Page 70 of Better in Black
Ari had wanted to wear gear. Even with a variety of clever tricks worked out over a few hundred years, it was still difficult for a female Shadowhunter to arm herself sufficiently in ordinary clothes. Anna had said no—no matter their history with the Hell Ruelle, gear would be read as threatening. Anna wore an elegant dove-gray suit with a gold embroidered waistcoat, and Ari wore an emerald-green evening dress with a daring transparent tulle insert at the bodice. She had the little three-sided needle of a blade in its place around her neck, and a whip coiled next to her hip in an adapted garter holster. It was a bit thrilling to feel it against her skin as she moved around, but she hoped she would not need to use it.
It would take only about ten minutes to walk briskly from the flat down across Oxford Street and through Soho Square to the Hell Ruelle. Anna and Ari turned from Percy Street onto Rathbone Place, where a large carriage was blocking the road. Ari took nonotice of it—a large carriage in central London was nothing unusual. Took no notice, that is, until the doors flew open and six Annas leapt out in ambush.
Both Anna and Ari froze. It had been bizarre enough to see one false Anna—to see multiple false Annas, all perfectly like the original down to the last detail, sent them reeling. They both recovered swiftly and reached for their weapons, but the pause was enough for them to be overwhelmed.
Two Annas grabbed Ari from behind and a third, her eyes blank as a lizard’s, pressed a handkerchief hard against her nose and mouth and held it there. Ari smelled something bitterly chemical; she choked on a gasp before the world slid away to oblivion.
—
Ari awoke sitting up, her back against something hard.
She ran her hands over her body, checking for injuries. Her necklace blade had been taken; the whip and its holster had not been tampered with. She was leaning against the wall of a large, tiled room, lit by gaslights. At the far end were three large pools of blue water, with elaborate staircases and diving platforms. It was one of the old Victorian bathhouses dotting London—she’d always thought of them as quaint, but they had been popular when her parents were growing up. It was decorated much as she would have expected: a mélange of miscellaneous “Eastern” decorations and artifacts meant to suggest some “exotic” place. The pools were suffused with light from some unknown glowing source below.
Ari rose to her feet, using the wall for support. Half of the room was set up as a lounging area, full of cane chairs and chaise longues, along with small cocktail tables in dark wood. The bath was obviously closed for business, so these should have been empty.
But they were not empty.
In these chairs sat Annas. Easily a dozen Annas. They were dressed identically, in black velvet suits with white shirtfronts. None of them were speaking, nor did they turn to look at Ari, but they were not motionless. They shifted in their chairs, looking here and there at the room they were in, but showed no awareness of Ari’s presence.
A splashing sound pulled Ari’s attention from the Annas. Someone had surfaced in the middle pool. A woman, head and shoulders bobbing above the water, her face cast in shadow. She raised a long hand, beckoning for Ari to come close to her.
Her hand resting lightly against the whip at her thigh, Ari moved toward the middle pool and its inhabitant. As she drew closer, she saw the woman’s hair: long, wavy, blue and green. Recognition clicked into place. Arabella. The mermaid she’d seen at the Hell Ruelle only a week or so ago. The same mermaid who’d been arrested for having tried to poison Hypatia Vex and Malcolm Fade. She recalled the snatch of dialogue she’d overheard:
Really? How on earth did she get out of prison?
Apparently her uncle is the Knight of Storms. You know faerie politics; it’s all favors and pulled strings.
“Arabella,” Ari said. She stopped at the edge of the pool, staring down.
Arabella rose out of the water to her waist. She was naked, the skin of her human half slightly iridescent in the gas lamplight. Silvery scales covered her breasts and waist, a sort of shimmering corset. She would have been quite beautiful, if Ari didn’t hate her so very much.
“You look disturbed,” Arabella said, coyly playing with a tress of blue hair. “Is it my lack of attire?”
“Honestly?” said Ari. “Yes.”
Arabella laughed. “Clothes are merely a concession faeries make to human needs. I choose not to make that concession here.”
“Nonsense,” said Ari.
Arabella smirked. “And if it is nonsense? I doubt you mind all that much.”
“You’re wildly overestimating your appeal,” Ari said. “I’m not interested in you; I’m interested in why you kidnapped me, and Anna? And why there are a dozen Annas here?”
“Fourteen,” Arabella said. “Plenty of Anna for everyone.” She bobbed up and down in obvious delight. “Anna Lightwood could never be faithful to one person,” she said. “I know Anna’s type.”
“Anna is not a type,” said Ari. “Anna is herself.”
“I used to think she spent so much time with Downworlders because she enjoyed our company,” Arabella went on as though Ari hadn’t spoken. “But she turns out to be just another Shadowhunter. Takes whatever she pleases from Downworld and gives nothing back.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ari, “is this really all just because you are jealous?”
“Anna knew just as much as anyone that to come to the Hell Ruelle, to walk on legs, is constant pain for me. That I did so and used my precious time there to flirt with her, I would have thought she’d appreciate. I assumed she did appreciate it. When I returned from prison, I came immediately to celebrate with her.” She shook her head, and water droplets sprayed from her hair. “Only to find everyone talking about a new girl—I’d heard about so many of Anna’s new girls, you understand.”
Ari frowned. “I’m sure.”
“I waited for Anna to grow tired of you as she always grew tiredof partners. And then finally Anna returned to the Hell Ruelle, and I hoped to catch her attention, but that fool Emerald ruined the moment.”
“And then Anna made a speech,” said Ari. “And said she was not available.”
