Also by Cassandra Clare

“What did you do?” Emma whispered. Her mouth had gone dry.
Blood was leaking steadily from the tear in his jacket. “It was burning,” he said. “Not like a normal
arrow. Emma—”
He dropped to his knees. His expression was dazed, though he was clearly fighting it. “We need to
get out of here,” he said hoarsely. “The shooter might come back, alone or with more—”
His voice choked off and he fell backward, sprawling in the grass. Emma moved faster than she
ever had in her life, leaping across the pool, but she still wasn’t there in time to catch him before he
hit the ground.
Clouds were gathering out over the ocean. The wind up on the roof was cool, the ocean acting like a
giant air conditioner. Cristina could hear the roar and crash of the surf in the distance as she moved
gingerly across the shingles. What was it about the Blackthorns and Emma that meant that ever since
she’d come to Los Angeles she’d spent half her time on top of buildings?
Mark was sitting near one of the copper gutters, his legs dangling over the side. The wind blew his
fair hair around his face. His hands were long and white and bare, bracing him against the roof tiles
behind him.
He was holding one of the Institute’s spare cell phones in his hand. It seemed incongruous—it was
incongruous, the faerie boy with the long, tangled hair, the tapestry of stars behind him, and the phone
in his hand. “I am so sorry, Helen,” she heard him say, and the word echoed with such a depth of love
and loneliness that she nearly turned away.
Leaving silently didn’t seem to be an option, though. Mark had heard her approach: He turned
slightly, and gestured for Cristina to remain.
She hovered uncertainly. It was Dru who had told her that she would find Mark on the roof, and the
others had urged her to go up and see if he was all right. She had wondered if it was really her place,
but Ty and Livvy had been absorbed in their translation job, and she’d sensed Dru was afraid of
Mark’s harsh words. And it wasn’t as if Tavvy could be sent to fetch his brother down. So with some
reluctance, Cristina had climbed the ladder to the roof.
Now that she was here, though, she felt an aching sympathy for the boy perched at the roof’s edge.
The look on his face as he spoke to Helen—she couldn’t imagine what it must be like for him, to
know there was only one other person in his family quite like him, who shared his blood and heritage,
and to know she was separated from him by a cruel and unbreakable Law.
“And I, you, my sister,” Mark said, and let the phone fall from his hand. It was an old-fashioned
one, with a screen that flickered and went dark as the call disconnected.
He slid it into a pocket and looked over at Cristina, the clouds casting shadows on his face.
“If you have come to tell me I behaved ill, I already know it,” he said.
“That’s not why I came,” she said, moving closer to him but not sitting down.
“But you agree,” he said. “I behaved ill. I should not have spoken as I did to Julian, especially in
front of the little ones.”
Cristina spoke carefully. “I don’t know Julian well. But I do believe he was worried about you,
and that’s why he didn’t want you to go with them.”
“I know that,” Mark said, surprising her. “But do you know what it’s like, to have your little
brother worry about you as if you were the child?” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I thought,
while I was gone, that Helen would be raising them. I never thought it would fall so much upon
Julian’s shoulders. I cannot tell if that is why he seems unknowable to me.”
Cristina thought of Julian, of his quiet competence and careful smiles. She remembered saying to