The webs were empty, though. They hung shimmering like the lace of an abandoned wedding dress, vacant of spiders or even the bodies of trapped bugs. Strange, Cordelia thought, glancing about. It was easy to imagine how this place had once been beautiful, the woodwork painted white, the glass letting in glimpses of blue sky. There were few flowers left now, though she spied the purplish petals and darkly budded berries of nightshade plants scattered beneath the shadow of a single great tree that still rose, stark and leafless, against a far wall.

Naughty, Cordelia thought. It was frowned on for Shadowhunters to grow plants like nightshade, which provided key ingredients in dark magic spells. There were plants she didn’t recognize as well—something like a fleshy white tulip, and something else a bit like a red Venus flytrap. None looked as if they had been cultivated recently: weeds grew up and around everything. A gardener’s nightmare.

The heavy scent in the air had intensified—like foliage that had been left to rot, a dying garden. Cordelia peered ahead of her, and saw thickening darkness and a twitch of movement—

She ducked just as a dark talon whipped by over her head. Demon! screamed a silent voice inside her head. The stink in the air, half-covered by the smell of rotting leaves—the lack of birds or even spiders inside the greenhouse—of course.

There was movement in the darkness—Cordelia caught sight of a great misshapen face looming over hers, bleached and fanged and bony, before the demon hissed and reared back from the light.

Cordelia turned to run but a curling tentacle whipped around her ankle, tightening like a noose. She was jerked off her feet, hitting the ground hard. Her witchlight went flying. Cordelia screamed as she was dragged into the shadows.

Lucie drew herself up to her full height—which was not very impressive; in all her family, she was the shortest. “I think it should be clear,” she said. “I am creeping about, spying.”

Jesse’s eyes flashed. “Oh, for—” He stepped back. “Come inside, quickly.”

Lucie did as he asked and found herself standing inside a vast room. Jesse stood in front of her, in the same clothes he had worn at the ball and before that, in the forest. One rarely saw a gentleman without a jacket, and certainly not in his shirtsleeves unless he was your brother or some other family member. She would not have noticed his state of undress when she was so young, but she was very conscious of it now. A metal disc—a locket perhaps—winked in the hollow of his throat, its surface etched with a circlet of thorns.

“You’re mad to come here,” he said. “It’s dangerous.”