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Looks of horror flicked across each face. Julian rose to his feet, bracing his hands on the back of the chair he’d been sitting on. His voice was rough and gritty when he spoke, as if exhaustion had worn away at it. “But Mina’s just a baby,” he said. “We assumed they took Clary for a reason, Dru was collateral damage, but why Mina? Why Jem and Tessa—”

“Maybe they were after Kit,” said Jace. His dark gold eyes burned with a low, furious light. “He is a descendant of the First Heir.”

“Which is why they had Cirenworth warded up like it was the Adamant Citadel,” said Isabelle. “If whoever did this could get through those wards—”

“They can get into Institutes,” said Julian flatly. “They could get into the Scholomance. Helen and Tavvy and Ty could be—”

He broke off, but not because he had stopped speaking. His voice had thinned out, like the note of a piano dying. Fear cut through Magnus like a blade as Julian was enveloped by a searing light—and vanished.

And he was not alone. Before the others could move toward Julian, they, too, began to flare up with that unearthly glow: The map Jace had been holding fluttered to the ground as he winked out of existence. Magnus ran toward Alec, even as Emma and Simon disappeared in flashes of brilliance, Isabelle and Thais following them. In less than a few seconds, they had all vanished.

Magnus saw Alec turn toward him—he was already luminescent, but his blue eyes were wide and aware of what was happening. He reached out for Magnus as the warlock reached out for him, but Magnus’s hand closed on nothing. The Shadowhunters had disappeared.

6

Feast of Offerings

The train to Amsterdam left from St. Pancras Station. Kit and Ty arrived with only a few minutes to spare and had to run to catch it.

At least Ragnor’s credit card had sprung for first class—they had their own compartment to themselves, two plushy red bench seats facing each other, closed off from the corridor by a sliding glass door. They divested themselves of their backpacks and sat down just as the train started to move.

Kit slid over to the window and watched the drizzle streak across the glass. It made London seem grim and drab, almost Dickensian. Buildings slipped by in smudges of gray, bisected by wet black roads. The trees were bursting into autumn shades, but under the heavy clouds they looked limp and colorless. Kit felt a pang—Tessa loved Dickens, and had bought him a copy of Great Expectations at Hatchards.

Across from him, Ty had huddled into his jacket, his sleeves pulled down over his hands. He hadn’t zipped it all the way up, and at his throat, Kit could see a vee of T-shirt, soaked with rain.

He cleared his throat. “Didn’t you bring anything warmer than that?” he said, and immediately told himself to be less crabby, but Ty didn’t seem bothered by the question. He just shook his head, the damp curling the ends of his hair.

“My backpack fell in a puddle. Everything’s wet right now.” He frowned. “I’m pretty sure there are other sweaters and a jacket in there. I packed in a hurry. And Irene kept trying to climb into my bag to keep me from leaving.”

“Who’s Irene?” Kit was unable to prevent himself from asking. He couldn’t picture Ty with a girlfriend. (Especially one so weird, she’d tried to climb into his backpack.) At the same time, he couldn’t picture Ty with a boyfriend either, but there was no reason he wouldn’t have one. Ty managed to be smart, adorable, and hot at the same time, and Kit couldn’t possibly be the only person who’d ever noticed.

“Irene’s my pet,” said Ty. “She’s a lynx. My friend is looking after her while I’m gone.”

Of course. Kit hadn’t forgotten Ty’s love of animals, but still. Relief made him feel generous. He dug around in his backpack, eventually producing an oatmeal-colored sweater. He tossed it to Ty, who caught it, looking surprised. “Wear it. It’ll give your jacket a chance to dry.”

Kit glanced back at the window, but it was nearly entirely dark outside now. Sundown came early in the fall here in England. The window reflected the lighted compartment back at him, where Ty was unzipping his jacket and wringing out his wet shirt. When they were fifteen, he would have been able to see Ty’s sharp shoulder blades through the cotton of his shirt; now, he couldn’t. Lean muscle had covered the bones. Apparently Ty had kept up his training at the Scholomance.

The glass of the window had started to fog up. Kit rubbed a clear spot into it with his sleeve. The dim shadows of farms and fields rushed by, and a faint moon made itself known between dark clouds. It looked like the countryside around Cirenworth.

It was almost impossible to believe he had begun his day with breakfast in the familiar kitchen at Cirenworth, and now, here he was, haring off to Amsterdam on a bizarre quest with someone he’d thought he would never see again. He wondered if it was all just as strange to Ty, but when he glanced over at Ty, he saw that the other boy was asleep, hunched up inside the thick sweater as though he were trying to cocoon himself.

Kit felt a sharp pain at his heart, as if it had been pricked with a pin. Ty looked so immensely vulnerable, with his head resting on his hand, his long lashes painting his cheeks with thin lines. His mouth slightly curved, like he was remembering something interesting.

“Don’t wake him up,” said a light voice. Kit nearly jumped out of his skin. He turned to see Livvy, half transparent, sitting on the bench seat next to Ty. “He’s hardly slept since yesterday.”

“I wasn’t going to,” said Kit. He glanced at her more closely. She’d been vivacious today, almost lively, but now that Ty was asleep, she seemed far more like the phantom girl she’d been when Ty first raised her. More distant, more removed. Which was also the way she’d always been when she visited Kit at Cirenworth. Clearly she acted one way when Ty could see her, and another when he could not.

“Could you, ah, firm up a bit?” Kit asked. “It’s unnerving to be able to see through you.”

Livvy sighed. “The living. So sensitive.”

But she slowly came into sharper focus, the color of her eyes darkening, her skin becoming opaque. Now Kit could see the gold chain around her neck with its shimmering locket—the ghost version of the real locket that Ty wore, tucked down under his collar.

“I was worried you were going to refuse to travel with him,” Livvy said. “I’m glad to see you’re getting less stubborn in your old age.”

Nettled, Kit said, “Well, Ty wouldn’t have been my first choice. But Ragnor said I couldn’t go alone.”

“He also offered to find someone else to go with you.”