Nausea stabbed through him. Downstairs, he thought. That was where the books he’d brought from the Institute were. He needed to look, to be absolutely sure. He threw on a jacket and shoes and clattered down the steps—
The doorbell rang.
No Effie appeared to answer it; she must not have returned from her night off. Praying it wasn’t some half stranger bearing condolences, James flung the door open. A werewolf boy of eight or nine occupied the stoop outside, his dirty hair tucked under a worn woolen cap, his face grimy.
“Neddy,” James said, surprised. “What are you doing here?” His hand tightened on the doorknob. “Has there been another murder?”
“No, sir,” the boy said, digging in his pocket for a crumpled note, which he handed to James. “No reports of any Shadowhunter deaths.”
No deaths. The killer had not struck. There was relief—no one had been hurt—as well as apprehension: he was no better off than he had been the day before. The deaths were occurring sporadically, not every night, but close together. He could not assume there would not be another. What could he do tonight, if tying himself to the bed hadn’t worked?
James unfolded the note and immediately recognized Thomas’s handwriting. He scanned the brief lines quickly: Matthew had taken Cordelia for a drive to cheer her up; the other Thieves, Thomas and Christopher, would be coming to Curzon Street shortly. I know Elias’s death has been a shock, Thomas had written. But brush your hair. Risa said you looked as if you’d been electrocuted.
“Everything all right, then?” Neddy said. “Right enough for me to get my tip?”
As James turned up a shilling for Neddy, he found the boy gawking curiously at the large, glossy carriage that had just drawn up before the house. James frowned. It was the Fairchild carriage, marked on the side with its pattern of wings. Had Charlotte come to pay her respects?
James pressed the money into Neddy’s hand and sent him on his way, just as the door to the carriage opened, and a slim hand in a dove-colored leather glove appeared, followed by sweeping ivory-colored skirts and a short coat of pale mink, topped with a head of upswept silver-blond hair, glimmering like metal in the sun.
It was Grace.
Cordelia fished a long woolen scarf from her handbag and wrapped it around her hair, securing her hat firmly to her head to keep it from flying off in the wind. Even slowed down by the London traffic, the little car felt wildly fast; it was able to nip in and out of spaces that a carriage would never have been able to navigate. Feeling somewhat windblown, she tied her hat down more firmly with her scarf as they zipped between two horse-buses and a milk cart and narrowly missed swerving onto the pavement. Several workmen by the side of the road cheered.
“Apologies!” yelled Matthew with a grin, spinning the wheel deftly to the right and shooting across another junction.
Cordelia eyed him severely. “Do you actually know where we’re going?”
“Of course I do! I have a map.”
He produced a slim red clothbound book from a pocket and handed it to her. The Bath Road, read the cover.
“We’ll definitely need a bath, by the time we get there,” she said, as the car splashed through a muddy puddle.
Their route took them through Hammersmith, roughly following the course of the Thames, visible in glimpses through the factories and houses of the outer suburbs. As they passed a sign for the turning toward Chiswick, Cordelia thought of Grace, a sort of humming discomfort behind her ribs.
Once they were through Brentford, its busy high street clogged with buses, the traffic thinned out and the buildings gave way to a more rural landscape. Open fields stretched out in front of them, pale with frost tinged pink by the early-morning sun. Matthew, hatless and grinning, his hair whipped back by the wind, beamed at her.
She had never experienced anything like this before. The world was unfolding before them, promising the unknown. Every mile they drove made the ache in her chest recede further. She was not Cordelia Herondale, who had just lost her father, who loved a man who would never love her. She was someone free and nameless, flying like a bird above the road that blurred beneath their wheels.
As the countryside hurtled by, the green hills mottled with melting patches of snow, the little villages with smoke drifting from chimneys, Cordelia imagined what it must be like to be Matthew—living on his own, able to go wherever he liked, whenever he liked. Always keeping some part of himself separate, slipping in and out of events and parties, never committing to being anywhere, disappointing hosts by not showing up, or arriving late to the undimmed delight of everyone who knew him. She wasn’t sure anyone had a true hold on Matthew, save James.
Of course Matthew would be the one among all of them to take up motoring, she thought. He diligently sought out exactly the feeling it provided, of nothing under your feet, of speed and purpose, of noise too loud to think. For perhaps the first time she realized that a small part of her sought it too.
She kept the little map on her lap and checked off the towns and villages as they passed through them. Hounslow, Colnbrook, Slough, Maidenhead. At Maidenhead they stopped briefly for a cup of tea in a hotel beside the Thames, next to the pretty seven-arched stone bridge. The decor and the atmosphere was rather Victorian; a pair of breakfasting old ladies stared disapprovingly at their somewhat disheveled motoring outfits. Matthew deployed the Smile at them, causing them to flutter like alarmed sparrows.
Back in the car, the villages whirled past like stage sets. Twyford, Theale, Woolhampton, Thatcham, Lambourn. There was an inn at Lambourn, in the village’s tiny market square. It was called the George, and it had a place to leave the car and a dim, cozy interior of which Cordelia—freezing by now—noticed nothing at all apart from a huge fireplace with a beautiful, roaring fire and two armchairs at a table beside it, which were wonderfully vacant. Cordelia suspected that not many travelers passed by this part of the Downs in deep winter.
A young woman in a sprigged cotton dress and white apron hurried to serve them. She was pretty, with auburn hair and a lush figure. Cordelia didn’t miss the way the girl looked at Matthew, who was handsome indeed in his leather coat, his goggles pushed up into his tousled blond hair.
Matthew didn’t miss the glance either. He ordered ale for himself and ginger beer for Cordelia, then inquired—with a rather shocking wink—what was good to eat. The girl flirted back as though Cordelia wasn’t there, but she didn’t mind; she was enjoying watching the other patrons, mostly farmers and tradesmen. She wasn’t accustomed to seeing Londoners drinking in the middle of the day, but she suspected these men had been working since well before dawn.
When the barmaid went off to the kitchen to see to their steak pies, Matthew turned his charming smile on Cordelia. But she was having none of it.
“Goodness,” she said. “You’re an awful flirt.”
Matthew looked offended. “Not at all,” he said. “I’m a diabolically excellent flirt. I’ve learned from the best.”
Cordelia couldn’t help but smile. “Anna?”
“And Oscar Wilde. The playwright, that is, not my retriever.”
The barmaid returned with their drinks and a sparkle in her eye. She set them down before scampering off behind the bar. Cordelia took a sip of her ginger beer: it was spicy-hot on her tongue. “Do you know anything of Anna and Ariadne? There is clearly a story there, history between the two of them, but I have always felt awkward inquiring. Anna is so private.”