Grace was reminded of the time he had given her a ride home from a picnic last summer during the demon attacks. He’d told her then about his love of science without being the least bit condescending, as her male admirers often were, or self-important in the way Charles always was. Christopher treated her as an equal whose enthusiasm for science was not only similar to his own but unsurprising.

“What were you working on when I came in?” she asked, truly curious, as he concluded the tour of the shelves and bins crammed with neatly labeled specimens and ingredients.

Christopher led her back to the stele and handed her a magnifying lens so that she could view the designs more closely. They were very odd—not quite the runes she was used to seeing on the skin of Shadowhunters, but not entirely unlike them either.

“It’s not a real stele at all,” he said. “I’ve been calling it a pithos, because it turns into a sort of box, too. I could try to melt down the material, see if it’s really adamas, but the problem is that once you melt something down, you can’t put it back the way it was.”

“I suppose not,” she said. “May I handle it?”

He passed it to her. Grace felt its weight in her hands, not quite sure what she was looking for. If she were an ordinary Shadowhunter, she would have handled plenty of steles, but Tatiana had always disapproved of her studying or training.

Christopher blinked his unusual violet eyes. “Just because it looks like a stele doesn’t mean anything—especially if its purpose was meant to be disguised for some reason.”

“Hold out your arm,” Grace said impulsively.

Christopher pushed up his shirtsleeve, revealing a Mark on his inside left forearm. Craft, maybe? Or Technique? “Go ahead if you like,” he said. “Draw something.”

She touched the tip of the pithos to his skin and hesitated, suddenly unsure of herself. She momentarily wished she had used her powers on him; she was sorely in need of the confidence they would bring her. Slowly and awkwardly, she drew the enkeli rune, the rune most Shadowhunters learned to draw first. Angelic power.

To her amazement, the moment it was finished, it disappeared from Christopher’s arm.

“Odd, isn’t it?” Christopher examined his arm; he’d clearly tried this already. “You draw a rune and it vanishes.”

“This Creation rune here on your arm,” she said. “Are you terribly fond of it?”

“No, not really—”

Grace took the pithos and, with the tip, traced the Creation rune on Christopher’s arm. He watched her with interest, and then some surprise as the Creation rune shimmered—and vanished.

Christopher’s eyebrows shot up into his hair. “What ho,” he said, sounding pleased. “Try to draw it on me again now.”