Cordelia hadn’t realized James was there. She turned and saw him standing just behind her.

The sight of him startled her. Years ago, he’d had the scalding fever: she was reminded of the way he’d looked then, pale and sick. “My stele,” he said roughly. “Inside my breast pocket. Barbara needs a healing rune.”

For a moment Cordelia wondered why he couldn’t fetch it himself, but his hands were clenched at his sides, hard as stones. She reached out and fumbled nervously at his chest. Silk and cloth under her hand, and the beat of his heart. She seized hold of the slim, pen-shaped object in his pocket and held it out to Thomas, who took it with a look of surprised thanks. She hadn’t really looked at Thomas before—he had bright hazel eyes, like his mother’s, framed by thick brown lashes.

“James.” Lucie had slipped between James and Cordelia and was tugging at her brother’s sleeve. “Jamie. Did you—”

He shook his head. “Not now, Luce.”

Lucie looked worried. The three of them watched in a silent group as Thomas finished the healing rune on his sister’s arm, and Barbara exclaimed again that she was just fine and had only had a dizzy spell. “I forgot to eat today,” she said to her mother, as Sophie put her arm around her. “That’s all it is.”

“Nevertheless, we had better get you home,” Sophie said, glancing around. “Will—can you have the carriage brought around?”

The crowd had begun to scatter; clearly there was nothing more of interest to see here. The Lightwood family were headed to the door, Barbara on Thomas’s arm, when they paused. A pigeon-chested man with a black handlebar mustache had rushed up to Gideon and was speaking to him excitedly.

“What’s the Inquisitor saying to Uncle Gideon?” Lucie asked curiously. James and Matthew only shook their heads. After a few moments, Gideon nodded and followed the man—the Inquisitor, Cordelia supposed—to where Charles stood speaking to Grace Blackthorn. Her face was turned up to his, her eyes bright and interested. Cordelia remembered all the lessons her mother had given her in how to appear interested in conversation at social events: Grace seemed to have already absorbed them all after only being in society for a short time.

Charles turned reluctantly away from Grace and fell into discussion with Gideon Lightwood. The Inquisitor was moving through the crowd, stopping to speak to several Shadowhunters as he went. Most seemed to be about Charles’s age: Cordelia guessed he was somewhere in his twenties.

“Looks like the party’s over,” said Alastair, appearing out of the crowd holding a cigar. He was gesturing with it, though Cordelia knew that if he ever started puffing tobacco, Sona would murder him. “Apparently there was a Shax demon attack in Seven Dials.”

“A demon attack?” James said, with some surprise. “On mundanes?”