“And what am I supposed to do while you’re gone?” Jessamine said crossly as they made their way to the door.
Jem glanced back over his shoulder. “You could always wake up Henry. It looks like he’s eating paper in his sleep again, and you know how Charlotte hates that.”
“Oh, bother,” said Jessamine with an exasperated sigh. “Why do I always get the sil y tasks?”
“Because you don’t want the serious ones,” said Jem, sounding as close to exasperated as Tessa had ever heard him. Neither of them noticed the icy look she shot them as they left the library behind and headed down the corridor.
“Mr. Bane has been awaiting your arrival, sir,” the footman said, and stepped aside to let Wil enter. The footman’s name was Archer—or Walker, or something like that, Wil thought—and he was one of Camil e’s human subjugates. Like al those enslaved to a vampire’s wil , he was sickly-looking, with parchment pale skin and thin, stringy hair. He looked about as happy to see Wil as a dinner party guest might be to see a slug crawling out from under his lettuce.
The moment Wil entered the house, the smel hit him. It was the smel of dark magic, like sulfur mixed with the Thames on a hot day. Wil wrinkled his nose. The footman looked at him with even more loathing. “Mr. Bane is in the drawing room.” His voice indicated that there was no chance whatsoever that he was going to accompany Wil there. “Shal I take your coat?”
“That won’t be necessary.” Coat stil on, Wil fol owed the scent of magic down the corridor. It intensified as he drew nearer to the door of the drawing room, which was firmly closed. Tendrils of smoke threaded out from the gap beneath the door. Wil took a deep breath of sour air, and pushed the door open.
The inside of the drawing room looked peculiarly bare. After a moment Wil realized that this was because Magnus had taken al the heavy teak furniture, even the piano, and pushed it up against the wal s. An ornate gasolier hung from the ceiling, but the light in the room was provided by dozens of thick black candles arranged in a circle in the center of the room. Magnus stood beside the circle, a book open in his hands; his old-fashioned cravat was loosened, and his black hair stood up wildly about his face as if charged with electricity. He looked up when Wil came in, and smiled. “Just in time!” he cried. “I real y think we may have him this round. Wil , meet Thammuz, a minor demon from the eighth dimension.
Thammuz, meet Wil , a minor Shadowhunter from—Wales, was it?”
“I will rip out your eyes,” hissed the creature sitting in the center of the burning circle. It was certainly a demon, no more than three feet high, with pale blue skin, three coal black, burning eyes, and long blood-red talons on its eight-fingered hands. “I will tear the skin from your face.”
“Don’t be rude, Thammuz,” said Magnus, and although his tone was light, the circle of candles blazed suddenly, brightly upward, causing the demon to shrink in on itself with a scream. “Wil has questions. You wil answer them.”
Wil shook his head. “I don’t know, Magnus,” he said. “He doesn’t look like the right one to me.”
“You said he was blue. This one’s blue.”
“He is blue,” Wil acknowledged, stepping closer to the circle of flame. “But the demon I need—wel , he was real y a cobalt blue. This one’s more .
. . periwinkle.”
“What did you call me?” The demon roared with rage. “Come closer, little Shadowhunter, and let me feast upon your liver! I will tear it from your body while you scream.”
Wil turned to Magnus. “He doesn’t sound right either. The voice is different. And the number of eyes.”
“Are you sure—”
“I’m absolutely sure,” said Wil in a voice that brooked no contradiction. “It’s not something I would ever—could ever—forget.”
Magnus sighed and turned back to the demon. “Thammuz,” he said, reading aloud from the book. “I charge you, by the power of bel and book and candle, and by the great names of Sammael and Abbadon and Moloch, to speak the truth. Have you ever encountered the Shadowhunter Wil Herondale before this day, or any of his blood or lineage?”
“I don’t know,” said the demon petulantly. “Humans all look alike to me.”
Magnus’s voice rose, sharp and commanding. “Answer me!”
“Oh, very well. No, I’ve never seen him before in my life. I’d remember. He looks as if he’d taste good.” The demon grinned, showing razor-sharp teeth. “I haven’t even been to this world for, oh, a hundred years, possibly more. I can never remember the difference between a hundred and a thousand. A nyway, the last time I was here, everyone was living in mud huts and eating bugs. So I doubt he was around”—he pointed a many-jointed finger at Wil —“unless Earthkind lives much longer than I was led to believe.”
Magnus rol ed his eyes. “You’re just determined not to be any help at al , aren’t you?”