a cross in the void // christopher lightwood {4}

three // curses

"Genie, what're you doing here?" Thomas looked up, apparently startled, when Eugenia walked in.

"I came here to see my brother," Eugenia said, as if that wasn't obvious. She sat down on the chair they'd put next to the bed. It seemed her dear brother was getting frequent visitors. "How are you feeling, Thomas?"

"Wishing I could be up and about," Thomas said. He flexed his fingers, almost morosely. "But I still have plenty of healing runes that have yet to kick in. I've been getting lots of visitors, but . . . it's just not enough."

"Believe me when I say that I know the feeling." Eugenia shifted in her seat. "So. Any interesting drama lately? Could be from anyone. Doesn't have to be from you."

Thomas frowned at her.

"I heard they found Pluto. And that they didn't even stay in London long enough to say hello to their father."

"They went to France," Thomas finally admitted, "to retrieve Matthew from Arles. Christopher was just telling me."

"Matthew went to Arles? When did that happen?"

"Apparently, he had planned a trip to Paris. Then he got injured. Then someone needed to take all that stuff Grace stole back to the historians she stole it from, whose mailing address is in Arles. He was supposed to go with Ian but he hared off by himself and someone had to go and retrieve him before he went on too bad of a drunken bender or something like that."

"You know, it surprises me that none of you have ever intervened."

Thomas looked sharply at his sister.

"I would have," Eugenia said, "by now."

"Like we should have intervened to keep you from mercilessly attacking Ariadne in the Institute's hallways?"

"That was different."

"You can't hide from it, Eugenia. You can't make something like that go away."

Eugenia closed her eyes. She looked at the floor. "They've forbid me from lifting weaponry."

"What?" She could hear the shock in Thomas's voice.

"I haven't just been taken off the patrol lists, Thomas. I'm banned from lifting any weapon." Eugenia turned over her hands, showing him the ashy Marks on her upturned palms. "If I touch a blade it will fall out of my hands like it's been greased with soap. They did the same to Ariadne. It was our compromise, the both of us, to get us out of time in the Silent City. Me for almost killing her, and her for almost killing you."

"But—"

"The curse can be removed," Eugenia said, "if need be. But I can't take it off myself. Mr. Lochlyn made sure of that, in case my help is needed in some emergency situation—Inquisitor Lochlyn. Damn. I keep forgetting that's what he's called now." Eugenia shook her head. "I can't seem to bring myself to think of him as anything but Pluto's father."

"He was always rather a quiet man, wasn't he? But I think that explains why he's done as well as he has." Thomas touched Eugenia's outstretched fingertips with his own. "That curse is nasty. But I'd rather that than seeing you locked up in the Gard in Idris. No matter what you've done."

< & >

Pluto managed, somehow, to place a phone call to their father before he left for Iceland, using the telephone closet in the hotel lobby.

"Hello?" Alan said, picking up.

"Yeah. Uh, it's Pluto."

"Hey, Pluto. How's it going?" He sounded worried.