فصل 7

Chapter 7

THE CURSE

An orphan’s curse would drag to hell

A spirit from on high;

But oh! more horrible than that

Is the curse in a dead man’s eye!

Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,

And yet I could not die.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

Magnus heard the sound of the front door opening and the following clatter of raised voices, and thought immediately, Will. And then was amused that he had thought it. The Shadow-hunter boy was becoming like an annoying relative, he thought as he folded down a page of the book he was reading—Lucian’s Dialogues of the Gods; Camille would be furious he had dog-eared her volume—someone whose habits you knew well but could not change. Someone whose presence you could recognize by the sound of their boots in the hallway. Someone who felt free to argue with the footman when he’d been given orders to tell everyone that you were not at home.

The parlor door flew open, and Will stood on the threshold, looking half-triumphant and half-wretched—quite a feat. “I knew you were here,” he announced as Magnus sat up straight on the sofa, swinging his boots to the floor. “Now, will you tell this—this overgrown bat to stop hovering over my shoulder?” He indicated Archer, Camille’s subjugate and Magnus’s temporary footman, who was indeed lurking at Will’s side. His face was set in a look of disapproval, but then it was always set in a look of disapproval. “Tell him you want to see me.” Magnus set his book down on the table beside him. “But maybe I don’t want to see you,” he said reasonably. “I told Archer to let no one in, not to let no one in but you.” “He threatened me,” Archer said in his hissing not-quite-human voice. “I shall tell my mistress.”

“You do that,” said Will, but his eyes were on Magnus, blue and anxious. “Please. I have to talk to you.” Drat the boy, Magnus thought. After an exhausting day spent clearing a memory-blocking spell for a member of the Penhallow family, he had wanted only to rest. He had stopped listening for Camille’s step in the hall, or waiting for her message, but he still preferred this room to others—this room, where her personal touch seemed to cling to the thorned roses on the wallpaper, the faint perfume that rose from the draperies. He had looked forward to an evening spent by the fire here—a glass of wine, a book, and being left strictly alone.

But now here was Will Herondale, his expression a study in pain and desperation, wanting Magnus’s help. He was really going to have to do something about this annoying softhearted impulse to assist the desperate, Magnus thought. That, and his weakness for blue eyes.

“Very well,” he said with a martyred sigh. “You may stay and talk to me. But I warn you, I’m not raising a demon. Not before I’ve had my supper. Unless you have turned up some sort of hard proof . . .” “No.” Will came eagerly into the room, shutting the door in Archer’s face. He reached around and locked it, for good measure, and then strode over to the fire. It was chilly out. The visible bit of window not blocked by drapes showed the square outside darkening to a blackish twilight, leaves blown rattling across the pavement by a brisk-looking wind. Will drew off his gloves, laid them on the mantel, and stretched his hands out to the flames. “I don’t want you to raise a demon.” “Huh.” Magnus put his booted feet up on the small rosewood table before the sofa, another gesture that would have infuriated Camille, had she been there. “That’s good news, I suppose—” “I want you to send me through. To the demon realms.”

Magnus choked. “You want me to do what?”

Will’s profile was black against the flickering fire. “Create a portal to the demon worlds and send me through. You can do that, can’t you?” “That’s black magic,” said Magnus. “Not quite necromancy, but—”

“No one need know.”

“Really.” Magnus’s tone was acid. “These things have a way of getting out. And if the Clave found out I’d sent one of their own, their most promising, to be rent apart by demons in another dimension—” “The Clave does not consider me promising.” Will’s voice was cold. “I am not promising. I am not anything, nor will I ever be. Not without your help.” “I am beginning to wonder if you’ve been sent to test me, Will Herondale.”

Will gave a harsh little bark of laughter. “By God?”

“By the Clave. Who might as well be God. Perhaps they simply seek to find out whether I am willing to break the Law.” Will swung around and stared at him. “I am deadly earnest,” he said. “This is not some sort of test. I cannot go on like this, summoning up demons at random, never having them be the correct one, endless hope, endless disappointment. Every day dawns blacker and blacker, and I will lose her forever if you—” “Lose her?” Magnus’s mind fastened on the word; he sat up straight, narrowing his eyes. “This is about Tessa. I knew it was.” Will flushed, a wash of color across the pallor of his face. “Not just her.”

“But you love her.”

Will stared at him. “Of course I do,” he said finally. “I had come to think I would never love anyone, but I love her.” “Is this curse supposed to be some business about taking away your ability to love? Because that’s nonsense if I’ve ever heard it. Jem’s your parabatai. I’ve seen you with him. You love him, don’t you?” “Jem is my great sin,” said Will. “Don’t talk to me about Jem.”

“Don’t talk to you about Jem, don’t talk to you about Tessa. You want me to open a portal to the demon worlds for you, and you won’t talk to me or tell me why? I won’t do it, Will.” Magnus crossed his arms over his chest.

Will rested a hand on the mantel. He was very still, the flames showing the outlines of him, the clear beautiful profile, the grace of his long slender hands. “I saw my family today,” he said, and then amended that quickly. “My sister. I saw my younger sister. Cecily. I knew they lived, but I never thought I would see them again. They cannot be near me.” “Why?” Magnus made his voice soft; he felt he was on the verge of something, some sort of breakthrough with this odd, infuriating, damaged, shattered boy. “What did they do that was so terrible?” “What did they do?” Will’s voice rose. “What did they do? Nothing. It is me. I am poison. Poison to them. Poison to anyone who loves me.” “Will—”

“I lied to you,” Will said, turning suddenly away from the fire.

“Shocking,” Magnus murmured, but Will was gone, gone into his memories, which was perhaps for the best. He had begun to pace, scuffing his boots along Camille’s lovely Persian carpet.

“You know what I’ve told you. I was in the library of my parents’ house in Wales. It was a rainy day; I was bored, going through my father’s old things. He kept a few things from his old life as a Shadowhunter, things he had not wanted, for sentiment I suppose, to give up. An old stele, though I did not know what it was at the time, and a small, engraved box, in a false drawer of his desk. I suppose he assumed that would be enough to keep us out, but nothing is enough to keep out curious children. Of course the first thing I did upon finding the box was open it. A mist poured out of it in a blast, forming almost instantly into a living demon. The moment I saw the creature, I began to scream. I was only twelve. I’d never seen anything like it. Enormous, deadly, all jagged teeth and barbed tail—and I had nothing. No weapons. When it roared, I fell to the carpet. The thing was hovering over me, hissing. Then my sister burst in.” “Cecily?”

“Ella. My elder sister. She had something blazing in her hand. I know what it was now—a seraph blade. I had no idea then. I screamed for her to get out, but she put herself between the creature and me. She had absolutely no fear, my sister. She never had. She was not afraid to climb the tallest tree, to ride the wildest horse—and she had no fear there, in the library. She told the thing to get out. It was hovering there like a great, ugly insect. She said, ‘I banish you.’ Then it laughed.” It would. Magnus felt a strange stirring of both pity and liking for the girl, brought up to know nothing about demons, their summoning or their banishment, yet standing her ground regardless.

“It laughed, and it swung out with its tail, knocking her to the ground. Then it fixed its eyes on me. They were all red, no whites at all. It said, ‘It is your father I would destroy, but as he is not here, you will have to do.’ I was so shocked, all I could do was stare. Ella was crawling over the carpet, grabbing for the fallen seraph blade. ‘I curse you,’ it said. ‘All who love you will die. Their love will be their destruction. It may take moments, it may take years, but any who look upon you with love will die of it, unless you remove yourself from them forever. And I shall begin it with her.’ It snarled in Ella’s direction, and vanished.” Magnus was fascinated despite himself. “And did she fall dead?”

“No.” Will was still pacing. He took off his jacket, slung it over a chair. His longish dark hair had begun to curl with the heat coming off his body, mixing with the heat of the fire; it stuck to the back of his neck. “She was unharmed. She took me in her arms. She comforted me. She told me the demon’s words meant nothing. She admitted she had read some of the forbidden books in the library, and that was how she knew what a seraph blade was, and how to use it, and that the thing I had opened was called a Pyxis, though she could not imagine why my father would have kept one. She made me promise not to touch anything of my parents’ again unless she was there, and then she led me up to bed, and sat reading while I fell asleep. I was exhausted with the shock of it all, I think. I remember hearing her murmur to my mother, something about how I had been taken ill while they had been out, some childish fever. By that point I was enjoying the fuss that was being made over me, and the demon was beginning to seem a rather exciting memory. I recall planning how to tell Cecily about it—without admitting, of course, that Ella had saved me while I had screamed like a child—” “You were a child,” Magnus noted.

“I was old enough,” said Will. “Old enough to know what it meant when I was woken up the next morning by my mother howling with grief. She was in Ella’s room, and Ella was dead in her bed. They did their best to keep me out, but I saw what I needed to see. She was swelled up, greenish-black like something had rotted her from inside. She didn’t look like my sister anymore. She didn’t look human anymore.

“I knew what had happened, even if they didn’t. ‘All who love you will die. And I shall begin it with her.’ It was my curse at work. I knew then that I had to get away from them—from all my family—before I brought the same horror down on them. I left that night, following the roads to London.” Magnus opened his mouth, then closed it again. For once he didn’t know what to say.

“So, you see,” said Will, “my curse can hardly be called nonsense. I have seen it at work. And since that day I have striven to be sure that what happened to Ella will happen to no one else in my life. Can you imagine it? Can you?” He raked his hands through his black hair, letting the tangled strands fall back into his eyes. “Never letting anyone near you. Making everyone who might otherwise love you, hate you. I left my family to distance myself from them, and that they might forget me. Each day I must show cruelty to those I have chosen to make my home with, lest they let themselves feel too much affection for me.” “Tessa . . .” Magnus’s mind was suddenly full of the serious-faced gray-eyed girl who had looked at Will as if he were a new sun dawning on the horizon. “You think she does not love you?” “I do not think so. I have been foul enough to her.” Will’s voice was wretchedness and misery and self-loathing all combined. “I think there was a time when she almost—I thought she was dead, you see, and I showed her—I let her see what I felt. I think she might have returned my feelings after that. But I crushed her, as brutally as I could. I imagine she simply hates me now.” “And Jem,” said Magnus, dreading the answer, knowing it.

“Jem is dying anyway,” Will said in a choked voice. “Jem is what I have allowed myself. I tell myself, if he dies, it is not my fault. He is dying anyway, and in pain. Ella’s death at least was swift. Perhaps through me he can be given a good death.” He looked up miserably, met Magnus’s accusing eyes. “No one can live with nothing,” he whispered. “Jem is all I have.” “You should have told him,” said Magnus. “He would have chosen to be your parabatai anyway, even knowing the risks.” “I cannot burden him with that knowledge! He would keep it secret if I asked him to, but it would pain him to know it—and the pain I cause others would only hurt him more. Yet if I were to tell Charlotte, to tell Henry and the rest, that my behavior is a sham—that every cruel thing I have said to them is a lie, that I wander the streets only to give the impression that I have been out drinking and whoring when in reality I have no desire to do either—then I have ceased to push them away.” “And thus you have never told anyone of this curse? No one but myself, since you were twelve years old?”

“I could not,” Will said. “How could I be sure they would form no attachment to me, once they knew the truth? A story like that might engender pity, pity could become attachment, and then . . .” Magnus raised his eyebrows. “Are you not concerned about me?”

“That you might love me?” Will sounded genuinely startled. “No, for you hate Nephilim, do you not? And besides, I imagine you warlocks have ways to guard against unwanted emotions. But for those like Charlotte, like Henry, if they knew the persona I presented to them was false, if they knew of my true heart . . . they might come to care for me.” “And then they would die,” said Magnus.

Images

Charlotte raised her face slowly from her hands. “And you’ve absolutely no idea where he is?” she asked for the third time. “Will is simply—gone?” “Charlotte.” Jem’s voice was soothing. They were in the drawing room, with its wallpaper of flowers and vines. Sophie was by the fire, using the poker to coax more flames from the coal. Henry sat behind the desk, fiddling with a set of copper instruments; Jessamine was on the chaise, and Charlotte was in an armchair by the fire. Tessa and Jem sat somewhat primly side by side on the sofa, which made Tessa feel peculiarly like a guest. She was full of sandwiches that Bridget had brought in on a tray, and tea, its warmth slowly thawing her insides. “It isn’t as if this is unusual. When do we ever know where Will is at nighttime?” “But this is different. He saw his family, or his sister at least. Oh, poor Will.” Charlotte’s voice shook with anxiety. “I had thought perhaps he was finally beginning to forget about them . . .” “No one forgets about their family,” said Jessamine sharply. She sat on the chaise longue with a watercolor easel and papers propped before her; she had recently made the decision that she had fallen behind in pursuing the maidenly arts, and had begun painting, cutting silhouettes, pressing flowers, and playing on the spinet in the music room, though Will said her singing voice made him think of Church when he was in a particularly complaining mood.

“Well, no, of course not,” said Charlotte hastily, “but perhaps not to live with the memory constantly, as a sort of dreadful weight on you.” “As if we’d know what to do with Will if he didn’t have the morbs every day,” said Jessamine. “Anyway, he can’t have cared about his family that much in the first place or he wouldn’t have left them.” Tessa gave a little gasp. “How can you say that? You don’t know why he left. You didn’t see his face at Ravenscar Manor—” “Ravenscar Manor.” Charlotte was staring blindly at the fireplace. “Of all the places I thought they’d go . . .” “Pish and tosh,” said Jessamine, looking angrily at Tessa. “At least his family’s alive. Besides, I’ll wager he wasn’t sad at all; I’ll wager you he was shamming. He always is.” Tessa glanced toward Jem for support, but he was looking at Charlotte, and his look was as hard as a silver coin. “What do you mean,” he said, “of all the places you thought they’d go? Did you know that Will’s family had moved?” Charlotte started, and sighed. “Jem . . .”

“It’s important, Charlotte.”

Charlotte glanced over at the tin on her desk that held her favorite lemon drops. “After Will’s parents came here to see him, when he was twelve, and he sent them away . . . I begged him to speak to them, just for a moment, but he wouldn’t. I tried to make him understand that if they left, then he could never see them again, and I could never tell him news of them. He took my hand, and he said, ‘Please just promise me you’ll tell me if they die, Charlotte. Promise me.’” She looked down, her fingers knotting in the material of her dress. “It was such an odd request for a little boy to make. I—I had to say yes.” “So you’ve been looking into the welfare of Will’s family?” Jem asked.

“I hired Ragnor Fell to do it,” Charlotte said. “For the first three years. The fourth year he came back to me and told me that the Herondales had moved. Edmund Herondale—that’s Will’s father—had lost their house gambling. That was all Ragnor was able to glean. The Herondales had been forced to move. He could find no further trace of them.” “Did you ever tell Will?” Tessa said.

“No.” Charlotte shook her head. “He had made me promise to tell him if they died, that was all. Why add to his unhappiness with the knowledge that they had lost their home? He never mentioned them. I had grown to hope he might have forgotten—” “He has never forgotten.” There was a force in Jem’s words that stopped the nervous movement of Charlotte’s fingers.

“I should not have done it,” Charlotte said. “I should never have made that promise. It was a contravention of the Law—” “When Will truly wants something,” said Jem quietly, “when he feels something, he can break your heart.”

There was a silence. Charlotte’s lips were tight, her eyes suspiciously bright. “Did he say anything about where he was going when he left Kings Cross?” “No,” said Tessa. “We arrived, and he just up and dusted—sorry, got up and ran,” she corrected herself, their blank looks alerting her to the fact that she was using American slang.

“’Up and dusted,’” said Jem. “I like that. Makes it sound like he left a cloud of dust spinning in his wake. He didn’t say anything, no—just elbowed his way through the crowd and was gone. Nearly knocked down Cyril coming to get us.” “None of it makes any sense,” Charlotte moaned. “Why on earth would Will’s family be living in a house that used to belong to Mortmain? In Yorkshire of all places? This is not where I thought this road would lead. We sought Mortmain and we found the Shades; we sought him again and found Will’s family. He encircles us, like that cursed ouroboros that is his symbol.” “You had Ragnor Fell look into Will’s family’s welfare before,” said Jem. “Can you do it again? If Mortmain is somehow entangled with them . . . for whatever reason . . .” “Yes, yes, of course,” said Charlotte. “I will write to him immediately.”

“There is a part of this I do not understand,” Tessa said. “The reparations demand was filed in 1825, and the complainant’s age was listed as twenty-two. If he was twenty-two then, he’d be seventy-five now, and he doesn’t look that old. Maybe forty . . .” “There are ways,” Charlotte said slowly, “for mundanes who dabble in dark magic to prolong their lives. Just the sort of spell, by the way, that one might find in the Book of the White. Which is why possession of the Book by anyone other than the Clave is considered a crime.” “All that newspaper business about Mortmain inheriting a shipping company from his father,” Jem said. “Do you think he pulled the vampire trick?” “The vampire trick?” echoed Tessa, trying in vain to remember such a thing from the Codex.

“It’s a way vampires have of keeping their money over time,” said Charlotte. “When they have been too long in one place, long enough that people have started to notice that they never age, they fake their own death and leave their inheritance to a long-lost son or nephew. Voila—the nephew shows up, bears an uncanny resemblance to his father or uncle, but there he is and he gets the money. And they go on like that for generations sometimes. Mortmain could easily have left the company to himself to disguise the fact that he wasn’t aging.” “So he pretended to be his own son,” said Tessa. “Which would also have given him a reason to be seen changing the direction of the company—to return to Britain and begin interesting himself in mechanisms, that sort of thing.” “And is probably also why he left the house in Yorkshire,” said Henry.

“Though that does not explain why it is being inhabited by Will’s family,” mused Jem.

“Or where Will is,” added Tessa.

“Or where Mortmain is,” put in Jessamine, with a sort of dark glee. “Only nine more days, Charlotte.”

Charlotte put her head back into her hands. “Tessa,” she said, “I hate to ask this of you, but it is, after all, why we sent you to Yorkshire, and we must leave no stone unturned. You still have the button from Starkweather’s coat?” Wordlessly Tessa took the button from her pocket. It was round, pearl and silver, strangely cold in her hand. “You want me to Change into him?” “Tessa,” Jem said quickly. “If you do not want to do this, Charlotte—we—would never require it.”

“I know,” Tessa said. “But I offered, and I would not go back on my word.”

“Thank you, Tessa.” Charlotte looked relieved. “We must know if there is anything he is hiding from us—if he was lying to you about any part of this business. His involvement in what happened to the Shades . . .” Henry frowned. “It will be a dark day when you cannot trust your fellow Shadowhunters, Lottie.”

“It is a dark day already, Henry dear,” Charlotte replied without looking at him.

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“You won’t help me, then,” Will said in a flat voice. Using magic, Magnus had built the fire up in the grate. In the glow of the leaping flames, the warlock could see more of the details of Will—the dark hair curling close at the nape of his neck, the delicate cheekbones and strong jaw, the shadow cast by his lashes. He reminded Magnus of someone; the memory tickled at the back of his mind, refusing to come clear. After so many years, it was hard sometimes to pick out individual memories, even of those you had loved. He could no longer remember his mother’s face, though he knew she had looked like him, a mixture of his Dutch grandfather and his Indonesian grandmother.

“If your definition of ‘help’ involves dropping you into the demon realms like a rat into a pit full of terriers, then no, I won’t help you,” said Magnus. “This is madness, you know. Go home. Sleep it off.” “I’m not drunk.”

“You might as well be.” Magnus ran both hands through his thick hair and thought, suddenly and irrationally, of Camille. And was pleased. Here in this room, with Will, he had gone nearly two hours without thinking of her at all. Progress. “You think you’re the only person who’s ever lost anyone?” Will’s face twisted. “Don’t make it sound like that. Like some ordinary sort of grief. It’s not like that. They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite. Over. This is a fresh wound every day.” “Yes,” said Magnus, leaning back against the cushions. “That is the genius of curses, isn’t it.”

“It would be one thing if I had been cursed so that everyone I loved would die,” said Will. “I could keep myself from loving. To keep others from caring for me—it is an odd, exhausting procedure.” He sounded exhausted, Magnus thought, and dramatic in that way that only seventeen-year-olds could be. He also doubted the truth of Will’s statement that he could have kept himself from loving, but understood why the boy would want to tell himself such a story. “I must play the part of another person all day, each day—bitter and vicious and cruel—” “I rather liked you that way. And don’t tell me you don’t enjoy yourself at least a little, playing the devil, Will Herondale.” “They say it runs in our blood, that sort of bitter humor,” said Will, looking at the flames. “Ella had it. So did Cecily. I never thought I did until I found I needed it. I have learned good lessons in how to be hateful over all these years. But I feel myself losing myself—” He groped for words. “I feel myself diminished, parts of me spiraling away into the darkness, that which is good and honest and true—If you hold it away from yourself long enough, do you lose it entirely? If no one cares for you at all, do you even really exist?” He said this last so softly that Magnus had to strain to hear him. “What was that?”

“Nothing. Something I read somewhere once.” Will turned to him. “You would be doing me a mercy, sending me to the demon realms. I might find what I am looking for. It is my only chance—and without that chance my life is worthless to me anyway.” “Easy enough to say at seventeen,” said Magnus, with no small amount of coldness. “You are in love and you think that is all there is in the world. But the world is bigger than you, Will, and may have need of you. You are a Shadowhunter. You serve a greater cause. Your life is not yours to throw away.” “Then nothing is mine,” said Will, and pushed himself away from the mantel, staggering a little as if he really were drunk. “If I don’t even own my own life—” “Who ever said we were owed happiness?” Magnus said softly, and in his mind he saw the house of his childhood, and his mother flinching away from him with frightened eyes, and her husband, who was not his father, burning. “What about what we owe to others?” “I’ve given them everything I have already,” said Will, seizing his coat off the back of the chair. “They’ve had enough out of me, and if this is what you have to say to me, then so have you—warlock.” He spat the last word like a curse. Regretting his harshness, Magnus began to rise to his feet, but Will pushed past him toward the door. It slammed behind him. Moments later Magnus saw him pass by the front window, struggling into his coat as he walked, his head bent down against the wind.

Images

Tessa sat before her vanity table, wrapped in her dressing gown and rolling the small button back and forth in her palm. She had asked to be left alone to do what Charlotte had requested of her. It was not the first time she had transformed into a man; the Dark Sisters had forced her to do it, more than once, and while it was a peculiar feeling, it was not what fueled her reluctance. It was the darkness she had seen in Starkweather’s eyes, the slight sheen of madness to his tone when he spoke of the spoils he had taken. It was not a mind she wanted to acquaint herself with further.

She did not have to do it, she thought. She could walk out there and tell them she had tried and it had not worked. But she knew even as the thought flickered through her mind, she could not do that. Somehow she had come to think of herself as bound with loyalty to the Institute’s Shadowhunters. They had protected her, shown her kindness, taught her much of the truth of what she was, and they had the same goal she did—find Mortmain and destroy him. She thought of Jem’s kind eyes on her, steady and silver and full of faith. With a deep breath she closed her fingers around the button.

The darkness came and enveloped her, wrapping her in its cool silence. The faint sound of the fire crackling in the grate, the wind against the panes of the window, vanished. Blackness and silence. She felt her body Change: Her hands felt large and swollen, shot through with the pains of arthritis. Her back ached, her head felt heavy, her feet were throbbing and painful, and there was a bitter taste in her mouth. Rotting teeth, she thought, and felt ill, so ill that she had to force her mind back to the darkness surrounding her, looking for the light, the connection.

It came, but not as the light usually did, as steady as a beacon. It came in shattered fragments, as if she were watching a mirror break into pieces. Each piece held an image that whipped by her, some at terrifying speed. She saw the image of a horse rearing back, a dark hill covered in snow, the black basalt Council room of the Clave, a cracked headstone. She struggled to seize and catch at a single image. Here was one, a memory: Starkweather dancing at a ball with a laughing woman in an empire-waisted ball gown. Tessa discarded it, reaching for another: The house was small, nestled in the shadows between one hill and another. Starkweather watched from the darkness of a copse of trees as the front door opened and out came a man. Even in memory Tessa felt Starkweather’s heart begin to beat more quickly. The man was tall, broad-shouldered—and as green-skinned as a lizard. His hair was black. The child he held by the hand, by contrast, seemed as normal as a child could be—small, chubby-fisted, pink-skinned.

Tessa knew the man’s name, because Starkweather knew it.

John Shade.

Shade hoisted the child up onto his shoulders as through the door of the house spilled a number of odd-looking metal creatures, like a child’s jointed dolls, but human-size, and with skin made of shining metal. The creatures were featureless. Though, oddly, they wore clothes—the rough workman’s coveralls of a Yorkshire farmer on some, and on others plain muslin dresses. The automatons joined hands and began to sway as if they were at a country dance. The child laughed and clapped his hands.

“Look well on this, my son,” said the green-skinned man, “for one day I shall rule a clockwork kingdom of such beings, and you shall be its prince.” “John!” came a voice from inside the house; a woman leaned through the window. She had long hair the color of a cloudless sky. “John, come in. Someone will see! And you’ll frighten the boy!” “He’s not frightened at all, Anne.” The man laughed, and set the boy down on the ground, ruffling his hair. “My little clockwork prince . . .” A swell of hatred rose in Starkweather’s heart at the memory, so violent that it ripped Tessa free, sending her spinning through the darkness again. She began to realize what was happening. Starkweather was becoming senile, losing the thread that connected thought and memory. What came and went in his mind was seemingly random. With an effort she tried to visualize the Shade family again, and caught the brief edge of a memory—a room torn apart, cogs and cams and gears and ripped metal everywhere, fluid leaking as black as blood, and the green-skinned man and blue-haired woman lying dead among the ruins. Then that, too, was gone, and she saw, again and again, the face of the girl from the portrait on the stairwell—the child with the fair hair and stubborn expression—saw her riding a small pony, her face set determinedly, saw her hair blowing in the wind off the moors—saw her screaming and writhing in pain as a stele was set to her skin and black Marks stained its whiteness. And last, Tessa saw her own face, appearing out of the shadowy gloom of the York Institute’s nave, and she felt the wave of his shock ripple through her, so strong that it threw her out of his body and back into her own.

There was a faint thump as the button fell out of her hand and struck the floor. Tessa raised her head and looked into the mirror over her vanity. She was herself again, and the bitter taste in her mouth now was blood where she had bitten her lip.

She rose to her feet, feeling ill, and went over to the window, throwing it open to feel the cool night air on her sweaty skin. The night outside was heavy with shadow; there was little wind, and the black gates of the Institute seemed to loom before her, their motto speaking more than ever of mortality and death. A glimmer of movement caught her eye. She looked down and saw a white shape gazing up at her from the stony courtyard below. A face, twisted but recognizable. Mrs. Dark.

She gasped and jerked back reflexively, out of sight of the window. A wave of dizziness came over her. She shook it off fiercely, her hands gripping the sill, and pulled herself forward again, gazing down with dread— But the courtyard was empty, nothing moving inside it but shadows. She closed her eyes, then opened them again slowly, and put her hand to the ticking angel at her throat. There had been nothing there, she told herself, just the rags of her wild imagination. Telling herself she’d better rein in her daydreaming or she’d end up as mad as old Starkweather, she slid the window shut.