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PROLOGUE:

FALL LIKE RAIN

The Los Angeles Institute, December 2007

On the day Emma Carstairs’s parents were killed, the weather was perfect

On the other hand the weather was usually perfect in Los Angeles Emma’sat the Institute in the hills behind the Pacific Coast Highway, overlooking the blue ocean The sky was a cloudless expanse that stretched from the cliffs of the Pacific Palisades to the beaches at Point Dume

A report had coht before of demonic activity near the beach caves of Leo Carrillo The Carstairs had been assigned to look into it Later E a windblown strand of hair behind her ear as she offered to draw a Fearless rune on E he wasn’t sure how he felt about newfangled runes He was fine as written in the Gray Book, thanks very much

At the ti the away to race up the Institute steps, her backpack bouncing between her shoulders as they waved good-bye from the courtyard

Eot to train at the Institute Not only did her best friend, Julian, live there, but she always felt as if she were flying into the ocean when she went inside it It was apebbled drive that wound through the hills Every room, every floor, looked out over the ocean and the reen and gold Eh, so far they’d been foiled by parents—to see if the view stretched all the way to the desert in the south

The front doors knew her and gave way easily under her familiar touch The entryway and lower floors of the Institute were full of adult Shadowhunters, striding back and forth Soht of Julian’s father, Andrew Blackthorn, the head of the Institute, as, she dashed for the changing room on the second floor, where she swapped her jeans and T-shirt for training clothes—oversize shirt, loose cotton pants, and theover her shoulder

Cortana The name simply meant “shortsword,” but it wasn’t short to E metal, the blade inscribed ords that never failed to cause a shiver down her spine: I am Cortana, of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and Durendal Her father had explained what it meant when he put the sword in her ten-year-old hands for the first time

“You can use this for training until you’re eighteen, when it beco down at her as her fingers traced the words “Do you understand what that means?”

She’d shaken her head “Steel” she’d understood, but not “te her father was alarning her she should control What did it have to do with a blade?

“You know of the Wayland family,” he’d said “They were fae all the Shadowhunter blades Wayland the Smith made Excalibur and Joyeuse, Arthur’s and Lancelot’s swords, and Durendal, the sword of the hero Roland And they made this sword too, froreat heat, aler” He’d kissed the top of her head “Carstairs have carried this sword for generations The inscription reel’s weapons Teer When we suffer, we survive”

Ehteen, when she could travel the world to fight demons, when she could be tempered in fire Now she strapped the sword on and left the changing rooination she was standing on top of the bluffs over the sea at Point Du off a cadre of Raum de his own favorite weapon, the crossbow

In Emma’sas she could remember The Blackthorns and the Carstairs had always been close, and Jules was only a few months older; she’d literally never lived in a world without him in it She’d learned to swim in the ocean with him when they’d both been babies They’d learned to walk and then run together She had been carried in his parents’ arms and corralled by his older brother and sister when

And they’dthe puffy white Blackthorn faht blue had been Emma’s idea when they were both seven Julian had taken the blame anyway; he often did After all, he’d pointed out, she was an only child and he was one of seven; his parents would forget they were angry with him a lot more quickly than hers would

She remembered when his mother had died, just after Tavvy’d been born, and how E Jules’s hand while the body had burned in the canyons and the smoke had climbed toward the sky She re that boys cried so differently froed sobs that sounded like they were being pulled out with hooks Maybe it orse for them because they weren’t supposed to cry—

“Oof!” Eht that she’d plowed right into Julian’s father, a tall man with the same tousled brown hair as most of his children “Sorry, Mr Blackthorn!”