Lord of Shadows The Dark Artifices 2

18

M

EMORIES OF THE

P

AST

Jia Penhallow was seated behind the desk in the Consul’s office, illuminated by the rays of the sun over Alicante. The spires of the demon towers glittered outside the window: red, gold, and orange, like shards of bloody glass.

She had the same warmth in her face Diana remembered, but she looked as if much more time had passed since the Dark War than five years. There was white in her black hair, which was pinned up elegantly on top of her head.

“It’s good to see you, Diana,” she said, inclining her head toward the chair opposite her desk. “We’ve all been very curious about your mysterious news.”

“I imagine.” Diana sat down. “But I was hoping what I had to say would stay between the two of us.”

Jia didn’t look surprised. Not that she would show it if she was. “I see. I’d wondered if you’d come about the Los Angeles Institute head position. I assumed you’d want to take over now that Arthur Blackthorn is dead.” Her graceful hands fluttered as she shuffled and stacked papers, slotted pens into their holders. “It was very brave of him to approach the convergence alone. I was sorry to hear he was slain.”

Diana nodded. For reasons none of them knew, Arthur’s body had been found near the destroyed convergence site, covered in blood from his cut throat and in stains of ichor that Julian told her grimly were Malcolm’s blood. There was no reason to contradict the official assumption that he had waged a solo assault on the convergence and been killed by Malcolm’s demons.

At least Arthur would be remembered as brave, though it gave her a pang that he had been burned and buried without his nieces and nephews there to mourn him. That in fact, no one in the wider world would know he had sacrificed himself for his family. Livvy had said to her that she hoped they would be able to have a remembrance ceremony for him when they all went to Idris. Diana hoped so too.

Jia didn’t seem nonplussed by Diana’s silence. “Patrick remembers Arthur from when they were boys,” she said, “though I’m afraid I never knew him. How are the children coping?”

The children? How did you explain that the Blackthorns’ second father had been their older brother since he was twelve years old? That Julian and Emma and Mark weren’t children at all, really, having suffered enough for most adults’ entire lifetimes? That Arthur Blackthorn had never, really, run the Institute, and the whole idea that he needed to be replaced was like an elaborate and terrible joke?

“The children are devastated,” Diana said. “Their family has been fragmented, as you know. What they want is to return to Los Angeles, their home.”

“But they cannot return while there is no one to head the Institute. Which is why I thought you—”

“I don’t want it to be me,” Diana said. “I’m not here to ask for that job. But neither do I want it to go to Zara Dearborn and her father.”

“Really,” said Jia. Her tone was neutral but her eyes glittered with interest. “If not the Dearborns, and not you, then who?”

“If Helen Blackthorn was allowed to return—”

Jia sat up straight. “And run the Institute? You know the Council would never allow—”

“Then let Aline run the Institute,” said Diana. “Helen could simply remain in Los Angeles as her wife, and be with her family.”

Jia’s expression was calm, but her hands gripped the desk tightly. “Aline is my daughter. You think I don’t want to bring her home?”

“I’ve never known what you thought,” Diana said. It was true. She had no children, but if it had been her sister who had been exiled, she couldn’t imagine not fighting tooth and claw to have her released.

“When Helen was first exiled, and Aline chose to go with her, I thought about resigning as Consul,” said Jia, her hands still taut. “I knew I had no power to reverse the Clave’s decision. The Consul is not a tyrant who can impose her choices on the unwilling. Usually I would say that was a good thing. But I will tell you, for a long time, I wished I could be a tyrant.”

“Why not resign, then?”

“I didn’t trust who might come after me,” said Jia simply. “The Cold Peace was very popular. If the Consul who followed me wished to, they could separate Aline from Helen—and though I want my daughter home, I don’t want her heart broken. They could do worse, too. They could try Aline and Helen as traitors, turn Helen’s sentence of exile into one of death. Maybe Aline’s as well. Anything was possible.” Her gaze was dark and heavy. “I remain where I am to stand between my daughter and the Clave’s darker forces.”

“Then aren’t we on the same side?” Diana said. “Don’t we want the same thing?”

Jia gave a flat smile. “What separates us, Diana, is five years. Five years of my trying everything to get the Council to reconsider. Helen is their example. Their way of saying to the Fair Folk: Look, we take the Cold Peace so seriously we even punish our own. Every time the issue comes up for a vote, I am voted down.”

“But what if other circumstances presented themselves?”

“What other circumstances did you have in mind?”

Diana rolled her shoulders back, feeling the tension prickle along her spine. “Jace Herondale and Clary Fairchild were dispatched to Faerie for a mission,” she said. It was half a guess—while the two of them had been at the Institute, she had glimpsed the contents of their bags: Both had been packed with iron and salt.

“Yes,” said Jia. “We have received several messages since they left.”

“Then they’ve told you,” said Diana. “About the blight on the Unseelie King’s Lands.”

Jia sat arrested, one hand hovering over her desk. “No one knows what they told me but the Inquisitor and myself,” she said. “How do you know . . . ?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m telling you because I need you to believe that I know what I’m talking about,” said Diana. “I know that the Unseelie King hates Nephilim, and that he has uncovered some force, some magic, that renders our powers useless. He has made it so that there are parts of his kingdom where runes do not work, where seraph blades will not light.”

Jia frowned. “Jace and Clary didn’t mention anything so specific. And they’ve had no contact with anyone but me since they entered Faerie—”

“There is a boy,” said Diana. “A faerie, a messenger from the Seelie Court. Kieran. He’s also a prince of Unseelie. He knows some of what his father plans. He’s willing to testify in front of the Council.”

Jia looked bewildered. “An Unseelie prince would testify for the Seelie Court? And what is the Seelie Court’s interest?”

“The Seelie Queen hates the Unseelie King,” said Diana. “More, apparently, than she hates Shadowhunters. She is willing to commit the forces of her army to defeating the Unseelie King. To wiping out his power and reversing the blight on his Lands.”

“Out of the kindness of her heart?” Jia raised an eyebrow.

“In exchange for the end of the Cold Peace,” said Diana.

Jia gave a short bark of laughter. “No one will agree to that. The Clave—”

“Everyone is sick of the Cold Peace except the most extreme bigots,” said Diana. “And I don’t think either of us want to see them gain power.”

Jia sighed. “You mean the Dearborns. And the Cohort.”

“I spent quite a bit of time with Zara Dearborn and her Centurion friends at the Institute,” said Diana. “Her views are not pleasant.”

Jia stood up, turning toward the window. “She and her father seek to return the Clave to a lost golden age. A time that never was, when Downworlders knew their place and Nephilim ruled in harmony. In truth, that past was a violent time, when Downworlders suffered and those Nephilim who possessed compassion and empathy were tormented and punished along with them.”

“How many of them are there?” Diana asked. “The Cohort?”

“Zara’s father, Horace Dearborn, is the unofficial leader,” said Jia. “His wife is dead and he has raised his daughter to follow in his footsteps. If he succeeds in placing himself at the head of the Los Angeles Institute, she will rule from beside him. Then there are other families—the Larkspears, the Bridgestocks, the Crosskills—they’re scattered around the world.”

“And their goal is to continue restricting Downworlder rights. Registering them all, giving them numbers—”

“Forbidding their marriages to Shadowhunters?”

Diana shrugged. “It’s all part of a piece, isn’t it? First you number people, then you restrict their rights and break up their marriages. Then—”

“No.” Jia’s voice was gritty. “We can’t let this happen. But you don’t understand—Zara’s being put forth as the great new Shadowhunter of her generation. The new Jace Herondale. Since she killed Malcolm—”

Diana bolted out of her chair. “That—that lying girl did not kill Malcolm.”

“We know Emma didn’t,” said Jia. “He returned.”

“I am aware of exactly how he died,” said Diana. “He raised Annabel Blackthorn from the dead. She killed him.”

“What?” Jia sounded shocked.

“It’s the truth, Consul.”

“Diana. You would need proof that what you’re saying is true. A trial by Mortal Sword—”

Diana’s greatest fear. “No,” she said. It wouldn’t be just my secrets I’d be revealing. It would be Julian’s. Emma’s. They’d all be ruined.

“You must see how this looks,” Jia said. “As if you’re seeking a way to keep the Los Angeles Institute under your control by discrediting the Dearborns.”

“They discredit themselves.” Diana looked hard at Jia. “You know Zara,” she said. “Do you really think she killed Malcolm?”

“No,” Jia said, after a pause. “I don’t.” She went to an ornate carved cabinet against one wall of her office. She slid open a drawer. “I need time to think about this, Diana. In the meantime—” She drew out a thick, cream-colored folder full of papers. “This is Zara Dearborn’s report on the death of Malcolm Fade and the attacks on the L.A. Institute. Perhaps you can find some discrepancies that might discredit her story.”

“Thank you.” Diana took the folder. “And the Council meeting? A chance for Kieran to give testimony?”

“I’ll discuss it with the Inquisitor.” Jia suddenly looked even older than she had before. “Go home, Diana. I’ll summon you tomorrow.”

* * *

“We should have brought Dru,” Livvy said, standing inside the gates of Blackthorn Hall. “This is every horror-movie fantasy she’s ever had come true.”

Blackthorn Hall turned out to be in a suburb of London not far from the Thames River. The area around it was ordinary: redbrick houses, bus stops plastered with movie posters, kids riding by on bicycles. After days trapped in the Institute, even the foreignness of London felt to Kit like waking up to reality after a dream.

Blackthorn Hall was glamoured, which meant that mundanes couldn’t see it. Kit had a sort of double vision when he glanced at it for the first time: He could see a pleasant but dull-looking private park, superimposed over a massive house with towering walls and gates, its stones blackened by years of rain and neglect.

He squinted hard. The park vanished, and only the house remained. It loomed overhead. It looked to Kit a little like a Greek temple, with columns holding up an arched portico in front of a set of double doors, massive and made of the same metal as the fence that ran all the way around the property. It was high, tipped with sharp points; the only entrance was a gate, which Ty had made short work of with one of his runes.

“What’s that one mean?” Kit had asked, pointing, as the gate creaked open with a puff of rust.

Ty looked at him. “Open.”

“I was going to guess that,” Kit muttered as they headed inside. Now within the property, he gazed around in wonder. The gardens might have fallen into disrepair now, but you could see where there had been rose arbors, and marble balustrades holding up massive stone jugs spilling flowers and weeds. There were wildflowers everywhere—it was beautiful in its own odd, ruined way.

The house was like a small castle, the circlet of thorns that Kit recognized as the Blackthorn family symbol stamped into the metal front doors and onto the tops of the columns.

“Looks haunted,” said Livvy, as they went up the front steps. In the distance, Kit could see the pitch-black circle of an old ornamental pond. Around it were set marble benches. A single statue of a man in a toga regarded him with blank, worried eyes.

“There used to be a whole collection of statues of different Greek and Roman playwrights and poets here,” said Livvy, as Ty went to work on the doors. “Uncle Arthur had most of them shipped to the L.A. Institute.”

“The open rune’s not working,” said Ty, straightening up and looking at Kit as if he knew everything Kit was thinking. As if he knew everything Kit had ever thought. There was something about being the focus of Tiberius’s gaze that was frightening and thrilling all at once. “We’ll have to figure another way in.”

Ty pushed past Kit and his sister, heading down the stairs. They made their way around the side of the Hall, down a pebbled path. Hedges that had probably once been neat and clipped curved away in explosions of leaves and flowers. In the far distance, the water of the Thames shimmered.

“Maybe there’s a way in through the back,” Livvy said. “The windows can’t be that secure either.”

“What about this door?” Kit pointed.

Ty turned around, frowning. “What door?”

“Here,” Kit said, puzzled. He could see the door very clearly: a tall, narrow entrance with an odd symbol carved into it. He placed his hand on the old wood: It felt rough and warm under his fingers. “Don’t you see it?”

“I see it now,” Livvy said. “But—I swear it wasn’t there a second ago.”

“Some kind of doubled glamour?” said Ty, coming up beside Kit. He had pulled up the hood on his sweater, and his face was a pale oval in between the black of his hair and the darkness of his collar. “But why would Kit be able to see it?”

“Maybe because I’m used to seeing glamours at the Shadow Market,” said Kit.

“Glamours that aren’t made by Shadowhunters,” said Livvy.

“Glamours that aren’t meant for Shadowhunters to see through,” said Kit.

Ty looked thoughtful. There was an opaqueness to him sometimes that made it hard for Kit to tell whether Ty agreed with him or not. He did, however, put his stele to the door and begin to draw the Open rune.

It wasn’t the lock that clicked, but the hinges that popped open. They jumped out of the way as the door half-fell, half-sagged to the side, slamming into the wall with an echoing sound.

“Don’t press down so hard when you draw,” Livvy said to Ty. He shrugged.

The space beyond the door was dark enough for the twins to need to spark up their witchlights. The glow of them had a pearlescent whitish tint that Kit found strangely beautiful.

They were in an old hallway, filled with dust and the webs of scuttling spiders. Ty went ahead of Kit and Livvy behind him; he suspected they were protecting him, and resented it, but knew that they wouldn’t understand his protest if he lodged one.

They went down the hall and up a long, narrow staircase, at the end of which was the rotted remains of a door. Through that door was a massive room with a hanging chandelier.

“Probably a ballroom,” Livvy said, her voice echoing oddly in the space. “Look, this part of the house is better taken care of.”

It was. The ballroom was empty but clean, and as they moved through other rooms, they found furniture shrouded in drop cloths, windows boarded carefully to protect the glass, boxes stacked in the halls. Inside the boxes were cloths and the strong smell of mothballs. Livvy coughed and waved a hand in front of her face.

“There’s got to be a library,” Ty said. “Somewhere they would keep family documents.”

“I can’t believe our dad might have visited here when he was growing up.” Livvy led the way down the hall, her body casting an elongated shadow. Long hair, long legs, shimmering witchlight in her hand.

“He didn’t live here?” Kit asked.

Livvy shook her head. “Grew up in Cornwall, not London. But he went to school in Idris.”

Idris. Kit had read more about Idris in the London Institute library. The fabled homeland of Shadowhunters, a place of green forests and high mountains, icy-cold lakes and a city of glass towers. He had to admit that the part of him that loved fantasy movies and Lord of the Rings yearned to see it.

He told that part of himself to be quiet. Idris was Shadowhunter business, and he hadn’t yet decided he wanted to be a Shadowhunter. In fact, he was quite—nearly totally—sure he didn’t.

“Library,” Ty said. It occurred to Kit that Ty never used five words when one would do. He was standing in front of the door to a hexagonal room, the walls beside him hung with paintings of ships. Some were cocked at odd angles as if they were plunging up or down waves.

The library walls were painted dark blue, the only art in the room a marble statue of a man’s head and shoulders sitting atop a stone column. There was a massive desk with multiple drawers that turned out to be disappointingly empty. Forays behind the bookshelves and under the rug also turned up nothing but dust balls.

“Maybe we should try another room,” Kit said, emerging from under an escritoire with dust in his blond hair.

Ty shook his head, looking frustrated. “There’s something in here. I have a feeling.”

Kit wasn’t sure Sherlock Holmes operated on feelings, but he didn’t say anything, just straightened up. As he did, he caught sight of a piece of paper sticking out of the edge of the small writing desk. He pulled at it, and it came away.

It was old paper, worn almost to transparency. Kit blinked. On it was written his name—not his name, but his last name, Herondale, over and over, entwined with another name, so that the two words formed looping patterns.

The other word was Blackthorn.

A deep sense of unease shot through him. He tucked the paper quickly into his jeans pocket just as Ty said, “Move, Kit. I want to get a closer look at that bust.”

To Kit, bust only meant one thing, but since the only breasts in the room belonged to Ty’s sister, he stepped aside with alacrity. Ty strode over to the small statue on the marble column. He’d pulled his hood down, and his hair stood up around his head, soft as the downy feathers of a black swan.

Ty touched a small placard below the carving. “ ‘The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for,’ ” he said.

“Homer,” said Livvy. Whatever kind of education the Shadowhunters got, Kit had to admit, it was thorough.

“Apparently,” said Ty, pulling a dagger out of his belt. A second later he’d driven the blade into the carved eye socket of the statue. Livvy yelped.

“Ty, what—?”

Her brother yanked the blade back out and repeated the action on the statue’s second eye socket. This time something round and glimmering popped out of the hole in the plaster with an audible crack. Ty caught it in his left hand.

He grinned, and the grin changed his face completely. Ty when he was still and expressionless had an intensity that fascinated Kit; when he was smiling, he was extraordinary.

“What did you find?” Livvy darted across the room and they gathered around Tiberius, who was holding out a many-faceted crystal, the size of a child’s hand. “And how’d you know it was in there?”

“When you said Homer’s name,” said Ty, “I recalled that he was blind. He’s almost always depicted with his eyes shut or with a cloth blindfold. But this statue had open eyes. I looked a little closer and saw that the bust was marble but the eyes were plaster. After that, it was . . .”

“Elementary?” said Kit.

“You know, Holmes never says, ‘Elementary, my dear Watson,’ in the books,” said Ty.

“I swear I’ve seen it in the movies,” Kit said. “Or maybe on TV.”

“Who would ever want movies or TV when there are books?” said Ty with disdain.

“Could someone here pay attention?” Livvy demanded, her ponytail swinging in exasperation. “What is that thing you found, Ty?”

“An aletheia crystal.” He held it up so that it caught the glow of his sister’s witchlight. “Look.”

Kit glanced at the faceted surface of the stone. To his surprise, a face flashed across it, like an image seen in a dream—a woman’s face, clouded around with long dark hair.

“Oh!” Livvy clapped her hand over her mouth. “She looks a little like me. But how—?”

“An aletheia crystal is a way of capturing or transporting memories. I think this one is of Annabel,” said Ty.

“Aletheia is Greek,” Livvy said.

“She was the Greek goddess of truth,” said Kit. He shrugged when they stared at him. “Ninth-grade book report.”

Ty’s mouth crooked at the corner. “Very good, Watson.”

“Don’t call me Watson,” said Kit.

Ty ignored this. “We need to figure out how to access what’s trapped in this crystal,” he said. “As quickly as possible. It could help Julian and Emma.”

“You don’t know how to get into it?” Kit asked.

Ty shook his head, clearly disgruntled. “It’s not Shadowhunter magic. We don’t learn other kinds. It’s forbidden.”

This struck Kit as a stupid rule. How were you ever supposed to know how your enemies operated if you made it forbidden to learn about them?

“We should go,” Livvy said, hovering in the doorway. “It’s starting to get dark. Demon time.”

Kit glanced toward the window. The sky was darkening, the stain of twilight spreading across the blue. The shadows were coming down over London.

“I have an idea,” he said. “Why don’t we take it to the Shadow Market here? I know my way around the Market. I can find a warlock or even a witch to help us get at whatever’s in this thing.”

The twins glanced at each other. Both were clearly hesitant. “We’re not really supposed to go to Shadow Markets,” said Livvy.

“So tell them I ran off there and you had to catch me,” said Kit. “If you even ever have to explain, which you won’t.”

Neither of them spoke, but Kit could see curiosity in Ty’s gray eyes.

“Come on,” he said, pitching his voice low, the way his father had taught him, the tone you used when you wanted to convince people you really meant something. “When you’re home, Julian never lets you go anywhere. Now’s your chance. Haven’t you always wanted to see a Shadow Market?”

Livvy broke first. “Okay,” she said, casting a quick look at her brother to see if he agreed with her. “Okay, if you know where it is.”

Ty’s pale face lit with excitement. Kit felt the same spark transfer to him. The Shadow Market. His home, his sanctuary, the place he’d been raised.

Trailing around after demons and artifacts with Livvy and Ty, they were the ones who knew everything while he knew nothing. But at the Shadow Market, he could shine. He’d shock them. Impress them.

And then, maybe, he’d cut and run away.

* * *

The shadows were lengthening by the time Julian and Emma finished their lunch. Julian bought some food and supplies at a small grocer’s shop, while Emma darted next door to pick up pajamas and T-shirts at a small New Age shop that sold tarot cards and crystal gnomes. When she emerged, she was grinning. She produced a blue-and-purple T-shirt emblazoned with a smiling unicorn for Jules, who stared at it in horror. She tucked it into his pack carefully before they started across the town to find the beginning of the path that led up and around the coast.

The hills sloped up steeply from the water; it wasn’t an easy climb. Marked only as TO THE CLIFFS, the path wound up through the outskirts of the town and the precariously perched houses, all of which looked as if they might at any moment tumble down into the half-moon harbor.

Shadowhunters were trained for much more than this kind of exertion, though, and they made good time. Soon they were out of the town proper and walking along a narrow path, the hill rising farther on their right, falling down toward the sea on their left.

The sea itself was a luminous deep blue, glowing like a lamp. Clouds the color of seashells twined across the sky. It was beautiful in a completely different way than sunset over the Pacific. Instead of the stark colors of sea and desert, everything here was soft pastels: greens and blues and pinks.

What was stark was the cliffs themselves. They were climbing closer to the Chapel part of Chapel Cliff, the rocky promontory that jutted out into the ocean, the spikes of gray stone that crowned it ominously black against the rosy sky. The hill was gone; they were out on the spit of land itself: Long gray slate shingles that looked like a pack of playing cards shuffled and then scattered tumbled steeply away on either side, down toward the sea.

The house they had seen from town was nestled among the rocks, the spiked crown of the stone chapel rising behind it. As Emma neared it, she felt the force of its glamour almost as a wall, pushing her back.

Jules had slowed too. “There’s a placard here,” he said. “Says this place belongs to the National Trust. No trespassers.”

Emma made a face. “No trespassers usually means the local kids have made it into a hangout and the whole place is covered with empty candy wrappers and booze bottles.”

“I don’t know. The glamour here is really strong—it’s not just visual, but emotional. You can feel it, right?”

Emma nodded. The cottage was giving off waves of stay away and danger and nothing here you want to see. It was a bit like being shouted at by an angry stranger on the bus.

“Take my hand,” Julian said.

“What?” She turned in surprise: He was holding his hand out. She could see the faint smatter of colored pencil on his skin. He flexed his fingers.

“We can get through this better together,” he said. “Concentrate on pushing it back.”

Emma took his hand, accepting the shock that went through her at his touch. His skin was warm and soft, rough where there were calluses. He tightened his fingers around hers.

They moved forward, past the gate and onto the path leading up to the front door. Emma imagined the glamour as a curtain, as something she could touch. She imagined drawing it aside. It was hard, like lifting a weight with her mind, but strength flowed through her from Julian, through her fingers and wrist, up her arm, into her heart and lungs.

Her concentration snapped into focus. Almost casually, she let herself draw the glamour away, lifting it lightly aside. The cottage sprang into clearer view: The windows weren’t boarded up at all, but clean and whole, the front door freshly painted a bright blue. Even the knob looked recently polished to a shiny bronze. Julian took hold of it and pushed and the door swung open, welcoming them inside.

The sense of something ordering them away from the cottage was gone. Emma let go of Julian’s hand and stepped inside; it was too dark to see. She took her witchlight out of her pocket and let its light rise up and around them.

Julian, behind her, gave a low whistle of surprise. “This doesn’t look deserted. Not by a long shot.”

It was a small, pretty room. A wooden four-poster bed stood beneath a window with a view out to the village below. Furniture that looked as if it had been hand-painted in blues, grays, and soft seaside colors was scattered about among a profusion of rag rugs.

Two walls were taken up by a kitchen with all the modern conveniences: a coffeemaker, a stove, a dishwasher, and granite-topped counters. Neat stacks of firewood rose on either side of a stone-bound fireplace. Two doors led off the main room: Emma investigated and found a small office with a hand-painted desk, and a blue-tiled bathroom with a tub and shower and a basin sink. She turned the shower faucets half in disbelief and yelped as water sprayed her. Everything seemed to be completely in working order, as if someone who lived in the cottage and took loving care of it had only just left.

“I guess we might as well stay here,” Emma said, returning to the living room, where Julian had flicked on the electric lights.

“Way ahead of you, Carstairs,” he said, opening a kitchen cabinet and starting to put the groceries away. “Nice place, no rent, and it’ll be easier to search if we’re here anyway.”

Emma set her witchlight down on the table and looked around wonderingly. “I know this seems far-fetched,” she said, “but do you think Malcolm had a secret second life as a renter of adorably furnished holiday cottages?”

“Or,” Julian said, “there’s an even stronger glamour on this place than we realized and it only looks like an adorably furnished holiday cottage, while actually it’s a hole in the ground full of rats.”

Emma threw herself down on the bed. The blanket felt like a cloud, and the mattress was heavenly after the lumpy one in the London Institute. “Best rats ever,” she announced, glad they weren’t going to have to stay in a bed-and-breakfast after all.

“Imagine their tiny, furry bodies wiggling around you.” Julian had turned back and was facing her, a half grin on his face. When Emma had been small, she’d been horrified by rats and rodents.

She sat up and glared at him. “Why are you trying to ruin my good time?”

“Well, to be fair, this isn’t a holiday. Not for us. This is a mission. We’re supposed to be looking for anything that might give us an idea where Annabel might have gone.”

“I don’t know,” Emma said. “This place looks like it’s been stripped down and totally renovated. It was built so long ago, how do we know what’s left of the original house? And wouldn’t Malcolm have taken anything that was important to him to his house in L.A.?”

“Not necessarily. I think this cottage was special to him.” Julian hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans. “Look at the way he’s taken care of it. This house is personal. It feels like a home. Not like that glass-and-steel thing he lived in in L.A.”

“Then I guess we should start looking around.” Emma tried to sound excited at the prospect, but she felt exhausted. No sleep the night before, the long trip on the train, her worry about Cristina, had all sapped her energy.

Julian looked at her critically. “I’ll make tea,” he said. “That’ll help.”

She crinkled her nose at him. “Tea? Tea is your solution? You’re not really even British! You spent two months in England! How did they brainwash you?”

“You don’t like coffee, and you need caffeine.”

“I get my caffeine the way right-thinking people get it.” Emma threw up her hands and stalked into the office. “From chocolate!”

She began to pull the drawers out of the desk. They were empty. She examined the bookshelves; nothing interesting there, either. She started to cross the room to the closet and heard something creak. She turned back and knelt down, shoving the rag rug out of the way.

The floor was stripped oak. Just under the rug was a square of lighter wood, and the faint black lines of seaming where the square outline of a trapdoor was visible. Emma took her stele out and placed the tip against it.

“Open,” she whispered, drawing the rune.

There was a tearing sound. The square of wood ripped away and crumbled into chunks of sawdust, tumbling into the hole she’d uncovered. It was slightly bigger on all sides than she’d thought. In it were several small books, and a large, leather-bound tome that Emma squinted at in puzzlement. Was it some kind of spell book?

“Did you just blow something up?” Julian came in, his cheek smeared with something black. He glanced over Emma’s shoulder and whistled. “Your classic secret floor compartment.”

“Help me take this stuff out of it. You get the giant book.” Emma picked up the three smaller volumes; they were all bound in worn leather with a stamped MFB on the spines, their pages rough-edged.

“It’s not a book,” Julian said in a slightly odd voice. “It’s a portfolio.”

He retrieved it and carried it into the living room, Emma hurrying after him. Two steaming cups of tea stood on the kitchen island, and a fire was blazing away. Emma realized that the black stuff on Julian’s face was probably ash. She pictured him kneeling here, starting a fire for them, patient and thoughtful, and felt a wave of overwhelming tenderness for him.

He was already standing at the island, gently opening the portfolio. He caught his breath. The first picture was a watercolor of Chapel Cliff, seen from a distance. The colors and shapes leaped out vividly; Emma could feel cool sea air on her neck, hear the cry of gulls.

“It’s lovely,” she said, sitting down opposite him on a tall stool.

“Annabel did it.” He touched her signature in the right-hand corner. “I had no idea she was an artist.”

“I guess art runs in your blood,” Emma said. Julian didn’t look up. He was turning the pages with careful, almost reverent hands. There were many more seascapes: Annabel seemed to have loved capturing the ocean and the curves of land that bordered it. Annabel had also drawn dozens of pictures of the Blackthorn manor house in Idris, lingering on the softness of its golden stone, the beauty of its gardens, the vines of thorns that wrapped the gates. Like the mural on the wall of your room, Emma wanted to say to Julian, but she didn’t.

Julian’s hand stopped on none of those, though. He paused instead on a sketch that was unmistakably of the cottage they were in at that moment. A wooden fence surrounded it, and Polperro was visible in the distance, the Warren crawling up the opposite hill, crowded with houses.

Malcolm leaned against the fence, looking impossibly young—he clearly had not yet stopped aging. Though it was a pencil sketch, somehow the drawing caught the fairness of his hair, the oddity of his eyes, but they had been rendered in such loving lines that he looked beautiful. He seemed about to smile.

“I think that they lived here two hundred years ago, probably in hiding from the Clave,” Julian said. “There’s something about a place you’ve been with someone you love. It takes on a meaning in your mind. It becomes more than a place. It becomes a distillation of what you felt for each other. The moments you spend in a place with someone . . . they become part of its bricks and mortar. Part of its soul.”

The firelight touched the side of his face, his hair, turning them gold. Emma felt tears rise in the back of her throat and fought them back.

“There’s a reason Malcolm didn’t just let this place fall into ruins. He loved it. He cared about it because it was a place he’d been with her.”

Emma picked up her tea. “And maybe a place he wanted to bring her back to?” she said. “After he raised her?”

“Yes. I think Malcolm raised Annabel’s body nearby, that he planned to hide with her here the way he had so long ago.” Julian seemed to shake off the intense mood that had come on him, like a wet dog shaking water off its fur. “There’re some guidebooks to Cornwall on the shelves—I’ll go through them. What have you got there? What’s in the books?”

Emma opened the first one. Diary of Malcolm Fade Blackthorn, Age 8, was scrawled on the inside cover. “By the Angel,” she said. “His diaries.”

She began to read out loud from the first page:

“My name is Malcolm Fade Blackthorn. I chose the first two names myself, but the last was given to me to use by the Blackthorns, who have kindly taken me in. Felix says I am a ward, though I don’t know what that means. He also says I am a warlock. When he says it, I think it is probably not a good thing to be, but Annabel says not to worry, that we are all born what we are and can’t change it. Annabel says . . .”

She broke off. This was the man who’d murdered her parents; but it was also a child’s voice, helpless and wondering, echoing down through the centuries. Two hundred years—the diary wasn’t dated, but it must have been written in the early 1800s.

“ ‘Annabel says,’ ” she whispered. “He fell in love with her so early.”

Julian cleared his throat and stood up. “Looks like it,” he said. “We’ll have to search the diary for mentions of places that were important to both of them.”

“It’s a lot of diary,” Emma said, glancing at the three volumes.

“Then I guess we’ve got a lot of reading ahead of us,” said Julian. “I’d better make more tea.”

Emma’s wail of “Not tea!” followed him into the kitchen.

* * *

The London Shadow Market was located at the southern end of London Bridge. Kit was disappointed to find that London Bridge was just a dull concrete edifice without towers. “I thought it would be like it is in the postcards,” he lamented.

“You’re thinking of Tower Bridge,” Livvy informed him archly as they began scrambling down a set of narrow stone steps to reach the space below the London Bridge railway lines, which crisscrossed overhead. “That’s the one in all the pictures. The real London Bridge was knocked down a long time ago; this one’s the modern replacement.”

A sign advertised some kind of daytime fruit and vegetable market, but that had long since closed. The white-painted stalls were battened down tightly, the gates locked. The shadow of Southwark Cathedral loomed over it all, a bulk of glass and stone that blocked their view of the river.

Kit blinked away the glamour as he reached the bottom of the steps. The image tore like spiderwebs and the Shadow Market burst into life. They were still using many of the ordinary market’s stalls—clever, he thought, to hide in plain sight like that—but they were brightly colored now, a rainbow of paint and shimmer. Tents billowed in between the stalls as well, made of silks and draperies, signs floating beside their openings, advertising everything from fortune-telling to luck charms to love spells.

They slipped into the bustling crowd. Stalls sold enchanted masks, bottles of vintage blood for vampires—Livvy looked like she was going to gag over the RED HOT CHERRY FLAVOUR variety—and apothecaries did a brisk trade in magical powders and tinctures. A werewolf with thin, pale white hair sold bottles of a silvery powder, while across from him a witch whose skin had been tattooed with multicolored scales was hawking spell books. Several stands were taken up with selling Shadowhunter-repelling charms, which made Livvy giggle.

Kit was less amused.

“Push your sleeves down,” he said. “And pull your hoods up. Cover your Marks as much as you can.”

Livvy and Ty did as they were told. Ty reached for his headphones, too, but paused. Slowly he looped them back around his neck. “I should keep them off,” he said. “I might need to hear something.”

Livvy squeezed his shoulder and said something to him in a low voice that Kit couldn’t hear. Ty shook his head, waving her away, and they pushed farther into the Market. A group of pale-skinned Night’s Children had gathered at a stall advertising WILLING VICTIMS HERE. A crowd of humans sat around a deal table, chatting; occasionally another vampire would come up, money would change hands, and one of the humans would be drawn into the shadows to be bitten.

Livvy made a smothered noise. “They’re very careful,” Kit assured her. “There’s a place like this in the L.A. Market. The vamps never drink enough to hurt anyone.”

He wondered if he should say something else reassuring to Ty. The dark-haired boy was pale, with a fine sheen of sweat along his cheekbones. His hands were opening and closing at his sides.

Farther along was a stall advertising a RAW BAR. Werewolves surrounded a dozen fresh carcasses of animals, selling bloody hunks torn off in fistfuls by passing customers. Livvy frowned; Ty said nothing. Kit had noticed before that puns and language jokes didn’t interest Ty much. And right now, Ty looked as if he were struggling between trying to take in the details of the Market, and throwing up.

“Put your headphones on,” Livvy murmured to him. “It’s all right.”

Ty shook his head again. His black hair was sticking to his forehead. Kit frowned. He wanted to grab Ty and drag him out of the Market to somewhere it would be calm and quiet. He remembered Ty saying that he hated crowds, that the sheer noise and confusion was “like broken glass in my head.”

There was something else, too, something odd and off about this Market.

“I think we’ve wandered into the food area,” said Livvy, making a face. “I wish we hadn’t.”

“This way.” Kit turned more toward the cathedral. Usually there was a section of the Market where warlocks grouped together; so far he’d only seen vampires, werewolves, witches, and . . .

He slowed almost to a stop. “No faeries,” he said.

“What?” Livvy asked, nearly bumping into him.

“The Market is usually full of faeries,” he said. “They sell everything from invisibility clothes to sacks of food that are never empty. But I haven’t seen a single one here.”

“I have,” said Ty. He pointed.

Nearby was a large stall manned by a tall male witch with long braided gray hair. In front of the stall was a green baize table. Displayed on the table were antique birdcages made of white-painted wrought iron. Each one was quite pretty in its own right, and for a moment Kit thought that they were what was for sale.

Then he looked closer. Inside each cage was a small, trapped creature. An assortment of pixies, nixies, brownies, and even a goblin, whose wide eyes were nearly swollen shut—probably from so much proximity to cold iron. The other faeries were chattering mournfully and softly, their hands seizing at the bars and then falling away with low cries of pain.

Ty was white with distress. His hands trembled against his sides. Kit thought of Ty in the desert, stroking the small lizards, putting mice in his pockets, capturing weasels for company. Ty, whose heart went out to small and helpless living things. “We can’t leave them like that.”

“They’re probably selling them for blood and bones,” said Livvy, her voice shaking. “We have to do something.”

“You have no authority here, Shadowhunter.” A cool, clipped voice spun them around. A woman stood before them. Her skin was dark as mahogany, her hair like bronze and dressed high on her head. The pupils of her eyes were shaped like golden stars. She was dressed in a glacier-white pantsuit with high, sparkling heels. She could have been any age from eighteen to thirty.

She smiled when they looked at her. “Yes, I can recognize a Shadowhunter, even those clumsily hiding their Marks,” she said. “I suggest you leave the Market before someone less friendly than I am notices you.”

Both the twins had made subtle gestures toward their weapons belts, their hands hovering near the hilts of their seraph blades. Kit knew this was his moment: his moment to show how well he could handle a Market and its denizens.

Not to mention preventing a bloodbath.

“I am an emissary of Barnabas Hale,” he said. “Of the Los Angeles Market. These Shadowhunters are under my protection. Who are you?”

“Hypatia Vex,” she said. “I co-run this Market.” She narrowed her starry eyes at Kit. “A representative of Barnabas, you say? Why should I believe you?”

“The only people who know about Barnabas Hale,” said Kit, “are people he wants to know.”

She nodded slightly. “And the Shadowhunters? Barnabas sent them, too?”

“He needs me to consult a warlock regarding a peculiar magical object,” said Kit. He was flying high now, high on the lies and the trickery and the con. “They have it in their possession.”

“Very well, then. If Barnabas sent you to consult a warlock, which warlock was it?”

“It was me.” A deep voice spoke from the shadows.

Kit turned to see a figure standing in front of a large dark green tent. It had been a male voice, but otherwise the figure was too covered—massive robe, cloak, hood, and gloves—to discern gender. “I’ll take this, Hypatia.”

Hypatia blinked slowly. It was like the stars vanishing and then reappearing from behind a cloud. “If you insist.”

She made as if to turn and stalk away, then paused, looking back over her shoulder at Livvy and Ty. “If you pity those creatures, those faeries, dying inside their cages,” she said, “think of this: If it were not for the Cold Peace your people insisted on, they would not be here. Look to the blood on your own hands, Shadowhunters.”

She disappeared between two tents. Ty’s expression was full of distress. “But my hands—”

“It’s an expression.” Livvy put her arm around her twin, hugging him tightly to her side. “It’s not your fault, Ty, she’s just being cruel.”

“We should go,” Kit said to the robed and hooded warlock, who nodded.

“Come with me,” he said, and slipped into his tent. The rest of them followed.

* * *

The inside of the tent was remarkably clean and plain, with a wooden floor, a simple cot bed, and several shelves filled with books, maps, bottles of powder, candles in different colors, and jars of alarming-colored liquids. Ty exhaled, leaning back against one of the tent poles. Relief was printed clearly on his face as he basked in the relative calm and quiet. Kit wanted to go over to Ty and ask him if he was all right after the cacophony of the Market, but Livvy was already there, brushing the sweat-damp hair off her brother’s forehead. Ty nodded, said something to her Kit couldn’t hear.

“Come,” said the warlock. “Sit down with me.”

He gestured. In the center of the room was a small table surrounded by chairs. The Shadowhunters sat down, and the hooded warlock settled opposite them. In the flickering light inside the tent, Kit could glimpse the edge of a mask beneath the hood, obscuring the warlock’s face.

“You may call me Shade,” he said. “It’s not my last name, but it will do.”

“Why did you lie for us?” Livvy said. “Out there. You don’t have any agreement with Barnabas Hale.”

“Oh, I have a few,” said Shade. “Not regarding you, to be fair, but I do know the man. And I’m curious that you do. Not many Shadowhunters are even aware of his name.”

“I’m not a Shadowhunter,” said Kit.

“Oh, you are,” said Shade. “You’re that new Herondale, to be exact.”

Livvy’s voice was sharp. “How do you know that? Tell us now.”

“Because of your face,” he said, to Kit. “Your pretty, pretty face. You’re not the first Herondale I’ve met, not even the first with those eyes, like distilled twilight. I don’t know why you only have one Mark, but I can certainly make a guess.” He templed his hands under his chin. Kit thought he saw a gleam of green skin at his wrist, just below the edge of his glove. “I have to say I never thought I’d have the pleasure of entertaining the Lost Herondale.”

“I’m not all that entertained, actually,” said Kit. “We could put on a movie.”

Livvy leaned forward. “Sorry,” she said. “He gets like this when he’s uncomfortable. Sarcastic.”

“Who knew that was an inherited trait?” Shade held out a gloved hand. “Now, show me what you’ve brought. I assume that wasn’t a lie?”

Ty reached into his jacket and brought out the aletheia crystal. In the candlelight, it glittered more than ever.

Shade chuckled. “A memory-holder,” he said. “It looks like you might get your movie, after all.” He reached out, and after a moment’s hesitation, Ty allowed him to take it.

Shade set the crystal delicately in the center of the table. He passed a hand over it, then frowned and removed his glove. As Kit had thought, the skin of the hand he revealed was deep green. He wondered why Shade would bother covering something like that up, here in the Shadow Market, where warlocks were commonplace.

Shade passed his bare hand over the crystal and murmured. The candles in the room began to gutter. His murmuring increased—Kit recognized the words as Latin, which he’d taken three months of in school before he decided there was no point in knowing a language you couldn’t converse in with anyone but the Pope, who he was unlikely to meet.

He had to admit now that it had a weight to it, though, a sense that each word was freighted with a deeper meaning. The candles went out entirely, but the room wasn’t dark: The crystal was glowing, brighter and brighter under Shade’s touch.

At last a focused beam of light seemed to explode from it, and Kit realized what Shade had meant when he’d joked about a movie. The light worked like the beam of a projector, casting moving images against the dark wall of the tent.

A girl sat bound to a chair inside a circular room filled with benches, a sort of auditorium. Through the windows of the room Kit could see mountains covered in snow. Though it was likely winter, the girl was wearing only a white shift dress; her feet were bare, and her long dark hair hung in tangles.

Her face was remarkably like Livvy’s, so much so that to see it twisted in agony and terror made Kit tense.

“Annabel Blackthorn.” A slight man with bent shoulders entered the scene. He was dressed in black; he wore a pin not unlike Diego’s clasped at his shoulder. His hood was drawn up: Because of that and the angle of the crystal’s viewpoint, it was hard to see his face or body in much detail.

“The Inquisitor,” muttered Shade. “He was a Centurion, back then.”

“You have come before us,” the man went on, “accused of consorting with Downworlders. Your family took in the warlock Malcolm Fade and raised him as a brother to you. He repaid their kindness with abject treachery. He stole the Black Volume of the Dead from the Cornwall Institute, and you helped him.”

“Where is Malcolm?” Annabel’s voice was shaking, but also clear and firm. “Why isn’t he here? I refuse to be questioned without him.”

“How attached you are to your warlock despoiler,” sneered the Inquisitor. Livvy gasped. Annabel looked furious. She had Livvy’s stubborn set to her jaw, Kit thought, but there was a little of Ty and the rest in her too. Julian’s haughtiness, Dru’s look of easy hurt, the thoughtful cast of Ty’s mouth and eyes. “So will it disappoint you, then, to hear that he is gone?”

“Gone?” Annabel repeated blankly.

“Disappeared from his cell in the Silent City overnight. Abandoned you to our tender mercies.”

Annabel clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “That can’t be true,” she said. “Where is he? What have you done with him?”

“We have done nothing with him. I would be happy to testify to such under the grip of the Mortal Sword,” said the Inquisitor. “In fact, what we want from you now—and we will release you afterward—is Fade’s location. Now, why would we want to know that unless he truly had escaped?”

Annabel was shaking her head wildly, her dark hair whipping across her face. “He wouldn’t leave me,” she whispered. “He wouldn’t.”

“The truth is better faced, Annabel,” said the Inquisitor. “He used you to gain access to the Cornwall Institute, to thieve from it. Once he had what he wanted, he vanished with it, leaving you alone to take the brunt of our wrath.”

“He wanted it for our protection.” Her voice trembled. “It was so we could begin a new life together where we would be safe—safe from the Law, safe from you.”

“The Black Volume does not contain spells of safety or protection,” said the Inquisitor. “The only way it could be of help to you would be if you traded it to someone powerful. Who was Fade’s powerful ally, Annabel?”

She shook her head, her chin set stubbornly. Behind her someone else was coming into the room: a stern-faced woman carrying what looked like a bundle of black cloth. She sent a shiver up Kit’s spine. “I will tell you nothing. Not even if you use the Sword.”

“Indeed, we cannot believe what you say under the Sword,” said the Inquisitor. “Malcolm has so tainted you—”

“Tainted?” Annabel echoed in horror. “As if—as if I am filth now?”

“You were filth from the time you first touched him. And now we do not know how he has changed you; you may well have some protection from our instruments of justice. Some charm we know not of. So we must do this as mundanes do it.”

The woman with the stern face had arrived at the Inquisitor’s side. She passed him the black bundle. He unrolled it, revealing a variety of sharp instruments—knives and razors and awls. Some of them had blades already stained with rusty red.

“Tell us who has that book now and the pain stops,” said the Inquisitor, lifting up a razor.

Annabel began to scream.

Mercifully, the image went dark. Livvy was pale. Ty was leaning forward, his arms clasping his body tightly. Kit wanted to reach out, wanted to put his hands on Ty, wanted to tell him it would be all right, communicate it in a way that startled him.

“There is more,” said Shade. “A different scene. Look.”

The image on the wall shifted. They were still inside the same auditorium, but it was night, and the windows were dark. The place was lit with torches that burned white-gold. They could see the Inquisitor’s face now, where before they had only been able to see the edges of his dark clothes and his hands. He wasn’t nearly as old as Kit had thought: a youngish man, with dark hair.

The room was empty except for him and a group of other men of varying ages. There were no women. The other men weren’t wearing robes, but Regency-era clothes: buckskin trousers and short, buttoned jackets. Several had sideburns as well, and a few had neat, trimmed beards. They all looked agitated.

“Felix Blackthorn,” said the Inquisitor, drawling a bit. “Your daughter, Annabel, was chosen to become an Iron Sister. She was sent to you for a final farewell, but I hear now from the ladies of the Adamant Citadel that she never arrived. Have you any idea of her whereabouts?”

A man with brown hair streaked with gray frowned. Kit stared at him in some fascination: Here was a living ancestor of Ty and Livvy, Julian and Mark. His face was broad and bore the marks of a bad temper.

“If you suggest I am hiding my daughter, I am not,” he said. “She fouled herself with the touch of a warlock, and she is no longer a part of our family.”

“My uncle speaks the truth,” said another of the men, this one younger. “Annabel is dead to us all.”

“What a vivid image,” said the Inquisitor. “Don’t mind me if I find it more than an image.”

The younger man flinched. Felix Blackthorn didn’t change expression.

“You would not mind a trial by Mortal Sword, would you, Felix?” said the Inquisitor. “Just to ensure that you truly do not know where your daughter is.”

“You sent her back to us tortured and half-mad,” snapped the younger Blackthorn. “Do not tell us now you care about her fate!”

“She was no more hurt than many Shadowhunters might be in a battle,” said the Inquisitor, “but death is another thing entirely. And the Iron Sisters are asking.”

“Might I speak?” said another of the men; he had dark hair and an aristocratic look.

The Inquisitor nodded.

“Since Annabel Blackthorn went to join the Iron Sisters,” he said, “Malcolm Fade has become a true ally to Nephilim. One of those rare warlocks we can count on our side, and who is indispensable in a battle.”

“Your point, Herondale?”

“If he does not think his lady love left him, shall we say, voluntarily, or if he learns of any harm that came to her, I think it unlikely that he will continue to be such a valuable asset to us.”

“The ladies of the Adamant Citadel do not leave their island to truck in gossip,” said another man, narrow-faced as a ferret. “If the discussion of the fate of unfortunate Annabel ends here, then it ends. After all, perhaps she ran away on the road, or perhaps she fell victim to a demon or a highwayman on the way to the Citadel. We may never know.”

The Inquisitor tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. He was looking at Felix Blackthorn, his eyes hooded; it was impossible for Kit to tell what he might be thinking. Finally he said, “You’re damnably clever, Felix, bringing your friends into this. You know I can’t punish you all without chaos. And you’re right about Fade. There’s been a demon uprising near the Scholomance, and we need him.” He flung his hands up. “Very well. We’ll never discuss this again.”

A look of relief passed over Felix Blackthorn’s face, mixed with an odd bitterness. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, Inquisitor Dearborn.”

The vision narrowed to a pinpoint of black and vanished.

For a moment Kit sat still. He heard Livvy and Ty speaking in rapid voices, and Shade answering: Yes, the vision was a real memory; no, there was no way of identifying whose it might be. It was probably two hundred years old. They were clearly excited about the mention of an Inquisitor Dearborn. But Kit’s brain had snagged on one word like a piece of cloth on a hook:

Herondale.

One of those horrible men had been his ancestor. Herondales and Dearborns and Blackthorns together had been complicit in covering up the torture and murder of a young woman whose only crime had been to love a warlock. It had been one thing to think he was related to Jace, who seemed to be universally adored and good at everything. Everyone had spoken of Herondales to him as though they were royalty, world-saving royalty.

He remembered Arthur’s words. What kind of Herondale will you be? William or Tobias? Stephen or Jace? Beautiful, bitter, or both?

“Rook!” The front of the tent shook. “Kit Rook, come out of there right now!”

The chatter inside the tent stopped. Kit blinked; he wasn’t Kit Rook, he was Christopher Herondale, he was—

He staggered to his feet. Livvy and Ty leaped up after him, Ty pausing only to pocket the aletheia crystal. “Kit, don’t—” Livvy started, reaching for him, but Kit had already shoved his way out of the tent.

Someone was calling his real name—or maybe it wasn’t his real name—but it was a part of him that he couldn’t deny. He stumbled into the lane outside.

Barnabas Hale stood in front of him, his arms crossed over his chest, his scaled white skin gleaming sickly in the torchlight. Behind him loomed a group of werewolves: big, muscular men and women in black leather and spiked bracelets. More than one sported a pair of brass knuckles.

“So, little Rook,” Barnabas said, his snake’s tongue flickering as he grinned. “What’s this I hear about you pretending to be here on business for me?”