“Don’t try to change the subject, Matthew.” Charlotte was clearly struggling to stay calm. “We weren’t talking about Charles. We were talking about you—”

James could stand it no more; he cleared his throat and took a few steps into the room. Matthew made a show of sitting up in surprise. “Look who’s here, Mother—James has come for a visit.”

Charlotte gave James a strained smile. “Hello, darling.”

“Mother and I were just discussing why your parents have had to hurry off to France.”

“Don’t let me interrupt.” James made a face at Matthew in response to his glare; he felt a parabatai’s duties ended where arguments with one’s mother began. “I thought I would say hello before I go down to the lab to see what Christopher is up to.”

Matthew collapsed back onto the cushions. James could hear his voice, and Charlotte’s, too, rising as he descended the stone spiral staircase to the cellar. It had been dubbed “the Dungeon” when Henry first took it over as a place to conduct his experiments many years earlier. James was struck, as always, by a vague smell of rotten eggs emanating from the collection of stoppered tubes, sample jars, and labeled boxes.

The lab was brightly lit with witchlight, but Henry’s workbench was empty save for a neat stack of notes. In the fireplace, which had long ago stopped working, was propped a straw dummy covered in stains and tears: the victim of countless past experiments.

Christopher’s corner was piled with its usual research in progress and piles of books with scrawls in the margins. An alabaster statue of Raziel, upon whose nose someone had placed a pair of spectacles, looked on benignly from the mantel as Thomas, seated on a stool beside Christopher, examined something in his hands.

As James drew closer, he saw that the object Thomas held was a nickel-plated handgun. Shadowhunters couldn’t use firearms; weapons had to be runed to be any use against demons, but runes also prevented gunpowder from igniting. Christopher had been long convinced that there must be some way to fix this problem, and this particular gun had been in the lab for some time; the plating was covered in runes. Christopher had never been able to make it work.

“Hullo, James,” Christopher said brightly. “You’re just in time.”

“What’s the idea, Kit?” James asked. “Have you made a breakthrough?”