Shaking her head, Lucie fell to her knees in front of the trunk at the foot of her bed that held her weaponry. She threw it open. Dust puffed up: inside were stacks of daggers, seraph blades, knives, chains, darts, and other such items, all wrapped daintily in folded velvet.

Noiselessly, Jesse appeared beside her. “Cerberus demons are not small. You might wish to bring a few more foot soldiers.”

“I was planning on that,” said Lucie, taking a small axe out of her trunk. “What will you do in the meantime?”

“Try to track down my mother and send her after Grace. She can tell the Cerberus demons to stand down; they’ll listen to her. Do you have any idea where James and Grace are meeting?”

Lucie yanked a satchel that held several daggers and seraph blades out of the trunk and looped it over her shoulder. “You mean you don’t know?”

“No; I did not see all of the letter,” said Jesse. “Do you think you can find them?”

“I’m certainly going to try.” Lucie rose, axe in hand. “Let me tell you something, Jesse Blackthorn. Your mother may have reason to be resentful of Shadowhunters, but if her ridiculous demons hurt my brother, I will have no pity. I shall beat her to death with her own stupid hat.”

And with that, she flung open her bedroom window, crawled out onto the ledge, and dropped noiselessly into the night.

9 DEADLY WINE

No growth of moor or coppice,

No heather-flower or vine,

But bloomless buds of poppies,

Green grapes of Proserpine,

Pale beds of blowing rushes

Where no leaf blooms or blushes

Save this whereout she crushes

For dead men deadly wine.

—Algernon Charles Swinburne, “The Garden of Proserpine”

Cordelia and Matthew went only a short way down the alley before a door rose up in front of them. It shimmered in the side of a worn-looking wall, and Cordelia suspected that to mundanes, the opening would not be visible at all.

Inside was a narrow hallway whose walls were heavy red cloth tapestries hanging from ceiling to floor, obscuring whatever was behind them. At the end of the hall was another door, also painted red.

“When this place is not home to the salon, it is a gaming house,” Matthew whispered to Cordelia as they approached the door. “There is even a trapdoor in the roof, so that if they are raided by police, the gamesters can escape over the eaves.”

The door was flung suddenly open. Lounging in the space it revealed was a tall man in an iron-gray jacket and trousers. In the dimness, his hair appeared utterly white. Cordelia thought he must be in his sixties at least, but as they approached she realized his face was young and sharp, his eyes dark purple.