Chain of Gold (48 page)

“No,” Cordelia whispered. “It isn't safe for James there. If we went to the Institute—or brought Jem there—”

“Absolutely not,” said James very calmly. “I'm not going anywhere. Not anywhere in London, at least.”

“Bloody hell, he's hallucinating,” said Matthew with a groan.

But Cordelia didn't think he was. In a low voice, she said, “James. What do you see?”

James raised his hand and pointed. “There. Between those two trees.”

And he was right—suddenly Cordelia, and Matthew as well, could see what James had been staring at all this time. Between two cedar trees was a large archway. It seemed to be made of dark light; it curved with Gothic flourishes, as though it were part of the cemetery, but Cordelia knew it was not. Through it, she could glimpse a swirl of dark chaos, as if she were looking through a Portal into the vastness of black space itself.

“A gateway,” said Matthew slowly.

“Like Ariadne said,” whispered Cordelia. “James—your blood—” She shook her head. “Don't. Don't do it, whatever it is. Everything about this feels wrong.”

But James only turned and went over toward the archway. He stretched out his arm toward it—the one with the wounds where Christopher's nails had punctured his skin—and made a fist.

The muscles of his arm swelled, and blood ran from the cuts on his wrist—they looked slight, but fat drops of red rose up along his arm and dripped onto the ground. The view through the archway seemed to solidify and clear itself, and now Cordelia could glimpse the world she'd seen on the bridge: a place with earth and sky like ashes, and trees like protrusions of bone.

“James,” Matthew said, closing the gap between himself and his friend. “Stop.”

“I have to do this.” James lowered his bleeding arm. His eyes were feverish, whether from determination or the poison now in his veins, Cordelia wasn't sure. “Math—you shouldn't touch me. It's not safe.”

Matthew, who had been reaching for James, stopped abruptly and flung his arms wide.
“James—”

“Is that why you're going?” Cordelia demanded. She could taste tears in the back of her throat. She wanted to break something, to take Cortana and smash the blade against the granite sides of the tombs. “Because you think you're going to die? Thomas and Lucie are getting the malos root right now. We could have an antidote in a day. In
hours
.”

“It's not that.” James shook his head. “Whether I'd been infected or not, I'd have to go, and you would have to let me.”

“Why?” Matthew demanded. “Tell us why, Jamie.”

“Because Christopher was right,” said James. “So was Ariadne. Only my going through the gateway can stop all this. It's about me. It's always been about me.
I have no other choice.
”

When all the world dissolves,

And every creature shall be purified,

All places shall be hell that is not heaven.

—Christopher Marlowe,
Doctor Faustus

By the time Lucie and
Thomas reached Chiswick House, it was near dark. The sun had set, and the mansion was tarnished silver against the dying light. Leaving the carriage at the curb, they made their way in silence up the long road flanked by twisted trees to the main house. Somehow the place looked worse than it had when Lucie had been here with Cordelia.

Lucie could see the humped shadow of the greenhouse in the distance, and the ruined Italian gardens in the other direction. Seeing the manor and its grounds in better light, Lucie wished she had not. She couldn't imagine living in such a house.

“Poor Grace,” she said. “This place is a rathole. Actually, I wouldn't wish it on a rat.”

“That is because you like rats,” said Thomas. “Remember Marie?”

Marie Curie had been a small white rat Christopher had kept in
the room at the Devil Tavern and fed on bread and chicken bones. Marie had been friendly enough to rest on Lucie's shoulder and nuzzle at her hair. Eventually Marie had died of natural causes and been buried with pomp and circumstance in Matthew's back garden.

“But I don't know if we ought to feel sorry for Grace,” said Lucie. “She broke James's heart.”

“For someone with a broken heart, he seems in remarkably fine fettle,” said Thomas. “Honestly, he actually seems
more
cheerful.”

Lucie could not deny that this was true. “Still,” she said. “It is the principle of the thing.”

They reached the greenhouse, a long structure of glass and wood. Long ago it had provided the Lightwood family with pineapples and grapes in winter. Now there were holes smashed into the glass walls, and the once-clean windows were smeared and dark.

A massive padlock hung on the door. Lucie started to reach for her stele, but Thomas put a hand on her wrist. “I can go around the back,” he said. “There ought to be a small shed there with an entrance into the greenhouse. They would have needed to heat the place by hypocaust.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” said Lucie. “But I suspect you know this because of all the hours you've spent listening to Christopher in the lab. Certainly, by all means, let us crawl into a dark and spider-infested shed.”

“It isn't spiders I'm worried about,” said Thomas. “And you won't be doing any crawling. We need you out here as sentry. If you see any unusual activity, send up an alarm.”

“I hate being the watchman. Are you certain we need one?”

“Yes,” said Thomas, “because if one of us is going to be devoured by demonic tree roots, then the other one had better be around to get help, or at least grab the malos root and run for it.”

Lucie had to admit he had a point. “Go on, then.”

Thomas headed toward the back of the greenhouse. Lucie
attempted to do as he had suggested for at least five minutes, but it was very dull. There was only so long one could pace back and forth in front of the door to a greenhouse before feeling like a goldfish swimming to and fro in its bowl. She was very nearly relieved to glimpse something out of the corner of her eye.

It looked like a spark of bright light, down toward the Italian gardens. She moved away from the greenhouse, narrowing her eyes. The light was pale in color and wavering against the twilight. A torch, perhaps?

She moved closer, keeping to the shadows. The gardens were a ruin. Once there had been neat hedgerows, but they were overgrown now, a mess of shrubbery leading in all directions. The marble statues of Virgil, Sophocles, and Ovid had been smashed to jagged pieces that protruded upward from broken plinths. In the center of the whole mess was a square brick structure, like an old storage shed.

As she moved toward it, she saw the flicker of light once again. It was stronger now, and seemed to be rising over the walls of the small structure, as if it had no roof, though that was not unusual for old buildings—the roof was often the first thing to go. It certainly had no windows, but the light continued to shine steadily from within.

Consumed by curiosity, Lucie reached the square little building and stared. It appeared to have been built long ago, of large and sturdy stone. There was a door in one side; though it was closed, light gleamed beneath the door.

As Lucie watched, the light moved. Someone, or something, was very definitely inside.

Throwing caution to the wind, Lucie began to climb one of the walls.

She reached the top almost immediately. The structure was indeed roofless: open to the elements despite the four thick walls.
Lucie flattened herself atop the wall she'd climbed and stared down into the space below.

It was a single room, bare of any decoration save a sword hanging upon one wall. It bore a crosspiece carved with thorns, the symbol of the Blackthorn family. In the center of the room was a table, on which rested a coffin. Standing beside the coffin was Grace Blackthorn, a witchlight torch in her right hand. Her left hand lay atop the coffin, her slim fingers outspread as if she could reach through the glass front and touch the body within.

For the coffin was made of glass, like the coffin of Snow White in fairy tales. And lying within it was Jesse Blackthorn—hair as black as ebony, skin as white as snow. His lips were not red as blood, though: they were pale and set, and his eyes were closed. He wore a suit of funeral white—it was jarring to see him in something other than the clothes he had died in—and his hands were crossed over his chest.

Lucie gripped the wall tightly. Jesse's body. It had probably only been in this shed a short time—Tatiana would have kept her son with her in Idris until they came to London. But why hadn't she simply put Jesse inside the main house, rather than in this odd little structure? Somewhere where there would have been a roof over him?

The thought of cold rain falling on his coffin was almost painful. Jesse didn't look dead; he looked as if sleep had found him as he lay at rest in a garden. He looked as if he might rise at any moment and step free of his glass prison. He looked—alive.

“Jesse,” Grace said. “Jesse, I'm afraid.”

Lucie froze. She had never heard Grace speak like this. Grace sounded afraid, it was true, but more than that, she sounded gentle.

“Jesse, I'm sorry. I hate to leave you out here in the cold, even though I know you don't feel it.” Grace sounded as if she were fighting tears. “Charles is always wandering around the inside of the manor.
I suppose he wants to see what kind of property he will inherit when Mama dies.” Her voice dropped; Lucie had to lean down to hear her. “Oh, Jesse. I'm afraid that they are going to stop me coming here at night. Charles is constantly saying that I shouldn't be alone in this tumbledown house. He doesn't know that I'm not alone.
You
come to talk to me.” She drew her lace-gloved hand back from the coffin. “You asked me why I'm marrying Charles. You asked if it was because I feared what Mama might do to James.”

Lucie froze. In the near-darkness, it was impossible to see Grace's expression—it seemed to change as the witchlight flickered: gentle one moment, vicious the next.

“But I am so much more selfish than that,” breathed Grace. “I am doing it because it will free me from Mama. I want her to recover, I truly do, but when she does, I must have her realize that I am part of the Consul's family now and can't be touched. As for James…”

The shadows thickened in the small room below. Behind Grace, there was only darkness. Lucie knew she should return to the greenhouse, but she was desperate to hear more of what Grace was saying.

“You have asked me so many times what I truly felt for James. And I never told you. I hid so much from you. I always wished to show you my best face, Jesse. You were the only one who ever spoke up for me against Mama. I wish—”

The shadows behind Grace seemed to move.

Lucie gasped. Grace looked up at the noise, just as a crouching shape emerged from the darkness.

It was a demon, half-reptilian and half-human, with leathery bat's wings and a sharply pointed chin like the tip of a knife. It loomed above Grace, massive and scaled, and she shrieked aloud, dropping her witchlight torch. She began to back away, but the demon was too swift. Its leathery claw shot out; it seized Grace
by the throat and lifted her off the ground. Her small feet in their heeled boots kicked wildly.

The demon spoke, its voice echoing off the brick walls.
“Grace Blackthorn. You
foolish
girl.”
In the light from the torch, Lucie could see that its face was flat, snakelike, its ovoid eyes glittering like black stones. It had two mouths, but only the lower one moved as it spoke. Great horns curved up from either side of its head, sheened with black and gray scales.
“You should never have betrayed the oaths your mother swore to those far more powerful than she. Some enchantments are not yours to remove. Do you understand?”

“It had already begun to fade,” Grace gasped. “It was not working—”

She must be talking about the enchantments placed on Jesse,
Lucie thought. Maybe something had happened to them when Tatiana had succumbed to the poison?

“You will do as you are told. Put the enchantment back where it was; I, Namtar, will see to its strengthening.”
Its voice was like gravel.
“Otherwise, when our master finds out it was removed, his wrath will be beyond your imagining. Remember, all you care for can be destroyed with one word from him. With one flick of his wrist.”

Its free hand shot out toward the coffin containing Jesse. Grace cried out. And Lucie flung herself from the wall, landing hard on the demon's back, her arms about its neck.

With a roar of surprise, the demon staggered back, releasing Grace. She landed hard, her eyes feral, her fair hair straggling about her face. The demon snarled and ducked its head as if to sink its teeth into Lucie's hands; she let go, dropping to the ground, and seized Grace by the wrist.

Grace stared at her in frozen astonishment. “What are
you
doing here?”

This did not seem to Lucie to be the most pressing issue at hand. She gritted her teeth and yanked Grace toward the door. “
Run
, Grace!”

At the sound of her name, Grace snapped free of her paralysis. She began to run, tugging Lucie after her; they burst through the door and into the garden. Grace let go of Lucie and swung around to slam the door shut behind them, but the demon had already seized it from the other side. There was a shriek of metal as the door was torn from its hinges and flung aside.

The demon advanced on the two girls. Lucie had half expected Grace to bolt for the house, but she was standing her ground. Lucie tugged a seraph blade free of her belt just as Grace bent, seized up a rock, and flung it at the demon. Lucie had to give her points for enterprise, at least.

The rock bounced off the demon's leathery chest. It grinned with both mouths and seized Lucie around the torso, sending her seraph blade flying. She was lifted off her feet as the demon's black gaze raked her up and down. Its eyes narrowed. “I know you,” it snarled. It sounded almost surprised. “You are the second one.”

Lucie kicked out, her feet connecting hard with the demon's torso. It grunted and she shrieked in pain as its grip tightened. Its lower mouth opened; she saw the glint of fangs, and then a flood of black as ichor poured forth. Staggering, it released Lucie; she fell to the ground and rolled aside as the demon's body arched backward. The blade of a sword emerged from its chest, smeared with green-black ichor. It looked down incredulously at the steel protruding from its torso, snarled, and vanished.

Standing just behind where the demon had been was Jesse.

He held the sword that had hung on the wall in the tiny coffin-room. Though there was ichor on the blade and spattered on the ground at his feet, there were no stains on his clothes, or on his bare hands. The sky was black above: his green eyes glittered as he slowly lowered the sword.

“Jesse,” Lucie breathed. “I—”

She broke off as Grace took a staggering step forward. Her gaze
darted from Lucie to Jesse and back again, her expression incredulous. “But I don't understand,” she said, gripping one hand with the other. “How can you see Jesse?”

James had thought Matthew and Cordelia still might try to prevent him, but after he explained—the words echoing in his own ears as he told them how he had put the pieces of it all together—he knew that they would not. Both stared at him with drained, pale faces, but neither made a move to stand between him and the gateway.

Matthew—disheveled, dirty, still with his incongruous spats on—drew himself up, his chin high. “Then, if you must go, I will go with you,” he said.

James's heart broke. How could he do this to Matthew? How could he contemplate dying in a place Matthew could never follow him to?

And yet.

“It won't work,” he said softly. “No one can follow me into the shadows, Math. Not even you.”

Matthew walked swiftly toward the archway, even as James called out to him in sharp alarm. He reached out to touch the empty space below the arch, where the green ground of the cemetery turned to ash and grayness.

His hand bounced back as if he had slammed it into glass. He turned back to face his companions, and Cordelia saw that he was shaking.

“Cordelia, do you have rope?” he said.

Cordelia still had the rope they had used to climb to Gast's window. Matthew took it from her; as James and Cordelia looked on, mystified, he secured one end of the rope around James's waist.

Despite the shaking of his hands, he tied an excellent knot.