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“I don’t think that dog likes me,” Alastair said, eyeing Oscar suspiciously.
“That doesn’t really answer the question, does it?”
Alastair sighed. He was wearing his dark blue paletot and a gray scarf. His thick black hair touched his collar, and his dark eyes were tired, the lids hanging heavy in a way that was almost seductive, though Thomas knew perfectly well it was only exhaustion. “All right,” he said. “Cordelia told me what happened. And believe it or not, I was worried.”
“About Matthew?” Oscar bounced at his owner’s name. “I’m not sure I do believe you.”
“Thomas,” Alastair said, with exaggerated patience, “I have a great deal of experience with drunks. I know what it means when they stop drinking suddenly. How ill they get. My father nearly killed himself a few times.”
“Oh,” Thomas said. “Well, why didn’t you ring the bell, then? Come up?”
“I arrived,” Alastair said, “and realized my presence might not be entirely welcome. I had been rather impulsive.” He looked surprised as Oscar sat on his feet. “Why is he doing that?”
“Because he does like you. He likes everybody. He’s a dog. So you decided you didn’t want to come in, and you’d just stand out here all night?”
“I thought I’d stand out here until one of you came out, and I’d ask how Matthew was. I could at least bring the information back to Cordelia. She’s sick with worry.” He patted Oscar’s head tentatively. “I admit I hoped it would be you. There’s something I’ve been meaning—needing—to tell you.”
Thomas’s heart gave a treacherous thump. He looked around, and then reminded himself they were both glamoured. No mundane could see them, and Shadowhunter patrols had ended with the sunrise. He moved a step closer to Alastair, and then another step, until he, Oscar, and Alastair were crowded together under the arch of a false doorway.
“All right,” Thomas said. “What is it?”
Alastair looked at him, his eyes sleepy, sensual. His licked his lips, and Thomas thought of their kiss in the library, the delicious friction of their mouths sliding together, and Alastair said, “I’m leaving London soon. I’m moving to Tehran.”
Thomas took a step back, accidentally putting a foot on Oscar’s paw. Oscar yelped resentfully, and Thomas bent to lay a hand on the dog’s head. It provided a blessed opportunity to hide his expression.
“My mother is going to move to Tehran with the baby,” Alastair said, “and I cannot let her go alone. If I don’t accompany her, Cordelia will volunteer, but Cordelia needs to stay here. She is the one with friends, a future parabatai, and a husband here. All I have is you.”
Thomas straightened up. His heart felt as if it had frozen in his chest. “And I am not enough?”
“You can’t be my only reason to stay,” Alastair whispered. “I can’t expect you to carry that weight. It isn’t fair to you.”
“I wish,” Thomas said, surprised at the coldness in his own voice, “that you would stop telling me what the best thing for me is. You tell me over and over that there are all these reasons why you think my loving you would be bad for me.”
Alastair’s chest was rising and falling quickly. “I didn’t say anything about love.”
“Well, I did,” Thomas said. “You came here; you even said it was because you hoped to talk to me. You’re the one chasing me around, telling me to leave you alone.”
“Don’t you see? It’s because I am a wretched, selfish person, Thomas. It’s not good for you to see me, for us to meet, but I want to see you. I want to see you every damned moment of every day, and so I spent the night standing outside this ugly pink building in hopes of seeing you, and now that I have seen you, I am reminded of all the reasons this is a bad idea. Believe me,” he said, with a bitter laugh, “if I were a better person, I would have just sent you a note.”
“The only reason you’ve given me that this is a bad idea,” said Thomas stubbornly, “is because you believe yourself to be a wretched and selfish person.”
“Isn’t that enough?” Alastair said, in an agonized voice. “You’re the only person who thinks I’m not, and if we were in a relationship, I would disappoint you, and you would stop being the one person who thinks well of me.”
“Don’t go to Tehran,” said Thomas. “I don’t want you to go.”
They stared at each other, and for a moment Thomas thought he saw something he knew to be an impossibility—the bright glint of tears in Alastair’s eyes. I cannot get through to him, he thought miserably. If only I had Matthew’s charm, or James’s gift with words, perhaps I could make him understand.
“Alastair,” he said softly, and then Oscar whimpered, moving restlessly beside Thomas’s leg. A precursor, Thomas knew, to the retriever setting up a mournful howl.
“He’s missing Matthew,” Thomas said. “I’d better get him back. I’ll tell Matthew you stopped by,” he added, but Alastair, twisting the material of his scarf in one hand, only shook his head.
“Don’t,” he said, and after a moment, Thomas shrugged and headed back inside.
Cordelia had done enough planning; she was ready to act. Still, she had to wait for sunset. She knew she should be reading the books on paladins and bonding magic Christopher had given her, but she could not concentrate.
It was always like that when she’d come up with a plan; as the hour of action grew near, her thoughts went around in a whirl, stopping intermittently to concentrate on this or that aspect of her scheme. First go here, then there; this is what I will tell Alastair; here is how I will return without being noticed.
Enough. She visited with her mother, until Sona fell asleep; she bothered Risa in the kitchen while she was making khoresh-e fesenjoon, and she even went to see what Alastair was doing, which turned out to be reading in the armchair in his bedroom. He looked up when Cordelia came in. “Oh no,” he said. “Please tell me you’re not coming to demand I participate in some harebrained scheme your friends have come up with. Kachalam kardan.” They drive me crazy.
