Charlotte made a bitter sound. "All characters in a play that Mortmain put on for our benefit. Do you know that, search as we have, we have not been able to find a scrap of evidence as to what other Downworlders controlled the Pandemonium Club? None of the mundane members have a clue, and since we destroyed de Quincey's clan, the Downworlders are more distrustful of us than ever."
"But it's only been a few days. It took Will six weeks to find the Dark Sisters. If you keep looking ..."
"We don't have that much time. If what Nathaniel said to Jem was true, and Mortmain plans to use the demon energies inside the Pyxis to animate his clockwork mannequins, we have only the time it will take him to learn to open the box." She shrugged a little. "Of course, the Clave believes that is impossible. The Pyxis can be opened only with runes, and only a Shadowhunter can draw them. But then again, only a Shadowhunter ought to have been able to gain access to the Institute."
"Mortmain is very clever."
"Yes." Charlotte's hands were tightly knotted in her lap. "Did you know that Henry is the one who told Mortmain about the Pyxis? What it was called, and what it did?"
"No ..." Tessa's reassuring words had deserted her.
"You couldn't. No one knows that. Only I do, and Henry. He wants me to tell the Clave, but I won't. They already treat him so badly, and I ..." Charlotte's voice shook, but her small face was set. "The Clave is convening a tribunal. My conduct, and Henry's, will be examined and voted upon. It is possible that we will lose the Institute."
Tessa was appalled. "But you're wonderful at running the Institute! The way you keep everything organized and in place, the way you manage it all."
Charlotte's eyes were wet. "Thank you, Tessa. The fact is that Benedict Lightwood has always wanted the place of head of the Institute for himself, or for his son. The Lightwoods have a great deal of family pride and despise taking orders. If not for the fact that Consul Wayland himself named my husband and me as the successors to my father, I am sure Benedict would be in charge. All I have ever wanted is to run the Institute, Tessa. I will do anything to keep it. If you would only help me—"
"Me? But what can I do? I know nothing of Shadowhunter politics."
"The alliances we forge with Downworlders are some of our most priceless assets, Tessa. Part of the reason I am still where I am is my affiliation with warlocks such as Magnus Bane and vampires such as Camille Belcourt. And you, you are a precious commodity. What you can do has already helped the Enclave once; the aid you could offer us in future could be incalculable. And if you are known to be a firm ally of mine, it will only help me."
Tessa held her breath. In her mind she saw Will—Will as he had looked in the Sanctuary—but, almost to her surprise, he was not all that her thoughts contained. There was Jem, with his kindness and gentle hands; and Henry making her laugh with his odd clothes and funny inventions; and even Jessamine, with her peculiar fierceness and occasional surprising bravery.
"But the Law," she said in a small voice.
"There is no Law against you remaining here as our guest," said Charlotte. "I have searched the archives and have found nothing that would prevent you from staying, if you consented. So do you consent, Tessa? Will you stay?"
Tessa dashed up the steps to the attic; for the first time in what felt like forever, her heart was almost light. The attic itself was much as she remembered, the high small windows letting in a little sunset light, for it was almost twilight now. There was a tipped-over pail on the floor; she maneuvered around it on her way to the narrow steps that led up to the roof.
He is often to be found there when he is troubled, Charlotte had said. And I have rarely seen Will so troubled. The loss of Thomas and Agatha has been more difficult for him than I foresaw.
The steps ended in a square overhead door, hinged on one side. Tessa pushed the trapdoor open, and climbed out onto the Institute's roof.
Straightening, she looked around. She stood in the wide, flat center of the roof, which was surrounded by a waist-high wrought iron railing. The bars of the railing ended in finials shaped like sharpened fleur-de-lis. At the far end of the roof stood Will, leaning against the railing. He did not turn, even as the trapdoor swung shut behind her and she took a step forward, rubbing her scratched palms against the fabric of her dress.
"Will," she said.
He did not move. The sun had begun to set in a torrent of fire. Across the Thames, factory smokestacks belched smoke that trailed dark fingers across the red sky. Will was leaning on the railing as if he were exhausted, as if he intended to fall forward across the javelin-sharp finials and end it all. He gave no sign of hearing Tessa as she approached and moved to stand beside him. From here the steeply pitched roof fell away to a dizzying view of the cobblestones below.
"Will," she said again. "What are you doing?"
He did not look at her. He was staring out at the city, a black outline against the reddened sky. The dome of St. Paul's shone through the mucky air, and the Thames ran like dark strong tea below it, bracketed here and there with the black lines of bridges. Dark shapes moved by the river's edge—mudlarks, searching through the filth thrown up by the water, hoping to find something valuable to sell.
"I remember now," Will said without looking at her, "what it was I was trying to remember the other day. It was Blake. ' And I behold London, a Human awful wonder of God.'" He stared out over the landscape. "Milton thought Hell was a city, you know. I think maybe he had it half-right. Perhaps London is just Hell's entrance, and we are the damned souls refusing to pass through, fearing that what we will find on the other side will be worse than the horror we already know."
"Will." Tessa was bewildered. "Will, what is it, what's wrong?"
He gripped the railing with both hands, his fingers whitening. His hands were covered with cuts and scratches, his knuckles scraped red and black. There were bruises on his face, too, darkening the line of his jaw, purpling the skin under his eye. His lower lip was split and swollen, and he had done nothing to heal any of it. She could not imagine why.
"I should have known," he said. "That it was a trick. That Mortmain was lying when he came here. Charlotte so often vaunts my skill at tactics, but a good tactician is not blindly trusting. I was a fool."
"Charlotte believes it's her fault. Henry believes it's his fault. I believe it's my fault," Tessa said impatiently. "We can't all have the luxury of blaming ourselves, now, can we?"
"Your fault?" Will sounded puzzled. "Because Mortmain is obsessed with you? That hardly seems—"
"For bringing Nathaniel here," Tessa said. Just saying it out loud made her feel as if her chest were being squeezed. "For urging you to trust him."
"You loved him," said Will. "He was your brother."
"He still is," Tessa said. "And I still love him. But I know what he is. I always did know what he was. I just didn't want to believe it. I suppose we all lie to ourselves sometimes."
"Yes." Will sounded tight and distant. "I suppose we do."
Quickly Tessa said, "I came up here because I have good news, Will. Won't you let me tell you what it is?"
"Tell me." His voice was dead.
"Charlotte says I can stay here," Tessa said. "At the Institute."
Will said nothing.
"She said there's no Law against it," Tessa went on, a little bewildered now. "So I won't need to leave."
"Charlotte would never have made you leave, Tessa. She cannot bear to abandon even a fly caught in a spider's web. She would not have abandoned you." There was no life in Will's voice and no feeling. He was simply stating a fact.
"I thought ..." Tessa's elation was fading quickly. "That you would be at least a little pleased. I thought we were becoming friends." She saw the line of his throat move as he swallowed, hard, his hands tensing again on the rail. "As a friend," she went on, her voice dropping, "I have come to admire you, Will. To care for you." She reached out, meaning to touch his hand, but she drew back, startled by the tension in his posture, the whiten
ess of the knuckles that gripped the metal railing. The red mourning Marks stood out, scarlet against the whitened skin, as if they had been cut there with knives. "I thought perhaps ..."
At last Will turned to look directly at her. Tessa was shocked at the expression on his face. The shadows under his eyes were so dark, they looked hollow.
She stood and stared at him, willing him to say what the hero in a book would say now, at this moment. Tessa, my feelings for you have grown beyond mere feelings of friendship. They are so much more rare and precious than that... .
"Come here," he said instead. There was nothing welcoming in his voice, or in the way he stood. Tessa fought back her instinct to shy away, and moved toward him, close enough for him to touch her. He reached out his hands and touched her hair lightly, brushing back the stray curls around her face. "Tess."
She looked up at him. His eyes were the same color as the smoke-stained sky; even bruised, his face was beautiful. She wanted to be touching him, wanted it in some inchoate, instinctive way she could neither explain nor control. When he bent to kiss her, it was all she could do to hold herself back until his lips met hers. His mouth brushed hers and she tasted salt on him, the tang of bruised and tender skin where his lip was cut. He took her by the shoulders and pulled her closer to him, his fingers knotting in the fabric of her dress. Even more than in the attic, she felt caught in the eddy of a powerful wave that threatened to pull her over and under, to crush and break her, to wear her down to softness as the sea might wear down a piece of glass.
She reached to lay her hands on his shoulders, and he drew back, looking down at her, breathing very hard. His eyes were bright, his lips red and swollen now from kissing as well as injuries.
"Perhaps," he said, "we should discuss our arrangements, then."
Tessa, still feeling as if she were drowning, whispered, "Arrangements?"
"If you are going to be staying," he said, "it would be to our advantage to be discreet. It might perhaps be better to use your room. Jem tends to come in and out of mine as if he lives in the place, and he might be puzzled to find the door locked. Your quarters, on the other hand—"
"Use my room?" she echoed. "Use it for what?"
Will's mouth quirked up at the corner; Tessa, who had been thinking about how beautifully shaped his lips were, took a moment to realize with a sense of distant surprise that the smile was a very cold one. "You cannot pretend you don't know... . You are not entirely ignorant of the world, I think, Tessa. Not with that brother of yours."
"Will." The warmth was going out of Tessa like the sea drawing back from the land; she felt cold, despite the summer air. "I am not like my brother."
"You care for me," Will said. His voice was cool and sure. "And you know that I admire you, the way that all women know when a man admires them. Now you have come to tell me you will be here, available to me, for as long as I might wish it. I am offering you what I thought you wanted."
"You cannot mean that."
"And you cannot have imagined I meant anything more," Will said. "There is no future for a Shadowhunter who dallies with warlocks. One might befriend them, employ them, but not ..."
"Marry them?" Tessa said. There was a clear picture in her head of the sea. It had drawn back entirely from the shore, and she could see the small creatures it had left gasping in its wake, flapping and dying on the bare sand.
"How forward." Will smirked; she wanted to slap the expression off his face. "What did you really expect, Tessa?"
"I did not expect you to insult me." Tessa's voice threatened to shake; somehow, she kept it firm.
"It cannot be the unwanted consequences of a dalliance that concern you," Will mused. "Since warlocks are unable to have children—"
"What?" Tessa stepped back as if he had pushed her. The ground felt unsteady under her feet.
Will looked at her. The sun was nearly completely gone from the sky. In the near darkness the bones of his face looked prominent and the lines at the corners of his mouth were as harsh as if he were racked by physical pain. But his voice when he spoke was even. "You didn't know that? I thought someone would have told you."
"No," Tessa said softly. "No one told me."
His gaze was steady. "If you are not interested in my offer ..."
"Stop," she said. This moment, she thought, was like the edge of a broken bit of glass, clear and sharp and painful. "Jem says you lie to make yourself look bad," she said. "And perhaps that is true, or perhaps he simply wishes to believe that about you. But there is no reason or excuse for cruelty like this."
For a moment he looked actually unnerved, as if she had truly startled him. The expression was gone in an instant, like the shifting shape of a cloud. "Then there is nothing more for me to say, is there?"
Without another word she spun on her heel and walked away from him, toward the steps that led back down into the Institute. She did not turn to see him looking after her, a still black silhouette against the last embers of the burning sky.
* * *
Lilith's Children, known also by the name warlocks, are, in the manner of mules and other crossbreeds, sterile. They cannot produce offspring. No exceptions to this rule have been noted... .
Tessa looked up from the Codex and stared, unseeing, out the window of the music room, though it was too dark outside for much of a view. She had taken refuge here, not wanting to return to her own room, where she would eventually be discovered moping by Sophie or, worse, Charlotte. The thin layer of dust over everything in this room reassured her that she was much less likely to be found here.
She wondered how she had missed this fact about warlocks before. To be fair, it was not in the Codex's section on warlocks, but rather in the later section on Downworld crossbreeds such as half faeries and half werewolves. There were no half warlocks, apparently. Warlocks could not have children. Will hadn't been lying to hurt her; he'd been telling the truth. Which seemed worse, in a way. He would have known that his words weren't a light blow, easily resolved.
Perhaps he had been correct. What else had she really thought would happen? Will was Will, and she should not have expected him to be anything else. Sophie had warned her, and still she hadn't listened. She knew what Aunt Harriet would have said about girls who didn't listen to good advice.
A faint rustling sound broke into her brown study. She turned, and at first saw nothing. The only light in the room came from a single witchlight sconce. Its flickering light played over the shape of the piano, the curving dark mass of the harp covered with a heavy drop cloth. As she stared, two bright points of light resolved themselves, close to the floor, an odd green-yellow color. They were moving toward her, both at the same pace, like twin will-o'-the-wisps.
Tessa expelled her held breath suddenly. Of course. She leaned forward. "Here, kitty." She made a coaxing noise. "Here, kitty, kitty!"
The cat's answering meow was lost in the noise of the door opening. Light streamed into the room, and for a moment the figure in the doorway was just a shadow. "Tessa? Tessa, is that you?"
Tessa knew the voice immediately—it was so near to the first thing he had ever said to her, the night she had walked into his room: Will? Will, is that you?
"Jem," she said resignedly. "Yes, it's me. Your cat seems to have wandered in here."
"I can't say that I'm surprised." Jem sounded amused. She could see him clearly now as he came into the room; witchlight from the corridor flooded in, and even the cat was clearly visible, sitting on the floor and washing its face with a paw. It looked angry, the way Persian cats always did. "He seems to be a bit of a gadabout. It's as if he demands to be introduced to everyone—" Jem broke off then, his eyes on Tessa's face. "What's wrong?"
Tessa was so taken off guard that she stammered. "W-why would you ask me that?"
"I can see it on your face. Something's happened." He sat down on the piano stool opposite her. "Charlotte told me the good news," he said as the cat rose to its feet and slunk across the room to him. "Or at least, I
thought it was good news. Are you not pleased?"
"Of course I'm pleased."
"Hm." Jem looked unconvinced. Bending down, he held out his hand to the cat, who rubbed its head against the back of his fingers. "Good cat, Church."
"Church? Is that the cat's name?" Tessa was amused despite herself. "Goodness, didn't it used to be one of Mrs. Dark's familiars or some such thing? Perhaps Church isn't the best name for it!"
"He," Jem corrected with mock severity, "was not a familiar but a poor creature she planned to sacrifice as part of her necromantic spell casting. And Charlotte's been saying that we ought to keep him because it's good luck to have a cat in a church. So we started calling him "the church cat," and from that ..." He shrugged. "Church. And if the name helps keep him out of trouble, so much the better."
"I do believe he's looking at me in a superior manner."
"Probably. Cats think they're superior to everyone." Jem scratched Church behind the ears. "What are you reading?"
Tessa showed him the Codex. "Will gave it to me... ."
Jem reached out and took it from her, with such deftness that Tessa had no time to draw her hand back. It was still open to the page she'd been studying. Jem glanced down at it, and then back up at her, his expression changing. "Did you not know this?"
She shook her head. "It is not so much that I dreamed of having children," she said. "I had not thought so far ahead in my life. It's more that this seems yet another thing that separates me from humanity. That makes me a monster. Something set apart."
Jem was silent for a long moment, his long fingers stroking the gray cat's fur. "Perhaps," he said, "it is not such a bad thing to be set apart." He leaned forward. "Tessa, you know that although it seems you are a warlock, you have an ability we have never seen before. You carry no warlock's mark. With so much about you uncertain, you cannot allow this one piece of information to drive you to despair."
"I am not despairing," Tessa said. "It's just— I have been lying awake these past few nights. Thinking about my parents. I barely remember them, you see. And yet I cannot help but wonder. Mortmain said my mother did not know that my father was a demon, but was he lying? He said she did not know what she was, but what does that mean? Did she ever know what I was, that I was not human? Is that why they left London as they did, so secretively, under cover of darkness? If I am the result of something—something hideous—that was done to my mother without her knowing, then how could she ever have loved me?"
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