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Paris

Mundane news was invariably trivial, but in August it seemed to reach a sort of apogee of inanity. Folding the morning papers with an irritated gesture, the man the Clave took for dead twice-over set them impatiently aside on the breakfast table before stretching out a well-manicured hand to lay another slice of saumon fumé on his buttered toast.

After ten months of self-imposed exile in the wilder parts of Albania, the small amenities of civilized living were undeniably a pleasure. Shadowhunters had no need of the comforts that mundanes clung to. You ignored cold, wet and hunger, and met pain and exhaustion with easy contempt. But that didn't mean you couldn't appreciate the finer things in life. It was simply a matter of priorities.

And the dark fruits of his Balkan researches were worth the trifling inconveniences of that rugged landscape a thousand times over. Pushing back the silk sleeve of his dressing gown, Valentine Morgenstern gazed with grim satisfaction at the gleaming blue-black Mark that circled exotically around his forearm like Damascus steel, throbbing unpleasantly.

It had hurt a good deal more at the beginning. But Nephilim were born to pain. You bowed to the will of Heaven and did what you had to, without thought for the cost. If only the Clave grasped this simple, unassailable truth, he thought with a flash of anger, none of what he was doing now would be necessary. But the Clave was as soft and lazy and feckless as ever — while the hosts of hell grew stronger with every wasted year. One day soon, the tipping point would slip by, unnoticed. And then all the belated heroism in the world would not be enough to hold back the demon hordes pouring across the face of the earth until they had reduced it to dust and cinders.

As though in dark resonance with the thought, the black fire braceleting his flesh burnt for a moment fiercer still. Breathing hard, he leaned his head against the back of the chair, forcing the savage pain back until he had made it as nothing again.

Valentine—

The musical voice in his head spoke quietly, urgently, familiar as breathing.

For the love of the Angel, Valentine. There has to be some limit to the things you can reasonably ask of yourself — of anyone. The voice rang with distress; but it held a note of loving resignation too, as if she had no real expectation that he would attend to her remonstrations any more than he ever had where this subject was concerned.

Jocelyn, we've been over this. The words breathed out soundlessly, somewhere between a thought and a sigh of exasperation. Reason had no place in this, nor should it. Brave and imaginative as she was, she had never really grasped the implications of the battle the Nephilim were fighting. Year after year, demonic incursions went on rising relentlessly. In the face of this threat, the notion of reasonable limits was preposterous, a travesty. There was nothing — nothing — he would not do, to safeguard this fragile world from the holocaust that threatened to engulf it.

With a frown, he gazed unseeing down at the snowy linen spread over the breakfast table. Sixteen precious years had been lost through his folly. But he would make up for lost time now — even if the Cup continued damnably to elude him. Armed now with this rune, he could call on the power of the Infernal Realms, and bend it to his purposes. With their assistance he would re-forge the Nephilim into a weapon that hadn't been seen since the days of Jonathan Shadowhunter.

And then he would turn it on the demon invaders, and drive them and every living trace of their taint from the world forever.

Letting his sleeve fall, he pushed all thoughts of his wayward, stubborn, faithless wife firmly aside, and returned to the contemplation of his plans. There were certain schemes he'd been revolving in his mind before he'd allowed the fatuities of the French press to distract him...

He was just stretching out a hand to pour out a second cup of Mme Bizalion's excellent coffee when he heard, or perhaps felt it: a faint rattling like a loose-fitting latch that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. He paused a moment, bone-china coffeepot suspended above his cup, before resuming pouring with a faint noise of irritation. Blackwell, almost certainly, with the latest unnecessary progress report on the refurbishments at Renwick's.

It had probably been a mistake to allow himself be persuaded to embrace this scheme. Of the great world cities, New York would not be his first choice as a base for his Circle Resurgent. Setting the coffee pot down, Valentine cast a regretful glance around the pale, panelled elegance of the Hôtel Bizalion's appartements meublés. The Parisian morning light picked out the fine plasterwork and discreetly elegant furnishings, gleaming on gilt and polished inlay and marble and reminding him exactly why he preferred the Old World to the New.

But with a little trouble one could make oneself comfortable anywhere. And the bones of Renwick's were good: a little money and taste could work wonders there. He hoped Blackwell wasn't making a pig's ear of his instructions.

From an operational point of view, the sanatorium was unquestionably superb: solidly-built, eminently defensible, and wholly forgotten. Which was of course what actually mattered. The unlooked-for discovery of a working Portal intact beneath a tangle of fallen beams was a stroke of fortune beyond his wildest imagining, and had naturally decided the matter. Fixed Portals were vanishingly rare, their usefulness practically limitless. Angel only knew how it had survived when the roof fell in.

Leaning back, he raked an abstracted hand through his hair. Nowadays, he was proof against the folly of optimism: you assessed the variables dispassionately, taking cold-eyed measure of the obstacles arrayed against you. And without a doubt they were formidable. All the same, it was difficult not to see it as a sign. After all, Heaven was ranged on his side.

Sub hoc signo, indeed, he thought with a thin smile. Perhaps he should have the motto picked out in the stonework.

To be fair, had to admit that New York, in all its urban ugliness, had certain indisputable advantages. Anyone looking for demons — whether to kill or to enslave — would be hard-put to find better hunting grounds.

And the squalor and degradation that drew demons to the city in such numbers could serve his own purposes as well. Meditatively, he buttered himself another piece of toast, gaze narrowing thoughtfully. If the Infernal Worlds found easy pickings among the scum and refuse of humanity that washed up on New York's streets, well so would he. His plans, after all, were maturing rapidly.

There was Jonathan to be thought of too: Jonathan, who would be of age in little over a year — sooner, by the Clave's reckoning. It was time he took a closer interest in his progress. It would be entertaining too to see how Maryse and Robert were getting on — and poor Hodge. Setting down his coffee cup, Valentine leaned back in his chair, a trace of amused anticipation pulling at the corners of his mouth. Yes, a sojourn in New York could definitely be rewarding.

The rattling noise, which had been continuing at intervals, resumed with a new violence and urgency, as though some unseen door were being savagely shaken off its hinges. With a stifled grimace of annoyance, he rose and went over to the french doors that opened onto the decorative balcony overlooking the Rue de Rivoli.

There was no one there, of course, nor could there have been: the balcony was purely ornamental, a flourish of wrought-iron scrollwork across a sill too narrow for anything human to stand on. Drawing his stele from his dressing-gown pocket, he scribbled rapidly on one of the windowpanes and waited.

The sweeping view of the Tuileries faded to blankness as the wards wavered and thinned, and in its place Blackwell's thickset outline slowly condensed in the glass, like a reflection appearing in the bathroom mirror as the steam recedes. He looked jaded: his shirt crumpled, lines of fatigue sharpening the blotchy outlines of his face. His expression was annoyed.

Valentine smiled. "Good morning, Cornelius. Or should I say: good evening?" He could see his own reflection, well-rested, breakfasted and immaculate in dove-grey brocaded silk, superimposed in the glass on Blackwell's disgruntled bulk. Half a world away, the man on the far side of the glass drew a bad-tempered breath.

Raising his eyebrows, Valentine held up a deprecating hand and forestalled him gently. "It was you who wished to speak with me, Cornelius."

His tone was mild, but the other man must have heard the warning in his voice because he subsided with a kind of visible growl like a large, truculent dog: thwarted but obedient.

"I'm sorry if the late hour is inconvenient." Valentine's gaze travelled with faint amusement over the Shadowhunter's dishevelled figure, noting the empty glass of scotch on the inlaid sideboard by his elbow — the consignment of furniture from Sotheby's had evidently arrived as scheduled — and the smouldering remains of one of his deplorable cigars. "I'm afraid my powers don't at present extend to eliminating the time difference between Paris and New York."

A scowl creased Blackwell's suffused face. "I tried looking for you earlier. In the evening. Your evening. You were out.

"Naturally I was out. I'm a busy man." He glanced at his watch. "I can give you five minutes. I take it you have something of importance to report?" The wallpaperers, he saw, glancing past the glowering Shadowhunter into the dim room beyond, had completed their work in good time. Taking no chances on failing to deliver as promised, he supposed, which was wise of them. In the rosy torchlight, the walls glimmered a stately crimson and gold: a trifle ponderous, perhaps, but it suited the monumental stonework of the Gothic Revival sanatorium.

"Not to report exactly." Blackwell hesitated, bloodshot eyes sliding sideways, though the set of his shoulders was still visibly resentful. "I wanted to confirm your instructions before work starts on the north wing. Rebuilding the roof is turning out to be more complicated than we anticipated; we're looking at some serious cost overruns, even allowing for the goblin workmen you called in. Obviously the south wing had to be done on account of the Portal, but I thought — I wondered if —" His thick voice trailed off belligerently.

"We anticipated?" Valentine allowed the pronoun to dangle unpleasantly in the air. "I might remind you that making use of this property was your notion, not mine, Cornelius, and I have left the business of superintending its reconstruction to you. A task I would not have thought beyond your powers."

Pangborn, he reflected, would have had the sense to apologize. Blackwell paled, but it was obvious he was about to launch into blustering excuse. Valentine eyed him like he was some kind of beetle he'd found crawling in the scullery, and cut him off coolly.

"Enough, Cornelius. In future, you will take care to furnish me with an accurate assessment of costs and potential difficulties. For now, the renovations will proceed as planned. My pockets are deep enough; and I don't fancy operating out of a ruin. Are those Ifrit plasterers finished on the first floor? Well tell them to get a move on; they've been at it for days, and the rest of the furnishings from Morlock are arriving at the end of the week. And you'd better remind the armourer that I expect those maces by Thursday."

This time Blackwell only nodded, his jaw tight. The sullen look on his face, thought Valentine with irritation, was probably the closest he got to looking chastened. He was aware of a pang of regret as he gazed at the thuggish figure in the window. So many of his best lieutenants had been lost — or lost to him. But you worked with the tools you had. In time he would have more and better ones again; they would flock to his banner.

Of course it had been the best ones — the bitterness of it burned like aloes on his tongue, even after all these years — who had deserted and betrayed him. All except poor Stephen. But he had preserved the best of Stephen, by Heaven's grace, and taken it for his own.

"I must go." Pausing by the table, he reached down to collect the jewelled brooch that lay beside his plate, chased silver winking in the sun. "I have an appointment in the Rue St. Honoré in three quarters of an hour, and I don't propose to go out like this—" he glanced dryly at the brocaded silk of his dressing gown.

"Give Maurice my greetings and tell him I'm looking into his suggestion about young Verlac. Oh, and you might have the armourer add a half-dozen lengths of silver chain to the order he's delivering today — no, better make that a dozen each of electrum and silver."

With a nod of dismissal, he pocketed the amulet and turned towards the door. He imagined his errand would prove as fruitless as all the rest; he'd pursued so many false leads over the years that he'd lost count. The medallion could easily have come into the jewellers's hands at three or four removes; there was no reason to suppose the young woman his assistant remembered was Jocelyn. In truth, he acknowledged wryly, she wasn't really a young woman any more — though he supposed an elderly Parisian shop assistant might conceivably still describe her in those terms.

But he couldn't shake off the feeling that this time he was close; that the luck which had brought him the unlooked-for gift of a Portal was still running strongly in his direction. He had dreamt about her last night for the first time in years, her face as vivid as firelight in the flaming calyx of her hair.

"Gemstones for a lady-friend?" Blackwell's unpleasant voice broke in on his reflections. Controlling the impulse to give this idiocy the savage answer it deserved, "Making enquiries," he said briefly. Even goons like Blackwell repaid a degree of finesse in handling, unfortunately. Turning back towards the window, he allowed a dark smile to spread across his features. "I have hopes of laying my hands on the Mortal Cup yet."

The other man's glance sharpened shrewdly. "One of your family trinkets, then, I take it? You think you can trace it back to the bitch?"

"Possibly." His voice was curt. It was not a subject he intended to discuss; not, at any rate, until there was a good deal more concrete to discuss. First he had to find her. Once he had seen her — well, after that, he would know whether it was any of these fools' business, or not.

But how strange — improbable — if after so many years of inaction, of fruitless searching, and careful, laborious rebuilding, events should — seemingly — all suddenly be moving at once. He found that he could picture Jocelyn in Paris surprisingly easily: one of the quainter parts of the Quartier Latin, he imagined. She had always been absurdly fond of the crooked stone streets around her parents' house in Alicante, though she'd settled happily enough with him on her family's vast estates when they were married.

That she would be painting, he had no doubts. For an instant, his lips curled sardonically at the image of his Shadowhunter wife standing like Degas or Renoir before her easel in some garret on the Left Bank. His foolish wife, who imagined she could escape from him by melting into the world of the mundanes — as though with the passage of years he might eventually lose interest in finding her. You should have known me better than that, Duchess, he thought grimly.

But the start of the trail lay in Nº 362, Rue St. Honoré. Turning on his heel, he strode towards the door, a dark gleam in his eyes his wife would have instantly recognized, the coiled, intent look of the hunter whose quarry has at last broken cover. His mind on street clothes, and the ticklish discretion of French shop assistants, it took him a minute to take in what the other man was saying.

Stopping dead, he swung around slowly.

"Say that again," he said, and there was no humour in his voice whatsoever.

"I said," Blackwell repeated conversationally, "that it's funny the way they're all suddenly popping up again after all these years. Because I saw Lucian Graymark day before yesterday, crossing Second Avenue. Must be sunspot activity or something."

For a moment incredulous fury darkened his vision, rising up behind his eyes in sheets of black fire, and he had to draw a hard-held breath before he could speak, fingers gripped on the delicate wood of the Louis Quattorze chair.

"Did he see you?" he said at last.

The intensity of the relief that washed over him as Blackwell shook his head took him by surprise. He found that the hands closed round the chair back were shaking with anger.

"I don't see how he could have," Blackwell's imbecile grin widened, "as I was thirty feet in the air above him at the time. In the Roosevelt Island tram," he elaborated painstakingly, "just coming down into Manhattan." He gave a slight shudder. "Hate that thing: gives me the heebie jeebies, dangling in mid-air like a damn circus act. But I suppose you wouldn't understand that," he said, shrugging. "Anyway, I was concentrating on keeping my eyes on the ground — looking at a lovely Ford Thunderbird waiting for the light, if you must know. And suddenly there was Lucian in the crosswalk, heading east on 60th."

"You're certain it was Lucian?" The words rapped out like a fistful of gravel flung against a window almost before Blackwell finished speaking.

But he had no real doubt what the answer would be. His presentiment had not misled him, he was sure of it: after all these years of searching for her in vain, she was within his grasp at last — so long as Blackwell's folly hadn't wrecked everything.

But not, it seemed, Paris after all. New York, of all improbable places—

"Oh it was definitely that bastard Graymark." Blackwell gave an unpleasant laugh. "Looking shabbier than ever. His hair's greyer — running around on all fours ages you pretty fast, I guess — but it was the same terrible cut, and he's still got those weedy wire-rimmed glasses. Anyway, I'd know his damn mongrel face anywhere, the dirty traitorous—" and he used a word that would have shocked Mme Bizalion if the walls hadn't been good, thick, eighteenth-century plaster.

"And you didn't see fit to mention this to me earlier?" His voice cut like a whip across Blackwell's epithets. Inside his ribs, his heart had begun beating a slow, fierce rhythm in time to the refrain echoing in his head. New York, New York, New York...

Blackwell was staring at him stupidly, obstinate bafflement plain on his blockish face. "It didn't seem like a big deal," he protested. "We've always known it was a possibility the bastard was still alive. I'd say by the look of it, he's lying low. Looked like a mundane. Anyway, I don't see how he can possibly be a danger to us, Valentine. We've got the Lightwoods and their damn Institute sitting less than forty blocks uptown from us; if that doesn't trouble you, I don't know why you're worrying about a lone werewolf somewhere among the eight million inhabitants of New York."

"Of course Lucian's not a danger," he said furiously, and watched the Shadowhunter take a reflexive step backwards at the cold savagery of his tone, as though there weren't half a globe separating them. "He's a lead, you self-satisfied, thick-witted, unpardonable fool. The lead: the first cast-iron break in fifteen years of hunting for the Angel's Cup—" He broke off, the breath coming hard in his chest. "You had Lucian Graymark in your sights, in broad daylight. And you lost him." With a violent effort, he suppressed the urge to walk straight through the scrying glass he'd opened up and wrap his fingers around the Shadowhunter's neck.

"Well I couldn't help it." Blackwell's tone was defensive. "By the time we'd descended to the station, he was gone. What do you expect me to do — leap out of the tram car in mid-air like a flying squirrel? Apart from anything else, they're sealed, you know, Valentine."

"Oh by the Angel and all the hosts of Heaven—" he hissed between gritted teeth. "I expect you to use your head. You have a stele, I presume. Even in the scrap heap that passes for the interior of your skull there must be the lineaments of a simple Sequor rune lingering somewhere."

"Well I didn't think of it. Anyway, you don't even know it would have worked on him. He's not exactly a Shadowhunter any more. I promise you, Valentine," he added, voice thick with loathing, "I want to get my hands on that bastard as badly as you do."

His thick fingers were closed into fists, an almost greedy hatred brightening his eyes, and Valentine felt a trickle of weary distaste seeping through the banked fury inside his chest.

Letting go of the chair, he made his way carefully back towards the window until he was standing a foot away from the paned glass, his hands clasped gently behind his back. Blackwell eyed him uneasily, a glimmer of fear dawning in his eyes at last.

Valentine looked at him for a long moment, and his voice when he spoke was like pressed ice, the words dropping like pebbles into the stillness.

"If you can contrive for a moment to rise above your sordid personal resentments and recall why you're in New York in the first place—" His eyes swept the Shadowhunter contemptuously, and he saw the other man swallow. "This isn't about vengeance — not at the moment at any rate," he added softly. "It's about the Mortal Cup.

"Or had you forgotten that?" His voice was dangerously quiet.

"Well, I don't know what makes you think Lucian has got your precious Cup." Blackwell's tone was sulky. "Whatever you may think of her, I don't believe even Jocelyn would turn over the Angel's Cup to a Downworlder."

For a second, a flare of pure anger fled like summer lightning through his veins. What I may think of my wife is my business and none of yours — or anyone else's. But aloud he only said shortly, "Of course Jocelyn hasn't given the Cup to anyone."

"Then what's Lucian got to do with it?"

"Because she is with him, you fool," he shouted, his control shattering at last like a dropped glass exploding against a stone floor, and he saw the other man blink in surprise. "Do you suppose that Lucian is in the city alone? They're together, have been together for years."

Of course they were: it was obvious. How could he ever have believed anything else? Because — he supposed — as the years passed without a whisper of news, he had allowed himself to believe that Lucian must surely be dead — precisely the sort of tomfool, inexcusable, wishful thinking he had no patience for. There was no reason to suppose Lucian was any more dead than he was — less, if it came to that. There had never been any report, or rumours even, of Lucian's death, and his information about Downworld was excellent; he'd made sure of that. The werewolf had simply disappeared from the face of the earth.

Just like Jocelyn. Rage and grief raked his heart with poisoned talons. He supposed he'd always known it, really. The pain of it took his breath away, dark and savage as the Mark burning on his arm, and no less self-inflicted.

Blackwell was still staring at him, fascination warring visibly with the wariness on his face. "And that's not personal," he muttered under his breath. "All right," he added hurriedly, seeing the look on Valentine's face. "You figure that if Lucian is in New York, Jocelyn is there somewhere too. And the Mortal Cup." He shrugged, a shade of scepticism entering his voice.

"You don't even know she's still got the Cup, Valentine. Maybe she hid it somewhere in Idris. Or threw it into the East River. It could be half way to Staten Island by now, ten feet under the muck at the bottom of New York Harbor."

"Trust me, she won't have gotten rid of it." He had himself in hand again, all traces smoothed from his voice and expression of the choking black tide pouring like cold poison through his breast.

"And you think you can get her to tell you where it is? The bitch would die rather than help you, Valentine. If you ask me, she'd probably die just for the pleasure of spiting you."

"Oh, she'll tell me where she put the Cup." Valentine smiled, a slow, dangerous smile. He could handle Jocelyn, of that he had no doubt: always could. He had allowed her to catch him out once — fatally — because he'd been distracted: absorbed, with the callowness of youth, in his own urgent preoccupations. He supposed he had underestimated and even perhaps misunderstood her. He would never make that mistake again.

His smile hardened, fingers closing around the cool silver of the medallion nestled in his pocket, lost for so long and back once more in his possession. "She'll tell me," he repeated. "I just have to find her."

As if in reply to his words, a light knock sounded discreetly from the door in the adjoining room. Mme Bizalion come for the breakfast tray — it must be later than he realised. With a swift flick of his stele, he restored the sunlit view to the room's long, paned windows. By the time she reached the inner door, the concierge would find only the foreign gentleman gazing pensively out at the sultry August morning.

A few more seconds and the link to New York would disintegrate completely, but for the moment, he knew, he could still be heard by the man on the far side of the sparkling panes of glass. When he spoke now, there was nothing in his voice but crisp efficiency: hard and bright as an angel blade.

"I think we've said all that needs to be said. I have a few matters to finish up here, but I'll be with you by tomorrow. Leave the Portal unbarred at your end. In the meantime, I would suggest you apply yourself to finding Lucian, fast. My tolerance for incompetence is not infinitely elastic. Try the werewolf community again. I know Maurice did due diligence on the city's Downworld when we settled on Renwick's, but look more closely. There may have been some contact there."

There was always the slim chance, he thought with resignation, that with Pangborn's help, Blackwell might succeed in catching up with Lucian even now, though he didn't hold out great hopes.

But the truth was, if the trail ran cold on them, it didn't matter. He was confident of his own powers. Now he knew where to look, it was only a matter of time until he ran the werewolf to ground.

I've got you now, Duchess, he thought, a small, cold flame of exultation springing up in his chest as he latched the window shut and swung round to give Mme Bizalion his greetings. He could feel his heartbeat, strong and steady as a bell tolling its slow, implacable note for the dead.

What Lucian might have found to do in that brilliant, restless, cosmopolitan city he couldn't begin to imagine: neither the skulking Downworlder, nor the quiet, steady, provincial boy he had once been. But of one thing he was certain: where Lucian was to be found, there he would find his wife.

Cantab
January 2015

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