Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Prince

“I want to know what I am,” she said. “I believe I am some . . . combination that has not been seen before. Part faerie, or part—”

“Have you ever thought of transforming yourself into one of your parents?” Will asked. “Your mother, or father? It would give you access to their memories, wouldn’t it?”

“I have thought of it. Of course I have. But I have nothing of my father’s or mother’s. Everything that was packed in my trunks for the voyage here was discarded by the Dark Sisters.”

“What about your angel necklace?” Will asked. “Wasn’t that your mother’s?”

Tessa shook her head. “I tried. I—I could reach nothing of her in it. It has been mine so long, I think, that what made it hers has evaporated, like water.”

Will’s eyes gleamed in the shadows. “Perhaps you are a clockwork girl. Perhaps Mortmain’s warlock father built you, and now Mortmain seeks the secret of how to create such a perfect facsimile of life when all he can build are hideous monstrosities. Perhaps all that beats beneath your chest is a heart made of metal.”

Tessa drew in a breath, feeling momentarily dizzy. His soft voice was so convincing, and yet—“No,” she said sharply. “You forget, I remember my childhood. Mechanical creatures do not change or grow. Nor would that explain my ability.”

“I know,” said Will with a grin that flashed white in the darkness. “I only wanted to see if I could convince you .”

Tessa looked at him steadily. “I am not the one who has no heart.”

It was too dark in the carriage for her to tell, but she sensed that he flushed, darkly. Before he could say anything in response, the wheels came to a jerking halt. They had arrived.

Cyril had paused the carriage outside the gates of the property, under the shade of a leafy oak tree. The Lightwoods’ country house in Chiswick, just outside London proper, was massive, built in the Palladian style, with soaring pillars and multiple staircases. The radiance of the moon made everything pearlescent like the inside of an oyster shell. The stone of the house seemed to gleam silver, while the gate that ran around the property had the sheen of black oil. None of the lights in the house seemed to be illuminated—the place was as dark as pitch and grave-silent, the vast grounds stretching all around it, down to the edge of a meander in the Thames River, unlit and deserted. Tessa began to wonder if they had made a mistake in coming here.

As Will left the carriage, helping her down after him, his head turned, his fine mouth hardening. “Do you smell that? Demonic witchcraft. Its stink is on the air.”

Tessa made a face. She could smell nothing unusual—in fact, this far out of the city center, the air seemed cleaner than it had near the Institute. She could smell wet leaves and dirt. She looked over at Will, his face raised to the moonlight, and wondered what weapons lay concealed under his closely fitted frock coat. His hands were sheathed in white gloves, his starched shirtfront immaculate. With the mask, he could have been an illustration of a handsome highwayman in a penny dreadful.

Tessa bit her lip. “Are you certain? The house looks deadly quiet. As if no one were home. Could we be wrong?”

He shook his head. “There is powerful magic at work here. Something stronger than a glamour. A true ward. Someone very much does not want us to know what is happening here tonight.” He glanced down at the invitation in her hand, shrugged, and went up to the gate. There was a bell there, and he rang it, the noise jangling Tessa’s already stretched nerves. She glared at him. He grinned. “ Caelum denique, angel,” he said, and melted away into the shadows, just as the gate before her opened.

A hooded figure stood before her. Her first thought was of the Silent Brothers, but their robes were the color of parchment, and the figure that stood before her was robed in the color of black smoke. The hood hid its face completely. Wordlessly she held out her invitation.

The hand that took it from her was gloved. For a moment the hidden face regarded the invitation. Tessa could not help but fidget. In any ordinary circumstance, a young lady attending a ball alone would be so improper as to be scandalous. But this was no ordinary circumstance. At last, a voice issued from beneath the hood:

“Welcome, Miss Lovelace.”

It was a gritty voice, a voice like skin being scraped over a rough, tearing surface. Tessa’s spine prickled, and she was glad she could not see beneath the hood. The figure returned the invitation to her and stepped back, gesturing her inside; she followed, forcing herself not to look around to see if Will was following.

She was led around the side of the house, down a narrow garden path. The gardens extended for a good distance out around the house, silvery-green in the moonlight. There was a circular black ornamental pond, with a white marble bench beside it, and low hedges, carefully clipped, running alongside neat paths. The path she was on ended at a tall and narrow entrance set into the house’s side. A strange symbol was carved into the door. It seemed to shift and change as Tessa looked at it, making her eyes hurt. She looked away as her hooded companion opened the door and gestured for her to go inside.

She entered the house, and the door slammed behind her. She turned just as it shut, catching a glimpse, she thought, of the face beneath the hood. She thought she had seen something very like a cluster of red eyes in the center of a dark oval, like the eyes of a spider. She caught her breath as the door clicked shut and she was plunged into darkness.

As she reached, blindly, for the handle of the door, light sprang up all around her. She was standing at the foot of a long, narrow staircase that led upward. Torches burning with a greenish flame—not witchlight—ran up the sides of the stairs.

At the top of the stairs was a door. Another symbol was painted on this one. Tessa felt her mouth go even dryer. It was the ouroboros , the double serpent. The symbol of the Pandemonium Club.

For a moment she felt frozen with fear. The symbol brought bleak memories rushing back: the Dark House; the Sisters torturing her, trying to force her to Change; Nate’s betrayal. She wondered what Will had said to her in Latin before he had vanished. “Courage,” no doubt, or some variant of that. She thought of Jane Eyre, bravely facing down the angry Mr. Rochester; Catherine Earnshaw, who when mauled by a savage dog “did not yell out—no! she would have scorned to do it.” And lastly she thought of Boadicea, who Will had told her was “braver than any man.”

It’s just a ball, Tessa, she told herself, and reached for the knob. Just a party.

She had never been to a ball before, of course. She knew only a little of what to expect, and all of that was from books. In Jane Austen’s books the characters were constantly waiting for there to be a ball, or arranging a ball, and often an entire village seemed to be involved in the planning and location of the ball. Whereas in other books, such as Vanity Fair , they were grand backdrops against which scheming and plotting occurred. She knew that there would be a dressing room for the ladies, where she could leave her shawl, and one for the men, where they could safely dispose of hats, overcoats, and walking sticks. There ought to be a dance card for her, where the names of the men who had asked her to dance could be marked down. It was rude to dance more than a few dances in a row with the same gentleman. There should be a grand, beautifully decorated ballroom, and a smaller refreshment room, where there would be iced drinks and sandwiches and biscuits and tipsy cake . . .