Chain of Gold

James crossed his arms over his chest. His eyes were golden slits. “Actually, Matthew brought her back. I’ve only just arrived.”

Alastair shrugged off his heavy coat and threw it angrily over the arm of a chair. “I thought you had better sense, Herondale, than to put yourself in a position to compromise my sister.”

“He brought back Cortana,” Cordelia protested.

“Your mother welcomed me into this room,” said James, his expression like ice. “Hers is the authority here, not yours.”

“My mother doesn’t understand—” Alastair broke off. He was yanking at the gloves on his hands with shaking fingers, and Cordelia realized with a shock that Alastair was far more upset than she’d realized. “I know you hate me for how I treated you in school, and rightfully so,” Alastair said, fixing James with a level gaze. “But however much you hate me, do not take it out on my sister.”

Cordelia saw a flicker of surprise in James’s eyes. “Alastair, you made my life a living hell at the Academy. But I’d never take it out on Cordelia. That’s something you would do, not something I would do.”

“I see how it is. In school I had the power, and here you have the power to lord it over me. What’s your game? What do you want with my sister?”

“Your sister,” James said, speaking with a slow, deliberate coldness. “Your sister is the only thing keeping me from punching you in the face. Your sister loves you, Angel knows why, and you aren’t even the least bit grateful.”

Alastair’s voice was hoarse. “You have no idea what I’ve done for my sister. You have no idea about our family. You don’t know the first thing—”

He broke off and glowered.

It was as if a jolt went through Cordelia. She had always thought of their family as fairly ordinary, aside from their constant travel. What was Alastair hinting at? “James,” she said. The air was crackling with violence; it was only a matter of time before one of the boys took a swing at the other. “James, you’d better go.”

James turned to her. “Are you sure?” he said in a low voice. “I won’t leave you alone, Cordelia, not unless you wish me to.”

“I’ll be fine,” she whispered back. “Alastair’s bark is worse than his bite. I promise.”

He raised his hand, as if he meant to cup her cheek, or brush back a lock of her hair. She could feel the energy between them, even now, even with her brother three feet away and mad with rage. It felt like the sparks of a bonfire.

James dropped his hand, and with a last hard look at Alastair, strode from the room. Cordelia went immediately to the door, shut and locked it. She turned to face him.

“What did you mean?” she said. “By ‘you have no idea what I’ve done for my sister’?”

“Nothing,” Alastair said, picking up his gloves. “I meant nothing, Cordelia.”

“Yes, you did,” she said. “I can tell that there is something you’re not telling me, something that has to do with Father. All this time you have acted like my attempts to save him, to save us, are childish and silly. You haven’t stood up for him at all. What are you not telling me?”

Alastair squeezed his eyes shut. “Please stop asking.”

“I won’t,” Cordelia said. “You think Father did something wrong. Don’t you?”

The gloves Alastair had been holding fell to the floor. “It doesn’t matter what I think, Cordelia—”

“It does matter!” Cordelia said. “It matters when you hide things from me, you and Mâmân. I got a letter from the Consul. It said that they couldn’t try Father with the Mortal Sword because he didn’t remember a thing about the expedition. How could that be? What did he do—”

“He was drunk,” Alastair said. “The night of the expedition, he was drunk, so drunk he probably sent those poor bastards into a nest of vampires because he didn’t know enough not to. So drunk he doesn’t remember a thing. Because he’s always bloody drunk, Cordelia. The only one of us who didn’t know that is you.”

Cordelia sank down on the couch. She no longer felt her legs could hold her up. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered.

“Because I never wanted you to know!” Alastair burst out. “Because I wanted you to have a childhood, a thing I never had. I wanted you to be able to love and respect your father as I never could. Every time he made a mess, who do you think had to clean it up? Who told you Father was ill or sleeping when he was drunk? Who went out and fetched him when he passed out in a gin palace and smuggled him in through the back door? Who learned at ten years old to refill the brandy bottles with water each morning so no one would notice the levels had sunk—?”

He broke off, breathing hard.

“Alastair,” Cordelia whispered. It was all true, she knew. She could not help but recall Father lying day after day in a darkened room, her mother saying he was “sick.” Elias’s hands shaking. Wine ceasing to appear at the dinner table. Elias never eating. Cordelia coming across bottles of brandy in odd places: a hall closet, a trunk of linens. Alastair never acknowledging any of it, laughing it off, turning her attention in some other direction, always, so she did not dwell. So she would not have to.

“He will never win this trial,” said Alastair. He was trembling. “Even though the Mortal Sword is useless, he will indict himself with the way he looks, the way he speaks. The Clave knows a drunk when they see one. That is why Mother wants you married quickly. So you will be safe when the shame of it comes down.”

“But what of you?” said Cordelia. “No shame should accrue to you, either—Father’s weakness is not your weakness.”

The fire in the grate had nearly burned down. Alastair’s eyes were luminous in the dark. “I have my own weaknesses, as you well know.”

“Love is not a weakness, Alastair dâdâsh,” she said, and for a moment she saw Alastair hesitate at the use of the Persian word.

Then his mouth tightened. The shadows under his eyes looked like bruises; she wondered where he had been, to return so late at night.

“Isn’t it?” he said, turning to leave the room. “Don’t give your heart to James Herondale, Cordelia. He is in love with Grace Blackthorn and he always will be.”

* * *

“You should brush your hair,” Jessamine said, pushing the silver-backed hairbrush along the nightstand toward Lucie. “It will get tangled.”

“Why must you be such a fussy ghost?” said Lucie, scooting upright against the pillows. She had been firmly ordered to stay in bed, though she was itching to leap up, seize her pen, and write. What was the point of having exciting things happen to you if you couldn’t tell a story about them?

“When I was a girl, I brushed my hair one hundred strokes a day,” said Jessamine—who, being a ghost, had hair that floated like fine gossamer and never needed brushing. “Why, I—”

She shrieked and shot up into the air, hovering a foot above the nightstand. A wash of cold went over Lucie. She pulled the blankets up around her, looking about the room anxiously. “Jesse?”

He materialized at the foot of the bed, in the same black trousers and shirtsleeves he always wore. His eyes were green and very serious. “I am here.”

Lucie looked up at Jessamine. “Could I have a moment to speak with Jesse alone?”

“Alone?” Jessamine looked horrified. “But he’s a gentleman. In your bedroom.”

“I am a ghost,” said Jesse dryly. “What is it exactly you imagine I might do?”

“Please, Jessamine,” said Lucie.

Jessamine sniffed. “Never in my day!” she announced, and vanished in a swirl of petticoats.

“Why are you here?” Lucie said, hugging the blankets to her chest. It was true that Jesse was a ghost, but she still felt awkward about the idea of him seeing her in her nightgown. “I don’t remember you leaving. At the bridge.”

“Your brother and friends seemed to have the situation well in hand,” Jesse said. His gold locket glimmered at his throat. “And your brother can see ghosts. He’s never seen me before, but—”

“Humph,” Lucie said. “You do realize I just had to be dishonest with my family and pretend as if I didn’t know you existed or that you raised the dead to bring Cordelia out of the river.”

“What?”

“I mean, I’m grateful that you did it. Brought Cordelia out of the river, I mean. Don’t think I’m not. It’s just—”

“You think I called the dead out of the river?” Jesse demanded. “I answered the call.”

Despite the blanket, Lucie suddenly felt cold all over. “What do you mean?”

“You called the dead,” said Jesse. “You called the dead, and the dead came. I heard you, across the whole city, calling for someone to help you.”

“What do you mean? Why would I have any ability to call the dead up? I can see them, but I certainly can’t command—”

She broke off. She was suddenly back in Emmanuel Gast’s bedroom in that small, terrible flat. You will, she had said when the ghost proclaimed he would never tell, and he had given up his secrets. Leave us, she had said, and he had winked out of existence.

“You were the only one who could see me in the ballroom,” said Jesse. “You have always been the only one who can see me besides my family. There’s something unusual about you.”

She stared at him. What if she ordered Jesse to do something? Would he have to do it? Would he have to come to her if she called, as he had on the riverbank?

She swallowed. “When we were beside the river, when you were with me, you were holding that locket at your throat. Clutching it.”

“And you want me to tell you why?” he said, and she knew he’d had the same thought she had. She didn’t like the thought. She didn’t want to order him around, or Jessamine. Perhaps she had to be panicked, though, she told herself. She’d been frightened in Gast’s flat, and again at the river.