Chapter 12: The Seeing Ones

12THE SEEING ONES

And you have known him from his origin,

You tell me; and a most uncommon urchin

He must have been to the few seeing ones—

A trifle terrifying, I dare say,

Discovering a world with his man’s eyes,

Quite as another lad might see some finches.

—Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford”

As they walked back toAnna’s flat, their boots kicking up slushy snow, Anna kept a weather eye on Matthew.

Matthew had always been her companion in mischief. She swore she could remember the day when she was two years old, when gurgling baby Matthew had been plonked into her lap and she had decided then and there that they would be the best of friends.

There had been a time, two years ago, when a darkness had taken up residence at the backs of Matthew’s eyes. A shadow where there had always been sunshine. He had never been willing to speak of it, and after some time it had gone away, replaced by a slightly wilder and more brittle cheerfulness. She had put it down to the oddness of boys growing up—after all, had James not grown odd and distant around the same time?

Today, in the Devil Tavern, Anna had seen that the shadow was back in Matthew’s eyes. She was not so foolish as not to assume it had something to do with the awful situation regarding Cordelia and James. If Matthew was unhappy—and that was clear—he was unhappy enough to have made himself ill over it. The shadows under his eyes looked like a boxer’s fading bruises.

So she had invited him home with her for tea. He’d seemed agreeable enough, especially once it was clear that Cordelia was returning to the Institute with James and Lucie. He spoke little on the walk to Percy Street: he was hatless and gloveless, as if taking some pleasure from the bitingly cold air.

Once inside the flat, Ariadne excused herself to change her dress, a carriage on Tottenham Court Road having splashed muddy slush all over its hem. Anna offered Matthew food, which he refused, and tea, which he accepted. His hands shook as he lifted the teacup to his mouth.

Anna scolded him out of his damp coat and handed him a flannel to dry his wet hair. He’d finished his tea, so she poured him another cup and added a capful of brandy. Matthew almost looked as if he were going to protest—odd, he’d never protested against brandy in his tea before—but stopped himself. His hair sticking up in soft gold spikes, he took the cup and flicked his eyes to the door of Anna’s bedroom. “So Ariadne is living with you now?”

Trust Matthew to want to gossip regardless of the circumstances.

“Temporarily,” Anna said. “She couldn’t remain with the Bridgestocks.”

“Even as a temporary measure,” Matthew said, a swallow of the brandied tea seeming to have steadied his hands, “do you think that’s a wise idea?”

“And who are you, exactly, to have anything to say about wisdom?” Anna said. “Your most recent idea was to run away to Paris with James’s wife.”

“Ah, but I am already well known for having only terrible ideas, whereas you are regarded as possessing good judgment and common sense.”

“Well, there you go,” said Anna. “If this was not a good idea, I would not be doing it, since I have only good ideas.”

Matthew began to protest, but Anna shushed him with a warning finger; Ariadne had come bustling back into the sitting room in a peach-colored day dress. There were few people Anna knew who could have carried off that shade of coral, but it seemed to make Ariadne’s skin glow from within. Her hair was down, a mass of black silk about her shoulders.

There was worry in Ariadne’s eyes as she glanced at Matthew, but wisely she said nothing, only took a seat beside him on the purple tufted sofa.

Good, don’t show him you’re worried,Anna thought. He’ll only dig his heels in like a stubborn pony.

But Ariadne had been well trained by her mother in etiquette. She could probably carry on a conversation about the weather with someone whose head was on fire. “I understand, Matthew,” she said, accepting a cup of Earl Grey, “that you have your own flat. That you, like Anna, prefer to live on your own. Is that true?”

“I’m not sure it was down to preference, but rather necessity,” said Matthew. “But I do like where I am living,” he added, “and you might like it as well; the flats are serviced, and I am fairly sure I could battle a demon in the lobby and the porter would be too polite to have any questions.” He glanced at Anna. “Is that why you asked me here? Advice over flats?”

Anna said nothing; the thought of Ariadne leaving unsettled her in a way she could not define. Surely she wished her privacy back, she thought, the calm and comfort of her flat, the refuge it provided, uninhabited by anyone but herself.…

Ariadne set her teacup down. “Not at all. We wanted your advice on something I found.”

Matthew raised his eyebrows, clearly curious now. Ariadne fetched the letter from atop the mantelpiece and passed it over. Matthew unfolded it and read it quickly, eyes widening.

“Where did you find this?” he asked when he was done. Anna was pleased to see that he seemed sharper, more focused.

“My father’s office,” Ariadne said. “And it’s obviously his. His handwriting, his signature.”

“But he didn’t send it,” said Matthew. “So either your father is blackmailing someone, or he is planning to blackmail someone but didn’t get around to it before he left for the Adamant Citadel. Did he notice it missing?”

Ariadne bit her lip. “I—don’t know. I think he meant to burn it—I found it in the fireplace, so I wouldn’t think he’d be looking for it. But we haven’t spoken since he got back.”

“The question,” said Anna, “is who the Inquisitor would want to blackmail, and over what.”

“I can’t imagine,” said Ariadne. “He’s already in such a position of power. Why would he need to hold something over someone? If a Shadowhunter was violating the Law, he would have every authority to confront them directly.”

Matthew was silent for a moment. “Is this letter why you feel you must move away?” he asked finally. “Why it is a… necessity for you to go?”

“I’ve always been raised to be a model Shadowhunter,” Ariadne said softly. “I’m the daughter of the Inquisitor. It is my father’s job to hold all the Nephilim to the impossibly high standard of Raziel’s Law, and he holds his family to no less a standard. I was raised to be an obedient daughter, in training to become an obedient wife. I would do what they said, marry who they wanted—”

“Charles, for instance,” Matthew said.

“Yes. But it was all rubbish in the end, wasn’t it? My father apparently doesn’t hold himself to his high-minded standards.” She shook her head and looked out the window. “It was the hypocrisy that was the last straw, I suppose.” She looked directly at Matthew, and as she spoke Anna felt, against her will, a surge of pride in Ariadne. “I told my mother that I would not marry whatever man they chose for me. That, in fact, I would not marry any man at all. That I did not love men, but women.”

Matthew wound a curl of his fair hair around his forefinger, a nervous gesture left over from childhood. “Did you know,” he said slowly, “that you were saying something she did not want to hear? Something you thought might cause her to cut you off? Even to—hate you?”

“I knew,” Ariadne said. “Yet I would do it again. I am sure my mother is mourning the daughter that she never had. But if she loves me—and I believe she does—I think she must love the reality of me.”

“What about your father?”

“He was in shock when he came back from Iceland,” Ariadne said. “I did not hear from him for nearly a day, and then it was a letter—clearly he knew I have been staying with Anna—saying that I could come home if I apologized to my mother and took back what I had said.”

“Which you will not do,” said Matthew.

“Which I will not do,” Ariadne agreed. Her smile was sad. “It may be hard for you to understand. Your parents are so remarkably kind.”

Matthew seemed to flinch. Anna thought with a pang of the time when the Fairchilds had been one of the closest families she knew, before Charles had grown so cold, before Matthew had become so sad.

“Well, they certainly aren’t blackmailing anyone,” Matthew said. “I noted something here in the letter: ‘Your family has benefited from the spoils of—giant ink blot—but it could all be lost if your house is not in order.’ What if it means ‘spoils’ quite literally?”

Ariadne frowned. “But it has been illegal to take spoils from Downworlders since the Accords were first signed.”

Anna shuddered. Spoils. It was an ugly word, an ugly concept. Spoils had been the practice of confiscating possessions from innocent Downworlders: common before the historic peace treaty between Downworlders and Shadowhunters that was now called the Accords. Common, and usually unpunished. Many old Shadowhunter families had enriched themselves that way.

“It may not refer to crimes being committed now. When the Accords were signed in 1872,” Anna said, “Shadowhunters were meant to return the spoils they had taken. But many did not. The Baybrooks and the Pouncebys, for instance. Their wealth came from spoils originally. Everyone knows it.”

“Which is dreadful,” Ariadne said, “but not an excuse for blackmail.”

“I doubt the blackmail springs from moral outrage,” said Matthew. “More convenience. He wishes to blackmail this person, and has found an excuse to do so.” He rubbed at his eyes. “It could be anyone he seeks to control. It could be Charles.”

Ariadne looked startled. “But my father and Charles have always been on good terms. Even after our engagement ended, they righted things quickly. Charles has always wanted to be just the sort of politician that my father is.”

“What do you think it is Charles has done that could render him vulnerable to blackmail?” Anna said.

Matthew shook his head. His hair, dry now, was beginning to fall into his eyes. “Nothing. Just an idea. I wondered if the spoils could be considered the spoils of political power, but I agree—let’s look into Baybrook and Pounceby first.” He turned to Ariadne. “Would you mind lending me the letter? I’ll confront Thoby—I know him best. And he has never been good at standing up to interrogation. Once he pilfered someone else’s food hamper at the Academy but folded like cheap paper under questioning.”

“Of course,” Ariadne said. “And I’m friendly with Eunice. I think she’ll be open to meeting with me, and she won’t even notice she’s being questioned. She’s too self-absorbed.”

Matthew rose to his feet, a soldier bracing for a return to the field. “I ought to go,” he said. “Oscar will be howling for my return.”

Anna walked him down to the front door. As Matthew opened it, he glanced up the stairs where Ariadne remained.

“She is brave,” he said. “Braver than either of us, I think.”

Anna laid a hand against his cheek. “My Matthew,” she said. “What is it you fear so much to tell your parents?”

Matthew closed his eyes, shaking his head. “I—I can’t, Anna. I do not want you to despise me.”

“I would never despise you,” Anna said. “We are all flawed creatures. As diamonds are flawed, each distinct imperfection makes us unique.”

“Perhaps I don’t wish to be unique,” Matthew said. “Perhaps I wish only to be happy and ordinary.”

“Matthew, darling, you are the least ordinary person I know—besides myself—and that is part of what makes you happy. You are a peacock, not a duck.”

“I see you have inherited the Herondale hatred of ducks from your mother,” said Matthew, with the faintest of smiles. He looked up at the sky, deep black, spangled with stars. “I cannot help but feel something terribly dark is coming. Even in Paris, we could not escape the warnings. It is not that I fear danger, or a battle. It is a greater shadow than that, casting itself across all of us. Across London.”

Anna frowned. “What do you mean?” she said, but Matthew, seeming to feel he had said too much, would not elaborate. He only straightened his jacket and set off, a slim figure making its way down Percy Street, unobserved by passersby.

---

“You could stay the night at the Institute, Daisy,” Lucie said as she, Jesse, Cordelia, and James made their way along Fleet Street. The streetlamps had been lit, each illuminating a circle of light where tiny flakes of snow swirled like swarms of icy gnats. The wind had picked up, and again blew flurries of ice in misty eddies around the four of them, which Jesse alone seemed to enjoy, his face upturned to the night as they walked. He had not been able to feel hot or cold for years, he had pointed out, and extremes of temperature still delighted him. Apparently he had once gotten close enough to the fireplace in the Institute drawing room to singe his jacket before Lucie pulled him away. “I mean, look at all this snow.”

“Perhaps,” Cordelia said. She cast a sideways glance at James, who had been quiet through the walk, his hands plunged deep into the pockets of his coat. Pale flakes were caught in the darkness of his hair.

She did not finish the thought; they had reached the Institute. Once inside, they stomped the snow off their shoes in the entryway and hung their clothes up next to gear jackets and an assortment of weapons on pegs near the front door. James rang one of the servants’ bells—presumably to let Will and Tessa know they had returned—and said, “We should go to one of the bedrooms. For privacy.”

If they had been at Curzon Street, of course, there would be no need to worry about Will and Tessa overhearing them. But James had promised to stay at the Institute while Tatiana was at large, and anyway Cordelia didn’t think she could have faced Curzon Street.

“Yours,” said Lucie promptly. “Mine is a mess.”

James’s bedroom. Cordelia had not been in it often—she had a blurred memory of arriving to see James, a copy of Layla and Majnun in her hand, and finding him in his room with Grace. If only she had given up on him then—not let this farce play out as long as it had. She was silent as they passed through the chapel: it was unlighted now, stripped of decorations. Only a few weeks ago she and James had gotten married here, wreaths of pale flowers garlanding the pews, spilling into the aisle. She had walked on crushed petals as she approached the altar, so that they released their perfume in a cloud of cream and tuberose.

She glanced sideways at James, but he appeared lost in thought. Of course she could not expect him to feel about this place as she did. It would not be a knife to the heart for him.

James led them to his bedroom. It was much neater than it had been when James had lived here before—probably because it was mostly bare, other than the open trunk at the foot of the bed. In the trunk Cordelia recognized James’s clothes, brought from their house, and a few knickknacks—was that a flash of ivory? Before she could look more closely, James had kicked the trunk shut. He turned to Jesse. “Lock the door, would you?”

Jesse hesitated before turning to Cordelia, to her surprise. “Cordelia,” he said. “I’ve heard so much about you from Lucie I feel as if I know you. But in truth—I’m nearly a stranger to you. If you’d prefer to speak to James and Lucie alone…”

“No.” Cordelia slipped off her gloves, tucking them into her pockets. She looked from Lucie’s worried face to James’s set one, and back to Jesse. “We have all been touched by Belial in some way or another,” she said. “Lucie and James, because they share his blood. You, because of the monstrous way he controlled you. And I, because I bear Cortana. He fears and hates us all. You are as much a part of this as any of us.”

Jesse met her gaze. She could certainly see why Lucie had been drawn to him, Cordelia thought. He was attractive, but that was not all of it; there was an intensity to him, a focus, as if everything he saw, he carefully considered. It made one wish to be considered by him. “All right,” he said. “I’ll lock the door.”

They settled themselves somewhat awkwardly around the room: James on the trunk, Cordelia in the chair, Lucie on James’s bed, and Jesse sitting atop the windowsill, his back against the cold glass. Everyone looked expectantly at Cordelia.

“It was what you said about your dream,” she explained. “That you heard Belial say, ‘They wake.’?”

“I’ve no idea what he meant,” said James. “But Grandfather does like a puzzle. Whether it has a solution or not.”

“Ugh,” said Lucie. “Don’t call him Grandfather. It makes it sound as if he carried us piggyback when we were children.”

“I’m sure he would have,” said James, “as long as he was piggybacking us up a volcano to sacrifice us to Lucifer.”

“He’d never sacrifice you,” Lucie said tartly. “He needs you.”

Jesse cleared his throat. “I think,” he said, “Cordelia was trying to tell us something?”

James turned his eyes on her, though Cordelia noticed they slid away, as if he could not bear to look directly at her. “Daisy?”

“Yes,” she said, and told them quickly about the Cabaret de l’Enfer, Madame Dorothea, and the words that had come, in theory, from her father. “?‘They wake,’?” she said, and shivered. “And I might have thought it was nonsense, except that when we were attacked by Lilith, she repeated the same words. I’m not sure she even knew what they meant,” Cordelia added. “She said, ‘Belial has not stopped his planning. I, too, have heard the whispers on the wind. They wake.’?”

When she finished, Lucie sighed. “Why are prophetic pronouncements always so vague? Why not a bit of information about who wakes, or why we should care?”

“Yet Belial wanted me to hear it,” said James. “He said, ‘Do you hear that, grandson? They wake.’ And I am fairly sure he was not referring to a litter of puppies somewhere in Oxfordshire.”

“It is meant to make you afraid. The fear is the point,” said Jesse. They all looked at him. “It is a method of control. My mother used it often—do this or that, or fear the consequences.”

“But there are no orders here, no demands,” James said. “Only the warning.”

“I do not think Belial feels fear,” Jesse said. “Not as we do. He wishes to grasp and to possess. He feels rage when his will is thwarted. But to him, fear is a human emotion. He knows it makes mortals behave in irrational ways. He may feel that by striking fear into us, we will run in circles, making it easier for him to do”—Jesse sighed—“whatever it is he plans to do.”

“Belial is afraid of one thing,” said James. “He is afraid of Cordelia.”

Jesse nodded. “He does not wish to die, and so if he fears anything, I suppose it is Cortana, in Cordelia’s hand.”

“Perhaps he merely means a horde of demons has awoken,” said Lucie, “as one might expect. Demons he intends to send against us.”

“He could have whipped up an army of demons at any point,” James pointed out. “Why now?”

“Maybe they needed military training,” Lucie suggested. “They’re not really disciplined, are most of them? Even with a Prince of Hell ordering them about.”

Cordelia tried to imagine Belial putting a horde of demons through basic military exercises, and failed. “Lucie,” she said, and hesitated. “With your powers, we could… well, do you think it would be wise to… try to reach my father through you? To find out if he knows more?”

Lucie looked discomfited. “I don’t think we ought. I’ve summoned an unwilling ghost before, and it is… unpleasant. Like torturing them.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t want to do that to your father.”

“It may not have been your father who spoke to you at all,” Jesse said. “The words ‘they wake’ certainly indicate it was a spirit who knew who you were. But that spirit could have been impersonating your father.”

“I know,” Cordelia said. But I so much want it to have been my father. I was never able to bid him goodbye, not properly.

“If you could reach out, Lucie,” she said. “Not to draw him back, but just to see if he is a spirit, hovering somewhere in the world…”

“I have, Cordelia,” Lucie said. “I did look—and no, I didn’t sense anything. Your father didn’t seem to be anywhere I could… reach him.”

Cordelia felt startled, and a little as if she’d been slapped. Lucie’s tone was so cold—though no colder, she supposed, than her own when she’d snapped at Lucie in the ballroom. The boys, too, looked startled, but before anyone could speak, there was a sudden loud knock on the door—less a knock than a sound as if someone had bashed the door with a hammer. They all jumped, save James, who rolled his eyes.

“Bridget,” he called. “I’ve told you—”

“Your parents sent me to fetch you for supper,” Bridget snapped. “I see you’ve locked your door. Lord knows what you’re up to in there. And where’s your sister?”

“Lucie’s in here as well,” James called. “We are having a private conversation.”

“Humph,” said Bridget. “Have I ever sung you the song about the young prince who wouldn’t come to dinner when his parents requested it of him?”

“Oh, dear,” murmured Lucie. “Not a song.”

A bonny young man was young Edward the prince

In his finest always dressed.

But one dark day he would not come to dinner

Even at his parents’ request.

Jesse raised his eyebrows. “Is this a real ballad?”

James waved a hand. “You’ll get used to Bridget. She is… eccentric.”

Bridget continued to sing:

His father did weep, his mother did moan

But Edward he would not hear.

That night a highwayman did waylay him

And cut off both his ears.

Cordelia couldn’t help but laugh, even amid her fretting. James looked over at her and smiled, that real smile of his that melted her insides. Bother.

“I think you would look fine without your ears, James,” said Lucie as Bridget stomped off down the hallway. “You could just grow your hair long and cover up the holes.”

“Wonderful advice from my loving sister,” said James, springing off the trunk. “Cordelia, did you want to stay for supper?”

Cordelia shook her head; it would only be painful being around Will and Tessa. And there was the tension with Lucie, which would hardly be solved when they were surrounded by others. “I had better get back to my mother.”

James only nodded. “I’ll walk you out, then.”

“Good night,” said Lucie, not quite directly to Cordelia. “Jesse and I shall hold the fort in the dining room.”

After a careful look up and down the corridor, James ushered Cordelia down the stairs. But their covert escape was not to be: Will appeared suddenly on the landing, in the midst of fixing his cuff links, and beamed with delight to see Cordelia. “My dear,” he said. “A pleasure to see you. Have you come from Cornwall Gardens? How is your mother?”

“Oh, very well, thank you,” Cordelia said, then realized that if her mother really were in peak condition, she had little excuse for staying away from James and the Institute. “Well, she has been very tired, and of course we are all concerned that she get her energy back. Risa has been trying to build her back up again with many… soups.”

Soups?Cordelia was not at all sure why she’d said that. Perhaps because her mother had always told her that ash-e jo, a sour barley soup, could cure anything.

“Soups?”

“Soups,” Cordelia said firmly. “Risa’s caretaking is very thorough, though of course, my mother wishes me by her side as much as possible. I have been reading to her—”

“Oh, anything interesting? I’m always seeking a new book,” said Will, having finished with the cuff links. They were studded with yellow topaz. The color of James’s eyes.

“Ah—no,” Cordelia said. “Only very boring things, really. Books about… ornithology.” Will’s eyebrows went up, but James had already thrown himself into the fray.

“I really must get Cordelia back home,” he said, laying a hand on her back. It was an entirely ordinary husbandly gesture, not at all remarkable. It felt to Cordelia like being struck by lightning between her shoulder blades. “I’ll see you in a moment, Father.”

“Well, Cordelia, we all hope you’ll be back before too long,” Will said. “James is positively pining away without you here. Incomplete without his better half, eh, James?” He went away up the stairs and down the corridor, whistling.

“Well,” said James after a long silence. “I thought, when I was ten years old and my father showed everyone the drawings I’d made of myself as Jonathan Shadowhunter, slaying a dragon, that was the most my parents would ever humiliate me. But that is no longer the case. There is a new champion.”

“Your father is something of a romantic, that’s all.”

“So you’ve noticed?” James still had his hand on her back, and Cordelia did not have the willpower to ask him to remove it. She let him guide her downstairs, where she fetched her coat in the entryway while James went to ask Davies, one of the Institute’s footmen, to bring the carriage around.

She joined him on the front step. He had not put on a jacket, and the icy wind stirred the locks of his dark hair where they kissed his cheeks and the back of his neck. When he saw her come outside, he exhaled—a plume of white—and reached into his pocket.

To Cordelia’s surprise, he drew out a pair of gloves. Her gloves. Pale gray kidskin with a tracery of leaves, though they were now very crumpled, and even a bit spotted, as if drops of rain had fallen on them.

“You left these,” James said, his voice very calm, “when you went to Paris. I wanted to return them to you. My apologies—I’ve been carrying them around all this time and meant to give them to you earlier.”

Cordelia took the gloves from him, puzzled. “But—why have you been carrying them around?”

He ran his hands through his hair, a characteristic gesture. “I want to be honest with you,” he said. “Very honest, because I think it is the only hope we have to come out of this. And I do still hope, Daisy. I will not bother you about it—about you and me—but I will not give up on us either.”

She looked at him in surprise. For all he had joked on the stairway about being humiliated, there was only a quiet determination in his face, his eyes. Even a sort of steely pride. He was not ashamed of anything he felt, that much was clear.

“I went after you that night,” he said. “The night you left. I followed you to Matthew’s, and then to the train station. I was on the platform—I saw you board the train. I would have gone after you, but my father had Tracked me to Waterloo. Lucie had disappeared, and I had to go after her.”

She looked down at the gloves in her hand. “You were there? On the train station platform?”

“Yes,” James said. He reached out and folded her hand over the gloves. His own was reddened with cold, his fingernails bitten down to the quick. “I wanted you to know. I went after you the moment I knew you’d left. I didn’t wait until hurt pride settled in or anything like that. I realized you were leaving and I ran after you, because when someone you love is leaving, all you think about is getting them back.”

Someone you love.His face was inches from hers. She thought, I could raise myself up on my toes and kiss him. He would kiss me back. I could put down the dreadful weight I’ve been carrying, this weight of caution that says: Be careful. You could be hurt again.

But the image of Matthew flashed across her field of vision then. Matthew and the lights of Paris, and all the reasons she had run away in the first place. She heard the creak of the wheels of the carriage as it rolled into the courtyard, and like Cinderella’s midnight clock, the spell was broken.

“Thank you,” she said. “For the gloves.”

She turned to descend the steps; she didn’t look back to see if James watched her depart.

As the carriage rumbled away from the Institute and into the purple-and-gray London dusk, she thought, If James saw me get on that train, he can’t have spent more than an hour with Grace, and probably less. And then—he fled from her? But what could possibly have caused his feelings to change so suddenly as that?

---

Would anything ever feel familiar again? James was not sure. Here he sat, eating supper with his family in the dining room where he’d eaten thousands of meals before, and yet the experiences of the past weeks had made everything strange. Here was the china cabinet with the glass-paneled doors and delicate inlaid floral marquetry; he remembered his mother ordering it from Shoolbred’s to replace the hideous Victorian monstrosity that had been there before. Here were the slim and elegant dining chairs with their backs carved in the shape of ferns that Lucie, when younger, had liked to pretend were warring pirate ships, and the pale green wallpaper, and the white glass lily-shaped lamps on either side of the fluted porcelain vase on the mantel that Tessa kept filled with fresh flowers every week, even in winter.

None of this had changed. But James had. He had left, after all; he had gotten married, moved into his own house. Very soon he would reach the age of majority, and the Clave would acknowledge him as an adult. But now he felt as though circumstance had forced him back into ill-fitting children’s clothes, a costume he had long outgrown.

“And what do you think, James?” said his mother.

James looked up, feeling guilty. He hadn’t been paying any attention. “Sorry, what was that?”

Lucie said, “We were talking about the Christmas party. It’s only three days away.” She gave James a beady look, as if to say, I know perfectly well you weren’t paying attention, and weren’t we just talking about this earlier?

“Really?” James frowned. “Is everyone still planning to attend?”

His parents were extremely dedicated to the tradition of the Institute Christmas party. It had started under Charlotte and Henry, who, his parents had explained, had decided that it didn’t matter that Shadowhunters didn’t celebrate the mundane holiday. It was so pervasive in London, present in every corner of the city through all of December, that they had realized the value of having something festive for the Enclave to look forward to during the long, cold winter months. The Herondales had continued the tradition of a ball in late December; in fact, James knew that it was at one of the Institute Christmas parties that his parents had become engaged to be married.

“It is odd,” Tessa said. “But the invitations were all sent at the beginning of the month, before any of the troubles we’ve been having. We thought perhaps guests would cancel, but they haven’t.”

“It’s important to the Enclave,” Will said. “And the Angel knows, it’s not a bad thing to keep up morale.”

Lucie moved her doubtful look to her father. “Yes, a completely selfless act, holding the party you love more than all other parties.”

“My dear daughter, I am offended by the insinuation,” Will said. “Everyone will be looking to the Institute to set the tone and demonstrate that as the chosen warriors of the Angel, the Shadowhunters will carry on, a united front against the forces of Hell. ‘Half a league, half a league, half a league’—”

“Will!” Tessa said reproachfully. “What have I said?”

Will looked chastened. “No ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ at the table.”

Tessa patted his wrist. “That’s right.”

Jesse said, “Is there anything particularly dangerous about holding the party?”

It was a sensible question. James had noticed this was Jesse’s way generally: he tended to be quiet and offer thoughts rarely, but when he did, they cut to the heart of things.

“Not where Belial is concerned,” said James. “The Institute’s the safest place in London when it comes to demons; if he did somehow attack, the whole Enclave would retreat here as a matter of policy.”

“I suppose,” said Jesse, still in the same calm voice, “I was thinking of my mother. A party like that, with so many of you collected in one place—it might attract her. Draw her here.”

Will regarded Jesse thoughtfully. “And then she would do what?”

Jesse shook his head. “I don’t know. She is unpredictable, but certainly she hates you all, and she has a special loathing for these Christmas parties—she spoke often to me of having been humiliated at one once, and the Enclave not caring.”

Will sighed. “That was me. I read her diary out loud at a Christmas party, long ago. I was twelve. And I was quite severely punished, so in fact, the Enclave was on her side.”

“Ah,” said Jesse. “When I was a child, I thought it was terrible that she had been so often wronged. Later I came to understand that my mother saw everything as a wrong undertaken against her. She collected grievances, as if they were china figurines. She liked to take them out and speak about them, examining them over and over for new facets of evil and betrayal. She held them closer to her than she ever held her children.”

“The next time she acts, the Clave will not be so lenient with her,” said Will tightly. “This time her Marks will be stripped.”

“Father,”said Lucie, looking pointedly in Jesse’s direction.

“It’s all right,” Jesse said. “Believe me. After what she did to me—” He put down his fork, shaking his head. “I try not to think about revenge. I take no pleasure in it, but I know that what is necessary must be done. She has done too much to me, to my sister, to be given another chance.”

Grace.For a moment, James could say nothing; his throat had closed up. The thought of Grace was like falling down an endless black hole, a pit lined with mirrors, each of which reflected back a vision of himself cringing, foolish, filled with shame.

He saw Lucie look at him, her blue eyes wide with worry. He knew she could not understand, but it was clear she sensed his distress. She said loudly, “I was thinking, since we are having the party, that it would be the best opportunity to introduce Jesse to the rest of the Enclave. As Jeremy Blackthorn, of course.”

She had successfully drawn off James’s parents attention. Will drew a lazy circle in the air with the tip of his spoon. “Good thought, cariad.”

“I am sure he will be instantly beloved,” Lucie said.

Jesse smiled. “I would settle for not being left to rot in the Silent City.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Tessa said kindly. “The Clave accepted me, and they’ll accept you as well.”

“He needs something new to wear,” Lucie said. “He can’t go on in James’s old clothes; they’re too short.” This was true; Jesse was taller than James, though thinner as well. “And half of them are fraying, and they all have old lemon drops in the pockets.”

“I don’t mind the lemon drops,” said Jesse mildly.

“Of course,” Will exclaimed. “A new wardrobe for a new man. We must take you to Mr. Sykes—”

“Mr. Sykes is a werewolf,” Lucie explained.

“He does excellent work,” Will said. “Twenty-seven out of thirty days. The others, he gets a bit wild with his colors and cuts.”

“We needn’t depend on Sykes,” Lucie stage-whispered, patting Jesse’s arm. “We’ll get in touch with Anna. She’ll sort you out.”

“If I am going to be presented to the Enclave…” Jesse cleared his throat. “I’d like to make use of the training room. I know very little of fighting, and I could be much stronger than I am. I need not master every skill; I know I am old to begin learning. But—”

“I’ll train with you,” James said. The black pit had receded; he was back at the table with his family again. Relief and gratitude made him sympathetic. He wanted to help Jesse. And if part of it was wanting someone to train with who was not Matthew, he did not admit it to himself at the moment.

Jesse looked pleased. Will was gazing at them both with an expression that seemed to portend a Welsh song on the horizon. Thankfully for everyone present, Bridget appeared suddenly, scowling as she slammed the door behind her. She approached Will and murmured something in his ear.

Will’s eyes lit up. “My goodness. We have a call.”

Tessa looked puzzled. “A call?”

“A call!” confirmed Will. “On the telephone. Bring it in, Bridget.”

James had forgotten about this. A few months before, Will had had one of the new mundane “telephones” installed in the Institute, although James knew that Magnus had done quite a lot of fiddling with magic in order to get it to work. But now it could be used for Institutes to call between one another. James was fairly sure that mundane telephones were usually connected to something by a wire, which this one was not, but he hadn’t wanted to bring it up.

Bridget came in holding a heavy wooden machine. She held it at arm’s length, as though it might explode, while from somewhere within a bell rang continuously, like an alarm clock.

“It just keeps clanging on,” Bridget complained, setting it down on the table with a thump. “I can’t get it to stop.”

“It’s supposed to do that,” Will said. “Just leave it there, thanks.”

He lifted a sort of black cone attached to the wooden box. Immediately a voice, sounding as though it were yelling from the far end of a tunnel, bellowed, “Identify yourself!”

Will held the cone away from his head, looking pained.

James and Lucie exchanged a look. The voice was immediately identifiable: Albert Pangborn, the head of the Cornwall Institute. Lucie gleefully mimed her hands sticking together, to Jesse’s puzzlement and a disapproving look from Tessa.

“This is Will Herondale.” Will spoke into the mouthpiece slowly and clearly. “And you telephoned me.”

Albert shouted back, “This is Albert Pangborn!”

“Yes, Albert,” said Will in the same careful tone, “from the Cornwall Institute. There is no need to shout.”

“I wanted! To tell you!” Albert shouted. “We found that lady! Who went missing!”

“Which lady was that, Albert?” said Will. James was fascinated. It was a rare circumstance to witness a conversation in which his father was the calm, quiet participant.

“The ONE WHO WENT MISSING!” Albert yowled. “From the Adamant Citadel!”

Jesse froze as if his blood had turned to ice. Out of the corner of his eye, James saw Lucie blanch. Will was suddenly all attention, hunched over the receiver of the telephone. “Albert,” he said. “Say that again. You found which missing woman?”

“Titania Greenthorpe!” shouted Albert.

“Do you mean Tatiana Blackthorn, Albert?”

“Whatever her name is!” Albert said. “She can’t answer to it herself, you see!”

“What?” said Will. “What do you mean?”

“We found her out on the moors!” Albert said. “One of us, I mean, not myself! It was young Polkinghorn found her!”

“On the moors?” said Will.

“On Bodmin Moor!” Albert said. “During patrol! She was out like a light when we found her! Still hasn’t woken up! Injured pretty badly, I daresay!”

It must be very strange, James thought, a little dazed, to patrol empty moors, rather than city streets full of mundanes. Albert was still shouting: “We thought she was dead at first, truth be told! She’d been slashed up pretty badly! Didn’t even want to put iratzes on her! Not sure she could take it!”

“Where is she now?” Will said.

“Sanctuary,” said Albert, calming down slightly. “Thought that was best.”

Will nodded, though of course Pangborn couldn’t see him. “It is. Keep her there, Albert.” Tessa was frantically miming drawing on her arm. Will added, “Don’t put any runes on her, though. We don’t know how much demonic magic there might be in her.”

“Amazing what young people get up to today, eh, Will?” Pangborn said. “You know what I mean! The young people! Running wild!”

“I’m one year older than Tatiana,” Will pointed out.

“Why, you’re but a boy!” Albert shouted. “Look, I’ve no idea how you do things in London, but I prefer not to harbor criminals in the Sanctuary of my Institute! Is anyone going to come get this woman?”

“Yes,” Will said. “The Silent Brothers will be on their way shortly, to examine her. Keep her in the Sanctuary until then. No runes, and minimal contact. Stay away from her if you can.”

“Give her what in a can?” Albert shouted, but Will was already hanging up. Without another word, he bent to kiss Tessa, who looked as astonished as everyone else, and walked out of the room.

To contact Jem, of course; James did not have to wonder. He knew his father.

There was a silence. Jesse sat like a statue, his face white, staring at the opposite wall. At last Tessa said, “Perhaps she broke with Belial. She may have—resisted him, or disagreed with him, and he abandoned her.”

“It would be very unlike her to do that,” said Jesse, and there was bitterness in his voice. James could not help but think it would also be very unlike Belial to do that: If Tatiana turned against him, surely he would kill her without a second thought?

“There’s always hope for people, Jesse,” Tessa said. “No one is a lost cause, not even your mother.”

Jesse looked at her, bemused, and James thought, Jesse has never had a kind motherly figure in his life. He’d never known a mother who gave him hope, rather than despair or fear. Now he pushed his chair away from the table and stood up with a small bow. “I think I’d better be alone for a little while,” he said, his voice calm. “I will need to tell Grace this news when I see her tomorrow. But I do very much appreciate the dinner. And the kind words,” he added, and departed.

Lucie said, “Should I go after him, do you think?”

“Not right this moment,” Tessa said. “Sometimes people just need to be by themselves. Poor Tatiana,” she added, to James’s surprise. “I can’t help but wonder if Belial simply took what he wanted from her, all these years, and when he was done, left her to die.”

James wondered if Tessa would still think “poor Tatiana” if she knew what Tatiana had wrought on her own son through Grace. What would she think of how James felt now—the acid burn of bitterness in his throat, the terrible sense of near pleasure in Tatiana’s suffering, which shamed him even as he felt it?

He grabbed for his empty wrist with his hand and held it. No matter how much he wished, he could not tell his parents about the bracelet. His mother always thought the best of everyone, and looking at her face, full of compassionate concern for a loathsome woman who had only ever wished her ill, he could not bring himself to ruin that.