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“Teakettle?” Jem suggested.

“Yes,” Kit said. “I would love you, but in a teakettle way. I would expect you to whistle all the time.”

Mina, who had not yet mastered whistling, frowned. “But would you still love me if I was a worm?”

“Hm. Yes. I would still love you, but in a worm way. At a distance.”

Mina waved her plastic cup, which was full of chocolate milk. Some of it splashed onto Kit’s arm. He didn’t mind. “Would you—”

“Mina, darling, that’s enough,” Tessa said. “Let Kit eat breakfast.”

“Breakfast is boring,” Mina said mournfully, and at that moment, the sound came. It fell like a knife, cutting apart the quiet peace in the kitchen.

BANG.

A hammering at the front door. Tessa, Jem, and Kit looked at each other in surprise.

“What would anyone be doing here this early?” Jem wondered aloud. “On a Saturday?”

“It would have to be an emergency,” Tessa said. She pushed her chair back, starting to get up. “I’ll go—”

Incipit. The word blazed behind Kit’s eyelids, and he shot to his feet. The sound came again, another blizzard of rattling bangs, and it was too late for him to explain. “No,” he said. “Let me get it.”

Jem twisted around in his chair. “Kit, don’t—”

But Kit was already running. Running through the big dining room with its massive table, the one they never used; cutting through the music room and into the foyer. The door was rattling on its hinges, as whoever it was outside banged away at it, and suddenly Kit wasn’t so much worried as angry. Only Shadowhunters could get past the wards, and even then, only those with benign intentions, but they were still frightening Kit’s family. He unbolted, unbarred, and undid the locks, and threw the door open.

Rain gusted in, blinding him for a moment. It really was unusually bad. He wiped at his eyes, blinked—and froze.

Standing on the front steps of Cirenworth, soaking wet, was Ty Blackthorn.

His jeans were drenched. His black shirt was glued to him like a second skin. His usually straight dark hair had turned curly with the wet, and stuck to his forehead in damp spirals.

All the sound in the world was suddenly sucked away. Kit knew that behind him, Jem was calling out for him, asking who was at the door; he knew the rain was hitting the ground like a dozen tiny hammer blows. He knew Ty was gasping, shivering with the cold. But he could hear none of it. He was staring at Ty, and Ty was staring back at him, and the look that passed between them was neither recognition nor surprise, but something sharper and more jagged than that.

“What,” Kit whispered—and with that, all the sound in the world came rushing back, even the pulse of blood in his ears—“what are you doing here?”

Ty wrapped his arms around himself. His lips were a pale lilac color, and his teeth were chattering, but his voice was steady when he answered. “I need your help,” he said. “Dru is missing.”

—

Dru came back to consciousness on the floor.

It was a hard, cold floor, made up of rough, irregular paving stones. She was lying face down, her chin scraping the ground, her limbs pulsing with pain. As she twisted herself around, she realized that her arms were tied behind her back, fastened at the wrists. The bindings were tight, pulling her shoulders back until they ached, and the delicate brooch pinning the waist of her shirt up was digging into her skin. Her legs, at least, were free, though the odd position she’d been lying in meant that as she stretched them out and began to move, they shrieked with cramping agony from having been folded under her for what might have been hours.

She turned over slowly, pushing against the pain. Now that she was on her side, she could see where she was. A big curving space, carved out of rock, and no windows. The only illumination came from the sickly phosphorescent moss growing on the walls. It looked like a massive room in a manor house, cold and ancient. There was a huge fireplace, big enough to roast a whole cow in, but there was no fire burning. The walls were adorned with dozens of stuffed animal heads, though where you’d expect to see deer and elk, there were the heads of mythical beasts: a manticore, a basilisk, and most grotesquely, a half-turned werewolf with a gray snout bursting from the features of a human face.

And there weren’t just beasts. There were the heads of faeries, too—shrunken and leathery, but Dru could still make out the pointed ears, the horns, the marks of nixies and pixies, brownies and goblins. Her only guess was that these were fey who had been executed by the Seelie Queen or perhaps defeated in battle. A reminder that as beautiful and elegant as faeries could seem, they were also brutal even to their own.

Bows, spears, slingshots, and other hunting weapons also hung on the walls. A table pushed up against the wall opposite the fireplace was covered with an alarming array of curved knives, bone saws, and flensing blades. All tools meant to skin, to slice, to gut and dissect. This was a hunter’s room, a place to bring dead prey and prepare it to be eaten or displayed. (Surely even faeries didn’t eat werewolves? Or manticores? Dru wasn’t certain, but her stomach twisted with nausea regardless.)

Clunk. The sound of metal striking something—bone? Flesh?—and then what Dru was sure was a muffled laugh. The noises were coming from the far end of the room, where it curved away into shadow.

Dru struggled to her feet. She moved slowly, trying to keep her booted footsteps soundless. She was still wearing what she’d been wearing at the club, but she could feel that her stele was missing from her boot. She wondered if they’d searched her pockets, taken her witchlight and dagger as well. She wished desperately for runes: Soundless, Clarity, Strength.

She retreated until her back hit the table. Her hands felt numb and tingly, but she scrabbled at the surface blindly. A sharp pain let her know she’d encountered the blade of a knife or a dagger; she curled her fingers under the hilt, pulling it toward her, inch by inch, until she closed her right hand around the handle.

She exhaled. Good. Now she had a weapon.