Sona looked hurt. “When I was your age—” she began. This, Cordelia knew, presaged a story about how when Sona had been a girl, she had been perfectly obedient to her parents, a dutiful Shadowhunter, and had always kept her clothes in pristine condition.
Alastair tossed his napkin onto the table. “Our Layla looks exhausted,” he said. “Helping the ill is very tiring. I’ll see her upstairs.”
There were three floors to the town house, the upper floor given over to Alastair’s and Cordelia’s bedrooms and a small study. Diamond-paned windows looked over the dark sky above Kensington. Alastair paused at the top of the stairs and leaned against the damask wallpaper. “Let’s never talk to those terrible people ever again,” he said.
He was twirling one of his Chinese spears between his fingers, its leaf-shaped blade catching the light that seeped up from downstairs. Alastair had a collection of spears, some of which folded up and could be kept in his pockets, several of which were secured in his coat lining.
“I like them,” Cordelia said crossly. “All of them.”
She could hear her mother singing to herself in her bedroom; a long time ago, Alastair himself had often sung and played the piano. Once they had been a musical family. Once things had been very different. Tonight had reminded Cordelia of when she and her brother were children, and co-conspirators as isolated siblings often were. Of the time before Alastair went to school, and came back so very hard to reach.
“Really?” Alastair inquired. “Which one do you find so agreeable? If it’s Herondale, he will never like you better than Miss Blackthorn, and if it’s Fairchild, he will never like you better than the bottle.”
Cordelia’s lips tightened. “Whether you like them or not, they are influential people, and I’d prefer to think you’re keeping our father’s well-being foremost in your mind.”
Alastair snorted. “Your plan is to save Father by making people like you?”
“Clearly you have never thought making people like you was important, Alastair, but I am not like that.”
Alastair looked startled, but recovered quickly. “You should think less about making people like you, and more about making them owe you.”
“Alastair—”
But someone was rapping on the door downstairs. The sound rang in the silence. Whoever was outside knocked three times in quick succession, then stopped.
Alastair’s expression changed. “We’ve spoken of this enough. Good night, Cordelia.”
Not Layla anymore. Cordelia. His expression was stern as he turned to hasten downstairs.
Cordelia reached out and grasped his coat. “Who could be visiting so late? Do you think it is bad news?”
Alastair started, seeming astonished that Cordelia was still present, and his coat slipped through her fingers.
“I know who it is. I will manage the situation. Go to bed at once, Cordelia,” Alastair ordered, not meeting her eyes. “If Mother catches you out of bed, there will be the devil to pay and no pitch hot.”
He dashed down the steps.
Cordelia leaned over the banister. Two floors down, she could see the encaustic tiles of their hall, the newly painted surfaces portraying yellow starbursts shining through a maze of swords. She saw her brother open the door, and saw the shadow cast on the swords and stars as their visitor walked in. The man removed his hat. With some surprise, Cordelia recognized Charles Fairchild.
Alastair glanced around worriedly, but it seemed clear that both their mother and Risa had gone to sleep. He took Charles’s hat and coat, and they headed together toward the drawing room.
Cordelia’s heart was pounding. Charles Fairchild. Charles, who had told James not to venture near Grace. Charles, who Matthew clearly did not trust—but who Alastair clearly did.
Alastair had promised her he would not tell James’s secrets. He had promised.
But he had not wanted to make the promise. Cordelia bit her lip, swore under her breath, and started down the steps. The stairs in their new home were oak, painted gray with a yellow runner up the center and a wrought-iron railing painted gray as well. Cordelia wrestled with her conscience as she ran down them lightly, her stockinged feet making no sound.
There was a back entrance to the drawing room. Cordelia slipped through the dining room, where the plates were still on the table, and down a servants’ corridor. At the end of the hall was the door to the drawing room, already slightly ajar. She pressed herself up against it, peering through the crack—she could just see Charles, warming his hands at the fire crackling in the white plaster grate.
His red hair looked dark in the low light, and very orderly. As Cordelia watched, Alastair stepped closer to Charles: now she could see her brother fully. He was running his fingers through his tangled hair in a hopeless attempt to make it lie flat.
“Alastair.” Charles turned so his back was to the fire. “Why are you looking a state? What happened?”
“I went to find you earlier today,” Alastair said. There was a sulky note in his voice that surprised Cordelia. “My sister was with Anna—I went to your house, and even to your club. Where were you?”
“I was at the Institute, of course. My fiancée remains ill, unless you’ve forgotten.”
“I would be very unlikely,” said Alastair coldly, “to forget your fiancée.”
In the shadows, Cordelia blinked in confusion. Did Alastair not like Ariadne? She did not recall him mentioning her before.
“Alastair,” said Charles, in a warning tone. “We’ve discussed this.”
“You said it would be temporary. A temporary political engagement. But I have spoken with Ariadne, Charles. She very much believes this marriage will happen.”
Alastair had been standing close to Charles, so close their shadows touched. Now he turned his back on Charles and walked over to the bookcases. Cordelia tried to move back and nearly stepped on her dress. Fortunately, Alastair stopped before he could have seen her and stared at the books blankly. Cordelia had rarely seen such misery on his face.
“This is not fair to her, Charles,” said Alastair. “Or to me.”
“Ariadne does not care what I do. Her interests lie elsewhere.” Charles paused for the briefest of moments. “She will gratify her parents with a good match, and I will find it useful to be connected to the Inquisitor. If I become Consul, I could do so much good for the Clave, as well as for you. My mother is too sentimental, but I can make our people strong again. It is what I have wanted all my life. You understand. I told you all my hopes in Paris.”
Alastair closed his eyes, as if the word “Paris” pained him. “Yes,” he said. “But you said—I thought—”
“What did I say? I would not make any false promises. You know how it must be. We are both men of the world.”
“I know,” said Alastair, opening his eyes. He turned to look at Charles. “It is only that—I love you.”
Cordelia inhaled sharply. Oh, Alastair.
Alastair’s voice cracked as he spoke. Charles’s voice cracked too, but his was not the sound of something breaking. It was the sound of a whip.
“You absolutely cannot say that,” Charles said. “Not where someone might hear you. You know it, Alastair.”
“No one can hear us,” said Alastair. “And I have loved you since Paris. I thought you loved me.”
Charles said nothing. And for a moment, all Cordelia could think was that she hated Charles Fairchild for hurting her brother. Then she saw the infinitesimal tremble of Charles’s hand as he put it in his pocket, and she realized that Charles might be scared too.
Charles took a deep breath and crossed the carpeted floor to Alastair’s side. Cordelia could see them both very clearly. Too clearly, perhaps, she thought, as Charles took his hands from his pockets and put them on her brother’s shoulders. Alastair’s lips parted slightly.
“I do,” Charles said. “You know I do.”
His hands slid up into Alastair’s hair. He was still wearing gloves, his fingers dark against Alastair�
��s pale hair; he drew Alastair in toward him, and their lips met. Alastair made a soft sound, like surrender. He slid an arm around Charles’s neck and pulled him down onto the sofa.
They stretched out together, Charles atop Alastair. It was Alastair’s turn to bury his hands in Charles’s hair, to press against Charles’s body and fumble with his waistcoat. Charles’s hands were flat against Alastair’s chest, and he was kissing Alastair hungrily, over and over—
Cordelia squeezed her eyes shut. This was her brother’s life, his business, his very private business. Oh, dear, she hadn’t come for this at all. She could hear soft moans, could hear Alastair whispering to Charles in Persian, endearments she could never have imagined her brother uttering.
There was a gasp. She would risk it, she decided. She would flee, and hopefully they would be too intent on each other to hear her.
Then she heard Charles say, “Alastair. I cannot—I cannot.” There was a thumping sound, and Cordelia opened her eyes to see Alastair sitting disheveled on the couch, and Charles standing, straightening his waistcoat. Alastair’s jacket was thrown over the back of the sofa. “Not now.”
Alastair no longer played music, but he still had a musician’s hands. Cordelia watched as those hands lifted, twisted together in a brief instant of pain, and stilled.
“What is wrong, Charles?” he said, his voice husky and rough. “If this is not what you came for, then why are you here?”
“I thought you had accepted the situation with Ariadne,” said Charles. “I would not leave you, Alastair. We would still be—what we are. And I thought that you would agree to marry too.”
“That I would marry?” Alastair sprang to his feet. “I have told you over and over, Charles, even if I did not have you, I would never marry some poor woman and deceive her as to my love and regard. I have convinced my mother I can be of better use to the family in politics—”
“You will find it difficult to succeed in politics without a wife,” said Charles. “And you do not need to deceive a woman.”
“Ariadne is an unusual case,” said Alastair. “If she did not prefer women, she would be unlikely to be willing to marry you.”
Charles stood very still, his eyes fixed on Alastair’s face. “And if it were not Ariadne?”
Alastair looked bewildered. “Speak sense, Charles. What do you mean?”
Charles shook his head as if he were clearing away cobwebs. “Nothing,” he said. “I am—unsettled. Much has happened this night, all of it bad.”
Cordelia tensed. What did he mean? He couldn’t possibly know about their encounter with the demons at Battersea Bridge. Had someone else fallen ill?
Charles spoke in a heavy voice. “Barbara Lightwood has died.”
Cordelia felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. She heard Alastair as if from a distance, sounding stunned, “Thomas’s sister is dead?”
“I wouldn’t have expected you to care,” said Charles. “I thought you hated those fellows.”
“No,” said Alastair, surprising Cordelia. “But—Ariadne is all right?”
“She lives still,” said Charles. “But Raziel alone knows what will happen. To any of them.”
Alastair sat back down. “Perhaps we should leave London. It may not be safe here for Cordelia, for my mother—”
Cordelia felt a jolt of surprise that her brother had thought of her.
Alastair put his head in his hands. “Nemidoonam,” he whispered. Charles looked blank, but Cordelia understood him: I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.
“We are Shadowhunters,” said Charles, and Cordelia wondered—did he not worry about Matthew falling ill? About Henry? “We do not run, or spend our time in mourning. This is the time to fight and win. The Enclave will need a leader, and with my mother in Idris, now is the time for me to show them my best qualities.” He touched Alastair lightly on the shoulder. Alastair looked up, and Cordelia closed her eyes. There was something too personal about the way Alastair looked at Charles, all his defensiveness stripped away.
“I must go,” Charles said. “But do not forget, Alastair, that whatever I do, it is with the thought of you ever in my mind.”
* * *
“Throw that back over here, Alexander,” Lucie said in a low voice.
“That” was a small red rubber ball. Lucie’s young cousin scooted along the marble floor of the library, but the ball bounced out of his reach and into Lucie’s lap.
Alexander looked mutinous. “Not fair,” he said. He was tired and fussy, as he had been awake for many hours past his usual bedtime. Lucie wasn’t sure what time it was exactly—she was sure many hours had passed since she had learned of Barbara’s death—but it all seemed strangely like a bad dream, timeless and imprecise.
Lucie glanced up and frowned. “Jessamine. Don’t take the child’s ball from him.”
“I just want to be included,” Jessamine said. She was drifting among the stacks, where Lucie had taken Alexander to amuse him while his parents and hers huddled in conversation. At some point Jessamine had appeared, sensitive to the unsettled feeling inside the Institute. She bobbed near Lucie, her long blond hair unbound and floating.
“Perhaps it is better for them to leave London,” Tessa was saying. She and Will sat with Lucie’s aunt Cecily and uncle Gabriel at a long table in the center of the big room. Green banker’s lamps cast a soft glow over the room. “It will be good for Sophie and Gideon to join Henry and Charlotte in Idris, for they are always a comforting presence. And surely being here at the moment will only remind them of Barbara.”
Lucie had seen her uncle Gideon and aunt Sophie only briefly when they had arrived to view Barbara’s body and collect Thomas. Both had seemed hollowed out, like puppets in the shapes of her uncle and aunt, going through the motions of what was necessary. Still, they had tried to comfort Oliver, who sat sobbing beside Barbara’s still body. She had thrashed and cried out at the last, it seemed, just before Tessa had arrived to find her dead: she had clawed Oliver’s hands, and blood stained the white cuffs of his shirt and mixed with his tears.
Oliver, devastated, was to return to York and his parents; Gideon and Sophie, it seemed, were headed to Idris, where Eugenia had collapsed on hearing the news of her sister’s death and was not well enough to travel by Portal. Thomas, though, would not be going with them. He had insisted on remaining in London, and would be staying with Cecily and Gabriel at their home in Bedford Square.
“We will take the best possible care of Thomas,” said Cecily. “Christopher will be so delighted to have him with us. But I cannot help but wonder if Thomas will regret not going to Idris. Surely it will be painful to be parted from his family at such a time.”
“You are also his family,” said Will. “Christopher and Thomas are like brothers, Cecy.”
“I don’t think he’ll regret it,” said Gabriel. He was a kind uncle, but his aquiline features—like Anna’s and Christopher’s—made him look sterner than he was. “Thomas is much like Gideon. The type who must have something to do when tragedy strikes. Christopher wishes for his help in working on an antidote—”
“But Kit is just a boy,” said Cecily. “He should hardly be expected to accomplish something so monumental.”
“There is nothing to say that Christopher and Thomas’s efforts will be in vain,” said Will. “We must all recall there was a time when the Clave doubted us and doubted Henry, and we prevailed.”
“Poor Sophie,” said Jessamine unexpectedly. “She was always such a kind girl. Except for that time she hit me over the head with a mirror and tied me to my bed.”
Lucie did not inquire further. Jessamine’s stories usually ran the gamut from rambling to alarming. Instead she pulled Alexander into her lap and rested her chin atop his head.
“It seems to be the lot of the living to have tragedy visited upon them,” Jessamine mused.
Lucie did not point out that the alternative seemed worse. Jessamine never seemed to wish she was alive; she seemed conten
t in her role as ghost guardian. So different from Jesse, Lucie thought. Jesse, who had asked her to keep him a secret, so that his odd half-life would not be discovered and ended by the Clave. Jesse, who seemed to badly want to live.
“We were all very brave then,” said Tessa. “I wonder sometimes if it is easier to be brave when one is young, before one knows truly how much there is to lose.”
Cecily murmured something in response; Lucie hugged Alexander, who was half-asleep in her arms, tightly. He was a comfort, despite being three years old and fussy. She felt somewhere in the core of her heart the truth of what her mother had just said. And one should put truth in books, she thought, but this would never be the sort of thing she put in the pages of The Beautiful Cordelia. Books were about experiencing joy. This was the raw and awful stuff of life.
It was much too terrible.
* * *
James was sitting at his writing desk, trying to read, but his eyes were skipping over the words on the page. He kept thinking of Barbara. He had not been extremely close with his cousin—the difference in age between them meant she regarded him indulgently as a child, as she did Thomas—but she had been there all his life, kind and cheerful, without her sister’s sharp tongue, always expecting the ready best of everyone. He had never lived in a world without Barbara in it.
Lucie was in the library, he knew, absorbing the company of others. But James had always found solace in books. Admittedly not the kind of book he was reading currently, though.
He had been surprised how very little material there was in the library on the Princes of Hell. They were not the kind of demons Shadowhunters fought—in the mythology about them, they were the mirrors of angels like Raziel. Their interests seemed to go beyond humanity, who were like ants to them. Their battles were with angels and the rulers of realms—other worlds than Earth, dimensions the princes seemed to collect like chess pieces. They could not be killed, though sometimes they were able to wound each other in a manner that left the injured party weakened for years.
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