“Did you know there’s a whole city underneath the city of Chattanooga? They had such terrible floods over the last century that finally they built over the original buildings. The old buildings are still there, underground, hollowed out like rotten teeth. And sure, everything is on higher ground now, but the floods still come. They wash away all the limestone, and what happens eventually? The foundations will crumble, and everything will be washed away in a deluge. There’s a metaphor there somewhere, little Shadowhunters. You build and you struggle and you fight, but the darkness and the abyss will come one day in a great tide and sweep away everything that you love.”

We didn’t have time to tour Chattanooga, Brother Zachariah said. We’re here for the adamas.

“The adamas! Of course!” Belial said. “You people kept such a tight grasp on the stuff.”

“You have it?” Sister Emilia said. “I thought it was death to demons, just the touch.”

“Your ordinary sort will just explode, yes,” Belial said. “But I am a Prince of Hell. Made of sterner stuff.”

Greater Demons can handle adamas, Brother Zachariah said. Though my understanding is that it is agonizing to them.

“To-may-to of agony, to-mah-to of ah-gony,” Belial said. His reflections in the various mirrors wept tears of blood. “Do you know what causes us pain? The one who made us has turned his face from us. We are not allowed before the throne. But adamas, that’s angelic stuff. When we touch it, the pain of our absence from the divine is indescribable. And yet it’s the closest we ever get to being in its presence. So we touch adamas, and we feel the absence of our creator, and in that absence we feel the smallest spark of what we once were. Oh, it’s the most wonderful thing you can imagine, that pain.”

Brother Zachariah said, And God said, “I shall not retain Belial within my heart.”

A sly, wounded look came over Belial’s face. “Of course you, too, my dear Brother Zachariah, have been cut off from the ones you love. We understand each other.” And then he said something in a language that Sister Emilia did not recognize, almost spitting out the awful, hissing syllables.

“What is he saying?” she said. She thought that the room seemed to be growing hotter. The mirrors were blazing brighter.

He’s speaking Abyssal, Brother Zachariah said calmly. Nothing of any interest.

“He’s doing something,” Sister Emilia hissed. “We have to stop him. Something is happening.”

In all the mirrors, Belial was swelling up, the suit of skin bursting like the skin of a sausage. The mirror versions of Sister Emilia and Brother Zachariah were dwindling, shrinking and blackening as if scorched by the heat of Belial.

Knock, knock, Brother Zachariah said.

“What?” Sister Emilia said.