Every Exquisite Thing (Ghosts of the Shadow Market #3)

Can you tell me about her? he asked Malcolm, who had returned to examining the book in his hand.

“Leopolda is a bit of an odd one,” Malcolm said. “I met her while I was traveling in Vienna. I don’t think she leaves her city often. She seems to get around with some famous mundanes. She is . . .”

He hesitated.

Yes?

“. . . more connected, I suppose, to her demon side than her human side than most of us are. More than me, certainly. She makes me feel uneasy. I’m glad that you came over. I was looking for a way to politely escape.”

Jem looked in the direction that Leopolda had gone. Someone more connected to the demon side . . .

That was someone he might need to speak with. Or watch.





Anna lay in her bed, eyes closed, trying to will herself to slumber. In her mind, she was dancing again. She wore her imaginary finest evening wear—a suit of deep gray, a waistcoat of sunny yellow with matching gloves. On her arm was Ariadne, as she had been tonight, in the blue dress.

Sleep was not coming. She pushed herself out of bed and went to the window. The night was warm and close. She had to do something with herself. Her brother’s clothes were still in her wardrobe. She picked them out and smoothed them on the bed. She had planned on returning them, but . . .

Who would miss them? Not Christopher. Their laundress might, but no one would question that Christopher might simply lose his trousers, possibly in the middle of a crowded dance floor. And the older clothes—he wouldn’t need them, not at the rate he was growing. The trousers were too long, but they could be hemmed. The shirt could be nipped in at the back. A few simple stitches were all it would take.

Anna was not a natural seamstress, but like all Shadowhunters, she possessed the basic skills to repair gear. She couldn’t have made lace or done precise tailoring, but she could get this job done. She tacked his shirt and waistcoat in the back to make them fit and flatter her torso. The jacket was a bit more complex, requiring tucks on the back and the side. The shoulders were a bit wrong, and the effect a bit triangular, but all in all it was a passable effort. She practiced her walk in the fitted trousers, now that they no longer scraped the ground.

She had always loved gear as a child, its easy maneuverability, the way it allowed her to move unfettered. She had always been surprised that other girls, unlike her, didn’t resent being pressed back into dresses and skirts when training was over. That they didn’t resent the loss of freedom.

But it was more than the comfort of the clothes. In silks and ruffles Anna felt silly, as if she were pretending to be someone she was not. When she wore dresses out on the street, she was ignored as a gawky girl, or stared at by men in a way she did not like. She had only been out in her brother’s clothes twice, both times late at night— but oh, women looked at her then, smiling women, conspiratorial women, women who knew that in donning the clothes of men, Anna walked in their power and their privilege. They looked at her soft lips, her long eyelashes, her blue eyes; they looked at her hips in tight trousers, the curve of her breasts under a man’s cotton shirt, and their eyes spoke to her in the secret language of women: You have taken their power for your own. You have stolen fire from the gods. Now come and make love to me, as Zeus made love to Danae, in a shower of gold.

In her mind’s eye, Anna bent to take Ariadne’s hand in hers, and the hand seemed real.

“You are so beautiful tonight,” she said to Ariadne. “You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.”

“And you,” Ariadne answered in her mind, “are the most handsome person I have ever known.”

The next day, Anna spent two hours writing a note to Ariadne that ended up reading:

Dear Ariadne,

It was very nice to meet you. I hope we can train together sometime. Please do pay a call.

Regards,

Anna Lightwood

Two entire hours for that, and a pile of drafts. Time no longer had meaning, and might never have meaning again.

In the afternoon, she had plans to meet her cousins, James, Lucie, and Thomas, along with Matthew Fairchild. James, Matthew, Thomas, and Christopher were inseparable, and always meeting at a house or a hideout. They were invading her Aunt Sophie and Uncle Gideon’s home today. Anna only attended their little gatherings on occasion, as did Lucie—the girls had many occupations to amuse themselves with; today, she desperately needed something to do, something to moor her mind in place, to keep her from fighting and pacing her room.

She walked with Christopher, who was excitedly talking of some kind of device that would fly through the air by means of four rotating blades. It sounded like he was describing a mechanical insect. Anna made noises that indicated she was listening although she was most assuredly not.

It was not far to their cousins’ house. Her cousins Barbara and Eugenia were in the morning room. Barbara was stretched out on a sofa, while Eugenia was furiously working at a bit of needlepoint as if she truly hated it and the only way she could express her hatred was by stabbing the stretched cloth with the needle as vigorously as she could.

Anna and Christopher went up to the rooms that had been set aside for the use of Sophie and Gideon’s children. James was there, sitting on his window seat, reading. Lucie was sitting at the desk, scribbling away. Tom was throwing a knife at the opposite wall.

Christopher greeted everyone and immediately sat down in the corner with a book. Anna dropped down next to Lucie.

“How’s Cordelia?” she asked.

“Oh, she’s wonderful! I was just writing to her quickly before Thomas helps me go over my Persian lesson.” Lucie was always writing to her future parabatai, Cordelia Carstairs. Lucie was always writing. Lucie could write in a room full of people talking, screaming, singing. Anna was sure that Lucie could probably write in the middle of battle. Anna approved of this highly—it was very good to see two girls so devoted to each other, even platonically. Women should value other women, even if society often did not.

Ariadne came into her mind again.

“What’s wrong, Anna?” James said.

He was looking at her curiously. Anna loved all of her cousins, but she had a very soft spot for James. He had been a somewhat awkward young boy, gentle and quiet and bookish. He had grown up into a young man Anna could see was extraordinarily handsome, like his father. He had a soft fall of the Herondale black hair; from his mother, he had inherited his demonic trait—his inhuman golden eyes. Anna had always thought they were rather pretty, though Christopher had told her that James had been teased relentlessly at the Academy because of them. It was the teasing that prompted Matthew to get the explosives and Christopher to arrange for a wing of the building to blow up.

It was honorable to defend your friends, your parabatai. Anna was proud of them for doing it. She would have done the same. James had been such a shy, delightful little boy —it made Anna furious to think that he had been mocked. He was older now, given a bit more to brooding and staring into the distance, but still kind under it all.

“Nothing,” she said. “I just . . . need a new book to read.”

“A most sensible request,” James said, swinging his long legs off his reading perch. “What sort of book? Fortunately, Aunt Sophie and Uncle Gideon have a respectable collection. Adventure? History? Romance? Poetry?”

All the younger set were fearfully bookish. Anna put it down to Uncle Will and Aunt Tessa’s influence. They seldom let one leave the Institute without a book they felt one simply must read.

Now that they were talking about this, perhaps this would be useful in talking to Ariadne. She was a fiendish reader, after all.