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A shadowy figure regarded her from the doorway. Grace, Zachariah said. I fear the last round of questioning was too much.
It had been bad; Grace had nearly fainted when describing the night her mother had taken her to the dark forest, the sound of Belial’s voice in the shadows. But Grace did not like the idea of anyone being able to sense what she felt. She said, “Will it be much longer? Before my sentence is pronounced?”
You wish for punishment that badly?
“No,” Grace said. “I only wish the questioning to stop. But I am ready to accept my punishment. I deserve it.”
Yes, you have done wrong. But how old were you when your mother brought you to Brocelind Forest to receive your power? Eleven? Twelve?
“It doesn’t matter.”
It does, said Zachariah. I believe that the Clave failed you. You are a Shadowhunter, Grace, born to a Shadowhunter family, and abandoned to terrible circumstances. It is unfair to you that the Clave left you there for so long, without intervention or even investigation.
Grace could not bear his pity; it felt like tiny needle marks against her skin. “You should not be kind to me, or try to understand,” she snapped. “I used demonic power to enchant James and make him believe he was in love with me. I caused him terrible pain.”
Zachariah regarded her without speaking, his face eerily still.
Grace wanted to hit him. “Don’t you think I deserve punishment? Mustn’t there be a reckoning? A balancing of things? An eye for an eye?”
That is your mother’s thinking about the world. Not mine.
“But the other Silent Brothers. The Enclave. Everyone in London—they will want to see me punished.”
They do not know, said Brother Zachariah. For the first time, Grace saw a sort of hesitation in him. What you have done at your mother’s behest remains known only to us, and to James.
“But—why?” It made no sense; surely James would tell his friends, and soon enough everyone would know. “Why would you protect me?”
We seek to question your mother; the job of that will be easier if she believes you are still on her side, your powers still unknown to us.
Grace sat back on the bed. “You want answers from my mother because you believe I am the puppet, and she the puppet master, the puller of strings. But the true puppet master is Belial. She is obedient to him. When she acts, it is at his behest. He is the one to fear.”
There was a long silence. Then, a gentle voice inside her head. Are you afraid, Grace?
“Not for myself,” she said. “I have already lost everything I had to lose. But for others, yes. I am very afraid indeed.”
Lucie followed Malcolm into the house and waited while the warlock divested himself of his traveling coat and walking stick in the entryway. He led her into the parlor she’d passed through earlier, with its high ceiling, and with a snap of his fingers set a roaring fire in the grate. It occurred to Lucie that not only could Malcolm acquire firewood without Jesse needing to chop it for him, he could probably keep fires going with no wood whatsoever.
Not that she minded watching Jesse chop wood. And he seemed to be enjoying it, so it was beneficial for the both of them.
Malcolm gestured her toward an overstuffed settee into which Lucie thought she might sink so far she would be unable to get up again. She perched on its arm. The room was quite cozy, actually: not at all what she would have associated with Malcolm Fade. Satinwood furniture, worn to a soft patina, upholstered with tapestry and velvet fabric—no effort had been made to match the pieces, though they all looked comfortable. A rug embroidered with pineapples covered the floor, and various portraits of people Lucie did not recognize hung upon the walls.
Malcolm remained standing, and Lucie assumed he would now lecture her about Jesse, or interrogate her regarding what she had done to him. Instead he said, “You might have noticed that although I have not been unconscious for several days after an act of unpracticed sorcery, I am looking somewhat the worse for wear.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Lucie said, though she had. “You look, er, quite polished and put-together.”
Malcolm waved this off. “I am not fishing for compliments. I mean to explain that these last days, while you have been sleeping off the effects of the magic you performed, I have been taking the opportunity of being back in Cornwall to continue my investigations into Annabel Blackthorn.”
Lucie felt a nervous fizzle in her stomach. Annabel Blackthorn. The woman Malcolm had loved, a hundred years ago, and who Malcolm had long believed had left him to join the Iron Sisters. In truth, her family had murdered her rather than allow her to marry a warlock. Lucie flinched, remembering the look on Malcolm’s face when Grace had told him the truth of Annabel’s fate.
Warlocks did not age, yet Malcolm seemed somehow older than he had a short time ago. The lines of strain about his mouth and eyes were pronounced. “I know that we agreed you would call up her spirit,” he said. “That you would allow me to speak to her again.”
It seemed odd to Lucie that warlocks could not, themselves, call up those dead who no longer haunted the world, but had passed into a place of peace. That the terrible power in her blood allowed her to do something even Magnus Bane, or Malcolm Fade, could not. But there it was—she had given Malcolm her word, though the hungry look in his eyes made her shiver a little.
“I did not know what would happen when you raised Jesse,” Malcolm said. “For him to have come back as he has—with breath and life, perfectly healthy, perfectly cognizant—is more miracle than magic.” He took a ragged breath. “Annabel’s death was no less unjust, no less monstrous, than what happened to Jesse. She deserves to live again no less than he. Of that I am certain.”
Lucie did not bring up the detail that Jesse’s body had been preserved by Belial in a strange half-living state, and Annabel’s surely hadn’t. Instead she said anxiously, “I gave you my word, Malcolm, that I would call up her spirit. Let you commune with her ghost. But no more than that. She cannot be… brought back. You know that.”
Malcolm seemed barely to hear this. He threw himself down into a nearby chair. “If indeed miracles are possible,” he said, “though I have never believed in them—I know of demons and angels, but have put my faith in science and magic only—”
