Lady Midnight

Lady Midnight is a young adult urban fantasy novel by the American writer Cassandra Clare, published in 2016 as the first book of The Dark Artifices.

Emma Carstairs has lived at the Los Angeles Institute since her parents died in the Dark War, and she has grown up alongside the Blackthorns: Julian, her parabatai; Livvy, Ty, Dru and the youngest of them, Tavvy. Her investigation into the deaths begins again when a mundane shopkeeper tells her that eleven faeries have been killed in similar circumstances, and the murders turn out to be connected to sacred places in the city known as ley lines. The faeries, who have been cut off from the Shadowhunters by the Cold Peace, offer the Institute a bargain in return for help with their own dead, and one part of that bargain is the return of Mark Blackthorn, who was taken five years earlier and has barely aged. Emma and Julian's own situation is the second engine of the book: the bond between parabatai forbids them to love each other, and both of them have understood what they feel. The title and every chapter heading are taken from Edgar Allan Poe's poem Annabel Lee, and the story is dated to 2012 in the chronology of the Shadowhunter Chronicles.