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When they were all settled, Malcolm cleared his throat. “I have spent the night looking into the question posed last night, and I believe I have an answer. I believe that Jesse should return to London, and that he should do so as a Blackthorn.”
Will made a surprised noise.
“He is unmistakably a Blackthorn in his appearance,” Malcolm added, “and I don’t think he will be able to pretend to be anything else. He looks as much like his father as if he were an artist’s copy.”
“Indeed,” said Will impatiently, “but we’ve already discussed that it will be a problem for him to reappear as himself. Not only does it bring up issues of necromancy, but the last anyone in the Clave heard of him, he was a dead body possessed by a demon in order to murder Shadowhunters.”
Jesse looked down at his hands. At the Voyance rune that had once belonged to Elias Carstairs. He moved his left hand away, as if he could hardly bear to look at it.
“Yes, we’ve been through all that,” said Malcolm tightly. “I am not suggesting he present himself as Jesse Blackthorn. How many people saw him, actually saw him as he is now, after he was possessed?”
There was a short silence. James said, “Lucie, of course. I did. Matthew, Cordelia—the Silent Brothers who prepared his body—”
“Most of the Enclave heard the story of what had happened,” said Malcolm. “But they did not see Jesse.”
“No,” Will said. “They didn’t.”
“You must understand, I have ties to the Blackthorn family that none of you share,” said Malcolm. “I was their ward—the ward of Felix and Adelaide Blackthorn—a hundred years ago.”
“They raised you?” said James.
Malcolm’s mouth set in a hard line. “I wouldn’t call it that. To them, I was their property, and for the privilege of being fed and clothed and housed by them, I was obliged to perform magic at their command.”
Will said, “Some Shadowhunters have always been bastards. My family has good cause to know it.”
Malcolm waved this off. “I don’t hold the Nephilim at large responsible for the actions of the Blackthorns. They are the only ones who should ever have to answer for those actions. For the purposes of this discussion, what is important is only that Felix and Adelaide had four children: Annabel, Abner, Jerome, and Ezekiel.”
“Terrible names they had in olden times,” Lucie murmured, “simply terrible.”
“The children had… different attitudes from their parents,” Malcolm went on, “regarding the treatment of Downworlders. Ezekiel, especially, found their bigotry and cruelty as unpleasant as I did. When he reached the age of majority, he renounced the family and struck off on his own. You will find in the Silent City no record of Ezekiel leaving any children after him, but I know that not to be the case.”
Jesse looked up.
“I happen to know,” said Malcolm, “that Ezekiel did have children. That he went to America, then a very new nation where Shadowhunters were few and far between, and married a mundane woman. They raised their children as mundanes, but of course, Nephilim blood breeds true, and his descendants are Shadowhunters just as much as any of you.
“I propose, then, that Jesse present himself as one of Ezekiel’s grandchildren, come to rejoin the Nephilim and seek out his cousins. That when he learned the truth of his heritage, he wished to be a Shadowhunter and presented himself to Will at the Institute. After all, Will has a not dissimilar history.”
It was true enough, Lucie thought; her father had thought himself a mundane until he learned the truth, whereupon he had walked all the way from Wales to London to join the Enclave. He had only been twelve years old. “An excellent plan,” she said, though Will and Magnus still looked dubious. “We shall call Jesse Hezekiah Blackthorn.”
“We shall not,” said Jesse.
“What about Cornelius?” said James. “I’ve always fancied Cornelius.”
“Definitely not,” said Jesse.
“It should be something with a J,” Will said, his arms folded. “Something it will be easy for Jesse to remember, and to respond to. Like Jeremy.”
“Then you agree with Malcolm?” Magnus said. “This will be the scheme? Jesse is to be Jeremy?”
“Have you a better plan?” Will looked tired. “Other than letting Jesse fend for himself in the world? At the Institute, we can protect him. And he is a Shadowhunter. He is one of our own.”
Magnus nodded thoughtfully. James said, “Can we at least tell the Lightwoods the truth? Gabriel and Gideon, Sophie and Cecily? They are Jesse’s family, after all, and he doesn’t even know them.”
“And my sister,” Jesse said. “Grace must know the truth.”
Lucie saw James’s face tighten.
“Of course,” said Will. “Only Jesse… I don’t know if you’ve been told, but…”
