Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,62

seventeen.”

“No one has two ages.”

“I do,” he said, unruffled. “When I was seventeen, I died. But my mother had—prepared.”

Lucie licked her dry lips. “What do you mean, prepared?”

He gestured at himself. “This, what you are looking at, is a manifestation of my soul. After my death, my mother told the Silent Brothers she would never give them my remains, that she refused to allow them to touch me again, to burn my body to ashes. I do not know if they questioned what she did then, but I know she brought a warlock into the room in the hours after I died, to preserve and to safeguard my physical body. My soul was cut free to wander between the real world and the spirit realm. Thus I do not age, I do not breathe, and I live only during the nights.”

“Which you spend haunting ballrooms and wandering about the forest?”

He gave her a dark look. “Usually I spend my time reading. Both the manor house in Idris and Chiswick House have well-stocked libraries. I’ve even read my grandfather Benedict’s unpublished papers. They were hidden in the chimney. Horrid stuff—he was obsessed with demons. Socializing with them, crossbreeding them—”

“Ugh,” said Lucie, waving a quelling hand. Benedict Lightwood’s peculiarities were well known. “What do you do during the day?”

He smiled faintly. “I vanish.”

“Really? Vanish where?”

“You have a great deal of questions.”

“Yes,” said Lucie. “In fact, I came here to ask you a question. What did you mean last night when you said, ‘There is death here’? Nothing happened at the ball.”

“But today it did,” said Jesse. “Grace told me.”

Lucie tried to imagine Grace and Jesse sitting in this shadowy room, exchanging the news of their days:

I saw a demon attack in Regent’s Park during the daytime.

Did you, now? Well, I didn’t do much, as you know, I’m still dead.

She cleared her throat. “So you can see the future?”

Jesse paused. He looked made out of moonlight and cobwebs, shadows at his temples, in the hollow of his throat, at his wrists. “Before I reveal anything else,” he said, “you must swear you will tell no one about me—not your brother, not Cordelia, not your parents. Understood?”

“A secret?” Lucie loved and hated secrets. She was always honored to be entrusted with one, and then was immediately tempted to tell it. “Why must it be a secret? Many know I can see ghosts.”

“But as you have so perspicaciously noted, I am not an ordinary ghost,” said Jesse. “I am kept in this state by necromantic magic and the Clave forbids such things. Should they find out, they would search for my body and burn it, and I would be dead in truth. And forever.”

Lucie swallowed. “So you still hope—you think you might return? To full life?”

Jesse leaned back against the wall, his arms folded. “You have not promised.”

“I give my word. I will tell no one about you. Now explain what you meant last night with your warning.”

She had thought he might smirk or say something mocking, but he looked very serious. “Being what I am puts me between two worlds,” he said. “I belong here and yet I don’t. Sometimes I can glimpse other things that do not quite belong. Other ghosts, of course—and demons. There was a sinister presence in that ballroom, and I believe it is the same one that returned today.”

“But why?” Lucie whispered.

Jesse shook his head. “That, I do not know.”

“Will they return—?” Lucie began. There was a flare of light. Jesse turned, surprised, toward the back wall of the house: the French doors had lit up, glowing a startling white.

Lucie darted to one of the windows and looked out. She could see the gardens clearly in all their tangled darkness. A small distance away was the greenhouse, and it was glimmering like a star.

Witchlight.

A moment later the light had winked out. Cold fear clawed at Lucie’s chest. “Daisy,” she breathed, and tore the doors open. Tumbling out onto the balcony without another look at Jesse, she flung herself at the wall and began to climb down.

* * *

Cordelia scrabbled at the ground with her free hand, her fingers sinking into the dirt as she was hauled into the shadows. The demon tentacle wrapped around her leg was agonizing—it felt as if a million small teeth were biting into her skin—but more horrifying was the heat on the back of her neck, the breath of whatever was hovering over her—

Something caught her hand. Lucie, she thought. She shrieked as she