Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

He put the flask away, balled up the handkerchief, and hurled it into the gutter. He raised his bloodshot green eyes to hers. “I know what you said inside. That you wanted me to stop drinking. Well, I’ve been trying. I haven’t had alcohol since—since yesterday.”


“Oh, Matthew,” Cordelia said, wanting to go to him, to put her hand on his arm. But something about his posture—spiky, defensive—held her back. “I don’t think it’s quite that simple. One cannot just stop.”

“I always thought I could,” he said emptily. “I thought I could stop anytime I liked. Then I tried, in Paris, our first day. And I was vilely sick.”

“You hid it well,” she said.

“I could barely manage twelve hours,” he said. “I knew—in that state—I could be of no use to you. It’s not an excuse, but it is why I lied about stopping. I had not brought you to Paris so you could spend time watching me convulse and clutch the floor.”

Cordelia knew she could tell him how foolish that had been, how she would have preferred to hold his hand as he screamed out for brandy than to be lied to. But now did not seem the time; it would be like kicking Oscar.

“Let us get you back to your flat,” Cordelia said. “I know things that can help—I remember, the times my father tried to stop—”

“But he never did succeed, did he?” Matthew said bitterly. The cold air ruffled his hair as he let his head fall back against the lamppost. “I’ll go home,” he said wearily. “But—alone.”

“Matthew—”

“I don’t want you to see me like this,” he said. “I never did.” He shook his head, his eyes closed. “I can’t bear it. Cordelia. Please.”

In the end, all he would allow her to do was flag down a hansom cab and watch while he climbed inside. As it drove off, she saw, illuminated by gaslight, that he was hunched over, his face in his hands.

Cordelia turned back toward the Hell Ruelle. She needed to find a runner who could deliver a message—several messages—as quickly as she could.



* * *



Jesse was not at dinner that night. Which, Will and Tessa said, was entirely to be expected: he’d had his protection ceremony done that day, in the Silent City, and though Jem had said everything had gone well, it was natural for him to be tired.

But Lucie still looked worried, though she tried to hide it, and James was even more sure that Jesse’s mood had something to do with Grace. He picked listlessly at his food as his family’s voices rose and fell around him: the Christmas tree had been misplaced by Bridget and she and Tessa were checking every closet in the Institute one by one; also, Tessa and Will agreed that Alastair Carstairs was a very well-mannered young man; also, remember when he and James had to deal with the unpleasantness at James and Cordelia’s wedding, hurrying a drunk Elias away from the reception party before he made a scene. Which only reminded James of Cordelia, as everything did these days.

When dinner had ended, James retreated to his room. He shucked off his dinner jacket and was in the process of unlacing his boots when he saw a piece of paper stuck into the corner of his mirror.

He plucked it up, frowning. Someone had scrawled the word ROOF on it in capital letters, and he had a fairly good idea who. James caught up a wool coat and headed for the stairs.

To reach the roof of the Institute required climbing up through the attic and unlatching a trapdoor. The roof was steeply slanted in most places; only here, at the top of the stairs, was there a flat, rectangular space surrounded by an iron fence, whose finials ended in pointed fleur-de-lis. Leaning against the dark fence was Jesse.

It was a clear night, the stars glittering like diamonds made of frost. London lay spread out under a silvery moon, the smoke from chimneys rising in black columns to stain the sky. Rooflines were crusted in sugary white.

Jesse wore only his dinner jacket—an old one of James’s, it was much too short on him, the sleeves coming only halfway down his forearms—and no coat or scarf. Here, the wind blew off the Thames, bringing with it an icy chill, but if Jesse noticed, he gave no sign.

“You must be freezing,” James said. “Do you want my coat?”

Jesse shook his head. “I am freezing, I think. It is still hard for me to tell, sometimes, exactly what my body is feeling.”

“How did you know about the roof?” James asked, coming to stand beside Jesse, next to the fence.

“Lucie showed me,” Jesse said. “I like to come up here. It makes me feel as if I’m as I once was—traveling freely through the air above London.” He cast a glance at James. “Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t wish I were a ghost again. It’s the loneliest thing you can imagine. The whole city beneath your feet, swirling around you, yet you cannot touch it, affect it. You cannot speak to the people you pass. Only the dead answer and those few, like your sister, who can see the dead. But most are not like Lucie. Most fear and shun us. The sight of us is, to them, a curse.”

“And yet you miss this one bit of it,” James said. “That’s understandable. It used to be that when I slept, I would sense Belial. See the shadowy realms he inhabits. Now, when I sleep, I see nothing. And it frightens me, that nothing. One should dream.”

Jesse looked off toward the river. There was something contained about him, James thought, as if he had been through so much that it would take a great deal to shock or upset him now. “I saw Grace this morning,” Jesse said. “She told me everything.”

James felt his hands grip the railing hard. He had guessed, and yet… “Everything?” he said quietly.

“About the bracelet,” Jesse said. “Her power. About what she did to you.”

The metal of the fence was icy, but James found he could not let go of it. He had worked so hard to control who knew what had happened to him. He knew it would happen someday—knew any relationship he could have with Cordelia depended on her knowing—and yet when he thought of saying the words Grace controlled me, made me feel things, do things, he wanted to retch. How pitiable Jesse must think he was—how weak.

He heard his own voice as if from a distance. “Have you told anyone?”

“Of course not,” Jesse said. “It’s your secret, to share as you wish.” He looked back out at the city. “I considered not telling you,” he said. “That Grace confessed to me. But that seemed like another betrayal, even of a small kind, and you deserve the truth. You must decide how to tell your friends, your family, in your own time.”

With a great effort, James unclenched his fists from around the iron railing. He shook them, trying to restore feeling to his fingertips. “I have told no one,” he said. “I suppose Grace told you that the Silent Brothers wish to keep this fact a secret—”

Jesse nodded.

“—but that will only be a temporary reprieve for me.”

“A reprieve?” Jesse looked surprised. “You don’t wish to tell your friends, your family?”