فصل 16

16 THE BINDING SPELL

And once, or twice, to throw the dice

Is a gentlemanly game,

But he does not win who plays with Sin

In the secret House of Shame.

—Oscar Wilde, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”

“Jessamine! Jessamine, what’s going on? Where’s Nate?”

Jessamine, who was standing just outside Nate’s room, whirled to face Tessa as she hurried up the corridor. Jessamine’s eyes were red-rimmed, her expression angry. Loose curls of blond hair were coming out of the usually neatly arranged knot at the back of her head. “I don’t know,” she snapped. “I fell asleep in the chair beside the bed, and when I woke up, he was gone—just gone!” She narrowed her eyes. “Gracious, you look ghastly.” Tessa glanced down at herself. She hadn’t bothered with a crinoline, or even shoes. She’d just thrown on a dress and slid her bare feet into slippers. Her hair was straggling down around her shoulders, and she imagined she likely resembled the madwoman Mr. Rochester kept in his attic in Jane Eyre. “Well, Nate can’t have gone very far, not as ill as he is,” Tessa said. “Isn’t anyone looking for him?” Jessamine threw up her hands. “Everyone’s looking for him. Will, Charlotte, Henry, Thomas, even Agatha. I don’t suppose you want us to roust poor Jem out of bed and make him part of the search party too?” Tessa shook her head. “Honestly, Jessamine—” She broke off, turning away. “Well, I’m going to look as well. You can stay here if you like.”

“I do like.” Jessamine tossed her head as Tessa spun away and stalked off down the corridor, her mind whirling. Where on earth could Nate have gone? Had he been feverish, delirious? Had he gotten out of bed not knowing where he was and staggered off to look for her? The thought made her heart clench. The Institute was a baffling maze, she thought as she turned yet another blind corner into yet another tapestry-lined corridor. If she could barely find her way around it even now, how could Nate possibly— “Miss Gray?”

Tessa turned and saw Thomas emerging from one of the doors along the hall. He was in shirtsleeves, his hair tousled as usual, his brown eyes very serious. She felt herself go very still. Oh, God, it’s bad news. “Yes?” “I’ve found your brother,” Thomas said, to Tessa’s astonishment.

“You have? But where was he?”

“In the drawing room. Got himself a bit of a hiding place, behind the curtains, he had.” Thomas spoke hastily, looking sheepish. “Minute he saw me, he went right off his chump. Started screamin’ and yellin’. Tried to bolt right past me, an’ I nearly had to give him one over the gash to keep him quiet—” At Tessa’s look of incomprehension, Thomas paused, and cleared his throat. “That is to say, I’m afraid I may have frightened him, miss.”

Tessa put her hand over her mouth. “Oh, dear. But he’s all right?”

It seemed that Thomas did not know quite where to look. He was embarrassed to have found Nate cowering behind Charlotte’s curtains, Tessa thought, and she felt a wave of indignation on Nate’s behalf. Her brother wasn’t a Shadow-hunter; he hadn’t grown up killing things and risking his life. Of course he was terrified. And he was probably delirious with fever, on top of that. “I had better go in and see him. Just me, you understand? I think he needs to see a familiar face.” Thomas looked relieved. “Yes, miss. And I’ll wait out here, just for now. You just let me know when you want me to summon the others.”

Tessa nodded and moved past Thomas to push the door open. The drawing room was dim, the only illumination the gray afternoon light that spilled through the tall windows. In the shadows the sofas and armchairs scattered about the room looked like crouched beasts. In one of the larger armchairs by the fire sat Nate. He had found the bloodstained shirt and trousers he had been wearing at de Quincey’s, and had put them on. His feet were bare. He sat with his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands. He looked wretched.

“Nate?” Tessa said softly.

At that he looked up—and sprang to his feet, a look of incredulous happiness on his face. “Tessie!”

With a little cry Tessa rushed across the room and threw her arms around her brother, hugging him fiercely. She heard him give a little whimper of pain, but his arms went around her too, and for a moment, embracing him, Tessa was back in her aunt’s little kitchen in New York, with the smell of cooking all around her and her aunt’s soft laughter as she scolded them for making so much noise.

Nate pulled away first, and looked down at her. “God, Tessie, you look so different. . . .”

A shudder went through her. “What do you mean?”

He patted her cheek, almost absently. “Older,” he said. “Thinner. You were a round-faced little girl when I left New York, weren’t you? Or is that just the way I remember you?”

Tessa reassured her brother that she was still the same little sister he’d always known, but her mind was only partly engaged with his question. She couldn’t help staring at him worriedly; he no longer looked as gray as he had, but he was still pale, and bruises stood out in blue, black, and yellow patches on his face and neck. “Nate . . .” “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he said, reading the anxiety on her face.

“Yes, it is. You should be in bed, resting. What are you doing in here?”

“I was trying to find you. I knew you were here. I saw you, before that bald bastard with the missing eyes got at me. I figured they’d imprisoned you, too. I was going to try to get us out.” “Imprisoned? Nate, no, it’s not like that.” She shook her head. “We’re safe here.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “This is the Institute, isn’t it? I was warned about this place. De Quincey said it was run by madmen, monsters who called themselves Nephilim. He said they keep the damned souls of men penned up in some kind of box of theirs, screaming—” “What, the Pyxis? It holds bits of demon energy, Nate, not men’s souls! It’s perfectly harmless. I’ll show it to you later, in the weapons room, if you don’t believe me.”

Nate looked no less grim. “He said that if the Nephilim got their hands on me, they’d take me apart, piece by piece, for breaking their Laws.”

A cold shiver went up Tessa’s spine; she drew away from her brother, and saw that one of the drawing room windows was open, the curtains fluttering in the breeze. So her shiver had been more than just nerves. “Did you open the window? It’s so cold in here, Nate.” Nate shook his head. “It was open when I came in.”

Shaking her head, Tessa went across the room and drew the window down. “You’ll catch your death—”

“Never mind my death,” Nate said irritably. “What about the Shadowhunters? Are you saying they haven’t kept you imprisoned here?”

“No.” Tessa turned away from the window. “They haven’t. They’re strange people, but the Shadowhunters have been kind to me. I wanted to stay here. They’ve been generous enough to let me.” Nate shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

Tessa felt a spark of anger, which surprised her; she pushed it back. It wasn’t Nate’s fault. There was so much he didn’t know. “Where else was I going to go, Nate?” she asked, crossing the room to him and taking his arm. She led him back over to the armchair. “Sit down. You’re exhausting yourself.” Nate sat obediently, and looked up at her. There was a distant look in his eyes. Tessa knew that look. It meant he was plotting, hatching some mad plan, dreaming a ridiculous dream. “We can still get away from this place,” he said. “Get to Liverpool, get on a steamer. Go back to New York.” “And do what?” Tessa said as gently as she could. “There’s nothing there for us. Not with Aunt dead. I had to sell all our things to pay for the funeral. The apartment’s gone. There was no rent money. There’s no place for us in New York, Nate.” “We’ll make a place. A new life.”

Tessa looked at her brother sadly. There was pain in seeing him like this, his face full of hopeless pleading, bruises blossoming on his cheekbones like ugly flowers, his fair hair still matted in places with blood. Nate was not like other people, Aunt Harriet had always said. He had a beautiful innocence about him that had to be protected at all costs.

And Tessa had tried. She and her aunt had hidden Nate’s own weaknesses from him, the consequences of his own flaws and failings. Never telling him of the work Aunt Harriet had had to do to make up the money he had lost gambling, of the taunts Tessa had endured from other children, calling her brother a drunk, a wastrel. They had hidden these things from him to keep him from being hurt. But he had been hurt anyway, Tessa thought. Maybe Jem was right. Maybe the truth was always best.

Sitting down on the ottoman opposite her brother, she looked at him steadily. “It can’t be like that, Nate. Not yet. This mess we’re both in now, it will follow us even if we run. And if we run, we’ll be alone when it does find us. There will be no one to help or protect us. We need the Institute, Nate. We need the Nephilim.” Nate’s blue eyes were dazed. “I guess so,” he said, and the phrase struck Tessa, who had heard nothing but British voices for nearly two months, as so American that she felt homesick. “It’s because of me that you’re here. De Quincey tortured me. Made me write those letters, send you that ticket. He told me he wouldn’t hurt you once he had you, but then he never let me see you, and I thought—I thought—” He raised his head and looked at her dully. “You ought to hate me.” Tessa’s voice was firm. “I could never hate you. You’re my brother. You’re my blood.”

“Do you think when all this is over, we can go back home?” Nate asked. “Forget all this ever happened? Live normal lives?”

Live normal lives. The words conjured up an image of herself and Nate in some small, sunny apartment. Nate could get another job, and in the evening she could cook and clean for him, while on weekends they could walk in the park or take the train to Coney Island and ride the carousel, or go to the top of the Iron Tower and watch the fireworks explode at night over the Manhattan Beach Hotel. There would be real sunshine, not like this gray watery version of summer, and Tessa could be an ordinary girl, with her head in a book and her feet planted firmly on the familiar pavement of New York City.

But when she tried to hold this mental picture in her head, the vision seemed to crumble and fall away from her, like a cobweb when you tried to lift it whole in your hands. She saw Will’s face, and Jem’s, and Charlotte’s, and even Magnus’s as he said, Poor thing. Now that you know the truth, you can never go back.

“But we are not normal,” said Tessa. “I am not normal. And you know that, Nate.”

He looked down at the floor. “I know.” He gave a helpless little wave of his hand. “So it’s true. You are what de Quincey said you were. Magical. He said you had the power to change shape, Tessie, to become anything you wanted to be.” “Did you even believe him? It’s true—well, almost true—but I barely believed it myself at first. It’s so strange—”

“I’ve seen stranger things.” His voice was hollow. “God, it ought to have been me.”

Tessa frowned. “What do you mean?”

But before he could answer, the door swung open. “Miss Gray.” It was Thomas, looking apologetic. “Miss Gray, Master Will is—”

“Master Will is right here.” It was Will, ducking nimbly around Thomas, despite the other boy’s bulk. He was still in the clothes he’d changed into the night before, and they looked rumpled. Tessa wondered if he’d slept in the chair in Jem’s room. There were blue-gray shadows under his eyes, and he looked tired, though his eyes brightened—with relief? amusement? Tessa couldn’t tell—as his gaze fell on Nate.

“Our wanderer, found at last,” he said. “Thomas tells me you were hiding behind the curtains?”

Nate looked at Will dully. “Who are you?”

Quickly Tessa made the introductions, though neither boy seemed all that happy to meet the other. Nate still looked as if he were dying, and Will was regarding Nate as if he were a new scientific discovery, and not a very attractive one at that.

“So you’re a Shadowhunter,” Nate said. “De Quincey told me that you lot were monsters.”

“Was that before or after he tried to eat you?” Will inquired.

Tessa rose quickly to her feet. “Will. Might I speak to you in the corridor for a moment, please?”

If she had expected resistance, she didn’t get it. After a last hostile look at Nate, Will nodded and went with her silently out into the hall, closing the drawing room door behind him.

The illumination in the windowless corridor was variable, the witchlight casting discrete bright pools of light that didn’t quite touch one another. Will and Tessa stood in the shadows between two of the pools, looking at each other—warily, Tessa thought, like angry cats circling in an alley.

It was Will who broke the silence. “Very well. You have me alone in the corridor—”

“Yes, yes,” said Tessa impatiently, “and thousands of women all over England would pay handsomely for the privilege of such an opportunity. Can we put aside the display of your wit for a moment? This is important.” “You want me to apologize, do you?” Will said. “For what happened in the attic?”

Tessa, caught off guard, blinked. “The attic?”

“You want me to say I’m sorry that I kissed you.”

At the words, the memory rose up again in Tessa with an unexpected clarity—Will’s fingers in her hair, the touch of his hand on her glove, his mouth on hers. She felt herself flush and hoped furiously that it wouldn’t be visible in the dimness. “What—no. No!” “So you don’t want me to be sorry,” Will said. He was smiling very slightly now, the sort of smile a small child might bend upon the castle he has just built out of toy blocks, before he destroys it with a wave of his arm.

“I don’t care whether you’re sorry or not,” Tessa said. “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to tell you to be kind to my brother. He’s been through an awful ordeal. He doesn’t need to be interrogated like some sort of criminal.” Will replied more quietly than Tessa would have thought. “I understand that. But if he’s hiding anything—”

“Everyone hides things!” Tessa burst out, surprising herself. “There are things I know he’s ashamed of, but that doesn’t mean they need to matter to you. It’s not as if you tell everyone everything, do you?” Will looked wary. “What are you on about?”

What about your parents, Will? Why did you refuse to see them? Why do you have nowhere to go but here? And why, in the attic, did you send me away? But Tessa said none of those things. Instead she said, “What about Jem? Why didn’t you tell me he was ill the way he is?” “Jem?” Will’s surprise seemed genuine. “He didn’t want me to. He considers it his business. Which it is. You might recall, I wasn’t even in favor of him telling you himself. He thought he owed you an explanation, but he didn’t. Jem owes nothing to anyone. What happened to him wasn’t his fault, and yet he carries the burden of it and is ashamed—” “He has nothing to be ashamed of.”

“You might think so. Others see no difference between his illness and an addiction, and they despise him for being weak. As if he could just stop taking the drug if he had enough willpower.” Will sounded surprisingly bitter. “They’ve said as much, sometimes to his face. I didn’t want him to have to hear you say it too.” “I would never have said that.”

“How would I have guessed what you might say?” Will said. “I don’t really know you, Tessa, do I? Any more than you know me.”

“You don’t want anyone to know you,” Tessa snapped. “And very well, I won’t try. But don’t pretend that Jem is just like you. Perhaps he’d rather people knew the truth of who he is.”

“Don’t,” Will said, his blue eyes darkening. “Don’t think you know Jem better than I do.”

“If you care about him so much, why aren’t you doing anything to help him? Why not look for a cure?”

“Do you think we haven’t? Do you think Charlotte hasn’t looked, Henry hasn’t looked, that we haven’t hired warlocks, paid for information, called in favors? Do you imagine Jem’s death is just something we have all accepted without ever fighting against it?” “Jem told me that he had asked you all to stop looking,” Tessa said, calm in the face of his anger, “and that you had. Haven’t you?”

“He told you that, did he?”

“Have you stopped?”

“There is nothing to find, Tessa. There is no cure.”

“You don’t know that. You could keep looking and not ever tell him you were looking. There might be something. Even the littlest chance—”

Will raised his eyebrows. The flickering corridor light deepened the shadows under his eyes, the angular bones of his cheeks. “You think we should disregard his wishes?”

“I think that you should do whatever you can, even if it means you must lie to him. I think I don’t understand your acceptance of his death.”

“And I think that you do not understand that sometimes the only choice is between acceptance and madness.”

Behind them in the corridor someone cleared their throat. “What’s going on here, then?” asked a familiar voice. Both Tessa and Will had been so caught up in their conversation that they had not heard Jem approaching. Will gave a guilty start before turning to look at his friend, who was regarding them both with calm interest. Jem was fully dressed but looked as if he had just woken from a feverish sleep, his hair mussed and his cheeks burning with color.

Will looked surprised, and not entirely pleased, to see him. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“I ran into Charlotte in the hall. She said we were all meeting in the drawing room to talk with Tessa’s brother.” Jem’s tone was mild, and it was

impossible to tell from his expression how much of Tessa and Will’s conversation he had overheard. “I’m well enough to listen, at least.”

“Oh, good, you’re all here.” It was Charlotte, hurrying up the corridor. Behind her strode Henry, and on either side of him, Jessamine and Sophie. Jessie had changed into one of her nicest dresses, Tessa observed, a sheer blue muslin, and she was carrying a folded blanket. Sophie, beside her, held a tray with tea and sandwiches on it.

“Are those for Nate?” Tessa asked, surprised. “The tea, and the blankets?”

Sophie nodded. “Mrs. Branwell thought he’d likely be hungry—”

“And I thought he might be cold. He was shivering so last night,” Jessamine put in eagerly. “Should we bring these things in to him, then?”

Charlotte looked to Tessa for her approval, which disarmed her. Charlotte would be kind to Nate; she couldn’t help it. “Yes. He’s waiting for you.”

“Thank you, Tessa,” Charlotte said softly, and then she pushed the drawing room door open and went in, followed by the others. As Tessa moved to go after them, she felt a hand on her arm, a touch so light she almost might not have noticed it.

It was Jem. “Wait,” he said. “Just a moment.”

She turned to look at him. Through the open doorway she could hear a murmur of voices—Henry’s friendly baritone, Jessamine’s eager falsetto rising as she said Nate’s name. “What is it?” He hesitated. His hand on her arm was cool; his fingers felt like thin stems of glass against her skin. She wondered if the skin over the bones of his cheeks, where he was flushed and feverish, would be warmer to the touch.

“But my sister—” Nate’s voice floated into the hallway, sounding anxious. “Is she joining us? Where is she?”

“Never mind. It’s nothing.” With a reassuring smile Jem dropped his hand. Tessa wondered, but turned and went into the drawing room, Jem behind her.

Sophie was kneeling by the grate, building up the fire; Nate was still in the armchair, where he sat with Jessamine’s blanket thrown over his lap. Jessamine, upright on a stool nearby, was beaming proudly. Henry and Charlotte sat on the sofa opposite Nate—Charlotte clearly bursting with curiosity—and Will, as usual, was holding up the nearest wall by leaning against it and looking both irritable and amused at the same time.

As Jem went to join Will, Tessa fixed her attention on her brother. Some of the tension had gone out of him when she’d come back into the room, but he still looked miserable. He was plucking at Jessamine’s blanket with his fingertips. She crossed the room and sank down onto the ottoman at his feet, resisting the urge to ruffle his hair or pat his shoulder. She could feel all the eyes in the room on her. Everyone was watching her and her brother, and she could have heard a pin drop.

“Nate,” she said softly. “I assume everyone has introduced themselves?”

Nate, still picking at the blanket, nodded.

“Mr. Gray,” said Charlotte, “we have spoken to Mr. Mortmain already. He has told us a great deal about you. About your fondness for Downworld. And gambling.”

“Charlotte,” Tessa protested.

Nate spoke heavily. “It’s true, Tessie.”

“No one blames your brother for what happened, Tessa.” Charlotte made her voice very gentle as she turned back to Nate. “Mortmain says you already knew he was involved in occult practices when you arrived in London. How did you know that he was a member of the Pandemonium Club?” Nate hesitated.

“Mr. Gray, we simply need to understand what happened to you. De Quincey’s interest in you—I know you aren’t well, and we have no wish to cruelly interrogate you, but if you could offer us even a little information, it might be of the most invaluable assistance—” “It was Aunt Harriet’s sewing notions,” Nate said in a low voice.

Tessa blinked. “It was what?”

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 deal 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 Shadow-hunters.”

“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 they 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.”