—Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
The city slept, beneath its blanket of snow. Every footstep Thomas took seemed to echo down empty streets, beneath the awnings of shops, past houses where people lay warm and safe inside, never knowing he paced past their thresholds.
He had walked up from Mayfair through Marylebone, past closed shops whose windows glittered with Christmas displays, until he reached Regent’s Park. The freezing rain had turned the trees into elaborate ice sculptures. There were a few carriages on the Euston Road as the hours turned toward dawn; doctors making emergency calls, perhaps, or traveling to or from late-night shifts at the hospitals.
It had been a long night, both because of the rain that had begun shortly after midnight, and because as he passed along Brewer Street, he had nearly run into a patrol of Shadowhunters: four or five men bundled in gear and heavy coats. He slipped away from them, through Golden Square. The last thing he wanted was to be caught, and likely censured. He could not—would not—rest until the killer was apprehended.
He could not have entirely explained what drove his restless determination. James was certainly a part of it—James, tied up in his own bedroom all night while their friends stood guard downstairs, prepared for something none of them believed possible. James, who bore the weight of a heritage darker than any shadows. It never seemed to touch Lucie, but James’s eyes were always haunted.
There was only one other person Thomas had known with eyes like that. Not golden eyes, but dark, and so sad—he had always been drawn to that dichotomy, he thought, of the cruelty of Alastair’s words, and the sadness with which he said them. Sorrowful eyes and a vicious tongue. Tell me, he had always wanted to say, what broke your heart, and let such bitterness spill out?
On and on Thomas strode, down through Bloomsbury, barely noticing how numb and cold his feet had grown, driven on by the feeling that just around the next corner, his quarry would be waiting. But there was nobody about except for the occasional bobby on his beat, or cloaked and bundled night workers trudging home, their faces invisible but no sense of threat coming from them. He passed the Covent Garden market, just beginning to open, tall stacks of wooden crates lining its colonnades as the wagons rolled in and out, carrying flowers, fruit, and even Christmas trees, whose boughs filled the air with the scent of pine.
As Thomas began to loop back west again toward Soho, the sky seemed to be growing perceptibly lighter. He stopped short in front of the statue of King George II at the center of Golden Square, its pale marble almost luminous under the deep, just-before-dawn blue of the sky. Somewhere, an early riser was playing the piano, and the mournful notes echoed through the square. Dawn was moments away. Back at Curzon Street, they would soon have their answer. Either there had been no deaths tonight—in which case James would still be a suspect—or the killer would have struck again, in which case they would know James was innocent. How strange, not to know what to wish for.
Suddenly Thomas wanted nothing more than to return to his friends. He started walking more briskly, rubbing his gloved hands to warm his stiff fingers as the glow of yellow and pink over the treetops signaled the sun’s approach.
Then a scream shattered the stillness. Thomas broke into a run without thinking, his training propelling him toward the sound before he had a moment to hesitate. He prayed that it was a fight, maybe drunks stumbling out of a pub, or a thief snatching a handbag from an early-morning commuter—
He skidded around a corner onto Sink Street. A woman was sprawled across the threshold of a terraced town house, half in and half out of the iced-over garden. She was facedown on the ground, her garments streaked in blood, gray hair spilling onto the snow. He looked wildly around, but saw no one else. He knelt and gathered the woman into his arms, turning her head to see her face—
It was Lilian Highsmith. He knew her—everyone did. She was an elder of the Clave, a respected figure—and kindly, too. She had kept peppermints in her pocket to give to children. He remembered her handing them to him when he was a little boy, her thin hands ruffling his hair.
She wore a morning dress, as if she had not expected to be outside. The fabric was slashed, blood pouring from multiple gashes in the material. Bloody foam flecked her lips—she was still breathing, he realized. With shaking hands, he drew out his stele, desperately carving iratze after iratze onto her skin. Each flickered and vanished, like a stone sinking into water.
He desperately wished, now, for the patrol he’d seen earlier. They’d barely been a few blocks from here. How could they have missed this?