The Wicked Ones (Ghosts of the Shadow Market Book 6) Page 5

  Because I have a feeling it belongs to you—and to your family.

  She stiffened, and Brother Zachariah marked the minute twitch of her hand, as if instinctively reaching for a weapon. She had sharp instincts, but also self-control—and arrogance, grace, and loyalty, and the capacity for great love, and a laugh that could light up the sky.

  He had come to Paris looking for the lost Herondale.

  And he had found her.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  You are the Herondale. Not your husband. You. The lost heir to a noble line of warriors.

  “I’m nobody,” she snapped. “Nobody of interest to you, at least.”

  I could reach into your mind and confirm the truth.

  She flinched. Zachariah didn’t have to read her mind to understand her panic, or her welling self-doubt as she scrambled to figure out how he had seen through the ruse.

  But I would not trespass on your secrets. I want only to help you.

  “My parents told me everything I need to know about the Shadowhunters,” she said, and Brother Zachariah understood this was as close to an admission as he was going to get. “Your precious little Clave. Your Law.” She spit out that last word like it was poison.

  I am not here as a representative of the Clave. They have no idea I’ve come to you—or even that you exist. I have my own reasons for finding you, for wanting to protect you.

  “And they are?”

  I would not trespass on your secrets, and I would ask that you not trespass on mine. Know only that I owe a great debt to your family. The bonds holding me to the Herondales run deeper than blood.

  “Well, that’s nice of you and all, but no one asked you to pay any debts,” Rosemary said. “Jack and I are doing just fine, taking care of each other, and that’s what we’ll keep doing.”

  It was clever of you to make it seem as if your husband was the one I sought, but—

  “It was clever of Jack. People underestimate him. And they pay for it.”

  —but, if I could penetrate your ruse, others who seek you may as well. And they are more dangerous than you know.

  “These ‘others’ you talk about butchered my parents.” Rosemary’s face betrayed no expression. “Jack and I have been on the run for years. Trust me, I know exactly how dangerous this is. And I know exactly how dangerous it is to trust a stranger, even a stranger with psychic ninja powers and a deeply weird fashion sense.”

  One of the things Brother Zachariah had learned in the Silent Brotherhood was the power of acceptance. Sometimes it was stronger to recognize an unwinnable fight and accept defeat—the better to begin laying groundwork for the next battle.

  Though this was not a battle, he reminded himself. You could not war for a person’s trust; you could only earn it.

  Your heron necklace now has an enchantment on it. If you encounter trouble you cannot face on your own, you need only summon me, and I will come.

  “If you think you can track us through this thing—”

  Your husband suggested that the only way to earn trust is by offering it. I will not try to find you if you prefer not to be found. But with this pendant, you can always find me. I trust you will summon me for help, if and when you need. Please trust that I will always answer.

  “And who are you, exactly?”

  You may call me Brother Zachariah.

  “I could, but if I end up in this hypothetical situation where I need my life saved by some bloodthirsty monk, I’d rather know his actual name.”

  I was once . . . It had been so long. He almost didn’t feel entitled to the name. But there was a deep, nearly human pleasure in allowing himself to claim it. I was once known as James Carstairs. Jem.

  “So who will you summon when you encounter trouble you can’t face on your own, Jem?” She fastened the pendant around her neck, and Zachariah felt a sliver of relief. At least he’d accomplished that much.

  I don’t anticipate that.

  “Then you’re not paying attention.”

  She touched him on the shoulder then, unexpectedly, and with unexpected gentleness.

  “Thank you for trying,” she said. “It’s a start.”

  Then he was watching her walk away.

  Brother Zachariah watched the water stream beneath the bridge. He thought about that other bridge, in another city, where once a year he returned to remember the man he’d once been and the dreams that man had once had.

  At the far end of the Pont des Arts, a young street musician opened a violin case and raised the instrument to his chin. For a moment, Zachariah thought he was imagining it—that he had conjured up a fantasy of his former self. But as he drew closer—because he could not stay away—he realized the musician was a girl. She was young, no more than fourteen or fifteen, her hair swept up beneath a newsboy cap, a neat, old-fashioned bowtie at the collar of her white blouse.

  She bowed the strings and began to play a haunting melody. Brother Zachariah recognized it: a Bartók violin concerto that had been written well after Jem Carstairs had put down his violin.

  Silent Brothers played no music. They didn’t listen to music either, not in the ordinary way. But even with their senses sealed off to mortal pleasures, they still heard.

  Jem heard.

  He was glamoured; the musician must have assumed she was alone. There was no audience for her music, no possibility of payment. She wasn’t playing for spare change, but for her own pleasure. She faced the water, the sky. This was a song to welcome the sun.

  Distantly, he remembered the soft pressure of the chinrest. He remembered his fingertips capering across the strings. He remembered the dance of the bow.

  He remembered how, sometimes, it had felt like the music was playing him.

  There was no music in the Silent City; there was no sun, no dawn. There was only dark. There was only quiet.

  Paris was a city that luxuriated in the senses—food, wine, art, romance. Everywhere was a reminder of what he’d lost, the pleasures of a world no longer his. He had learned to live with the loss. It was harder, when he immersed himself in the world like this, but it was bearable.

  This was something else, though.

  The nothing he felt, as he listened to the melody, watched the bow waltz up and down the strings—the great hollow it opened inside him, echoing only with the past? That made him feel utterly, dismally inhuman.

  The longing he felt, to truly hear, to want, to feel? That made him feel almost alive.

  Come home, the Brothers whispered in his mind. It is time.

  Over the years, as he’d gained more control, Brother Zachariah had learned how to isolate himself from the voices of his Brothers when need be. It was a strange thing, the Brotherhood. Most assumed it was a lonely, solitary life—and it was, indeed, solitary. But he was never truly alone. The Brotherhood was always there, on the edge of his awareness, watching, waiting. Brother Zachariah needed only extend a hand, and the Brotherhood would reclaim him.

  Soon, he promised them. But not yet. I have more business here.

  He was more Silent Brother than not. But he was still less Silent Brother than the others. It was a strange, liminal space, one that allowed him a modicum of privacy—and a desire for it that his Brothers had long since abandoned. Zachariah shut himself off from them for the moment. He felt a deep regret over his failure here, but it was good, it was human, to feel regret, and he wanted to savor it, all on his own.

  Or maybe not all on his own.

  There was, in fact, one more piece of business before he could return to the Silent City. He needed to explain himself to the one person who cared as much about the Herondales as he did.

  He needed Tessa.

  Céline didn’t go to Valentine’s apartment intending to break in. That would have been madness. And anyway, after a night and day of blindly wan
dering the city, she was too sleep deprived to form clear intentions of anything. She simply followed a whim. She wanted the certainty that settled over her in Valentine’s presence, the power he had to make her believe. Not just in him, but in herself.

  After her strange encounter on the bridge, she’d considered going back to the flat in the Marais. She knew Stephen and Robert should be apprised of the unexpected demon activity, the possibility of a rogue Shadowhunter causing trouble and spreading suspicion about the Circle.

  She couldn’t face them. Let them worry about what had become of her. Or not worry. She no longer cared.

  At least, she was trying very hard not to care.

  She’d spent the day in the Louvre, haunting galleries that none of the tourists cared to see, old Etruscan masks and Mesopotamian coins. She’d spent hours there when she was younger, blending in with the hordes of schoolchildren. It was easy, when you were a child, to go unseen.

  The challenge, Céline understood now, was to be seen—and once seen, to endure judgment.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about the couple on the bridge, the way they’d gazed at each other. The way they’d touched each other, with so much care and so much need. Nor could she stop thinking about the woman’s warning about Valentine. Céline was certain she could trust Valentine with her life.

  But if she’d been so wrong about Stephen, how could she know for sure she was right about anything?

  Valentine was staying in opulent quarters in the sixth arrondissement, down the street from a famous chocolatier and a mercerie where the custom hats cost more than most people spent on rent. She knocked loudly. When no one answered, it was easy enough to pick the lock.

  I am breaking into Valentine Morgenstern’s apartment, she thought, bewildered by herself. It didn’t seem quite real.

  The apartment was elegant, almost regal, walls draped with gold fleurs-de-lis, furniture covered with velvet. Plush rugs dotted the gleaming hardwood floors. Heavy golden curtains dimmed the light. The room’s only anachronism was a large glass case in the center, inside of which lay Dominique du Froid, bound, beaten, and unconscious.

  Before she could decide what to do, there was the sound of a key rattling in the lock. The doorknob turned. Without thinking, Céline dove behind the thick curtains. She held herself very, very still.

  From her hiding spot, she couldn’t see Valentine pacing back and forth across the living room. But she could hear everything she needed to.

  “Wake up,” he snapped.

  There was a pause, a rustling, and then a woman’s yelp of pain.

  “Halphas demons?” he said, sounding halfway between amused and enraged. “Really?”

  “You told me to make it look real,” Dominique whined.

  “Yes, I told you to make it look real—not endanger them.”

  “You also told me you’d pay, but here I am, in some kind of cage. With an empty wallet. And a couple unseemly lumps on my head.”

  Valentine sighed heavily, as if this were all an irritating imposition on his time. “You told them exactly what we agreed upon, yes? And signed the confession?”

  “Isn’t that what the little brats told you when they dumped me here? So how about you pay me for my services, and we can forget this ever happened.”

  “Gladly.”

  There was a strange sound, one that Céline couldn’t place. Then a smell, one that she could: burnt flesh.

  Valentine cleared his throat. “You can come out now, Céline.”

  She froze. Didn’t so much catch her breath as lose the ability to breathe.

  “Not very good at subterfuge lately, are we? Come on now, show yourself.” He clapped his hands together sharply, as if summoning a pet. “No more games.”

  Céline stepped out from behind the curtains, feeling like a fool.

  “You knew I was here? The whole time?”

  “You would be surprised what all I know, Céline.” Valentine smiled coldly. As always, he was dressed in all black, which made his white-blond hair seem to glow with pale fire. Céline supposed that by objective standards, Valentine was just as handsome as Stephen, but it was impossible to think of him that way. He was handsome the way a statue was handsome: perfectly sculpted, unyielding as stone. Sometimes at the Academy, Céline would watch him with Jocelyn, wondering at the way a single touch from her could melt his ice. Once Céline had come upon them in an embrace and had watched from the shadows as they lost themselves in each other. When they broke from the kiss, Valentine had raised a hand to Jocelyn’s cheek in an impossibly tender touch, and his expression, as he gazed at his first and only love, was almost human.

  There was no trace of that in him now. He opened his arms wide, as if welcoming her to make herself at home in the opulent living room. The cage at the center was empty, except for a smoldering pile of black lace and leather. Dominique du Froid was gone.

  Valentine followed her gaze.

  “She was a criminal,” he said. “I simply expedited the inevitable sentence.”

  There were rumors about Valentine, about the change that had come over him when his father was killed. Dark whispers about the cruelties he carried out not just on trespassing Downworlders but on anyone who crossed him. Anyone who questioned him.

  “You look worried, Céline. Even . . . afraid.”

  “No,” she said quickly.

  “It’s almost as if you think breaking into my apartment to spy on me might draw some kind of nasty consequence.”

  “I wasn’t spying, I was just—”

  He favored her with a smile then, so warm, so sunny, that she felt ridiculous for having been so afraid. “Would you settle for tea? And maybe some biscuits. You look like you haven’t eaten in a year.”

  He set out a bounty: not just tea and biscuits but a sliced baguette, fresh chevre and a small pot of honey, a bowl of blueberries that tasted like they’d just been plucked from the branch. Céline hadn’t known she was hungry until the taste of honey hit her tongue. She realized she was ravenous.

  They made polite Paris small talk: their favorite cafes, their preferred picnic spots, the best crêpe stand, the relative merits of the Orsay and the Pompidou. Then Valentine took a hearty bite of cheese-smeared baguette and said, almost cheerfully, “You know, of course, that the others think you’re weak, and not particularly bright.”

  Céline almost choked on a blueberry.

  “If it were up to most of the Circle, you wouldn’t be in it. Fortunately, this isn’t a democracy. They think they know you, Céline, but they don’t know the half of it, do they?”

  Slowly, she shook her head. No one knew her, not really.

  “I, on the other hand, believed in you. I trusted you. And you repay this trust with suspicion?”

  “I really didn’t—”

  “Of course, you had no suspicions. You just thought you’d pay a social call. Behind my curtains. While I was out.”

  “Okay. Oui. I was suspicious.”

  “See? You are smart.” That smile again, warm and approving, like she’d fulfilled his intentions. “And what is it you’ve discovered about me, with your intrepid investigation?”

  There was no point in pretense. And Céline was almost as curious as she was terrified. So she told the truth, as she’d surmised it. “Dominique du Froid wasn’t in business with two Shadowhunters. She was in business with you. You’re trying to set someone up, and you’re using us to do it.”

  “Us?”

  “Me. Robert. Stephen.”

  “Robert and Stephen, yes. I’m indeed using them. But you? You’re here, aren’t you? You’re getting the full story.”

  “I am?”

  “If you want it . . .”

  Céline had not had the kind of parents who read her fairy tales. But she’d read enough of them herself to know the cardinal rule of these stories: Be careful wh
at you wish for.

  And like every Shadowhunter, she knew: all the stories are true.

  “I want to know,” she said.

  He told her she was right. He was framing two Shadowhunters, innocent of these crimes but guilty of a much larger one—standing in the Circle’s way. “They’re bogged down in tradition, they’re beholden to the Clave’s corruption. And they’re dead set on destroying me. So I acted first.” He’d used the warlock to plant evidence, he admitted. Now he would use Stephen and Robert as witnesses to her confession. “Since she is, unfortunately, no longer able to testify.”

  “What about the Mortal Sword?” Céline asked. “Aren’t you worried what will happen when the accused Shadowhunters are interrogated?”

  Valentine tsked, as if disappointed that she hadn’t jumped to the correct conclusion. “It’s very unfortunate, they’ll never make it that far. I happen to know these two Shadowhunters will make an escape attempt during their transport to the Silent City. They’ll be killed in the ensuing chaos. Tragic.”

  The words sat heavy between them. Céline tried to process it. Valentine wasn’t just setting up two Shadowhunters, two innocent Shadowhunters. He was planning to murder them in cold blood. This was an unthinkable crime, for which the Law would demand death.

  “Why are you telling me this,” she said, trying to keep her voice from trembling. “What makes you think I won’t turn you in? Unless—”

  Unless he had no intention of letting her leave this apartment alive.

  A man who could kill two Shadowhunters in cold blood could presumably kill a third. Everything in her said that she should leap to her feet, draw her weapon, fight her way out of here, run straight to the Paris Institute, tell them everything. Stop this—stop him—before he went any further. Valentine watched her calmly, palms up on the table, as if to say, Your move.

  She didn’t move.

  The Verlac family, who ran the Paris Institute, were friends with her parents. More than once, a Verlac had sought out her hiding place and dumped her back home. That first time, she’d pleaded for asylum at the Institute, where all Shadowhunters were supposedly guaranteed a safe home. Céline was told she was too young to make such requests, too young to know what safe meant. She was told her parents loved her and she should stop causing them so much trouble.