And then the next figure, in the next bed. “James.”

Matthew rose to his feet. “What’s going on?”

Christopher’s lilac eyes flew wide; his grip on James’s wrist tightened as he jerked him forward. Face inches from James’s, he hissed, “Get out of here—you have to get out of here. You have to leave. James, you don’t understand. It’s about you. It’s always been about you.”

“What does that mean?” Matthew demanded, as more and more voices were added to the chant:

“James. James. James.”

Matthew took hold of James’s sleeve and drew him back from Christopher, who let go of James reluctantly. Cordelia put her hand to the hilt of Cortana. “What’s going on?” she demanded. “Christopher—?”

One by one the sick were rising into sitting positions, though it did not look as if they were doing so of their own volition. It seemed they were being dragged upward like puppets on strings; their heads sagged loosely to the side, their arms limp and dangling. Their eyes were wide open, white and shining in the dimness of the room. Cordelia saw with horror that the whites of them were also veined in black.

“James Herondale.” It was the voice of Ariadne Bridgestock. She sat at the edge of her own narrow bed, her body slumped forward. Her voice rasped, empty of emotion. “James Herondale, you have been summoned.”

“By who?” Matthew shouted. “Who’s summoning him?”

“The Prince,” said Ariadne, “the Lord of Thieves. Only he can stop the dying. Only he can call off the Mandikhor, the poison bringer. You carry the taint now, Herondale. Your blood can open the gateway.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “You have no other choice.”

Drawing away from Matthew, James took a step toward her. “What gateway? Ariadne—”

Cordelia threw out an arm to stop him. “This is not Ariadne.”

What is going on here?

They all turned. It was Jem, who had entered the room in a swirl of parchment robes; he carried his oak staff in his hand. Despite the stillness of his face, Cordelia could sense how furious he was. It radiated from the words that exploded into her mind: What are you three doing here?

“I got your message,” said James. “You told me to come.”

I sent no message, said Jem.

“Yes, you did,” protested Cordelia indignantly. “We all saw it.”

“Our master sent the message,” said Ariadne. “He waits in the shadows. Still, he controls all.”

Jem shook his head. His hood had fallen back so that Cordelia could see the white streak in his dark hair.

There is foulness at work here, he said. He lifted the oaken staff in his hands, and Cordelia saw the letters WH carved into the grip.

The sick were all chanting James’s name now, their voices rising in a hazy murmur.

Jem brought the staff down, and the noise of the wood striking the stone floor echoed in their ears. The chanting stopped; the sick went still.

Jem turned to Cordelia and the boys. Some evil has brought you here, Jem said. Get out. I fear you are in danger.

They ran.

* * *

The flight out of the Silent City was almost a blur to Cordelia. James went first, the witchlight in his hand illuminating their path as they darted out of the way of various Silent Brothers. She and Matthew came after; in seconds they had all reached the last stairway, where it arced up toward the sky.

Suddenly Matthew gasped. He staggered, falling back against the stone wall as if he’d been pushed. Cordelia caught at his arm. “Matthew! What’s happening?”

His face was paper white. “James,” he whispered. “There’s something very wrong with James.”

Cordelia glanced up the stairs. James vanished from her view. He must not have realized they were no longer following. “Matthew, he’s fine—he’s out of the City—”

Matthew pushed away from the wall. “We must hurry,” was all he said, and began to run again.

They tore up the stairs and burst out into the clearing above. James was nowhere to be seen.

Matthew took Cordelia’s hand. “He’s this way,” he said, and drew her through a narrow path between the trees. It was nearly black beneath the canopy of leaves, but Matthew seemed to know exactly where he was going.

They emerged in a shadowy grove ringed with tombs, the sky above them the deep blue of late twilight. James was there, standing still as a statue. A statue of a dark prince, all in black, with hair like crow’s feathers. He was in the process of casting aside his jacket, puzzlingly, since it had grown cold now that it was evening.

He was not looking at Matthew or Cordelia, but at something in the distance. His expression was stark, his eyes ringed with darkness. He looked ill, Cordelia realized with dismay. As if, just as Matthew had said, there was something very wrong.

Matthew cupped his hands around his mouth. “James!”

James turned slowly, dropping his jacket to the ground. He was moving mechanically, like an automaton.

Cordelia’s unease mounted. She went toward James, slowly, as if she were approaching a startled deer in the forest. He watched her with restless gold eyes; there was color in his cheeks, a high consumptive flush. She heard Matthew curse under his breath.

“James,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

He rolled up the left sleeve of his shirt. On the back of his wrist, just above where the cuff of his shirt would have ended, were four small, bloody crescents, surrounded by a tracery of darkening veins.

Nail marks.

“Christopher,” said James, and Cordelia remembered with horror the way Christopher had clutched at James in the sickroom, gripping his wrist. “I know he didn’t mean to.” His mouth twisted into a painful smile. “No one tell him. He’d be so upset.”

Oh, James, no. Please, no. She thought of Oliver Hayward, dead because Barbara had clawed him in her last agonies. Not James.

Matthew’s voice shook. “We have to go back to the Silent City. We have to get you to Jem—”

“No,” Cordelia whispered. “It isn’t safe for James there. If we went to the Institute—or brought Jem there—”

“Absolutely not,” said James very calmly. “I’m not going anywhere. Not anywhere in London, at least.”

“Bloody hell, he’s hallucinating,” said Matthew with a groan.

But Cordelia didn’t think he was. In a low voice, she said, “James. What do you see?”

James raised his hand and pointed. “There. Between those two trees.”

And he was right—suddenly Cordelia, and Matthew as well, could see what James had been staring at all this time. Between two cedar trees was a large archway. It seemed to be made of dark light; it curved with Gothic flourishes, as though it were part of the cemetery, but Cordelia knew it was not. Through it, she could glimpse a swirl of dark chaos, as if she were looking through a Portal into the vastness of black space itself.

“A gateway,” said Matthew slowly.

“Like Ariadne said,” whispered Cordelia. “James—your blood—” She shook her head. “Don’t. Don’t do it, whatever it is. Everything about this feels wrong.”

But James only turned and went over toward the archway. He stretched out his arm toward it—the one with the wounds where Christopher’s nails had punctured his skin—and made a fist.

The muscles of his arm swelled, and blood ran from the cuts on his wrist—they looked slight, but fat drops of red rose up along his arm and dripped onto the ground. The view through the archway seemed to solidify and clear itself, and now Cordelia could glimpse the world she’d seen on the bridge: a place with earth and sky like ashes, and trees like protrusions of bone.

“James,” Matthew said, closing the gap between himself and his friend. “Stop.”

“I have to do this.” James lowered his bleeding arm. His eyes were feverish, whether from determination or the poison now in his veins, Cordelia wasn’t sure. “Math—you shouldn’t touch me. It’s not safe.”

Matthew, who had been reaching for James, stopped abruptly and flung his arms wide. “James—”

“Is that why you’re going?” Cordelia demanded. She could taste tears in the back of her throat. She wanted to break something, to take Cortana and smash the blade against the granite sides of the tombs. “Because you think you’re going to die? Thomas and Lucie are getting the malos root right now. We could have an antidote in a day. In hours.”

“It’s not that.” James shook his head. “Whether I’d been infected or not, I’d have to go, and you would have to let me.”

“Why?” Matthew demanded. “Tell us why, Jamie.”

“Because Christopher was right,” said James. “So was Ariadne. Only my going through the gateway can stop all this. It’s about me. It’s always been about me. I have no other choice.”

19 ALL PLACES HELL

When all the world dissolves,

And every creature shall be purified,

All places shall be hell that is not heaven.

—Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

By the time Lucie and Thomas reached Chiswick House, it was near dark. The sun had set, and the mansion was tarnished silver against the dying light. Leaving the carriage at the curb, they made their way in silence up the long road flanked by twisted trees to the main house. Somehow the place looked worse than it had when Lucie had been here with Cordelia.

Lucie could see the humped shadow of the greenhouse in the distance, and the ruined Italian gardens in the other direction. Seeing the manor and its grounds in better light, Lucie wished she had not. She couldn’t imagine living in such a house.

“Poor Grace,” she said. “This place is a rathole. Actually, I wouldn’t wish it on a rat.”

“That is because you like rats,” said Thomas. “Remember Marie?”

Marie Curie had been a small white rat Christopher had kept in the room at the Devil Tavern and fed on bread and chicken bones. Marie had been friendly enough to rest on Lucie’s shoulder and nuzzle at her hair. Eventually Marie had died of natural causes and been buried with pomp and circumstance in Matthew’s back garden.