“You mentioned the mark before,” said Christopher. “What was it? What makes you so sure it has to do with Belial?”
James rose and took the Monarchia Daemonium from where he had placed it on the piano bench. It was a tall volume, bound in dark purple leather. “This is where I first read about Belial and the other eight Princes of Hell,” he said. “Each has a sigil, a sign by which he is known.” He sat down and opened the book to the two-page section on Belial. “This is the symbol I saw in the ice.”
The others crowded around, Anna leaning over the back of James’s chair. There was a silence as they took in the illustration of Belial—he was facing away, his head turned to the side, his profile razor-sharp. He wore a dark red cloak, and a single clawed hand was visible at his side. Not quite the elegant gentleman James had met in Belphegor’s realm, though there remained the same aura about him of leashed menace.
“So Belial left you a calling card,” Anna murmured. “Rude of him not to wait until the footman was at home.”
“So is it meant to be a message?” said Thomas. “A way of saying, ‘Here I am’？”
“Perhaps a way of saying he is me,” said James. “Perhaps he has found a way to possess me when I am unconscious—”
“You are not a murderer or possessed,” snapped Lucie. “In case you’ve forgotten, demons cannot possess Shadowhunters. You don’t think our parents forgot our protection spells when we were born, do you?”
“Lucie,” James said. “I don’t blame them or expect they forgot. But this is Belial. He’s a Prince of Hell. Half my life, he’s reached into my waking dreams. If anyone could break through the protection spell, a Prince of Hell—”
“It should protect against any demonic interference,” said Christopher. “The spell was originally intended to keep Lilith away specifically. The angels Sanvi, Sansanvi, and Semangelaf are her mortal enemies. But the full ritual, performed by the Silent Brothers, should be strong enough to keep away even Belial, or Leviathan.”
“An excellent reminder it could be worse,” said James. “Our grandfather could have been Leviathan. We’d both have tentacles.”
“So hard to find clothes that would fit,” said Christopher sympathetically.
“So what do these sigils do?” wondered Thomas, settling back into his chair. “Do they just serve as elaborate signatures?”
James set the book down on the inlaid table by the fire. “They are more than symbols. They can be used in summoning. Ancient cults used to create massive sigils with standing stones or marks on the ground, which would serve as gateways for demons.” He paused, arrested by a sudden thought. “Christopher, do you have a map of London?”
“I am a scientist,” said Christopher, “not a geographer! I don’t have a map of London. I do have a beaker of Raum venom,” he added, “but it’s in my shoe, and will be difficult to reach.”
“Does anyone have questions about that?” James said, glancing around. “No? Good. All right, a map—”
Anna clambered lightly onto an upholstered chair and reached for a high shelf of books. She drew down a volume of maps. “How fortunate that you have a well-stocked library, James.”
James took the book and set it down on the table, flipping through the pages. The map of London was easy to find: no Londoner did not know the shape of his city, with its crowded banks, its bridges, its river winding past wharves and docks.
Over Thomas’s protests, James flicked a pen from his friend’s pocket. He began to mark spots on the map, counting them off in order. “Clerkenwell, Fitch Lane, Shoe Lane, Shepherd Market—”
“I think he is possessed,” said Thomas. “He’s defacing a book.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” James squinted. Splashed across the map were his marks, one for each address where a body had been found. He had connected them with his pen, but they formed nothing resembling Belial’s sigil. “I had wondered—”
“If someone was trying to draw the sigil, so to speak, with the locations chosen for the murders,” said Christopher, his face alight with thought. “I realized what you were doing—it’s very clever, but I don’t see how that could even be the beginning of Belial’s sigil. It’s all circles, and this is more like a line that hooks at the end—”
James tossed the pen onto the table. “It was just a theory. But that doesn’t mean that Belial isn’t working his will through me while I sleep. Think of what Filomena’s ghost said to Cordelia, that she had wounded Belial and should have been able to help her. Perhaps because she knew her murderer was also one of Hell’s princes? Maybe even the same one?”