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Prologue

“Are we lost?” Drusilla Blackthorn peered across the darkened field toward the horizon. “Tell me we’re not lost.”

Her roommate Thais frowned at the hand-scrawled map she held in her hand. “I’m not sure. Check your direction rune.”

Dru sighed and looked at the inside of her wrist, where she’d applied a True North rune earlier that evening. In the late afternoon, really. Hours ago.

Neither she nor Thais had expected this particular activity to take as long as it had. The assignment had sounded simple enough. Usually Dru was delighted when the Shadowhunter Academy students got out of the classroom and did field exercises. She didn’t mind studying, but she wasn’t like her brothers and sisters—every single one of them excelled at memorizing facts: dates, languages, kinds of weapons. Dru liked to see and touch things, to hear stories about them. To understand how they worked. That was how she learned.

This year, her third at Shadowhunter Academy, they had Downworlder studies, which was split into quarters covering vampires, werewolves, warlocks, and faeries. They were on faeries now: their history—which Dru liked, as history was always stories—and the various kinds of faerie nobility and traditions, which she liked less. Faeries had both a lot of traditions and a lot of noble houses and ranks and there was no understanding them; they just had to be memorized.

She and Thais had both been pleasantly surprised to walk into class today and find Luke Garroway, the head of the Academy, there, carrying a stack of maps and instructing them all to get into fighting gear and meet him outside the farmhouse to find out what their assignment was. Luke may have been passing out gear, but he was in his usual uniform of jeans and a thick plaid shirt.

Dru always liked getting into gear. There was something about buttoning and zipping herself into the close-fitting black fabric and heavy boots that made her feel a part of all the Shadowhunters who had gone before her. It helped that she’d brought her mother’s gear jacket to school with her—she and her mom had been shaped the same, curvier and rounder than most Nephilim—as wearing it made her feel closer to Eleanor.

Thais always looked glamorous in her gear. She was tall and rangy, with long russet-brown hair streaked with gold where the sun had lightened it. She had brown skin and freckles on her nose, and Dru often thought they looked like exact opposites—Dru kept her pale skin out of the sun, and her choppy hair (she’d cut it to her shoulders recently, with a pair of dull scissors) was dyed black as ink, with two deep blue streaks. Where Thais was slim, she was curved; where Thais was tall, Dru had resigned herself to being five foot three forever.

In the ways that mattered, though, they matched perfectly. They both loved horror movies, staying up late, sarcastic humor, inside jokes, and every part of learning to be a Shadowhunter. Even the brutal ones, like the bruising training: learning to take punches, to fall without breaking bones, to climb ropes using the strength of their arms until their bodies went nerveless and they slid to the ground only to do it again a second later.

For Dru, it was a way to forget everything that haunted her. For Thais, it was a way to prove herself. She hated failing anything—as did Dru, which was probably the reason she and Thais had started Shadowhunter Academy earlier than most. Thais was scowling hard right now as she glared around at the unchanging view, dark fields bordered by shadowy hedges, trees spreading black branches against the night sky, the faint moon hanging over the distant hills. Somehow they’d wandered far enough from the farmhouse that it was no longer visible; more worrying, Dru couldn’t see—or hear—any of their classmates, either.

“Faeries tread lightly on the land,” Luke had said when he’d explained their assignment. “They leave few signs behind, but training can help you spot them. You’ve been learning those signs these past weeks. Now you’re going to go out and begin your search.”

“And if we catch a faerie, then what?” It was Mason Hardcastle, generally considered to be the most popular of the third-year boys. He had fine features and always seemed to be wearing a cashmere sweater thrown casually over his shoulders. “Trap it, bring it back?”

“You’re not hunting faeries,” Luke said. “They’ve left clues for you to find. You’re looking for signs of the Fair Folk, not faeries themselves.”

“What kind of signs?” demanded Paige Ashdown, looking as if she found the whole business tiresome.

“Faeries tend to work with things that already exist in the natural world,” piped up Jane Cartwright. Dru shot her an encouraging smile—she’d always liked Jane, who was often shy. “So we want to look for things that seem like they belong in nature, but are unusually beautiful or delicately shaped. And we should handle them carefully.”

“That’s right,” Luke said. He gave them all a measured look. “The local faeries are cooperating with this exercise. Don’t make them sorry they agreed to help.”

Mason muttered something under his breath, and Paige sniggered. Dru gestured rudely at Mason as Luke explained that they were going to split up into groups of two or three and comb the grounds—the Academy was located on Luke’s farm in upstate New York, and it was more than sixty acres, so it wasn’t a small area—until seven p.m., when they’d have to return to the farmhouse. Any sign of faeries they saw was supposed to be collected if possible, or noted down on their group’s map if not.

Dru and Thais didn’t need to ask each other; they knew already they’d be a team. Thais turned around so Dru could shove the map into her backpack, holding the mass of her wavy hair up and out of the way so it wouldn’t get caught in the zipper.

Mason Hardcastle sauntered up just as Dru had finished with the pack and was giving Thais’s shoulder a pat to let her know she was all set.

“Maybe you two should change it up a little,” he said. He lowered his voice. “The three of us are the best here. If we team up, we’ll win.”

“What, you don’t think your friends are the best?” Dru inquired archly, shooting a dark look toward Paige, who was glaring in their direction. She’d known Paige back in Los Angeles—the Ashdowns had been friendly with the Blackthorns, though Paige herself had always been unpleasant. She’d mocked Dru for her clothes, her weight, and her enthusiasm for horror movies, and been even crueler toward Dru’s brother Ty. She’d never apologized for any of it. No, Dru didn’t have a lot of time for Paige Ashdown.

“They’re fine,” Mason drawled. “But you’re better.”

“It’s an exercise, Mason, not a contest,” said Thais, turning around. “There’s no winning.”

“There’s always winning,” Mason said, but he wasn’t looking at Thais. He was looking at Dru. “Come on. Let me help you.”

Dru zipped her gear jacket up. “Go away, Mason.”

He grinned. “Drusilla,” he said. “Don’t pretend you’re impervious to my charms.”

Dru shrugged. “But it’s true. I’m impervious. I cannot be perved.” She looked at Thais, ignoring Mason’s narrow glare. “Should we get going?”

Thais winked. “Vamos.”

Dru hurried to join the crowd of students on the dirt road that curved through the fields. Thais, beside her, was silent until they’d clambered over a fence and were heading away from the others through waist-high grass.