Also by Cassandra Clare

“How do you know?” said Cristina. “Had any of the people at the theater been picked in the
Lottery before?”
“Belinda,” said Sterling promptly. “She was the first. Most of the others didn’t stick around.
They’re probably off somewhere, living it up. Well, except Ava.”
“Ava Leigh was a Lottery winner?” asked Emma. “The one who lived with Stanley Wells?”
Perfect Diego jammed his knife harder against Sterling’s throat. “What did you know about Ava?”
Sterling winced away from the knife. “Yeah, she was a Lottery winner. Look, it didn’t matter who
winners picked to kill—no Downworlders except faeries, that was the only rule. Some of the Lottery
winners chose people they knew. Ava decided to kill her sugar-daddy boyfriend. She was tired of
him. But it freaked her out. She killed herself after. Drowned herself in his pool. It was stupid of her.
She could have had anything she wanted.”
“She didn’t commit suicide,” Emma said. “She was murdered.”
He shrugged. “Nah, she offed herself. That’s what everyone said.”
Cristina looked as if she was struggling to stay calm. “You knew her,” she said. “Don’t you care?
Do you feel anything? What about guilt over the girl you killed?”
“Some girl from the Shadow Market,” said Sterling with a shrug. “Used to sell jewelry there. I told
her I could get her designs into department stores. Make her rich, if she’d just meet me.” He snorted.
“Everyone’s greedy.”
They had passed the initial highway clutter and reached a stretch of beach, dotted with blue
lifeguard towers.
“That blue fire,” Emma said, thinking out loud. “The Guardian was in it. They took the body to the
convergence. You stabbed her, but the Guardian grabbed her before she died. So the deaths happen at
the convergence, and everything else too—the burning, submerging the body in seawater, carving the
runes, the whole ritual?”
“Yeah. And I was supposed to be taken to the convergence too,” Sterling said, resentment coloring
his voice. “It’s where the Guardian would have thanked me—given me anything I wanted. I could
have seen the ritual. One death strengthens us all.”
Emma and Cristina exchanged looks. Sterling wasn’t clearing things up; he was making them more
confusing.
“You said she was the last,” said Diego. “What happens after this? What’s the payoff?”
Sterling grunted. “No idea. I didn’t get where I am in life by asking questions I don’t need the
answers to.”
“Get where you are in life?” Emma snorted. “You mean tied up in the back of a car?”
Emma could see the lights of the Malibu Pier up ahead. They shone against the dark water. “None
of that matters. The Guardian will find me,” Sterling said.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” said Perfect Diego in his low voice.
Emma turned off the highway onto their familiar road. She could see the lights of the Institute in the
distance, illuminating the rutted track under her wheels. “And when he does find you?” she said. “The
Guardian? What do you think he’ll do, just welcome you back after you told us all this? You don’t
think he’ll make you pay?”
“There’s one more thing I have to give him,” Sterling said. “Belinda did. And even Ava did. One
last, last thing. And then—”
Sterling broke off with a yowl of terror. The Institute loomed up in front of them. Perfect Diego
swore.
“Emma!” Cristina gasped. “Emma, stop!”