Chain of Gold (40 page)

His hands shaped the curves of her, sweeping from her hips to her waist, rising to cup her breasts. She gasped, breathing into the new sensation, wanting his hands on her. His fingers curved to hook into the neckline of her gown. He was touching her skin, her bare skin. She shivered in amazement and he looked at her, his eyes wild and hot and golden. He shrugged off his black frock coat, tossing it aside; when he came back to her, she could feel the heat of his body through her thin silk dress.

Even in her dance, even in the training room, she had never felt her body so absolutely right as she did now. He lifted her onto the walnut desk, so she sat on a wooden perch above him. She wrapped her legs around his waist. He cradled her face between his hands. Her hair was a curtain of flames streaming about both of them as they kissed and kissed.

At last she drew him up. Her back met the wood of the desk as he leaned over her, one hand braced above her head. The feel of his body all along hers scorched her blood. She understood now why poets said love was like burning. The heat of it was all through her and in her, and all she wanted was more—more kisses, more touches, to be devoured by this like a forest by wildfire.

And his face—she had never seen him like this, eyes burning and lost to desire, his pupils wide and black. He groaned as she touched him, running her palms over his hard chest, his rigid arms holding him braced over her. She tangled her fingers in the dark riot of his hair as he bent to kiss the swell of each breast, his breath hot against her skin.

The door to the room opened again. James froze, and a moment later scrambled up and off the desk, seizing his coat. He handed it to Cordelia as she sat up hurriedly.

Matthew stood on the threshold, staring at them both. Cordelia clutched the coat to her, though she was still fully dressed. Still, it felt like something of a shield against Matthew's stunned gaze.

“James,” he said, and he sounded as if he didn't quite believe the evidence of his own eyes. His expression was tense and sharp as his eyes flicked from James to Cordelia's shoes, discarded on the floor.

“We're not meant to be in here,” Cordelia said hurriedly. “James thought if we pretended—I mean, if someone came in and thought—”

“I understand,” Matthew said, looking not at her, but at James. And James, Cordelia thought, looked composed—so composed, as if nothing had happened. Only his hair was mussed a little, and his tie askew, but his expression was unremarkable: calm, faintly curious.

“Is Charles still here?” he said.

Languidly, Matthew leaned against the doorframe. His hands moved slowly as he spoke, describing pale arcs in the air. “He left. He gave me quite a dressing-down first, I can assure you, for
spending my time in such a swamp of debauchery and ruin. He said he thought I would have at least brought you or Anna to look after me.” He grimaced.

“Hard luck, old chap,” said James, turning to Cordelia, and reaching out a hand to help her down from the desk. The heat had gone from his golden eyes; they were cool and unreadable. She handed him his coat and he shrugged it on. “Why was he here?”

“The Enclave is looking into what Downworlders know about the situation,” said Matthew. “Days after we already had the idea, of course.”

“We ought to leave,” said James. “Charles may have gone, but nothing prevents other Clave members from making an unwelcome appearance.”

“We have to warn Anna,” said Cordelia, clearing her throat. She thought she sounded remarkably steady, all things considered.

Matthew's smile was brittle. “Hypatia won't like that.”

“Still,” Cordelia said stubbornly, retrieving one shoe, and then the other. “We must.”

She took Cortana back from where James had leaned it against the wall and followed the boys out into the corridor. She bit her lip as they hurried down the damask-papered hallway in silence. The scent of the smoke in the Whispering Room clung to her hair and clothes, sickly sweet.

“Here,” Matthew said, as an ornately carved golden door rose up in front of them, its knob carved in the shape of a dancing nymph. It seemed Hypatia had altered the entrance to her room, just as she had altered the walls in the central chamber. “The bedroom of Hypatia Vex. Cordelia, I assume you wish to knock?”

Cordelia refrained from glaring at Matthew. He stood close to her, nearly shoulder to shoulder, and she could smell alcohol on him—something rich and dark, like brandy or rum. She thought of the too-slow deliberation of his gestures, the way he'd blinked
at her and James. Before he had come to fetch them from the Whispering Room, he had gotten drunk, she realized. Probably far more drunk than he was letting on.

Before she could move, the nymph-knob turned, and Anna opened the door in a wash of bronze light and a heavy rush of scent, redolent of white flowers: jasmine and tuberose. Anna's hair was mussed and the collar of her shirt hung open to display a ruby necklace glimmering red as blood against her throat. She held a wooden box, carved with the
ourobouros
and dark with the patina of years, in her left hand.

“Shhh,”
she whispered, glaring at them. “Hypatia's asleep, but she won't stay that way long. Take it!”

And she tossed the Pyxis to James.

“Then we're done,” said Matthew. “Come along with us.”

“And make Hypatia suspicious? Don't be ridiculous.” Anna rolled her blue eyes. “Off you go, conspirators. I've done my part, and the rest of my evening will not require you.”

“Anna?” Hypatia's voice sounded from somewhere inside the bronze-lit room. “Anna, darling, where are you?”

“Take my carriage,” Anna whispered. Then she smiled. “And you did very well, Cordelia. They'll be talking about that dance for ages.”

She winked and shut the door in their faces.

Sleep eluded Cordelia that night. Long after the boys had dropped her at the house in Kensington, long after she had wearily climbed the steps to her bedroom, long after her new dress had been discarded in a pile of bronze silk on the floor, she lay awake, staring up at the white plaster ceiling of her room. She could still feel James's lips on hers, the touch of his hands and fingers on her body.

He had kissed her with violent desperation, as if he were dying
for her. He had said her name:
Daisy, my Daisy.
Hadn't he? Yet when they had reached Kensington, he had helped her down from the carriage and bid her good night casually, as if they were simply the friends they had always been. She tried to hold the memory of what it felt like to kiss him in her mind, but it slipped away and vanished with only the memory of sweetness, like the smoke in the Whispering Room.

The sea gave up its dead, and death and the grave gave up their dead.

—Revelations 20:13

When Cordelia arrived at the
Institute in the late afternoon, she found Lucie and the Merry Thieves in the ballroom, clearly taking advantage of the fact that Will and Tessa had gone on a day patrol. White sheets had been thrown over the furniture and the piano, and the only light came from the arched windows, whose heavy velvet curtains had been pulled back. Even in the short time that had passed since the ball, the floor had grown lightly grained with dust.

Lucie, Christopher, James, Matthew, and Thomas were standing in a circle around an object that had been placed in the middle of the room. As Cordelia drew near them, she recognized it as the Pyxis Anna had handed to James the night before.

In the watery daylight, Cordelia could see it more clearly. It was made of a dark golden wood, with the pattern of the
ouroboros
, the snake swallowing its own tail, burned into four of its sides. A handle protruded from the top.

“Cordelia!” Lucie exclaimed. “We were just exchanging information. We learned a great deal that was important at the Enclave meeting last night, and it sounds as if you did something or other at the Hell Ruelle. Nothing that compelling, no doubt, but we cannot all be spies.”

“I heard about the meeting from my brother this morning,” said Cordelia, joining the others in their makeshift circle. Like Cordelia, Lucie and the boys were in gear. James wore a Norfolk jacket over his, with the storm collar turned up. Locks of black hair tumbled over his forehead and kissed the tops of his cheekbones. She looked away quickly, before their eyes could meet. “The quarantine and—and all the rest.”

Alastair was still angry at her, but to be fair to him he had been gentle in breaking the bad news about Oliver Hayward. She did not know what to say about it now, though. She had not known Oliver, except as a presence at Barbara's side, but the others had. She could not imagine what they felt, especially Thomas, who looked even more tense and strained than he had before.

“It seems even more urgent to find and trap the demon responsible for this contagion now, before it attacks anyone else,” she said at last.

Christopher enthusiastically waved an enormous book he was holding, his glasses balanced on the tip of his nose. The words
On the Uses of Pyxides and Other Phylacteries
were stamped across the front in gold. “It appears that this generation of Pyxis is fairly simple. When you wish to trap a demon, you first wound or weaken it. Then you place the Pyxis on the ground nearby and speak the words ‘
Thaam Tholach Thechembaor
,' and the demon will be sucked into the box.”

The Pyxis wobbled sharply, nearly tipping onto its side. Everyone jumped about a foot back.

“It's
alive
,” Thomas said, staring. “Not the Pyxis, I mean—well, you know what I mean.”

“Indeed,” said James. “I see a flaw in our plan.”

Matthew nodded. “I do as well. What if the Pyxis has an occupant? There was no real reason to assume the box at Hypatia's was
empty
. It could have had a demon in it all these years.”

They all stared at each other.

“What would happen if we tried to put
another
demon in there?” Cordelia asked at last. “Could they both fit?”

“It isn't a good idea,” said Christopher, consulting the book. “Since we don't know what kind of demon is already in there, we don't know if there will be enough space. Pyxides are bigger inside than they appear, but still finite.”

“Well, then we have to empty this Pyxis out,” Lucie said practically. “Anything could be in there. It could be a Greater Demon.”

“What ho,” said Christopher sadly.

“I'm sure it isn't,” said James. “Still—let's relocate to the Sanctuary. No matter what happens, we can at least keep it contained until help arrives.”

“Why not?” said Matthew. “Surely there's no way this plan can go wrong.”

James raised an eyebrow. “Have you got another idea?”

“I think we should do it,” said Thomas. “It's ridiculous to come this far and turn back.”

Lucie sniffed. “Well, you'd all better hope it works. Especially you, James, because if Mam and Papa find out you released a demon in the Sanctuary, they will feed you to it.”

James shot Lucie a dark older-brother glare that almost made Cordelia giggle. She had always been a little jealous of the closeness Lucie and James shared, something she had always wanted with Alastair but never had. It was nice that at some moments they were perfectly ordinary.

They relocated themselves to the Sanctuary, James carrying the Pyxis carefully, as if it were an infernal device that might explode
at any moment. Cordelia found herself walking beside James and Lucie. She wondered if she and James would ever discuss what had happened the night before in the Whispering Room or if she would be left to go quietly mad wondering about it.

“Don't worry,” Lucie said to her brother. “It won't be like it was with Papa.”

“What do you mean?” Cordelia asked.

James said, “When he was a child, my father opened a Pyxis with tragic consequences. My aunt Ella was killed.”

Cordelia was horrified. “Maybe we shouldn't—”

“This will be different,” Lucie said, and Cordelia wasn't sure if Lucie was reassuring herself or James. “We know what we're getting into. Papa didn't.”

They had arrived at the Sanctuary, the only room in the Institute where Downworlders could freely enter without being invited in by a Shadowhunter. It was warded all around with spells preventing them from entering the main body of the Institute. Meetings with prominent Downworlders were often held there, and Downworlders could even seek refuge in a Sanctuary under the Accords.

It was certainly clear that the London Institute had once been a cathedral, and a large one. Massive stone pillars stretched up to a vaulted roof. Thomas had produced a box of vestas and was moving around the room, lighting a dozen enormous candelabras, their sconces stuffed with fat white candles that cast a glimmering light. The tapestries and pillars were all traced with the designs of runes, as were the tiles of the floor. Cordelia had to admit that if one was going to release a demon, this seemed one of the better places to do it.

In the middle of the room was a dry stone fountain, in the center of which stood the statue of an angel with folded wings, its stone face streaked with black lines like tears.

James set the box on the floor, directly on top of a rune of angelic
power. He knelt down, studying the Pyxis. After a moment, he took an unlit seraph blade from the inside of his coat.

“Arm yourselves, everyone,” he said.

Cordelia unsheathed Cortana; the others drew seraph blades as James had done, save Thomas, who took out his
bolas
. James reached out and took hold of the handle of the Pyxis.

Cordelia's hand tightened on the hilt of her sword.

James twisted the handle sideways, as if turning a corkscrew. There was a loud
click
as the Pyxis popped open. All through the Sanctuary, the white candles spat and guttered. James sprang back, raising his blade.

There was a sound like the whistle of a train at night, and smoke billowed from the open Pyxis, bringing with it a foul, burnt smell. Cordelia coughed, raising Cortana. She heard James call out,
“Barachiel!”
and the light of his seraph blade cut through the smoke, followed by the blades of the others—Matthew, Christopher, and Lucie.

Something was rising through the smoke—something like a massive caterpillar, greenish in color, with a segmented, undulating body and a smooth head slashed across by a lipless mouth. The mouth cracked open, showing row upon row of blackened teeth. Then, to Cordelia's surprise, it spoke.

“At last I am free,”
it hissed.
“I, Agaliarept, am free to recover the domain of my master, stolen from him by a demon of great cunning. I shall retrieve his lost world and flood this one with blood and death.”
Its blind head turned toward the Shadowhunters.
“Those who have freed me, what is thy bidding? Speak! I am commanded to do anything you ask.”

“Anything?” said Matthew curiously.

There was a flash of light as James's seraph blade arced through the smoke and plunged into the demon's middle. Black ichor sprayed as the demon shrieked in a high, chittering voice. The candles
guttered and went out as James pulled his blade free; he was spattered with black fluid, his jaw set, his eyes glittering.

The demon howled and vanished, leaving only smoke and stink behind. Lucie staggered back, coughing, her face screwed up in disgust.

“But it would have done our bidding!” Matthew protested.

“It seemed untrustworthy,” said James, wiping ichor from his face with his sleeve. His seraph blade had gone dark.

“I thought he seemed all right, for a demon,” said Christopher. “You know.”

“
What
is going on here?” said a loud voice.

They all spun around, Cordelia raising Cortana reflexively. She waved smoke away from her face and stared.

Someone had come in through the door to the street outside. A tall man—very tall, with a shock of black hair. His skin was brown, a shade darker than Cordelia's own, his eyes gold-green and slit-pupilled like a cat's. He was dressed as if for a summer wedding, in a gray frock coat and trousers, with gray suede gloves and boots. The outfit was topped off by a magnificent waistcoat of gray-and-magenta brocade, a walking stick, and bright magenta spats.

“Magnus
Bane
?” said Matthew, with a mixture of amazement and horror.

Magnus Bane walked some distance into the Sanctuary, shaking his head as he studied the scene before him. “I want to know what you're doing, but I must confess I'm afraid to find out,” he said. “A spot of demon-summoning, I gather?”

“It's a bit complicated,” said James. “Hello, Magnus. It's good to see you.”

“Last time I saw
you
, you were facedown in the Serpentine,” Magnus said cheerfully. “Now you're fiddling with a Pyxis. I see you have decided to follow in the long Herondale tradition of poor decision-making.”

“So have I!” said Lucie, determined not to be left out.

“I came all the way from Jakarta to have a meeting with Tessa and Will about this whole daylight demon plague business,” Magnus said. “Yet when I knocked on the front door, no one answered. Thus I was forced to come in through the Sanctuary.”

“It's odd they would have asked you to come here now,” said Thomas. “Everyone over eighteen is out searching for the demons responsible for the attacks.”

Magnus furrowed his brow. He lifted his hand to stare at the expensive-looking watch on his wrist and groaned. “It seems that I forgot to turn my watch backward and therefore have arrived six hours early. Bloody hell.”

Matthew looked delighted. “We could have tea. I am a true enthusiast of your work, Mr. Bane. Also, your personal style. Your waistcoats alone…”

“Matthew, do shut up,” said Thomas. “Mr. Bane doesn't want to talk about waistcoats.”

“Untrue,” said Magnus. “I always want to talk about waistcoats. But I admit I'm more curious about this Pyxis.” He drew closer and poked at the box with his Malacca walking stick. “Am I correct in deducing that you opened the box on purpose and let a Palpis demon out?”

“Yes,” said James.

“… Why?” said Magnus.

“We need to be able to use the Pyxis,” Matthew burst out. “To trap a demon. So it had to be empty. We were just—clearing it out.”

James sighed. “Matthew, you would be a terrible spy. You might not break under torture, but you'd tell someone anything they wanted to know in exchange for a nice pair of trousers.”

“Oh, for goodness' sake,” Cordelia said. She turned to Magnus. “You want this demon business over, right? You don't want any more Shadowhunters to die?”

Magnus looked startled to be addressed so forcefully. “I am generally not on the side of murderous demons, no.”

“Then perhaps you could help us,” James said, and quickly outlined their plan, or at least as much of it as he could tell without breaking faith with Ragnor. Their belief that they were seeking a kind of demon that could only be trapped by a Pyxis. James's vision of the shadow realm and reason to think that the demon would be on Tower Bridge. As he spoke, Magnus looked more and more curious. By the end of the story, Magnus had seated himself on the edge of the fountain, his long legs stretched out in front of him.

“This is quite a collection of suppositions,” he said, when James was done. “But I must ask, especially you, Lucie and James—why do you not seek your parents' assistance with this? Why the secrecy?”

“Because we made a promise,” said Matthew. “To the person who gave us the key that unlocked a great deal of this information. And we can't break it.”

Magnus smiled an odd sideways smile. “Ragnor told me that he trusted you with some information, and it appears that you have not betrayed his trust. Not many Shadowhunters would honor such a vow made to a Downworlder. Since I am Ragnor's best friend, or at least the only person who can tolerate him for long stretches, I will keep your secret.” He glanced from James to Lucie. “In days past, when I knew your parents well, they probably would have been spearheading this plan.” He stood up. “But now they are no longer children. They are parents, and thus devoted to something they love more than their own lives. So indeed, perhaps they should not be told.”

Even Matthew had no response to that.

“Well, good luck,” Magnus said, picking up his walking stick. “I suppose I shall go to Hatchards for a few hours. There is no better distraction in this world than losing oneself in books for a while.”