Finding a suitable flat in central London was turning out to be harder than finding a Naga demon hiding in a drainpipe. Nothing affordable was livable, and nothing livable was affordable. She received the same stipend as any other Shadowhunter, but since she’d been living with her parents, she’d given it all to them for house expenses; she had nothing saved up.

As for the flats she could afford—if she sold her jewelry—they were uniformly awful. There was the flat in the cellar of a house whose owner announced breezily that he would frequently be passing through the parlor in the nude and did not expect to have to knock or make himself known beforehand. There was the one full of rats—which were, the landlady informed her, pets. The others she saw were all mold and mildew, broken faucets and cracked plaster. Worse, whatever mundanes thought of a woman Ariadne’s age—and complexion—looking for her own flat, it was not complimentary, and most had no qualms about making that clear.

“I shall have to go to Whitechapel,” she murmured to herself as she went up the stairs. “I shall find a band of knife-wielding gangsters and join them in order to make some money. Perhaps I shall rise to the top and become a criminal mastermind.”

She plastered a bright smile on her face and pushed the door of the flat open. Inside, she found Anna gazing at her half-cleared bookshelf, books piled on all nearby surfaces. She was balanced on a dangerously tilting chair, wearing a loose white shirt and a silk waistcoat with gold buttons. “I’m arranging them by color,” she said, gesturing at the books. “What do you think, darling?”

“How will you find anything?” Ariadne said, knowing better than to be affected by that casual darling; Anna called everyone that. “Or do you remember the colors of all your books?”

“Of course I do,” said Anna, hopping down from her chair. Her black hair was flyaway and mussed, her pin-striped trousers clinging to her hips—they had clearly been tailored for her slim curves. Ariadne sighed inwardly. “Doesn’t everyone?” Anna peered more closely at Ariadne. “What’s wrong? How goes the flat hunt?”

Half of Ariadne wanted to spill all her troubles at Anna’s feet. If nothing else, they could have had a laugh about the naked landlord in Holborn. But she had promised she’d be out of Anna’s flat as soon as was possible; surely Anna was looking forward to having it back?

“It went very well,” she said, going to hang up her coat. Can’t I just stay here? she did not say. “I found a lovely little place in Pimlico.”

“Splendid!” Anna shelved a green book with a loud thunk, a bit more forcefully than Ariadne would have expected. “When will they let you have it?”

“Oh,” said Ariadne, “the first of the month. New year, new start, as they say.”

“Do they say that?” Anna asked. “Anyway, what’s it like?”

“It’s very nice,” Ariadne said, aware she was digging herself in ever deeper but now unable to stop. “It has a light, airy feel and, er, decorative sconces.” So now she had to find not only a flat in Pimlico in the next ten days, it had to be “light” and “airy.” With “decorative sconces.” She wasn’t even sure she knew what sconces were. “Winston will love it.”

“Winston!” said Anna. “Why didn’t we retrieve him when we went to your parents’ house?”

Ariadne sighed. “I tried, but there wasn’t any chance. I do feel awful. As if I’ve abandoned him. He won’t understand at all.”

“Well, he’s yours,” said Anna. “Winston was a gift, wasn’t he? You have every right to take that parrot back.”

Ariadne sighed and sat down on the settee. “My parents’ letter said they’ve changed the locks. I can’t even get into the house. At least Mother is fond of Winston. She’ll take good care of him.”

“That is terribly unfair to Winston. He will be missing you. Parrots become very attached to their owners, and they can live more than a hundred years, I’ve heard.”

Ariadne raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize you were such a defender of the feelings of birds.”

“Parrots are very sensitive,” Anna said. “It’s not all pirates and biscuits. I know we’re meeting the others at Chiswick this afternoon, but I also happen to know your parents will be at the Consul’s tonight. Which provides a perfect opportunity to liberate Winston so that he may join you in your new life.”

“Did you just come up with this idea on the spot?” Ariadne said, amused.

“Not at all,” Anna said, tossing a volume of Byron’s poetry into the air. “I’ve given it at least two or three hours of consideration over the past few days. And I have devised a plan.”

“Sometimes I wonder if anything makes sense,” said Grace. “But—I am so glad you’re here. And glad Lucie did what she did.”

“I’ll thank her for you.” He smiled a little at the thought of Lucie, that besotted smile that Grace had often seen on the faces of her own suitors. She had to push away a small pang. So often her mother had told her that if Jesse ever fell in love, he would have no further time for his mother and sister. But her mother had been wrong about so many things. And it wasn’t as if the clock could be turned back, either, and undo what he felt. And he seemed happy. She would not want to undo it if she could.

“And you’re both safe,” Grace said. “The Clave doesn’t suspect Lucie of—anything?”

“Grace,” Jesse said. “Don’t worry.”

But she couldn’t help it. The Clave was unlikely to understand, or care about understanding, the distinction between necromancy and what Lucie had done. Jesse would need to pretend to be this obscure Blackthorn cousin, and she would need to pretend that too, for now. Maybe forever. It would still be worth it.

“Last night,” Jesse said, “Mother was recaptured. She was found on Bodmin Moor. I assume Belial tired of her and abandoned her.” His lip curled. “It was bound to happen. She was looking for loyalty from a demon.”

“Recaptured?” Grace was almost too stunned to speak. “So—will they take her to Idris? Try her by the Mortal Sword?”

Jesse nodded. “You know what that means, don’t you? You don’t have to stay here, Gracie. It was brave of you to bring yourself to the Silent Brothers, to see if Mother had done anything to you like she did to me, but surely they would have discovered it by now if she had? And I’m sure it felt safer here, as well,” he added, lowering his voice, “but if you come back to the Institute with me—”

“But you are Jeremy Blackthorn now,” said Grace, her mind whirling. “Surely you are not meant to even know me.”

“Within the walls of the Institute, I am still Jesse,” he said. “Still your brother. And I want you with me. You’ll be safe there—”

“I’ll be whispered about,” said Grace. “Tatiana’s daughter. Everyone in the Enclave will stare.”

“You cannot spend the rest of your life in the Silent City because you are worried about vicious gossip,” said Jesse. “I know there are things Mother forced you to do that you’re ashamed of, but people will understand—”

Grace felt as if her heart had begun to pound in her stomach. Her mind was full of a hot, twisting horror. To go to the Institute—to see James every day, James who had looked at her as if she were the worst monster he had ever seen—James, who she had wronged beyond belief. And there were Cordelia, Charles, Matthew… and Lucie…

Perhaps they did not know the truth yet. It seemed James was keeping the secret. But they would know soon enough.

“I can’t,” Grace said. “I need to stay here.”

“Grace, I too bear the marks of the terrible things our mother forced me to do. Quite literally. But this is Lucie’s family. They will understand—”

“No,” Grace said. “They won’t.”

Jesse’s intelligent green eyes narrowed. “Did the Silent Brothers find something?” he said quietly. “Did she do something to you—?”

Grace hesitated. She could lie to him, she thought. She could hide the truth just a little bit longer. But Jesse was the most important person in her life. She needed him to know who she really was. All of it. If he did not understand not just what she had gone through, but what she had done, he would never really know her.

“It’s worse than that,” she said.

And she told him. All of it, sparing no details, from the forest to the bracelet to Charles to James’s demand that she be arrested. She spared him only one thing: her mother’s last request of her, that she use her power to seduce Jesse, too, and bend him to Belial’s will.

As she spoke, Jesse sat back slowly in his chair, withdrawing his hand from hers. Shivering, she clenched her fists in her lap, as her voice finally trailed off. The story was done. She felt as if she had cut her wrists in front of her brother, and poison had poured out instead of blood.

“You,” Jesse said, and cleared his throat. He was shaking—she could see it, though he had jammed his hands into the pockets of his coat. “You did those things to James? And others, too, Matthew and Charles and—Christopher?”

“Not Christopher,” Grace said. “I never used my power on him.”

“Really.” There was a coldness in Jesse’s voice she had never heard before. “Lucie said you had grown friendly with him; I don’t see how else that could have happened. How could you, Grace? How could you have done all that?”

“How could I not?” she whispered. “Mother told me it was a great gift. She said I was a weapon in her hand, that if I only did what she said, together we would bring you back—”

“Don’t use me as an excuse,” Jesse snapped.

“I felt I had no choice.”

“But you did,” he said. “You had a choice.”

“I know that now.” She tried to look into his eyes, but he would not meet her gaze. “I wasn’t strong enough. I am trying to be strong enough now. That is why I’m here. And why I won’t leave. I told James the truth—”

“But you haven’t told anyone else. Lucie is unaware of this. And Cordelia—what you’ve done to their marriage, Grace—”

James hasn’t told her?Grace thought in surprise, but she was barely able to feel it. She was numb, as if a limb had been severed and she was in the first shock of the wound. “I can’t tell anyone,” she said. “I shouldn’t have told you. It’s a secret. The Silent Brothers wish to keep it hidden so they can use the information to deceive our mother as to what they know—”

“I don’t believe you,” Jesse said flatly. “You are trying to make me a party to your deception. I won’t have it.”

Grace shook her head wearily. “Ask James,” she said. “He will tell you just what I have. Talk to him before you speak with anyone else—he has a right—”

Jesse stood up, knocking over his chair. It clattered to the stone floor. “You are the last person,” he said, “to lecture me about James’s rights.” He snatched the witchlight torch off the wall. His eyes glittered in its light—surely those were not tears?

“I must go,” he said. “I feel sick.”

And without another word, he was gone, taking the light with him.

In the end, the deciding factor was—as it often seemed to be these days—Alastair. He had come straight over to Christopher after the Devil Tavern gathering and said, “I’ll help you in the library with research, if you like.”

Christopher’s eyebrows had gone up, but he’d only said, “You read Persian, don’t you?”

“And Sanskrit,” Alastair said. “Urdu, some Malay, Tamil, Greek, and a bit of Coptic. If that would be useful.”

Christopher looked as if someone had given him a box of kittens with bows on. “Wonderful,” he said. “We’ll meet in the library tomorrow morning.” His eyes darted over to Thomas, who tried to school his expression into complete blankness. “Thomas, are you still on for joining me, as well?”

And then Thomas could not say anything but yes; it was one thing to disappoint Christopher, another to make it seem as if he had changed his mind about assisting Christopher in the library simply because Alastair was going to be there.

Thomas was not someone who normally paid that much attention to his clothes. If they were not bizarre, and did not have holes or burns in them, he was happy. Yet he changed his jacket at least six times that morning before finding a dark olive one that brought out the green in his eyes. He brushed his sandy hair four or five different ways before coming downstairs to find Eugenia, alone in the breakfast room, buttering toast.

She eyed him. “You’re going out wearing that?” she said.

Thomas stared at her in horror. “What?”

She chuckled. “Nothing. You look fine, Tom. Go have fun with Alastair and Christopher.”

“You are a fiend,” he said to her. “A fiend from the deep.”

Thomas was running through various cutting remarks he could have made to Eugenia, had he thought of them at the time, when he arrived at the Institute and took the stairs two at a time to reach the library. It was immediately evident that he was the last to arrive; as he was making his way down the library’s central aisle of heavy oak study tables, he caught sight of Christopher down the stacks, where he had carefully arranged a pile of books as a stepstool so he could reach something else on a top shelf. He turned when he heard Thomas’s footsteps, nearly toppled off the stack, rescued himself with a heroic waving of arms, and jumped down to greet Thomas.

Alastair was somewhat farther into the room, sitting at one of the study tables, green lamp burning and a fearsome stack of leatherbound volumes next to him. Christopher led Thomas over to him.

“Lightwood,” Alastair said, nodding to Christopher, and then to Thomas, “Other Lightwood.”

“Well, that is going to be very confusing,” Christopher said, while Thomas fumed silently at being referred to as Other Lightwood. “But no matter. We are here to find out about paladins.”

“And more specifically,” Alastair said, “to help my sister stop being one.” He sighed. “I’ve been going through these,” he said, patting the stack of books on the table, a patchwork of volumes in languages familiar to Thomas—Greek, Latin, Spanish, Old English—and many that were not.

“You’re a braver man than I,” Christopher said. To Thomas’s quizzical expression he added, “Books of Deeds. The Shadowhunters used to record notable demon fights for their records. Extensively.”

“Or, more often,” Alastair said, “highly boring, completely ordinary demon fights engaged in by notable persons. Heads of Institutes, that sort of thing. And, long ago, paladins.”

“What have you found?” Christopher said.

“A fat lot of nothing,” Alastair said briskly. “All the paladins I’ve found stay paladins until they die in their beds.”

Thomas said, “I wouldn’t think Shadowhunter paladins would want to stop being paladins.”

Alastair grimaced. “It’s not only that. Do you think if a Shadowhunter stopped being the paladin of an angel—and the angel didn’t smite them dead—they’d stay a Shadowhunter? The Clave would surely strip their Marks and cast them out.”

“Because a Shadowhunter paladin is bound to an angel,” Thomas said. “So those vows are holy. To leave the angel’s service would be unholy.” Alastair nodded. “What if they violate their vows? Do something that makes the angel break the connection with them?”

“What are you getting at?” Alastair looked at him, dark eyes curious. They were a velvet-dark, a softer sort of shade than black. For a moment Thomas forgot what he was supposed to be saying, until Christopher poked him in the ribs.

“I mean,” said Thomas, “that if you’re the paladin of an angel, but you do terrible things—commit terrible sins—the angel might reject you. But what if Cordelia does lots of good deeds? Very good deeds, I mean. Feeds the sick, clothes the needy… washes the feet of beggars? I can tell from your faces that you don’t see much merit in the idea, but I think we should consider it.”

“Cordelia already only does good and kind things,” Alastair said testily. “Well,” he added, “the last week excluded, I suppose.”

Christopher looked alarmed, an expression Thomas strongly suspected was mirrored on his own face.

“Oh, what?” snapped Alastair. “Are we all supposed to pretend that Cordelia didn’t run off to Paris with Matthew because James made her miserable, always gazing after that vacuous Grace Blackthorn? And now they’re all back, and they all look miserable. What an appalling mess.”

“It’s not James’s fault,” Thomas said hotly. “He and Cordelia had an agreement—she knew—”

“I don’t need to listen to this,” said Alastair ferociously. Thomas had always secretly loved Alastair’s god-damn-you expression, with his dark eyes snapping and that hard twist to his soft mouth. At the moment, though, he wanted to snap back—wanted to defend James—and at the same time, he couldn’t help but understand what Alastair felt. Eugenia might be a toast-eating fiend, but Thomas had to admit he would not think much of any man marrying her and then mooning about over someone else.

But Thomas never got to say any of this, of course, because Alastair had already snatched up a volume from his table and was striding away toward the privacy of the stacks.

Thomas and Christopher looked at each other gloomily. “I suppose he has a point,” Christopher said. “It is a mess.”

“Did you learn anything from talking to James the other night?” Thomas said. “About Grace, or…”

Christopher sat down on the table Alastair had abandoned. “Grace,” he said, in an odd sort of voice. “If James loved her once, he doesn’t now. He loves Cordelia, and I think for him, not being with her is like it would be for me if I had to give up science and learning things.” He looked at Thomas. “What did you find out from Matthew?”

“He also loves Cordelia, unfortunately,” said Thomas. “And he is also miserable, just like James; in part he is miserable because of James. He misses him, and he feels like he has wronged him, and at the same time he feels wronged—he feels like if James had ever told him that he loved Cordelia, he would never have let himself fall in love with her. And now it’s too late.”

“I wonder,” said Christopher. “Do you think Matthew really loves Cordelia?”

“I think for him Cordelia is a sort of absolution,” said Thomas. “If she loved him, he imagines it would fix everything broken in his life.”

“I don’t think love works that way,” said Christopher, with a frown. “I think some people are suited for each other, and others aren’t. Like Grace and James weren’t suited. James and Cordelia are a much better match.” He lifted a heavy Book of Deeds, holding it up so he could examine the faded gilt spine.

Thomas said, “I suppose I never gave much thought to whether James and Grace were well suited. I barely know her at all, to be honest.”

“Well, she was shut up like Rapunzel in a tower by her mother for all those years,” said Christopher. “Yet despite all that, she is possessed of a fine scientific mind.”

“Is she,” Thomas said, arching an eyebrow.

“Oh, yes. We have had some excellent conversations about my work on the fire-messages. And she shares my views on activated moth powder.”

“Christopher,” said Thomas. “How do you know so much about Grace?”

Christopher’s eyes widened. “I am observant,” he said. “I am a scientist. We observe.” He squinted again at the book in his hand. “This will not be useful. I must return it to the shelf from which it was taken.”

With which unusually formal pronouncement, he sprang off the table and disappeared into the shadows at the east end of the library.

Thomas struck off toward the other end of the library, where Alastair had vanished among the shadows between the white-flickering lamps placed at intervals on the tables. The curving stained-glass windows threw diamonds of scarlet and gold at Thomas’s feet as he turned a corner and found Alastair sitting on the floor, his head thrown back against the wall, a book dangling from his hand.

He started when he saw Thomas but made no move to relocate as Thomas sat down beside him. For a long moment they simply sat together, side by side, looking out at the painted angel on the library wall.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas said, after some time had passed. “The business between James and Cordelia—I oughtn’t to have inserted my opinion into it. James has been my friend for a long time, but I’ve never fathomed his interest in Grace. None of us have.”

Alastair turned to look at Thomas. His hair had grown long since he had come to London; it fell over his eyes, soft and dark as a cloud of smoke. The desire to touch Alastair’s hair, to rub the strands between his fingers, was so strong that Thomas clenched his hands into fists. “I’m sure they would say the same about you and me,” Alastair said, “if they knew.”

Thomas could only stammer. “You—and me?”

“Grace is a mystery to the Merry Thieves, it seems,” said Alastair, “but I am a known and disliked quantity. I am only saying they would no doubt find it just as puzzling that you and I had—”

Thomas could stand it no more. He caught hold of Alastair’s collar and drew him in to kiss him. Alastair had clearly not been expecting it; the book he had been holding fell, and he laid an unsure hand on Thomas’s arm, steadying himself.

But he did not pull away. He leaned into the kiss, and Thomas unclenched his hands and let them find their way into Alastair’s hair, which was rough silk against his fingers. He felt an exquisite sense of relief—he had wanted this for so long, and what had happened between them in the Sanctuary had only made it worse—and then the relief melted away into heat, traversing his veins like liquid fire. Alastair was kissing him hard, each kiss opening his mouth a little wider, their tongues touching in a flickering dance. In between kisses, Alastair murmured soft words in Persian. “Ey pesar,” he whispered, “nik ze hadd mibebari kar-e jamal.” His tongue swept Thomas’s lower lip; Thomas shuddered, pressed into him, his breath catching with every kiss, every movement of Alastair’s body. “Ba conin hosn ze to sabr konam?”

And then, just as abruptly as it had started, it was over. Alastair pulled back, his hand still on Thomas’s arm, his face flushed. “Thomas,” he breathed. “This isn’t something I can do.”

Thomas closed his eyes. “Why not?”

“The situation hasn’t changed,” Alastair said, in a voice closer to his usual tone, and Thomas could feel the spell broken, dissipating as though it had never been. “Your friends hate me. And they are right to do so—”

“I told Matthew,” Thomas said.

Alastair’s eyes widened. “You what?”

“I told Matthew,” said Thomas. “About me. And that I—that we—that I cared about you.” He cleared his throat. “He knew about you and Charles already.”

“Well, Charles is his brother,” said Alastair, in an oddly mechanical voice. “And Matthew is himself—different. But your other friends…”

“Christopher won’t care. As for James, he is married to your sister. Alastair, you are already part of us, part of our group, whether you like it or not. You cannot use my friends as an excuse.”

“It’s not an excuse.” Alastair was still holding on to Thomas’s jacket, still leaning toward him. Thomas could smell Alastair’s scent of smoke and spice and leather. Desire burned deep in his belly like a swallowed coal, but he knew it made no difference. Alastair was shaking his head. “I learned—with Charles—things cannot be all stolen moments. But neither can we hurt others by blindly pursuing what we want—”

“So you do want me,” Thomas said, and felt a bitter sort of gladness.

Alastair’s eyes darkened. “How can you even ask—”

There was a bang and both of them looked up to see Christopher, carrying a tall stack of books, one of which had just fallen loudly to the ground. He seemed delighted to see them, as if it were perfectly normal for Thomas and Alastair to be sitting on the floor, with Alastair clutching Thomas’s sleeve.

“Enough shilly-shallying, you two,” Christopher exclaimed. “I’ve had an idea. We must go immediately to Limehouse.”