“Well, yes.” Matthew sighed. “I’ve been eyeing this mansion flat in Marylebone for quite a few months. I’d even put a deposit on it some time ago, but had been rather waffling on it. Yesterday afternoon I decided it was time.” He met James’s gaze with his own. “Independence! Hot and cold running servants and my own teakettle! I’ll have you all around to pendre la crémaillère when things are a bit more cheerful.”
“You should have told us,” said Thomas. “We would have helped you move your things. I’m exceptionally good at carrying large objects.”
“And think of all those hairbrushes you would have had to relocate,” Lucie said. “Haven’t you got six or seven?”
Matthew glowered at her affectionately. “I try to be at least as stylish as our local ghosts—”
The whistle blew loudly, drowning out the rest of his sentence. The carriage doors slammed and the train chuffed away from the station in a cloud of black smoke.
Thomas was looking thoughtful. “I wonder why that ghost approached Lucie, rather than one of the older Shadowhunters of the Enclave? Most Nephilim can see ghosts if the ghosts wish to be seen.”
Lucie shrugged. “Maybe because I was the last one into the Institute this morning.”
“It could be,” said James. “Or it could be that there are certainly many Enclave members who wouldn’t be all that keen on receiving information from a ghost.”
The compartment was stuffy and smelled of damp woolen overcoats. Outside the sun had vanished behind clouds. A drizzling rain hazed the outlines of rows of grimy little terraced houses backing directly onto the tracks, with the vague outlines of factory chimneys in the distance. The train stopped briefly at Shadwell. It was raining harder now and the long, wet platform with its dripping wooden canopy was completely deserted. As the train pulled away, live sparks from the coal shot past the window like fireflies, oddly beautiful in the mist.
“Shadowhunters are being killed,” Anna said grimly. “We should be glad that anyone cares enough to pass along a clue, ghost or no. I believe the popular attitude among most of Downworld is that we can take care of our own problems, since we meddle in everyone else’s.”
Now the train was running alongside a looming row of tall black warehouses, the spaces between them briefly giving fog-blurred glimpses of an expanse of water on the right, crowded with the tall, ghostly masts of Thames barges, bringing in cargoes from the river.
“That’s Regent’s Canal Dock,” said Matthew. “We’re almost there.”
Everyone got up as the train pulled into Limehouse station. A guard in a peaked cap and dripping overcoat eyed Matthew curiously as he held out his ticket for punching. The others slipped by invisibly and started down the wooden stairs behind him.
It was still raining as they emerged from the station under the railway bridge onto a narrow, cobbled street. In front of them, looming through the mist, was the dim bulk of a huge church with a tall square tower. They started for the address given by the ghost, following the churchyard wall along the street until they reached a quiet little lane crowded with small houses. At the end of the alley was a low wall, from beyond which came the faint sound of something large slicing through water: a barge on a canal.
“This is the Limehouse Cut,” said Matthew. “It ought to be just up here.”
It was a working day; the canal was busy with watermen shouting to each other, their voices echoing oddly across the water as they maneuvered heavily laden barges in both directions, barely visible through the fog, which seemed even thicker down here. The Shadowhunters slipped down the narrow towpath silently, passing the high walls of warehouses until Lucie came to a stop beside a doorway set into a high fence.
The corners of the door were coated heavily in spiderwebs; it had clearly not been used in years. A rusty padlock hung ineffectively from an even rustier hasp. Across the warped and rotten boards, peeling paint spelled out the ghosts of faded letters, unreadable except for the last row: ILMAKERS.
James raised an eyebrow. “Thomas?” he said.
Thomas turned sideways and slammed his shoulder into the door. It promptly collapsed. The Shadowhunters piled through and found themselves standing in a tiny yard filled with a tangle of weeds and rubble, looking at the back of a building. It might have been painted white, once. Now its bricks were green with mildew, its windows cracked and blind with dust. A set of rotting wooden steps led up to a gaping doorway into darkness.