“You know what you were doing,” Jesse said. His green eyes were burning; Lucie realized, at the look of fear on Martha’s face, that Jesse must be a terrible oddity to her. He was not alive enough to be among the living, nor dead enough to seem natural to the dead. “There is no excuse to harm the living. Now go.”
The ghost bared her teeth—a sudden, savage gesture. They were black, ragged stubs. “You can’t always be with her—”
Jesse moved lightning fast. He was no longer at the alley’s entrance; he was next to Martha, his hand closing on her shoulder. She gave a little shriek as if the touch had burned her, and pulled back—her body seemed to stretch out like taffy, strands of white ghost-matter clinging to Jesse’s hand as Martha twisted away. She gave a little hiss as she came apart in strings of ropy white stuff that drifted away like fog.
Lucie gasped. A moment later Jesse was beside her, leading her under the overhang of a market stall shuttered for the night.
“What—what was that?” she demanded, angling her hat to protect her from the dripping awning. “Is she—dead? I mean, more dead?”
“Not at all. She’ll re-form again somewhere tonight, just as bitter and vengeful as always. But she’ll stay away from you now.”
“Because she’s afraid of you?”
“As you’ve said before, ghosts gossip.” His tone was very flat. “I cannot harm them, not really, but I can make them uncomfortable. And they always worry if it might be more. Most ghosts are cowardly, afraid to lose the ragged little bits of life they have left. I am not one of them exactly, but I can see them, touch them. That makes them afraid. They know who I am—hopefully Martha will let them know to stay away from you unless they wish to deal with me.”
“They are not afraid of me,” Lucie said thoughtfully, “though I have always been able to see them—”
Though, she had to admit, that was not entirely true. She remembered the shade of Emmanuel Gast, the dead warlock, hissing at her—truly, you are monsters, despite your angel blood. But he had been a criminal, she reminded herself, and a liar.
“Oh, they likely are afraid,” Jesse said grimly. “But they are also greedy. The ghost who gave you the location of that factory—others are starting to hear what you did for him. That you made him forget what tormented him.”
Lucie clasped her gloved hands together. “He asked me to do it. I did not command him without his request—”
“And I’m sure he would not tell you where Filomena’s ghost was unless you helped him,” Jesse said. “Ghosts can be as unscrupulous as the living. But you didn’t tell me about it, did you—”
“Because I knew you would take on like this,” Lucie snapped—she was cold, worried for James, and most of all she could not bear the disappointed look on Jesse’s face. “This is my talent, my power, and I can decide when to utilize it.”
“You can,” he said, in a low voice, “but there are consequences, and I cannot help you with them if you do not tell me—I will not always be waiting in the shadows, Lucie. It was only an accident that I was here to stop Martha.”
“Why were you here?”
He set his hands on her shoulders. There was no warmth where his fingers touched her, yet there was weight there, and realness. “I know you have been trying to—to help me. To raise me.” She wanted to lean into his touch. “When I rise at night, I see where you and Grace have left the marks of your works behind—the ashes, the scattered bits of potion ingredients. But now blood—blood magic is dark stuff, Lucie.”
Lucie frowned inwardly. Grace, what are you doing? “You have been fading,” she said softly. “I worry that there is not much time. I think Grace feels it too, in her way.”
“As do I,” he said, a deep ache in his voice. “You think I do not want to live again, truly? To walk with you by the river, hand in hand in the sunlight? And I have had hopes. But after what we tried last night, Luce—you cannot keep putting yourself in danger. That includes seeking out dangerous people as though you’re at some—some garden party.”
To walk with you by the river, hand in hand. Words she would store away and take out later to turn over in her memories as someone might take out a beloved photograph to study its details. Now, however, she only said, “Jesse, I am a Shadowhunter, not some mundane girl you need to shelter from the riffraff.”
“We’re not talking about riffraff. We’re talking about necromancers. Real danger, for you and for Grace.”