Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,69

Matthew and Lucie and Thomas and Christopher into trouble as well.

Silent, James gritted his teeth.

Charles sighed. “You leave us to assume the worst, James.”

“That he’s a senseless vandal? Honestly, Charles,” said Will. “You know how Tatiana feels about our family.”

“I killed a demon in that greenhouse,” James said evenly. “I did what I was supposed to do. Yet I am the one the Enclave is blaming, rather than the Shadowhunter keeping a demon on the grounds of her house.”

It was Will’s turn to sigh. “Jamie, we know that Benedict kept Cerberus demons.”

“The one that was there—and I do believe you when you say it was there—cannot be blamed on Tatiana,” said Charles. “The rest of the property has been searched, and there were no more. It was your bad luck to stumble across this one.”

“That greenhouse is full of dark magic plants,” said James. “Surely someone noticed that.”

“It is,” Charles admitted, “but given the severity of her complaints, James, no one is going to note the presence of a few belladonna bushes in her shrubbery. You still wouldn’t have run across the demon if you hadn’t been trespassing already.”

“Tell Tatiana we’ll pay for the repairs to the greenhouse,” said Will wearily. “I must say all this seems a vast overreaction, Charles. James happened to be there, he ran into a demon, and things took their natural course. Would you rather he’d let it loose to devour the neighborhood?”

Charles cleared his throat. “Let us stick to practicalities.” Sometimes James had a hard time remembering that Charles was a Shadowhunter, and not one of the thousands of bowler-hatted, sack-suited bankers who flooded down Fleet Street every morning on their way to offices in the City. “I have had a long conversation with Bridgestock this morning—”

Will said something rude in Welsh.

“However you may feel about him, he remains the Inquisitor,” said Charles. “And at the moment, with my mother in Idris dealing with the Elias Carstairs situation, I represent her interests here in London. When the Inquisitor speaks, I must hear him out.”

James started. He had not connected Charlotte’s trip to Idris with the situation affecting Cordelia’s father. He supposed he should have: he recalled overhearing his sister and Cordelia in Kensington Gardens, Cordelia saying her father had made a mistake. The tremble in her voice.

“No punishment is being recommended for James at this point,” Charles went on. “But James—I suggest you avoid Chiswick House, and avoid Tatiana Blackthorn and her daughter entirely.”

James went still. The hands of the grandfather clock were blades, sweeping slowly around the face, cutting time.

“Let me apologize to her,” James said; the silver bracelet felt as if it were burning on his wrist. He didn’t know if he meant Tatiana or Grace.

“Now, James,” Charles said. “You should not try to make a young woman choose between you and her family. It is not kind. Grace told me herself that if she were to marry a man not of her mother’s choosing, she would be disowned—”

“You barely know her,” James snapped. “One carriage ride—”

“I know her better than you think,” said Charles, with a flash of schoolboy superiority.

“Are you two talking about the same girl?” said Will, his eyebrows rising. “Grace Blackthorn? I don’t see—”

“It’s nothing. Nothing.” James could stand it no longer. He rose, buttoning his jacket. “I must be off,” he said. “There’s an orangery in Kensington Gardens that needs smashing. Ladies, lock up your outbuildings. James Herondale is in town and he has been slighted in love!”

Charles looked pained. “James,” he said, but James had already swept past him and out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

* * *

Cordelia plucked nervously at the fabric of her visiting gown. Quite surprisingly, an official invitation to tea from Anna Lightwood—on monogrammed stationery, no less—had arrived by penny post that morning. Cordelia was shocked that after everything that had happened, Anna had remembered her desultory offer. Still, she had seized at the opportunity to get out of the house like a drowning man seizing a rope.

She’d barely been able to sleep after getting home the night before. Curled under her coverlet, she couldn’t help thinking of Cousin Jem and her father, and helplessly of James, the way he’d been gentle with her ankle, the look on his face when he’d talked about the shadow realm that only he could see. She couldn’t think of a way to help him, any more than she could help her father. She wondered if not being able to help the people