Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Prince

Your servant,

Magnus Bane

Postscript: If I were you, I would not share the contents of this letter with Mrs. Branwell. Just a suggestion.

M.B.

Though reading Magnus’s letter made her feel as if her veins were full of fire, somehow Tessa survived the rest of the afternoon, and dinner as well, without—she thought—betraying any outward sign of her distress. It seemed to take Sophie an agonizingly long time to help her out of her dress, brush her hair, stoke the fire, and tell her the day’s gossip. (Cyril’s cousin worked in the Lightwoods’ house and had reported that Tatiana—Gabriel and Gideon’s sister—was due to return from her honeymoon on the Continent with her new husband any day now. The household was in an uproar as she was rumored to have a most unpleasant disposition.)

Tessa muttered something about how she must take after her father that way. Impatience made her voice a croak, and Sophie was only just prevented from rushing out to get her a tisane of mint by Tessa’s insistence that she was exhausted, and needed sleep more than she needed tea.

The moment the door shut behind Sophie, Tessa was on her feet, shimmying out of her nightclothes and into a dress, lacing herself up as best she could and throwing a short jacket on over the top. After a cautious glance out into the corridor, she slipped out of her room and across the hall to Jem’s door, where she knocked as quietly as she could. For a moment nothing happened, and she had the fleeting worry that he had already gone to sleep, but then the door flew open and Jem stood on the threshold.

She had clearly caught him in the middle of readying himself for bed; his shoes and jacket were off, his shirt open at the collar, his hair an adorable rumpled mess of silver. She wanted to reach out and smooth it down. He blinked at her. “Tessa?”

Without a word she handed him the note. He glanced up and down the corridor, then gestured her inside the room. She shut the door behind him as he read Magnus’s scrawl once, and then again, before balling it up in his hand, the crackling paper loud in the room. “I knew it,” he said.

It was Tessa’s turn to blink. “Knew what?”

“That this wasn’t an ordinary sort of absence.” He sat down on the trunk at the foot of his bed and shoved his feet into his shoes. “I felt it. Here.” He put his hand over his chest. “I knew there was something strange. I felt it like a shadow on my soul.”

“You don’t think he’d really hurt himself, do you?”

“Hurt himself, I don’t know. Put himself in a situation where he might be hurt—” Jem stood up. “I should go.”

“Don’t you mean ‘we’? You weren’t thinking of going looking for Will without me, were you?” she asked archly, and when he said nothing, she said, “That letter was addressed to me, James. I didn’t have to show it to you.”

He half-closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, he was smiling crookedly. “James,” he said. “Ordinarily only Will calls me that.”

“I’m sorry—”

“No. Don’t be. I like the sound of it on your lips.”

Lips. There was something strangely, delicately indelicate about the word, like a kiss itself. It seemed to hover in the air between them while they both hesitated. But it’s Jem, Tessa thought in bewilderment. Jem. Not Will, who could make her feel as if he were running his fingers along her bare skin just by looking at her—

“You’re right,” Jem said, clearing his throat. “Magnus would not have sent the letter to you had he not intended you to be part of searching for Will. Perhaps he thinks your power will be useful. In either case—” He turned from her, going to his wardrobe and flinging it open. “Wait for me in your room. I will be there momentarily.”

Tessa wasn’t sure if she nodded—she thought she had—and moments later she found herself back in her bedroom, leaning against the door. Her face felt hot, as if she had stood too close to a fire. She looked around. When had she started to think of this room as her bedroom? The big, grand space, with its mullioned windows and softly glowing witchlight tapers, was so unlike the tiny box room she had slept in in the flat in New York, with its puddles of wax on the bedside table, caused by her staying up all night reading by candlelight, and the cheap wooden-framed bed with its thin blankets. In the winter the windows, ill-seated, would rattle in their frames when the wind blew.

A soft knock on the door drew her out of her reverie, and she turned, flinging it open to find Jem on the threshold. He was fully dressed in Shadowhunter gear—the tough leather-looking black coat and trousers, the heavy boots. He put a finger to his lips and gestured for her to follow him.

It was probably ten o’clock at night, Tessa guessed, and the witchlight was burning low. They took a curious, winding path through the corridors, not the one she was used to taking to get to the front doors. Her confusion was answered when they reached a door set at the end of a long corridor. There was a rounded look to the space they stood in, and Tessa guessed they were probably inside one of the Gothic towers that stood at each corner of the Institute.

Jem pushed the door open and ushered her in after him; he closed the door firmly behind them, slipping the key he had used back into his pocket. “This,” he said, “is Will’s room.”

“Gracious,” Tessa said. “I’ve never been in here. I was starting to imagine he slept upside down, like a bat.”

Jem laughed and went past her, over to a wooden bureau, and began to rummage through the contents on top of it as Tessa glanced around. Her heart was beating fast, as if she were seeing something she wasn’t meant to see—some secret, hidden part of Will. She told herself not to be silly, it was just a room, with the same heavy dark furniture as all the other Institute rooms. It was a mess, too—covers kicked down to the foot of the bed; clothes draped over the backs of chairs, teacups half-full of liquid not yet cleared away, balanced precariously on the nightstand. And everywhere books—books on the side tables, books on the bed, books in stacks on the floor, books double-lined in shelves along the walls. As Jem rummaged, Tessa wandered to the shelves and looked curiously at the titles.

She was not surprised to find that they were almost all fiction and poetry. Some were titles in languages she couldn’t read. She recognized Latin and the Greek alphabet. There were also books of fairy tales, The Arabian Nights , James Payn’s work, Anthony Trollope’s Vicar of Bullhampton , Thomas Hardy’s Desperate Remedies , a pile of Wilkie Collins— The New Magdalen , The Law and the Lady , The Two Destinies , and a new Jules Verne novel titled Child of the Cavern that she itched to get her hands on. And then, there it was— A Tale of Two Cities. With a rueful smile she reached to take it from the shelf. As she lifted it, several scrawled-on papers that had been pressed between the covers fluttered to the floor. She knelt to pick them up—and froze. She recognized the handwriting instantly. It was her own.

Her throat tightened as she thumbed through the pages. Dear Nate, she read. I tried to Change today, and failed. It was a coin they gave me, and I could get nothing from it. Either it was never owned by a person, or my power is weakening. I would not care, but that they whipped me—have you ever been whipped before? No, a silly question. Of course you haven’t. It feels like fire being laid in lines across your skin. I am ashamed to say I cried, and you know how I hate to cry . . . And Dear Nate, I missed you so much today, I thought I would die. If you are gone, there is no one in the world who cares if I am dead or alive. I feel myself dissolving, vanishing into nothingness, for if there is no one in the world who cares for you, do you really exist at all?