“If Filomena returned as a ghost to tell us what she knew about her murder,” said Thomas, “isn’t it a bit odd she didn’t really tell us very much?” He looked at Cordelia apologetically. “What she said in Italian—”

Cordelia froze. She could hear Filomena’s eerie voice in her mind. “She spoke about how I stabbed Belial.” She tried to keep her voice steady. “She wanted to know why, if I did that, I couldn’t help her. She asked why I didn’t save her.”

She did not mention Cortana. She couldn’t bear to. What if Filomena had been wrong? What if she was not a heroine, not the true bearer of Cortana? What if the sword had decided she didn’t deserve it?

Cordelia looked down at her hands. “I failed her.”

There was a murmur of dissenting voices; she felt a hand brush her arm. She knew it was James, without having to look. “Daisy,” he said. “We are Nephilim, not angels themselves. We cannot be where we do not know we are needed. We cannot know all things.”

“I, for instance,” said Matthew, “know very little.”

“And I do not know why I am seeing these deaths in dreams.” James set down his cup. “There is some reason I am connected to all this. Though I could quite understand if none of you wanted to be involved.”

“I believe the spirit of our organization is that we do want to be involved,” said Matthew, “when it comes to each other.”

“That is why we should be looking into oneiromancy, the study of dreams,” said Christopher brightly. “I have brought quite a few books on the topic, to be distributed among us.”

“Do any of them have love scenes?” inquired Lucie. “I’ve been working on mine.”

“If they do, I am sure they are quite disturbing,” said James.

“These books are very interesting,” said Christopher sternly. “There are stories of necromancers who have traveled in dreams, even killed and collected death energy in dreams.”

“What exactly do you mean when you say ‘death energy’?” Lucie asked. If Cordelia wasn’t mistaken, she looked a little pale. “You mean, what necromancers use to raise the dead?”

“Exactly that,” said Christopher. “There are ways to raise the dead using a catalyst—an object imbued with collected power by a warlock—but most involve using the life force released when someone dies to power a corpse’s rising.”

“Well, if the killer were a Shadowhunter, he or she could have no use for death energy,” said Matthew, nibbling the edge of a pastry. “Unless they were in cahoots with a warlock, I suppose—”

“Oh, bother,” said Thomas, rising to his feet and brushing off his waistcoat. “I promised to get home by noon. My parents are fussing, and they keep threatening to ask Charlotte to strike me off the patrol lists if I don’t sign up for a partner.”