Lord of Shadows
Page 88

“What’s that one mean?” Kit had asked, pointing, as the gate creaked open with a puff of rust.
Ty looked at him. “Open.”
“I was going to guess that,” Kit muttered as they headed inside. Now within the property, he gazed around in wonder. The gardens might have fallen into disrepair now, but you could see where there had been rose arbors, and marble balustrades holding up massive stone jugs spilling flowers and weeds. There were wildflowers everywhere—it was beautiful in its own odd, ruined way.
The house was like a small castle, the circlet of thorns that Kit recognized as the Blackthorn family symbol stamped into the metal front doors and onto the tops of the columns.
“Looks haunted,” said Livvy, as they went up the front steps. In the distance, Kit could see the pitch-black circle of an old ornamental pond. Around it were set marble benches. A single statue of a man in a toga regarded him with blank, worried eyes.
“There used to be a whole collection of statues of different Greek and Roman playwrights and poets here,” said Livvy, as Ty went to work on the doors. “Uncle Arthur had most of them shipped to the L.A. Institute.”
“The open rune’s not working,” said Ty, straightening up and looking at Kit as if he knew everything Kit was thinking. As if he knew everything Kit had ever thought. There was something about being the focus of Tiberius’s gaze that was frightening and thrilling all at once. “We’ll have to figure another way in.”
Ty pushed past Kit and his sister, heading down the stairs. They made their way around the side of the Hall, down a pebbled path. Hedges that had probably once been neat and clipped curved away in explosions of leaves and flowers. In the far distance, the water of the Thames shimmered.
“Maybe there’s a way in through the back,” Livvy said. “The windows can’t be that secure either.”
“What about this door?” Kit pointed.
Ty turned around, frowning. “What door?”
“Here,” Kit said, puzzled. He could see the door very clearly: a tall, narrow entrance with an odd symbol carved into it. He placed his hand on the old wood: It felt rough and warm under his fingers. “Don’t you see it?”
“I see it now,” Livvy said. “But—I swear it wasn’t there a second ago.”
“Some kind of doubled glamour?” said Ty, coming up beside Kit. He had pulled up the hood on his sweater, and his face was a pale oval in between the black of his hair and the darkness of his collar. “But why would Kit be able to see it?”
“Maybe because I’m used to seeing glamours at the Shadow Market,” said Kit.
“Glamours that aren’t made by Shadowhunters,” said Livvy.
“Glamours that aren’t meant for Shadowhunters to see through,” said Kit.
Ty looked thoughtful. There was an opaqueness to him sometimes that made it hard for Kit to tell whether Ty agreed with him or not. He did, however, put his stele to the door and begin to draw the Open rune.
It wasn’t the lock that clicked, but the hinges that popped open. They jumped out of the way as the door half-fell, half-sagged to the side, slamming into the wall with an echoing sound.
“Don’t press down so hard when you draw,” Livvy said to Ty. He shrugged.
The space beyond the door was dark enough for the twins to need to spark up their witchlights. The glow of them had a pearlescent whitish tint that Kit found strangely beautiful.
They were in an old hallway, filled with dust and the webs of scuttling spiders. Ty went ahead of Kit and Livvy behind him; he suspected they were protecting him, and resented it, but knew that they wouldn’t understand his protest if he lodged one.
They went down the hall and up a long, narrow staircase, at the end of which was the rotted remains of a door. Through that door was a massive room with a hanging chandelier.
“Probably a ballroom,” Livvy said, her voice echoing oddly in the space. “Look, this part of the house is better taken care of.”
It was. The ballroom was empty but clean, and as they moved through other rooms, they found furniture shrouded in drop cloths, windows boarded carefully to protect the glass, boxes stacked in the halls. Inside the boxes were cloths and the strong smell of mothballs. Livvy coughed and waved a hand in front of her face.
“There’s got to be a library,” Ty said. “Somewhere they would keep family documents.”
“I can’t believe our dad might have visited here when he was growing up.” Livvy led the way down the hall, her body casting an elongated shadow. Long hair, long legs, shimmering witchlight in her hand.
“He didn’t live here?” Kit asked.
Livvy shook her head. “Grew up in Cornwall, not London. But he went to school in Idris.”
Idris. Kit had read more about Idris in the London Institute library. The fabled homeland of Shadowhunters, a place of green forests and high mountains, icy-cold lakes and a city of glass towers. He had to admit that the part of him that loved fantasy movies and Lord of the Rings yearned to see it.
He told that part of himself to be quiet. Idris was Shadowhunter business, and he hadn’t yet decided he wanted to be a Shadowhunter. In fact, he was quite—nearly totally—sure he didn’t.
“Library,” Ty said. It occurred to Kit that Ty never used five words when one would do. He was standing in front of the door to a hexagonal room, the walls beside him hung with paintings of ships. Some were cocked at odd angles as if they were plunging up or down waves.
The library walls were painted dark blue, the only art in the room a marble statue of a man’s head and shoulders sitting atop a stone column. There was a massive desk with multiple drawers that turned out to be disappointingly empty. Forays behind the bookshelves and under the rug also turned up nothing but dust balls.
“Maybe we should try another room,” Kit said, emerging from under an escritoire with dust in his blond hair.
Ty shook his head, looking frustrated. “There’s something in here. I have a feeling.”
Kit wasn’t sure Sherlock Holmes operated on feelings, but he didn’t say anything, just straightened up. As he did, he caught sight of a piece of paper sticking out of the edge of the small writing desk. He pulled at it, and it came away.
It was old paper, worn almost to transparency. Kit blinked. On it was written his name—not his name, but his last name, Herondale, over and over, entwined with another name, so that the two words formed looping patterns.
The other word was Blackthorn.
A deep sense of unease shot through him. He tucked the paper quickly into his jeans pocket just as Ty said, “Move, Kit. I want to get a closer look at that bust.”
To Kit, bust only meant one thing, but since the only breasts in the room belonged to Ty’s sister, he stepped aside with alacrity. Ty strode over to the small statue on the marble column. He’d pulled his hood down, and his hair stood up around his head, soft as the downy feathers of a black swan.
Ty touched a small placard below the carving. “‘The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for,’” he said.
“Homer,” said Livvy. Whatever kind of education the Shadowhunters got, Kit had to admit, it was thorough.
“Apparently,” said Ty, pulling a dagger out of his belt. A second later he’d driven the blade into the carved eye socket of the statue. Livvy yelped.