mirror shards // matthew fairchild {1}

fourteen // manticore, in the ancient greek

The note on Sydney's bedside table tells her to meet Lucie, Cordelia, and the Thieves at the Devil Tavern, ASAP. She doesn't even bother to shower. She takes the streetcar most of the way, and runs what's left. She gets there just after everyone else, and finds the Thieves showing Lucie and Cordelia around Headquarters. Thomas looks exhausted, his eyes circled with lilac shadows, and Sydney pauses for a moment to make sure he's alright.

"Welcome to our sanctum, ladies," says Matthew. "Christopher salvaged quite a bit of this furniture for us. Like King Arthur and his knights, we prefer to sit at a round table that we all might be equal."

"Also," says Christopher, taking a book down from the shelves and handing it to James, "it was the only table my mother was willing to spare."

Sydney tries and fails to not laugh.

"I couldn't go to Idris," Thomas says suddenly, stopping her. "I wish to see Eugenia, but I need to stay here. I need to help Kit find the cure for this demon disease or poison or whatever this is. What happened to my sister cannot happen to someone else."

"Sometimes grief and worry must take the form of action," says Cordelia. "Sometimes it is unbearable to sit and wait."

Thomas shoots her a grateful look. "Exactly that," he says. "So – Christopher told you all about the shards?"

"Yes," says Christopher.

"No," says Sydney. "I know nothing about this, I only just arrived on set."

Quickly, Christopher fills her in on the trip to Emmanuel Ghast's flat, his death, his ghost, the shards they found there, covered in ichor and strange writing, how he showed them to the others..."and James realized the shards are from a Pyxis."

"A Pyxis?" Thomas echoes. "But they were destroyed after the Clockwork War. They're unsafe – remember what happened at school."

Sydney shudders: yet another memory she's tried to put behind her.

"Most Pyxides were destroyed after the Clockwork War," says James. "In Gast's flat, though, I found a drawing. It looked rather like a sketch of an ordinary box – he wasn't a very good artist..."

"We can't all be Philip de Lázsló," says Sydney.

"Who now?" asks Thomas.

"The drawing with the wobbly runes around it?" Matthew asks.

"They weren't runes," says James. "They were alchemical symbols – the kind you'd carve onto a Pyxis box."

"Oh!" says Lucie. "The markings on the shards. They were alchemical symbols too. Of course."

"Do you think he built it himself?" asks Sydney.

"That would explain why it failed," says Christopher.

"That wasn't all," said James. "On the paper Gast had scrawled a word in Old Persian. Cordelia was able to translate it." He looks at Cordelia expectantly.

"It was a demon's name," says Cordelia. "Merthykhuwar." She frowns. "In modern Persian it would be Mardykhor. But Shadowhunters – Shadowhunters call it a Mandikhor. They are said to be viciously poisonous."

"Manticore," says Sydney, "to the ancient Greeks."

"You think Gast summoned up a Mandikhor demon?" Matthew asks. "But aren't they meant to be extinct? And what've they got to do with Pyxis boxes?"

"Honey," says Sydney, "there's no such thing as a demon that's completely extinct."

Matthew shoots her a fast look, but says nothing.