Chapter 4
FOUR
The chapel was not quite what Matthew had imagined.
He had pictured a wood-lined room with pews and an altar, somewhere Sunday services could be held for spiritually inclined passengers.
Instead it was more of a drawing room. As if it had been intended originally as a place for passengers to play cards, read, and smoke cigars, it was a carpeted room filled with round, white-draped tables, the porthole windows hung with slightly dusty velvet curtains.
The only thing that seemed to mark it out as a chapel was a somewhat makeshift altar at one end.
A large gold crucifix anchored a drapery of silk cloth, and a several-branched candlestick sat beside it, unlit.
A number of the chairs and tables had been moved to the edges of the room to create space for the large cot that had been placed in the center. On the cot lay the sheet-draped body of—Matthew assumed—Bart Morrow.
“Unfortunate,” Sylvain noted, glancing around the room. “I doubt this place is consecrated. The vampires may be able to come in any time they like.”
“Then we’d better have a look at the body before they can get to it,” Matthew said grimly, and approached the cot.
As he gingerly drew back the sheet, he saw that someone had made the effort to arrange Bart Morrow’s body in a peaceful position.
His eyes had been closed and his hands were folded across his chest. Matthew felt his stomach lurch; it was the same position they had put Christopher in when they’d laid him out on the bier in the Sanctuary of the London Institute.
Though Christopher had looked like he was sleeping, and Morrow was very clearly and definitely dead.
“What’s wrong?” said Sylvain. “Do you see something?”
Matthew snapped himself back to attention. Pushing back his revulsion, he reached to open the dead man’s mouth to check his gums. They were gray. He drew his hand back, noting the way Morrow’s skin seemed almost shriveled, drawn tightly to his bones.
“He was drained of blood,” Matthew said, wearily. “Come look.”
Sylvain joined Matthew beside the dead man’s body. With a clinical disinterest, he examined Morrow’s throat and the cut Matthew had noticed before. “Someone made this slash to hide the puncture wounds from fangs,” he said. “I’d guess they were in a hurry—it’s a messy job.”
“Is there any other reasonable explanation for this that isn’t vampires?” said Matthew hopefully. “Anything else that could have happened to him?”
“Eels,” Sylvain said. “Giant eels.”
Matthew looked at him sharply, then realized Sylvain was joking—or at least as close to joking as he got.
Matthew’s mind was racing. Somehow he’d managed to travel around the world for nearly a year without a single peep of trouble from Downworlders or demons, and now this, on what was essentially his voyage home.
“What do we do?” Sylvain said. His arms were crossed, his eyes fixed on Morrow’s dead body.
Matthew held up a hand. “Hear me out,” he said. “Nothing. I suggest we do nothing.”
Sylvain’s eyes narrowed. “Explain yourself. As you said before, they’ve broken the Accords—we can’t do nothing.”
“I know.” Matthew scrubbed at his eyes, feeling suddenly tired.
“I wasn’t suggesting we do absolutely nothing.
I was suggesting we send a fire-message to the Clave, so they can have Shadowhunters waiting when we disembark in Constantinople.
It would be better if we didn’t have to handle this on our own. ”
“But if we wait,” said Sylvain, reasonably enough, “whoever did this may kill to feed again.”
“I’ve known quite a few vampires,” Matthew said.
“Most don’t want trouble with Shadowhunters.
Most are willing to live by the Accords.
The ones who are dedicated killers, who feed on human death, are much more careful than this.
They know how not to get caught. This feels like an act of panic.
One of these vampires attacked Morrow, then threw his body overboard, hoping to cover up what they’d done.
Which does not to me seem like a premeditated act. ”
“Premeditated or not,” Sylvain said, “murder is murder.”
“But the why still matters,” said Matthew. As quickly as he could, he searched Morrow’s pockets—first his trousers, then his jacket. In his waistcoat, he found a bundle of sodden papers tied with a black ribbon.
Sylvain made an inquisitive sound and moved to stand beside Matthew.
He watched as Matthew, as carefully as he could, untied the wet papers and examined them.
Most of the pages were illegible, the ink smeared by seawater.
It appeared to be some sort of contract or legal document.
The final page, being bound in the center, had not gotten as wet as the others, and Matthew could see that there was a space there for a signature, filled in with a neat feminine hand.
Melody Doyle Morrow.
“Miss Melody,” murmured Sylvain. “So was she perhaps secretly married to Mr. Morrow?”
“They behaved as if they knew each other not at all,” said Matthew. “But that is clearly not the case.”
“Unless it is some sort of peculiar game they play, in which they pretend not to know each other in company to amuse themselves,” mused Sylvain, which Matthew felt was a very French theory to come up with. “But they were not even traveling together. Clearly, they were estranged—”
He broke off as the door to the chapel rattled on its hinges. Matthew barely had time to jam the sodden papers into his pocket before he found himself hauled behind the altar by Sylvain.
He clapped his hand over his mouth to stifle a sneeze.
It was quite dusty behind the altar, and poorly lit.
Sylvain was a shadow beside him. They were awkwardly pushed up against each other, and Matthew could feel the muscles in Sylvain’s arm flex as the other boy reached down to put his hand on the hilt of his weapon.
He also noticed that Sylvain smelled pleasantly of salt water and soap, though he reminded himself immediately that now was not the time to be thinking about how people smelled.
Now was the time to peer around the altar at the vampire standing in the middle of the room, looking down at the corpse of Bart Morrow.
Melody Doyle (Melody Doyle Morrow, Matthew reminded himself) had come into the room almost silently, and she stood over the body of the dead man with that preternatural stillness common to vampires.
She wore a somber dark gray dress, at odds with the familiar glimmering necklace around her throat.
Other than the stillness, and her pallor, she looked very ordinary, and very young.
Matthew and Sylvain had assumed that by waiting until morning to examine the body, they’d avoid crossing paths with any vampires—an incorrect assumption, he realized now.
Melody must be moving about the ship cautiously, avoiding the sunlight.
“We should question her,” Sylvain whispered into Matthew’s ear.
They were squeezed into a tight space, but Sylvain really was leaning quite hard against Matthew’s side.
He should probably move away, Matthew thought, and promptly didn’t.
The feeling of someone else’s warmth and solidity against him reminded him, half against his will, of how long it had been since he had touched another person.
Even for a simple embrace or the clasping of hands.
“I said,” Sylvain whispered again, “we should question her.” He had turned his head to look at Matthew. His eyes were very shadowed, very dark, the pupil widened to catch the sparse light.
Before Matthew could respond, Melody spoke out loud. Matthew froze for a moment—had she seen them hiding? But it soon became clear she had not. She was addressing the dead man, her voice low and cold.
“Remember when I came to you, Bart, and told you I’d been—turned?
I thought you would help me. But you said I was better off dead.
” She bent her head, strands of her pale hair falling to hide her face.
“You never really cared about me, did you? You were always so cold. And yet I told myself it was because of father, the way he was. That he had so despised emotionalism that you had been forced to lock away your secret heart. But now I have found that you had no heart to hide. And all I’ll have to remember you by will be this. ”
She yanked up her left sleeve. Matthew heard Sylvain suck in a breath. A red wound marked Melody’s inner arm, dark red and raw and crusted around the edges with black blood. It was a burn, in the shape of a cross.
Even knowing she might be a murderer, Matthew felt a wrench of sympathetic pain. A vampire would heal from a wound like that much sooner than a human, he knew; the burn must have been inflicted recently and still be very painful.
Melody drew her sleeve back down. And now, to Matthew’s surprise, she began to search the dead man, just as he had.
Finding nothing in his trouser pockets, she turned her attention to his jacket, even slipping her hand inside the lining, her movements growing in urgency as her search turned up nothing.
Matthew thought of the damp papers in his own coat pocket—was that what she was searching for?
“Now can we question her?” Sylvain demanded in a low voice.
“I didn’t say we couldn’t in the first place,” Matthew pointed out. “Also, it’s not up to me. You do what you like.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Well, pardon me, then. I was under the impression that we were working together.”
Matthew felt suddenly ashamed. He had been unnecessarily snappy.
As Sylvain began to rise, Matthew caught at his hand.
Sylvain glanced down at him, his dark eyes startled—and immediately ducked down again behind the altar.
The door had opened once more, and a familiar passenger came in: the tall, bony man who had played Prospero onstage.