Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

“Were they demons?” said Magnus.

“I don’t know,” said James. “Their forms were shadowy and diffuse, and the light was dark.… It was as though I could not fully focus my eyes on them. But they are part of some plan of Belial’s. He spoke to me.”

“What did he say?” said Magnus quietly.

“?‘They wake,’?” said James.

Will exhaled loudly through his nose. “Well, that isn’t very helpful of him. What wakes?”

“Something that was sleeping?” suggested Magnus. “In the past, it seemed that Belial wanted you to see his actions clearly. Now he wants you in the dark.”

“He wants me to be afraid,” James said. “That’s what he wants.”

“Well, don’t be,” said Will decidedly. “As soon as we find Lucie, we will return to London. Now that you’ve told us the situation, we can muster every resource at our command to deal with this thing.”

James tried to look as if the thought heartened him. He knew his father had faith, a kind he did not, that even the most intractable problem could be overcome; still James could not imagine a life in which he was not tied to Belial. The connection would exist as long as Belial lived, and as James had been reminded many times, a Prince of Hell could not die.

“Are you not going to drink your port?” said Magnus. “It might steady your nerves a bit, help you rest.”

James shook his head. He felt sick, looking at the alcohol, and he knew it was not only his nerves. It was Matthew. Memories had been coming back to him, ever since he had rid himself of the bracelet—memories not just of events, but of his own thoughts and feelings, things he had forgotten, things pushed to the back of his mind. His feelings for Cordelia… his desire to remove the bracelet itself… but also his worries about Matthew’s drinking. It was as if the bracelet’s influence had insisted that there was nothing wrong with Matthew, that he need not concern himself with anything except that which the bracelet wanted him to concern himself. It had grown clearer and clearer to him that something was terribly wrong with Matthew, and that it was getting worse, but the bracelet had ensured that he couldn’t hold on to the thought, couldn’t focus on it. He recalled the London Shadow Market, a snowy alley, his snapping at Matthew, Tell me there is someone you love more than that bottle in your hand.

He had known, but he had done nothing. He had allowed the bracelet to guide his attention elsewhere. He had failed his best friend. He had failed his parabatai.

“Well, you need sleep,” Magnus said. “Dreamless sleep, if possible. I was hoping to use the more mundane methods of getting there, but…”

James swallowed. “I don’t think I can drink it.”

“Then I’ll give you something else,” Magnus said decisively. “Water, with something more magical than mere fortified wine. How about you, Will?”

“Certainly,” said Will, and James thought he still sounded lost in thought. “Bring on the potions.”

That night James slept like the dead, and if his father rose in the middle of the night to check on him as if he were a small boy, if Will sat beside him on his bed and sang to him in rusty Welsh, James did not remember it when he woke up.



* * *



“As you can see,” Matthew said, throwing out his arm to embrace the whole of the Boulevard de Clichy. He was wearing a fur greatcoat with multiple capes, which made the gesture all the more dramatic. “Here is Hell.”

“You,” Cordelia said, “are a very wicked person, Matthew Fairchild. Very wicked.” She couldn’t help but smile, though, half at Matthew’s expectant expression and half at what he’d brought her to Montmartre to see.

Montmartre was one of the most scandalous neighborhoods in a scandalous city. The notorious Moulin Rouge was here, with its famous red windmill and half-naked dancers. She had expected them to wind up there, but Matthew, of course, had to be different. Instead he had brought them to the Cabaret de l’Enfer—quite literally, the Cabaret of Hell—a place whose front entrance had been carved to look like a demonic face, with black bulging eyes and a row of fanged teeth at the top of its open mouth, which served as the door.

“We needn’t go in if you don’t want to,” Matthew said, more seriously than usual. He set a gloved finger under Cordelia’s chin, raising her face to meet his gaze. She looked at him in some surprise. He was bareheaded, and his eyes were a very dark green in the light spilling from L’Enfer. “I thought it might amuse you, as the Hell Ruelle did. And this place makes the Ruelle look like a child’s playroom.”

She hesitated. She was aware of the warmth of his body, close to hers, and the scent of him: wool and cologne. As she hung back, a richly dressed couple emerged from a fiacre and headed inside L’Enfer, both giggling.

Wealthy Parisians, Cordelia thought, slumming it in a neighborhood famous for its poor artists, starving in their garret flats. Light from the gas torches on either side of the doors fell upon their faces as they entered the club, and Cordelia saw that the woman was deadly pale, with dark red lips.

Vampire. Of course Downworlders would be drawn to a place with a theme like this one. Cordelia understood what Matthew was doing: trying to give her the excitement of the Hell Ruelle, in a new place, without the weight of memories. And why not? What was she afraid of, when there was nothing left for her to lose?

Cordelia squared her shoulders. “Let’s go in.”

Inside, a staircase led sharply downward into a cavernous den lit by torches behind sconces of red glass, which gave the view a tinge of scarlet. The plaster walls were carved in the shapes of screaming faces, each one different, each one a mask of dread or agony or terror. Gilt ribbons hung from the ceiling, each bearing a line from Dante’s Inferno: from MIDWAY UPON THE JOURNEY OF LIFE, I FOUND MYSELF WITHIN A FOREST DARK to THERE IS NO GREATER SORROW THAN TO RECALL IN MISERY THE TIME WHEN WE WERE HAPPY.

The floor had been painted in swirls of red and gold—meant, Cordelia expected, to evoke the eternal fires of the damned. They were at the back of a single large room, high-ceilinged, which sloped downhill gently toward the stage at the far end; in between were innumerable café tables lit by softly glowing lights and mostly filled with Downworlders, though there were a few mundanes, elaborately costumed, glasses of green absinthe at their elbows. No doubt they thought the Downworlders to be other mundanes, in amusing costumes.