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Dru felt a bolt of tension go through her. The words sounded almost dangerous. Maybe it was his voice, low and a little rough. “I’ve forgotten all the times we’ve met—”

“And a Memory rune will help you remember?”

“Maybe,” she said, slowly. “Memory runes aren’t really used for retrieving lost memories. More for studying. They help you to memorize details. So I thought I could try to memorize, you know, all this.” She made a gesture meant to encompass the whole Court, maybe all of Faerie. “I was hoping that this time, after I return to the mortal world, I won’t forget you. That if we ever meet again, it will not be as strangers.”

She wondered if she’d gone too far—the expression on his face was unreadable, blank. He won’t do it, Dru thought. He knows I’m playacting.

He drew the stele from his pocket. Her stele. “Perhaps it will be good practice.”

A small voice at the back of Dru’s head whispered that she should grab the stele and run. She knew where Clary was. She could get to her, put the stele in her hands—

Not before I was caught, she thought. In fact, the door to this room is locked, and I don’t have the keys. I wouldn’t even get that far.

The small voice grumbled. Ignoring it, Dru said, “Where do you want me?”

His eyes seemed to glow for a moment, like a cat’s. He stepped closer to her. Close enough that she could see the faint glimmer of the lighter threads in his silver-white hair. Close enough to feel the invisible walls that surrounded him.

“Turn around,” he said.

Dru didn’t want to turn her back on him, but saw little choice. She turned. She felt his hand at the back of her neck, quick and clever. His fingers found the top button of her tunic and unfastened it.

She heard his breath catch. Wondered if he saw the pattern of old Marks on her skin. When their power was used up, Marks vanished, leaving behind only a lacelike tracing of white lines. She wondered if he’d think the scars were ugly.

Another button, and another. All Dru’s awareness was focused on his hands. It was like preparing to be pricked by a needle; her skin felt super-sensitized, waiting for the sting she knew was coming. She wondered if she should tell Ash that runes put on you by someone else were more powerful than ones you applied yourself. Maybe not.

The last button slipped free. Her tunic fell open in the back, baring her skin to the cool air. Automatically, she reached up to catch the front of the tunic, holding it in place over her lacy bra.

His fingertips found the skin at the base of her neck. He was touching her lightly, so lightly that she shivered. She could sense goose bumps rising, following the trail of his touch. His fingers glided across her spine, coming to rest at the curve of her left shoulder blade. She could feel him just behind her, near enough that her senses were overwhelmed: by the heat of his body, the thrum of his breathing, the scent of leather and velvet and Faerie, green and dark.

“Hold still,” he murmured in her ear, and she felt her whole body shudder as the tip of the stele followed the course of his fingers. It burned, of course, but that was something of a relief. Pain was a sensation that felt safe, familiar. “I hope this means you’ll actually remember me next time.”

She could sense the drag of the stele’s point like a lit match dancing across her shoulder blade, feel his hand on her back, the heated press of his palm as he steadied himself. Time felt suspended.

The pain stopped. The rune was finished. Ash fastened the buttons of her tunic as briskly as if he’d done it a dozen times before and stepped back as Dru slowly turned to face him.

The stele was gone; she hadn’t seen him put it away. He gave her a sharply impersonal glance, like a Silent Brother inspecting a document. “It looked good,” he said. “Let me know if you remember anything.”

Dru tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. “Sometimes it takes time,” she said. “For a rune to work properly. Especially if it has to do with emotions. Grief, or mourning—”

“Right.” His gaze flicked across her, already bored. “You’ll let me know.”

The tone in his voice said that this was an order, not a request. He started to turn away, busy with an undone button on his cuff. He was leaving, Dru thought. Soon he’d be out the door, and who knew when she’d see him again? They were following his timetable, not hers.

“I don’t understand you,” she burst out.

He stopped, but didn’t turn around. “Hardly anyone does,” he said. “I am delightfully complicated.”

“You laugh and snap in the same sentence. You say you owe Janus but I think you know what he really is. You act like your courtiers are your best friends sometimes, and other times you obviously despise them. I can’t tell what’s real and what’s pretending—”

Ash turned around. His eyes held that strange luminous light in them again, that pale green like Arctic water. His words held the same wintry chill: “As if I am the only one pretending.”

Dru flinched—had she said too much, blown her cover?—but he had already turned away. And this time he did walk out of the room, without pausing to look behind him.

—

The restaurant Catarina had chosen—a café run by warlocks, not far from the Amsterdam Shadow Market—was just off a winding canal where brightly colored bicycles clung to the wrought iron railings like flowers to a vine. Outside, the wind blew fallen leaves past the windows and pedestrians hurried by, their chins tucked into their collars to ward off the chill.

Inside, the restaurant was a cozy pocket of warmth and pale gold light. Candles flickered on the tables, each one a high-backed booth, and the ceiling was crisscrossed with heavy wooden beams like an old farmhouse. The smell of butter and browning onions made Kit’s stomach growl. There was only so far any self-respecting teenage boy could get on a waffle and some coffee.