He wouldn’t be able to kill Jace easily and take his place by Clary’s side. They would all know. He knew none of their jokes, the way they interacted. He had barely been able to fool Clary for a few stolen moments in the dark. Even now, she suspected him, and later on, she might ask Jace why he’d been acting so strange…. Janus couldn’t bear to think of it. He could never fool them all in the light. Not yet.

He did not realize for some time that he was soaked to the skin, shaking with cold and rage. He hated them all. He hated Alec and Isabelle and Magnus and Simon. He hated and loved Clary in equal measure and it was like poison in his throat. For all these years he had been tortured and they had not noticed or cared or missed him.

He would show them what that darkness could be like, one day.

The woods and the gardens were full of memories, but so was their home. Jem and Tessa had put up pictures on the stone walls, black-and-white photographs carefully preserved: of Will, of James and Lucie, who were Mina’s half brother and half sister separated by a more than a century. Someday they could point out each face to Mina and tell her their names and that they would have loved her.

Memories were like love: wound and cure, both at once.

That night, they were all together in the nursery, reading Mina her bedtime story. Mina was in Tessa’s lap, gumming avidly at the edge of her rubber book. Tessa finished the story and looked down at Kit, who was lying on the carpet, propped up on his elbows.

“I transformed into your mother once,” Tessa told him in a low voice. “I know you never knew her.”

Kit stiffened but tried to pass it off casually, as he did most things.

“Yeah, I’m still absorbing the fact that I’m literally Rosemary’s baby,” he remarked.

“Read that book,” Tessa said with a faint smile.

“Saw that movie,” returned Kit.

“I have no idea what you two are talking about,” said Jem, as he usually did when they played Read that book/Saw that movie.

Later Tessa would give him the book, or Kit would cue up the movie on his laptop.