Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,177

road flanked by twisted trees to the main house. Somehow the place looked worse than it had when Lucie had been here with Cordelia.

Lucie could see the humped shadow of the greenhouse in the distance, and the ruined Italian gardens in the other direction. Seeing the manor and its grounds in better light, Lucie wished she had not. She couldn’t imagine living in such a house.

“Poor Grace,” she said. “This place is a rathole. Actually, I wouldn’t wish it on a rat.”

“That is because you like rats,” said Thomas. “Remember Marie?”

Marie Curie had been a small white rat Christopher had kept in the room at the Devil Tavern and fed on bread and chicken bones. Marie had been friendly enough to rest on Lucie’s shoulder and nuzzle at her hair. Eventually Marie had died of natural causes and been buried with pomp and circumstance in Matthew’s back garden.

“But I don’t know if we ought to feel sorry for Grace,” said Lucie. “She broke James’s heart.”

“For someone with a broken heart, he seems in remarkably fine fettle,” said Thomas. “Honestly, he actually seems more cheerful.”

Lucie could not deny that this was true. “Still,” she said. “It is the principle of the thing.”

They reached the greenhouse, a long structure of glass and wood. Long ago it had provided the Lightwood family with pineapples and grapes in winter. Now there were holes smashed into the glass walls, and the once-clean windows were smeared and dark.

A massive padlock hung on the door. Lucie started to reach for her stele, but Thomas put a hand on her wrist. “I can go around the back,” he said. “There ought to be a small shed there with an entrance into the greenhouse. They would have needed to heat the place by hypocaust.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” said Lucie. “But I suspect you know this because of all the hours you’ve spent listening to Christopher in the lab. Certainly, by all means, let us crawl into a dark and spider-infested shed.”

“It isn’t spiders I’m worried about,” said Thomas. “And you won’t be doing any crawling. We need you out here as sentry. If you see any unusual activity, send up an alarm.”

“I hate being the watchman. Are you certain we need one?”

“Yes,” said Thomas, “because if one of us is going to be devoured by demonic tree roots, then the other one had better be around to get help, or at least grab the malos root and run for it.”

Lucie had to admit he had a point. “Go on, then.”

Thomas headed toward the back of the greenhouse. Lucie attempted to do as he had suggested for at least five minutes, but it was very dull. There was only so long one could pace back and forth in front of the door to a greenhouse before feeling like a goldfish swimming to and fro in its bowl. She was very nearly relieved to glimpse something out of the corner of her eye.

It looked like a spark of bright light, down toward the Italian gardens. She moved away from the greenhouse, narrowing her eyes. The light was pale in color and wavering against the twilight. A torch, perhaps?

She moved closer, keeping to the shadows. The gardens were a ruin. Once there had been neat hedgerows, but they were overgrown now, a mess of shrubbery leading in all directions. The marble statues of Virgil, Sophocles, and Ovid had been smashed to jagged pieces that protruded upward from broken plinths. In the center of the whole mess was a square brick structure, like an old storage shed.

As she moved toward it, she saw the flicker of light once again. It was stronger now, and seemed to be rising over the walls of the small structure, as if it had no roof, though that was not unusual for old buildings—the roof was often the first thing to go. It certainly had no windows, but the light continued to shine steadily from within.

Consumed by curiosity, Lucie reached the square little building and stared. It appeared to have been built long ago, of large and sturdy stone. There was a door in one side; though it was closed, light gleamed beneath the door.

As Lucie watched, the light moved. Someone, or something, was very definitely inside.

Throwing caution to the wind, Lucie began to climb one of the walls.

She reached the top almost immediately. The structure was indeed roofless: open to the elements despite the four thick walls. Lucie flattened herself atop the wall she’d