James turned her loose with a groan. He caught up Cortana, pressing the hilt into her hand. Her fingers closed automatically around the grip. “I know what Belial wants now. I promise, there’s nothing you can do—”

Her hand tightened on Cortana. “Only if you come back with me,” she said stubbornly. The sound came again; it was not thunder, but it seemed to echo through the earth.

“I can’t,” he said. The wind from the desert had risen, blowing his black-silk hair across his forehead. “I must destroy it. It is the only way to end this.” He touched her face. “Go back, my Daisy. Tell Matthew—”

A roar split the night, shaking the earth beneath them. Cordelia gasped as the dunes all around them suddenly blew apart. Sand exploded upward, blotting out the stars; the earth broke open, and something clawed its way free, roaring like thunder.

Cordelia raised her hand to cover her face. When she lowered it, her skin and hair gritty with sand, she blinked and stared. Where before there had been empty desert, the Mandikhor demon, three times the size it had appeared on the bridge, loomed above her and James, its bulk dividing the sky.

The Consul’s mansion in Grosvenor Square had been built in the style of Georgian times, pale stucco swathing brick to create a pillared facade reminiscent of ancient Rome. It was a big house: the tops of trees brushed against the windows on the fourth floor. For Thomas, it had been a place he had played with his friends since he was very young, long devoid of the ability to impress or alarm.

Or so he’d thought. As he descended from the carriage and began to climb the broad steps to the front door, anxiety settled in the pit of his stomach. He and Lucie had broken every rule in the Codex, and now he had fled straight to the Consul’s house. He must be mad.

He thought of James, of Lucie and Matthew. Of Cordelia. None of them would have a moment’s hesitation about walking straight up to the front door. He thought of Christopher, dying in the Silent City. Alone in the darkness, without his friends, the poison burning through his veins. Christopher, Thomas’s cousin, and the brother of his heart.

Thomas bolted up the stairs and hammered at the front door. “Charles!” he called. “Charles, it’s Thomas Lightwood, let me in!”

As if Charles had been waiting by the entryway, the door opened immediately.

Charles wore a crisp black suit, his red hair slicked back. Thomas felt a mix of hurt and anger, as he always did in Charles’s presence these days. Once Charles had only been Matthew’s annoying older brother, rarely thought about. Now Thomas saw the way Alastair looked at Charles, and felt a dull pain.