Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,25

through blood. She was dancing with Matthew, he saw to his surprise. Matthew’s arms were around her, and she was smiling.

Relief went through him. So he hadn’t done her any harm. That was good. He liked Cordelia. He had been glad to see her there among the usual group of girls, knowing he could ask her to dance and she would make no wrong assumptions about his intentions: they were family friends.

The music stopped. It was a pause for refreshments. Couples began to flood off the dance floor—James smiled to himself as he saw Jessamine, the Institute’s resident ghost, drifting above the head of Rosamund Wentworth as Rosamund gossiped with her friends. Jessamine loved overhearing gossip, even though she’d been dead for a quarter century.

Cordelia flashed past as she hurried away from Matthew; she was glancing around, as if searching for someone. Her brother, perhaps? But Alastair seemed to be deep in conversation with Thomas. Very puzzling, that—James was positive Thomas hadn’t liked Alastair much at school.

“My mother is summoning me back,” Grace said. “I had better go.”

Tatiana was indeed beckoning from the sidelines. James touched Grace’s hand lightly with his own. He knew they could not hold hands, as Barbara and Oliver were doing. They could not show any affection openly.

Not now. But someday.

“Tomorrow, in the park,” he said. “We will find a time to talk.”

She nodded and turned away, hurrying toward Tatiana, who stood alone by the ballroom doors. James watched her go: it had been years of summers, he thought, but Grace was still a mystery.

“She’s very pretty,” said a familiar voice behind him. He turned and saw Anna leaning against the wall. She had the uncanny ability to disappear from one spot and appear in another, like a moving point of light.

James leaned against the wall next to Anna. He had spent many dances this way, draped against the William Morris wallpaper with his acerbic cousin. Too much dancing always made him feel as if he were being disloyal to Grace. “Is she?”

“I assumed that was why you bolted across the room like Oscar spotting a biscuit.” Oscar was Matthew’s golden retriever, well known for loyalty if not intelligence. “Bad form, James. Abandoning that nice Cordelia Carstairs.”

“I hope you know me well enough to know that I don’t simply bolt at every pretty girl I see,” said James, nettled. “Maybe she reminded me of a long-lost aunt.”

“My mother is your aunt, and you’ve never been that enthused to see her.” Anna smiled, her blue eyes sparking. “So how do you know Grace Blackthorn?”

James glanced over at Grace, who was being introduced to Charles Fairchild. Poor Grace. She wouldn’t find Charles the least bit interesting. James liked Matthew’s older brother well enough, and they were practically family, but he had only one interest—Shadowhunter politics.

Grace was nodding and smiling politely. James wondered if he ought to rescue her. The world of Alicante and its dramas and policies couldn’t be further from Grace’s experience.

“And now you’re thinking you ought to rescue her from Charles,” said Anna, running her fingers through her pomaded hair. “I can’t blame you.”

“Do you not like Charles?” James was slightly surprised. Anna viewed the world with amused tolerance. She rarely went so far as to particularly like anyone, and it was even more rare for her to dislike them.

“I cannot admire all his decisions,” said Anna, clearly choosing her words with care. James wondered what decisions she meant. “Go ahead, then, Jamie—rescue her.”

James got only a few steps before the world around him shifted and changed. Anna vanished, as did all the music and laughter: gray, formless nothing swirled around him. He could hear only the sound of his own heartbeat. The floor seemed to tilt under him like the deck of a sinking ship.

NO, he cried out silently, but there was nothing he could do to stop it: the shadows were rising all around him as the universe went gray.

* * *

The boy drew Lucie down the hall and through the first open door, taking them into the games room. He didn’t move to shut the door, only went to light the witchlight on the mantel, so Lucie shut it herself, and turned the key for good measure.

Then she spun around and stared accusingly. “What on earth are you doing here?” she demanded.

The boy smiled. He looked, puzzlingly, no older than Lucie remembered him—sixteen, seventeen perhaps. Still slender, and under real light and not a forest moon he was terribly, shockingly pale, with that