He looked around, shivering; the window was cracked open several inches.
Swearing, James sat bolt upright. The ropes lay in pieces around him, the knife beside his hand. Somehow, during the night, he had cut himself free.
He rolled out of bed and stalked to the window. He reached up to slide it closed—perhaps it was time to nail the thing shut—and paused.
In the ice on the windowsill had been traced an odd mark. He stood for a moment, studying it. Who had scratched it there?
Dread rose in the pit of his stomach. He had not been still while he slept. He’d cut himself free. Anything could have happened. And the symbol, on the window—
He had to talk to Daisy. He was halfway to her room when he remembered, his brain clearing: she wasn’t there. She was at her mother’s. He wanted to rush to Kensington, wanted to beg Cordelia to come home. She lived here, belonged here. But he couldn’t blame her if she didn’t want to see him. He had been the last person to speak to her father, and their exchange had been ugly and vicious. And what was he proposing to confess? That he thought he might be the reason her father was dead? That his might have been the hand that held the knife?
And God knew what he had done last night.
Nausea stabbed through him. Downstairs, he thought. That was where the books he’d brought from the Institute were. He needed to look, to be absolutely sure. He threw on a jacket and shoes and clattered down the steps—
The doorbell rang.
No Effie appeared to answer it; she must not have returned from her night off. Praying it wasn’t some half stranger bearing condolences, James flung the door open. A werewolf boy of eight or nine occupied the stoop outside, his dirty hair tucked under a worn woolen cap, his face grimy.
“Neddy,” James said, surprised. “What are you doing here?” His hand tightened on the doorknob. “Has there been another murder?”
“No, sir,” the boy said, digging in his pocket for a crumpled note, which he handed to James. “No reports of any Shadowhunter deaths.”
No deaths. The killer had not struck. There was relief—no one had been hurt—as well as apprehension: he was no better off than he had been the day before. The deaths were occurring sporadically, not every night, but close together. He could not assume there would not be another. What could he do tonight, if tying himself to the bed hadn’t worked?
James unfolded the note and immediately recognized Thomas’s handwriting. He scanned the brief lines quickly: Matthew had taken Cordelia for a drive to cheer her up; the other Thieves, Thomas and Christopher, would be coming to Curzon Street shortly. I know Elias’s death has been a shock, Thomas had written. But brush your hair. Risa said you looked as if you’d been electrocuted.
“Everything all right, then?” Neddy said. “Right enough for me to get my tip?”
As James turned up a shilling for Neddy, he found the boy gawking curiously at the large, glossy carriage that had just drawn up before the house. James frowned. It was the Fairchild carriage, marked on the side with its pattern of wings. Had Charlotte come to pay her respects?
James pressed the money into Neddy’s hand and sent him on his way, just as the door to the carriage opened, and a slim hand in a dove-colored leather glove appeared, followed by sweeping ivory-colored skirts and a short coat of pale mink, topped with a head of upswept silver-blond hair, glimmering like metal in the sun.
It was Grace.
* * *
Cordelia fished a long woolen scarf from her handbag and wrapped it around her hair, securing her hat firmly to her head to keep it from flying off in the wind. Even slowed down by the London traffic, the little car felt wildly fast; it was able to nip in and out of spaces that a carriage would never have been able to navigate. Feeling somewhat windblown, she tied her hat down more firmly with her scarf as they zipped between two horse-buses and a milk cart and narrowly missed swerving onto the pavement. Several workmen by the side of the road cheered.
“Apologies!” yelled Matthew with a grin, spinning the wheel deftly to the right and shooting across another junction.
Cordelia eyed him severely. “Do you actually know where we’re going?”
“Of course I do! I have a map.”
He produced a slim red clothbound book from a pocket and handed it to her. The Bath Road, read the cover.
“We’ll definitely need a bath, by the time we get there,” she said, as the car splashed through a muddy puddle.
Their route took them through Hammersmith, roughly following the course of the Thames, visible in glimpses through the factories and houses of the outer suburbs. As they passed a sign for the turning toward Chiswick, Cordelia thought of Grace, a sort of humming discomfort behind her ribs.