Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Prince

She shut the door behind her and carried the book over to her bed, sitting down so she could examine it. Will must have left it for her. Obviously it could have been no one else. But why ? Why these odd, small kindnesses in the dark, the talk about books, and the coldness the rest of the time?

She opened the book to its title page. Will had scrawled a note for her there—not just a note, in fact. A poem.

For Tessa Gray, on the occasion of being given

a copy of Vathek to read:

Caliph Vathek and his dark horde

Are bound for Hell, you won’t be bored!

Your faith in me will be restored—

Unless this token you find untoward

And my poor gift you have ignored.

—Will

Tessa burst out laughing, then clapped a hand over her mouth. Drat Will, for always being able to make her laugh, even when she didn’t want to, even when she knew that opening her heart to him even an inch was like taking a pinch of some deadly addictive drug. She dropped the copy of Vathek , complete with Will’s deliberately terrible poem, onto her nightstand and rolled onto the bed, burying her face in the pillows. She could still hear Jem’s violin music, sweetly sad, drifting beneath her door. As hard as she could, she tried to push thoughts of Will out of her mind; and indeed, when she fell asleep at last and dreamed, for once he made no appearance.

It rained the next day, and despite her umbrella Tessa could feel the fine hat she had borrowed from Jessamine beginning to sag like a waterlogged bird around her ears as they—she, Jem, Will, and Cyril, carrying their luggage—hurried from the coach into Kings Cross Station. Through the sheets of gray rain she was conscious only of a tall, imposing building, a great clock tower rising from the front. It was topped with a weathercock that showed that the wind was blowing due north—and not gently, spattering drops of cold rain into her face.

Inside, the station was chaos: people hurrying hither and thither, newspaper boys hawking their wares, men striding up and down with sandwich boards strapped to their chests, advertising everything from hair tonic to soap. A little boy in a Norfolk jacket dashed to and fro, his mother in hot pursuit. With a word to Jem, Will vanished immediately into the crowd.

“Gone off and left us, has he?” said Tessa, struggling with her umbrella, which was refusing to close.

“Let me do that.” Deftly Jem reached over and flicked at the mechanism; the umbrella shut with a decided snap. Pushing her damp hair out of her eyes, Tessa smiled at him, just as Will returned with an aggrieved-looking porter who relieved Cyril of the baggage and snapped at them to hurry up, the train wouldn’t wait all day.

Will looked from the porter to Jem’s cane, and back. His blue eyes narrowed. “It will wait for us ,” Will said with a deadly smile.

The porter looked bewildered but said “Sir” in a decidedly less aggressive tone and proceeded to lead them toward the departure platform. People—so many people!—streamed about Tessa as she made her way through the crowd, clutching at Jem with one hand and Jessamine’s hat with the other. Far at the end of the station, where the tracks ran out into open ground, she could see the steel gray sky, smudged with soot.

Jem helped her up into their compartment; there was much bustling about the luggage, and Will tipping the porter in among shouts and whistling as the train prepared to depart. The door swung shut behind them just as the train pulled forward, steam rushing past the windows in white drifts, wheels clacking merrily.

“Did you bring anything to read on the journey?” asked Will, settling into the seat opposite Tessa; Jem was beside her, his cane leaning up against the wall.

She thought of the copy of Vathek and his poem in it; she had left it at the Institute to avoid temptation, the way you might leave behind a box of candies if you were banting and didn’t want to put on weight. “No,” she said. “I haven’t come across anything I particularly wanted to read lately.”

Will’s jaw set, but he said nothing.

“There is always something so exciting about the start of a journey, don’t you think?” Tessa went on, nose to the window, though she could see little but smoke and soot and hurtling gray rain; London was a dim shadow in the mist.

“No,” said Will as he sat back and pulled his hat down over his eyes.

Tessa kept her face against the glass as the gray of London began to fall away behind them, and with it the rain. Soon they were rolling through green fields dotted with white sheep, with here and there the point of a village steeple in the distance. The sky had turned from steel to a damp, misty blue, and small black clouds scudded overhead. Tessa watched it all with fascination.

“Haven’t you ever been in the countryside before?” asked Jem, though unlike Will’s, his question had the flavor of actual curiosity.

Tessa shook her head. “I don’t remember ever leaving New York, except to go to Coney Island, and that isn’t really countryside. I suppose I must have passed through some of it when I came from Southampton with the Dark Sisters, but it was dark, and they kept the curtains across the windows, besides.” She took off her hat, which was dripping water, and laid it on the seat between them to dry. “But I feel as if I have seen it before. In books. I keep imagining I’ll see Thornfield Hall rising up beyond the trees, or Wuthering Heights perched on a stony crag—”

“Wuthering Heights is in Yorkshire,” said Will, from under his hat, “and we’re nowhere near Yorkshire yet. We haven’t even reached Grantham. And there’s nothing that impressive about Yorkshire. Hills and dales, no proper mountains like we have in Wales.”

“Do you miss Wales?” Tessa inquired. She wasn’t sure why she did it; she knew asking Will about his past was like poking a dog with a sore tail, but she couldn’t seem to help it.

Will shrugged lightly. “What’s to miss? Sheep and singing,” he said. “And the ridiculous language. Fe hoffwn i fod mor feddw, fyddai ddim yn cofio fy enw. ”

“What does that mean?”

“It means ‘I wish to get so drunk I no longer remember my own name,’ Quite useful.”

“You don’t sound very patriotic,” observed Tessa. “Weren’t you just reminiscing about the mountains?”

“Patriotic?” Will looked smug. “I’ll tell you what’s patriotic,” he said. “In honor of my birthplace, I’ve the dragon of Wales tattooed on my—”

“You’re in a charming temper, aren’t you, William?” interrupted Jem, though there was no edge to his voice. Still, having observed them now for some time, together and apart, Tessa knew it meant something when they called each other by their full first names instead of the familiar shortened forms. “Remember, Starkweather can’t stand Charlotte, so if this is the mood you’re in—”

“I promise to charm the dickens out of him,” said Will, sitting up and readjusting his crushed hat. “I shall charm him with such force that when I am done, he will be left lying limply on the ground, trying to remember his own name.”

“The man’s eighty-nine,” muttered Jem. “He may well have that problem anyway.”

“I suppose you’re storing up all that charm now?” Tessa inquired. “Wouldn’t want to waste any of it on us?”

“That’s it exactly.” Will sounded pleased. “And it isn’t Charlotte the Starkweathers can’t stand, Jem. It’s her father.”

“Sins of the fathers,” said Jem. “They’re not inclined to like any Fairchild, or anyone associated with one. Charlotte wouldn’t even let Henry come up—”