Lucie sprang off the bed, brushing down her dress. She hadn’t even had a chance to change clothes, and the hem of her skirt was still damp. “Stay, then, if you must.”

She stood in the middle of her room and closed her eyes, then slowed her breath until she could count several heartbeats on every inhale and exhale. This was a process she had worked out for those times when she was having trouble focusing on her writing, but she’d found that it was useful for all sorts of things. It was what she’d done in the warehouse when she’d needed to reach Filomena, to summon her out of the shadows and air.…

She visualized a great darkness spreading around her, a darkness inhabited by points of light, scintillating like stars. This, she told herself, was the vast world of the dead. Somewhere, among these glimmering memories of what once was life, he was there.

Emmanuel Gast.

She felt a fluttering, as she had felt on a few occasions when she had tried to command the souls of animals. Gast’s spirit was there—she felt it—but it did not want to come forth. She drew on him, feeling his soul’s reluctance like the drag of a sleigh rail on a patch of earth.

Then, suddenly, it came free.

She gasped and opened her eyes. Gast’s ghost hovered before her, glowering. The last time Lucie had encountered his ghost, he had borne the marks of his violent death—a slit throat and blood-soaked clothes. Now he seemed intact, though around him thrummed a violent tear in the world, a shimmer of darkness that vanished if looked at directly.

“I know you,” Gast said. Dank hair straggled about his face, his rows of teeth showing in a scowl. “The girl in my flat. The one with the power to command the dead.”

Jessamine shrank back, appalled. “Lucie, what is he—”

Oh no. Lucie had not expected Gast to spill the beans so quickly, or so thoroughly. She shook her head at Jessamine, as if to say that Gast didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Emmanuel Gast,” she said. “I summoned you because I need to know something about a Shadowhunter named Jesse Blackthorn. Do you remember him?”

Gast’s mouth contorted in a sneer. “Yes, I remember him. Tatiana’s whelp.”

Lucie felt her heart skip a beat. “You did have something to do with what happened to him, then.”

Jessamine made an uneasy noise. After a long pause, Gast said, “How would you know anything about that, Shadowhunter?”

“Just tell me what you know,” Lucie said. “I won’t ask you twice.”

Gast crossed his arms and looked down his nose at her. “I suppose,” he said finally, “it matters very little now.”

“I already know about the protection spells,” prompted Lucie.