Chapter 4: Blessed Ghost

4BLESSED GHOST

I moved, and could not feel my limbs:

I was so light—almost

I thought that I had died in sleep,

And was a blessed ghost.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

Malcolm could barely remain atthe table for the few minutes it took to eat dinner. In fact, he had seemed impatient when, hours after the sun had set, Lucie had pointed out that they needed to eat. She suspected it had been a long time since Malcolm had had a houseguest. And probably, he rarely bothered to sit and eat a full meal at his dining table. Probably he just magicked himself up some food whenever he got hungry, wherever he was.

Though he had grumped about it, he eventually produced plates for them of what he explained was simple but traditional Cornish fishing village fare: pilchards—a sort of tiny fish—grilled over a wood fire; great hunks of bread with a crust you could break teeth on; a creamy round cheese; and a jug of cider. Lucie had torn into the food, feeling as though she hadn’t eaten in days—which, she realized, she hadn’t.

Jesse had eyed the pilchards warily, and the pilchards had glassily eyed him back, but eventually he had made his peace with the situation and eaten a few. Lucie was so caught up in watching Jesse eat that she nearly forgot how hungry she was. Though he must have eaten during the time she’d been sleeping, it was clearly still a revelation to him. With each bite he closed his eyes; he even licked spilled cider from his finger with a look that made Lucie’s insides feel muddled.

Halfway through the meal, it occurred to Lucie to ask Malcolm where exactly he had gotten the food, and she and Jesse exchanged looks of dismay when he admitted he had nicked it from a local family who had been about to sit down to dinner. “They’ll blame the piskies,” he said, which were apparently a type of mischievous local faerie.

After a moment of guilt, Lucie had considered that it wasn’t feasible at this point to return the table scraps, and tried to put it out of her mind.

The moment their plates were empty, Malcolm leaped up and departed again, leaning back into the dining room only to tell them that they should feel free to put the kettle on, if they wished, and then leaving so quickly that the front door rattled on its hinges as he slammed it closed behind him.

“Where does he go, I wonder?” Jesse said. He delicately bit the edge of a treacle tart. “He’s off most of the time, you know. Even while you were unconscious.”

“I don’t know where he goes exactly,” Lucie said. “But I know he’s trying to find out more about what happened to Annabel Blackthorn.”

“Oh, his great lost love?” Jesse said, and when Lucie looked surprised, he smiled. “Malcolm told me a bit. That they loved one another when they were children, and her family disapproved, and he lost her tragically, and now he doesn’t even know where her body is buried.”

Lucie nodded. “He always thought she had become an Iron Sister, but it turned out that never happened. That’s just what her family told him, to stop him looking for her.”

“He didn’t tell me that part. He did tell me that I shouldn’t worry, because the Blackthorns who lied to him were only very distant relations of mine.”

“Oh, dear. What did you say?”

He gave her a wry look. “That if I were to be responsible for the poor behavior of my relatives, I had bigger problems closer to home.”

The reminder of Tatiana made Lucie shiver. Jesse looked immediately concerned. “Shall we go into the drawing room? There’s a fire on.”

This seemed a fine idea to Lucie. She had brought her notebook and pens down from the trunk in her bedroom and had thought she might try to write a bit after dinner.

They went into the room, and Jesse busied himself finding Lucie a shawl to wrap herself in, before going over to the fireplace and kneeling down to prod at the glowing embers with a poker. Lucie, for once feeling no desire to pick up a pen, curled up on the settee and watched him. She wondered if she would ever stop marveling at the realness of this new Jesse. His skin was flushed from the heat of the fire; he had pushed his sleeves up to his elbows, and the muscles in his forearms flexed as he moved.

He rose and turned toward her. Lucie breathed in sharply. His face was beautiful—she had known that, of course she had, it was the same face as always—but before it had been washed out, faded, distant. Now he seemed to glow with a pale fire. There was texture and depth to him that had not been there before, the sense of something real, something that could be touched. There were the faintest of shadows below his eyes, too—had he not been sleeping? Sleeping must be so strange to him; it had been so long since he’d done it.

“Jesse,” she said softly. “Is something wrong?”

The corner of his mouth curled a little. “You know me so well.”

“Not that well,” she said. “I know you seem bothered, but not why.”

He hesitated a moment, then said—in a reckless sort of way, as if he were throwing himself headlong into an unknown darkness, “It’s my Marks.”

“Your—Marks?”

He held out his bared forearms to her. She stood up, throwing off the shawl; she was quite warm enough. She came closer to him; she had not really noted the Marks before, since nearly everyone she knew bore them. On the back of Jesse’s right hand was the old scar of a failed Voyance rune, and inside his left elbow, a rune of Angelic Power. There were four more, she knew: Strength, on his chest; Swiftness and Precision, on his left shoulder; a new Voyance rune, on the back of his left hand.

“These are not mine,” he said, looking at the Voyance and enkeli runes. “They belong to dead people—people Belial murdered, using my hands to do it. I always wanted runes, since I was a child, but now I feel as if I am wearing the marks of their death on my body.”

“Jesse. It’s not your fault. None of it was your fault.” She took his face between her hands, forced him to look directly at her. “Listen to me. I can only imagine how awful it must feel. But you had no control over any of it. And—and when we get back to London, I’m sure the runes can be removed, and you could have new runes put on, ones that would be yours, that you chose.” She tilted her head back. Their faces were inches apart. “I know what it is like, to be gifted by Belial with something you did not ask for, did not want.”

“Lucie—that’s different—”

“It’s not,” she whispered. “You and I, we are alike in that way. And I only hope—that I can always be as brave as you have been, bear up as well as you have—”

He kissed her. She gave a little gasp against his mouth, and her hands slipped down to his shoulders, clutching at him. They had kissed before, at the Shadow Market. But this was something else entirely. It was like the difference between having someone describe a color to you and finally seeing it yourself.

His hands slid into her hair, tangling in the thick strands; she could feel his body change as he held her, feel the tightening in his muscles, the heat blooming between them. She opened her mouth to him, feeling wild, almost shocked at her own lack of restraint. He tasted of cider and honey—his hands moved downward, cupping the wings of her shoulder blades, following the arch of her back. She could feel the racing beat of his heart as he rocked her against him, hear the deep groan low in his throat. He was shaking, whispering against her mouth that she felt perfectly perfect, perfectly alive, saying her name: “Lucie, Lucie.”

She felt dizzy, as though she were falling. Falling through darkness. Like the visions, or dreams, she’d had in her half-consciousness in bed. It felt like it did when she had raised him, like she was losing herself, like she was losing anything that connected her to the real world at all.

“Oh—” She drew away, disoriented and blinking. She met his blazing green eyes, saw the desire darkening his gaze. “Bother,” she said.

Flushed, and very disheveled, he said, “Are you all right?”

“I was just dizzy for a moment—probably still a bit wobbly and tired,” she said disconsolately. “Which is dreadful, because I was enjoying the kissing a great deal.”

Jesse inhaled sharply. He looked dazed, as if he’d just been shaken awake. “Don’t say things like that. It makes me want to kiss you again. And I probably shouldn’t, if you’re—wobbly.”

“Maybe if you just kissed my neck,” she suggested, looking up at him through her lashes.

“Lucie.” He took a shuddering breath, kissed her cheek, and stepped back. “I promise you,” he said, “I would have a difficult time stopping there. Which means I am going to now pick up a poker and respectably tend to the fire.”

“And if I try to kiss you again, you’ll hit me with the poker?” She smiled.

“Not at all. I will do the gentlemanly thing, and hit myself with the poker, and you can explain the resultant carnage to Malcolm when he returns.”

“I don’t think Malcolm is going to want to stay here that much longer.” Lucie sighed, watching the sparks leap up in the grate, dancing motes of gold and red. “He will have to return to London at some point. He is the High Warlock.”

“Lucie,” Jesse said softly. He turned to watch the fire for a moment. Its light danced in his eyes. “What is our plan for the future? We will have to go back to the world.”

Lucie thought about it. “I suppose if Malcolm throws us out, we can go on the road and be highwaymen. We will only rob the cruel and unjust, of course.”

Jesse smiled reluctantly. “Unfortunately, I hear there has been a tragic reduction in the ability of highwaymen to ply their trade due to the increasing popularity of the automobile.”

“Then we shall join the circus,” Lucie suggested.

“Regrettably, I have a terror of clowns and broad stripes.”

“Then we shall hop aboard a steamer bound for Europe,” Lucie said, suddenly quite enthusiastic about the idea, “and become itinerant musicians on the Continent.”

“I cannot carry a tune,” Jesse said. “Lucie—”

“What is it you think we ought to do?”

He took a deep breath. “I think you should return to London without me.”

Lucie took a step back. “No. I won’t do that. I—”

“You have a family, Lucie. One that loves you. They will never accept me—it would be madness to imagine it, and even if they did—” He shook his head in frustration. “Even if they did, how would they explain me to the Enclave without bringing trouble down on themselves? I don’t want to take them away from you. You must return to them. Tell them whatever you need to, make up a story, anything. I will stay away from you so that no blame accrues to you for what you have done.”

“What I have done?” she echoed, in a near whisper. She had thought, of course, so terribly often of the horror her friends and family would feel if they knew the extent of her power. Knew that she could not just see ghosts, but control them. That she had commanded Jesse to come back, back from the shadowy in-between place where Tatiana had trapped him. That she had dragged him back, over the threshold between life and death, thrust him back into the bright world of the living. Because she had willed it.

She had feared what they would think; she had not thought Jesse would fear it too.

She spoke stiffly. “I am the one who brought you back. I have a responsibility to you. You can’t just stay here and—and be a fisherman in Cornwall—and never see Grace again! I am not the only one with family.”

“I have thought of that, and of course I will see Grace. I will write to her, first, as soon as it is safe. I spoke to Malcolm. He thinks my best course of action would be to Portal to a faraway Institute and present myself as a Shadowhunter there, where no one knows my face or my family.”

Lucie stopped short. She had not realized Malcolm and Jesse had been talking about plans, about her, while she was not there. She did not much like the idea. “Jesse, that’s ridiculous. I do not want you to live a life of such—such exile.”

“But it is a life,” he said. “Thanks to you.”

She shook her head. “I did not bring you back from the dead so that—” So that you could go away from me, she almost said, but cut herself off. She had heard a noise—something at the front door. She and Jesse looked at each other in consternation. “Who could it be?” she whispered.

“Probably nothing. A villager, perhaps, looking for Malcolm. I’ll answer it.”

But he seized up the poker from where he’d left it and stalked out of the room. Lucie hurried after him, wondering what it was that made the Blackthorns so fond of using fireplace tools as weapons.

Before he could reach the door, she stepped in front of him, her instinct always to protect Jesse even if he didn’t need protection. She jostled him out of the way and threw the front door open. She stared, halfway between horror and relief, at the three figures on the doorstep, wrapped in winter coats, flushed from the cold and the long walk up the hill.

Her brother. Her father. And Magnus Bane.

---

Cordelia dreamed that she stood upon a great chessboard that stretched out infinitely beneath an equally infinite night sky. Stars spangled the blackness like a scatter of diamonds. As she watched, her father staggered out upon the board, his coat torn and bloody. As he fell to his knees, she raced toward him, but as fast as she might run, she seemed to conquer no distance. The board still stretched between them, even as he sank to his knees, blood pooling around him on the black-and-white board.

“Baba! Baba!” she cried. “Daddy, please!”

But the board spun away from her. Suddenly she stood in the drawing room at Curzon Street, light from the fire spilling over the chess set she and James had played upon so often. James himself stood by the fire, his hand upon the mantel. He turned to look at her, achingly beautiful in the firelight, his eyes the color of molten gold.

In those eyes was no recognition at all. “Who are you?” he said. “Where is Grace?”

Cordelia woke gasping, her covers tangled tightly around her. She fought her way free, almost retching, her fingers digging into her pillow. She longed for her mother, for Alastair. For Lucie. She buried her face in her arms, her body shaking.

The door to her bedroom swung open, and bright light spilled into the room. Framed in the light was Matthew, wearing a dressing gown, his hair a wild tangle. “I heard screaming,” he said urgently. “What happened?”

Cordelia let out a long exhale and unclenched her hands. “Nothing,” she said. “Just a dream. I dreamed that… that my father was calling to me. Asking me to save him.”

He sat down beside her, the mattress shifting under his weight. He smelled comfortingly of soap and cologne, and he took her hand and held it while her pulse slowed its racing. “You and I are the same,” he said. “We are sick in our souls from old wounds. I know you blame yourself—for Lilith, for James—and you must not, Daisy. We will recover together from our soul-sickness. Here, in Paris, we will conquer the pain.”

He held her hand until she fell asleep.

---

James wasn’t sure how he’d expected Lucie to respond to their arrival, but he was startled nonetheless at the fear that flashed across her face.

She took a step back, nearly knocking into the boy standing next to her—Jesse Blackthorn, it was Jesse Blackthorn—and flung her hands up, as if to ward them off. As if to ward off James, and her father.

“Oh, dear,” Magnus muttered.

This struck James as an understatement. He was exhausted—nightmare-plagued sleep interrupted by uncomfortable carriage rides, the unburdening of his soul to Magnus and his father, and a long, wet walk up a slippery cliff path to Malcolm Fade’s house had worn him down to the bone. Still, the look on Lucie’s face—worry, fear—sent protectiveness shooting through his veins.

“Luce,” he said, stepping into the cottage’s entryway. “It’s all right—”

Lucie looked at him gratefully for a moment, then flinched as Will, unsheathing a blade from his weapons belt, strode into the cottage and seized hold of Jesse Blackthorn by his shirtfront. Dagger in his fist, fury in his blue eyes, Will shoved Jesse hard against the wall.

“Foul spirit,” he snarled. “What have you done to my daughter to force her to bring you here? Where is Malcolm Fade?”

“Papa—no, don’t—” Lucie started toward Will, but James caught at her arm. He rarely saw his father angry, but Will had an explosive temper when roused, and threats to his family galvanized his rage more quickly than anything else.

“Tad,”James said urgently; he only used the word for father in Welsh when he was trying to get Will’s attention. “Wait.”

“Yes, please wait,” Lucie broke in. “I’m sorry I left as I did, but you don’t understand—”

“I understand that this was a corpse possessed by Belial,” Will said, holding his blade level with Jesse’s throat. Jesse didn’t move; he hadn’t moved, in fact, since Will had grabbed him, nor had he spoken. He was very pale (well, he would be, wouldn’t he, James thought), his green eyes burning. His hands hung carefully loose at his sides, as if to say, See, I present no threat. “I understand that my daughter is softhearted and thinks she can save every fallen sparrow. I understand that the dead cannot live again, not without exacting a terrible price on the living.”

James, Lucie, and Magnus all started to speak at once. Will said something, angrily, that James could not quite hear. Looking exasperated, Magnus snapped his fingers. Blue sparks leaped from them, and the world went utterly quiet. Even the sound of the wind was gone, swallowed up in Magnus’s spell.

“Enough of this,” the warlock said. He was leaning in the embrasure of the door, hat tipped over his forehead, his posture a study in exaggerated calm. “If we are discussing necromancy, or possible necromancy, that is my area of expertise, not yours.” He looked closely at Jesse, his gold-green eyes thoughtful. “Does he speak?”

Jesse raised his eyebrows.

“Oh, right,” Magnus said, and snapped his fingers again. “No more Silence spell. Proceed.”

“I speak,” Jesse said calmly, “when I have something to say.”

“Interesting,” Magnus murmured. “Does he bleed?”

“Oh no,” said Lucie. “Don’t encourage my father. Papa, don’t you dare—”

“Lucie,” Jesse said. “It’s all right.” He raised his hand—the one with the stolen Voyance rune slashed across the back. He brought his palm up and pressed it to the tip of Will’s dagger.

Blood welled, red and bright, and spilled down his hand, reddening the cuff of his white shirt.

Magnus’s eyes narrowed. “Even more interesting. All right, I’m tired of freezing in this doorway. Malcolm must have some sort of sitting room; he likes his creature comforts. Lucie, lead us to it.”

Once they had piled into the parlor—quainter and prettier than James would have guessed—Will and James sank down onto a long sofa. Lucie, on her feet, watched as Magnus placed Jesse in front of the roaring fire and commenced some kind of full magical examination of him.

“What are you looking for?” Jesse said. James thought he sounded nervous.

Magnus looked up at him briefly, his fingers dancing with blue sparks. Some had caught in Jesse’s hair, bright as scarab beetles.

“Death,” he said.

Jesse looked grimly stoic. James supposed he would have learned to endure unpleasant things, given the life he’d led—or was it a life? It had been once; but what would one call what he’d experienced since? A sort of nightmare life-in-death, like the monster from the Coleridge poem.

“He is not dead,” Lucie said. “He never was. Let me explain.” She sounded weary, as James had felt when spilling his own secrets at the wayside inn. How much trouble could have been avoided if they’d only all trusted one another in the first place? he thought.

“Luce,” James said gently. She looked so tired, he thought, at the same time both younger and older than he’d remembered. “Tell us.”

Much of Lucie’s story James could have guessed, in its broad strokes if not in its details. First came Jesse’s tale: the story of what Belial, and his own mother, had done to him. Much of it James already knew: how Belial had used the corrupt warlock Emmanuel Gast to seed a bit of Belial’s demonic essence inside Jesse when he was just a baby; how that essence had destroyed Jesse when the time came for his first Marks to be placed upon him. How Tatiana had turned her dying son into a sort of living specter: a ghost during the nights, a corpse during the days. How she had preserved his last breath in the gold locket that Lucie now wore about her neck, hoping one day to use it to bring Jesse back to life.

How Jesse had sacrificed that last breath, instead, to save James.

“Really?” Will sat forward, frowning in that way of his that suggested careful thought rather than displeasure. “But how—?”

“It’s true,” James said. “I saw him.”

A boy leaning over him: a boy with hair as black as his own, a boy with green eyes the color of spring leaves, a boy who was already beginning to fade around the edges, like a figure seen in a cloud that disappears when the wind changes.

“You said, ‘Who are you?’?” Jesse said. Magnus seemed to be done examining him; Jesse was leaning against the fireplace mantel, looking as if Lucie’s telling of her story—which was his, too—was draining him as well. “But—I couldn’t answer you.”

“I remember,” James said. “Thank you. For saving my life. I didn’t get to say it before.”

Magnus cleared his throat. “Enough sentimentality,” he said, obviously wishing to forestall Will, who looked as if he were considering leaping up and folding Jesse into a fatherly embrace. “We have a good understanding of what happened to Jesse. What we do not understand, dear Lucie, is how you brought him back from the state he was in. And I am afraid we must ask.”

“Now?” said James. “It’s late, she must be exhausted—”

“It’s all right, Jamie,” Lucie said. “I want to tell it.”

And she did. The story of her discovery of her powers over the dead—that she could not only see them when they wanted to remain hidden, as James and Will could, but could command them, and they were compelled to obey her—reminded James of the discovery of his own power, of the combined sense of strength and shame that it had brought.

He wanted to stand up, wanted to reach out to his sister. Especially as her story went on—as she told how she had raised an army of the drowned and dead to save Cordelia from the Thames. He wanted to tell her how much it meant to him that she had saved Cordelia’s life; wanted to tell her how much bleak horror he felt at the thought that he might have lost Cordelia. But he kept his mouth shut. Lucie had no reason to believe he wasn’t in love with Grace, and he would only look to her like an awful hypocrite.

“I am somewhat insulted,” Magnus said, “that you went to Malcolm Fade to seek his advice on what to do about Jesse, and did not come to me. Usually I am the warlock you annoy first, and I consider that a proud tradition.”

“You were in the Spiral Labyrinth,” Lucie reminded him. “And—well, there were other reasons for asking Malcolm, but they don’t matter now.” (James, who felt he had become an unwilling master of the ability to tell only as much of a story as was required at the time, suspected they mattered quite a bit, but said nothing.) “Malcolm told us, told me, that it was like Jesse was stuck at the threshold between death and life. Which is why you couldn’t see him like you can normal ghosts.” She looked over at Will. “Because he wasn’t really dead. What I did to bring him back wasn’t necromancy. I just—” She interleaved the fingers of one hand with the other. “I commanded him to live. It would not have worked if he were truly dead, but since I was only uniting a living soul with a living body—from which it had been improperly separated—it did.”

Will pushed a lock of black hair, threaded with strands of gray, back from his forehead. “What do you think, Magnus?”

Magnus looked at Jesse, still tensely propped against the mantel, and sighed. “There are a few blotches of death energy on Jesse.” He held up a finger before anyone could speak. “But they are only at the sites of the runes that Belial placed on him.”

So James had told Will and Magnus the full extent of what Belial had done to Jesse, Lucie thought. Jesse himself looked as if he were about to be sick.

Magnus added, “Otherwise, as far as I can tell, this is a healthy, living human being. I’ve seen what happens when someone raises the dead. This… is not that.”

James said, “I was present when Lucie told Jesse to cast out Belial. And he did it. It is not easy to battle a Prince of Hell for your own soul. To win the fight—” James met Jesse’s gaze directly. “It takes courage, and more than that. It takes goodness. Lucie trusts him; I believe we should too.”

A little of the tension seemed to leave Jesse, a loosening of the tightness that wrapped him like invisible chains. He looked at Will—they all looked at Will, Lucie with a desperate hope in her eyes.

Will rose to his feet and crossed the room to Jesse. Jesse did not cringe away, but he looked visibly nervous. He stood still and watchful, not dropping his gaze, waiting for Will to make the first move.

“You saved my son’s life,” said Will. “And my daughter trusts you. That’s good enough for me.” He held out a hand to Jesse to shake. “I apologize for having doubted you, son.”

At that last word, Jesse lit up like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. He had never had a father, James realized. The only parent he had had was Tatiana; the only other adult force in his life had been Belial.

And Will seemed to be thinking the same thing. “You really are the spitting image of your father, you know,” he said to Jesse. “Rupert. It’s a pity you never knew him. I’m sure he would have been proud of you.”

Jesse looked as if he had actually grown taller. Lucie beamed over at him. Ah, James thought. This is not some sort of crush. She is truly in love with Jesse Blackthorn. How did I never guess any of this was happening?

But then, he had kept his own secrets about love, too well. He thought of Matthew, who would be with Cordelia now in Paris. He tried to breathe around the pain of the thought.

“Now,” said Will, and with a decided air, clapped Jesse on the shoulder. “We can stand around blaming Tatiana, and believe me, I do, but it won’t help the present situation. It seems you are our concern, young Jesse. What are we going to do with you?”

Lucie frowned. “Why don’t we just go back to the Clave? And explain what happened? They already know Tatiana was up to dark doings. They wouldn’t blame Jesse for what was done to him.”

Magnus rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “No. Terrible idea. Certainly not.”

Lucie glared at him.

Magnus shrugged. “Lucie, your heart is in the right place.” Lucie stuck out her tongue at him, and he smiled. “But it would be quite dangerous to start involving the Clave on a large scale. There are some who have every reason to believe this story, but just as many, if not more, who would strongly prefer to disbelieve it.”

“Magnus is right,” said Will. “Unfortunately. This is a question of nuance. Jesse was not brought back from the dead; he was never truly dead to begin with. Still, he was possessed by Belial. And during that possession he did—”

The light had gone out of Jesse’s face. “I did terrible things,” he said. “They will say, ‘Well, if he was alive, then he was responsible for the things he did; if he was dead, then this is necromancy.’?” His gaze flicked to Lucie. “I told you I could not return to London,” he said. “Mine is a complicated story, and people do not want to hear complicated stories. They want simple stories, in which people are either good or evil, and no one good ever makes a mistake, and no one evil ever repents.”

“You have nothing to repent,” said James. “If there is anyone who knows what it is like to have Belial whispering in their ear, it is me.”

“Ah, but you have never done his bidding, have you?” said Jesse, with a bitter smile. “I think there is nothing to be done here save for me to go away. A new identity—”

“Jesse, no.” Lucie started toward him, then swayed back. “You deserve to have your life. The one Tatiana tried to steal from you.”

Jesse said nothing. James, reminded of his sister’s admonition to treat him like a person, said, “Jesse. What would you want to do?”

“What do I want?” said Jesse with a sad smile. “I want four impossible things. I want to join the Enclave in London. I want to be a Shadowhunter, as I was born to be. I want to be accepted as a normal, living person. I wish to reunite with my sister, the only real family I’ve ever had. But I don’t see how any of that is possible.”

A silence came over the room as they pondered this; it was interrupted by a sudden loud creak that made them all jump. It was coming from the direction of the entryway, and after a moment Malcolm Fade came into the room, stamping his feet on the stone floor to remove the snow from his boots. He was hatless, white flakes of snow caught in his already white hair. He looked thinner, James thought, than the last time he’d seen him; his look was intense, and peculiarly faraway. It took him a long moment to notice that his sitting room was full of visitors. When he did see them, he froze in place.

“Thought we’d pop by, Malcolm,” said Magnus airily.

Malcolm looked as if he wanted nothing more than to flee through the night, winding up in the morning perhaps in Rio de Janeiro or some other far-flung locale. Instead he sighed and resorted to the last bulwark of an Englishman under stress.

“Tea?” he suggested.

---

It was late, and Anna Lightwood was getting tired. Unfortunately, the party in her flat showed no signs of slowing. Nearly all her Shadowhunter friends were out of town for a variety of silly reasons, and she had taken the opportunity to invite over some of those Downworlders she wished to know better. Claude Kellington, the master of music at the Hell Ruelle, had a new composition to debut, and he wished to do so before an intimate audience. Anna’s flat, according to him, was the perfect spot.

Kellington’s new composition involved a lot of singing, never Claude’s strongest talent. Nor had Anna realized that it was a song cycle adapted from an epic poem also of his composition. The performance had now entered its fourth hour, and Anna’s guests, however well disposed toward the artist, had long ago become bored and drunk. Kellington, whose usual audience were the bored and drunk denizens of the Hell Ruelle, hadn’t even noticed; he also, Anna noted, had apparently never heard of the word “intermission.”

Now a vampire and werewolf whose names Anna did not recall were entangled passionately on her sofa, a positive step for Downworlder relations, at least. Someone in the corner by the china cabinet had gotten into the snuff. Even Percy the stuffed snake looked worn-out. Every now and again Anna took a discreet glance at her watch to note the hours ticking by, but she had no idea how to stop Kellington politely. Every time he paused for a moment she stood to interject, but he would only barrel right into the next movement.

Hyacinth, a pale blue faerie in the employ of Hypatia Vex, was here and had been sending suggestive glances in Anna’s direction all evening. She and Anna had a history, and Anna did not like to repeat a reckless debauch from her past; still, Kellington’s performance would have normally driven her into Hyacinth’s arms before the first hour was up. Instead she had been carefully avoiding the faerie girl’s gaze. Looking at Hyacinth only reminded Anna of the last words Ariadne had spoken to her. It is because of me that you have become what you are. Hard and bright as a diamond. Untouchable.

The same words repeated themselves in her mind every time she thought about romance these days. What had once interested her—the purr of petticoats falling to the ground, the whispering fall of loosened hair—no longer did, unless it was Ariadne’s hair. Ariadne’s petticoats.

She would forget, she told herself. She would make herself forget. She had thrown herself into distractions. This performance of Kellington’s, for instance. She had also held a life-drawing class with Percy as the subject, she had attended a number of shockingly dull vampire dances, and she had played cribbage with Hypatia until dawn. She missed Matthew more than she had thought possible. Surely he would have been able to distract her.

She was shaken from her reverie by a sudden knocking at the door. Startled, Anna rose. It was quite late for an unanticipated visitor. Perhaps—hopefully—a neighbor come to complain of the noise?

She threaded her way across the room and threw the door open. On the threshold, shivering with cold, stood Ariadne Bridgestock.

Her eyes were red, her cheeks blotchy. She’d been crying. Anna felt her stomach drop; whatever she might have rehearsed to say the next time she and Ariadne spoke disappeared from her mind instantly. Instead she felt a prickle of fear—what had happened? What was wrong?

“I’m sorry,” Ariadne said. “For bothering you.” Her chin was raised high, her eyes bright with defiance. “I know I shouldn’t have come. But I’ve nowhere else I can go.”

Wordlessly Anna stepped aside to let her into the flat. Ariadne came inside; she was carrying a small holdall, and the coat she wore was far too thin for the weather. Her hands were bare. Anna’s alarm ticked up a notch. Something was certainly wrong.

In that moment, though Ariadne had said nothing, Anna made a decision.

She strode over to the piano, which Kellington was playing fortissimo while singing something about a lonely wolf in the moonlight, and closed the fallboard on his hands. The music stopped abruptly, and Kellington looked up at her with a hurt expression. Anna ignored him. “Thank you all so much for coming tonight,” she said loudly, “but alas, pressing Nephilim business has arisen. I’m afraid I must ask you all to depart.”

“I’m only halfway through,” protested Kellington.

“Then we shall gather at some other time to hear the second half,” Anna lied, and in a few minutes she had managed to herd the dozen or so guests out of the flat. A few grumbled, but most only looked puzzled. As the door closed on the last of them a silence settled, the uncanny stillness that always followed the end of a party. Only Ariadne remained.

A few minutes later found Ariadne perched uneasily on Anna’s settee, her legs curled under her, her coat drying by the fire. She had stopped shivering once Anna had gotten some tea into her, but the look in her eyes was grim and faraway. Anna waited, lounging with a false casualness against the back of the settee.

As she sipped, Ariadne looked around the flat slowly, taking it in. Anna was puzzled by this until she realized with a start that Ariadne had never actually been here before. Anna had always arranged to meet her elsewhere.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” Ariadne said.

Oh, thank the Angel, she’s going to bring it up herself,Anna thought. Anna had always welcomed those in distress to her flat—Eugenia, weeping over Augustus Pounceby; Matthew, full of sorrows he could not name; Christopher, fretting that his science would come to nothing in the end; Cordelia, desperately in love with James but too proud to admit it. She knew how to talk to the heartbroken; she knew it was always best not to push for information, and to wait for them to speak first.

But with Ariadne, things were different; Anna knew she could not have held back a moment longer from asking her what had happened. It mattered too much. That was the problem. With Ariadne, things had always mattered too much.

Ariadne began to speak—slowly, and then faster. She explained that earlier that day the Consul had come to seek news of her father, and that she had gone into his office afterward and found a file full of information about the Herondales and the Lightwoods, and all the times any of them had perhaps bent a small law, or caused a problem in the Enclave through an error. None of it, she said, rose to a level of significance such that the Inquisitor should take interest.

Anna did not, as she wanted to, immediately ask whether Ariadne had seen any entries about her specifically. Instead she only frowned and said, “Well, I don’t like the sound of that. What could he hope to accomplish by such a record?”

“I don’t know,” Ariadne said. “But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that in the fireplace, partly burned, I found this.”

From the pocket of her coat, she withdrew a sheet of paper, crumpled and black at its edges, and handed it to Anna. It was obviously a letter, with the Inquisitor’s sign-off and messy signature halfway down the page, but it was singed with small holes and its first page was missing.

—and I have always considered you to be one of the brightest [blotch] in the Shadowhunter firmament. I have found us to be aligned in our views as to the proper behavior of a Shadowhunter and the importance of the Law and strict adherence to it. Therefore I have watched with growing concern, as it seems to me your sympathy and even preference has increased toward the Herondales and some of the more scandalous Lightwoods with whom they consort. I have reasoned with you and argued with you, all, it seems, to no avail. Therefore I have decided to take the step of letting you know that the secrets which you believe well hidden are known to me. There is such in your history as I might be willing to overlook, but I can assure you the rest of the Clave will not. You should be aware that I intend to [blotch] the Herondales and have them removed from [blotch]. With your help, I believe I could also make charges stick against certain of the Lightwoods as well. I expect resistance from the Enclave, as some people are sentimental, and this is where your support of me will be key. If you back me in my actions to prune the more corrupt branches of the Nephilim tree, I will overlook your indiscretions. Your family has benefited from the spoils of—here the letter became illegible, marred by a huge inkblot—but it could all be lost if your house is not in order.

I remain,

Inquisitor Maurice Bridgestock

Anna looked up at Ariadne. “Blackmail?” she said. “The Inquisitor—your father—is blackmailing someone?”

“It certainly looks that way, doesn’t it,” Ariadne said grimly. “But it’s impossible to tell whom he is blackmailing, or why, or what about. I only know my mother was furious when she realized what I’d found.”

“It might not be what it looks like,” Anna offered. “He didn’t send this, for one thing.”

“No,” said Ariadne slowly, “but do you see this blotch? ‘Your family has benefited from the spoils of—something.’ I think this must have been an early draft and he discarded it in the fire.”

Anna frowned. “Without the first page, it is hard to even guess who the target might be. It does seem the person is neither a Herondale nor a Lightwood—they are both mentioned as separate from the recipient.” Anna hesitated. “Did your mother really throw you out just because you found these papers?”

“Not… entirely,” said Ariadne. “I was greatly distressed when I found the files and the letter. She said it was none of my business. That it was my concern only to be an obedient and dutiful daughter, and to make a good marriage. And when she said that, well… I may have lost my temper.”

“Oh?” said Anna.

“I told her I would not make a good marriage, I would not make any marriage, that I would never get married, because I had no interest at all in men.”

The air seemed to have been sucked from the room. Anna said quietly, “And?”

“She fell to pieces,” Ariadne said. “She begged me to say it wasn’t true, and when I wouldn’t, she said I could not let such impulses ruin my life.” She scrubbed impatiently at her tears with the back of her hand. “I could see in her eyes that she had already known. Or at least suspected. She told me to think of my future, that I would be alone, that I would never have children.”

“Ah,” Anna said softly. She ached inside. She knew how badly Ariadne had always wanted children, that that desire had been at the heart of what had ended their relationship two years ago.

“I went to my room, threw a few things into a holdall—I told her I would not live under the same roof as her and Papa if they would not accept me as I truly was. As I am. And she said—she said she would promise to forget everything I had told her. That we could pretend I had never spoken. That if I were to tell Papa what I had told her, he would throw me out onto the street.” Anna did not breathe. “And so I fled,” Ariadne finished. “Left the house and came here. Because you are the most independent person I know. I cannot go back to that house. I will not. My pride and my… my self depend on it. I need to learn how to strike out on my own. To live independently, as you do.” Her expression was determined, but her hands trembled as she spoke. “I thought… if you could show me how…”

Anna gently took the rattling teacup from her. “Of course,” she said. “You shall be as independent as you wish. But not tonight. Tonight you have had a shock, and it is very late, and you must rest. In the morning you will start a new life. And it will be wonderful.”

A slow smiled bloomed across Ariadne’s face. And for a moment, Anna was undone by her sheer beauty. The grace of her, the way her dark hair glowed, the line of her neck and the soft flutter of her lashes. An impulse to take Ariadne in her arms, to cover her eyelids and her mouth with kisses, came over Anna. She curled her hands into fists behind her back, where Ariadne would not see them.

“You take the bedroom,” she said evenly. “I will sleep here on the chaise longue; it is quite comfortable.”

“Thank you.” Ariadne rose with her holdall. “Anna—the last time I saw you—I was angry,” she said. “I should not have said you were hard. You have always had the biggest heart of anyone I have known, with room in it for all manner of waifs and strays. Like me,” she added, with a sad little smile.

Anna sighed inwardly. In the end, Ariadne had come to her for the same reason Matthew did, or Eugenia: because Anna was easy to talk to, because she could be depended on for sympathy and tea and a place to sleep. She did not blame Ariadne, or think less of her for it. It was only that she had hoped that perhaps there had been a different reason.

A little while later, after Ariadne had gone to bed, Anna went to bank up the fire for the night. As she turned back, she caught Percy’s disapproving scowl.

“I know,” she said quietly. “It is a terrible mistake, letting her stay here. I shall come to regret it. I know.”

Percy could only agree.

---

No one, as it turned out, wanted tea.

“Malcolm Fade,” Will said, advancing on the warlock. His anger, which had dissipated quickly enough on hearing Lucie’s story, seemed to have returned along with Malcolm. James stood up, ready to intervene if needed; he knew the tone in his father’s voice. “I should have you hauled in front of the Clave, you know. Put on trial, for breaking the Accords.”

Malcolm walked past Will and threw himself into the chair next to the fireplace. “On what charges?” he said, sounding tired. “Necromancy? I didn’t perform any necromancy.”

“Well,” said Magnus, folding his arms, “you did take a Shadowhunter child to a secret location without her parents’ knowledge. That’s frowned on. Oh, and you stole the corpse of a Shadowhunter. I’m pretty sure that’s frowned upon as well.”

“Et tu, Magnus?” Malcolm said. “Have you no solidarity with your fellow warlocks?”

“Not when they kidnap children, no,” said Magnus dryly.

“Malcolm,” Will said, and James could tell he was trying to keep his voice down, “you’re the High Warlock of London. If Lucie came to you with this forbidden business, you should have said no. You should have come to me, in fact.”

Malcolm sighed, as though the whole situation exhausted him. “A long time ago, I lost someone I loved. Her death—her death almost destroyed me.” He looked at the window, at the gray sea beyond. “When your daughter came to me for aid, I couldn’t help but sympathize. I couldn’t turn her away. If that means I must lose my position, then so be it.”

“I won’t let Malcolm lose his position because of me,” snapped Lucie, putting her hands on her hips. “I went in search of him. I demanded his help. When I restored Jesse to life, Malcolm didn’t even know I was doing it. When he arrived, I—” She broke off. “I insisted on being taken to Cornwall. I feared what the Clave would do to Jesse. I was trying to protect him, and so was Malcolm. This is all my doing. And I am happy to go before the Clave and say so.”

“Lucie,” James said. “That’s not a good idea.”

Lucie gave him a look that reminded him of certain scenes from Lucie’s first novel, Secret Princess Lucie Is Rescued from Her Terrible Family. If he recalled correctly, the brother of the main character, Cruel Prince James, had a habit of putting vampire bats in his sister’s hair, and later died a much-deserved death when he fell into a barrel of treacle.

“James is right. The Clave is brutal, ruthless,” said Malcolm in a grim tone. “I would not wish you to be questioned by them, Lucie.”

“The Mortal Sword—” Lucie began.

“The Mortal Sword will force you to reveal not just that you raised Jesse, but that you were able to do it because of Belial,” said Magnus. “Because of the power that comes from him.”

“But then James—and Mama—”

“Exactly,” said Will. “Which is why involving the Clave in any aspect of this is a poor idea.”

“Which is why I remain a problem,” said Jesse. “In terms of my returning in any way to the world of Shadowhunters.”

“No,” said Lucie. “We will think of something—”

“Jesse Blackthorn,” said Malcolm, “with his mother and his heritage and history, cannot return to Shadowhunter society, at least not in London.”

Lucie looked stricken; Jesse had the grim expression of someone already resigned.

Magnus narrowed his eyes. “Malcolm,” he said, “I feel you are trying to tell us something.”

“Jesse Blackthorn cannot join the London Enclave,” said Malcolm. “But—because of my history, my research, nobody knows more about the Blackthorn family than I do. If I can find a means by which Jesse can be returned to Shadowhunter society, without suspicion… could we then consider this whole matter put behind us?”

Will looked at Lucie for a long time. Then he said, “All right.” Lucie exhaled, her eyes closing in relief. Will pointed at Malcolm. “You have until tomorrow.”