“Certainly not,” said Lucie. “The Iron Sisters take their job very seriously, and even if they didn’t, you can’t make demonic objects in the Adamant Citadel. The wards won’t let you. I used to want to be an Iron Sister,” she added, as everyone looked at her in surprise, “until I found out how cold it gets in Iceland. Brr.”

“Could someone else have taken a stele and reversed its alliance?” James asked. “Made it demonic?”

“No,” said Magnus. “It was never a real stele. It was made the way you see it now, I’m sure of it. Very unlikely to have been Lilian Highsmith’s. I would agree—that object belongs to whoever has been committing these murders.”

“Could a demon shape adamas?” said James. “We believe a demon is connected to these murders somehow. Not perhaps that he is committing the murders, but that his—will—is somehow involved.”

“No idea which demon?” Magnus asked casually, selecting a biscuit from the platter.

James exchanged a quick look with the rest of the group. Matthew shrugged and nodded, speaking for them all: it was James’s secret to tell.

“Belial,” James said. “Somehow, he seems to have regained enough strength, even after his wound, to return to me in dreams. I have been having… visions, it seems, of the murders. I see them happen. I almost feel as if I’m the one—the one doing the killing.”

“You feel as if you’re the one…?” Magnus narrowed his cat’s eyes. “Would you care to elaborate?”

“James is definitely not committing the murders,” Cordelia said hotly. “Do you think we’d be foolish enough not to think of that? We tested him—he’s innocent.”

“They tied me to a bed,” James said, examining a piece of Turkish delight.

“Charming.” Magnus waved a hand in mock alarm. “There’s no need to tell me anything else about that part.”

“It has to be my connection to Belial that’s causing these visions,” James said. “There’s just no other reason I’d have them. They’re like the ones I’ve had in the past, when I was in his realm. My grandfather must be involved somehow.”

“Have you seen his world again?” Magnus asked quietly. “His realm?”

“Not quite.” James hesitated. “I fell into shadow once—the night before my wedding—but the realm didn’t resemble the one Cordelia and I destroyed.” He glanced at her. “It was no place I’d seen before. There was a huge, empty heath, and beyond that—ruins—the remains of towers and canals. There was a dark fortress with a gate—”

Magnus sat forward, his eyes alight. “Edom. The realm you saw is Edom.”

“Edom?” Matthew rubbed the back of his neck. “The name is familiar. Probably a class I largely slept through.”