She took Cortana back from where James had leaned it against the wall and followed the boys out into the corridor. She bit her lip as they hurried down the damask-papered hallway in silence. The scent of the smoke in the Whispering Room clung to her hair and clothes, sickly sweet.

“Here,” Matthew said, as an ornately carved golden door rose up in front of them, its knob carved in the shape of a dancing nymph. It seemed Hypatia had altered the entrance to her room, just as she had altered the walls in the central chamber. “The bedroom of Hypatia Vex. Cordelia, I assume you wish to knock?”

Cordelia refrained from glaring at Matthew. He stood close to her, nearly shoulder to shoulder, and she could smell alcohol on him—something rich and dark, like brandy or rum. She thought of the too-slow deliberation of his gestures, the way he’d blinked at her and James. Before he had come to fetch them from the Whispering Room, he had gotten drunk, she realized. Probably far more drunk than he was letting on.

Before she could move, the nymph-knob turned, and Anna opened the door in a wash of bronze light and a heavy rush of scent, redolent of white flowers: jasmine and tuberose. Anna’s hair was mussed and the collar of her shirt hung open to display a ruby necklace glimmering red as blood against her throat. She held a wooden box, carved with the ourobouros and dark with the patina of years, in her left hand.

“Shhh,” she whispered, glaring at them. “Hypatia’s asleep, but she won’t stay that way long. Take it!”

And she tossed the Pyxis to James.

“Then we’re done,” said Matthew. “Come along with us.”

“And make Hypatia suspicious? Don’t be ridiculous.” Anna rolled her blue eyes. “Off you go, conspirators. I’ve done my part, and the rest of my evening will not require you.”

“Anna?” Hypatia’s voice sounded from somewhere inside the bronze-lit room. “Anna, darling, where are you?”

“Take my carriage,” Anna whispered. Then she smiled. “And you did very well, Cordelia. They’ll be talking about that dance for ages.”

She winked and shut the door in their faces.

* * *

Sleep eluded Cordelia that night. Long after the boys had dropped her at the house in Kensington, long after she had wearily climbed the steps to her bedroom, long after her new dress had been discarded in a pile of bronze silk on the floor, she lay awake, staring up at the white plaster ceiling of her room. She could still feel James’s lips on hers, the touch of his hands and fingers on her body.

He had kissed her with violent desperation, as if he were dying for her. He had said her name: Daisy, my Daisy. Hadn’t he? Yet when they had reached Kensington, he had helped her down from the carriage and bid her good night casually, as if they were simply the friends they had always been. She tried to hold the memory of what it felt like to kiss him in her mind, but it slipped away and vanished with only the memory of sweetness, like the smoke in the Whispering Room.

16 LEGION

The sea gave up its dead, and death and the grave gave up their dead.

—Revelations 20:13

When Cordelia arrived at the Institute in the late afternoon, she found Lucie and the Merry Thieves in the ballroom, clearly taking advantage of the fact that Will and Tessa had gone on a day patrol. White sheets had been thrown over the furniture and the piano, and the only light came from the arched windows, whose heavy velvet curtains had been pulled back. Even in the short time that had passed since the ball, the floor had grown lightly grained with dust.

Lucie, Christopher, James, Matthew, and Thomas were standing in a circle around an object that had been placed in the middle of the room. As Cordelia drew near them, she recognized it as the Pyxis Anna had handed to James the night before.

In the watery daylight, Cordelia could see it more clearly. It was made of a dark golden wood, with the pattern of the ouroboros, the snake swallowing its own tail, burned into four of its sides. A handle protruded from the top.

“Cordelia!” Lucie exclaimed. “We were just exchanging information. We learned a great deal that was important at the Enclave meeting last night, and it sounds as if you did something or other at the Hell Ruelle. Nothing that compelling, no doubt, but we cannot all be spies.”

“I heard about the meeting from my brother this morning,” said Cordelia, joining the others in their makeshift circle. Like Cordelia, Lucie and the boys were in gear. James wore a Norfolk jacket over his, with the storm collar turned up. Locks of black hair tumbled over his forehead and kissed the tops of his cheekbones. She looked away quickly, before their eyes could meet. “The quarantine and—and all the rest.”

Alastair was still angry at her, but to be fair to him he had been gentle in breaking the bad news about Oliver Hayward. She did not know what to say about it now, though. She had not known Oliver, except as a presence at Barbara’s side, but the others had. She could not imagine what they felt, especially Thomas, who looked even more tense and strained than he had before.

“It seems even more urgent to find and trap the demon responsible for this contagion now, before it attacks anyone else,” she said at last.

Christopher enthusiastically waved an enormous book he was holding, his glasses balanced on the tip of his nose. The words On the Uses of Pyxides and Other Phylacteries were stamped across the front in gold. “It appears that this generation of Pyxis is fairly simple. When you wish to trap a demon, you first wound or weaken it. Then you place the Pyxis on the ground nearby and speak the words ‘Thaam Tholach Thechembaor,’ and the demon will be sucked into the box.”

The Pyxis wobbled sharply, nearly tipping onto its side. Everyone jumped about a foot back.

“It’s alive,” Thomas said, staring. “Not the Pyxis, I mean—well, you know what I mean.”

“Indeed,” said James. “I see a flaw in our plan.”

Matthew nodded. “I do as well. What if the Pyxis has an occupant? There was no real reason to assume the box at Hypatia’s was empty. It could have had a demon in it all these years.”

They all stared at each other.

“What would happen if we tried to put another demon in there?” Cordelia asked at last. “Could they both fit?”

“It isn’t a good idea,” said Christopher, consulting the book. “Since we don’t know what kind of demon is already in there, we don’t know if there will be enough space. Pyxides are bigger inside than they appear, but still finite.”

“Well, then we have to empty this Pyxis out,” Lucie said practically. “Anything could be in there. It could be a Greater Demon.”

“What ho,” said Christopher sadly.

“I’m sure it isn’t,” said James. “Still—let’s relocate to the Sanctuary. No matter what happens, we can at least keep it contained until help arrives.”

“Why not?” said Matthew. “Surely there’s no way this plan can go wrong.”

James raised an eyebrow. “Have you got another idea?”

“I think we should do it,” said Thomas. “It’s ridiculous to come this far and turn back.”

Lucie sniffed. “Well, you’d all better hope it works. Especially you, James, because if Mam and Papa find out you released a demon in the Sanctuary, they will feed you to it.”

James shot Lucie a dark older-brother glare that almost made Cordelia giggle. She had always been a little jealous of the closeness Lucie and James shared, something she had always wanted with Alastair but never had. It was nice that at some moments they were perfectly ordinary.

They relocated themselves to the Sanctuary, James carrying the Pyxis carefully, as if it were an infernal device that might explode at any moment. Cordelia found herself walking beside James and Lucie. She wondered if she and James would ever discuss what had happened the night before in the Whispering Room or if she would be left to go quietly mad wondering about it.

“Don’t worry,” Lucie said to her brother. “It won’t be like it was with Papa.”

“What do you mean?” Cordelia asked.

James said, “When he was a child, my father opened a Pyxis with tragic consequences. My aunt Ella was killed.”

Cordelia was horrified. “Maybe we shouldn’t—”

“This will be different,” Lucie said, and Cordelia wasn’t sure if Lucie was reassuring herself or James. “We know what we’re getting into. Papa didn’t.”

They had arrived at the Sanctuary, the only room in the Institute where Downworlders could freely enter without being invited in by a Shadowhunter. It was warded all around with spells preventing them from entering the main body of the Institute. Meetings with prominent Downworlders were often held there, and Downworlders could even seek refuge in a Sanctuary under the Accords.

It was certainly clear that the London Institute had once been a cathedral, and a large one. Massive stone pillars stretched up to a vaulted roof. Thomas had produced a box of vestas and was moving around the room, lighting a dozen enormous candelabras, their sconces stuffed with fat white candles that cast a glimmering light. The tapestries and pillars were all traced with the designs of runes, as were the tiles of the floor. Cordelia had to admit that if one was going to release a demon, this seemed one of the better places to do it.

In the middle of the room was a dry stone fountain, in the center of which stood the statue of an angel with folded wings, its stone face streaked with black lines like tears.

James set the box on the floor, directly on top of a rune of angelic power. He knelt down, studying the Pyxis. After a moment, he took an unlit seraph blade from the inside of his coat.

“Arm yourselves, everyone,” he said.

Cordelia unsheathed Cortana; the others drew seraph blades as James had done, save Thomas, who took out his bolas. James reached out and took hold of the handle of the Pyxis.

Cordelia’s hand tightened on the hilt of her sword.

James twisted the handle sideways, as if turning a corkscrew. There was a loud click as the Pyxis popped open. All through the Sanctuary, the white candles spat and guttered. James sprang back, raising his blade.