache form inside his chest.
And yet he was hurting her. He knew it. Knew it and hated it. He’d believed he’d had such a
brilliant idea when he’d thought of taking the children to England for eight weeks. Knowing Cristina
Rosales was coming, knowing Emma wouldn’t be alone or unhappy. It had seemed perfect.
He’d thought things would be different when he came back. That he would be different.
But he wasn’t.
“What did Magnus say to you?” he asked as she looked out the window, her scarred fingers
drumming an arrhythmic tattoo on her bent knee. “He whispered something.”
A furrow appeared between her brows. “He said that there are places where ley lines converge. I
assume he means that since they bend and curve, there are locations where more than one of them
meet. Maybe all of them.”
“And that’s important because . . . ?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. We do know all the bodies have been dumped at ley lines, and
that’s a specific kind of magic. Maybe the convergences have some quality we need to understand. We
should find a map of ley lines. I bet Arthur would know where to look in the library. If not, we can