Nate continued, in a low voice. "Our aunt Harriet always kept mother's old jewelry box on the nightstand by her bed. She said she kept sewing notions in it, but I—" Nate took a deep breath, looking at Tessa as he spoke. "I was in debt. I'd made a few rash bets, had lost some money, and I was in a bad way. I didn't want you or Aunt to know. I remembered there was a gold bracelet Mother used to wear when she was alive. I got it into my head that it was still in that jewelry box and that Aunt Harriet was just too stubborn to sell it. You know how she is—how she was. Anyway, I couldn't let the idea go. I knew that if I could pawn the bracelet, I could get the money to pay off my debts. So one day when you and Aunt were out, I got hold of the box and searched it.
"Of course the bracelet wasn't in it. But I did find a false bottom to the case. There was nothing in it of any worth, just a wadded-up bunch of old papers. I snatched them when I heard you coming up the stairs, and took them back to my room."
Nate paused. All eyes were on him. After a moment Tessa, no longer able to hold her questions in, said, "And?"
"They were Mother's diary pages," Nate said. "Torn out of their original binding, with quite a few missing, but it was enough for me to put together a strange story.
"It began when our parents were living in London. Father was gone often, working in Mortmain's offices down at the docks, but mother had Aunt Harriet to keep her company, and me to keep her occupied. I had just been born. That was, until Father began to come home night after night increasingly distressed. He reported odd doings on the factory floor, bits of machinery malfunctioning in strange ways, noises heard at all hours, and even the night watchman gone missing one night. There were rumors, too, that Mortmain was involved in occult practices." Nate sounded as if he were remembering as much as reciting the tale. "Father shrugged the rumors off at first but eventually repeated them to Mortmain, who admitted everything. I gather he managed to make it sound rather harmless, as if he were just having a bit of a lark with spells and pentagrams and things. He called the organization he belonged to the Pandemonium Club. He suggested that Father come to one of their meetings, and bring Mother."
"Bring Mother? But he couldn't possibly have wanted to do that—"
"Probably not, but with a new wife and a new baby, Father would have been eager to please his employer. He agreed to go, and to bring Mother with him."
"Father should have gone to the police—"
"A rich man like Mortmain would have had the police in his pocket," interrupted Will. "Had your father gone to the police, they would have laughed at him."
Nathaniel pushed the hair back off his forehead; he was sweating now, strands of hair sticking to his skin. "Mortmain arranged a carriage to come for both of them late at night, when no one would be watching. The carriage brought them to Mortmain's town house. After that there were many missing pages, and no details about what happened that night. It was the first time they went, but not, I learned, the last. They met with the Pandemonium Club several times over the course of the next few months. Mother, at least, hated going, but they continued to attend the meetings until something changed abruptly. I don't know what it was; there were few pages after that. I was able to discern that when they left London, they did it under cover of night, that they told no one where they were going, and they left no forwarding address. They might as well have vanished. Nothing in the diary, though, said anything about why—"
Nathaniel broke off his story with a fit of dry coughing. Jessamine scrambled for the tea that Sophie had left on the side table, and a moment later was pressing a cup into Nate's hand. She gave Tessa a superior expression as she did so, as if to point out that Tessa really ought to have thought of it first.
Nate, having quieted his coughing with tea, continued. "Having found the diary pages, I felt as if I'd stumbled across a gold mine. I'd heard of Mortmain. I knew the man was as rich as Croesus, even if he was evidently a bit mad. I wrote to him and told him I was Nathaniel Gray, the son of Richard and Elizabeth Gray, that my father was dead, and so was my mother, and in among her papers I had found evidence of his occult activities. I intimated that I was eager to meet him and discuss possible employment, and that if he proved less eager to meet me, there were several newspapers that I imagined would be interested in my mother's diary."
"That was enterprising." Will sounded nearly impressed.
Nate smiled. Tessa shot him a furious look. "Don't look pleased with yourself. When Will says 'enterprising,' he means 'morally deficient.'"
"No, I mean enterprising," said Will. "When I mean morally deficient, I say, 'Now, that's something I would have done.'"
"That's enough, Will," Charlotte interrupted. "Let Mr. Gray finish his story."
"I thought perhaps he'd send me a bribe, some money to shut me up," Nate went on. "Instead I got a first-class steamer ticket to London and the official offer of a job once I arrived. I figured I was onto a good thing, and for the first time in my life, I didn't plan on messing it up.
"When I got to London, I went straight to Mortmain's house, where I was ushered into the study to meet him. He greeted me with great warmth, telling me how glad he was to see me and how I looked just like my dear dead mother. Then he grew serious. He sat me down and told me he had always liked my parents and had been saddened when they had left England. He had not known they were dead until he received my letter. Even if I were to go public with what I knew about him, he claimed he would happily give me a job and do whatever he could for me, for my parents' sake.
"I told Mortmain that I would keep his secret—if he brought me with him to attend a meeting of the Pandemonium Club, that he owed it to me to show me what it was he had shown my parents. The truth was, the mentioning of gambling in my mother's diary had sparked my interest. I imagined a meeting of a group of men silly enough to believe in magic and devils. Surely it wouldn't be difficult to win a bit of money off such fools." Nate closed his eyes.
"Mortmain agreed, reluctantly, to take me. I suppose he had no choice. That night the meeting was at de Quincey's town house. The moment the door opened, I knew I was the fool. This was no group of amateurs dabbling in spiritualism. This was the real thing, the Shadow World my mother had made only glancing reference to in her diary. It was real. I can barely describe my sense of shock as I stared around me—creatures of indescribable grotesqueness filled the room. The Dark Sisters were there, leering at me from behind their whist cards, their nails like talons. Women with their faces and shoulders powdered white smiled at me with blood running out the corners of their mouths. Little creatures whose eyes changed color scuttled across the floor. I had never imagined such things were real, and I said as much to Mortmain.
"'There are more things in Heaven and earth, Nathaniel, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,' he said.
"Well, I knew the quote because of you, Tessa. You were always reading Shakespeare at me, and I even paid attention some of the time. I was about to tell Mortmain not to make fun of me, when a man came up to us. I saw Mortmain go stiff as a board, as if this were someone he was frightened of. He introduced me as Nathaniel, a new employee, and told me the man's name. De Quincey.
"De Quincey smiled. I knew immediately he wasn't human. I'd never seen a vampire before, with that death white skin of theirs, and of course when he smiled, I saw his teeth. I think I just stared. 'Mortmain, you're keeping things from me again,' he said. 'This is more than just a new employee. This is Nathaniel Gray. Elizabeth and Richard Gray's son.'
"Mortmain stammered something, looking baffled. De Quincey chuckled. 'I do hear things, Axel,' he said. Then he turned to me. 'I knew your father,' he told me. 'I liked him quite a bit. Perhaps you'd join me for a game of cards?'
"Mortmain shook his head at me, but I'd seen the card room when I'd come into the house, of course. I was drawn to the gaming tables like a moth to light. I sat playing faro all night with a vampire, two werewolves, and a wild-haired warlock. I made my jack that night—won a great deal of money, and drank a great de
al of the colorful sparkling drinks that were passed around the room on silver trays. At some point Mortmain left, but I didn't care. I emerged in the dawn light feeling exultant, on top of the world—and with an invitation from de Quincey to return to the club whenever I liked.
"I was a fool, of course. I was having such a high old time of it because the drinks were mixed with warlock potions, addictive ones. And I had been allowed to win that evening. I went back of course, without Mortmain, night after night. At first I won—won steadily, which was how I was able to send money back to you and Aunt Harriet, Tessie. It certainly wasn't from working at Mortmain's. I went into the office irregularly, but I could barely concentrate even on the simple tasks I was assigned. All I thought about was getting back to the club, drinking more of those drinks, winning more money.
"Then I started to lose. The more I lost, the more obsessed I became with winning it back. De Quincey suggested I start playing on tick, so I borrowed money; I stopped coming into the office at all. I slept all day, and gambled all night. I lost everything." His voice was remote. "When I got your letter that Aunt had died, Tessa, I thought it was a judgment on me. A punishment for my behavior. I wanted to rush out and buy a ticket to return to New York that day—but I had no money. Desperate, I went to the club—I was unshaved, miserable, red-eyed. I must have looked like a man at his lowest ebb, because it was then that de Quincey approached me with a proposition. He drew me into a back room and pointed out that I had lost more money to the club than any one man could ever pay back. He seemed amused by it all, the devil, flicking invisible dust off his cuffs, grinning at me with those needle teeth. He asked me what I'd be willing to give to pay off my debts. I said, 'Anything.' And he said, 'What about your sister?'"
Tessa felt the hairs on her arms rise, and was uncomfortably aware of the eyes of everyone in the room on her. "What—what did he say about me?"
"I was utterly taken off guard," said Nate. "I didn't recall having discussed you with him, ever, but I had been drunk so many times at the club, and we had spoken very freely... ." The teacup in his hand rattled in its saucer; he set them both down, hard. "I asked him what he could possibly want with my sister. He told me that he had reason to know that one of my mother's children was ... special. He had thought it might be me, but having had leisure to observe me, the only thing unusual about me was my foolishness." Nate's tone was bitter. "'But your sister, your sister is something else again,' he told me. 'She has all the power you do not. I have no intention of harming her. She is far too important.'
"I spluttered and begged for more information, but he was unyielding. Either I procured Tessa for him, or I would die. He even told me what it was I had to do."
Tessa exhaled slowly. "De Quincey told you to write me that letter," she said. "He had you send me the tickets for the Main. He had you bring me here."
Nate's eyes pleaded with her to understand. "He swore he wouldn't hurt you. He told me all he wanted was to teach you to use your power. He told me you'd be honored and wealthy beyond imagining—"
"Well, that's just fine, then," interrupted Will. "It's not as if there are more important things than money." His eyes were blazing with indignation; Jem looked no less disgusted.
"It's not Nate's fault!" Jessamine snapped. "Didn't you hear him? De Quincey would have killed him. And he knew who Nate was, where he came from; he would have found Tessa eventually anyway, and Nate would have died for no reason."
"So that's your objective ethical opinion, is it, Jess?" Will said. "And I suppose it has nothing to do with the fact that you've been drooling over Tessa's brother since he arrived. Any mundane will do, I suppose, no matter how useless—"
Jessamine let out an indignant squawk, and rose to her feet. Charlotte, her voice rising, tried to quiet them both as they shouted at each other, but Tessa had stopped listening; she was looking at Nate.
She had known for some time her brother was weak, that what her aunt had called innocence was really spoiled pettish childishness; that being a boy, the firstborn, and beautiful, Nate had always been the prince of his own tiny kingdom. She had understood that, while it had been his job as older brother to protect her, really it had always been she, and her aunt, who had protected him.
But he was her brother; she loved him; and the old protectiveness rose in her, as it always did where Nate was concerned, and probably always would. "Jessamine's right," she said, raising her voice to cut through the angry voices in the room. "It wouldn't have done him any good to refuse de Quincey, and there's no point arguing about it now. We still need to know what de Quincey's plans are. Do you know, Nate? Did he tell you what he wanted with me?"
Nate shook his head. "Once I agreed to send for you, he kept me trapped in his town house. He had me send a letter to Mortmain, of course, resigning from his employment; the poor man must have thought I was throwing his generosity back in his face. De Quincey wasn't planning on taking his eyes off me until he had you in hand, Tessie; I was his insurance. He gave the Dark Sisters my ring to prove to you that I was in their power. He promised me over and over that he wouldn't hurt you, that he was simply having the Sisters teach you to use your power. The Dark Sisters reported on your progress every day, so I knew you were still alive.
"Since I was there in the house anyway, I found myself observing the workings of the Pandemonium Club. I saw that there was an organization to the ranks. There were those who were very low down, clinging to the fringes, like Mortmain and his ilk. De Quincey and the higher-ups mostly kept them around because they had money, and they teased them with little glimpses of magic and the Shadow World to keep them coming back for more. Then there were those such as the Dark Sisters and others, those who had more power and responsibility in the club. They were all supernatural creatures, no humans. And then, at the top, was de Quincey. The others called him the Magister.
"They often held meetings to which the humans and those lower down weren't invited. That was where I first heard about Shadowhunters. De Quincey despises Shadowhunters," Nate said, turning to Henry and Charlotte. "He has a grudge against them—against you. He kept talking about how much better things would be when Shadowhunters were destroyed and Downworlders could live and trade in peace—"
"What tosh." Henry looked genuinely offended. "Don't know what kind of peace he thinks there'd be, without Shadowhunters."
"He talked about how there'd never been a way to defeat Shadowhunters before because their weapons were so superior. He said the legend was that God had meant the Nephilim to be superior warriors, so no living creature could destroy them. So, apparently he thought, 'Why not a creature who wasn't living at all?'"
"The automatons," said Charlotte. "His machine army."
Nate looked puzzled. "You've seen them?"
"A few of them attacked your sister last night," said Will. "Fortunately, we Shadowhunter monsters were around to save her."
"Not that she was doing too badly by herself," Jem murmured.
"Do you know anything about the machines?" Charlotte demanded, leaning forward eagerly. "Anything at all? Did de Quincey ever talk about them in front of you?"
Nate shrank back in his chair. "He did, but I didn't understand most of it. I don't have a mechanical mind, really—"
"It's simple." It was Henry, using the tone of someone trying to calm a frightened cat. "Right now these machines of de Quincey's just run on mechanisms. They have to be wound up, like clocks. But we found a copy of a spell in his library that indicates that he's trying to find a way to make them live, a way to bind demon energy to the clockwork shell and bring it to life."
"Oh, that! Yes, he talked about that," Nathaniel replied, like a child pleased to be able to give the right answer in a schoolroom. Tessa could practically see the ears of the Shadowhunters pricking up with excitement. This was what they really wanted to know. "That's what he hired the Dark Sisters for—not just for training Tessa. They're warlocks, you know, and they were meant to be figuring out how it could be done. And t
hey did. It wasn't long ago—a few weeks—but they did."
"They did?" Charlotte looked shocked. "But, then why hasn't de Quincey done it yet? What's he waiting for?"
Nate looked from her anxious face to Tessa's, and all around the room. "I—I thought you knew. He said the binding charm could only be generated at the full moon. When that happens, the Dark Sisters will get to work, and then—he's got dozens of the things stored in his hideaway, and I know he plans to make many more—hundreds, thousands, perhaps. I suppose he'll animate them, and ..."
"The full moon?" Charlotte, glancing toward the window, bit her lip. "That will be very soon—tomorrow night, I think."
Jem straightened up like a shot. "I can check the lunar tables in the library. I'll be right back." He vanished through the door.
Charlotte turned to Nate. "You're quite sure about this?"
Nate nodded, swallowing hard. "When Tessa escaped from the Dark Sisters, de Quincey blamed me, even though I hadn't known anything about it. He told me he was going to let the Night Children drain my blood as a punishment. He kept me imprisoned for days before the party. He didn't care what he said in front of me then. He knew I was going to die. I heard him talking about how the Sisters had mastered the binding spell. That it wasn't going to be long before the Nephilim were destroyed, and all the members of the Pandemonium Club could rule London in their stead."
Will spoke, his voice harsh. "Have you any idea where de Quincey might be hiding now that his house has burned?"
Nate looked exhausted. "He has a hideaway in Chelsea. He would have gone to ground there with those who are loyal to him—there are still probably a hundred vampires of his clan who weren't at the town house that night. I know exactly where the place is. I can show you on a map—" He broke off as Jem burst into the room, his eyes very wide.
"It's not tomorrow," Jem said. "The full moon. It's tonight."
17
CALL THE
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