Page 67 of Better in Black
Rather than answering the unasked question, Ari pulled Anna into an embrace. She pressed herself closely against her, inhaling her scent, reaching up to tip Anna’s head down to hers with her finger. They kissed; Ari lingered. She drew her head down to kiss Anna’s neck, her collarbone, the hollow of her throat. One of her hands gently slipped under the lapel of Anna’s dressing gown.
She thought,Either Anna is the most successful cheat in all history, or something else is going on.There was not the slightest suggestion of perfume or grass or smoke or anything that would suggest Anna had been anywhere but this flat all night.
Ari leaned up to kiss Anna again and Anna smiled against her mouth. “What is going on with you this evening? Not that I mind.” She began unbuttoning the jacket of Ari’s patrol gear.
“I just missed you,” Ari said, and helped Anna shrug the dressing gown off, where it pooled onto the bed behind them. “Sorry about being short a moment ago. Patrol was just fine, but I think we discovered that someone is trying to stir up some trouble.”
“Oh?” said Anna, and then “Oh,” and then words departed from the scene entirely until the next morning.
—
“I am on Anna’s side,” her mother said. “Unequivocally.”
Ari was having lunch with her mother. They’d met at the pale green tearoom at Fortnum & Mason on Picadilly, as Flora had further business in the neighborhood afterward.
Ari smiled to herself. After the chaos of Belial’s attack and her father’s exile, Flora had appeared to decide that as she had always wanted Ari to make a good marriage, Anna Lightwood was that marriage. It was maddening to have your own mother often take the side of your beloved over you, of course, but Ari understood that in her own way this was her mother’s way of demonstrating her approval.
“There aren’t sides, Mother,” Ari said, gently. “I’m not angry at Anna, nor she at me. I’m just—puzzled.”
“I agree that what you saw in Regent’s Park doesn’t make sense,” Flora went on, buttering a scone. “But not that it doesn’t make sense in an Anna way. It doesn’t make sense in a Shadowhunter way.”
“Oh?” Ari said, surprised.
It was always a little odd to hear her mother talk about Shadowhunter things. She was a Shadowhunter and always had been, but Ari’s father’s absence had made Ari realize how much her mother had kept herself quiet and domestic before, how much she was the Inquisitor’s Wife and thought of herself as little else. Now she was active in the Enclave and making friends with the other ladies her age.
“Anna would not hide away from ravening hordes for a week and then have a secret assignation in Regent’s Park, and then lie about it to you. Which means someone is up to something, magic is involved, and you should look into it, not because of your relationship but because it happened on your patrol.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Ari said. She sighed. “I feel like I know Anna so well, yet there is a great deal she keeps hidden.”
“From you?”
“From everyone,” said Ari.
“Ari,” her mother said. She reached across the table and grasped Ari’s hand with both of hers. “You must rise above the rabble and the rabble-rousers here. Do not let rumors and suspicion eat away at what you and Anna have made together. Just go talk to her.”
Not for the first time in the past year—but it still surprised her—Ari had to admit her mother had a good point.
—
A half block away from the flat, Ari became aware of an odd scene on her front steps. Her steps quickened and her hand went to the blade at her throat as she approached.
On the steps were Anna and also a girl Ari didn’t recognize. It was not the girl from the previous night. This one was tall and pale and wore a pink shirtwaist, but otherwise there was nothing distinctive about her. What was distinctive was that she was energetically kissing Anna, and Anna, leaning back against the front door, was letting her. More than letting her. Enthusiastically responding to her.
Really,Ari thought,I am all for giving Anna the benefit of the doubt, but this seems rather beyond the scope of that.
But also,she thought as she passed the widow on the rocker,this is extremely unlike Anna, even Anna before…before.She would never have flaunted her romances in public, on the street. Ari’s mind felt oddly clear, in that way that sudden intense shock can cause, and as she got closer she considered possibilities. Anna could have been drugged, or enspelled—by a vampire’s enchantment, by a faerie, by a warlock.
“Look here!” she called out, as she reached the steps. “What’s going on?”
The girl broke away from Anna and simpered at her, but didn’tspeak. Anna pushed herself lazily to an upright posture and smirked at Ari.
“Don’t look so shocked, Ari,” Anna said. “It’s just a kiss. This is what bohemians do. It’s what sets us apart from the rest of them, all the boring people. You must have learned that by now.”
“An-na,” the mystery girl said in an irritatingly waifish voice, “who is this?”
“Who am I?” demanded Ari. “Who are you?”
Ari drew the blade from where it rested between her breasts and brandished it at the girl, who promptly burst into tears, stumbled down the stairs, and ran down Percy Street at a flat gallop. The greengrocer widow watched her with interest before returning to her rocking.
