Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,115

going.” She vanished with a sigh of relief, no doubt at no longer having to keep herself in visible form.

Lucie reached up to pull down one of her writing notebooks from the edge of the desk. Perhaps it was time to begin recording their thoughts. “There is another odd thing. We know Gast raised multiple demons, but he kept referring to one demon. He said he raised it, not them.”

“Perhaps the demon had offspring,” James suggested. “Some demons have dozens of spawn, like spiders—”

From outside Lucie’s window came the rattle of wheels and the neighing of horses. A moment later there was the sound of cries from the courtyard. James and Lucie both rushed to the window.

A driverless carriage had drawn up before the Institute’s front steps. Lucie recognized the arms on the side instantly: the four Cs of the Consul. It was Charles Fairchild’s carriage.

The carriage door flew open and Grace tumbled out, her hair streaming over her shoulders, her dress stained with blood. She was screaming.

Beside Lucie, James’s body tensed like iron.

The front doors of the Institute burst open and Brother Enoch came rushing down the steps. He reached into the carriage behind Grace and lifted out the twitching body of a woman, clad in a stained fuchsia dress. Her arm was bloody, wrapped in a makeshift bandage.

Tatiana Blackthorn.

Cordelia and Matthew had joined them at the window. Cordelia had her hand over her mouth. “By the Angel,” said Matthew. “Another attack.”

Lucie turned to tell James to hurry to Grace, but there was no need to say it. He was already gone.

* * *

James burst into the infirmary to find a scene of horror. Screens had been put up between the beds along the west wall where the sick lay in their poisoned sleep. James could see only their silhouettes—dark shapes hunched under covers, still as corpses. At the far end of the room two beds had been pushed together: Tatiana had been carried across the room, and blood smeared the floor in a trail leading to where she lay sprawled crosswise upon them, her body jerking and twisting. Her shoulder had been torn, and her arm; her hat had come off, and the thin tufts of her graying hair were matted to her skull.

Brother Enoch was bending over Tatiana, dripping dark blue fluid from a beaker into her open mouth as she gasped for air. James thought wildly of a baby bird being fed by its mother. Jem stood by, holding bandages soaked in antiseptic. Grace knelt in the shadows by the foot of her mother’s bed, her hands gripping each other tightly.

James approached, passing the beds in which the other patients lay in their restless drugged states. Ariadne, Vespasia, and Gerald might have been only sleeping, had it not been for the dark maps of black veins beneath their skin. They seemed to grow more visible by the day.

Hello, James.

It was Jem’s voice, gentle in his mind. James wished he had something to tell his uncle, other than the frustrating threads of a mystery that refused to knit itself together. But Jem was already searching out the identity of James’s grandfather. He couldn’t burden Jem with more questions that might have no answers.

Will she live? he asked silently, indicating Tatiana.

Jem’s voice was unusually strained. If she dies, it will not be because of these injuries you see here.

The poison. Death-dealer, poisoner of life, Gast had said. But what in the Angel’s name had he raised?

“James.” A hand caught at his arm; he looked down to see Grace, her face ashen, her lips deadly white. She was gripping his arm with both hands. “Take me out of here.”

He turned slightly to shield them both from view. “Where shall I take you? What do you need?”

Her hands trembled, shaking his arm. “I need to talk to you, James. Take me somewhere we can be alone.”

* * *

“James has been gone for an absolute age,” Lucie said. She had been scribbling in her notebook, but had begun to look worried. “Would you go and look for him, Cordelia?”

Cordelia did not want to go look for James. She’d seen the look on his face when Grace tumbled out of Charles’s carriage in the courtyard. The longing that had turned so quickly to fear for Grace; the quick unconscious way he’d touched the bracelet on his wrist. He hated Tatiana, she knew, and with good reason. But he would have done anything to protect her to spare Grace pain.

She wondered what it