She moved cautiously over the ruined, winter-burned grounds. As always, Chiswick House seemed abandoned, only the whistle of the winter wind through the trees to accompany her. But she was determined to take no chances. If her guess about Jesse was even remotely close to the truth, then she had to be very careful indeed. She crossed the ruined garden, with the wry thought that she was becoming as familiar with the paths of the Chiswick grounds as she was with the streets of her own neighborhood. She wended her way past broken statuary and overgrown shrubbery until she arrived at the old garden shed.

She listened for several moments to reassure herself that no one had followed her. The scrape of bare branches against the slate walls of the shed jangled her nerves, but she pressed on and approached the door, which stood slightly ajar. She caught a bitter scent in the air—incense, perhaps, that Grace had been burning as part of some attempt to revive her brother.

Lucie slipped inside, and once her eyes adjusted, she saw Jesse’s body, just as she’d last seen it, laid out peacefully in the glass coffin. His eyes closed, his hands folded on his chest.

Still, she had to make sure. With trembling hands she did something she had never done before, and raised the hinged lid to the glass coffin.

The body before her was not Jesse, she told herself. Jesse was her ghost, a spirit, and not this physical remnant. It still felt like a strange kind of violation as she pulled back the lapels of Jesse’s white funeral jacket.

The broadcloth shirt beneath was spattered with blood.

Half holding her breath, Lucie began to unbutton the top of the shirt, peeling the cold fabric away, the gesture bizarrely intimate.

There, across the pale skin of his chest, was a Strength rune. On his left shoulder, Swiftness and Precision. Voyance on his left hand, though she knew it was not his dominant one. At the inner turn of his arm was the enkeli rune.

Lucie let the fabric slip from her fingers and stared at the black markings on Jesse’s pale, waxy skin. It was as she had feared.

The anchor.

The runes. Jesse had never had any runes. Now he had five. One for each murdered Shadowhunter: Amos Gladstone, Basil Pounceby, Filomena di Angelo, Lilian Highsmith, Elias Carstairs.

Numbly, she went to the far wall and took down the Blackthorn sword. Her steps slowed as she returned to the coffin. The lid was still open, and inside, Jesse lay still—peaceful, and utterly unaware. It was unfair. Horribly unfair. Jesse was innocent.

But those who had been murdered—they had been innocent too.

Lucie had to do it now, before she lost her nerve. She gritted her teeth and raised the sword, gripping the hilt with both hands, ready to swing it down straight and true, as her father had taught her.