Lucie half heard Matthew say something in response, but she was already taking advantage of their distraction to slip through a half-open door into the flat’s small bedroom.

Her hand flew to her mouth. She gagged and bit down hard on her own thumb, the pain cutting through the nausea like a knife.

The room was nearly bare save for an iron-posted bed, a single window, and what remained of Emmanuel Gast lying ruined on the bare floorboards. Flesh and bone had been carved apart, ribs cracked open to show a collapsed red cavern. Blood had sunk in black grooves into the wooden floor. The most human-looking part of him left were his hands, his arms outflung with the hands turned palm up as if he were begging for mercy he had not received.

He had been dead a long time. The stench was putrid.

Lucie took a step back. The door behind her swung suddenly shut, slamming closed with a force that vibrated the wall. She dropped her hand, tasting blood in her mouth as the thing on the floor heaved and a black shadow spilled upward between jagged white ribs.

It was a ghost. This ghost was no Jessamine, or Jesse Blackthorn, who looked solid and human. There was an awful shimmer in the air around it, as if with his violent end a space had been torn in the world. It—he—was ragged at the edges, his face skull-pale in a nest of straggling brown hair. She could see the patterned wallpaper through his transparent body.

The ghost of Emmanuel Gast blinked watery blue eyes at her. “Why have you summoned me, fool?” it demanded, in a voice like the hiss of steam escaping from a pipe.

“I did not summon you,” said Lucie. “I had no idea you were even dead, until this very disgusting moment.” She glared.

“Why have you dragged me back to this place of agony?” Gast hissed. “What do you want, Shadowhunter?”

Lucie reached for the knob of the door behind her and rattled it, but it was stuck. She could faintly hear the voices of the others in the parlor, calling her name.

She took a deep breath, almost choking on the fetid air. Even though he was dead, Gast was still their only tenuous connection to the demons that had killed Barbara.

She drew herself up to her full height. “Did you summon the demons? The ones that have been attacking Nephilim in broad daylight?”

The ghost was silent. Lucie could see where its throat had been slit, its spine showing through the slashed hole in its neck. Whoever had murdered Emmanuel Gast had wanted to make very sure he was dead.

“Answer me!” Lucie cried.