Gast spit in disgust—a spark of white translucence that vanished before it struck the floor. “I am not the one who put the first rune on the boy. Your precious Silent Brothers did that. I did the protection spells by the book. The council may have scorned me when I was alive, but I was a perfectly capable warlock.”
“So you did the protection spells just as a Silent Brother would have done them?” Lucie said. “You can swear to that?”
Gast stared directly at Lucie as a look of panic stole across his face. Abruptly he turned away from her, his hands clawing at the air as if he were trying to drag himself back into the darkness he’d come from.
“Stop it,” Lucie said, and he stopped immediately. He hung in midair, glaring.
Jessamine whispered something; Lucie couldn’t quite tell what, but she couldn’t worry about Jessamine now.
“Tell me the truth,” Lucie said.
Gast’s face twisted. “No. There are worse things than death, little Shadowhunter, and more to fear on the other side than you might imagine. Do you think you are the only one who can control the dead? Where do you think that power comes from?”
“Enough!” Lucie snapped her fingers. “I command you to tell me.”
“Lucie, stop!” Jessamine fluttered her hands in terror. “You mustn’t!”
Gast’s head snapped back with a sound like a stick breaking. He twisted, pushing back at her, scrabbling like a trapped rabbit. For a moment, Lucie pitied him.
Then she thought of Jesse, dying in agony when the rune was placed on him. Tangled in blood-covered sheets. Screaming for help when no help could be had.
A cold sweat broke out on Lucie’s forehead. She bent her will on Gast, the force of her power and her anger.
Tell me. Tell me the truth.
“The anchor!” Gast cried, the words torn from his throat. “By God, the anchor, sunk in his soul! I didn’t want to do it, but I had no choice!” His voice rose to a howl. “Dear God let me go he’ll tear me to pieces—”
Jessamine screamed, just as Gast’s translucent body ripped down the middle like a piece of paper. Lucie stumbled back as the ghost came apart, splitting into tattered pieces that sank to the floor and dissolved, leaving faint black stains behind.
Lucie sagged against the bedpost. Exhaustion freighted her limbs, as if she’d run a marathon. “Jessamine,” she whispered. “Jessamine, are you all right?”
But Jessamine was staring at her, her ghostly eyes vast in her pale face. “You can command the dead,” she choked out. “That means—every time you asked me to fetch your hairbrush, or asked me to tell you a bedtime story, or asked for the window to be opened—you were commanding me? I had no choice?”
“Jessamine, no,” Lucie protested. “It’s not like that. I didn’t even know.…”
But Jessamine had vanished, between one breath and the next. Lucie slumped onto the bed, her face in her hands. The room stank like smoke and death. She had never thought that even Gast could resist her so hard he would rip himself to smithereens. Surely that would be like tearing one’s own head off.
But he had clearly been terrified. Someone very much did not want him answering her question—perhaps to the point of placing a magical compulsion upon him. Torn between warring compulsions, Gast had been ripped apart.
Lucie went very still. Barely breathing, she thought back on what Gast had said. What Jesse had said.
Do you think you are the only one who can command the dead? Where do you think that power comes from?
The anchor, sunk in his soul.
I knew something was keeping me anchored here, when by all rights I should have vanished.
“The anchor,” Lucie whispered.
She seized up her weapons belt and stele. Any thought of going after Jessamine had vanished. She scrawled a quick note to her aunt and uncle and made straight for the door; she had to get to Chiswick before anyone noticed she’d left.
She had to see Jesse.
* * *
A loud metallic rattle sounded through the Sanctuary, causing Thomas to scramble upright on the bed. Someone was unlocking the door.
Thomas had no idea how long he’d been kissing Alastair Carstairs, but he was fairly sure it had been hours. Not that he was complaining. They had stopped once to eat sandwiches and drink cider, laughing together until something about the way Alastair bit into a slice of apple made Thomas want to kiss him again. They’d rolled off the mattress several times, and Thomas had knocked his head fairly hard into the wall at one point, but Alastair had been very apologetic about it. He’d also been gentle and patient, refusing to take things any further than kissing. “If something serious is to happen between us,” he’d said firmly, “it will not be because you were bunged into the Sanctuary on account of being suspected of murder.”