Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,132

up in a gaggle. A gaggle is not dignified.”

“It makes sense for me to go,” said Matthew. “They know me there.”

“I should go as well,” said James. “It is possible my shadow power might be useful. I have utilized it before to—to acquire certain things.”

Everyone looked puzzled, but James’s expression was not one that suggested a request for clarification would be welcome.

Anna smiled her slow, scotch-and-honey smile. “And Cordelia as well, of course,” she said. “A beautiful girl is always a distraction, and we will need to be very distracting indeed.”

James and Matthew both glanced at Cordelia. I will not blush, she told herself fiercely. I will not. She had a suspicion she looked as if she might be choking.

“Bother,” said Lucie. “I can already tell I’m going to be left out.”

Anna turned toward her. “Lucie, you are very much needed. At the Institute. You see, there is a meeting of all the Enclave tomorrow night, and I had planned to attend. Apparently there is some significant news.”

Lucie looked puzzled. Enclave meetings were restricted to Clave members who were eighteen and older. Only Anna and Thomas qualified.

“I can attend,” said Thomas, with some reluctance. “Though I am not keen on sitting in a room full of people looking at me bloody pityingly.”

They all looked at him in surprise; Thomas rarely swore.

“I was not thinking of attendance,” said Anna. “They may moderate what they have to say if you are there. Better to spy on them.”

“Oh, spying,” said Lucie. “Perfect. They’ll be meeting in the library; I know which room is over it. We can spy on them from overhead. Christopher shall be able to analyze what they say from a scientific perspective, and Thomas can recall it all with his excellent memory.”

She beamed, and Cordelia found herself wanting to smile. Hidden in Lucie’s practicality was a great kindness, she knew—Thomas had lost his sister and was desperate for something to do, some action to take. Lucie was giving him just that.

Thomas seemed to understand as well. He smiled at Lucie—the first smile Cordelia had seen on his face since Barbara’s death. “Espionage it is,” he said. “At last, something to look forward to.”

14 AMONG LIONS

She dropped her glove, to prove his love, then looked at him and smiled;

He bowed, and in a moment leaped among the lions wild:

The leap was quick, return was quick, he has regained his place,

Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady’s face.

“By God!” said Francis, “rightly done!” and he rose from where he sat:

“Not love,” quoth he, “but vanity, sets love a task like that.”

—Leigh Hunt, “The Glove and the Lions”

James insisted on walking Cordelia home, though it was a distance from Percy Street to Kensington. Anna had whisked Matthew away on a secret errand, and Thomas, Christopher, and Lucie had returned to the Devil Tavern to research the working of Pyxis boxes. Cordelia had wished she could stay with them, but she knew the limits of her mother’s patience. Sona would be wondering where she was.

It was getting on toward twilight, the shade thickening under the trees on Cromwell Road. Only a few horse-drawn carriages clipped by in the blue light. It felt almost as if they had the city to themselves; they weren’t glamoured, but still no one cast them more than glances of idle curiosity as they passed by the great brick pile of the Natural History Museum. They were probably looking at James, Cordelia thought: like his father, he drew glances without trying. In the darkening light, his eyes reminded her of the eyes of tigers she had seen in Rajasthan, golden and watchful.

“It was clever of you to think of Anna,” said James. Cordelia looked at him in some surprise; they had been chatting rather desultorily about their educations: Cordelia had been taught by Sona and an ever-changing group of tutors. James had gone to Shadowhunter Academy for only a few months; he’d met Thomas, Matthew, and Christopher there, and they’d promptly blown up a wing of the school. They’d all been expelled, save Thomas, who hadn’t wanted to stay at the Academy without his friends and returned to London willingly at the end of the school year. For the past three years the Merry Thieves had been taught by Henry Fairchild and Sophie Lightwood. “I was grateful to have you with us today.”

“The calming presence of a feminine hand?” Cordelia teased. “Lucie could do that.”

James laughed. There was a graceful lightness to his walk that