This time, however, he knew.
He crawled across the splintery floor and knelt to open the closet door. Inside, he pushed aside clothes and various packets and potions, feeling along the walls for what he wanted. When he emerged, coughing on dust balls, he was dragging a decent-sized wooden trunk. Though he had lived a long time, he tended to travel light: to keep very few mementos of his past. He sensed somehow that they would weigh him down, keep him from moving forward. When you lived forever, you could spend only so much time looking back.
It had been so long since he’d unlocked the trunk, it came open with a squeal of hinges that sent Chairman Meow skittering under the sofa, his tail twitching.
The heap of objects inside the trunk looked like the hoard of an unfastidious dragon. Some objects gleamed with metal and gems—Magnus drew out an old snuffbox with the initials WS picked out across the top in winking rubies, and grinned at the bad taste of the thing, and also at the memories it evoked. Others seemed unremarkable: a faded, cream-colored silk ribbon that had been Camille’s; a matchbook from the Cloud Club with the words I know what you are written on the inside cover in a lady’s hand; a limerick signed OFOWW; a half-burned piece of stationery from the Hong Kong Club—a place he had been barred from not for being a warlock, but for not being white. He touched a piece of twisted rope nearly at the bottom of the pile, and thought of his mother. She had been the daughter of a Dutch colonialist man and an Indonesian woman who had died in childbirth and whose name Magnus had never known.
He was almost at the bottom of the trunk when he found what he was looking for and drew it out, squinting: a black-and-white paper photograph mounted on hard cardboard. An object that really shouldn’t have existed, and wouldn’t if Henry had not been obsessed with photography. Magnus could picture him now, ducking in and out from beneath his photographer’s hood, racing with the wet plates to the darkroom he’d set up in the crypt to develop the film, shouting at his photographic subjects to keep still. Those were the days when in order to render an accurate photograph, one had to remain motionless for minutes at a time. Not easy, Magnus thought, the corner of his mouth flicking up, for the crew of the London Institute.
There was Charlotte, her dark hair up in a practical bun. She was smiling, but anxiously, as if squinting into the sun. Beside her was Jessamine in a dress that looked black in the photo, but which Magnus knew had been dark blue. Her hair was curled and ribbons fell like streamers from the brim of her straw bonnet. She looked very pretty, but very unhappy. He wondered how she would have reacted to someone like Isabelle: a girl her own age who obviously loved Shadowhunting, who showed off her bruises and the scars of her marks as if they were jewelry instead of hiding them with Mechlin lace.
On the other side of Charlotte stood Jem, looking like a photographic negative himself with his silvery hair and eyes turned almost white; his hand rested on his jade dragon-topped cane, and his face was turned toward Tessa’s. Tessa—Tessa’s hat was in her hand and her long brown curls blew free, slightly blurred by their motion.
There was a faint halo of light around Will: as befitted his nature and would have surprised no one who’d known him, he had not been able to stand still for the photograph. As always, he was hatless, his black hair curling against his temples. It was a loss not to be able to see the color of his eyes, but he was still beautiful and young and a little vulnerable-looking in the photograph, with one hand in his pocket and the other behind his neck.
It had been so long since Magnus had looked at the photograph that the resemblance between Will and Jace struck him suddenly. Though it was Alec who had that black hair and those eyes—that very startling dark blue—it was Jace who had more of Will’s personality, at least on the surface. The same sharp arrogance hiding something breakable underneath, the same pointed wit . . .
He traced the halo of light around Will with a finger and smiled. Will had been no angel, though neither had he been as flawed as some might have thought him. When Magnus thought of Will, even now, he thought of him dripping rainwater on Camille’s rug, begging Magnus for help no one else could give him. It was Will who had introduced him to the idea that Shadowhunters and Downworlders might be friends.
Jem was Will’s other, better half. He and Will had been parabatai, like Alec and Jace, and shared that same evident closeness. And though Alec struck Magnus as nothing at all like Jem—Alec was jumpy and sweet, sensitive and worried, while Jem had been calm, rarely bothered, older than his years—both of them were unusual where Shadowhunters were concerned. Alec exuded a bone-deep innocence that was rare among Shadowhunters—a quality that, Magnus had to admit, drew him like a moth to a flame, despite all his own cynicism.
Magnus looked at Tessa again. Though she was not conventionally pretty in the way Jessamine had been pretty, her face was alive with energy and intelligence. Her lips curved up at the corners. She stood, as Magnus supposed was appropriate, between Jem and Will. Tessa. Tessa, who, like Magnus, lived forever. Magnus looked at the detritus in the box—memories of loves past, some of whose faces stayed with him as clearly as the day he’d first seen them, and some whose names he barely remembered. Tessa, who like him, had loved a mortal, someone destined to die as she was not.
Magnus replaced the photograph in the trunk. He shook his head, as if he could clear it of memories. There was a reason he rarely opened the trunk. Memories weighed him down, reminded him of what he had once had but did no longer. Jem, Will, Jessamine, Henry, Charlotte—in a way it was amazing that he still remembered their names. But then, knowing them had changed his life.
Knowing Will and his friends had made Magnus swear to himself that he would never again get involved in Shadow-hunters’ personal business. Because when you got to know them, you got to care about them. And when you got to care about mortals, they broke your heart.
“And I won’t,” he told Chairman Meow solemnly, perhaps a little drunkenly. “I don’t care how charming they are or how brave or even how helpless they seem. I will never ever ever—”
Downstairs, the doorbell buzzed, and Magnus got up to answer it.
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1: The Council Chamber
Chapter 2: Reparations
Chapter 3: Unjustifiable Death
Chapter 4: A Journey
Chapter 5: Shades of the Past
Chapter 6: In Silence Sealed
Chapter 7: The Curse
Chapter 8: A Shadow on the Soul
Chapter 9: Fierce Midnight
Chapter 10: The Virtue of Angels
Chapter 11: Wild Unrest
Chapter 12: Masquerade
Chapter 13: The Mortal Sword
Chapter 14: The Silent City
Chapter 15: Thousands More
Chapter 16: Mortal Rage
Chapter 17: In Dreams
Chapter 18: Until I Die
Chapter 19: If Treason Doth Prosper
Chapter 20: The Bitter Root
Chapter 21: Coals of Fire
Acknowledgments
A Note on Tessa’s England
For Elka
Khalepa ta kala
“I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. . . . Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing. . . .”
—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
PROLOGUE
The Outcast Dead
The fog was thick, muffling sound and sight. Where it parted, Will Herondale could see the street rising ahead of him, slick and wet and black with rain, and he could hear the voices of the dead.
Not all Shadowhunters could hear ghosts, unless the ghosts chose to be heard, but Will was one of those who could. As he approache
d the old cemetery, their voices rose in a ragged chorus—wails and pleading, cries and snarls. This was not a peaceful burial ground, but Will knew that; it was not his first visit to the Cross Bones Graveyard near London Bridge. He did his best to block out the noises, hunching his shoulders so that his collar covered his ears, head down, a fine mist of rain dampening his black hair.
The entrance to the cemetery was halfway down the block: a pair of wrought iron gates set into a high stone wall, though any mundane passing by would have observed nothing but a plot of overgrown land, part of an unnamed builder’s yard. As Will neared the gates, something else no mundane would have seen materialized out of the fog: a great bronze knocker in the shape of a hand, the fingers bony and skeletal. With a grimace Will reached out one of his own gloved hands and lifted the knocker, letting it fall once, twice, three times, the hollow clank resounding through the night.
Beyond the gates mist rose like steam from the ground, obscuring the gleam of bone against the rough ground. Slowly the mist began to coalesce, taking on an eerie blue glow. Will put his hands to the bars of the gate; the cold of the metal seeped through his gloves, into his bones, and he shivered. It was a more than ordinary cold. When ghosts rose, they drew energy from their surroundings, depriving the air around them of heat. The hairs on the back of Will’s neck prickled and stood up as the blue mist formed slowly into the shape of an old woman in a ragged dress and white apron, her head bent.
“Hallo, Mol,” said Will. “You’re looking particularly fine this evening, if I do say so.”
The ghost raised her head. Old Molly was a strong spirit, one of the stronger Will had ever encountered. Even as moonlight speared through a gap in the clouds, she hardly looked transparent. Her body was solid, her hair twisted in a thick yellow-gray coil over one shoulder, her rough, red hands braced on her hips. Only her eyes were hollow, twin blue flames flickering in their depths.
“William ’erondale,” she said. “Back again so soon?”
She moved toward the gate with that gliding motion peculiar to ghosts. Her feet were bare and filthy, despite the fact that they never touched the ground.
Will leaned against the gate. “You know I missed your pretty face.”
She grinned, her eyes flickering, and he caught a glimpse of the skull beneath the half-transparent skin. Overhead the clouds had closed in on one another again, blocking out the moon. Idly, Will wondered what Old Molly had done to get herself buried here, far from consecrated ground. Most of the wailing voices of the dead belonged to prostitutes, suicides, and stillbirths—those outcast dead who could not be buried in a churchyard. Although Molly had managed to make the situation quite profitable for herself, so perhaps she didn’t mind.
She chortled. “What d’you want, then, young Shadow-hunter? Malphas venom? I ’ave the talon of a Morax demon, polished very fine, the poison at the tip entirely invisible—”
“No,” Will said. “That’s not what I need. I need Foraii demon powders, ground fine.”
Molly turned her head to the side and spat a tendril of blue fire. “Now what’s a fine young man like you want with stuff like that?”
Will just sighed inwardly; Molly’s protests were part of the bargaining process. Magnus had already sent Will to Old Mol several times now, once for black stinking candles that stuck to his skin like tar, once for the bones of an unborn child, and once for a bag of faeries’ eyes, which had dripped blood on his shirt. Foraii demon powder sounded pleasant by comparison.
“You think I’m a fool,” Molly went on. “This is a trap, innit? You Nephilim catch me selling that sort of stuff, an’ it’s the stick for Old Mol, it is.”
“You’re already dead.” Will did his best not to sound irritable. “I don’t know what you think the Clave could do to you now.”
“Pah.” Her hollow eyes flamed. “The prisons of the Silent Brothers, beneath the earth, can ’old either the living or the dead; you know that, Shadowhunter.”
Will held up his hands. “No tricks, old one. Surely you must have heard the rumors running about in Downworld. The Clave has other things on its mind than tracking down ghosts who traffic in demon powders and faerie blood.” He leaned forward. “I’ll give you a good price.” He drew a cambric bag from his pocket and dangled it in the air. It clinked like coins rattling together. “They all fit your description, Mol.”
An eager look came over her dead face, and she solidified enough to take the bag from him. She plunged one hand into it and brought her palm out full of rings—gold wedding rings, each tied in a lovers’ knot at the top. Old Mol, like many ghosts, was always looking for that talisman, that lost piece of her past that would finally allow her to die, the anchor that kept her trapped in the world. In her case it was her wedding ring. It was common belief, Magnus had told Will, that the ring was long gone, buried under the silty bed of the Thames, but in the meantime she’d take any bag of found rings in the hope one would turn out to be hers.
She dropped the rings back into the bag, which vanished somewhere on her undead person, and handed him a folded sachet of powder in return. He slipped it into his jacket pocket just as the ghost began to shimmer and fade. “Hold up, there, Mol. That isn’t all I have come for tonight.”
The spirit flickered while greed warred with impatience and the effort of remaining visible. Finally she grunted. “Very well. What else d’you want?”
Will hesitated. This was not something Magnus had sent him for; it was something he wanted to know for himself. “Love potions—”
Old Mol screeched with laughter. “Love potions? For Will ’erondale? ’Tain’t my way to turn down payment, but any man who looks like you ’as got no need of love potions, and that’s a fact.”
“No,” Will said, a little desperation in his voice. “I was looking for the opposite, really—something that might put an end to being in love.”
“An ’atred potion?” Mol still sounded amused.
“I was hoping for something more akin to indifference? Tolerance?”
She made a snorting noise, astonishingly human for a ghost. “I ’ardly like to tell you this, Nephilim, but if you want a girl to ’ate you, there’s easy enough ways of making it ’appen. You don’t need my help with the poor thing.”
And with that she vanished, spinning away into the mists among the graves. Will, looking after her, sighed. “Not for her,” he said under his breath, though there was no one to hear him, “for me . . .” And he leaned his head against the cold iron gate.
1
THE COUNCIL CHAMBER
Above, the fair hall-ceiling stately set
Many an arch high up did lift,
And angels rising and descending met
With interchange of gift.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Palace of Art”
“Oh, yes. It really does look just as I imagined,” Tessa said, and turned to smile at the boy who stood beside her. He had just helped her over a puddle, and his hand still rested politely on her arm, just above the crook of her elbow.
James Carstairs smiled back at her, elegant in his dark suit, his silver-fair hair whipped by the wind. His other hand rested on a jade-topped cane, and if any of the great crowd of people milling around them thought that it was odd that someone so young should need a walking stick, or found anything unusual about his coloring or the cast of his features, they didn’t pause to stare.
“I shall count that as a blessing,” said Jem. “I was beginning to worry, you know, that everything you encountered in London was going to be a disappointment.”
A disappointment. Tessa’s brother, Nate, had once promised her everything in London—a new beginning, a wonderful place to live, a city of soaring buildings and gorgeous parks. What Tessa had found instead was horror and betrayal, and danger beyond anything she could have imagined. And yet . . .
“Not everything has been.” She smiled up at Jem.
“I am glad to hear it.” His tone was serious, not teasing. She looked away from him
up at the grand edifice that rose before them. Westminster Abbey, with its great Gothic spires nearly touching the sky. The sun had done its best to struggle out from behind the haze-tipped clouds, and the abbey was bathed in weak sunlight.
“This is really where it is?” she asked as Jem drew her forward, toward the abbey entrance. “It seems so . . .”
“Mundane?”
“I had meant to say crowded.” The Abbey was open to tourists today, and groups of them swarmed busily in and out the enormous doors, most clutching Baedeker guidebooks in their hands. A group of American tourists—middle-aged women in unfashionable clothes, murmuring in accents that made Tessa briefly homesick—passed them as they went up the stairs, hurrying after a lecturer who was offering a guided tour of the Abbey. Jem and Tessa melted in effortlessly behind them.
The inside of the abbey smelled of cold stone and metal. Tessa looked up and around, marveling at the size of the place. It made the Institute look like a village church.
“Notice the triple division of the nave,” a guide droned, going on to explain that smaller chapels lined the eastern and western aisles of the Abbey. There was a hush over the place even though no services were going on. As Tessa let Jem lead her toward the eastern side of the church, she realized she was stepping over stones carved with dates and names. She had known that famous kings, queens, soldiers, and poets were buried in Westminster Abbey, but she hadn’t quite expected she’d be standing on top of them.
She and Jem slowed finally at the southeastern corner of the church. Watery daylight poured through the rose window overhead. “I know we are in a hurry to get to the Council meeting,” said Jem, “but I wanted you to see this.” He gestured around them. “Poets’ Corner.”
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