Chain of Iron

Thomas opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. “May I have your permission to shout, keeping in mind I am not shouting at you?” he said to Cordelia.

“Oh, quite,” she said. “I like a good shouting in general.”

“Yes,” agreed Lucie. “Shout at Matthew if you like.”

“Thank you very much, Luce,” said Matthew.

“Stop,” said James. They all looked at him in surprise. “We need to discuss what we’re dealing with before we argue about who’s going on patrol and when. Patrol is meant to be about demons, and Math told me the Enclave is already thinking this wasn’t a demon’s doing—”

“WHAT?” said Thomas, so loudly they all jumped. “Sorry,” he said. “I was all prepared to shout and I hadn’t got a chance yet.”

“What makes them say it wasn’t a demon?” Christopher asked thoughtfully.

“Pounceby was stabbed at least thirty times with a sharp blade,” Matthew said. “Demons don’t carry weapons.”

“It could have been a demon with very pointy talons,” Christopher argued, “or—it could have been a demon with a knife face.” He looked around eagerly.

“Knife face?” Matthew echoed. “That’s your argument?”

“Yes,” said Christopher stubbornly. “It could have some sort of facial protuberance. Maybe several. Like a long, pointy nose with a sharp edge.”

“There wasn’t any residue of demonic activity, either, on the bodies or at the sites,” said Matthew. “A demon would leave behind some kind of trace.”

“What about a Sighted mundane?” suggested Lucie. “Maybe he didn’t even know what he was seeing. He could have been drunk. Or mad. Maybe he was stumbling about in the dark, saw a Shadowhunter, and perceived he was some kind of threat.”

“Or it could be another Shadowhunter,” Matthew said. “Don’t look at me like that—we have to consider the possibility. After all, people commit murder for all kinds of reasons.”

“Like what?” James said skeptically.

“I don’t know—maybe Basil was a rival for someone’s affections, or the object of a grudge. Or someone resented him for creating Augustus. No one would be surprised. For that matter, it could have been Alastair.”

“Matthew,” Cordelia said furiously. “Must we keep bringing up my brother? Alastair may be many things, but he is not a murderer.”

“I just like to blame him for things,” Matthew said a bit sheepishly.

“None of this makes any sense anyway,” said Cordelia. “If someone murdered Basil Pounceby for revenge, or love, or any such thing like that, why would they also murder Amos Gladstone? And we would be foolish to assume the deaths are not connected.”

“I believe they are connected,” James said. He looked tightly drawn; he seemed to be steeling himself, as if to deliver bad news. “I had a dream last night,” he added abruptly. “A ghastly awful dream that felt so real—”

“Real like—like traveling into the shadow realm?” Lucie looked alarmed. Matthew and the others were exchanging worried glances as well.

“Not at all like falling into shadow,” James said. “I was very much here, in London. I saw the murder.”

“You saw it?” echoed Matthew. “What do you mean?”

“It was a dream, but not at all like an ordinary dream,” said James. “I was there—I felt the cold of the air, the cobblestones under my feet. I recognized Threadneedle Street. I saw a knife—I saw a body falling—and I saw hands. Hands covered in blood. They were—human hands.”

“The murderer’s hands?” Thomas said.

“I don’t know,” James said, “but I felt such hate, hate like I’ve only felt before in Belial’s realm. It did not seem like a human hate.”

“Who was it that you hated?” Cordelia whispered. “In the dream?”

His eyes fixed on hers. His voice was a whisper. “Everyone.”

“So you witnessed the murder in your sleep,” Lucie said, worry etched on her face. “But here, in London, not in the shadow realm, or through it. If you understand what I mean.”

“Not the shadow realm,” agreed James. “This was London, not some blasted landscape of hellish death and destruction.”

“Unless you are talking about Piccadilly Circus when the traffic’s bad,” said Matthew.

“I am going to ignore that comment,” said James, “as it is not helpful. All I can say is that I do not believe Pounceby was killed by a demon—or by a jealous husband, or a vampire, or a vampire’s jealous husband. I cannot say, but what I do believe is that the same entity that killed Amos Gladstone killed Pounceby, too.”

“Did you dream about that as well?” Cordelia asked. “But that was only a night or so before last, wasn’t it?”

“I had what I assumed was a nightmare,” said James. “Nothing like as clear and detailed as the dream I had last night. But I recall a suffocating sense of horror. It simply didn’t occur to me that there was any connection to what happened to Gladstone—not until I dreamed of Pounceby’s death last night.”

“Jamie,” Lucie said. “When the Khora demons were attacking, before they even claimed a victim, you had a vision of what was coming. Is it possible perhaps you have the ability to somehow see when bad things are going to happen to Shadowhunters?”

“Not before they happen, unfortunately,” said James. “I had only just woken up from the nightmare perhaps a half an hour before Matthew arrived to tell us that Pounceby was dead and the whole Clave knew.”

“And that was already ten o’clock in the morning,” said Matthew. “Could you tell what time it was in your dream?”

James shook his head. “Around dawn, I think.”

“So not much of an early warning,” said Thomas. “And no way to know if it’ll happen again.”

“We ought to tell someone,” said Christopher. “Not just sit here coming up with theories. Though I do love coming up with theories.” He looked wistful.

“Our parents—” Lucie began.

“No,” James said. “We are absolutely not dragging our parents back from Paris for this. They only just left. I’ll try again to get a message to Jem.”

Matthew frowned. “My mother said something about him—whatever he and Magnus are doing in the Spiral Labyrinth, it seems to be important. I get the sense they’re both cloistered there; she said there was no reaching Magnus, for now.”

“If we were to say to the Enclave—” Thomas began.

“We cannot,” Matthew said. “They already think that the two deaths are connected. There’s nothing new we could tell them except that James has been having these dreams, and for them to think the dreams had any relevance or meaning …”

“We’d have to tell them about Belial,” said Cordelia.

“And that would potentially be disastrous,” said Matthew. “For Jamie, for Lucie, for Will and Tessa—for all the reasons we decided not to tell them in the first place.”