Matthew laughed. “Come now. Any deadly hatreds you harbor in your bosom? Any ladies of your heart?”

Thomas flushed a deep red and dropped his knife. “No.”

Oscar bounded over to fetch the knife for Thomas, and Thomas stroked his floppy ears.

Matthew sauntered closer to the laboratory corner, though he knew it was rash.

“Is there anyone who has caught your eye?” he asked Christopher.

Christopher eyed Matthew with alarm. Matthew sighed and prepared himself to explain further.

“Is there a lady you find yourself thinking of more often than other ladies?” he asked. “Or a fellow,” he added tentatively.

Christopher’s face cleared. “Oh! Oh yes, I see. Yes, there is a lady.”

“Christopher!” Matthew exclaimed, delighted. “You sly dog! Do I know her?”

“No, I cannot think so,” said Christopher. “She is a mundane.”

“Christopher, you dark horse,” said Matthew. “What is her name?”

“Mrs.—”

“A married lady!” Matthew said, overwhelmed. “No, no. I beg your pardon. Please go on.”

“Mrs. Marie Curie,” said Christopher. “I believe her to be one of the preeminent scientists of the age. If you read her papers, Matthew, I believe you would be most interest—”

“Have you ever met this lady?” said Matthew in dangerous tones.

“No?” said Christopher, heedless of danger as he often was around irate teachers and naked flames.

Christopher had the audacity to look surprised when Matthew began to belabor him mightily about the head and face.

“Watch the test tubes!” cried Thomas. “There is a hole in the floor at the Academy that Professor Fell calls the Christopher Lightwood Chasm.”

“I suppose I hate some people,” offered James. “Augustus Pounceby. Lavinia Whitelaw. Alastair Carstairs.”

Matthew regarded his very own parabatai with deep approval.

“This is why we are chosen warrior partners, because we share such a perfect bond of sympathy. Come to me, Jamie, that we might share a manly embrace.”

He made incursions upon Jamie’s person. James thwacked him over the head with his book. It was a large book.

“Betrayed,” said Matthew, writhing prone upon the floor. “Is that why you insist on carrying about enormous tomes everywhere you go, that you might visit violence upon innocent persons? Done to death by my best friend—my heart’s brother—my own dear parabatai—”

He snagged James around the waist and brought him crashing to the floor for the second time that day. James hit Matthew with the book again, then subsided, leaning his shoulder against Matthew’s. They were both thoroughly rumpled, but Matthew did not mind being rumpled for a good cause.

Matthew jostled James, very thankful that he had brought up Alastair and provided Matthew an opening to tell his secret.

“Alastair is not so bad,” said Thomas unexpectedly from the sofa.

They all looked at him, and Tom curled up like an earwig under their scrutiny but persisted.

“I know what Alastair did to James was wrong,” Thomas said. “Alastair knows that very well too. That was why he was prickly whenever it was mentioned.”