Alastair looked at him. He said, his voice husky, “I thought you liked me last year.”
Thomas stared at him. And, unexpectedly, Alastair started to smile. “I was teasing you,” he said. “Thomas, you—”
Thomas kissed him. He caught Alastair by the lapel of his coat, and then he was kissing Alastair, and both their mouths were cold and then not cold at all. Alastair arched up against him as the carriage lurched, his hands twining in Thomas’s hair. He pulled Thomas against him, hard and then harder.
Thomas’s pulse beat hotly in every part of his body. Alastair pressed his mouth against his, his lips finding ways to tease and explore, and then their mouths were open, their tongues sliding against each other, and the carriage lurched hard, throwing them both to the floor.
Neither of them cared. They had landed on Thomas’s discarded blanket. Thomas tore at Alastair’s coat, yanking the buttons free. He wanted to feel Alastair, feel the shape of him, not just crumpled wool under his hands. Alastair was on top of him; behind Alastair he could see the sky through the windows. It was riven by storm, the clouds slashed through with a bloody channel of fire.
Thomas struggled out of his own coat. Alastair was leaning over him, his eyes black as a starless night. He opened the collar of Thomas’s shirt and kissed his throat. He found the notch of Thomas’s collarbone and licked it, making stars explode behind Thomas’s eyes.
He tore at Thomas’s shirt. The buttons came free, and he shoved Thomas’s undershirt up, baring his chest. “Look at you,” Alastair said, in a low voice. “Beautiful. You’re so beautiful, Tom.”
Thomas felt tears burn behind his eyes. He tried to tell himself not to be ridiculous, but that little buzzing voice in the back of his head, the one that mocked him when he was fanciful, was silent. There was only Alastair, who bit and kissed and licked at him until he was writhing and crying out, until he was pulling Alastair’s shirt free, running his hands over Alastair’s bare skin, silk pulled tight over hard muscle.
He rolled over, pinning Alastair beneath him. His naked skin against Alastair’s was driving him out of his mind. He wanted more of it. More of Alastair. Alastair’s bare chest was gorgeous, marked with old scars, his nipples peaked in the cold air. Thomas bent his head and circled one with his tongue.
Alastair’s whole body arched. He whimpered low in his throat, clawed at Thomas’s back. “Tom. Tom—”
With a slamming lurch, the carriage struck hard against something. Thomas heard the wheels scream, the whinny of the horses as the whole thing tilted to the side. A clap of thunder, loud as the crack of a whip, sounded overhead as the carriage came to a grinding halt.
Alastair was already sitting up, buttoning his shirt. “Bloody hell,” he said. “What was that?”
“We must have hit something.” Thomas did his best to put his clothes back as they had been, though half his buttons were torn. “You’re all right?”
“Yes.” Alastair looked at Thomas, then leaned over and kissed him, hard, on the mouth. A second later he was throwing the carriage door open and leaping out.
Thomas heard him hit the ground, heard him suck in his breath. There was a bitter smell on the air, he thought as he clambered after Alastair, like charcoal. “Bloody hell,” Alastair said. “What is all this?”
A moment later, Thomas was leaping out of the carriage after him.
* * *
“Well,” Matthew said as Tatiana’s shriek faded on the air, “I think we can all agree that that’s one invitation we should turn down.” He looked around the room at the others, all of whom seemed stunned, even Anna. “We should at least wait until Charles gets back with the First Patrol.”
“I never thought I’d hear you say we should wait for Charles,” said Anna, who was already drawing a seraph blade from her belt.
“Tatiana’s a madwoman,” said Matthew. “There’s no telling what she’ll do.”
“She’ll break the doors down,” Jesse said. “Those things with her—they’re Shadowhunters. Demons in Shadowhunter skin. They can come inside the Institute.”
“Jesse’s right,” said Grace, who had begun to shake again. “Mama’s only making it an invitation now because it amuses her to force you to do what she wants.”
“So if we don’t go down there,” said Cordelia, “she and her demon companions will burst in here.”
“Then we’ll all go,” James said, “and hold her off at the front door. The Sanctuary’s locked; there’s no other way in.” He turned to the others, who were busy laying hands on whatever weapons they had. Most had a seraph blade or two; Ari had her khanda, Jesse the Blackthorn sword. “I think Jesse and I should go outside and confront her in the yard. The rest of you remain at the entryway, as defense. Keep the false Silent Brothers from trying to creep around and get inside. I’ll try to keep her talking, at least until Charles and the First Patrol return—”
“Jesse isn’t trained, though,” Matthew said, buckling on his weapons belt. “Let me go outside with you. She demanded a Fairchild, didn’t she?”
James said, “Jesse’s the one of us she’s least likely to hurt. The only one who might give her pause.”
“I should confront Tatiana,” Cordelia said.
James turned to face her. She had her chin up, her gaze fixed unwaveringly on his. “I am a paladin. She should fear me. She should fear Lilith.”
“But she won’t know that unless you start fighting,” Lucie protested. “Unless Lilith is summoned. And I can’t imagine summoning Lilith will make the situation better.”
“There may be a point where it can’t make it worse,” Cordelia said quietly. “I promise—I won’t lift a weapon unless there’s no other choice. But I want to go out there.”
James wanted to shake his head, wanted to protest that Cordelia should stay inside, stay safe. But he knew that was a kind of protection Cordelia would never accept. He could ask her to remain inside, and perhaps she would do it because he had requested it, but it would be asking her to be someone other than who she was.
“Come out!” Tatiana shrilled, and Lucie felt the shriek in her bones. “Come out, Herondales! Come out, Carstairs! Come out, Lightwoods! I will not ask again!”
“I’m going outside,” Cordelia said firmly, and there was no chance for James to protest anyway; they were all headed downstairs, all save Grace, who watched them go, her face blank and sad, as if she had exhausted even her capacity to be afraid.
* * *
Tatiana had not moved from her place in the center of the courtyard. As James walked out the front door of the Institute, followed by Cordelia and Jesse, he saw her standing below them, near the foot of the steps. She faced the Institute, grinning, surrounded by demons and shadow.
The sky overhead was a boiling mass of dark gray clouds, laced with black and scarlet. The moon was visible only as a dim and flickering lamp behind a frost of reddish-white, casting the courtyard of the Institute into a bloody light.
Tatiana’s white hair streamed around her like smoke. It was as if she had brought storm and darkness with her, as if she had ridden the forked lightning that crackled through the clouds. On either side of her stood three Silent Brothers, in the white robes Grace had described. The runes that edged the cuffs and plackets were runes of Quietude and Death; Grace would not have recognized them as such, but James did. Each held a staff, as the Silent Brothers usually did, but their staffs crackled with a dark energy, and each wooden tip had been sharpened to a wicked point. They flanked Tatiana like foot soldiers flanking a general.