“I just want to be included,” Jessamine said. She was drifting among the stacks, where Lucie had taken Alexander to amuse him while his parents and hers huddled in conversation. At some point Jessamine had appeared, sensitive to the unsettled feeling inside the Institute. She bobbed near Lucie, her long blond hair unbound and floating.

“Perhaps it is better for them to leave London,” Tessa was saying. She and Will sat with Lucie’s aunt Cecily and uncle Gabriel at a long table in the center of the big room. Green banker’s lamps cast a soft glow over the room. “It will be good for Sophie and Gideon to join Henry and Charlotte in Idris, for they are always a comforting presence. And surely being here at the moment will only remind them of Barbara.”

Lucie had seen her uncle Gideon and aunt Sophie only briefly when they had arrived to view Barbara’s body and collect Thomas. Both had seemed hollowed out, like puppets in the shapes of her uncle and aunt, going through the motions of what was necessary. Still, they had tried to comfort Oliver, who sat sobbing beside Barbara’s still body. She had thrashed and cried out at the last, it seemed, just before Tessa had arrived to find her dead: she had clawed Oliver’s hands, and blood stained the white cuffs of his shirt and mixed with his tears.

Oliver, devastated, was to return to York and his parents; Gideon and Sophie, it seemed, were headed to Idris, where Eugenia had collapsed on hearing the news of her sister’s death and was not well enough to travel by Portal. Thomas, though, would not be going with them. He had insisted on remaining in London, and would be staying with Cecily and Gabriel at their home in Bedford Square.

“We will take the best possible care of Thomas,” said Cecily. “Christopher will be so delighted to have him with us. But I cannot help but wonder if Thomas will regret not going to Idris. Surely it will be painful to be parted from his family at such a time.”

“You are also his family,” said Will. “Christopher and Thomas are like brothers, Cecy.”

“I don’t think he’ll regret it,” said Gabriel. He was a kind uncle, but his aquiline features—like Anna’s and Christopher’s—made him look sterner than he was. “Thomas is much like Gideon. The type who must have something to do when tragedy strikes. Christopher wishes for his help in working on an antidote—”

“But Kit is just a boy,” said Cecily. “He should hardly be expected to accomplish something so monumental.”

“There is nothing to say that Christopher and Thomas’s efforts will be in vain,” said Will. “We must all recall there was a time when the Clave doubted us and doubted Henry, and we prevailed.”