Also by Cassandra Clare

Smith was, and Cristina stomped on his foot.
The ticket girl smiled, her red lips curving up into a bow, and slowly tore the ticket in half. If she
recognized Emma, she didn’t show it. “Mr. Smith,” she said. “Hold out your hand.”
Julian offered his free hand, and the ticket girl stamped it with red-black ink. The stamp was an
odd little symbol, lines of water underneath a flame. “The performance is running a bit late tonight.
You’ll find your row and seat numbers have appeared on your ticket. Please don’t sit in anyone else’s
seat.” Her gaze went to Mark—a sharp, intent, assessing gaze. “And welcome,” she said. “I believe
you will find the Followers a . . . sympathetic group.”
Mark looked baffled.
Hands stamped and ticket torn, the four of them trailed into the theater. The moment they crossed
the threshold, the music rose to deafening levels, and Emma recognized it as the kind of big-band jazz
ensemble her father had loved. Just because I play the violin doesn’t mean I don’t like dancing, she
remembered him saying, swinging her mother into an impromptu fox-trot in the kitchen.
Julian turned to her. “What is it?” he asked gently.
Emma wished he couldn’t read her moods quite so perfectly. She glanced away to hide her
expression. Mark and Cristina were behind them, looking around. There was a concession stand,
selling popcorn and candy. A sign reading DANCE HALL/THEATER hung over the stand, pointing left.
People in fancy dress were moving excitedly down the hallway.
“Nothing. We should go that way,” Emma said, and tugged on Julian’s hand. “Follow the crowd.”
“Hell of a crowd,” he muttered. He wasn’t wrong. Emma didn’t think she’d seen so many
expensively dressed people in one place before. “It’s like walking into a noir film.”
Everywhere were beautiful people, the kind of Hollywood beautiful Emma was used to seeing
around Los Angeles: people who had access to gyms and tanning salons and expensive hairdressers
and the best clothes. Here they looked as if they’d dressed as extras for a Rat Pack movie. Silk
dresses and seamed stockings, fedoras and skinny ties and peaked lapels. Apparently Julian’s Sy
Devore suit had been a presciently smart choice.
The room was elegant, with a pressed copper ceiling, arched windows, and closed doors marked
THEATER LEFT and THEATER RIGHT. A rug had been rolled back for dancing, and couples were swirling
together to the sound of a band playing on a raised stage at the end of the room. Thanks to her father’s
tutelage, she recognized trombones and trumpets, drums and piano, an upright bass and—no special
knowledge needed there—a piano. There was a clarinet player too, who took his lips away from the
instrument long enough to grin at Emma as she came into the room. He had auburn curls, and there
was something odd about his eyes.
“He is faerie,” Mark said, his voice suddenly tight. “At least in part.”
Oh. Emma shot a second look around the room, gaze sweeping over the dancers. She had dismissed
them as mundanes, but . . . glancing through the crowd, she saw a pointed ear there, a flash of orange
eyes or taloned fingernails here.
W-H-A-T I-S I-T? Jules wrote on her back, his fingertips warm through the thin material of her
dress.
“They’re all something,” Emma said. She remembered the sign at the Shadow Market. PART
SUPERNATURAL? YOU’RE NOT ALONE. “Good thing we covered our runes. They’ve all got the Sight,
they’ve all got some kind of magic.”
“The musicians are half-gentry Fair Folk,” said Mark, “which is not surprising, for there is nothing
the shining ones value more than music. But there are others here whose blood is mixed with those of
merfolk, and some who are weres.”