Cordelia, Matthew, and James arrived at Mount Street Gardens at a run. The gate was open, the garden itself seemingly deserted. Cordelia slowed to a walk as they passed onto the footpaths that ran beneath the plane trees. She told herself that the silence—despite the red Jacobean primary school building looming up on the right—was due to the earliness of the morning. The schoolchildren wouldn’t have arrived yet, and it was chilly weather for a walk.

And yet, she could not shake her feeling of prickly unease, as if someone were watching them. But the raked footpaths were bare. James ranged restlessly across the park, hatless, his dark hair whipping in the wind as he searched. They were all glamoured—they would certainly have alarmed the pedestrians on South Audley Street otherwise—but it seemed no one was here to see them. She was wondering if they were too late—or too early—when James gave a hoarse bark of alarm.

“Matthew! Come quickly!”

Matthew and Cordelia exchanged a quick look of puzzlement; James was over by a bronze statue in the middle of the garden, waving furiously. Matthew ran to him, and after a moment, Cordelia followed.

She saw immediately why James had called Matthew to him first. The statue surmounted a now-dry bronze fountain; slumped behind the fountain was the body of a Shadowhunter—a man in gear, with dark red hair. Not far away, an object glittered on the pathway, as if it had fallen or been tossed aside. The pithos.

Nearing the fountain, Matthew froze. He had gone an awful color, like chalk.

“Charles,” he whispered.

He seemed unable to move. Cordelia caught hold of his hand and half dragged him to where James was kneeling by the body—no, not a body, she realized with relief. Charles was alive, if barely. James had rolled him onto his back, and his blood-soaked chest rose and fell unevenly.

James had his stele out and was frantically drawing iratzes on Charles’s skin, where a torn and bloody sleeve exposed his forearm. Cordelia heard Matthew suck in a ragged breath. He was staring intently at the runes, and Cordelia knew why: when a wound was fatal, iratzes would not hold their place on skin. They would vanish, overwhelmed by a level of damage they could not heal.

“They’re staying,” she whispered, though she knew it was not a guarantee. She squeezed Matthew’s hand hard. “Go—Matthew, you’ll hate yourself if you don’t.”

With a stiff nod, Matthew drew away and fell to his knees beside James. He laid his hand, long and slender, glittering with his signet ring, on his brother’s cheek. “Charles,” he said breathlessly. “Hang on, Charlie. We’ll get you help. We’ll—”

He broke off and sat motionless, one hand on his brother’s face, the other arrested in the motion of reaching for his stele. The slow rise and fall of Charles’s shallow breathing seemed to have stopped as well. They were frozen, like statues. Cordelia looked wildly at James, who was staring around them in amazement. The park was utterly silent, utterly still. Where were the sounds of birds—city starlings and sparrows? The sounds of London awakening: the cries of costermongers, the tread of pedestrians on their way to work? The rustle of leaves in the wind? The world felt still and frozen, as if pressed under glass.

But James—James could move too. Pocketing the pithos, he rose to his feet, seeking out Cordelia with his gaze. His golden eyes were burning. “Cordelia,” he said. “Turn around.”

She whirled to face the park gates and nearly jumped out of her skin: a young man was strolling toward them, whistling softly. The tune carried through the silent park like music in a church. The boy seemed familiar, though Cordelia couldn’t have said why; he was dark-haired and smiling, carrying a heavy sword with an etched crosspiece in one hand. He was dressed in a pure white suit as if it were summer, his shirt and jacket spattered with bright red blood. He was handsome—striking, really, with dark green eyes the color of new leaves. Yet something about him made her skin crawl. There was something feral about his smile, like the grin of the Cheshire cat.

James was gazing at the boy in what seemed to be dawning horror. Beside him Matthew and Charles remained frozen in their strange tableau, their eyes blank and staring.

“But that can’t be,” James said, half to himself. “It’s not possible.”

“What do you mean? What’s not possible?”

“That’s Jesse,” James said. “Jesse Blackthorn.”

“Tatiana’s son? But he died,” Cordelia said. “Years ago.”

“Maybe,” said James, taking a knife from his belt. His gaze never left the boy—Jesse—as he approached, fastidiously skirting a border of holly. “But I recognize—I’ve seen his portrait in Blackthorn Manor. And a few photographs Grace had. It’s him.”

“But that’s impossible—”

Cordelia broke off, her hand flying to Cortana. The boy was suddenly standing in front of them, twirling his sword in his hand like a music-hall singer with a cane. His jacket hung casually open, his smile widening as he looked from James to Cordelia. “Of course it’s impossible,” he said. “Jesse Blackthorn is long dead.”

James cocked his head to the side. He was pale, but his gaze was steady and full of loathing.

“Grandfather,” he said.

Of course. It was not the boy who had struck Cordelia as familiar, but rather his cruel smile, the way he moved, those pale clothes like the ones she had seen him wear in the hell-world where she had followed James. He wasn’t looking at Cordelia—rather pointedly so.

Interesting.

“Indeed,” said Belial, with an unexpected cheerfulness. “Even without quite the ideal vessel, I walk in your world freely. Feeling the sunshine on my face. Breathing the air of London.”

“Calling a dead body ‘not quite the ideal vessel’ is rather like calling the sewers of London ‘not that bad a holiday destination,’” said James, flicking his eyes over Jesse Blackthorn’s admittedly well-preserved remains. “Indulge me a moment—the tale I heard of the manner and time of Jesse’s death. Was all of it a lie?”

“My dear boy,” said Belial. Cordelia unsheathed Cortana; she saw Belial flinch almost imperceptibly, though he still refused to look at her. “My dear boy, there is no need to trouble yourself that your dear Grace lied to you.” He gazed lovingly down at Jesse’s left hand, where a Voyance rune gleamed, new and black. “There was a time, you know, when I feared your mother would never procreate. That there would never be a James Herondale. I was forced to make alternate plans. I placed an anchor in this world, sunk deep into the soul of a baby boy when his protection spells were placed on him. Little Jesse Blackthorn, whose mother didn’t trust Shadowhunters but did trust warlocks. Emmanuel Gast was easy enough to threaten into obedience. He placed the protections on Jesse, as instructed, and a little something extra as well. A bit of my essence, tucked under the skin of the child’s soul.”

Cordelia felt sick. A Shadowhunter’s protection spells were precious, almost holy. What Belial had done felt like a nauseating violation. “But James was born,” she said. “So you didn’t need Jesse after that, did you? Is that why he died?”

“I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re asking,” Belial said. “His own mother did. She let the Silent Brothers place a rune on him. I warned her not to let them interfere. The angelic runes of the Gray Book reacted quite badly with the demonic essence deep inside him. So …”