Even with the war, the Shadow Market went on, though it was fragmentary. Like the mundanes with their ration cards, their limited supplies of food, of clothing, and even of bathwater, things here were in short supply. The old-book stalls had been picked through. Instead of hundreds of potions and powders, only a dozen or so graced the vendors’ tables. The sparkle and the fire were nothing compared to the flames that raged on the opposite bank or the machines that dropped death from the sky, so there seemed little point in putting on light shows. The children still ran about—the young werewolves, the street children and orphans who had been Turned in the dark corners of the blackout and now roamed, seeking nourishment and parental guidance. A small vampire, Turned far too young, trailed alongside Brother Zachariah, pulling on his cloak for fun. Zachariah did not disturb him. The child looked lonely and dirty, and if it pleased him to trail a Silent Brother, then Zachariah would allow it.

“What are you?” said the little boy.

A kind of Shadowhunter, Brother Zachariah replied.

“Did you come to kill us? I heard ’at’s what they do.”

No. That is not what we do. Where is your family?

“Gone,” the little boy said. “A bomb dropped on us, and my master came and got me.”

It had been all too easy to pluck these little ones out of the wreckage of a home, take them by the hand to some pitch-black alley, and Turn them. Demon activity too was at an all-time high. After all, who could tell whether that torn limb was from someone killed by a bomb or someone ripped apart by a demon? Did it make a difference? Mundanes had their own demonic ways.

A crowd of other vampire children ran past, and the little boy ran off with them. The sky roared, thick with the sound of planes. Brother Zachariah listened to the noise of the bombing with a musician’s ear. The bombs whistled when they dropped, but there was that strange punctuating silence as they neared the earth. Silences in music were as important as sound. In this case, the silences told so much of the story to come. Tonight, the bombs were falling on the other side of the river like rain—a thundering symphony with too many notes. Those bombs would be falling near the Institute, near St. Bart’s Hospital, where Tessa worked. Fear for her ran through Zachariah, cold as the river cutting across the city. In these empty days since Will’s death, emotion was a rare visitor for him, but when it came to Tessa, feeling always bloomed.

“Bad one tonight,” said a faerie woman with silver scaled skin who sold enchanted toy toads. They leaped about on her table, with protruding golden tongues. “Like a toad?”