Matthew rolled his eyes, sitting up a few degrees and rearranging the cushions. “It’s not my fault that you and Father were the most boring people alive when you were adolescents. I’m not like you. I want to enjoy being young. I want to drink and stay up late. There’s nothing wrong with it. You are over-worrying.”
“There is an old saying.” Charlotte’s voice had gone very quiet. “First a man takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.”
James thought of Cordelia’s father and winced. However well intended, Charlotte was taking exactly the wrong tack with Matthew, mistaking his blasé attitude for indifference. He had resettled himself in a position of even more louche inactivity than before; Charlotte might take the gesture for scorn, but James knew that underneath Matthew’s lassitude was fury—the same fury that drove him to brazen the situation out in front of James, as if to say: See how ridiculous this all is, see how foolish they’re being.
“So would you rather I was more like Charles, then?” Matthew demanded. “He wants everyone to know how very important and capable he is. And yet Will and Tessa have had to rush off to Paris to smooth over his latest catastrophe. And if they are successful in preventing war from breaking out over the mess he made, he’ll have to hurry back to his loveless alliance with Grace Blackthorn—”
“Don’t try to change the subject, Matthew.” Charlotte was clearly struggling to stay calm. “We weren’t talking about Charles. We were talking about you—”
James could stand it no more; he cleared his throat and took a few steps into the room. Matthew made a show of sitting up in surprise. “Look who’s here, Mother—James has come for a visit.”
Charlotte gave James a strained smile. “Hello, darling.”
“Mother and I were just discussing why your parents have had to hurry off to France.”
“Don’t let me interrupt.” James made a face at Matthew in response to his glare; he felt a parabatai’s duties ended where arguments with one’s mother began. “I thought I would say hello before I go down to the lab to see what Christopher is up to.”
Matthew collapsed back onto the cushions. James could hear his voice, and Charlotte’s, too, rising as he descended the stone spiral staircase to the cellar. It had been dubbed “the Dungeon” when Henry first took it over as a place to conduct his experiments many years earlier. James was struck, as always, by a vague smell of rotten eggs emanating from the collection of stoppered tubes, sample jars, and labeled boxes.
The lab was brightly lit with witchlight, but Henry’s workbench was empty save for a neat stack of notes. In the fireplace, which had long ago stopped working, was propped a straw dummy covered in stains and tears: the victim of countless past experiments.
Christopher’s corner was piled with its usual research in progress and piles of books with scrawls in the margins. An alabaster statue of Raziel, upon whose nose someone had placed a pair of spectacles, looked on benignly from the mantel as Thomas, seated on a stool beside Christopher, examined something in his hands.
As James drew closer, he saw that the object Thomas held was a nickel-plated handgun. Shadowhunters couldn’t use firearms; weapons had to be runed to be any use against demons, but runes also prevented gunpowder from igniting. Christopher had been long convinced that there must be some way to fix this problem, and this particular gun had been in the lab for some time; the plating was covered in runes. Christopher had never been able to make it work.
“Hullo, James,” Christopher said brightly. “You’re just in time.”
“What’s the idea, Kit?” James asked. “Have you made a breakthrough?”
“Not quite—but I had an idea for some adjustments I could make to the revolver. After what happened to poor Basil Pounceby, I decided to set aside my message-sending project and turn my attentions back to the firearm. Think how useful it could be! If one were able to develop a runed gun that would work on demons and other creatures alike, they could be issued to everyone who goes on patrol. It could be an invaluable tool for defeating Knife Face—or whoever the killer turns out to be.”
James couldn’t help smiling at Christopher’s enthusiasm. His cousin’s violet eyes were shining, his hair was sticking up, and he was gesturing wildly as he spoke. Thomas was also smiling, though he looked a little skeptical.
“So I wanted help from you, James,” Christopher went on. “Obviously I’ve never fired a gun, and neither has Thomas, but you have. We want to make sure we’re doing it right. It is loaded,” he added, rather as an afterthought.