Alastair said goodbye to him at the end of the lane; he said he was leaving Paris the next day, but he continued to refuse to tell Thomas why he was there or where he was going or why he was leaving the next day. Thomas supposed that they weren’t, after all, friends, though he had enjoyed the time they’d spent together. He wasn’t fully sure what a friend was, if it wasn’t someone you enjoyed spending time with.

The whole trip had seemed disconnected and dreamlike. Alastair had come from nowhere and now returned to nowhere, and Thomas had no idea when they would next see each other, or how they would act when they did. Were they now friends? Had they been friends these past few days?

“I return to Spain in a couple of days myself,” Thomas said.

Alastair gave a little chuckle. “It’s odd that you came here from Madrid. Like taking a vacation from a vacation.”

“I suppose,” said Thomas. Then he frowned. “No, it isn’t odd. A travel year isn’t a vacation. It’s an assignment to a post. Do you have to snipe at everything?”

Alastair looked startled. “I’m sorry,” he said after a long moment. “I don’t mean anything by it.”

He seemed worried in that moment, and human and vulnerable in a way that made Thomas want to—well, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, but he stuck out his hand to Alastair, who stared at it for a moment, then slowly took it.

His hand was warm and calloused against Thomas’s, and Thomas remembered the feel of Alastair’s fingers on the inside of his arm and tried not to change expression. They shook.

Alastair had not asked Thomas about his friends or his family. Thomas hadn’t asked Alastair, either. For these days it had been as though nobody else existed in the entire world.

“Well,” Thomas said. “Goodbye, Carstairs.”

“Goodbye, Lightwood. Try not to get any taller. You’re starting to be off-putting in the other direction.”

Thomas watched Alastair walk away and waited for him to turn around one last time, but Alastair never looked back as he turned the corner and disappeared.

10 LOYALTY BINDS

Close, side by side, from morn till night,

Kissing and dalliance their delight,

Whilst thou from human solace flying

With unrequited love art dying.

—Nizami Ganjavi, Layla and Majnun

The proprietor would not let Lucie up to the Merry Thieves’ private rooms at the Devil Tavern, so she was reduced to sending a message through Polly, the werewolf barmaid. She sat in an uncomfortable wooden chair and fumed as a mixture of Downworlders and magicians stared at her curiously: a small, bonneted girl with Nephilim runes, clutching an axe. In the corner, a kelpie who seemed to be marinating in a tank of gin gave her a beady look.