Every Exquisite Thing, Page 3

Now that they were talking about this, perhaps this would be useful in talking to Ariadne. She was a fiendish reader, after all.

  “I’m training with someone new,” Anna said. “Her name is Ariadne. She does quite a lot of reading, so—”

  “Ah! Ariadne. That’s a name from mythology. We could start you on a course of that. Would you like to begin with The Golden Bough, by Frazer? There’s a new edition of three volumes. Unless you want to start with the basics. There’s always Lemprière’s Bibliotheca Classica . . .”

  James flipped gracefully through the books on the wall. He was an accomplished fighter and excellent dancer. Perhaps it was these traits, combined with the fact that he was growing into his looks, that explained why he seemed to suddenly be so popular with girls. He couldn’t walk through a room of them without them sighing and giggling. Anna supposed she was pleased for him, or would be if he ever noticed it was happening.

  He had soon plucked a dozen books from the shelf, passing one to Christopher almost as an afterthought. A silver bracelet flashed upon his wrist as he held his arm out—a love-gift, Anna wondered? Perhaps one of the sighing gigglers had attracted his interest after all. Anna supposed she ought to be more charitable toward them—she felt herself on the verge of sighing and giggling over Ariadne at any moment.

  The door flew open, and Matthew Fairchild entered the room and draped himself dramatically over the back of a chair. “Good afternoon, you wonderful bunch of villains. James, why are you clearing the shelves?”

  “Anna asked me for something to read,” James said, surveying a table of contents with a furious eye. He set the book aside.

  “Anna? Reading? What dark magic is this?”

  “I am hardly an illiterate,” Anna said, throwing an apple at him. He caught it easily and smiled. Matthew was normally very fastidious. He and Anna often spoke of gentlemen’s fashion together, but today Anna noticed that his hair was a bit wild, and one of the buttons on his waistcoat was undone. These were small things, to be sure, but on Matthew, they spoke of something larger.

  “What is your interest?” Matthew asked.

  “Is it a crime to want to become more literate?”

  “Not all,” Matthew said. “I love literature. In fact, I’ve found a marvelous place. It’s a salon, full of writers and poets. But it is a bit . . . disreputable.”

  Anna cocked her head in interest.

  “Here we go,” James said, bringing over a pile of a dozen or so books and setting it down with a heavy thump. “Do any of these appeal? Have a look and see. Of course, I can recommend others. Wait. No. Not these. Not these.”

  He scooped the books away and returned to the shelves. James was clearly absorbed in his task. Christopher was happily reading his book, which had a horribly scientific title. Lucie and Thomas were at the desk, Thomas helping Lucie go over some phrases: Lucie was learning for Cordelia, and Tom liked languages, since he spoke Spanish with Uncle Gideon and Welsh with his cousins. Angel bless their sweet studious souls, none of them seemed likely to hear Anna and Matthew hatching a dark plot. Nevertheless, Matthew pitched his voice very low.

  “Why don’t I come and get you at midnight,” Matthew said. “We can go together. I could use a companion who knows how to have a bit of fun. You might need a disguise, though. No reputable young lady walks the streets of London at midnight.”

  “Oh,” Anna said. “I think I can manage something.”

  Just before midnight, as promised, Anna heard a tapping at her bedroom window. Matthew Fairchild was there, dancing along the edge. Anna threw it open.

  “My my!” he said approvingly. “Are those Christopher’s?”

  Anna had dressed herself in her brother’s clothes. The sewing had helped a good deal.

  “A disguise,” she said simply.

  He laughed, spinning carelessly on the sill. She could see he had been drinking—his reflexes were slow, and he only caught himself a half second before tumbling back out to the ground.

  “They suit you better than they suit him, but still . . . we need to get you something nicer than that. Here.”

  He pulled the ascot from his neck and handed it to her.

  “I insist,” he said. “I could never let a lady go out in inferior menswear.”

  Anna felt herself exhaling slowly and smiling as she put on the tie. The two of them jumped from her window, landing noiselessly on the courtyard in front of the house.

  “Where is this place?” Anna said.

  “A nefarious corner of Soho,” he said with a smile.

  “Soho!” Anna was delighted. “How did you find out about it?”

  “Oh, just through my wanderings.”

  “You do a lot of those.”

  “I have a periphrastic soul.”

  Matthew was more drunk than he had first appeared. He rolled back on his heels and spun around the occasional lamppost as they walked. He had been like this a lot in recent weeks—what was fun and light about Matthew had taken on an edge. On some level, she felt a bit of worry rising. But this was Matthew, and he did not do well under confinement. Perhaps the summer night had just gotten his spirits particularly high.

  The house Matthew took Anna to was deep in the warren of Soho, off of Brewer Street. It was painted black, with a green door.

  “You’ll like it here,” Matthew said, smiling at Anna.

  The door was opened by a tall, pale man in a maroon frock coat.

  “Fairchild,” he said, looking at Matthew. “And . . .”

  “Fairchild’s good friend,” Matthew replied.

  Anna could feel the intelligence of the vampire’s gaze, as he took her in for a long time. He seemed intrigued, both by her and by Matthew, though his expression was unreadable.

  At last he stepped aside and allowed them in.

  “You see?” Matthew said. “No one can resist our company.”

  The hall was utterly dark—the fanlight had been covered in a velvet drape. The only light came from candles. The house was decorated in a style that Anna thoroughly approved of—heavy green paper run through with gold, velvet curtains and furniture. It smelled of cigars and strange, tiny rose-colored cigarettes and gin. The room was crowded with a mix of Downworlders and mundanes, all elaborately dressed.

  Anna noticed many people taking in the sight of her in her men’s clothing and nodding appreciatively. The men seemed pleased or amused, the women either admiring or—interested. Quite a few raked Anna boldly with their eyes, their gazes clinging to the feminine body revealed by her fitted clothes. It was as if in casting off dresses she had cast off society’s expectation of a woman’s modesty and could allow herself to be admired, desired. Her soul soared with new confidence: she felt herself a gorgeous creature, neither a gentleman nor a lady. A gentlewoman, she thought, and winked at one of the only people she recognized: the werewolf Woolsey Scott, head of the Praetor Lupus. He wore a bottle-green smoking jacket and was puffing away on a hookah pipe while holding court for a cluster of fascinated mundanes.

  “Of course,” Anna heard him say, “they had a difficult time getting my bathtub into one of the tree houses, but I would hardly leave it behind. One must always bring one’s own bathtub.”

  “That’s Somebody Somebody Yeats over there,” Matthew said, indicating a tall, bespectacled man. “He read a new work the last time I was here.”

  “And it was wonderful,” said a voice. It came from a woman sitting near where Matthew and Anna stood. She was a stunning warlock with the scaled skin of a snake, colored silver, almost opalescent. Her long green hair tumbled over her shoulders and was strung through with a fine gold mesh. She wore a red gown that clung to her frame. She tipped her head up elegantly toward Matthew and Anna.

  “Are all London Shadowhunters so handsome as you?” she asked. She had a German accent.

  “No,” Anna said simply.

 
; “Definitely not,” Matthew agreed.

  The warlock smiled.

  “Your London Shadowhunters are more interesting than ours,” she said. “Ours are very tedious. Yours are beautiful and amusing.”

  Someone grumbled something at this, but the rest of the group laughed appreciatively.

  “Do sit and join us,” the woman said. “I am Leopolda Stain.”

  Most of the people around Leopolda seemed to be fawning mundanes, like the group around Woolsey Scott. One man wore a black robe covered in symbols Anna did not recognize. Matthew and Anna sat down on the rug, against a pile of tasseled pillows that served as a sofa. Next to them was a woman wearing a gold turban scarf pinned with a sapphire.

  “Are you two of The Chosen?” she asked Matthew and Anna.

  “Certainly,” Matthew said.

  “Ah. I could tell from the way Leopolda reacted to you. She is quite wonderful, is she not? She is from Vienna and knows simply everyone—Freud, Mahler, Klimt, Schiele . . .”

  “Marvelous,” Matthew said. He probably did think it was marvelous—Matthew adored art, and artists.

  “She’s going to help us,” the woman said. “Obviously, we’ve had such troubles here. Why, Crowley wasn’t even recognized here in London! He had to go to the Ahathoor Temple in Paris to be initiated to the grade of Adeptus Minor, which I’m sure you heard about.”

  “The moment it happened,” Matthew lied.

  Anna bit her lip and looked down to keep herself from laughing. It was always amusing to meet mundanes who had fantastical notions of how magic worked. Leopolda, she noticed, was smiling indulgently at the entire group, like they were adorable but somewhat dimwitted children.

  “Well,” the woman continued, “I was an Adept of the Isis-Urania temple, and I can assure you that I was adamant that—”

  This was interrupted by a man standing in the middle of the room and raising a glass of something green.

  “My friends!” he said. “I demand that we remember Oscar. You must raise your glasses!”

  There was a general noise of agreement, and glasses were raised. The man began to recite Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.” Anna was struck by one of the stanzas:

  Some love too little, some too long,

  Some sell, and others buy;

  Some do the deed with many tears,

  And some without a sigh:

  For each man kills the thing he loves,

  Yet each man does not die.

  She didn’t quite know what it meant, but the spirit of it haunted her. It seemed to have an even more pointed effect on Matthew, who slumped down.

  “It is a rotten world that would allow a man like Wilde to die,” Matthew said. There was a hardness in his voice that was new, and a bit alarming.

  “You’re sounding a bit dire,” Anna said.

  “It’s true,” he replied. “Our greatest poet, and he died in poverty and obscurity, not so long ago. They threw him in jail because he loved another man. I do not think love can be wrong.”

  “No,” Anna said. She had always known that she loved women the way she was expected to love men. That she found women beautiful and desirable, while men were good friends, brothers-in-arms, but nothing more. She had never pretended otherwise, and her close friends all seemed to accept this about her as a known fact.

  But it was true that though Matthew and the others often joked with her about slaying the hearts of pretty girls, it was not something she and her mother had ever talked about. She recalled her mother touching her hair fondly in the carriage. What did Cecily truly think of her odd daughter?

  Not now, she told herself. She turned to the woman in the turban, who had been trying to get her attention. “Yes?”

  “My dear,” the woman said. “You must be sure to be here in a week’s time. The faithful will be rewarded, I promise you. The ancient ones, so long hidden from us, shall be revealed.”

  “Of course,” Anna said, blinking. “Yes. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  While she was simply making conversation, Anna found that she would like to return to this place. She had come here dressed as she was, and she had received only approbation. In fact, she was sure that one of the vampire girls was examining her with a look that was not entirely wholesome. And Leopolda, the beautiful warlock, had not taken her eyes from Anna. Had Anna’s mind and soul not been full of Ariadne . . .

  Well, it could only be left to the imagination.

  As Matthew and Anna left the house that night, they did not notice a figure across the street, standing in the shadows.

  Jem recognized Matthew at once, but was confused at first as to who was with him. The person resembled his parabatai, Will Herondale—not Will as he was now, but Will at seventeen, with his confident swagger and upturned chin. But that could not be. And the person was obviously not James, Will’s son.

  It took him several minutes to realize that the young man was not a young man at all. It was Anna Lightwood, Will’s niece. She had inherited the dark hair and the profile from the Herondale side of her family, and clearly, she had inherited her uncle’s swagger. For a moment, Jem felt a pang in his heart. It was like seeing his friend as a young man again, as the two of them had been when they lived at the Institute together and fought side by side, as they had been when Tessa Gray first arrived at their door.

  Was it really so long ago?

  Jem shook the thought loose and focused on the present. Anna was in some sort of disguise, and she and Matthew had just been at a Downworlder gathering with a warlock he had come to observe. He had no idea what they were doing there.

  A full week passed. A full week of Anna running for the post, looking from the window, walking partway to Cavendish Square before turning back. A lifetime. It was agony, and just as it was turning to acceptance, Anna was called downstairs early Friday morning to find Ariadne waiting for her in a yellow dress and a white hat.

  “Good morning,” Ariadne said. “Why aren’t you ready?”

  “Ready?” Anna said, her throat gone dry at the sudden appearance of Ariadne.

  “To train!”

  “I—”

  “Good morning, Ariadne!” Cecily Lightwood said, coming in with Alexander.

  “Oh!” Ariadne’s eyes lit up when she saw the baby. “Oh, I must hold him—I simply adore babies.”

  The appearance of Alexander bought Anna enough time to scramble upstairs, catch her breath, splash water on her face, and collect her gear. Five minutes later, Anna was seated next to Ariadne in the Bridgestock carriage, rumbling toward the Institute. They were alone now, close to each other in the warm carriage. The smell of Ariadne’s orange-blossom perfume wafted up and wrapped around Anna.

  “Did I disturb you?” Ariadne said. “I had simply hoped . . . that you might be free to train with me . . .” She looked worried. “I hope I did not presume. Are you angry?”

  “No,” Anna replied. “I could never be angry with you.”

  Anna tried to make it sound light, but a husky note of truth rang through.

  “Good.” Ariadne looked radiantly pleased at that and crossed her hands on her lap. “I would hate to displease you.”

  When they arrived at the Institute, Anna changed much more quickly than Ariadne. She waited in the training room, nervously pacing, taking knives from the walls and throwing them to steady her nerves.

  Just training. Simple training.

  “You have a good arm,” Ariadne said.

  Ariadne was stunning in her dresses; the gear revealed something else. She was still feminine, with her long hair and lush curves, but unencumbered by pounds of fabric, she moved with grace and speed.

  “How would you like to begin?” Anna said. “Do you have a preferred weapon? Or should we do some climbing? Work on the beam?”

  “Whatever you think is best,” Ari
adne replied.

  “Shall we start with blades?” Anna said, taking one from the wall.

  Whatever Ariadne had been doing in Idris, it did not involve much training. She had been accurate in that. When she threw, her arm was weak. Anna came up and guided her, forcing herself to maintain her composure as she took Ariadne’s hand in hers and guided the toss. She was surprisingly good at climbing, but once on the ceiling beam, she took a bad tumble. Anna jumped underneath and caught her neatly.

  “Oh, very impressive!” Ariadne said, smiling.

  Anna stood there for a moment, Ariadne in her arms, unsure of what to do. There was something in Ariadne’s gaze, in the way she was looking at Anna . . . as if mesmerized . . .

  How did she ask? How did this happen with someone like Ariadne?

  It was too much.

  “A very good attempt,” Anna said, gently setting Ariadne on her feet. “Just . . . watch your footing.”

  “I think I’ve had enough of that for today,” Ariadne said. “How does one have fun in London?”

  Oh, so many ways.

  “Well,” Anna said. “There is the theater, and the zoo is—”

  “No.” Ariadne took hold of one of the pillars and gently spun around it. “Fun. Surely, you know a place.”

  “Well,” Anna said, searching her mind frantically, “I know a place full of writers and poets. It is quite louche. It is in Soho and starts after midnight.”

  “Then I assume you will be taking me,” Ariadne said, eyes sparkling. “I will wait for you by my window at midnight tonight.”

  The wait that evening was excruciating.

  Anna picked at her dinner and watched the clock across the room. Christopher was forming his carrots into a pyramid and working something out in his head. Her mother was feeding Alexander. Anna was counting her heartbeats. She had to try not to appear conspicuous. She spent some time in the family room with her baby brother; she picked up a book and cast an eye blankly over the pages. By nine, she was able to stretch and say she was going to have a bath and retire.