Chain of Iron
Then, suddenly, it came free.
She gasped and opened her eyes. Gast’s ghost hovered before her, glowering. The last time Lucie had encountered his ghost, he had borne the marks of his violent death—a slit throat and blood-soaked clothes. Now he seemed intact, though around him thrummed a violent tear in the world, a shimmer of darkness that vanished if looked at directly.
“I know you,” Gast said. Dank hair straggled about his face, his rows of teeth showing in a scowl. “The girl in my flat. The one with the power to command the dead.”
Jessamine shrank back, appalled. “Lucie, what is he—”
Oh no. Lucie had not expected Gast to spill the beans so quickly, or so thoroughly. She shook her head at Jessamine, as if to say that Gast didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Emmanuel Gast,” she said. “I summoned you because I need to know something about a Shadowhunter named Jesse Blackthorn. Do you remember him?”
Gast’s mouth contorted in a sneer. “Yes, I remember him. Tatiana’s whelp.”
Lucie felt her heart skip a beat. “You did have something to do with what happened to him, then.”
Jessamine made an uneasy noise. After a long pause, Gast said, “How would you know anything about that, Shadowhunter?”
“Just tell me what you know,” Lucie said. “I won’t ask you twice.”
Gast crossed his arms and looked down his nose at her. “I suppose,” he said finally, “it matters very little now.”
“I already know about the protection spells,” prompted Lucie.
“Indeed.” The ghost seemed to be warming to his subject. “Tatiana Blackthorn didn’t trust the Silent Brothers and Iron Sisters to do the work, of course. Didn’t trust nearly anybody and least of all Shadowhunters. She hired me to work the spells instead.”
“But when the Voyance rune was put on Jesse, he died,” said Lucie. “Would that have something to do with the protection spells?”
Gast spit in disgust—a spark of white translucence that vanished before it struck the floor. “I am not the one who put the first rune on the boy. Your precious Silent Brothers did that. I did the protection spells by the book. The council may have scorned me when I was alive, but I was a perfectly capable warlock.”
“So you did the protection spells just as a Silent Brother would have done them?” Lucie said. “You can swear to that?”
Gast stared directly at Lucie as a look of panic stole across his face. Abruptly he turned away from her, his hands clawing at the air as if he were trying to drag himself back into the darkness he’d come from.
“Stop it,” Lucie said, and he stopped immediately. He hung in midair, glaring.
Jessamine whispered something; Lucie couldn’t quite tell what, but she couldn’t worry about Jessamine now.
“Tell me the truth,” Lucie said.
Gast’s face twisted. “No. There are worse things than death, little Shadowhunter, and more to fear on the other side than you might imagine. Do you think you are the only one who can control the dead? Where do you think that power comes from?”
“Enough!” Lucie snapped her fingers. “I command you to tell me.”
“Lucie, stop!” Jessamine fluttered her hands in terror. “You mustn’t!”
Gast’s head snapped back with a sound like a stick breaking. He twisted, pushing back at her, scrabbling like a trapped rabbit. For a moment, Lucie pitied him.
Then she thought of Jesse, dying in agony when the rune was placed on him. Tangled in blood-covered sheets. Screaming for help when no help could be had.
A cold sweat broke out on Lucie’s forehead. She bent her will on Gast, the force of her power and her anger.
Tell me. Tell me the truth.
“The anchor!” Gast cried, the words torn from his throat. “By God, the anchor, sunk in his soul! I didn’t want to do it, but I had no choice!” His voice rose to a howl. “Dear God let me go he’ll tear me to pieces—”
Jessamine screamed, just as Gast’s translucent body ripped down the middle like a piece of paper. Lucie stumbled back as the ghost came apart, splitting into tattered pieces that sank to the floor and dissolved, leaving faint black stains behind.
Lucie sagged against the bedpost. Exhaustion freighted her limbs, as if she’d run a marathon. “Jessamine,” she whispered. “Jessamine, are you all right?”
But Jessamine was staring at her, her ghostly eyes vast in her pale face. “You can command the dead,” she choked out. “That means—every time you asked me to fetch your hairbrush, or asked me to tell you a bedtime story, or asked for the window to be opened—you were commanding me? I had no choice?”
“Jessamine, no,” Lucie protested. “It’s not like that. I didn’t even know….”
But Jessamine had vanished, between one breath and the next. Lucie slumped onto the bed, her face in her hands. The room stank like smoke and death. She had never thought that even Gast could resist her so hard he would rip himself to smithereens. Surely that would be like tearing one’s own head off.
But he had clearly been terrified. Someone very much did not want him answering her question—perhaps to the point of placing a magical compulsion upon him. Torn between warring compulsions, Gast had been ripped apart.
Lucie went very still. Barely breathing, she thought back on what Gast had said. What Jesse had said.
Do you think you are the only one who can command the dead? Where do you think that power comes from?
The anchor, sunk in his soul.
I knew something was keeping me anchored here, when by all rights I should have vanished.
“The anchor,” Lucie whispered.
She seized up her weapons belt and stele. Any thought of going after Jessamine had vanished. She scrawled a quick note to her aunt and uncle and made straight for the door; she had to get to Chiswick before anyone noticed she’d left.
She had to see Jesse.
A loud metallic rattle sounded through the Sanctuary, causing Thomas to scramble upright on the bed. Someone was unlocking the door.
Thomas had no idea how long he’d been kissing Alastair Carstairs, but he was fairly sure it had been hours. Not that he was complaining. They had stopped once to eat sandwiches and drink cider, laughing together until something about the way Alastair bit into a slice of apple made Thomas want to kiss him again. They’d rolled off the mattress several times, and Thomas had knocked his head fairly hard into the wall at one point, but Alastair had been very apologetic about it. He’d also been gentle and patient, refusing to take things any further than kissing. “If something serious is to happen between us,” he’d said firmly, “it will not be because you were bunged into the Sanctuary on account of being suspected of murder.”
Thomas supposed this line of reason had merit, but he’d rather thought something serious had already happened between them. He had been a bit crushed, but thought he had hidden it well.
Now he rushed to smooth down his clothes, throw on his jacket, and kick his feet back into his shoes. Alastair did the same, and by the time the door swung open, they were both standing on opposite sides of the room, fully dressed.
Which was a good thing, because into the room strode Thomas’s uncle Will and aunt Tessa. Tessa wore a sea-green French silk dress, her long brown hair bound up in a chignon. Will had clearly discarded his coat somewhere and was carrying a long, heavily ornamented scabbard balanced jauntily on his shoulder. A hilt whose cross guard had been carved in the shape of an angel with outspread wings protruded from the scabbard.