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Within the glass, Kit saw a clear image of Dru. She was wearing an unbelievable dress, clearly of Faerie design. It seemed to have been sewn together from a thousand rose petals. Her hair, black waves streaked with dark blue, tumbled to her shoulders, and her lips were painted deep red. Her eyes, that familiar Blackthorn blue green, were searching for something—as if she were trying to find Ty as hard as he was trying to find her.

“She’s alive,” Ty whispered. “Dru…”

His breath fogged the glass. For a moment, Dru turned toward his voice. Her eyes fixed on them, her lips parting in surprise—

And she was gone as the surface of the mirror wavered and went dark. Ty sucked in a sharp breath, as if he’d been punched, his shoulders tightening.

Hyacinth took the mirror from him, shaking her head at the sight of its black surface. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It only seems to work in short bursts these days. After this, it’ll probably need the whole night before it wakes up again.” She rose to her feet, looking at Ty in concern. “I’ll give you two a moment alone,” she added, and stepped out of the booth, letting the velvet curtain fall closed behind her.

What do I say? Kit thought; every word of comfort he could imagine felt clumsy and awkward in his mouth. He had no chance to speak, though—Livvy dropped down from where she’d been drifting, near the roof, as light as a white feather. She wrapped her arms around Ty from behind, holding him, her presence stirring his hair.

“Ty-Ty,” she said, and there was so much love in her voice that Kit had to look away. “Don’t be sad. She’s alive, Ty. Now you know. Now it’s for sure. Dru is alive in Faerie.”

Thais

Thais was in the middle of a dream in which her body kept dissolving and vanishing into nothing. She tried to hold herself together somehow but it was impossible, as if she were made of smoke. Soon, she knew, she would be gone entirely from the world, as though she had never existed at all.

She gasped as she was shaken awake, and rolled over on her lumpy mattress to see a dark figure looming over her. It took a few blinks before her eyes focused. “Jaime,” she said. He was rumpled and sleep mussed, his dark hair standing up in little spikes. She was struck by a sudden, absurd urge to push his hair back out of his eyes. They were nice eyes, dark and sparkling. But there was an urgency in them now that made her uneasy.

“Jaime,” she said again, pushing herself up into a sitting position. She felt cramped and itchy, probably from sleeping in her borrowed clothes: a thin sweater and jeans that likely had belonged to Emma. “Is something wrong?”

“Not exactly.” He sat down on the edge of her mattress, which put them at eye level. “I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking.”

“Well, no one told you to do that,” said Thais. He smiled. He had a warm smile, the kind that always reached his eyes.

“When you disappeared from New York,” Jaime said slowly, “you told me you’d woken up hallucinating. And then, when Manuel brought you here, you were sick until he gave you some sort of potion.”

Thais remembered shivering in the bed, Manuel jamming the lip of a glass between her teeth. She shuddered. “Yes…?”

“I think you were in the lake,” he said. “Lake Lyn. We all know the water is poisonous, you can’t swim in it. And once you come out, you wind up hallucinating and sick until you get an antidote.”

“In the lake? But wouldn’t I have drowned?”

He tugged at the neck of his white T-shirt, which almost glowed in the dim light. “Think about it. Why would the Cohort have brought all these Shadowhunters here? Zara said they were trapped in Idris, not dead. I know this sounds crazy, but maybe they’re trapped in the lake—and you were trapped there too.”

“Zara did specifically say that they were being prepared for a ritual,” Thais mused. “Remember? ‘When the ritual is performed here in Alicante, the power of every Shadowhunter who has denied the Cohort will be poured into our bodies.’ You think the lake might have something to do with the ritual?”

“Yes. I think the others are being held in the lake somehow,” Jaime said. His shirtsleeves were riding up, showing his tattoos. Dru had told Thais about them: It was unusual for a Shadowhunter to have tattoos as well as Marks. She liked the way they looked on his brown skin, though, long loops of black script that made her wish she spoke Spanish. La sangre sin fuego hierve. “They’re being preserved. Probably for whatever this ritual is.”

“And it explains why we couldn’t Track them past the hills,” said Thais. “You can’t Track over water.”

“Exactly,” Jaime said, clearly pleased at her quickness. “Those boats at the edge of the lake—the Cohort must have used them to get the bodies into the lake in the first place. We need to take one out and see if we’re right.”

“Absolutely,” Thais agreed, and for a moment, their eyes met in mutual excitement. Finally they had a plan. Thais almost wanted to reach out and hug Jaime, but she held herself back. He was Dru’s crush, off-limits, and even in extreme circumstances, the rules of friendship were too important to break. “We’ll go tomorrow. If we can find them and use your ring, maybe Magnus can get us all out of here.”

14

That Strange Mirror

The world spun in front of Dru. She saw a devil mask that matched hers, and a set of white, grinning teeth below it. Black hair, ram’s horns, a man so tall and broad shouldered that Dru almost felt like a child. His coat was a deep red velvet that shimmered with an oily finish.

“Lord Byrne,” she said. “I haven’t seen you since you leered at me at the last banquet.”

“So I did.” His grin widened. “I didn’t think Shadowhunters danced.”

“Battle is much like a dance.” Dru could see Byrne’s eyes behind the mask, so black they seemed to have no pupils. She felt the same flicker of distaste that she had at the banquet, stronger now that he’d tried to grope her.

He guided her into a spin. “I see what you mean. In both situations, one must be constantly aware of where one puts one’s feet and hands. And both situations can, of course, be dangerous.”