James did not know how long Cordelia had been reading: he had kept his eyes shut, his free arm flung across his face, willing himself to sleep. But sleep had not come. It seemed an impossibility. He could not stop thinking of Cordelia, though she was beside him. Of the feel of her, her heavy hair gathered in his hands, her body against his. But not just of that—memories of all their minutes together came like flashes of lightning, illuminating the darkness behind his eyes: the nights they’d spent game playing, the times they’d laughed, exchanged glances of understanding, whispered secrets. The bracelet on his wrist felt as heavy as a two-ton weight. But you love Grace, whispered the unwelcome voice at the back of his mind. You know that you do.
He pushed back against the thought. It was like pressing on a bruise, or a broken bone. He had kissed Grace that day, but the memory of it felt faded, like old parchment. Like the shadow-memory of a dream. His head throbbed, as if something hard were pressing at his temples; the voice in his mind wanted him to think of Grace, but again he pushed against it.
He thought of Daisy. He had missed her when she was gone; when he woke this morning, he had thought first of her, of laying his troubles before her so they could be shared and sorted out together. That was something more than friendship, and besides, friendship did not make you want to seize someone the moment you saw them and ravage them with kisses.
But he owed Grace. He had made promises to her for so many years. He could not recall specifically what they were, but the certainty was as real as an iron bar rammed through his heart. He had made them because he loved her. Loyalty bound him. His wrist ached where the rope crisscrossed her bracelet, sending a cold pain up his arm. You have always loved Grace, came the voice again. Love is not to be abandoned. It is not a toy to discard by the roadside.
You have never loved anyone else.
There was a soft murmur in his head. It was Daisy, reading Dickens.
“Of late, very often. There was a long hard time when I kept far from me, the remembrance, of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth. But, since my duty has not been incompatible with the admission of that remembrance, I have given it a place in my heart.”
A real memory came then, strong and dark as tea, of another room, a time when he had tossed and turned, and Daisy had read aloud. The memory was like the surge of a wave; it lifted and broke under him, and was gone. He reached for it, but it had evaporated in the darkness; exhausted, he could no longer push against the force of his own mind. The voice in the back of his head returned like a flood. He had seen Grace that day, and he had not been able to stop himself from kissing her. He did love her. It was a surety that felt like the closing of a cell door.
“James?” Cordelia had paused in her reading; she sounded worried. “Are you all right? No bad dreams?”
The night was a canyon, black and depthless; James ached for things he could not name or define. “Not yet,” he said. “No bad dreams.”
LONDON: GOLDEN SQUARE
The killer could move so swiftly now that mundanes did not see him; he was a shade, flickering past them on the streets. No more would he have to hide, or discard his bloody clothes in abandoned buildings—though it amused him no end that the Shadowhunters had kept a watch on the abandoned Limehouse factory as if they expected his return.
He brushed past crowds like the shadow of a passing cloud. Sometimes he paused, to look around and smile, to gather himself. There would be blood at dawn, but whose would spill? A group of patrolling Shadowhunters moved past him and onto Brewer Street. He grinned ferociously—what fun it would be to separate one from the pack and take him down, leaving him dead in his own blood before the others had even noticed.
Even as he reached for his blade, another Shadowhunter passed—a young one, tall, brown-haired. This one was alone, watchful. Not part of a patrol. He was walking into Golden Square, his back straight, head held high. A voice whispered in the back of the killer’s mind: a name.
Thomas Lightwood.
PART TWO
— — BY THE SWORD
In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed, Then He openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, That He may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man.
He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword.
—Job 33:15
17 PROPHET OF EVIL
Prophet of evil I ever am to myself: forced for ever into sorrowful auguries that I have no power to hide from my own heart, no, not through one night’s solitary dreams.