Maryse Lightwood pulled her coat tightly around her as she ventured into the night. As she walked through the cold snow Maryse pocketed her stele, the silencing rune she had drawn on the palm of her bare hand doing its job. She made no sound as she crunched through the snow underfoot.
Ahead of her, Maryse's husband Robert was hunched against the cold. She followed him around the back of the apartment they shared and past the church where they were married. He stepped into the glamoured Shadowhunter cemetery in the shadow of the church. Maryse followed. Robert had been out every night this week, what with his sister sick and the trouble with the Downworlder club on Fifth Avenue. She had questioned none of this until she decided to pay the Downworlder club a little visit. After scouring the streets for hours, Maryse had returned home, adamant in her belief the Downworlder club did not exist. Robert had lied to her.
Maryse tripped over a small, dark and obviously Downworlder headstone. Here lies Tessa Gray, warlock and friend of the Nephilim, it said. That next to it was marked in the same curling script, and here lies William Herondale, the beloved Shadowhunter companion of Miss Gray, and her loving spouse in the end. The years on the headstones said Tessa and William were hardly eighteen when they died. How good it must have been, thought Maryse, to know at such a young age that you love someone, and that your feelings are returned by that person. Maryse and Robert had married early, even for Shadowhunters, who tended to marry in their youth, as they generally did not live an extraordinarily long time, yet she had always doubted him, and their relationship was not one built on trust.
She looked up as a spiraling light shone suddenly before her. Robert's thin figure was clearly visible in front of his Portal. He stepped through it and Maryse slipped discreetly in after him. She needed answers.
Maryse's chest expanded, as if a heavy weight had been lifted off her, as she stepped out of the portal. She saw, much to her surprise, that she was standing in the large, lavish foyer of Annamarie Highbury, her dear friend and coveted member of the Clave. She saw the door ahead of her swing shut behind Robert. He must be here on Clave business, thought Maryse. There is simply no other explanation. If she truly believed that, Maryse would have left Annamarie's house right then, but something held her back. She needed to know why she had gone searching for a nonexistent club, why Robert was so squeamish around the children these days. Every time little Alec neared his father, the latter became odd and withdrawn, and he hardly ever looked at baby Isabelle in her crib.
Maryse loved her children more than any other woman could. Alec, with his dark hair and blue eyes, looked so like Maryse's brother, and Izzy's baby photos were easily mistaken with those of her mother. Alec, at least, could tell there was something wrong with his father, and Maryse pushed herself forward and through the door, knowing that Alec deserved to know what was going on. And if Robert's behavior was sending his two-year old's sixth sense tingling, maybe she should know what was going on, too.
Maryse slid into a dark room off the foyer. She could hear voices coming from another door that, she knew, led into Annamarie's bedroom. Highbury Manor had been in the family for several generations, and had been the site of many a wild sleepover when Maryse was young. She knew the layout of this building like the back of her hand.