Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

A moment later Anna joined her. Ariadne was at the other end of the room, examining the dumbwaiter, whose door she had managed to wrench open with a puff of dust and broken paint. For a long moment, Anna and Cordelia stood together, looking out the cracked window at the once-green lawns sloping down toward the River Thames.

“Anna,” Cordelia said, in a small voice. “Is Matthew really doing an errand for Ariadne?”

“Indeed he is,” Anna said. She touched a long finger to the window glass, making a spot in the dust. “Why do you ask?”

Cordelia felt herself flush scarlet. “I suppose I was worried. And there’s no one else I can ask. Is he all right?”

Anna paused in the act of drawing back a curtain. “Does he have a reason not to be?”

“I just thought,” Cordelia said, “since you are close to him, you might know something of his state of mind.”

“My dear,” Anna said gently. “His state of mind is that he loves you. He loves you and he mourns that love as impossible. He fears that you despise him, that everyone does. That is his state of mind, and it is a difficult one indeed.”

Cordelia shot a quick look at Ariadne, who thankfully had her head half-stuck in the dumbwaiter and couldn’t possibly have heard. Then she felt foolish for worrying. My fraught love life is evidently the worst-kept secret in the Enclave, so perhaps I should give up trying to maintain my dignity.

“I do not hate Matthew,” Cordelia whispered. “I regret going to Paris—and yet I cannot regret all of it. He held out a hand to me when I was desperate. He took me out of my despair. I could never, ever despise him.”

“He needs help now,” Anna said, half to herself. “The sort I am afraid I cannot give him, because he will refuse it. I worry—” She broke off, shaking her head. “Cordelia, what happened in Paris?”

“It was lovely at first. We went to museums, dressmakers, the theater. It was a sort of game of pretend, as children play. We pretended we were other people, without troubles, people who could do as they liked.”

“Ah,” said Anna delicately. “You… there isn’t a chance you are with child, is there, Cordelia?”

Cordelia nearly fell out of the window. “No,” she said. “None—we kissed, that’s all. And then James showed up in the middle of it, and saw everything.”

“A very romantic gesture, his rushing to Paris,” Anna noted, “but his timing leaves something to be desired.”

“Except,” said Cordelia, “that James has been in love with Grace for years, before I ever came to London. He was in love with Grace through all of our marriage. He was very plain about it.”

“People’s feelings change.”

“Do they?” Cordelia said. “I didn’t run away to Paris on a lark, you know. I left our house because Grace appeared at our door. And though James didn’t know I could see, I found him in the vestibule, holding her close. As in love as ever, by all appearances.”

“Oh, my poor darling,” Anna said. “What can I say? That must have been dreadful. Only—things are not always as they first appear.”

“I know what I saw.”

“Perhaps,” Anna said. “And perhaps you should ask James what truly happened that night. It may be as you fear. But I am an excellent reader of faces, Daisy. And when I see James looking at Grace, I see nothing at all. But when I see him looking at you, he is transformed. We all carry a light inside ourselves. It burns with the flame of our souls. But there are other people in our lives who add their own flames to ours, creating a brighter conflagration.” She glanced quickly at Ariadne, and then back at Cordelia. “James is special. He has always burned bright. But when he looks at you, his light blazes up like a bonfire.”

“Really?” Cordelia whispered. “Anna, I don’t know—”

Anna jolted, putting her hand to her chest, where her ruby necklace was flashing like a winking eye. At that moment, Ariadne shrieked, reeling back from the dumbwaiter, which had begun to tremble and rattle within the wall. “Demon!” she cried. “Look out!”



* * *



The shed appeared untouched since the day Lucie and Grace had found the coffin open and Jesse gone, little knowing the night would end with his resurrection and Grace turning herself in and so much else. Strange—she would have expected the Clave to seek it out, or Tatiana at least, but if anyone had come, they had left no trace; they had not even closed the coffin lid. Lucie found it distressing to be back here; had she really spent so much time in this awful, morbid room?

Despite the sun and the missing roof, the high brick walls cast shadows over the room, which felt dark and small now that Jesse was standing in it, his face tipped up to the sky. When Lucie and Grace had been working to bring him back, it had seemed dramatic to her—a secret crypt from a Gothic novel, the dungeon of a castle. Now she recognized it as a place where Jesse had been imprisoned, where he had been dreadfully controlled. She was grateful that James had ducked out, sensing that being back here would be fraught for Jesse, and even for her.

“Is it hard to be here?” she asked.

Jesse looked around: at the small space, the damp walls, the ashes where she and Grace had burned so very many ineffective ingredients for useless spells. With a visible effort, he turned to Lucie and said, “I was never even aware of being here, really. So what it reminds me is how much work you did, to bring me back.”

“Grace helped,” Lucie said, but Jesse’s expression only hardened. He turned and went over to the coffin. Taking off his glove, he reached inside. Lucie moved to join him. There was nothing inside; Jesse seemed to be running his bare hand over the black velvet lining, now beginning to spot with mold from exposure to the elements. “Jesse,” Lucie said. “Something happened when you went to see Grace in the Silent City, didn’t it?”

He hesitated. “Yes. She told me something that—that I didn’t want to hear, or know.”

Lucie felt a grim little twist of cold at her spine. “What was it?”

“I…” Jesse looked up from the coffin, his green eyes dark. “I will not lie to you, Lucie. But the whole of what I can tell you is that it is not my secret to tell.”

“But if there is a danger… to the Enclave, or to anyone—”

“It’s nothing like that. And the Silent Brothers know it; if there were a danger, they would share it.”

“Oh,” Lucie said. The curious part of her wanted to stamp her feet and demand to be told. The part of her that had been changed by everything that had happened in this past year, the part that had begun to understand patience, won out. “I trust you will tell me when you can.”

Jesse did not reply; he was leaning into the coffin, tearing at the velvet lining—“Aha!” He turned to her, holding up a small wooden box. “I knew it,” he said, almost savagely. “There’s a false bottom in the coffin, under the lining. Where else would my mother hide something than with her most precious possession?”

“You were not her possession,” Lucie said. “You never belonged to her.”

“That’s not what she believed.” Jesse frowned as he opened the box and withdrew an object. He held it up to show her: a hand mirror. Its handle was cut glass, but black—not black adamas, she didn’t think, but it was hard to tell—and around the octagonal looking glass itself she could see tiny carvings that seemed to twist and writhe in the light.

“What is it?” Lucie said. “Do you recognize it?”

“Yes.” Jesse nodded. “It’s the only remaining mirror in Chiswick.” There was an odd look on his face. “And—I believe I know where else we ought to be searching.…”



* * *



Cordelia whipped around to see something the size of a small dog explode from the dumbwaiter, shattering it—and a good portion of the wall—apart. The demon had a ratlike face, with long yellow teeth. It was covered in scales and too many skinny limbs, whipping around in a fury, each one tipped with a hooked claw. A Gamigin demon, Cordelia thought, though she’d never seen one in person before.

Ariadne drew a blade from her belt, but it was too fast. One of its skinny limbs shot out, the hook at the end of its claw sinking into the back of Ariadne’s jacket. It flung her away; she skidded across the dusty floor as Anna screamed, “Ari!”

And Anna sprang into motion, racing across the room, her whip suddenly in her hand. The demon was crouched over Ariadne, its yellow-toothed mouth opening wide. She screamed as black demon saliva spattered her neck and face. Then Anna was there, her whip arcing through the air, a wire of golden flame.

With a shriek, the demon sprang away. Anna dropped to her knees—Ariadne was convulsing on the floor—and the demon, hissing, shot across the floor toward Cordelia.