Learn about Loss (Ghosts of the Shadow Market #4)(4)

Jem had tried not to think of his violin. But you couldn’t keep secrets from your Brothers. And that violin had lain silent and neglected for a very long time.

He said, attempting to think of other things as they walked, Can you tell me if you know anything of an Annabel Blackthorn? An Iron Sister? She and a friend of mine, the warlock Malcom Fade, fell in love and made plans to run away together, but when her family discovered this, they forced her to join the Iron Sisterhood. It would ease his mind to know something of what her life has been in the Adamant Citadel.

Sister Emilia said, “It’s clear that you know very little about the Iron Sisters! No one is ever forced to join against their will. Indeed, it is a great honor, and many who attempt the path are turned away. If this Annabel became an Iron Sister, she chose that for herself. I know nothing of her, although it’s true that most of us change our names when we are consecrated.”

Jem said, If you come to know anything of her, my friend would be most grateful. He does not speak of her much, but I believe that she is always in his thoughts.





When Jem and Sister Emilia passed through the gates of the carnival, the first strange thing they saw was a werewolf eating cotton candy out of a paper cone. Sticky pink strands were caught in his beard.

“Full moon tonight,” Sister Emilia said. “The Praetor Lupus has sent down some of their people, but it’s said the werewolves here are a law to themselves. They run moonshine and ride roughshod in the mountains. These boys should be steering clear of mundanes this time of the month, not eating cotton candy and peddling rotgut.”

The werewolf stuck out its tongue at them and sauntered away. “Sauce!” Sister Emilia said, and would have pursued the werewolf.

Jem said, Hold. There are worse things here than Downworlders with terrible manners and sweet tooths. Can you smell that?

Sister Emilia wrinkled her nose. “Demon,” she said.

They followed the smell through the winding alleys of the carnival, through the strangest iteration of the Shadow Market that Jem had ever seen. The Market was, of course, much bigger than you would have expected a carnival, even one of this size, to encompass. Some of the vendors he recognized. Some watched warily as he and Sister Emilia passed. One or two, with looks of resignation, began to pack up their wares. The rules by which Shadow Markets existed were more the rules of long custom than those written down and codified, but everything about this Shadow Market felt wrong to Jem, and the Silent Brothers in his head were all debating how it might have come to be. Even if a Shadow Market had been right and proper in this place, there should not have been mundanes browsing and exclaiming over the strange goods on offer. Here went a man, looking pale and dreamy-eyed, blood still trickling from two neat punctures in his neck.

“I’ve never actually been to a Shadow Market,” Sister Emilia said, slowing down. “My mother always said it was no place for Shadowhunters and insisted that my brothers and I stay away from it.” She seemed particularly interested in a booth that sold knives and weapons.

Souvenirs later, Jem said, pushing on. Business first.

They were suddenly out of the Shadow Market and in front of a stage where a magician was telling jokes as he turned a small shaggy dog into a green melon and then cut the melon in half with a playing card. Inside was a fiery sphere that rose up and hung in the air like a miniature sun. The magician (the sign above his head proclaimed him to be Roland the Astonishing) poured water out of his hat onto it, and the sphere became a mouse and ran off the stage into an audience that gasped and shrieked and then applauded.

Sister Emilia had stopped to watch, and Jem stopped too.

She said, “Real magic?”

Real illusions at least, Jem said. He gestured at the woman who stood at the side of the stage watching the magician perform his tricks.

The magician looked to be in his sixties, but his companion could have been any age at all. She was clearly of high Fey lineage, and there was a baby in her arms. The way that she watched the magician on the stage made Jem’s chest grow tight. He had seen Tessa look at Will the same way, with that rapt attention and love mingled with the knowledge of future sorrow that must, one day, be endured.

Brother Enoch said, again, When the day comes, we will bear it with you.

A thought came to Jem like an arrow, that when that day came and Will left the world, he did not wish to share his grief with his brothers. That others would be there with him when Will was not. And, too, there was Tessa. Who would stay to help her endure when Jem took the body that Will had left behind back to the Silent City?

The faerie woman looked out over the crowd and then drew back suddenly behind a velvet curtain. When Jem tried to see what she had seen, he saw a goblin perched on a flag above the top of a nearby tent. It appeared to be sniffing the wind as if it smelled something particularly delicious. Mostly what Jem smelled now was demon.

Sister Emilia craned her neck to see where Jem was looking and said, “Another faerie! It’s nice to be out in the world again. I’ll have such a lot to write about in my diary when I’m back in the Iron Citadel.”

Do Iron Sisters keep diaries? Jem asked politely.

“That was a joke,” Sister Emilia said. She actually looked disappointed in him. “Do Silent Brothers have any kind of a sense of humor, or do they stitch that up too?”

We collect knock-knock jokes, Jem said.

She perked up. “Really? Do you have any favorites?”