Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,58

the top of the ironwork.

ULTIMA FORSAN. The end is closer than you think.

They sent a shiver down Lucie’s spine. She put her hand to her waist, where her weapons belt rested. Bridget had left seraph blades, belts, and steles in the carriage for them, and they had Marked themselves carefully with various runes—Strength, Stealth, Night Vision. One never could be too careful in a possibly haunted place.

Lucie only wished they had been able to change into gear. They were still wearing their dresses from the picnic, torn and bloodstained.

“There is disrepair and then there’s disaster,” Lucie said, reaching for her stele. “How can Grace bear to live here?”

“I suppose she finds other things to make her happy,” Cordelia said in a subdued voice as Lucie scratched an Open rune on the gates and they swung open, scattering a powder of red rust.

They stepped forward onto the broken stones and overgrowth of what had once been a gorgeous avenue lined with potted cypress and cedar trees. The rot of dying cedar filled the air now and tickled the back of Lucie’s throat. The trees overhead had grown into each other, their branches tangling, bending, and snapping. Dead branches littered the ground.

As they came out from the avenue and into the broad circular drive in front of the house, Lucie was struck by the destroyed beauty of the manor. A double set of stairs, wonderfully constructed, led up to a broad entryway: blackened vines twisted their way around fluted columns. If she cast her gaze up she could see the balconies her mother had spoken of—but they had been taken over by clusters of thorns.

“Like Sleeping Beauty’s castle,” Lucie murmured.

“I was just thinking that!” said Cordelia. “Did you ever read the older fairy tales? I remember them being much more frightening. There was one where Sleeping Beauty’s palace was ringed all around with sharp briars, and the bodies of the princes who tried to get through hung on the thorns when they died, and their bones whitened in the sun.”

“Delightful!” said Lucie. “I shall be sure to include that in a book.”

“Not in The Beautiful Cordelia, you won’t,” said Cordelia, moving up to inspect the house more closely. “Lucie, there isn’t a single light on, not a single bit of illumination. Maybe they are not home?”

“Look—there,” Lucie said, and pointed. “I saw a light, darting across one of the windows. If you do not want to knock on the door, you need not. I admit, it is quite alarming here.”

Cordelia squared her shoulders. “I am not alarmed.”

Lucie hid a smile. “Then I am going to seek a ghost while you distract the inhabitants. We will meet back at the gates in a quarter hour.”

Cordelia nodded and began to climb the cracked marble steps to the front door. The sound of her knocking faded as Lucie slipped around the house to the back, where the grass sloped down toward the dark water of the river. She found herself looking up at the stone wall of the manor, cracked with age and veined through with a million thick and twisting vines.

Lucie took a running jump and seized the vines. She began to climb quickly, hand over hand, the way she had always climbed the rope in the training room, hoping to find an open window she could climb through. To her delight, halfway up the wall she realized she had reached a balcony. Even better.

Lucie pulled herself up and over the balcony railing and tumbled onto the ground. She leaped up before any of the thorny briars could penetrate her cloak and give her a nasty scratch. She felt terribly pleased with herself—she wondered if her father would have been proud if he’d known how handily she’d climbed the wall.

Probably not, she had to conclude. Probably he simply would have been murderous that she was here at all. Parents really were unable to see what their children could accomplish, alas. Lucie reached for the handle of the cracked French doors, their glass smeared with black dirt and greenish rot. She pushed inward—

The door flew open, showing a massive, empty ballroom beyond. Well, nearly empty. Jesse Blackthorn stood in front of her, his green eyes blazing with rage.

“What in Raziel’s name are you doing here?” he hissed.

* * *

The shadow realm was piercingly cold. James had never felt the chill before: he had always stood somehow apart from the dark place, but now he was within. It was no longer silent, either. He could hear