Janus’s smile became less real and far more easy. “I can tell you’re perceptive. Perhaps in the future, if I needed your help—”

“Anything we can do!” the werewolves rushed to assure him. “Absolutely anything.”

Janus kept smiling. “Oh good.”

It was good to make allies—especially those who were stupid and eager to please.

Janus headed to what he had come for, the bright blue caravan where he had been assured that faeries and warlocks together could produce impenetrable glamours.

In Thule, there was no more warlock magic. There were no more warlocks at all. But there were demons crawling everywhere across the surface of that world, thick as flies on spoiled meat, and Sebastian could make the demons create illusions. Very occasionally, when Janus had pleased Sebastian, he would give him such a gift. Only sometimes, and it was never enough.

A faerie with mushrooms in her hair let him into the caravan. She seemed young, and she quailed when his eyes fell on her, but he paid the price she and the warlock demanded. It was exorbitant. He would have paid more.

The inside of the caravan was a wooden shell that had a jewel hidden within. The faeries had not been wrong when they said the combined magic could produce an extraordinary result. She was the most convincing illusion he had ever seen.

She was small, always so small. Her hair fell in red loops and swirls around her face and her shoulders. He had wanted to follow every loop with his finger, work out the precise shape of each curl, as he’d wanted to trace connections between every golden freckle. He’d wanted to know her completely.

“Clary,” he said.

Her name sounded foreign in his mouth. He hadn’t said it often, even in Thule, where whatever he felt had been buried under layers and layers of a weight like cement.

“Come here,” he said. He was surprised by the roughness in his own voice. His hands were shaking. It felt like a distant, even despicable weakness.

She moved toward him. He caught her by the wrists and pulled her roughly against his chest.

Holding her was a mistake. That was where the illusion began to collapse. He could feel her trembling, and Clary would not have done that. Clary was the bravest person he knew.

The illusions were never convincing enough. No illusion could love you back. No illusion would ever look at him the way Clary had once looked at him. And though he didn’t know why he needed that, he did. He had needed it before, and the severing of his bond with Sebastian had made it a thousand times worse.

Clary. Clary. Clary.

He fooled himself for another moment, pressing his lips against her forehead, then her cheek, then burying his face in the cloud of her bright hair.