Alastair said goodbye to him at the end of the lane; he said he was leaving Paris the next day, but he continued to refuse to tell Thomas why he was there or where he was going or why he was leaving the next day. Thomas supposed that they weren’t, after all, friends, though he had enjoyed the time they’d spent together. He wasn’t fully sure what a friend was, if it wasn’t someone you enjoyed spending time with.

The whole trip had seemed disconnected and dreamlike. Alastair had come from nowhere and now returned to nowhere, and Thomas had no idea when they would next see each other, or how they would act when they did. Were they now friends? Had they been friends these past few days?

“I return to Spain in a couple of days myself,” Thomas said.

Alastair gave a little chuckle. “It’s odd that you came here from Madrid. Like taking a vacation from a vacation.”

“I suppose,” said Thomas. Then he frowned. “No, it isn’t odd. A travel year isn’t a vacation. It’s an assignment to a post. Do you have to snipe at everything?”

Alastair looked startled. “I’m sorry,” he said after a long moment. “I don’t mean anything by it.”

He seemed worried in that moment, and human and vulnerable in a way that made Thomas want to—well, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, but he stuck out his hand to Alastair, who stared at it for a moment, then slowly took it.

His hand was warm and calloused against Thomas’s, and Thomas remembered the feel of Alastair’s fingers on the inside of his arm and tried not to change expression. They shook.

Alastair had not asked Thomas about his friends or his family. Thomas hadn’t asked Alastair, either. For these days it had been as though nobody else existed in the entire world.

“Well,” Thomas said. “Goodbye, Carstairs.”

“Goodbye, Lightwood. Try not to get any taller. You’re starting to be off-putting in the other direction.”

Thomas watched Alastair walk away and waited for him to turn around one last time, but Alastair never looked back as he turned the corner and disappeared.

10 LOYALTY BINDS

Close, side by side, from morn till night,

Kissing and dalliance their delight,

Whilst thou from human solace flying

With unrequited love art dying.

—Nizami Ganjavi, Layla and Majnun

The proprietor would not let Lucie up to the Merry Thieves’ private rooms at the Devil Tavern, so she was reduced to sending a message through Polly, the werewolf barmaid. She sat in an uncomfortable wooden chair and fumed as a mixture of Downworlders and magicians stared at her curiously: a small, bonneted girl with Nephilim runes, clutching an axe. In the corner, a kelpie who seemed to be marinating in a tank of gin gave her a beady look.

“Drain of pale?” inquired a wild-haired vampire, offering her a half-drunk bottle of gin.

“She doesn’t drink.” It was Thomas, glowering. The vampire shrank back. Christopher appeared at Thomas’s shoulder, blinking.

“I knew you’d be here,” said Lucie triumphantly.

“We very nearly weren’t,” said Christopher. “We decided to use the laboratory upstairs instead of at Grosvenor Square since Matthew and James weren’t going to be here to be bothered or blown up—”

Thomas shushed him. “Christopher, enough. Lucie, what’s going on? Did something happen?”

After dragging the two of them outside, Lucie did her best to explain the situation without mentioning Jesse. She blamed Jessamine instead, and a gossip network between ghosts that she had invented on the spot. Fortunately, neither Christopher nor Thomas was the suspicious type.

“We need Matthew, and he’s bloody gone off to Anna’s,” said Thomas, after telling her the little they knew—the letter that had come for James at Matthew’s house, his determination to meet Grace, the time of the meeting set for ten o’clock. “He’ll know where James has gone. James said it was where the two of them used to practice balance.”

“But what if we’re too late?” said Christopher, vibrating with anxiety.

Lucie checked the clock that hung before the church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, across the dark line of Fleet Street. They were quite near the Institute here. She could see its distinctive spire rising above the roofs of London. “Nine o’clock,” she said. “One of you must have a carriage. We’ll go to Anna’s.”

Which was how they found themselves a quarter of an hour later on Percy Street, Thomas helping Lucie down from his family’s Victoria. The street was empty of pedestrians, though there were lights on in many windows. Lucie made out a shape sitting on Anna’s stairs in the dark. She felt no surprise—ladies were always making cakes of themselves on Anna’s doorstep.

Then Lucie made out broad shoulders on the silhouette and realized that the person on Anna’s doorstep was a man.

He bolted upright, and the light from the arc lamps fell on him. On Percy Street, the streetlights were older and less reliable, their fierce yellow burn stripping the world down to harsh lines. Lucie saw bright hair and a scowling face.

“Alastair?” Thomas sounded astonished.

Christopher groaned as Alastair Carstairs raced down the street toward them, a whirlwind in an unbuttoned town coat. Beneath the coat his waistcoat was disarranged, and one side of his high wingtip collar was askew.

“You’ve lost your hat, Alastair,” said Lucie.

Alastair said, “I have lost my sister!”

Lucie went cold. “What do you mean? Has something happened to Cordelia?”

“I don’t bloody know, do I?” said Alastair. “I let her go take tea with Anna Lightwood and now I return to pick her up at the agreed-upon time and they are both gone. I should never have left her alone with—”

“Be very careful what you say about Anna,” said Christopher. Lucie thought she ought to have found it funny: Christopher, who was never angry, speaking in those icy tones to Alastair. But somehow, it was not funny at all.

Alastair advanced upon Christopher dangerously, but Thomas caught his arm as he went by. Lucie watched with great satisfaction as Alastair was brought to a complete standstill, without Thomas having to exert any particular effort. The muscles of Alastair’s arm tensed beneath his coat sleeve as he strained against Thomas’s grip. Alastair was tall enough, and looked strong enough, but he couldn’t make any headway.

“Steady, Alastair,” said Thomas. “I know you are worried about your sister. We are worried about James. Better we discuss setting matters right than brawl in public.”

Alastair tilted his chin to meet Thomas’s eyes, the line of his jaw a hard slash. “Let me loose,” he snarled. “And cease constantly addressing me by my first name. You are not a scrubby schoolboy trailing after me any longer.”

Thomas, his cheeks flaming red, whipped his hand back as if he’d been burned.

“Stop it!” Lucie snapped. Thomas had only been trying to be kind. “Matthew is most likely with Anna and Cordelia. He can chaperone—”

Alastair’s expression went flat. “You think I would be relieved to hear she’s with Matthew? You think I don’t know a drunk when I see one? Believe me, I do. If he puts Cordelia in harm’s way—”

There was the sudden and welcome rattle of wheels on stony road. They all whirled to see the Consul’s carriage rolling up to Anna’s house. The carriage door opened and disgorged Cordelia and Matthew, who was holding a rolled-up piece of velvet.

The two of them froze at the sight of the visitors. “What are you doing here?” Matthew said. “Has something happened to Barbara and the others?”

“No,” Thomas said hastily. “Nothing like that. But it is urgent. James is in danger.”

* * *

James walked through the night from the King’s Road toward the Thames. Matthew had often taken him on impromptu tours of Chelsea, past Queen Anne–style buildings with their grand sweeps of stone steps and terra-cotta panels turning gold in the sunshine, pointing out the residences of famous poets and artists who had lived scandalous lives. Now the lit windows of the houses shone dimly through a heavy mist, which grew heavier as James approached the river.

The riverside at Chelsea Embankment was a promenade under plane trees heavy with leaves, visible only as dark clouds above James’s head, their wet trunks illuminated by the ghostly globes of the cast-iron lampposts that lined the river’s edge. The Thames, beyond the river wall, was barely distinguishable in the thick fog: only the sound of a petrol-powered police boat chugging past and the gleams of a bobby’s lantern on its wake betrayed the river’s presence.

James was early. He started walking slowly toward the arch of Battersea Bridge, trying to quell his impatience and worry. Grace. He recalled their kiss in the park, the inchoate agony that had risen up inside him. As if he were being stabbed through with a needle. A premonition of demons, perhaps, the unknown danger so close, the shadow realm just touching this one. It was hard to know, but then it was hard to know anything that had to do with Grace. There were times when he thought of her that he felt such pain that all his bones seemed strung on a single wire, and he imagined that if the wire was pulled taut, it would kill him.

“How much is love meant to hurt?” he had asked his father once.

“Oh, terribly,” his father had said with a smile. “But we suffer for love because love is worth it.”

Suddenly she was there, as if she had appeared between one moment and another, standing beneath an ornate triple-headed lamppost at the near end of the bridge: a small, misty figure in the fog, dressed as she always was in light colors, her face a pale moon in the lamplight. James broke into a run, and she dashed down the steps of the bridge toward where he stood on the embankment.

When they reached each other, she threw her arms around him. Her hands were cool against the back of his neck, and he felt dizzy and assailed by memories: the crumbling walls of Blackthorn Manor, the shadows in the forest where they’d sat and talked together, her hand fastening the silver bracelet around his wrist.…