“Be reasonable,” said Anna. “How would you come and go in the middle of the night, knocking about and bumping into things because you’re not even awake, and not raise—not raise the whole house?”

“I’m not sure it’s the same as sleepwalking,” James said. “Maybe I wouldn’t be bumping into things. Maybe I’m more aware than that and the dreams are a kind of memory of what I’ve done. And—” His throat felt desert-dry. “And the night Elias died, when I dreamed—it was different from the others. He seemed to see me. He recognized me.”

Anna, who had been pacing, stopped in her tracks. “He said your name?”

“No,” James had to admit. “I saw recognition spark in his eyes—he said something, I think it was, ‘It’s you.’ But he didn’t say my name.”

His friends exchanged worried glances. “I see why you didn’t want Cordelia here,” Anna said finally. “To tell her you think you were responsible for the death of her father—”

“Though you weren’t, James,” Lucie put in.

“I do want her here, actually,” James said. “I thought she and Matthew would be back by now. I can’t keep this from her. A conspiracy of silence like that—” He shook his head. “No. If she despises me after, then I will need you to be there for her. Her friends.”

“She will not,” Anna began, “despise you, James—”

As if on cue, they all heard the sound of a motorcar coming to a stop in front of the house. His friends’ voices rose in a murmur behind James as he went to open the front door.

He was in shirtsleeves, and the cold air outside cut sharply through the cotton. It was not snowing, but a fog had come in with the setting sun, softening the edges of the city, making the motorcar look like a faerie carriage drawn by invisible horses.

He leaned against the doorjamb as Matthew, a shadow in the fog, came around the car to help Cordelia out. The blanket wrapped around her started to slip down as she stood, but Matthew caught it before it reached the ground and carefully rearranged it around her shoulders. Even through the fog, James could see her smile.

He felt an odd sensation, a sort of tingle between his shoulder blades. Apprehension, perhaps; he was not looking forward to telling his tale to Cordelia. She and Matthew were making their way toward the house, their booted feet silent on the snowy pavement. Cordelia’s hair was loose, its brilliant red the single focal point of color in the monochrome fog.

“Daisy!” James called. “Math! Get inside. You’ll freeze.”

A moment later they were hurrying past him into the entryway, Matthew reaching to help Cordelia off with her coat before James could think to do it. They both looked windburned, high color in their cheeks. Matthew was chattering about the car, and how James should have a try at driving it.

Cordelia, though, was quiet, drawing off her gloves, her wide, dark eyes thoughtful. As Matthew took a moment to breathe, she said, “James—who’s here?”

“Anna, Lucie, Thomas, and Christopher are in the drawing room,” he said. “I asked them to come.”

Matthew frowned, pulling off his goggles. “Is everything all right?”

“Not quite,” said James, and added, as they both turned apprehensive faces toward him, “There hasn’t been another death—nothing like that.”

“But things are not all right?” Matthew said. “Has something else happened? The Enclave done something dreadful?”

“The Enclave is torn between thinking it’s a warlock gone rogue and thinking it’s a Shadowhunter,” said James. “But Thomas and Anna can tell you more about that. I need to talk to Cordelia for a moment. If you don’t mind, Math.”

A flicker of emotion crossed Matthew’s face but vanished before James could identify it. “Of course,” he said, sliding past James to vanish down the hall.

Cordelia looked up at James inquiringly. Her hair was damp; it curled around her face like the buds of roses. A whisper pressed at the back of his mind: You have to tell her you kissed Grace.

He told the whisper to be quiet. What he had to tell her first was so much worse.

“I’ve missed you,” he said. “And before we go into the drawing room, I wished to apologize. What I said about your father in the Ossuarium was unforgivable, and my sending him away was something I will always regret—”

But she was shaking her head. “I have been wanting to apologize to you. You have nothing to be sorry for. You could not have saved my father. By awful luck, you were the last one to see him, and he was—oh, the shame of him demanding money from you.” There was a cold passion of anger in her voice. She shook her head, her hair straining against the few pins still confining it. “Alastair set me right, of all people. You did what you should have, James.”

“There’s more,” he said, forcing the words past his dry throat. “More that I have to tell you. I do not know if you will still feel as kindly toward me when I am done.”

He saw her flinch, saw her steel herself. It was a reminder of how much her childhood must have taught her to brace for bad news. “Tell me.”

In a way, it was easier to tell her than it had been to explain himself to the others. Daisy already knew of his screaming awakenings from nightmare, of the open window in his bedroom, the things he saw when he dreamed. Daisy, like him, had met Belial. It was one thing to imagine you could face down a Prince of Hell. It was another entirely to stand near one, to feel the freezing blast of their hatred, their evil, their power.

He forced himself through the last of it—explaining his experiment, the ropes, the mark on the sill—as she stared at him, her expression very still.

“I see,” she said, when he was done, “that I should not have left you alone last night.”

His hair was in his eyes; he raised a shaking hand to push it back. “The worst of it is, I know precious little more now than I did then. And we may need to hire another maid to replace Effie.”

“And what do the others say?” she asked.

“They refuse to believe it—any of it,” he said. “They may think the shock of what happened with your father has turned my brain.” His breath caught. “Daisy. The hate I have felt, every time I have dreamed, I cannot but imagine it is anything but Belial’s hate. And your father—” His breath caught. “If you want nothing to do with this, with me, I would never blame you.”

“James.” She took hold of his wrist; the small gesture went through him like an electric shock. Her face was set, determined. “Come with me.”

He let her pull him down the hall, into the drawing room, where the others had congregated. Matthew was seated on the back of the sofa; he turned toward James as he entered the room, his eyes dark with worry.

Anna’s blue gaze flicked to Cordelia. “Did you tell her?”

Cordelia released James’s wrist. “I know everything,” she said. Her voice was very level. There was something different about her, James thought, something he could not quite put his finger on. She had changed—since yesterday, even. But then, she had lost her father. Her family would never be the same.

“It’s ridiculous,” Matthew said, sliding off the sofa back. “James, you can’t really believe—”