Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

Demon ichor.

“What happened?” Thomas stopped in his tracks. “Alastair—a demon? In the middle of the day? Don’t tell me—” Don’t tell me that they’re back. They’d been plagued some months ago with demons that had possessed the ability to appear in daylight, but that had been because of Belial’s meddling. If it was happening again…

“No,” Alastair said quickly, as if he sensed Thomas’s alarm. “I had, rather stupidly, gone into the mews house to look for something. It was dark in there, and one of the demons had apparently decided to lurk in wait.”

“One of what demons?” Thomas said.

Alastair waved a vague hand. “It was a good thing I had Cortana with me,” he said, and Thomas, surprised all over again, said, “Why do you have Cortana with you?”

Cortana was Cordelia’s sword, passed down through generations of the Carstairs family. It was a precious heirloom, forged by the same Shadowhunter smith who had created Durendal for Roland, and Excalibur for King Arthur. Thomas had rarely seen Cordelia without it.

Alastair sighed. Thomas wondered if he was cold standing about with his sleeves rolled up, but decided not to mention it because Alastair had lean, muscular forearms. And maybe the cold didn’t bother him anyway. “Cordelia left it behind when she went to Paris. She thought she should give it up because of the paladin business.”

“It’s odd,” Thomas ventured, “isn’t it, Cordelia going to Paris with Matthew?”

“It’s odd,” Alastair allowed. “But Cordelia’s business is her own.” He turned Cortana over in his hand, letting the watery sunlight spark off the blade. “Anyway—I’ve been keeping the sword close to me as much as I can. Which is fine during the day, but not so much once the sun sets. Bloody demons seem to swarm to it like a beacon every time I step outside.”

“Are you sure they’re attacking you because of the sword?”

“Are you suggesting it’s my personality?” Alastair snapped. “They weren’t attacking me like this before Cordelia handed the sword off to me, and she gave it to me because she didn’t want anyone to know where it was. I suspect these ratty demon creatures are intended as spies, sent by someone looking for Cortana—Lilith, Belial, there’s really an appalling pantheon of villains to choose from.”

“So whoever it is—whoever’s looking for it—they know you have it?”

“They certainly suspect I have it,” said Alastair. “I think I’ve killed all the demons before they could report back definitively. Nothing nastier has shown up to attack me yet, in any case. But it’s not a sustainable way to live.”

Thomas shifted his feet. “Did you, ah, ask me here to help?” he said. “Because I’d be happy to help. We could put a guard on you. Christopher and I could take it in turns, and Anna would surely help—”

“No,” said Alastair.

“Just trying to be helpful,” said Thomas.

“I didn’t ask you here for help. You just happened to turn up right after—” Alastair made a gesture apparently intended to encompass demons hiding in stables, and slid Cortana back into its scabbard at his hip. “I asked you here because I wanted to know why you sent me a note calling me stupid.”

“I didn’t,” Thomas began indignantly, and then recalled, with a moment of freezing horror, what he had written in Henry’s laboratory. Dear Alastair, why are you so stupid and so frustrating, and why do I think about you all the time?

Oh no. But how—?

Alastair produced a burnt piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Thomas. Most of the paper had been charred beyond legibility. What was left read:

Dear Alastair,

why are you so stupid

I brush my teeth

don’t tell anyone

—Thomas



“I don’t know why you don’t want anyone to know you brush your teeth,” Alastair added, “but I will, of course, keep this news in strictest confidence.”

Thomas was torn between a feeling of terrible humiliation and a strange excitement. Of course this would be the one time Christopher’s ridiculous experiment would partially work, but on the other hand—it had partially worked. He couldn’t wait to tell Kit.

“Alastair,” he said. “This writing is just nonsense. Christopher had me scribble some words down for an experiment he was doing.”

Alastair looked dubious. “If you say so.”

“Look,” said Thomas. “Even if you didn’t ask me here to help, I do want to help. I—” I hate the idea of you being in danger. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be constantly attacked by demons, and I doubt Cordelia would have left the sword with you if she thought that would happen.”

“No,” Alastair agreed.

“Why don’t we hide it?” Thomas suggested. “Cortana, I mean.”

“I know, that’s the sensible solution,” said Alastair. “But it’s felt safer to keep it with me, even though I keep being harassed. If it were hidden, I would just constantly worry that whoever’s looking would find it, and then what would I tell Cordelia? And also what if the demon who wanted it used it to destroy the world, or something? I would be mortified. I just can’t think of a hiding place safe enough.”

“Hm. What if I had a hiding place that would be safe enough?”

Alastair raised his dark, arched eyebrows. “Lightwood, as always, you are full of surprises. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Thomas did.



* * *



Cordelia emerged from her bedroom, wearing her striped walking dress, to find Matthew buttering a croissant at the breakfast table. The day was bright, daisy-yellow sunshine spilling in through the high, arched windows, turning Matthew’s hair to a halo of spun gold.

“I wasn’t going to wake you,” he said, “as we were up rather late last night.” He leaned back in his chair. “Breakfast?”

The table was covered in a daunting spread of croissants, butter, marmalade, fruit jams and jellies, porridge, bacon and fried potatoes, crumpets, kippers, buttered eggs, and tea. “What army are we feeding?” she inquired, sliding into the chair opposite him.

He lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug. “I wasn’t sure what you wanted to eat, so I got everything.”

Cordelia felt her heart soften. She could tell Matthew was nervous, though he hid it well. She had been badly shaken last night. She remembered his arms around her as she stood under the gaslight on the Boulevard de Clichy, fiacres rumbling by like trains. She had told him he had been nothing but kind to her, and it was true.

As she poured out a cup of tea, Matthew said, “I thought today we could visit the Musée Grévin? It has wax sculptures, and a hall of mirrors that resembles the inside of a kaleidoscope—”

“Matthew,” she said. “Tonight I would like to return to the Cabaret de l’Enfer.”

“I didn’t think—”

“That I enjoyed myself?” She fiddled with her spoon. “I suppose I didn’t, exactly, but if—if that was truly my father—I want to know the truth. I would like to ask Madame Dorothea a question to which only my father would know the answer.”

He shook his head, disarranging his blond curls. “I can’t say no to you,” he said, and Cordelia felt herself flush. “But—only as long as we can spend today just enjoying ourselves. And not thinking about ghosts, or dire warnings. Agreed?”

Cordelia agreed, and they spent the day sightseeing. Matthew insisted on taking the little Brownie camera he had bought, so in the Musée Grévin, Cordelia obligingly posed with wax versions of the pope, Napoléon, Victor Hugo, Marie Antoinette, and various figures in rooms set with scenes from the French Revolution, some of which were so lifelike it felt very strange to walk into the midst of them.

Matthew declared himself in need of fresh air, so they flagged down a fiacre to take them to the Bois de Boulogne. “Everything is better in Paris,” he said as they rolled past the Opéra and slowly made their way down the Rue Saint-Lazare, “except, perhaps, the traffic.”

Cordelia had to agree: as they passed the Arc de Triomphe and approached the Bois de Boulogne, what seemed like hundreds of carriages poured in a flood toward the entrance, mingled with cars tooting their horns, riders on horseback, groups of bicyclists, and crowds and crowds of people on foot. The fiacre, trapped in the throng, was buffeted slowly down an allée lined with trees, which ended at the edge of a lake, where a cheerfully rowdy group of young students were determinedly having a picnic despite the cold weather.