a struck link // christopher lightwood {3}

seventeen // zwei

Christopher woke to commotion. People in the hall. The door to the stairs slamming shut.

Curious, he got to his feet, grabbed for a dressing gown to throw over his pyjamas, and stuck his head out into the hall. Everybody had already gone.

Christopher ran through a list of likely places they might have gone, and figured they were most likely either in the Sanctuary or the directors' office, or the Infirmary if someone had been injured. Perhaps there had been another attack. That would be bad.

The directors' office was closest, so he tried there first, only to find it empty. He took the stairs down to the Infirmary and found the doors flung open, light and hushed noise pouring through. As he neared, Seanan Lochlyn stepped into the hall. She was pale, her lovely blue dress hemmed with mud. Her hands shook, one still clutching a small bone-hilted knife.

"Miss Lochlyn?" Christopher burst out. "What happened?"

"It's your Italian friend. Filomena. There was another attack."

"Oh, no. Is she-"

"She's alive." Seanan leaned back against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest. The movement was very Pluto-like and he remembered, then, that Seanan was a Lochlyn too-Pluto's several-times great aunt. They bore a certain odd family resemblance to each other, when he thought about it. "She managed to get away, and she managed to run far enough to slam into me on my way back from walking Gloria home. She'll live but it's...not good. She's been badly injured, lost a lot of blood. She's in a lot of pain. And she keeps slipping in and out of consciousness."

Christopher closed his eyes. Behind them he saw Miss di Angelo as she had been at Rosamund's party, all sparkling-eyed amusement when she found him inspecting one of Mrs. Wentworth's potted roses as he tried to get his mind off Pluto carrying a heavy Sears Company crate as easily as if it weighed nothing at all. He had complained to her of how awfully Mrs. Wentworth treated her roses, and she had asked him what he would do with them instead, in a way that suggested she knew but wanted to see if he did. Come to find out, Filomena's grandmother had a garden, and one of her specialties was roses. So they spoke of roses, and of the arthropods that fed on them, of the dangers to the ecosystem posed by killing those bugs, and of better ways to keep them off the plants one didn't want them eating. She'd taught him a trick using eggshells to keep off slugs. He couldn't imagine her lying half-conscious in an infirmary bed, bleeding from a dozen wounds.

"Mr. Lightwood?" Seanan stepped toward him, looking worried. "Are you alright?"

"I don't know," Christopher answered.

"Oh, thank goodness, Christopher, you're already up." Cecily bustled out of the Infirmary. "I take it Seanan has already told you what happened?"

"She did, yes."

"Good," said Cecily. "Miss di Angelo woke up, just now, though we don't know for how long. Oddly, she was asking for you."

Christopher nodded dully. "Alright. I suppose I'll go and see her."

Filomena lay stretched out on her back in one of the Infirmary cots, her body sheathed in white from the breast bone down, baring her shoulders and her arms. Her forearms were bandaged and more white gauze peeked out from beneath the sheets and blankets. It occurred to Christopher not for the first time how strange and morbid it was that the Infirmary beds were made up with white.

Filomena's eyes were open. She looked up at him and it looked like she meant to say something but it took a moment for her to get any words.

"Remind me," she said slowly, "I need to thank Pluto."