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Dru could only stare. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You have influence over him,” said Nene, and Dru got the sense that Nene was speaking very carefully. “He changes his behavior around you. He does not want you to be made unhappy. I have seen it.”

Dru thought of the way Ash had spoken to Janus in his room, when she’d overheard their conversation. Of Janus saying, You’ve changed. “I really don’t know about that, Nene. If he didn’t want me to be unhappy…”

She’d been about to say, He’d let me go home, but she trailed off. Ash couldn’t take her home; he didn’t know a way back to the mortal world any more than she did, and letting her out into Faerie was pointless. She’d learned that tonight.

“The Queen and her Huntsman have a plan,” Nene went on, looking as if she’d tasted something foul. “Already they have begun to put it into play. The sealing of Faerie. The disappearance of the Shadowhunters. All that is part of it. And so is Ash.”

“Then—he’s the enemy, isn’t he?”

“I am not sure,” said Nene. “I know there is a place for him in their schemes; I have overheard as much. But does he know Janus’s true ambitions? Is he aware how carelessly they intend to make him a pawn, his mother and the Huntsman?”

“I think he doesn’t want to believe it,” Dru said. “But I also think he can’t quite look away from it. He isn’t the sort of person who lies to himself. He would—I don’t know how to explain it—he’d look down on doing that.”

“He has reason to distrust Janus,” Nene said. “I think he would tell you that, if you asked.”

“Well, I think he won’t,” Dru said. She could feel her hands trembling; she hated the way her body responded to his name. “Especially after tonight. He’s furious with me.”

Nene’s face softened. “Just a lovers’ quarrel, Dru. It happens all the time in Faerie.”

Dru held up her hands as if to stop Nene’s train of thought dead. “You have got the wrong end of the divining stick, my friend. We are not lovers.” Even the word made her blush, and the unwelcome memory of what had happened that night at the wall made it worse. “His power doesn’t work on me,” she said—there seemed no reason for Nene not to know, and it was a relief to tell someone. “I’ve never felt like I needed to be loyal to him. He figured it out.”

A look of surprise flitted over Nene’s face. “His power doesn’t work on you? I know there are a few unaffected, like the Queen, but why not you?”

Dru told her quickly about Uncle Arthur and the spell that had affected her memories. Nene shook her head. “Poor young Arthur Blackthorn,” she said. “I knew him and his brother well. I cannot blame him for mistrusting Faerie.” She cocked her head to the side. “How did Ash react when he discovered you were immune to his talent?”

Dru felt suddenly exhausted. “I don’t think he knows how to feel about it. But I bet he dislikes the idea that I can say no to him.”

Nene’s expression hardened. “Dru. No. He is desperate for that, for someone who can and will be truthful with him, even defy him. It is what he needs more than anything else. And if you ask to see him alone, he will see you. I am entirely sure of it.”

“And if I did see him alone,” Dru said slowly, “what would happen then?”

“Then you could ask for what you wanted from him,” said Nene. “And I think he would give it to you. He can be a force for good, Dru. And we require that.”

Dru started to shake her head again, then stopped. As much as she wanted to push away the idea that Ash cared about her, she could feel Nene’s desperation as her own. Somehow the Seelie Queen and Janus were the nexus of a darkness that was coming, a threat that had already placed many Shadowhunters in grave danger. And they would not stop there. Dru wasn’t sure what they ultimately wanted, but she was sure this was only a step on the way to getting it.

“What was he like as a child?” she asked, not looking at Nene. “Ash, I mean.”

Nene’s voice softened. “He was kind. Gentle. He always cared for those around him, especially the weak and the lonely. He knew when others were in pain, and sought to heal it. Now…”

Now he sees when others are in pain, and knows how to exploit it. But Dru didn’t say the words out loud; there was no point. Nene hadn’t lied—she was an ally. In the end, they wanted the same things. For Mark and Helen’s sake. For the sake of all Shadowhunters.

“All right,” Dru said. “Let’s say I do ask to see Ash alone. What do you want me to ask him for then?”

—

Kit took a swig from his mug of bitter coffee and glanced around Keleti train station. It felt deserted at this hour—nearly empty, with only a handful of travelers sitting on the dirty tile floor waiting for night trains. Some were asleep, their heads pillowed on their backpacks. The glow from the station’s overhead lights cast long shadows across the distant train platforms, a bright, sterile illumination that made the space feel hollow and abandoned.

Inside the little café, the low hum of conversation mingled with the clatter of dishes and the distant sounds of trains arriving and leaving. Kit looked across the table to where Ty sat with his chin in his hand, his backpack resting in his lap. Hyacinth, beside him, was glamoured to look like a mundane teenager in a crop top and faded jeans, though she’d kept the lavender hair. She was chewing gum, which apparently helped with the nausea caused by all the cold iron in the station.

Hyacinth had led a shell-shocked Kit and Ty out of the cemetery, through the darkened city, and back to the station. Surprising Kit, who had always thought of Hyacinth as slightly vague and dreamy, she’d arranged to have two other faeries retrieve Kit’s and Ty’s bags from their hotel, and presented them with another of the magical envelopes, this one containing the next address they needed to go to and two tickets for the night train from Budapest to Munich.

She’d also sat them both down in the small café in the lobby of the station, where a block-printed sign above their heads read Étterem and everything was slightly yellow. She’d ordered them hot coffee and some kind of stew that Kit had wolfed down. Ty had said he wasn’t hungry and was drinking mint tea. Kit couldn’t see Livvy: She was exhausted from making herself solid enough to get Hyacinth’s attention, and was resting in her incorporeal state.

Kit couldn’t stop glancing over at Ty across from him, the weight of their fight with the dullahans heavy on his mind. Despite a mix of energy and healing runes, Ty was still pale, his skin almost gray in the fluorescent light of the café. He’d unzipped his jacket, and Kit could see the sharpness of his collarbones under the neck of his shirt.

Most puzzling of all was Ty’s heron necklace.