Also by Cassandra Clare

e any help at all.
Julian determined that he would love them twice as fiercely as any adult could. He would do
everything for them, he thought, as he went up to the attic one night after his uncle had lived in the
Institute for some months. He would make sure they had everything they wanted. He would make
sure they never missed what they didn’t have; he would love them enough to make up for
everything they’d lost.
He shouldered open the door to the attic. For a moment, blinking in disorientation, he thought
that the room was empty. That his uncle had gone, or was downstairs, sleeping, as he sometimes
did at odd hours.
“Andrew?” The voice came from the floor. There was Uncle Arthur, hunched over, his back
against the massive desk. It looked as if he were sitting in a pool of darkness. It took Julian a
moment to realize that it was blood—black in the dim light, sticky pools of it everywhere, drying
on the floor, gumming together loose pages of paper. Arthur’s shirtsleeves were rolled up, his shirt
itself liberally splattered with blood. He held a dull knife in his right hand. “Andrew,” he said in a
slurred voice, rolling his head toward Julian. “Forgive me. I had to do it. I had—too many
thoughts. Dreams. Their voices are carried to me on blood, you see. When I spill the blood, I stop
hearing them.”
Somehow Julian found his voice. “Whose voices?”
“The angels in Heaven above,” said Arthur. “And the demons down under the sea.” He pressed
the pad of a finger to the tip of the knife and watched the blood bead there.
But Julian barely heard him. He was staring down the barrel of the years and the Clave and the
Law.
“Lunacy” was what they called it when a Shadowhunter heard voices speak to them that no one
else could hear, when they saw things that no one else could see. There were other words, uglier
ones, but there was no understanding, no sympathy, and no tolerance. Lunacy was a taint, a sign
that your brain had rejected the perfection of the Angel’s blood. Those who were considered
lunatics were closed up in the Basilias and never allowed out again.
They certainly were not allowed to run Institutes.
It seemed that the matter of not being loved enough was not the ugliest possibility the
Blackthorn children had to face after all.