She looked up from the pillow.

“I don’t have to tell you, do I?” she asked. “What kind of place it was, where women were sold, and men came and went?”

“Lily,” Alec breathed, in horror.

Lily shook her black-and-pink head defiantly. “They called it the House of Eternal Pearl because—some men want women to be young and beautiful forever. Pearls are created from a center of dirt that can’t be washed away. In the cellar without windows, in the heart of that house, were chained women. Those women were cold and lovely forever. They would never age and would do anything for blood. They were for the richest men, they fetched the highest prices, and they had to be fed. My mother grew too old, so they fed her to the vampires. And that night, I crept down and I made a deal with one of them. I promised if she Turned me, I’d free us all. She kept her side of the bargain, but I didn’t keep mine.” Lily studied the toes of her pointed boots. “I woke up and killed a lot of people. I don’t mean that I drank from somebody, though I did that, too. I burned the place to the ground. Nobody got out, not the men, not the women. Nobody but me. I didn’t care about anybody but myself.”

Alec moved his chair closer to her, but Lily drew her legs up onto the bed, making herself as small as possible.

“Nobody knows all that,” she said. “A few people know a little. Magnus knows I wasn’t made in the 1920s, but he could tell that I didn’t want to say. He never asked for any of my secrets.”

“No,” said Alec. “He wouldn’t.”

Magnus knew all about painful secrets. Alec had learned.

“Raphael bribed somebody to find out,” said Lily. “I don’t know who, or how much he paid. He could have asked me, but he wasn’t like that. I only knew that he knew because he was sweet to me for a few nights. In his way. We never talked about it. I’ve never told anybody. Not until you.”

“I won’t tell anybody,” Alec promised.

The corner of Lily’s mouth lifted. “I know you won’t, Alec.”

Some of the tension went out of her thin shoulders.

“I told you so you’d understand what happened next,” she said. “I couldn’t stay in Hong Kong. I came to London, I think it was 1903, and I met Shadowhunters for the first time.”

“Shadowhunters!” said Alec.

He understood why Downworlders said the word with fear sometimes. Already he couldn’t bear what had happened to Lily. He didn’t want to hear about Shadowhunters doing anything worse to his friend.

But Lily was smiling now, just a little. “I noticed one in particular, a girl with hair the color of blood in shadows. I barely knew what Shadowhunters were, but she was brave and kind. She protected people. Her name was Cordelia Carstairs. I asked around about Shadowhunters. I heard about a faerie woman with a grudge against all Shadowhunters, particularly against one family. We saw her at the Shadow Market tonight. Tell Jem to ask the woman with dandelion hair about the Herondales. She knows something.”