Also by Cassandra Clare

“Is everything all right?”
Julian nodded. “Could I talk to Ty for a second?”
Tiberius stood up. His black hair was messy, getting too long. Julian reminded himself to schedule
a haircut for both twins. Another thing to add to the calendar.
Ty came out into the corridor, pulling the computer room door shut behind him. His expression was
wary. “Is this about the skunk? Because Livvy took it back outside.”
Julian shook his head. “It’s not about the skunk.”
Ty lifted his face. He’d always had delicate features, more elfin than Helen or Mark’s. His father
had said he was a throwback to earlier generations of Blackthorns, and he looked not unlike some of
the family portraits in the dining room they rarely used, slender Victorian men in tailored clothes with
porcelain faces and black, curling hair. “Then what is it?”
Julian hesitated. The whole house was still. He could hear the faint crackle of the computer on the
other side of the door.
He had thought about asking Ty to look into the poison that he had been shot with. But that would
require him to say, I was dying. I should be dead. The words wouldn’t come. They were like a dam,
and behind them were so many other words: I’m not sure about anything. I hate being in charge. I
hate making the decisions. I’m terrified you’ll all learn to hate me. I’m terrified of losing you. I’m
terrified of losing Mark. I’m terrified of losing Emma. I want someone to take over. I’m not as
strong as you think. The things I want are wrong and broken things to want.
He knew he could say none of this. The facade he showed them, his children, had to be perfect: A
crack in him would be like a crack in the world to them.
“You know I love you,” he said, instead, and Ty looked up at him, startled, meeting his gaze for a
flicker of a moment. Over the years, Julian had come to understand why Ty didn’t like looking into
other people’s eyes. It was too much movement, color, expression, like looking into a blaring
television set. He could do it—he knew it was something people liked, and that it mattered to them—
but he didn’t see what the fuss was about.
Ty was searching now, though, seeking in Julian’s face the answer to his odd hesitancy. “I do
know,” Ty said, finally.
Julian couldn’t help the ghost of a smile. It was what you wanted to hear, wasn’t it, from your
children? That they knew they were loved? He remembered when he had been carrying Tavvy
upstairs, once, when he’d been thirteen; he’d tripped and fallen, twisting his body around so that he
would land on his back and head, not caring if he was hurt as long as Tavvy was all right. He’d
cracked himself pretty hard on the head, too, but he’d sat upright fast, his mind racing: Tavvy, my
baby, is he okay?
It was the first time he’d thought “my baby” and not “the baby.”
“I don’t understand why you wanted to talk to me, though,” Ty said, his dark brows drawn together
in puzzlement. “Was there a reason?”
Julian shook his head. In the distance, he could hear the front door open, the faint sound of Emma
and Cristina’s laughter carrying. They were back. “No reason at all,” he said.