Page 24

He broke off as the sound of something splintering echoed through the room. Kit whirled to see that it was the window that faced the garden, now riven with cracks, as if a rock had smashed into it.

The temperature in the room dropped. Kit shivered; he knew this chill. It wasn’t the broken window.

“Livvy?” he said.

She appeared, evolving out of the space between Kit and Ty. She was more solid than she had been the last time Kit had seen her, when she’d been half transparent. She wore the white dress she always did, the last thing she’d ever worn, and her hair floated loosely around her, as if she were underwater.

Her eyes were huge in her pale face, wider than any living human’s: They looked like black wells, filled with panic. “You have to go,” she said. “Get somewhere safe. The wards have come down. And something’s coming.”

“The cellar,” Kit said immediately. The cellar was sunk deep underground and the door was reinforced steel. It was where they were all supposed to go in case of emergency.

Ty was already moving toward the door. Kit grabbed his backpack and jacket off the bed. They raced down the hallway together, their boots echoing off the old wooden floors.

As he ran, Kit felt the house begin to shake around him. The paintings rattled on the walls. A glass vase on a side table tumbled over, shattering on the floor underneath.

Something’s coming, Kit thought. And then, Incipit. Was this what the acorns had been warning him about? An attack on Cirenworth?

Halfway down the stairs, they ran into Jem, clearly on his way to retrieve them. Down in the foyer, Kit could see Tessa, clutching Mina tightly to her chest.

Jem turned and ran with Kit and Ty down the remaining steps. The house was shaking harder now, the chandelier in the foyer swinging back and forth with a sound like wind chimes. Tessa flattened herself against the wall, curving her body to protect Mina, who seemed stunned into silent crying, her dark head pressed to her mother’s shoulder.

Kit’s heart ached. Mina. They had reached the ground floor. Jem pulled out a stele and ran for the steel door embedded in the wall under the stairs as Ty seized his own backpack and swung his arms into the straps.

Livvy had vanished again, but Kit had no space in his mind to wonder where she’d gone. He was too terrified for his family.

“Is Mina all right?” he demanded, crossing the foyer.

Tessa raised her head and nodded. “Oh, Kit.” Her eyes were bright with tears. “I was so worried about you.”

Jem finished the Open rune he’d been inscribing on the door, and it swung open. Inside, Kit could see the familiar stone steps leading downward, illuminated by witchlight torches. Jem whipped around, his jaw set. “Let’s go,” he said. “I don’t think we have much time—”

He broke off, looking startled. His stele fell from his grip, striking the floor with a loud crack. Jem looked down at his hand—at first in puzzlement, then in shock.

His fingers had begun to glow. As Kit and the others stared, a searing light outlined Jem, flaring brighter and brighter. Kit could see Jem amid the incandescence, could make out the shock and confusion on his face—and then the light winked out.

Jem was gone, as though he’d never been there.

“Jem!” Tessa started toward her husband, but she, too, had begun to glow, to flare with that same horrible brightness. Kit lunged toward her, reaching for her, for Mina—

But his hands passed through empty space. The light had flared and taken Tessa and Mina with it.

Kit screamed. The sound tore out of him, scorching his throat. He felt something flutter around him, then a touch on his shoulder like the brush of a feather. Livvy, trying to comfort him. Ty was staring at the whole scene in horror, his hand at his weapons belt. But there was nothing to fight.

“Kit,” Ty whispered. He was looking down at his hands. They were gleaming, the light growing in brilliance as it had with the others.

Kit moved without knowing he was going to move, as if his body and brain had separated. In a few steps, he was close enough to Ty to grab him by the shoulders. He could feel Ty’s warmth, his solidity. For the moment, he was still here. Still alive and breathing.

“Don’t,” Kit said, his voice breaking. “Ty, hold on, fight it, stay, you have to fight it—”

The front door exploded inward. Splinters of wood flew through the air, and wind gusted in like the ocean rushing up the shore. Outside, Kit could see a shadow silhouetted against darkness. Black shadows fluttered around it, bat-like. The outlines of a hood and cloak.

“Kit, run!” Ty said, as the stranger stalked into the house. Ty had started to blur around the edges, the way some paintings, dropped in water, began to soften and fade at their borders. “Leave me behind—”

“I won’t.” Kit dug his fingers into Ty’s shoulders, holding him tighter, as if he could ground him, keep him here and complete.

“Oh, look, a noble-off,” said a familiar—and sarcastic—voice. “How typical for Shadowhunters.”

Stunned, Kit turned his head to see the stranger—who was not, after all, a stranger—pull back his hood to reveal a green-skinned face, and two twisting, pale horns.