“Drain of pale?” inquired a wild-haired vampire, offering her a half-drunk bottle of gin.

“She doesn’t drink.” It was Thomas, glowering. The vampire shrank back. Christopher appeared at Thomas’s shoulder, blinking.

“I knew you’d be here,” said Lucie triumphantly.

“We very nearly weren’t,” said Christopher. “We decided to use the laboratory upstairs instead of at Grosvenor Square since Matthew and James weren’t going to be here to be bothered or blown up—”

Thomas shushed him. “Christopher, enough. Lucie, what’s going on? Did something happen?”

After dragging the two of them outside, Lucie did her best to explain the situation without mentioning Jesse. She blamed Jessamine instead, and a gossip network between ghosts that she had invented on the spot. Fortunately, neither Christopher nor Thomas was the suspicious type.

“We need Matthew, and he’s bloody gone off to Anna’s,” said Thomas, after telling her the little they knew—the letter that had come for James at Matthew’s house, his determination to meet Grace, the time of the meeting set for ten o’clock. “He’ll know where James has gone. James said it was where the two of them used to practice balance.”

“But what if we’re too late?” said Christopher, vibrating with anxiety.

Lucie checked the clock that hung before the church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, across the dark line of Fleet Street. They were quite near the Institute here. She could see its distinctive spire rising above the roofs of London. “Nine o’clock,” she said. “One of you must have a carriage. We’ll go to Anna’s.”

Which was how they found themselves a quarter of an hour later on Percy Street, Thomas helping Lucie down from his family’s Victoria. The street was empty of pedestrians, though there were lights on in many windows. Lucie made out a shape sitting on Anna’s stairs in the dark. She felt no surprise—ladies were always making cakes of themselves on Anna’s doorstep.

Then Lucie made out broad shoulders on the silhouette and realized that the person on Anna’s doorstep was a man.

He bolted upright, and the light from the arc lamps fell on him. On Percy Street, the streetlights were older and less reliable, their fierce yellow burn stripping the world down to harsh lines. Lucie saw bright hair and a scowling face.

“Alastair?” Thomas sounded astonished.

Christopher groaned as Alastair Carstairs raced down the street toward them, a whirlwind in an unbuttoned town coat. Beneath the coat his waistcoat was disarranged, and one side of his high wingtip collar was askew.

“You’ve lost your hat, Alastair,” said Lucie.

Alastair said, “I have lost my sister!”

Lucie went cold. “What do you mean? Has something happened to Cordelia?”