Adelia woke up to loud voices. She was sleeping in her room in Thomas' house, waiting for her parabatai to return from his year abroad. She darted out of the room, her bare feet slapping against the polished hardwood of the corridor. She hit the stairs and took them two at a time, swinging around the landings. She could hear voices distinctly now too. She thought she heard Aunt Sophie, Thomas' mother, raising her voice while fretting over her only son, and Thomas answering.

And then she was there, on the second-floor gallery overlooking the foyer. The space was lit up as if it were daytime by a myriad of swirling colors, remnants of a vanishing Portal. In the center of the room stood Thomas. He was still holding onto his luggage with an arm around each of his sisters, Barbara and Eugenia.

She darted down the stairs. Thomas was saying something to his father, Gideon. Then he turned and took several quick strides toward Adelia.

They collided in the middle of the foyer, and she threw her arms around him. "Tom," she said, but the sound was muffled against his shoulder as he hugged her back. For a moment, his arms were so tight around her that she could barely breathe.

Then he released her and took a step back. Thomas looked different.

He began talking, describing his favorite parts of his vacation, but she was not paying much attention. She was much more focused on figuring out the difference between him now and him a year ago.

His eyes were more alert and he no longer hunched in on himself. His shoulders were straight. When he spoke, his words were louder too. And faster paced, as though he was no longer unsure of himself.

He was more confident. That was what changed. But it wouldn't happen this much, this fast, all by himself. Which meant that there was someone else. Which meant that Thomas was in love. And since he didn't tell her yet, it was someone who she wouldn't approve of.

There were very few boys that Adelia wouldn't approve of Thomas dating and he had to have been in Paris in the past year.

Adelia gasped as the pieces fell into place.

Alastair Carstairs.

Adelia spun around, her skirts swirling around her as she thrust her seraph blade into a demon. It roared in anger and swiped at her but she ducked out of reach.

The demon had a ribbed gray body, a curving, sharp beak lined with hooked teeth, and splayed paw-like feet from which ragged claws protruded. A Deumas. She swore under her breath. Just her luck that after months of uneventful patrolling, on the one day she hadn't worn proper gear, she and her friends were fighting one of the most dangerous demons.

The Deumas roared again, drool spilling from its mouth in long green strings. He lurched backward, suddenly and ran, as well as a demon with one leg could run, away from her.

She used the small reprieve to catch her breath and groaned when she saw her damaged dress. Anna was going to murder her. Anna was Christopher's sister who designed the very dress she was wearing.

Adelia ran after the demon, tossing her spattering blade aside. Seraph blades, infused with the energy of angels, were often a Shadowhunter's most trusted weapon and best defense against demons, but after drowning one in ichor, the chances of it still working were very low.

She pulled her throwing stars from her belt. They weren't very good with short-range fighting so she had to put them aside in favor of the seraph blades when dealing with the demon. She followed the demon's tracks to an alley where James was fighting him.

Thomas, Matthew, and Christopher were already there. Thomas whipped his bolas through the air and it dug into the demon's leg. He yanked it backward away from James and towards Adelia, ever the gentleman in offering her the kill.

The Deumas hit the ground with another roar, just as she let both her stars fly. One plunged into the demon's throat, the other into its forehead. Its eyes rolled back and it spasmed before bursting apart, showering her, Matthew, and Thomas with ichor.

Adelia groaned, looking at her clothes, "Anna is going to cut off my head."

Deumas demons were notably messy. Most demons vanished when they died. Not them.

They exploded.

"How—wha—?" Christopher stuttered, at a clear loss for words. Slime dripped off his pointed nose and gold-rimmed spectacles. "But how...?"

"Do you mean how is it possible that we finally tracked down the last demon in London and it was also the most disgusting? Ours is not to question why, Christopher."

She glared at James, lifting her hand to shake some of the undried ichor off her hair. Thomas rolled his eyes at her, but stepped closer, pulling the bits out of her hair quicker than she had.

Matthew's blade extinguished and he tossed it aside. "This is an outrage. Do the demons even know how much I spent on this waistcoat? Do they even care?"

"Considering the fact that we saw the demon trying to kill a group of children, I would say no. I doubt it would care much about you dressing like an extra from The Importance Of Being Ernest."

Adelia laughed at James' words but winced when the sound sent a blinding pain through her side. Thomas, her parabatai, ever in tune with her emotions, spun her around so that he was facing her and he bent, examining the blood on her side.

"We should probably go to the Devil's Tavern. The light isn't bright enough for me to inspect your wound and you can't very well begin to undress in the middle of the street."

Adelia nodded, even though Thomas wasn't really asking. If there was one thing he never eased up on it was her safety and it was the same way for her. Her adrenaline faded and she suddenly felt the effects of the night in her aching limbs and her wounded side. She didn't know when the demon had struck her but her carelessness certainly did not go unnoticed by Thomas.

"You need to be more careful, Ada."

She nodded, too tired to argue as Thomas helped her lean against him. "I'm fine. And anyway, the tavern isn't that far."

They were close to Fleet Street and if Adelia was high-up enough, she would be able to see the print shop it was next to without using any runes.

The tavern was glamoured so that no mundanes could see it or hear the raucous noises of debauchery that poured from the windows and the open doors. It was half-timbered in the Tudor style, the old wood ratty and splintering, kept from falling down by warlocks' spells. Behind the bar, the werewolf owner Ernie pulled pints: the crowd was a mix of pixies and vampires and lycanthropes and warlocks.

Usually, if a Shadowhunter walked into the tavern, they wouldn't be welcome but Adelia and the others would come there so often that the regulars were used to them.

She nodded at Johen, the beta in a werewolf pack, in greeting and kissed Elise, his girlfriend, on her cheek before continuing upstairs. James stayed in the pub to collect drinks from Polly, the barmaid.

Polly was a werewolf and had taken them under her wing when James had first rented out the attic rooms three years ago, wanting a private bolt-hole to retreat to where their parents wouldn't be hovering. She was the one who'd first taken to calling them the Merry Thieves, after Robin Hood and his men.

"It looks worse than it actually is," Adelia stated, looking at her wound in the small, dust-stained mirror. She had ripped off the cloth that covered it and used Thomas' handkerchief to try and staunch the blood flow.

"That's a relief considering that it looks absolutely horrid." Thomas traced the familiar iratze onto her shoulder and she let a sigh escape from her lips and tilted her head back as the pain faded.

By the time James had entered the room, Adelia had already showered and had slipped into the clothes she had stashed for this very purpose. Thomas and Matthew were free of ichor, too, and wearing clean but wrinkled clothes. She was sprawled on the floor next to them, drinking from a half-finished brandy bottle.

Matthew cheered upon seeing his friend. His eyes were suspiciously bright. "Is that a bottle of cheap spirits I see before me? Thank the Angel," He shot a half-hearted glare at Adelia, "Someone stole my alcohol."

"It's not my fault you needed to go shower," Adelia stated and looked at Matthew dead in the eyes as she tilted the bottle to her lips and drained every last drop of alcohol.

He stared at her and a few seconds later, cleared his throat, dragging his eyes elsewhere. His cheeks were dusted with a faint pink.

James set the wine down on the table just as Christopher emerged from the small bedroom at the far end of the attic space. The bedroom had been there before they had taken over the space: there was still a bed in it, but none of them used it for anything besides washing up and storing weapons and changes of clothes.

"James," Christopher said, looking pleased. "I thought you'd gone home."

"Why on earth would I go home?" James took a seat beside Matthew and tossed Polly's dish towels onto the table.

Adelia sat up and curled her body against Thomas, leaning her head on his chest. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her more into him, and pressed his lips against her head.

"No idea," said Christopher cheerfully, pulling up a chair. "But you might have. People do odd things all the time. We had a cook who went to do the shopping and was found two weeks later in Regent's Park. She'd become a zookeeper."

Thomas raised his eyebrows. Adelia had no clue whether or not that actually happened. Christopher wasn't a liar, but he only paid a fraction of his attention to anything that didn't have to do with science.

"Your hand," Adelia shrugged out of Thomas' arm and leaned forward, holding James' hand gently in her own. "What happened?"

"Just a cut," James said, opening his hand. The wound was a long diagonal slice across his palm. As Matthew took James's hand from her, the silver bracelet that James always wore on his right wrist clinked against the hock bottle on the table.

"You should have told me," Matthew said, reaching into his waistcoat for his stele. "I would have fixed you up in the alley."

"I forgot," James said.

"Did something happen?" Thomas asked.

"It was very quick," James said, with some reluctance.

"Many things that are 'very quick' are also very bad," said Matthew, setting the point of his stele to James's skin. "Guillotines come down very quickly, for instance. When Christopher's experiments explode, they often explode very quickly."

"Clearly, I have neither exploded nor been guillotined," said James. "I—went into the shadow realm."

Matthew's head jerked up, though his hand remained steady as the iratze, took shape on James's skin. James could feel the pain in his hand begin to subside. "I thought all that business had stopped,' Matthew said. "I thought Jem had helped you."

"He did help me. It's been a year since the last time." James shook his head. "I suppose it was too much to hope it was gone forever."

"Do you know why it happened? It used to when you were upset. Was it the demon attacking?" Adelia asked.

"No," James said quickly. "I can't imagine- no."

"Demons don't bother our boy," said Matthew, finishing the healing rune. This close to his parabatai, James could smell the familiar scent of Matthew's soap mixed with alcohol. "It must have been something else."

"You ought to talk to your uncle, then, James," said Adelia.

James shook his head. "It was nothing. I was surprised by the demon; I grabbed at the blade by accident. I'm sure that's what caused it."

"Did you turn into a shadow?" said Matthew, putting his stele into his pocket.

Sometimes James had turned into a shadow, able to pass through objects. That was what happened the first time he went into the realm.

Christopher looked up from his notebook. "Speaking of the demon—"

"Which we weren't," Matthew pointed out.

"—what kind was it again?" Christopher asked, biting the end of his pen. He often wrote down details of their demon-fighting expeditions. He claimed it helped him in his research. "The one that exploded, I mean."

"As opposed to the one that didn't?" Adelia asked, before sighing, "It was a Deumas. Strange that it was here, though."

"I saved some of its ichor," said Christopher, producing from somewhere on his person a corked test tube full of a greenish substance. "I caution all of you not to drink any of it."

"I can assure you we had no plans to do any such thing, you daft boot," said Thomas.

Matthew shuddered. "Enough talk of ichor. Let's toast again to Thomas being home!"

Thomas protested. James raised his glass and toasted with Adelia and then Matthew. Christopher was about to clink his test tube against James's glass when Matthew, muttering imprecations, confiscated it and handed Christopher a glass of hock instead.

Thomas, despite his objections, looked pleased. Adelia smiled at that. He had gone to Paris and had spent the better part of the past year in the Institute run by her sister. Belle absolutely adored Thomas and so did her husband, Rahul.

Adelia settled back into Thomas and opened the book she had left halfway through the last time she was here.

"Oscar Wilde again? Looks like I'm rubbing off on you."

She glared at Matthew halfheartedly, "I liked him long before you ever did, you twat."

She threw a hairpin at him and when Matthew moved to block his face, he knocked over one of Christopher's test tubes which turned a violent puce almost immediately, and began to eat through the table. They all leaped up to grab for Polly's dish towels. Thomas hurled a pitcher of water at the table, which drenched Christopher, and Adelia doubled over laughing.

"I say," said Christopher, mopping wet hair out of his eyes. "I do think that worked, Tom. The acid has been neutralized."

Thomas was shaking his head. "Someone should neutralize you, you mopstick-"