“I’m not sure,” Cordelia said. “I heard you call out for me. It was as if I was pulled toward you—but all I could see was shadows, and then I knew you in the dark. That you were there. I lifted up Cortana so I could see, and I heard Belial’s voice.” Give yourself to me, be mine. I will let you sleep.

He glanced up at her; she was standing over him as he sat on the arm of one of the upholstered chairs. They had abandoned the study for the drawing room, where the furniture was still upright. Witchlight glowed from sconces above the mantel, softly illuminating the room.

“I was afraid,” Cordelia said, “after Magnus came back without you, that you would be trapped there.” “Afraid” seemed a pale word for it. She had been terrified. “Did you open a door to return? Like a Portal?”

His golden eyes searched her face. She moved the stele up his arm, to make a third Mark: the graze was already healing, closing into a scar. Dirt and blood stained his undershirt, and his cheekbone was scraped, his hair a wild explosion. She wondered if it was odd that in some ways she preferred this James—mess and blood and sweat and all—to the perfectly behaved gentleman with the Mask at the ready. “Perhaps Belial didn’t want me there,” he said, which was not quite an answer to the question. “He did say he never sent me any visions of the murders—never intended me to see them at all.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Yes,” said James, after a pause. “I know he’s a liar, but he usually wants me to think he’s all-powerful. I don’t see the advantage of lying to me in a way that makes it seem as if he made a mistake.”

“Then what does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” James said, though Cordelia suspected he had some guesses. “But I believe I do understand why he is so fearful of Cortana and of you. When we were in the shadow realm, Magnus said to him, ‘You have one. You only need three.’ ”

“One what?”

“One wound, I think,” said James. “From Cortana. It still hasn’t healed. It’s like the wound of the Fisher King; it bleeds and bleeds. I guessed that two more blows from the sword—mortal wounds, not scratches—could finish him. And when I mentioned that, Belial seemed terrified.”

Cordelia stepped back to examine her handiwork. James’s arm and shoulder were still bruised, but the cut was a thin white line now. She dropped the small towel she’d been holding into the copper bowl of pinkish water on the table and said, “But I don’t understand. They say nothing can kill a Prince of Hell, so how could Cortana do it? No matter the number of blows?”