Page 5

The sun was directly behind the big old clapboard house, nearly blinding her as she approached. She didn’t see the crowd of people spilling from the back door until she was only a few feet away. She froze, blinking.

The first person out was her brother Julian. Julian, who was meant to be in London with his girlfriend, Emma. He was looking down at his left hand and saying, “The Familias rune, it just activated—she’s got to be nearby, somewhere.”

Emma came out of the house behind him, and Mark followed. Mark, who was meant to be in Faerie. And then Dru’s sister Helen, and then there was Ty, his dark hair a mess, his expression anxious.

Emma saw Dru first, and she caught at Julian’s shoulder, her eyes widening. “Jules,” she said. “She’s here.”

Julian looked up. And a second later he was running, and Dru was swept up in her brother’s arms. He held her so tightly she thought she might asphyxiate, but she didn’t mind. She could feel his heart hammering, hear the crack in his voice as he said her name over and over. “Dru, Dru, Dru.” He pulled back, his hands on her shoulders, his blue-green eyes—so much like her own—searching her face. She knew what he was looking for: bruises, cuts, any signs of harm. “Dru, where were you?”

And then the rest were surging around them both, everyone hugging and crying indiscriminately, except Ty. He stood at a little distance, away from the fray of emotions, but Dru could tell he was glad to see her. Not just glad—relieved.

“I’m okay,” she said, over and over, as Mark and Emma and Helen seized and hugged her and suddenly Thais was there, and her eyes were red and clearly swollen from crying. She unleashed a torrent of Portuguese before seizing Dru by the hand and bursting into tears. And Luke was there too, with his wife, Jocelyn, looking grave and serious and as if he’d aged a year since Dru had seen him the night before.

“Guys,” Dru said. “Guys.” She waved her hands. (She could still see the marks the faerie brooch had made against her palm, a strange stark reminder of what she had forgotten.) “Okay, I don’t understand. What are you all doing here?”

She looked from face to face, all of them bearing the marks of sleepless nights. There were shadows under Julian’s eyes. Mark hadn’t shaved; there was pale gold stubble on his cheeks. Emma’s hair was disheveled and she looked tense, her hand still resting on the hilt of her sword Cortana as if she might need to draw it at any moment.

“We Tracked you to the edge of the property,” Luke said. “After that, the Tracking broke down. You were gone, Drusilla.”

“Gone?” Dru said. “I don’t get it. I know I was out all night, but—”

“Dru, you weren’t just gone all night,” Julian said, gently. She knew that tone of voice. He was afraid, and trying not to worry her, too. She braced herself for whatever he might say next, but even so, when he spoke, it was a shock. “You’ve been missing for three days.”

1

In Dreams Begins Responsibility

“Look, Ty,” said Catarina Loss, the blue-eyed, blue-skinned warlock currently in charge of academics at the Scholomance. “It’s not that you’re not a good student. You’re a wonderful student.”

Livvy watched anxiously as her brother sank down in his chair. Ty wasn’t always perfect at picking up the invisible implications of neurotypical speech, but he appeared to have gotten the message that the fact that Catarina was complimenting him meant something bad was coming. Livvy supposed that shouldn’t be surprising; Catarina rarely called students to her office unless they were in trouble.

“Is this about my final project?” Ty asked. He had taken one of his fidget toys out of his pocket—Livvy knew this one, it had been made from sea glass, by their older brother Julian—and was playing with it, his thumb sweeping over the uneven surface.

Catarina hesitated. “It is and it isn’t,” she said. “You told us your final project would be about solving crimes using magic. But this”—she tapped the stack of paper in front of her—“seems to be about the alternate dimension Thule. It includes a section on how one might possibly get there—”

“That part is theoretical,” said Ty.

“All right,” Catarina said. “But the final project is supposed to cover the kind of work you want to do when you leave the Scholomance. You’re nineteen now. An adult Shadowhunter. Solving crimes using magic seems like something you could do. Attempting interdimensional travel to a hell world does not. I know your brother Julian visited that other world, and that he met the alternate version of your twin there, but there were extenuating circumstances involved, ones that will never be replicated.”

“I said it was theoretical—”

“If you opened a door to hell in your dorm room and a beast came through and ate you, that wouldn’t be theoretical.”

“No, I would call that empirical evidence. But I’m not doing that.”

Catarina templed her hands beneath her chin. “I believe you,” she said. “And I don’t think you actually want to go to Thule, even if a version of Livvy is alive there. I think you turned in a final project you knew couldn’t possibly pass on purpose.”

Ty froze, his gaze flicking to Livvy, who was floating atop one of Catarina’s bookshelves. Catarina glanced over to see what Ty was looking at, but of course, Livvy wasn’t visible to her.

“Why would I do that?” Ty asked.

“So you can stay here at the Scholomance,” Catarina said. “It’s comforting to stay in a familiar place for pretty much everyone. For people like you, even more so.”

“You mean because I have autism?” Ty asked. Most Shadowhunters still didn’t know much about neurodivergence (although the Blackthorn family had learned as much as they could, to support Ty better), but Catarina had been a hospital nurse once and was much more aware of conditions for which only mundanes had real words.

“That, yes. Things here naturally run to a schedule, and you’re encouraged to explore any interests you may have. But there are also your life circumstances. You experienced a great deal of trauma before you came to the Scholomance, and you may be fearful of returning to the outside world.”

“So does that mean I can stay here?”