Chain of Gold (18 page)

The webs were empty, though. They hung shimmering like the lace of an abandoned wedding dress, vacant of spiders or even the bodies of trapped bugs.
Strange,
Cordelia thought, glancing about. It was easy to imagine how this place had once been beautiful, the woodwork painted white, the glass letting in glimpses of blue sky. There were few flowers left now, though she spied the purplish petals and darkly budded berries of nightshade plants scattered beneath the shadow of a single great tree that still rose, stark and leafless, against a far wall.

Naughty,
Cordelia thought. It was frowned on for Shadowhunters to grow plants like nightshade, which provided key ingredients in dark magic spells. There were plants she didn't recognize as well—something like a fleshy white tulip, and something else a bit like a red Venus flytrap. None looked as if they had been cultivated recently: weeds grew up and around everything. A gardener's nightmare.

The heavy scent in the air had intensified—like foliage that had been left to rot, a dying garden. Cordelia peered ahead of her, and saw thickening darkness and a twitch of movement—

She ducked just as a dark talon whipped by over her head.
Demon!
screamed a silent voice inside her head. The stink in the air, half-covered by the smell of rotting leaves—the lack of birds or even spiders inside the greenhouse—of course.

There was movement in the darkness—Cordelia caught sight of a great misshapen face looming over hers, bleached and fanged and bony, before the demon hissed and reared back from the light.

Cordelia turned to run but a curling tentacle whipped around her ankle, tightening like a noose. She was jerked off her feet, hitting the ground hard. Her witchlight went flying. Cordelia screamed as she was dragged into the shadows.

Lucie drew herself up to her full height—which was not very impressive; in all her family, she was the shortest. “I think it should be clear,” she said. “I am creeping about, spying.”

Jesse's eyes flashed. “Oh, for—” He stepped back. “Come inside, quickly.”

Lucie did as he asked and found herself standing inside a vast room. Jesse stood in front of her, in the same clothes he had worn at the ball and before that, in the forest. One rarely saw a gentleman without a jacket, and certainly not in his shirtsleeves unless he was your brother or some other family member. She would not have noticed his state of undress when she was so young, but she was very conscious of it now. A metal disc—a locket perhaps—winked in the hollow of his throat, its surface etched with a circlet of thorns.

“You're mad to come here,” he said. “It's dangerous.”

Lucie looked around. The size of the room, the roof vaulting overhead, only served to make it feel more deserted. Moonlight shone in through a broken window. The walls had once been dark blue but were nearly black now, with a fine grime of dirt. Massive tangles of shimmering fabric, now occluded with dust, hung from the ceiling, swaying in the breeze from the broken windows. She moved toward the center of the room, where a huge crystal chandelier hung. It looked as if it had once been fashioned into the shape
of a glittering spider, but the years had taken its crystals and scattered them on the floor like hardened teardrops.

She bent down to pick one up—a false diamond, but still beautiful, all glimmer and dust. “This was the ballroom,” she said in a soft voice.

“It still is,” said Jesse, and she whirled to face him. He was standing in an entirely different place than he had been before, though she hadn't heard him move. He was all black and white—the only color on him was the silver Blackthorn ring on his scarred right hand and his green eyes.

“Oh, it is rotted away now. It gives my mother pleasure to let time take this place, to let the years wither and destroy the pride of the Lightwoods.”

“Will she ever stop hating them?”

“It isn't just the Lightwoods she hates,” said Jesse. “She hates everyone she holds responsible for the death of my father. Her brothers, your father and mother, Jem Carstairs. And beyond even that, the Clave. She holds them responsible for what happened to me.”

“What
did
happen to you?” Lucie asked, slipping the broken crystal into the pocket of her cloak.

Jesse was prowling about the room: he looked like a black cat in the dimness, long and lithe, with shaggy dark hair. Lucie turned to watch him as he faded in and out of the shadows. The chandelier swung, its remaining crystals sending glittering bolts of light through the room, scattering sparks in the darkness. For a moment, Lucie thought she saw a young man in the shadows—a young man with pale blond hair and a hard twist to his unforgiving mouth. There was something familiar about him.…

“How long have you been able to see the dead?” Jesse asked.

Lucie blinked and the blond boy vanished. “Most Herondales can see ghosts,” she said. “I've always been able to see Jessamine. So can James. I hadn't thought of it as anything special.”

Jesse had moved to stand under the chandelier. For someone so calm, he had a surprising amount of restlessness. “No one but my mother and sister have seen me since… since you saw me in Brocelind six years ago.”

Lucie frowned. “You are a ghost, but not like any other ghost. Even my father and brother can't see you. It's so odd. Are you buried?”

“It's very forward to ask a gentleman if he's buried,” said Jesse.

“How old are you?” Lucie was undeterred.

Jesse sighed and looked up at the chandelier. “I have two ages,” he said. “I am twenty-four. And I am seventeen.”

“No one has two ages.”

“I do,” he said, unruffled. “When I was seventeen, I died. But my mother had—prepared.”

Lucie licked her dry lips. “What do you mean, prepared?”

He gestured at himself. “This, what you are looking at, is a manifestation of my soul. After my death, my mother told the Silent Brothers she would never give them my remains, that she refused to allow them to touch me again, to burn my body to ashes. I do not know if they questioned what she did then, but I know she brought a warlock into the room in the hours after I died, to preserve and to safeguard my physical body. My soul was cut free to wander between the real world and the spirit realm. Thus I do not age, I do not breathe, and I live only during the nights.”

“Which you spend haunting ballrooms and wandering about the forest?”

He gave her a dark look. “Usually I spend my time reading. Both the manor house in Idris and Chiswick House have well-stocked libraries. I've even read my grandfather Benedict's unpublished papers. They were hidden in the chimney. Horrid stuff—he was obsessed with demons. Socializing with them, crossbreeding them—”

“Ugh,” said Lucie, waving a quelling hand. Benedict Lightwood's peculiarities were well known. “What do you do during the day?”

He smiled faintly. “I vanish.”

“Really? Vanish where?”

“You have a great deal of questions.”

“Yes,” said Lucie. “In fact, I came here to ask you a question. What did you mean last night when you said, ‘There is death here'? Nothing happened at the ball.”

“But today it did,” said Jesse. “Grace told me.”

Lucie tried to imagine Grace and Jesse sitting in this shadowy room, exchanging the news of their days:

I saw a demon attack in Regent's Park during the daytime.

Did you, now? Well, I didn't do much, as you know, I'm still dead.

She cleared her throat. “So you can see the future?”

Jesse paused. He looked made out of moonlight and cobwebs, shadows at his temples, in the hollow of his throat, at his wrists. “Before I reveal anything else,” he said, “you must swear you will tell no one about me—not your brother, not Cordelia, not your parents. Understood?”

“A secret?” Lucie loved and hated secrets. She was always honored to be entrusted with one, and then was immediately tempted to tell it. “Why must it be a secret? Many know I can see ghosts.”

“But as you have so perspicaciously noted, I am not an ordinary ghost,” said Jesse. “I am kept in this state by necromantic magic and the Clave forbids such things. Should they find out, they would search for my body and burn it, and I would be dead in truth. And forever.”

Lucie swallowed. “So you still hope—you think you might return? To full life?”

Jesse leaned back against the wall, his arms folded. “You have not promised.”

“I give my word. I will tell no one about you. Now explain what you meant last night with your warning.”

She had thought he might smirk or say something mocking,
but he looked very serious. “Being what I am puts me between two worlds,” he said. “I belong here and yet I don't. Sometimes I can glimpse other things that do not quite belong. Other ghosts, of course—and demons. There was a sinister presence in that ballroom, and I believe it is the same one that returned today.”

“But why?” Lucie whispered.

Jesse shook his head. “That, I do not know.”

“Will they return—?” Lucie began. There was a flare of light. Jesse turned, surprised, toward the back wall of the house: the French doors had lit up, glowing a startling white.

Lucie darted to one of the windows and looked out. She could see the gardens clearly in all their tangled darkness. A small distance away was the greenhouse, and it was glimmering like a star.

Witchlight.

A moment later the light had winked out. Cold fear clawed at Lucie's chest. “Daisy,” she breathed, and tore the doors open. Tumbling out onto the balcony without another look at Jesse, she flung herself at the wall and began to climb down.

Cordelia scrabbled at the ground with her free hand, her fingers sinking into the dirt as she was hauled into the shadows. The demon tentacle wrapped around her leg was agonizing—it felt as if a million small teeth were biting into her skin—but more horrifying was the heat on the back of her neck, the breath of whatever was hovering over her—

Something caught her hand.
Lucie,
she thought. She shrieked as she came to a sudden stop, the painful cord around her leg tightening, jerking her body sideways. She reached up to clutch the hand that had caught hers, and saw who it belonged to.

The greenhouse was dim, but she knew him instantly. A shock of black hair, pale gold eyes, the face she had memorized. James.

He wasn't wearing gear. He was in trousers and shirtsleeves, and his face was pale with shock. Still, he was gripping her wrist firmly, hauling her toward the door, as the cord around her leg tried to drag her farther into the greenhouse. If she did not move fast, she would be torn in two.

Using James's grip as an anchor, Cordelia twisted around to free Cortana—it had been trapped beneath her—and surged downward with the blade in her hand. She slashed the sword through the tentacle holding her.

Cortana sparked gold as it cut through demon flesh. There was a deep, rumbling cry, and suddenly Cordelia was free, sliding toward James in a welter of ichor and her own blood.

The pain lanced through her like fire as he hauled her to her feet. There was nothing elegant about it, nothing of a gentleman helping a lady. This was the urgency of battle, hands grasping and yanking in desperation. She fell against James, who caught at her. Her witchlight pulsed dimly in the dirt where she had dropped it.

“What the blazes, Daisy—?” James began.

She whirled, pulling out of his grasp to snatch up the witchlight. In its renewed glow, she realized that what she had thought was a massive tree rising against the far wall of the greenhouse was something very different.

It was a demon, but not like any she had seen before. From a distance it almost seemed a butterfly or moth, pinned to the wall, wings outspread. A second, closer look revealed that its wings were membranous extensions, shot through with pulsing red veins. Where the wings joined together, they rose into a sort of central stalk, crowned by three heads. Each head was like a wolf's, but with black, insectile eyes.

Extending from the bottom of the stalk was a knot of long tentacles, like the limbs of a squid. Clustered with membranous seedpods, they hit the floor of the greenhouse and stretched out
along the dirt like roots. They wound between the trees and the potted plants, they choked the bases of flowering bushes, they reached across the floor toward Cordelia and James.

The one that Cordelia had severed lay on the ground, pulsing slow freshets of ichor. Not swiftly, but inexorably, the others slipped after it.

She dropped her witchlight into her pocket. If she was going to need to fight, she wanted both hands free.

James had apparently had a similar thought: he slid a dagger from his weapons belt and sighted along his arm, his eyes narrowed. “Daisy,” he said without looking at her. “Run.”

Did he actually mean to face the thing down with a throwing blade? It would be suicide. Cordelia seized his free arm and bolted, yanking James after her. Too startled to hang back, he followed. She glanced back once and saw the boiling rush of black talons behind them, causing her to put on a frantic burst of speed. Good Raziel, how enormous was this greenhouse?

She tore past the last of the potted orange trees and came up short. She could see the door at last, but her heart sank: it was wrapped around with black talons, curving along the walls, their tips pressing against the door, holding it shut. Her hand tightened on James's wrist.

“Is that the door?” he whispered. She shot him a look of surprise—how could he not know? Hadn't he come in the same way she had?

“Yes,” she said. “I have a seraph blade, but only one—we could try—”

James hurled the dagger, the runes along its blade shining. He moved so fast it was like a blur: one moment he was holding the blade and the next it had plunged into the demon's membranous wing, shattering the glass behind it. Shrieking, the demon began to pull itself away from the wall.