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“Maybe you want to know those things,” Tessa said, “but it’s not my fight. I’m not a Shadowhunter. ”
“Indeed,” said Will. “Don’t think we don’t know that. ”
“Be quiet, Will. ” Charlotte’s tone held more than its usual asperity. She turned from him to Tessa, her brown eyes beseeching. “We trust you, Tessa. You need to trust us, too. ”
“No,” Tessa said. “No, I don’t. ” She could feel Will’s gaze on her and was suddenly filled with a startling rage. How dare he be cold to her, angry at her? What had she done to deserve it? She’d let him kiss her. That was all. Somehow, it was as if that alone had erased everything else she had done that evening—as if now that she’d kissed Will, it no longer mattered that she had also been brave. “You wanted to use me—just like the Dark Sisters did—and the moment you had a chance to, the moment Lady Belcourt came along and you needed what I could do, you wanted me to do it. Never mind how dangerous it was! You behave as if I have some responsibility to your world, your laws and your Accords, but it’s your world, and you’re the ones meant to govern it. It’s not my fault if you’re doing a rotten job!”
Tessa saw Charlotte whiten and sit back. She felt a sharp twinge in her chest. It wasn’t Charlotte she had meant to hurt. Still, she went on. She couldn’t help herself, the words coming out in a flood, “All your talk about Downworlders and how you don’t hate them. That’s all nothing, isn’t it? Just words. You don’t mean them. And as for mundanes, have you ever thought maybe you’d be better at protecting them if you didn’t despise them all so much?” She looked at Will. He was pale, his eyes blazing. He looked—she wasn’t sure she could describe his expression. Horrified, she thought, but not at her; the horror ran deeper than that.
“Tessa,” Charlotte protested, but Tessa was already fumbling for the door. She turned at the last moment, on the threshold, to see them all staring at her.
“Stay away from my brother,” she snapped. “And don’t follow me. ”
* * *
Anger, Tessa thought, was satisfying in its own way, when you gave in to it. There was something peculiarly gratifying about shouting in a blind rage until your words ran out.
Of course, the aftermath was less pleasant. Once you’d told everyone you hated them and not to come after you, where exactly did you go? If she went back to her own room, it was as much as saying she was just having a tantrum that would wear off. She couldn’t go to Nate and bring her black mood into his sickroom, and lurking anywhere else meant risking being found sulking by Sophie or Agatha.
In the end she took the narrow, winding stairs that led down through the Institute. She made her way through the witch-lit nave and came out onto the broad front steps of the church, where she sank down on the top stair and wrapped her arms around herself, shivering in the unexpectedly cold breeze. It must have rained sometime during the day, for the steps were damp, and the black stone of the courtyard shone like a mirror. The moon was out, darting in between racing scuds of cloud, and the huge iron gate gleamed blackly in the fitful light. We are dust and shadows.
“I know what you’re thinking. ” The voice that came from the doorway behind Tessa was soft enough that it could almost have been part of the wind that rattled the leaves on the tree branches.
Tessa turned. Jem stood in the arch of the doorway, the white witchlight behind him lighting his hair so that it shone like metal. His face, though, was hidden in shadow. He held his cane in his right hand; the dragon’s eyes gleamed watchfully at Tessa.
“I don’t think you do. ”
“You’re thinking, If they call this damp nastiness summer, what must winter be like? You’d be surprised. Winter’s actually much the same. ” He moved away from the door and sat down on the step beside Tessa, though not too close. “It’s spring that’s really lovely. ”
“Is it?” Tessa said, without much real interest.
“No. It’s actually quite foggy and wet as well. ” He looked sideways at her. “I know you said not to follow you. But I was rather hoping you just meant Will. ”
“I did. ” Tessa twisted round to look up at him. “I shouldn’t have shouted like that. ”
“No, you were quite right to say what you did,” said Jem. “We Shadowhunters have been what we are for so long, and are so insular, that we often forget to look at any situation from someone else’s point of view. It is only ever about whether something is good for the Nephilim or bad for the Nephilim. Sometimes I think we forget to ask whether it is good or bad for the world. ”
“I never meant to hurt Charlotte. ”
“Charlotte is very sensitive about the way the Institute is run. As a woman, she must fight to be heard, and even then her decisions are second-guessed. You heard Benedict Lightwood at the Enclave meeting. She feels she has no freedom to make a mistake. ”
“Do any of us? Do any of you? Everything is life and death to you. ” Tessa took a long breath of the foggy air. It tasted of city, metal and ashes and horses and river water. “I just—I feel sometimes as if I can’t bear it. Any of it. I wish I’d never learned what I was. I wish Nate had stayed home and none of this had ever happened!”
“Sometimes,” Jem said, “our lives can change so fast that the change outpaces our minds and hearts. It’s those times, I think, when our lives have altered but we still long for the time before everything was altered—that is when we feel the greatest pain. I can tell you, though, from experience, you grow accustomed to it. You learn to live your new life, and you can’t imagine, or even really remember, how things were before. ”
“You’re saying I’ll get used to being a warlock, or whatever it is that I am. ”
“You’ve always been what you are. That’s not new. What you’ll get used to is knowing it. ”
Tessa took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I didn’t mean what I said upstairs,” she said. “I don’t think the Nephilim are as dreadful as all that. ”
“I know you didn’t mean it. If you had, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be at your brother’s side, guarding him against our dire intentions. ”
“Will didn’t really mean what he said, either, did he,” Tessa said after a moment. “He wouldn’t hurt Nate. ”
“Ah. ” Jem looked out toward the gate, his gray eyes thoughtful. “You’re correct. But I’m surprised you know it. I know it. But I have had years to understand Will. To know when he means what he says and when he doesn’t. ”
“So you don’t ever get angry at him?”
Jem laughed out loud. “I would hardly say that. Sometimes I want to strangle him. ”
“How on earth do you prevent yourself?”
“I go to my favorite place in London,” said Jem, “and I stand and look at the water, and I think about the continuity of life, and how the river rolls on, oblivious of the petty upsets in our lives. ”
Tessa was fascinated. “Does that work?”
“Not really, but after that I think about how I could kill him while he slept if I really wanted to, and then I feel better. ”
Tessa giggled. “So where is it, then? This favorite place of yours?”
For a moment Jem looked pensive. Then he bounded to his feet, and held out the hand that did not clasp the cane. “Come along, and I’ll show you. ”
“Is it far?”
“Not at all. ” He smiled. He had a lovely smile, Tessa thought—and a contagious one. She couldn’t help smiling back, for what felt like the first time in ages.
Tessa let herself be pulled to her feet. Jem’s hand was warm and strong, surprisingly reassuring. She glanced back at the Institute once, hesitated, and let him draw her through the iron gate and out into the shadows of the city.
14
BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE
Twenty bridges from Tower to Kew
Wanted to know what the River knew,
For they were young and the Thames was old,
And this is the tale that the River tol
d.
—Rudyard Kipling, “The River’s Tale”
Stepping through the Institute’s iron gate, Tessa felt a bit like Sleeping Beauty leaving her castle behind its wall of thorns. The Institute was in the center of a square, and streets left the square in each cardinal direction, plunging into narrow labyrinths between houses. Still with his hand courteously on her elbow, Jem led Tessa down a narrow passage. The sky overhead was like steel. The ground was still damp from the rain earlier in the day, and the sides of the buildings that seemed to press in on either side were streaked with damp and stained with black residues of dust.
Jem talked as they went, not saying much of import but keeping up a soothing chatter, telling her what he had thought of London when he had first come here, how everything had seemed to him a uniform shade of gray—even the people! He had been unable to believe it could rain so much in one place, and so unceasingly. The damp had seemed to come up from the floors and into his bones, so that he’d thought he would eventually sprout mold, in the manner of a tree. “You do get used to it,” he said as they came out from the narrow passage and into the broadness of Fleet Street. “Even if sometimes you feel as if you ought to be able to be wrung out like a washrag. ”
Remembering the chaos of the street during the day, Tessa was comforted to see how much quieter it was in the evening, the thronging crowds reduced to the occasional figure striding along the pavement, head down, keeping to the shadows. There were still carriages and even single riders in the road, though none seemed to notice Tessa and Jem. A glamour at work? Tessa wondered, but didn’t ask. She was enjoying just listening to Jem talk. This was the oldest part of the city, he told her, where London had been born. The shops that lined the street were closed, their blinds drawn, but advertisements still blared from every surface, advertisements for everything from Pears soap to hair tonic to announcements urging people to attend a lecture on spiritualism. As Tessa walked, she caught glimpses of the spires of the Institute between the buildings, and couldn’t help but wonder if anyone else could see them. She remembered the parrot woman with the green skin and feathers. Was the Institute really hidden in plain sight? Curiosity getting the better of her, she asked Jem as much.
“Let me show you something,” he said. “Stop here. ” He took Tessa by the elbow and turned her so that she was facing across the street. He pointed. “What do you see there?”
She squinted across the street; they were near the intersection of Fleet Street and Chancery Lane. There seemed nothing remarkable about where they stood. “The front of a bank. What else is there to see?”
“Now let your mind wander a bit,” he said, still in the same soft voice. “Look at something else, the way you might avoid looking directly at a cat so as not to frighten it. Glance at the bank again, out of the corner of your eye. Now look at it, directly, and very fast!”