Anna and Christopher went up to the rooms that had been set aside for the use of Sophie and Gideon’s children. James was there, sitting on his window seat, reading. Lucie was sitting at the desk, scribbling away. Tom was throwing a knife at the opposite wall.
Christopher greeted everyone and immediately sat down in the corner with a book. Anna dropped down next to Lucie.
“How’s Cordelia?” she asked.
“Oh, she’s wonderful! I was just writing to her quickly before Thomas helps me go over my Persian lesson.” Lucie was always writing to her future parabatai, Cordelia Carstairs. Lucie was always writing. Lucie could write in a room full of people talking, screaming, singing. Anna was sure that Lucie could probably write in the middle of battle. Anna approved of this highly—it was very good to see two girls so devoted to each other, even platonically. Women should value other women, even if society often did not.
Ariadne came into her mind again.
“What’s wrong, Anna?” James said.
He was looking at her curiously. Anna loved all her cousins, but she had a very soft spot for James. He had been a somewhat awkward young boy, gentle and quiet and bookish. He had grown up into a young man Anna could see was extraordinarily handsome, like his father. He had a soft fall of the Herondale black hair; from his mother, he had inherited his demonic trait—his inhuman golden eyes. Anna had always thought they were rather pretty, though Christopher had told her that James had been teased relentlessly at the Academy because of them. It was the teasing that prompted Matthew to get the explosives and Christopher to arrange for a wing of the building to blow up.
It was honorable to defend your friends, your parabatai. Anna was proud of them for doing it. She would have done the same. James had been such a shy, delightful little boy—it made Anna furious to think that he had been mocked. He was older now, given a bit more to brooding and staring into the distance, but still kind under it all.
“Nothing,” she said. “I just . . . need a new book to read.”
“A most sensible request,” James said, swinging his long legs off his reading perch. “What sort of book? Fortunately, Aunt Sophie and Uncle Gideon have a respectable collection. Adventure? History? Romance? Poetry?”
All the younger set were fearfully bookish. Anna put it down to Uncle Will and Aunt Tessa’s influence. They seldom let one leave the Institute without a book they felt one simply must read.
Now that they were talking about this, perhaps this would be useful in talking to Ariadne. She was a fiendish reader, after all.
“I’m training with someone new,” Anna said. “Her name is Ariadne. She does quite a lot of reading, so—”
“Ah! Ariadne. That’s a name from mythology. We could start you on a course of that. Would you like to begin with The Golden Bough, by Frazer? There’s a new edition of three volumes. Unless you want to start with the basics. There’s always Lemprière’s Bibliotheca Classica. . . .”
James flipped gracefully through the books on the wall. He was an accomplished fighter and excellent dancer. Perhaps it was these traits, combined with the fact that he was growing into his looks, that explained why he seemed to suddenly be so popular with girls. He couldn’t walk through a room of them without them sighing and giggling. Anna supposed she was pleased for him, or would be if he ever noticed it was happening.
He had soon plucked a dozen books from the shelf, passing one to Christopher almost as an afterthought. A silver bracelet flashed upon his wrist as he held his arm out—a love gift? Anna wondered. Perhaps one of the sighing gigglers had attracted his interest after all. Anna supposed she ought to be more charitable toward them—she felt herself on the verge of sighing and giggling over Ariadne at any moment.
The door flew open, and Matthew Fairchild entered the room and draped himself dramatically over the back of a chair. “Good afternoon, you wonderful bunch of villains. James, why are you clearing the shelves?”
“Anna asked me for something to read,” James said, surveying a table of contents with a furious eye. He set the book aside.
“Anna? Reading? What dark magic is this?”
“I am hardly an illiterate,” Anna said, throwing an apple at him. He caught it easily and smiled. Matthew was normally very fastidious. He and Anna often spoke of gentlemen’s fashion together, but today Anna noticed that his hair was a bit wild and one of the buttons on his waistcoat was undone. These were small things, to be sure, but on Matthew, they spoke of something larger.
“What is your interest?” Matthew asked.
“Is it a crime to want to become more literate?”
“Not at all,” Matthew said. “I love literature. In fact, I’ve found a marvelous place. It’s a salon, full of writers and poets. But it is a bit . . . disreputable.”
Anna cocked her head in interest.
“Here we go,” James said, bringing over a pile of a dozen or so books and setting it down with a heavy thump. “Do any of these appeal? Have a look and see. Of course, I can recommend others. Wait. No. Not these. Not these.”
He scooped the books away and returned to the shelves. James was clearly absorbed in his task. Christopher was happily reading his book, which had a horribly scientific title. Lucie and Thomas were at the desk, Thomas helping Lucie go over some phrases: Lucie was learning for Cordelia, and Tom liked languages, since he spoke Spanish with Uncle Gideon and Welsh with his cousins. Angel bless their sweet studious souls, none of them seemed likely to hear Anna and Matthew hatching a dark plot. Nevertheless, Matthew pitched his voice very low.
“Why don’t I come and get you at midnight,” Matthew said. “We can go together. I could use a companion who knows how to have a bit of fun. You might need a disguise, though. No reputable young lady walks the streets of London at midnight.”
“Oh,” Anna said. “I think I can manage something.”
* * *
Just before midnight, as promised, Anna heard a tapping at her bedroom window. Matthew Fairchild was there, dancing along the edge. Anna threw it open.
“My my!” he said approvingly. “Are those Christopher’s?”
Anna had dressed herself in her brother’s clothes. The sewing had helped a good deal.
“A disguise,” she said simply.
He laughed, spinning carelessly on the sill. She could see he had been drinking—his reflexes were slow, and he only caught himself a half second before tumbling back out to the ground.
“They suit you better than they suit him, but still . . . we need to get you something nicer than that. Here.”
He pulled the ascot from his neck and handed it to her.
“I insist,” he said. “I could never let a lady go out in inferior menswear.”
Anna felt herself exhaling slowly and smiling as she put on the tie. The two of them jumped from her window, landing noiselessly on the courtyard in front of the house.
“Where is this place?” Anna said.
“A nefarious corner of Soho,” he said with a smile.
“Soho!” Anna was delighted. “How did you find out about it?”
“Oh, just through my wanderings.”
“You do a lot of those.”
“I have a periphrastic soul.”
Matthew was more drunk than he had first appeared. He rolled back on his heels and spun around the occasional lamppost as they walked. He had been like this a lot in recent weeks—what was fun and light about Matthew had taken on an edge. On some level, she felt a bit of worry rising. But this was Matthew, and he did not do well under confinement. Perhaps the summer night had just gotten his spirits particularly high.
The house Matthew took Anna to was deep in the warren of Soho, off Brewer Street. It was painted black, with a green door.
“You’ll like it here,” Matthew said, smiling at Anna.
The door was opened by a tall, pale man in a maroon frock coat.
“Fairchild,” he said, looking at Matthew. “And . . .”
“Fairchild’s good friend,” Matthew replied.
Anna could feel the intelligence of the vampire’s gaze, as he took her in for a long time. He seemed intrigued, both by her and by Matthew, though his expression was unreadable.
At last he stepped aside and allowed them in.
“You see?” Matthew said. “No one can resist our company.”
The hall was utterly dark—the fanlight had been covered in a velvet drape. The only light came from candles. The house was decorated in a style that Anna thoroughly approved of—heavy green paper run through with gold, velvet curtains and furniture. It smelled of cigars and strange, tiny, rose-colored cigarettes and gin. The room was crowded with a mix of Downworlders and mundanes, all elaborately dressed.
Anna noticed many people taking in the sight of her in her men’s clothing and nodding appreciatively. The men seemed pleased or amused, the women either admiring or—interested. Quite a few raked Anna boldly with their eyes, their gazes clinging to the feminine body revealed by her fitted clothes. It was as if in casting off dresses she had cast off society’s expectation of a woman’s modesty and could allow herself to be admired, desired. Her soul soared with new confidence: she felt herself a gorgeous creature, neither a gentleman nor a lady. A gentlewoman, she thought, and winked at one of the only people she recognized: the werewolf Woolsey Scott, head of the Praetor Lupus. He wore a bottle-green smoking jacket and was puffing away on a hookah pipe while holding court for a cluster of fascinated mundanes.
“Of course,” Anna heard him say, “they had a difficult time getting my bathtub into one of the tree houses, but I would hardly leave it behind. One must always bring one’s own bathtub.”
“That’s Somebody Somebody Yeats over there,” Matthew said, indicating a tall, bespectacled man. “He read a new work the last time I was here.”
“And it was wonderful,” said a voice. It came from a woman sitting near where Matthew and Anna stood. She was a stunning warlock with the scaled skin of a snake, colored silver, almost opalescent. Her long green hair tumbled over her shoulders and was strung through with a fine gold mesh. She wore a red gown that clung to her frame. She tipped her head up elegantly toward Matthew and Anna.